When you're up against someone who wants to fight, settling can feel like surrender. A master mediator would tell you it's often the smartest, least costly win available. In this episode, mediator and retired judge Shel Stark joins Lisa to explain how.

Shel opens with the trap that keeps people stuck: we fall in love with our own rights, and the more a conflict escalates, the more we ignore the risks. He and Lisa cover why "I want justice" is the wrong goal for a negotiation, how closure becomes the thing people value most (sometimes with a dollar figure attached), the two questions he uses to disarm a tense room, the "pledge" that turns opponents into joint problem-solvers, how he handles an ex who hides assets, and why a good settlement you control beats a good lawsuit you can lose. Shel has retired, but his free educational articles remain at starkmediator.com.

This is strategic education, not legal advice for your specific situation.

✅ WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
 ✅ Why "falling in love with your rights" keeps you stuck and at risk
 ✅ Why "I want justice" is the wrong goal to bring to a negotiation
 ✅ How closure becomes the thing people value most (and can be worth real money)
 ✅ The two questions a master mediator uses to disarm a tense room
 ✅ The "pledge" that turns opponents into joint problem-solvers
 ✅ How to handle an ex who hides assets or won't share the numbers
 ✅ Why the $5,000 opening offer shouldn't panic you until round four or five
 ✅ Why a good settlement you control beats a good lawsuit you can lose

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS (+1:00 for the bumper)
 0:00 Intro
 1:36 Why people "fall in love with their rights"
 3:05 What people really want: justice, or closure?
 7:03 The real value of closure
 11:04 The two icebreakers that change a mediation
 16:22 The pledge: from zealous advocacy to joint problem-solving
 20:40 When the other side hides assets
 24:39 "Expectations are resentments under construction"
 26:00 The $5,000 offer on a million-dollar case
 32:58 The vanishing trial: why a good settlement beats a good lawsuit
 35:37 Why proving your ex is lying is so hard
 45:05 Where to find Shel's free articles

CTA (spoken): Heading into mediation with a high-conflict ex? Book a free discovery call at beentheregotout.com.
 Books: Been There Got Out — https://www.amazon.com/Been-There-Got-Relationships-Circumstances/dp/194627495X/ · When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You — https://www.amazon.com/Been-There-Got-Out-Against/dp/1967674183
 More from Shel (free articles): starkmediator.com
 Tags: mediation, divorce mediation, settling out of court, negotiation, closure, high conflict divorce, settlement vs trial, managing expectations, family court

Lisa filed for a restraining order once on her own and was denied. The next day, a legal services office in another state rewrote the same facts, explained why they were framing it the way they were, and it was granted. Nothing about the underlying situation changed in twenty-four hours. What changed was that the application was written against what the statute required.

Steve Dana is the founder and CEO of Protection From Abuse, a nonprofit that provides safety planning, protective programs and advocacy to people dealing with domestic violence, stalking and sexual assault. His background is executive protection and security rather than law, and he opens by saying he is not an attorney and is not giving legal advice. What he does have is unusual: his organization runs a safe-access-to-court program in New Jersey, escorting people to hearings when the other party is volatile, which has put him through hundreds of hours of restraining order proceedings as an observer. He also teaches safety planning to other advocates, including through a course at a university school of social work.

He starts before the filing. The county victim advocate, the local domestic violence agency and the law school clinics that will help at no cost, and why a restraining order is a finite enough piece of work that free legal help genuinely exists for it in a way it does not for a contested divorce. Then the application itself. New Jersey can limit your testimony at the hearing to what you wrote on the temporary order form, so leaving out the history can cost you the ability to describe it later. He suggests sitting down and working backwards, using approximate timeframes where exact dates are gone, because this is a civil matter decided on the preponderance of the evidence rather than the criminal standard, and your own account is evidence.

From there: the three thresholds a New Jersey judge applies and why continuing danger is the one that trips people, what the statute counts and how to describe firearms precisely enough for them to be found, why intimidation at a custody exchange usually will not carry an order and what it does call for instead, and what the hearing itself is like, including the fact that many judges will not take video off your phone. He talks about orders filed first as a strategy, how long orders last and what renewing one requires, what police actually need before they can act on a violation, and the trick of inviting contact and then reporting it. He ends on the myths: that a dropped order bars a new one, that you need a police report, and that an order is only a piece of paper.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• The three thresholds a judge applies, and which one most applications fail
• Why writing down only the latest incident can limit what you are allowed to say later
• Why your own testimony is evidence, and why no police report is required
• What the statute counts, and why describing where a firearm is kept decides whether it is seized
• Why intimidation at an exchange rarely carries an order, and what does address it
• What the hearing is like, and checking in advance how the court will accept your evidence
• What to do when they file first, and how people get baited into breaking their own order
• What police need before they can act on a violation, and how to build toward that

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Restraining orders as their own kind of hearing, and Steve's background
5:00 Free help most people never use: advocates, agencies, legal clinics
9:00 Writing the application: work backwards, not just the last incident
13:00 Why your testimony is evidence, and why no police report is needed
15:00 The three thresholds, and where applications come apart
19:00 What the statute covers, and being specific about firearms
23:00 Intimidation at exchanges, and why safety planning handles it instead
29:00 Inside the hearing, and how judges will and will not take your evidence
33:00 When they file first, and how long an order actually lasts
41:00 Violations, documentation, and being baited into breaking your own order
51:00 Myths worth dropping, and trading an order for a civil restraint

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Protection From Abuse (Steve's nonprofit): https://protectionfromabuse.org/

🎧 More with Steve Dana on this podcast
Ep 78: Risk Assessment and Real Safety Planning

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

In mediation, a parent is asked what custody schedule they want. Having spent two years describing in detail what the other side wants, they have no answer. Tess Abalos would say that is not indecision. It is what happens when your intentions and your values have come apart, and a conflicted mind never decides.

Tess Abalos is a holistic health coach and licensed massage therapist based in Stamford, Connecticut, where she has run her own practice for around two decades. She works with clients on both the physical and the energetic side of health, and much of what she teaches sits outside the treatment room: nutrition, environment, and the mindset work she credits for her own career and her own life after divorce. She is also a friend of Lisa's in real life, and the person who came up with "from puddle to ninja" over breakfast one morning, which Been There Got Out has used ever since.

Tess lays out the sequence she uses. Start with beliefs and values, the ones that were yours before any of this, and check whether your intentions are actually aligned with them. Then begin with the end in mind, and let yourself name the outcome you want without judging whether it sounds achievable. Then look for the result both households can live with, which she frames as the thing that lets everyone move on rather than a concession. Clarity follows from that, certainty follows clarity, and action follows certainty.

Lisa connects it to the preparation she does with clients before mediation, writing down the must-haves, the can-live-withs and the absolutes rather than handing those decisions to a third party. The two of them also talk about what a steady diet of family court horror stories does to a person's sense of what is possible, why staying steady gives your kids someone to model, what to do with a sense of injustice that will not let you sleep, and why Tess prefers the word confidence to the word hope. Both share how they wrote down what they wanted in a partner years after their marriages ended, and what happened next.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why coercive control leaves people unable to decide even small things, and where clarity starts
• How to check whether your intentions actually line up with your own beliefs and values
• Begin with the end in mind: naming the outcome you want before you sit down to negotiate
• What to write down before mediation: your must-haves, your can-live-withs, your absolutes
• What a steady diet of family court horror content does to your sense of what is possible
• Why anger spends the energy you need for the case, and what looking for a workable outcome buys you
• Why one steady parent still gives kids someone to model when the other parent won't be one
• Confidence instead of hope, and why negotiating from desperation invites moving goalposts

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 The story behind "from puddle to ninja," and Tess's practice
6:00 Where clarity starts: beliefs, values, and intention
9:00 Begin with the end in mind, and why writing it down matters
11:00 Prepping for mediation: what you want, and what you won't budge on
13:00 What you focus on, and the family court content you consume
17:00 Looking for the win-win, and what anger costs you
19:00 Being the steady parent your kids can look to
21:00 Injustice, and the question Tess asks instead
23:00 Confidence over hope, and why desperation loses a negotiation
31:00 The sequence: beliefs, end in mind, clarity, certainty, action

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 CT Massage & Bodywork (Tess Abalos, LMT): https://www.massagebook.com/CTMassageAndBodywork

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Halfway through a hearing, a client who had been composed and strong glanced at the judge's screen and saw the case caption: her name against her husband's. That was the thing that undid her. Melissa Cohen tells that story to make a point about how much of family court is felt, not argued.

Melissa Cohen is a divorce and family law attorney in Cranford, New Jersey. She graduated from Seton Hall Law more than twenty years ago, clerked for a family court judge, and has been in private practice ever since, handling divorce, custody, support, and a domestic violence caseload she takes on by choice, including pro bono work. She joins Lisa for a wide-ranging conversation that starts with how the pandemic reshaped family court and keeps going into the parts of a case people tend to get wrong.

Melissa describes the trade-offs of virtual hearings: real savings in time and money, and real losses, like the courtroom pressure that used to move people toward settlement, and the toll of appearing in person that clients feel and attorneys sometimes forget. She and Lisa dig into documentation, and why "document everything" becomes a liability when it means a hundred unsorted emails. The better move is to bring your attorney the two or three issues that map to the custody statute. She explains why a judge pushing settlement can still be the right call, and how a shared parenting app becomes both a safeguard and, in the wrong hands, another way to keep contact.

The back half covers relocation, which she says has grown harder in New Jersey and turns on a best-interests analysis, and the twin traps of Google and barstool council, both of which hand people confident answers stripped of the facts a court actually weighs. Melissa closes on what she thinks makes a good family lawyer, real empathy for people at a painful, disorienting point in their lives, and how to find one who understands domestic violence.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• What virtual family court gained and lost, from billable hours to settlement pressure
• Why "document everything" backfires, and how targeted documentation fixes it
• Why reading the custody statute early tells you what the court is required to weigh
• How closed mediation can work even when a restraining order is in place
• Why relocation is harder than people assume, and the best-interests analysis behind it
• Why Google and "barstool council" steer people wrong in fact-specific family law
• How a shared parenting app can be both a safeguard and a tool for continued contact
• How to find a family lawyer who genuinely understands domestic violence

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Melissa's background, and why she takes DV cases
7:00 Invisible abuse, and proof versus provable truth
9:00 How the pandemic moved family court online
13:00 What in-person court cost litigants, and what virtual court lost
17:00 Targeted documentation, and the custody statute
23:00 Mediating with a restraining order: closed mediation
27:00 Parenting apps as safeguard and loophole
35:00 Relocation, and the best-interests standard
43:00 Why Google and barstool council steer you wrong
51:00 What makes a good family lawyer

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Melissa E. Cohen, Esq. at Seiden Freed: https://www.seidenfreed.com/melissa-e-cohen-esq/

🎧 More with Melissa Cohen on this podcast
Ep 171: New Jersey's Coercive Control Law, Explained

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

BTGO welcomes back our friend, author, coach, therapist, and TikTok superstar creator, Matt Phifer (Instagram @matthewlphifer) who talks about how staying in toxic relationships hinders your personal growth, different attachment styles and their effect on children, and the key to helping you heal from abuse.

Need help with your own situation? Go to our website BeenThereGotOut.com and sign up for a free Discovery call (click the top red button on the homepage), and/or check out our weekly Legal Abuse Support Group (bottom blue button).

If you are struggling in a high-conflict relationship, divorce, custody battle, or co-parenting hell which requires PERSONALIZED attention, let us HOLD YOUR HAND along the way, while providing EXPERT, STRATEGIC guidance based on one's years of success (representing myself in court!), coupled with the other's High Conflict Divorce Coach certification.

Recorded: February 23rd, 2023

Legal fees are often what actually break people in a high-conflict divorce. Carol Reed's argument is that a low-cost legal plan changes the math, giving you access to a law firm for a flat monthly fee instead of hundreds of dollars just to ask a question.

Carol Reed is a former educator and a representative for LegalShield, a legal-services membership. She came to the work because it fit a problem she cared about, ordinary people being treated unfairly by a system they cannot afford to fight. She is careful that a plan like this is not a replacement for your own attorney in a contested case.

In this episode, Carol and Lisa talk about the gap so many people fall into, running out of money for a lawyer and ending up self-represented by necessity. Carol explains how the membership model works: prepaid access to a dedicated law firm, review of contracts and documents, letters and calls made on your behalf, and a discount on hourly rates if you do hire that firm. Lisa shares her own experience trying the service across her long, two-state case, and a client's experience getting a custody order reviewed for a fraction of a normal consult.

They also cover what is and is not included, how coverage can extend to children, and the everyday legal questions, from a traffic stop to a tax matter, that a plan like this is built for. The larger point is one Lisa and Chris return to often: when full representation is out of reach, an affordable second opinion is rarely a bad idea.

To be clear: Been There Got Out does not accept compensation for referrals, this one included. We recommend LegalShield only because we think it is a real resource in the right situations, never because anyone pays us to.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why legal fees, not the conflict itself, are what bankrupt so many people in divorce
• How a subscription legal plan works, and how it differs from hiring your own attorney
• What these plans typically cover: advice, document review, and letters or calls on your behalf
• Why an affordable second opinion on a document or order can be worth it
• How coverage can extend to your kids
• The member discount to weigh if you do decide to hire the firm

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What a legal-services plan is, and the affordability pitch
3:00 Carol's background, and the gap she's trying to fill
7:00 How collective buying power keeps it cheap
9:00 What's covered: advice, document review, calls and letters
11:00 Lisa tries it herself, and a client's custody order reviewed
17:00 Who's covered, including kids
19:00 Extra features: traffic stops, a tax lawyer, emergencies
21:00 The member discount if you do hire the firm
25:00 Month-to-month terms, and how to reach Carol

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Carol Reed (LegalShield): https://creed26.legalshieldassociate.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

The professionals assigned to a child in a custody case are supposed to be the ones who hear the truth. Frequently they are the last people a child will tell. Marnie Grundman says the reason usually sits in one of two places: what the child is being told at home about what happens if they talk, or something the professional said in the first five minutes that put them, in the child's reading of it, on the other side.

Marnie Grundman is a Canadian therapist, speaker, and author who specializes in healing from narcissistic family systems. She survived one. She began running away from home at five, was living on the streets by thirteen, and raised herself from there. She wrote a book about it more than a decade ago, which turned into a career: advocating for kids who end up on the street, working with adult survivors of child abuse, and teaching people how to navigate low contact and no contact with a family that will not change. She was a working sculptor for thirty years before any of this.

In this episode, Marnie and Lisa go through the practical moves that give a child room to speak, and the ones that shut them down. Then they turn to the parent's side of it. Marnie makes the case against bubble-wrapping: a child who is never allowed to feel what happened cannot process it, and cannot build any judgment about it. Her replacement is questions, what do you mean by that and how does that make you feel, asked when a child checks in about something the other parent said.

They also cover the reason defending yourself hands the other parent exactly what they wanted, the difference between reacting and responding, loving an adult child from a distance while keeping the door open, and how EMDR moves a memory from the part of the brain that is stuck reliving it to the part that can put it in context.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• The two reasons a child goes silent in front of a guardian ad litem or therapist
• The line professionals use that tells a child they have taken the abusive parent's side
• How to give a child control so they can talk: eye level, permission, and writing it down
• The one neutral question a parent can ask that is not coaching and is not leading
• Why bubble-wrapping a child stops them from processing what actually happened
• Reacting vs responding when your child repeats something your ex said about you
• Loving an adult child from a distance when they have stopped speaking to you
• What EMDR does with a memory that never got processed, and what changes after

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Welcome, and Marnie's story: running away, the streets, the work now
11:00 The question: a child who talks to a parent but not the professionals
13:00 Threats at home, and professionals who side with the abuser by accident
17:00 Giving a child control: eye level, permission, and writing it down
21:00 Learned helplessness, and when telling someone changes nothing
25:00 Bubble-wrap parenting, and why a child needs to feel it
28:00 Reacting vs responding when your child repeats what your ex said
31:00 Adult children who pulled away, and loving from a distance
42:00 Kids raised without a voice, and open-ended questions
50:00 EMDR: what it is, and what actually moves

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Marnie Grundman at Marnie Speaks: https://marniespeaks.com/

🎧 More with Marnie Grundman on this podcast
Ep 32: When Your Ex Aligns With Your Family
Ep 130: When a Parent Abandons the Kids

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

If you are dreading a trial, the odds are you will never have one. Katrina Xyloportas, a New Jersey family law attorney, says about 98 percent of divorces settle, and she would rather you settle on purpose than get forced into it on a courthouse deadline.

Katrina Xyloportas practices family law in New Jersey, where a large share of the caseload is domestic violence, since in New Jersey that falls under the family law umbrella. She was born and raised on Staten Island, and she has wanted to be a lawyer since she was a kid watching Judge Judy after school, an origin she talks about with real affection here. She joins Lisa to walk through how family court actually works in New Jersey, and how to keep your own case from running longer and costing more than it has to.

Katrina explains the pandemic backlog that can leave two people living under one roof for years while they wait for a trial date, and why that pressure is so often where domestic violence starts. She is direct about documentation: judges do read the papers, so condense them to what is relevant instead of burying the point under ten binders. New Jersey is no-fault, so a cheating spouse does not owe you more, and she has never seen anyone walk out of a courtroom having gotten away with everything. Her plainest framing is that divorce is one long business decision, and she coaches clients through the math so they stop spending ten thousand dollars to win a five-thousand-dollar fight.

The heart of the conversation is why settling beats trial: you keep control of your own future, you avoid the cost and the delay, and you get flexibility a judge does not have, from a house buyout to a parenting plan that names the holidays and the handoffs. She covers New Jersey's free court-sponsored mediation and early settlement panels, when mediation is worth trying with a high-conflict ex, and how leverage, often a dollar amount, is what finally moves a case to resolution.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why about 98 percent of divorces settle, and why you're better placed than a judge to decide
• What a judge will do with your house versus what a settlement can do (buyout, refinance, timing)
• Why a judge's blanket parenting order sends people back to court, and what a detailed plan fixes
• Why your lawyer should be a truth-teller as well as an advocate
• Why no-fault means a cheating spouse doesn't owe you more, and judges spot games fast
• Why short, hard-hitting court papers beat ten binders of documentation
• "Divorce is one long business decision": the cost-benefit math before every fight
• New Jersey's protections for abuse survivors, and its free court-sponsored mediation

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Katrina's background, and domestic violence in New Jersey
5:00 New Jersey's protections, and why Judge Judy is her icon
9:00 The court backlog, and why cases drag for years
11:00 Do judges actually read the papers?
13:00 Condensing your case, and the lawyer's two hats
17:00 No-fault, honesty, and why settling beats trial
21:00 The parenting-plan detail a judge won't give you
25:00 Billing, timelines, and divorce as a business decision
29:00 Mediation, and New Jersey's free court-sponsored options
33:00 Using leverage to move a high-conflict case

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Katrina Xyloportas at Schenck Price Smith & King: https://www.spsk.com/katrina-m-xyloportas

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Some clients want a lawyer who will scream at the other side, because it feels like protection. Kara Bellew is not that lawyer, and she can explain, precisely, why the screaming usually costs you.

Kara Bellew is a partner at Rower LLC in New York, practicing across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Westchester. Before private practice she spent years at Sanctuary for Families, the largest provider of services to domestic-violence survivors in the state, and she trained at the Domestic Violence Institute at Northeastern School of Law after earning a master's in social work. That combination, legal skill plus a social-work lens, runs through everything she says here.

In this conversation, Kara and Lisa focus on managing a high-conflict case well, including the part people do not expect: managing the relationship with your own attorney. She talks about matching with a lawyer on temperament and strategy, laying out real options with their costs and timelines, and what the request "I want full custody" actually means once children, forensic evaluators, and attorneys for the children enter the picture. They dig into the email wars that drain a client's money, and how to set communication rules that keep you informed without keeping you up at night.

They also get into the strategy that decides outcomes: why letting the other side sense your desperation to settle can guarantee it will not settle, and how showing you are prepared to go the distance can turn a case; how trauma and the discovery process re-injure people, and how a real team carries some of that weight; what a judge will and will not do with your sense of justice; and the trade-offs of remote versus in-person hearings, plus when mediation is and is not safe given a power imbalance.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why you sometimes have to advocate with your own attorney, not only through them
• What "I want full custody" actually triggers in a litigation, and what to weigh first
• Why the email war between attorneys costs you money and rarely moves your case
• How to set communication rules so bad news doesn't land at 10 p.m.
• How trauma shows up in a case, and how a good lawyer meets you where you are
• Why signaling that you are desperate to settle hands the other side power
• Why the judge will not tell you that you were wronged, and how to set goals accordingly
• The trade-offs of remote vs. in-person appearances, and mediation with a power imbalance

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Meeting Kara, and a lawyer with a social-work background
3:00 Learning to advocate for yourself, starting with your attorney
5:00 "I want full custody": what that really means in litigation
9:00 The "pissing contest" you're paying for, and setting communication rules
15:00 How trauma shows up, and meeting a client where they are
19:00 Discovery overwhelm, and letting the team carry the load
21:00 When to stay out of court, and when to litigate
25:00 Desperation and settlement: why signaling it backfires
29:00 Goals, "justice," and what a judge will and won't say
35:00 Remote vs in-person, safety, and mediation with a power imbalance

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

BTGO welcomes back Ally Toyos, child survivor of a reunification camp and founder of the Instagram community @cjeyouthspeak, for part 2 of our interview. After sharing her incredible and nightmarish story in Part 1, Ally talks about the tricky nature of the label "parental alienation," including how it is often weaponized against protective parents in family court, and how reunification might be better handled for actual victims.

Our book, “Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances” is now available!! Learn more and order here:

https://BeenThereGotOut.com/book

Need help with your own situation? Go to our website BeenThereGotOut.com and sign up for a free Discovery call (click the top red button on the homepage), and/or check out our weekly Legal Abuse Support Group (bottom blue button).

If you are struggling in a high-conflict relationship, divorce, custody battle, or co-parenting hell which requires PERSONALIZED attention, let us HOLD YOUR HAND along the way, while providing EXPERT, STRATEGIC guidance based on one's years of success (representing myself in court!), coupled with the other's High Conflict Divorce Coach certification.

Recorded: February 2nd, 2023