Taylor Kaspar (00:01.75)
Hey friend, I'm really glad you are here inside of the Co-Parenting Chaos audio series where we're decoding the five mistakes moms make in high conflict that are really keeping them so stuck. Before we jump into the five biggest mistakes I see women making, I want to take a few minutes to tell you why I created this private audio series in the first place. Now, if you followed me for a while, you know that I'm a family law attorney, and every day I help women.
navigate divorce, custody disputes, mediation, parenting plans, and family court. But here's what you may not know. I am not teaching this from the sidelines. Unfortunately, I've been living it too. As I'm recording this, I am in the middle of my own active litigation right now. And in fact, I've been involved in some sort of conflict, whether it was an agreed upon modification, a mediation, motion practice,
Requests for orders or full blown trial facing litigation at least once a year for the last five years. And over the last several weeks leading up to this recording, I've been doing exactly what I help my clients do every single day documenting, drafting affidavits, organizing exhibits, working with third parties, and preparing for court. Then about a week ago, someone sent me a DM that if I'm being honest.
Almost set me all the way off. She said, You're a family law attorney and you're still dealing with your acts. And in that moment, like I literally wanted to pop off so hard. But after I sat with what I was reading for a minute, I realized it was actually a pretty fair question. Okay, it wasn't a minute, it was like two days before I could bring Taylor back down to reality. Because I think a lot of people assume.
That once you know enough about family law, or once you hire the right attorney, right? Like you get that shark that the conflict is just gonna stop. Like there's some sort of magic court order or some magic thing your attorney can say that's gonna make your ex agree and everything's gonna go so well. And it's finally gonna make the high conflict person stop being high conflict. And I wish that were true. There is
Taylor Kaspar (02:24.174)
Probably no amount of money you couldn't get me to pay for that to become my reality. But if you're dealing with a truly high conflict person, you already know that that's not how this works. They don't stop creating chaos because they lost the last hearing. They don't wake up one morning and decide to respect your boundaries because somebody finally explained it to them well enough. That is not how they think at all.
Especially if your ex has the money to litigate. And especially if you're in one of the places where final orders aren't really final because they can be modified as soon as one year after the order gets entered. Which means depending on where you live, you could literally find yourself with a new set of pleadings from your ex demanding a modification of custody, of parenting time, of support of the parenting plan, whatever, every 366 days.
Like, think about that for a second. You spend months getting through mediation or litigation, thousands and thousands of dollars, and you finally get an order and you finally exhale. And before you've even had a chance to settle into your new normal thoroughly, you're right back at it again. And honestly, I wish somebody would have explained that to me years ago because, which is kind of embarrassing since I'm a family law attorney, for a long time, I believed that.
When you got your order, that was it, right? Like in the law firm, we counted the people that came back to us multiple times as like the crazies, right? The frequent flyers, if you will. And that was my perception of what family law was like. Because for a long time I believed that if I didn't want to be one of the crazies or one of the frequent flyers, then all I had to do was just cooperate a little more. And eventually, if I cooperated enough.
We would get to peace. I drafted our divorce paperwork so he wouldn't have to hire an attorney because I was trying to be nice. I agreed to things that cost me thousands and thousands of dollars every single year because I thought cooperation would eventually create cooperation, right? But it didn't. Every inch I gave became another mile that he expected or took if I didn't give it up willingly.
Taylor Kaspar (04:46.592)
Eventually I realized something that completely changed the way I approached co-parenting. I wasn't dealing with someone who wanted resolution. I was dealing with somebody who wanted access, right? Access to my time, access to my attention, access to my energy, access to my peace. And that's when I stopped asking how do I get him to cooperate and started asking instead how do I build a life for myself and for my kids?
That doesn't depend on his cooperation. Because the truth is, I'll probably never get it. And that one question that switch in my brain changed everything. It changed the way I communicated. It changed the way I documented. It changed the way I negotiated. It changed the way I approached family court. It changed the way I thought about boundaries. Because I finally realized something I think too many women never hear.
High conflict is not one problem. It's an ecosystem. It's not just family court. It isn't just about whether you're documenting enough. It's not just about saying the right thing or learning to communicate better. It isn't, if I have the best parenting plan on the face of the earth that I paid some guru $10,000 for that my lawyer argued for in court, right? It's not mediation. It isn't just boundaries. It's all of those things.
Working together in tandem that make a difference. And if you're only focusing on one piece, you're always going to feel like you're putting out one fire for a while, but then another one immediately pops up. And that's why I created this private audio series. Over the next five episodes, I'm going to walk you through the five biggest mistakes I see women make.
When they're navigating high conflict co-parenting. And in the last episode, we're gonna put it all together in a way that makes sense for you. In episode two, where we're going over the first mistake, we're gonna talk about why believing court will solve everything keeps so many women stuck, and what court can and can't realistically do for you. After that, we're going to talk about the trap of reacting instead of responding strategically.
Taylor Kaspar (07:07.106)
To your ex, and why high conflict people seem to be so good at pulling you into urgency. Then we're going to talk about why waiting until litigation starts in order to start documenting is one of the biggest mistakes you can make and how documentation can change far more than just your court case. After that, we're going to talk about why so many women negotiate from guilt instead of from a place of strategy, and how that shapes everything from parenting plans.
To the day-to-day co parenting and so much more. And in the final mistake, we're gonna talk about this belief that peace comes from when the judge signs the final order and instead understand that it comes from you learning how to navigate the entire ecosystem of high conflict co parenting. And if you're just listening to these episodes and you find yourself thinking, nobody has ever explained this to me in this way before, then I want you to listen to this not once, not twice, but three times.
For as many times as you need to really let this sink in. And then when you're ready to take another step and put this in action, I want you to join one of my monthly challenges, the high conflict reset challenge, to really start taking big steps for how to put this into action. Because over those live five trainings, we're gonna go so much deeper into every single one of these ideas, plus way more, so that you can start applying this.
To your own life. Not just because I want you to become better at like surviving chaos, but because I want you to start thinking differently about the chaos. Because when your thinking changes, the way you make decisions changes. And when your decisions change, your life changes. So I'm so glad you're here. I can't wait to dive into mistake number one. And I will see you over there, or we'll chat over there in the very next episode.
