Taylor (00:00.53)
Welcome to the Divorce Queens podcast where real women get real about divorce. I'm Taylor Wins, divorce coach, family law attorney and mom of four.
I'm Rachel Kennedy, family mediator, parenting consultant, and divorced mom of three. We are here to cut through the noise and bring you the legal, personal, and practical sides of divorce because getting divorced isn't just a legal process, it is a total life transformation.
So whether you're thinking about getting divorced, in the middle of the chaos, or trying to rebuild after it's all over, you're not alone. Grab your coffee, your wine, or your walking shoes, and let's get into it.
This is something we hear a lot in day to day conversation. We see it posted in Facebook moms groups when we're having consultations in our professional lives, when we're talking to the other hockey moms or whatever on the bench. People are super concerned and have a high level anxiety when they're considering divorce about what the court is going to make them do or what a judge will decide for them, for their children.
and for their lives and it's anxiety producing, right? To think if I'm getting divorced, the only option that I have is to file for divorce and then I show up and then the court starts telling me I have to do things this way and my children have to do this and this is the parenting time that I'm going to get and this is what the law says. And I think people need to be more educated, one, about the process of divorce because that's not even how the court system actually works. Number one,
Taylor (01:38.156)
And number two, think they need to be a lot more educated about what options do you have aside from just turning your kids over and your life over to the core system.
Absolutely. Yep. Yeah. it's really, I mean, I understand why people are scared when you're talking about like, well, I homeschool my kids. Is the judge going to make me put them in school? Or we want to, you one of us, one of the other wants to keep the house, but is the judge going to make us sell it or whatever? And I always just want to be like, maybe just don't get to the point where a judge is trying to make these decisions. Cause you got like a hundred steps between here and there.
And you, I mean, talk about it on your own. Go to mediation. In fact, I was just talking to somebody this morning, actually, who's in the middle of a divorce and they were discussing spousal maintenance and the one party suggested a number to the other party and the other party said, well, we can't just make that decision. that we we need our lawyers or the judge or whatever to like tell us what that number is supposed to be. We can't make that number. And I was like.
No, actually you can and you should, assuming it's fair and all of that. But like, there seems to be this assumption that the court wants to be making decisions for us. And I will say they don't. Like even 10 years ago when I was going through my divorce, the court kind of, the judge was like, get out of here. Go to mediation. Figure out everything you can figure out on your own first. And then if you want to come back, if you want me to make decisions for you, I will, but you probably won't like them.
Literally, that's what our judge said to us. And so I just, I think there are so many ways to either, if you can have healthy, productive conversations as you're going through a divorce, cool, do it. Like figure out whatever you can figure out on your own. If you need help from a mediator, great, that's why we're here. I have plenty of people that I see that are like, okay,
Rachel (03:42.7)
We think we probably can have these conversations and come to these agreements, just not by ourselves. Like when we have conversations between the two of us, they don't go well. We need you to sit in the middle of us, but then we can have this conversation. That's great. Or if you need to hire lawyers, so you know that you've got someone on your side, the other party has someone on their side, and then the lawyers can kind of help you talk through things. Those are all fine options. Those are all great options. And those are all options before...
you're like at a trial and the judge is making all these decisions because after, by the time you even get to that point, you've already gone through mediation. You've probably had a custody evaluation. You've probably like a bunch of these steps have happened already and you don't want those steps in my opinion. And I'm saying my opinion isn't even just as a mediator, but as a mom who like my divorce was all of that. And we had all kinds of people making decisions for
our kids and I was, I felt that I was backed into a corner and kind of more or less had to hand my small children over to the court system to determine what their lives were gonna look like. I didn't, what was that? It was horrible. It was literally as horrible as anybody might think. It was really awful. And at the time I didn't know any different.
Yeah, which sounds horrible.
Rachel (05:10.99)
But now that's why I'm so passionate about telling people who are going through divorce, there are better ways to handle these things. So yeah, I've kind of been rambling. Do you have anything to add to that, Taylor?
Yeah, I think this idea that you're just going to like show up in court, I think, okay, and the judge is going to tell you what to do comes from a few different places, right? One, it's a lack of awareness of what the court even does and what its function is. Two, it's a lack of understanding that you have personal autonomy, right? Like it's a very big brother ask, like pull out the book 1984.
where big brother is telling you what you can eat at the cafeteria and work is that that book or like, it's it's very Orwellian, right? Like, we're just gonna, we don't have any personal freedom. We don't have any choice. I'll just like file for divorce and somebody will just tell me what I have to do. That's scary. You don't want that way. Yeah, you don't want it that way. And it's not real. You have a lot of personal autonomy. You have a lot of choice and process. And the third thing is, is like,
let's be clear about what the court even does and what their role is because I think people do a couple of things. They give the court too much power and too much credence. And then on the other hand, people like over demonize the court. And the reality is the court exists somewhere in the middle. So does the divorce process, right? It's somewhere in the middle of both these like extreme ways of being where we just like here court decide my whole life with your person in a black robe and your custody evaluator.
who meets with your family, by the way, for maybe a total of 10 hours of meeting with you, your children, and your collateral sources, and then tells you everything that's gonna happen the rest of your life. But the reality is the court is somewhere in the middle, right? And so the court is there to kind of just keep the divorce on track and moving forward and give it legal significance when it's over, right? So that like legally we have parental rights protected.
Taylor (07:15.998)
legally somebody's paying for, you know, the benefit of the children, be it child support, be it providing them with health insurance or whatever. Legally, you don't have to give everything that you earn back to this person that you're divorced from, or you don't have to take on their bills. You don't have to get garnished for their tax liens, right? Like that's, that's really the only purpose of the court is just give legal significance to this stuff, but the best option and like, you know, who cares what the actual process is called? The best option is for you to figure out.
how you and your soon to be former, right? Spouse, partner, whatever, can figure out when are we gonna have our kids? When are we gonna enroll in this? How are we gonna split our money? Who's gonna move where? You're better off using some sort of process to figure that out either directly between you at the kitchen table with a third party who's a mediator. You can get lawyers if you wanna get lawyers.
But the reality is, is you're served way better by trying to figure it out between you than saying, which this is a really overly rigid way of thinking, think, saying like, we have to go to the court and the court has to tell us what's going to happen, or our lawyers have to tell us what's going to happen. Or even this thought that like, I have to get what I'm entitled to. Because I think that's a dangerous way of thinking too. If everybody's only out for their entitlement, you know, is that really serving?
the family system because as much as you want to throw away your soon to be former after you get the divorce, the reality is if you have kids or if you have any financial ties to each other, they don't go away forever when it's done. And so the better you can get through the process, because it's just a transition. not, it's not, you know, the whole thing. you know, the sooner, the quicker, the easier, and with the least amount of court intervention, the better, right?
So yeah, some things that we see people being concerned about the court making them do where in reality you have choice. One example Rachel already mentioned, we see this a lot is will I have to sell my house? Rachel, didn't you just see like a post or talk to somebody who said that?
Rachel (09:31.19)
Yeah, people are constantly asking, is the judge going to make me sell my house? Is the judge going to make me do something different with my kids education or health care or whatever? And it's like, probably not.
Yeah. Like one way I saw, I don't remember where I saw it, but is the judge going to make me sell my house is one I saw recently too. It's probably, and some group or some consult that, that we had recently. And you're like, no, the judge takes no. Like there's the judge has no stake in what happens to this piece of property at one, two, three, four Elm street. They do not care. What they care about is equity, right? They care about upholding the law and
you selling your house is not synonymous with equity or upholding the law. It's not like, you know, the judge is just like, you're getting a divorce. Sell it, the baby. Right. The reality is, is if you want them to make that decision, because you just cannot come to an agreement with the other party, they'll make it if they have to, cause your divorce has to end, but you have a ton of options, right? There is no, this has to happen this way. I, as a lawyer can give you some recommendations for what I've seen or what I think makes sense.
for what I think is in your interest, but there's more to it than just, there's no one size fits all for any circumstance in divorce. And I think people get so hung up on, what does the law say I have to do or the court that they forget that, you know, these are things and decisions that if you weren't getting a divorce, no third party would come metal in in your life. So treat it like that and figure it out for yourself. Another one we've seen is,
the homeschool situation, Rachel, you were homeschooling when you got a divorce, I was homeschooling, although for a very shorter duration of time when I got a divorce and that didn't even come up in my divorce. Did it come up in yours? Like was anybody talking to you about putting the kids in school or making you do anything with their education?
Rachel (11:29.122)
Well, actually nobody was trying to make us do anything. But what I found in my own divorce is that the court, the court being even extensions of the court custody evaluators or whoever are trying to either make those decisions or give recommendations on those, at least in our case and Taylor, you can probably speak to this too, but they were more concerned with status quo for the kids. Like my kids had been homeschooled for several years already by the time like
more than five, probably seven or eight years or something by the time we got divorced. My kids had already been homeschooled for a long time. So they were kind of like, we're not trying to tell you that you have to change what you've already been doing for all these years. So that was my experience with that. So it was addressed, but they didn't make us put the kids in school right away. We did eventually, but it was our choice.
Yeah.
Taylor (12:26.562)
Right, because that's not, and I probably sound super fricking libertarian right now, but like that's not something the government and the court system and these extensions of the court, like you said, which are custody evaluators, which are parenting consultants, which sometimes lawyers almost act as extensions of the court, unfortunately, right? But these are things that like these outside entities would not be coming in your home and deciding for you, but for the fact that you have decided you're getting a divorce and then, know,
de facto put yourself in front of the court system, which I think is really unfortunate actually for a lot of families. The process of divorce has changed so much, just even within the last, I would say the whole time I've been in practice, which at this point has been since 2017 to now, but even just with the shifts we've had and how we're doing things in family court since August of 24, things have changed so much that now I feel like we've had this turn again to like,
pushing people to like get before the court quickly and get that court intervention faster in family court than we used to. And I know like, there's a reason for it, right? The process was like, we're gonna file for divorce and then we're gonna take everybody to this initial hearing and then everybody's gonna mediate and have these evaluations done. Then we're gonna come back. And what was happening is like during all that interim time from filing to that initial hearing till you have the meditative evaluation, then you get in on your review hearing or your pretrial.
like six, seven months, right? And what if you're not getting along for six, seven months and you don't have a set parenting time schedule for six or seven months of this divorce and one person doesn't earn enough and one person's living in the house and the other person can't get into the house and can't get access to the marital funds and whatever. So we've got six, seven months of chaos, right?
we had that for two years in our divorce. was lots of
Taylor (14:17.638)
And so the courts now looked at that and said, okay, we have the best of intentions, which was try to push people out of the court system to figure it out themselves. And we maybe didn't think of some things that we should have thought of and it created a mess. actually it was showing that, you know, while some were settling some cases were taking twice as long. And so then they reopened it back up for us now and now we can do temporary motion hearings and people have started getting wind of that. So now they're filing for a divorce.
30 days go by, we don't have it all figured out, right? Johnny's not paying spousal maintenance to Suzy yet and Suzy is not giving Johnny the kids. And now everybody's like running to the court on these motions and it's creating new problems that we're seeing because people are like, I'm gonna run to the court and the court's gonna solve my problems. And it's like, whoa, hold on. I don't know if I want the court to solve my problems, especially in light of like,
what the court, what I feel like the court does when it doesn't have enough information to make a good decision. And what I think the court does, I think the court just splits the baby. And so the court looks at it they say, all right, yeah, you guys have been separated for 45 days and we're here on a motion. Tell me what's wrong with Johnny. Johnny, tell me what's wrong with Susie. And if nobody's bad enough, we'll give everybody 50 50. Have a good day.
And so, you know, and I think it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, right? Before we let the court have that kind of power to make these like ad hoc temporary decisions that are really hard to go back from. If you get a temporary order for, and I'm using 50-50 as the example. If you get a temporary order for 50-50 parenting time, unless Suzy is like doing drugs, that may be just what you end with. Cause the court now looks at and they say, Hey, we've been doing this for six months. It's going fine.
Back to that status quo thing too. When you do that, you're establishing what that status quo is. So then the court is like, well, it's working.
Taylor (16:20.48)
Yeah, it's not it's working whether not working. Yeah
Whether it's working or not, they're just like, well, this is what we're doing. This is, it's working well enough or whatever. And we'll just keep doing it. Whether it's really best or not.
Yep. And same with, um, we've seen it with spousal maintenance. Oh man, you get that spousal maintenance award and, uh, Jimmy's now paying 2,500 bucks a month and makes all those payments on time. Well, it looks like Jimmy can afford to keep paying Sally 2,500 bucks a month. That's what it looks like to me, right? Cause it's not, not working, which is almost, I feel like the measuring stick of the court sometimes, um, when it comes to matrimonial and domestic relations matters.
So it's really, it's kind of dangerous to, to, like you said, Rachel, establish that status quo. Yeah. So that's kind of how it looks in the process. But of course, one, not everybody was married, right? So not everybody gets a divorce. we have other issues between, you know, like families that the parents were never married. And so that I think is really synonymous with when people like they have an existing
divorce decree, but now we need to go back and either modify something because it's not working like we want it to or like we intended it to or somebody's not complying. Do you see those where people want to run back to court in those circumstances?
Rachel (17:49.484)
Yes, all the time. Yeah. Yeah. and I see a lot of those because when people are trying to go back to court for these types of things, most of the time the court will say, Hey, cool problem. You've been to mediation yet? No. All right. Get out of here. Go to mediation, see what you can figure out on your own and then come back if you have to. So yeah, I see. I see a lot of those.
Mm Yeah. those are really tough for me because it's always a symptom of a bigger problem. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, the damaged relationship, the need for control, the poor communication skills, and really what you're getting at a lot of times in these post-ecre like we're so far beyond whether or not
we're looking for the best interests of the kids. And if we're really here for the kids, seems like post-ecre is always a fight for power and control. That's my opinion. There's a lot of it there. A lot to unpack there underneath all that. people come back and they want to go on these motions to modify their existing order, be it parenting time. It's usually parenting time. It's provisions of that. do see some financial support.
That's what I see. Yeah.
Taylor (19:16.65)
stuff get modified, but overwhelmingly, maybe it's just the nature of my practice, it's for parenting time. And a lot of times, what's behind wanting to modify is the other parent's non-compliance with the terms of the parenting time, or they're complying with the dates and the times, but they're either exerting some level of control over
smaller things like the transportation, or they're late, or, you know, they're not agreeable to paying their fair share of back to school items, or they're doing, you know, they're making some jabs at the other parent trying to get the child to make up their mind with their feet about where they're going to spend their time. And then we see the aggrieved party run back and want to file a motion. And while I understand the sentiment,
I'm actually really leery sometimes of filing these motions because my fear is that people don't understand you might get in there and ask for one thing and the other party is going to get in there and they're going to have a whole slew of requests or a whole slew of information about you or a whole file they've been keeping on you that you weren't aware of. And now you've opened Pandora's box and we're like in this big re-litigation.
of the divorce in the first place. Does that ring true, I guess, with what you see too?
Yeah, I just want to mention one other thing that I see related to this in post-ecre is when, in my opinion, they weren't clear enough on parenting time in the first place. So people will just get divorced with something that says something along the lines of like, one I saw was parents will have 50-50 and they will come to an agreement on what the schedule looks like. I'm like, guys,
Taylor (21:17.304)
Mm.
Rachel (21:20.662)
You've been divorced six months and you cannot come to an agreement on what the schedule looks like. Who saw that coming?
And if you agree to 50-50, just pick a schedule. You know what I mean?
even yeah I just honestly so that's I think this is maybe for people who are heading into divorce right right now we're kind of talking about the divorce process but for the people heading into divorce my preference is almost always to be to to include more detail more detail rather than less when you're setting up your agreements because I see so much of that post decree where stuff is totally ambiguous and then they can't agree on what they're trying to do
So it's a little bit of an aside, but.
I see those, like I think, and sometimes those aren't an appropriate place to go. I actually think sometimes those are an appropriate place to go back to court because if you have something like 50-50, like that is very clear, but you didn't have a schedule and you know, Johnny wants one schedule and Susie wants another. There's only a handful of ways to do 50-50 unless you're going to go back and forth every day. Like, you know what I mean? And it's like, if you really read an impasse on that, that's a quick one.
Taylor (22:31.042)
Right? That is something the would be happy to resolve for you. Here's our book of guidelines about what's an appropriate schedule. If your child is under six, if your child is six to 12, if your child's 12 plus. But like where I don't like people going back and like turning over, which that's so like, I don't want to say it's silly, but like those people should be able to resolve that. Right? But like I'm talking when we have the softer side of parenting, this is what I really see.
The softer side of parenting and we want the court to make determinations about that. Yeah. Right. And that's where you don't want the court involved. think you're going to explain. Yeah. For an example, like this doctor side of parenting. Okay. we've got parent, you know, we've got mom and dad, right. And mom and dad have an enumerated parenting time schedule and they share joint legal custody. But then, and we've got
Thanks for
Taylor (23:20.328)
all the fancy provisions we should have in there about how we're going to resolve disputes. Like we're going to go to mediation and we're going to pick the three mediators and then we're going to strike one alternately and then we'll get our person and you know, this is how we're going to resolve disputes and this is how we're going to pay the bills. and you know, so on and so forth. And you've got a pretty decent decree, right? Like there's always some little things that hindsight being 2020 that should have been included. So one of them, for example, on the soft side of parenting is
We've run into an issue with the school. Okay, we run into an issue with the school. The school no longer fits the children's needs because the child, you know, needs a certain service that needs to be provided and they don't have it at the school. And one parent wants to switch the school and one parent doesn't. And it's like, well, we have all, you know, we put a lot of detail in there and we have these decision-making provisions. But then what happens when, you know, one parent doesn't and one parent does and you find yourselves back.
in an endless round of like re-litigating some of these softer things. And I see a lot of people want to run to the court and have the court decide and just take a minute to think how ridiculous it sounds to have a judge who went to law school and practiced corporate mergers and transactions before sitting on the family bench, decide where your child with special needs goes to school. Like what specialized background do they have? Have they met your child?
Do they know anything about child development? Are they down with how large the autism spectrum can be? That's an example. One in 36 kids has autism right now. And I went to court on emotion and the child had autism and the judge pretty much acted like the child was like, had nonverbal Angelman syndrome, if you're familiar with that, like nonverbal, can't speak, can't do ADLs. And I'm like,
Do you know what autism is? Like the kids are like all the way from nonverbal to like they could like look at your checkbook and balance it without using a pen, a calculator, a pencil or anything just in their brain. Like, you know what I mean? And I was like, it was very clear this judge had no wherewithal whatsoever about anything to do with special needs. That's making your decisions. Good luck. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like stuff like that or stuff like the one, you know,
Taylor (25:46.53)
that we see a lot. And I've seen this, the first time I saw this was one of the first cases I ever did in practice where child is in might hockey and dad refuses to take the child on his time. And now you got to go litigate about what that means for the parenting time. I mean, who thinks about that when you, when you are getting a divorce and your child is three, who thinks about the sports and activities and all that stuff, right? And like, those are some of the softer parts of parenting where you just can't litigate them.
You can't litigate that dad talks shit about mom at dad's house. You can't litigate that. How do you prove that? Right. And so people want to run back on motions and like work themselves to death over recording their phone calls with the other parent and marking down every single time. Mom doesn't comply with this thing and how many sports games she's missing and whether or not the kids are going to extra technical training. And, know, and it's it just gets so messy and so tiring. It's like, at what point do we stop?
Yeah, one that I just saw a couple days ago on a Facebook mom's group because, you know, we hang out there. But somebody was saying, like, we have 50-50 parenting time. We share joint physical and legal. Can dad take the kids hunting on his parenting time?
my gosh, I think I saw that. And people were like, well, what's wrong with hunting?
Yeah, and but the thing like my answer to that is like, yeah, I mean, okay, unless you're like handing a two year old a gun that's bigger than he is, you know, like unless there's like egregious, like very clear safety issues with anything, for the most part, parents can, assuming they're, you know, competent parents and whatever, which the general assumption is most people are.
Rachel (27:37.506)
They can pretty much do whatever they want on parenting time and you're not gonna get anywhere trying to say, don't want the other parent taking them hunting or I don't want the other parent doing whatever. Like that's not a thing to litigate or even to bring to mediation because it's just not a thing if you disagree.
Yeah, like reasonable parents can do whatever they want on their parenting time. You know what I mean? you, okay, I did have one where dad was taking the kids urban sledding and I was like, ooh, that seems not dangerous, very dangerous, like very not safe where you hook a sled up to the back of a car and you pull it down the street.
Okay, that's different. If there are, would say, documented safety issues or if it's like illegal or something. Yeah. But I mean, I have seen where, you know, one parent wants to take the kids to a running club or something just on their time and the other parent says, no, you can't do that. Cause I, what, what, what's bad about that? If like it's on my time, I'm taking them. They like running. Why are you telling me I can't do this on my time? It's.
No.
Yeah, yeah, that goes back to that power and control for sure. And it's it's learning how and when I when I corner the market on how to get people who are in these very difficult co parenting situations to learn negotiation skills to get in front of the right professionals to
Taylor (29:08.614)
make their own path forward as easy as possible. I'm going to bottle it and I'm going to give it to all of you because it is really tough, right? When you get put in situations and, you know, I know in my life and in my co-parenting situation, there are a lot of things where I would love if I could run back to the court and have the court, you know, slap the other parent on the wrist and tell them they're wrong and tell them they're being ridiculous and tell them that I can have what I want. But
How many times do I want to go to court? You know, is that someplace I want to be every six months? Is that how I want to spend my energy and my time? So, you know, there's definitely that to it. And then also if I do that, what's the other person going to say about me and what stipulations are they going to ask me put on my life? If you know, I run back on things that I'm not happy with, you know, I could see that going.
Right.
Taylor (30:05.546)
so many ways and getting so out of control that sometimes it's better to try to work your life and with your children and your existence around the fact that this other parent isn't going away and what can we live with? You know, as things go forward.
And that can be really hard. just personally, I consider myself to be like super justice minded and this is not fair. This is not equitable. This is not best for the children. This is not, you know, fill in the blank. Yes, those things can be true. And also it is what it is. And
do i really want to waste like you said all my time mental energy even money because it's expensive to keep going back to court and all of that and like do i want to keep doing that for something and sometimes the answer is yes obviously sometimes we have to fight these things but in general i think it's more peaceful for the parents and honestly even more peaceful for the kids sometimes too to just be like well this isn't ideal
let's acknowledge that this isn't ideal and then figure out how to move forward.
Yeah. And I think sometimes there are other ways to get justice. I know I feel really strongly when I think my co-parent is doing something that's bad for the kids or harming the kids. And I feel really strongly when things are being said about me by my co-parent to the children that they shouldn't know about, or that's, know, tarnishing towards like their perception of me or my relationship with them. And, you know, if anybody's going through that, that is wrong. Like there is such a thing as attempts at parental alienation.
Taylor (31:49.716)
you know, and those types of things, and maybe you do want to seek some advice about, you know, things like that, or maybe you want to seek some advice about if your co-parent isn't bringing the kids to, you know, soccer practice or whatever. Right. And we could have a, I could give you a whole recitation about my entire life some other time, but other, there are other forms of justice. And one that I am clinging to right now and my personal reflection is, you know, justice may be served.
by the fact that I will have a really good relationship with my kids for, you know, as they age and as they grow up and as they become adults, based on all my efforts to try to give them a good childhood and try to be loving and supporting and try to promote, you know, their whole family system relationships with their grandparents, relationships with their friends and try to give them a good life. And somebody who's actively acting against that, you know, may not have the opportunity at that relationship. And maybe that's justice.
I don't like that as my version of justice, but maybe that is what it is. yeah. I think another thing that people need to consider before they run back to court is what it takes to win in court.
Yeah.
Rachel (33:01.014)
And what even happens if you win? Mm-hmm. Okay, you won. Now what?
Now what? And like, when you go to court to win, you have to be ready to win at any cost. Okay. And a lot of people don't have the stomach for that. And if you are not some crazy competitive person, you're not a mean, nasty person by nature. This probably isn't the arena for you because if you're going to, and I'm not saying that lawyers are mean and nasty and that,
court is a competition. But the reality is, is that if you're going to win in anything, you have to be able and you have to be willing to do things that other people won't do in order to win. Right. So watching the Timberwolves play the Lakers last night. And if you're going to be a professional basketball player, you have to be willing to train and eat and give your whole life to something like other people will not do. And the same is true for when you go to court, you have to be willing to say some things. You have to be willing to
document some things. You have to be willing to put some things in front of the court. You have to be willing to sometimes maybe even give a little information that's damaging about yourself in order to win. And it takes a lot. And there's an emotional toll to winning. Okay. Like I was on a call with a client and they don't want the father to have 50-50 custody. It was very, very frank. And I said, okay, well, logistically, you got a 50-50 setup all day. You both are college educated. You both can work.
You both take the kids to the doctor. You both take the kids to the school for conferences. You sometimes he takes the kids to practice and you're not there. Sometimes you travel on a girls trip and he has had the kids in his care solely. So the court's going to look at that and say everybody is present for the parenting time. The kids get to and from school. They're fed, they're clothed. They have their needs met in both households. And there's nothing in this situation logistically
Taylor (35:02.498)
that doesn't show me that it's a 50-50 schedule. So is there something wrong with one of the parents? That's what you're gonna have to prove. So like, are you willing to get down in the dirt and put all his business and all his laundry out there about what he might do and what he might not do and what's happened in your family in order to win more parenting time? Because that's what it's gonna take. And I don't think you wanna do that.
And I would say in a lot of cases that's harmful for the children as well.
And it's harmful for the children and it's harmful for them long-term because what it's doing is it's going to damage your co-parenting relationship. if it doesn't need to be damaged, like, don't do it.
that dirty
Taylor (35:51.222)
No. If you have, of course, the caveat serious safety concerns, right? Like there's abuse, there's substance use disorder, there's, you know, insert thing that's going on here. Voice those those need that is in the best interest of your children to provide them with the protection that they need. But for a lot of people, it's just not there. And maybe you need to examine like what you think you're going to get out of running to court or what you think you're going to get out of that when you're seeking so much or like what it is you're afraid of.
that's even leading you down this path.
Thanks for hanging out with us on the Divorce Queens podcast. If you loved today's episode, be sure to hit subscribe and leave us review. It helps more women find the support they deserve.
You can find me, Taylor, on Instagram at momlawyeredivorced and you can find Rachel at RachelTalksDivorced. Got questions? Need a pep talk? Wanna share your story? Slide into our DMs. We're here for it.
And of isn't that the end of your story? It is the beginning of your comeback. See you next week!
