31. BONUS: Safe-guarding yourself from 'alienation' accusations - flexible thinking, compromise and high-quality preparation

Hi, welcome to a bonus episode of the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast. My name's Danielle Black and I'm a Specialist Separation, divorce and Co-Parenting Coach for Australian women. This bonus episode of the podcast is related to the series about safeguarding yourself and your case from accusations of alienation, gatekeeping and withholding. In the previous four episodes on this particular topic, I spoke about facilitating supervised visitation in order for your children to maintain a relationship with the other parent whilst also being safe. In part two, I spoke about unsupervised day visits only, along with drug and alcohol testing as another way to provide a level of safety for your children in the care of the other parent, whilst allowing some form of contact. In part three of the safeguarding series, I spoke about providing regular written updates to the other parent, along with utilizing a photo sharing application. In part four of the safeguarding series, I spoke about taking responsibility for healing your own trauma.

In this bonus episode, what I'd like to briefly mention is the importance of preparation if your matter proceeds to court, in particular, careful preparation prior to meeting with a court, child expert or family consultant. This is often one of the first steps when a parenting matter proceeds to court. It's often ordered that a child impact report or family report be provided, and these are prepared by family consultants or court child experts. Throughout this process, you will meet With the court child expert or family consultant. Your ex-partner will meet with that person privately as well and, depending on the ages of your children, your children may also meet privately with that person.

That person then prepares a report including their observations and also recommendations when it comes to parenting arrangements being adequately prepared for this meeting can help to optimise your overall outcome abusive behaviour after separation and help you take back your power and control. Let's go.

Part of the way in which I support many of my clients is by helping them to understand what they might expect to be asked during these meetings with a family consultant or court child expert, and to also help them to understand more about how they present to other people and how to optimize how they present and how they may be perceived. This can include conversations about our physical presentation whilst meeting with a family consultant or court child expert, along with the sorts of things that you should speak about and the things that you should avoid speaking about or avoid saying. I'm not going to go into too much detail about that in this podcast episode, because those particular recommendations are highly strategic and highly specific to each person's case. One thing that I will share, though, about meeting with a family consultant or court child expert is the importance of demonstrating flexibility with your thinking.

Abusive people, high conflict people, personality disordered people, tend to be fairly inflexible and rigid in their thinking and what they're seeking when it comes to parenting arrangements. Part of your task when you're meeting with a court child expert or family consultant is to present yourself in a way in which you are not perceived as being part of the problem. What you don't want is a family consultant or court child expert, thinking that both you and your ex are both problematic in the dynamic. One way in which you can help all of the professionals involved see more clearly where the conflict is coming from is by demonstrating that you are capable of flexible thinking, that you are not rigid, that you are not black and white, that you are not fixated on particular parenting arrangements. Now, this can be really hard, particularly if you've experienced family violence, particularly if there's ongoing post-separation abuse, particularly if you know that the best thing for your kids is just if a hole would open up in the ground and your ex would fall into it. It can be very, very difficult to make space for the thought, to make space for the idea of parenting arrangements changing, perhaps more parenting time than what you are initially feeling comfortable with. This is another one of the ways in which I support my clients to help them make space, to help them think about alternative parenting arrangements, other things that can be offered, other things that can be considered, not necessarily immediately, okay, but potentially over time, because even the fact that you're prepared to contemplate those things, even the fact that you're prepared to chat about them, to demonstrate that you've spent any time at all thinking about them. That's something that can go in your favor when you're meeting with a court professional, being able to demonstrate that you're not black and white, that you're not rigid and inflexible when it comes to what you're seeking. There are ways in which you can talk about parenting arrangements that can help to demonstrate that you're capable of flexible thinking, that you're capable of perceiving things from a different perspective, and also to leave the court professional with the perception that you are committed to facilitating a relationship between your children and the other parent, albeit in a manner that is safe. This sort of planning and preparation can also be really helpful before mediation, particularly if it's lawyer-assisted mediation, because it really is in everybody's best interests to reach agreement without the need to progress to court.

Court should always be a last resort and, whether we like it or not, being prepared to compromise can be an important part of the mediation process, but also an important part of the court process, and I think this is something that many people who haven't been through mediation or haven't been through the court process this is something that many people who haven't been through mediation or haven't been through the court process this is something that many people are not aware of that. If you hold out on mediation, that if you're not prepared to be flexible or to compromise in any way, you might be thinking, okay, fine, we'll just try our luck in court. But throughout that court process, you will be expected to be somewhat flexible, you will be expected to demonstrate a degree of compromise, and if you're not capable of that, or if you refuse to do that, then you do risk being painted as part of the problem and this can undermine your credibility. Helping clients to develop child-focused parenting plans is one of my areas of expertise, along with helping my clients to prepare for mediation and to prepare for meeting with court, child experts or family consultants. We can never completely control our outcome, but I do firmly believe that there are things that we can do to influence and optimize our outcome.

If you're preparing for mediation, or if you are in the midst of the court process or believe that that's going to be in your future, I do encourage you to reach out for support. At the time of recording this episode, I'm still offering free discovery calls. These can be easily booked via my website, danielleblackcoachingcomau, if you're at all concerned about your own case, about how you're potentially being perceived or might be perceived, whether that's in mediation, whether that's in the court process, or whether you're wanting to approach mediation in a way that helps you to avoid the court process. Please reach out. Thank you so much for your time. I'll talk to you soon.