In today’s episode, I talk to Brian Victor, A Family Law Attorney about high conflict divorces. Not only is he skilled as an attorney, but his background as a therapist and a family court services mediator adds to his knowledge and understanding of divorce. He explains how any divorce can turn “high conflict,” and gives tips on how to handle this type of situation

India: (00:05)
Welcome to the divorce recovery podcast. My name is India Kern. My intention is to encourage and guide you through the Valley of divorce. It doesn’t matter what stage you are in because we all need a little help navigating the road from married to divorced. I’ve been there and I know how it is. So sit tight, listen up and enjoy the podcast. Today I will be speaking with Brian Victor, who is a family law attorney here in San Diego. Brian has an extremely unique background, which I will let him tell you all about. In today’s episode, we will be discussing high conflict divorces. There’s a lot to cover, so we will do our best at sticking to just a few topics to better understand the red flags, how to handle it, and what resources are available to those that are in a high conflict divorce. So welcome. Brian, can you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself?

Brian: (00:58)
Well, thank you India for having me. I appreciate it. So my background’s a little different than other attorneys, especially family law attorneys. So I basically started out, I got a master’s degree in clinical psychology and then went on and got licensed as a marriage family therapist. From there I actually did stints. I worked at child protective services for about seven years and then went on to work at family court at family court services, where I provided the mediation, which is mandatory in any child custody dispute here in California. And during that time I went on and got my law degree and I’ve been practicing family law since, so I do have a little bit of a different background, which isn’t just necessarily law related, but it really allows me to put on a different hat and really understand what my clients are going through when they’re in the process of divorce.

India: (01:51)
No, I think that’s so cool cause you bring so many hats to the table. I mean the therapy part and then you know, your family court mediator and I just think that’s wonderful. And now you’re an attorney so I can see that really helping you throughout your practice.

Brian: (02:08)
And it does. And I do not do the therapy with my clients. I’m just doing the law aspect, but having the knowledge and the base behind me of understanding the grief process, the process and the stress that goes into when people get divorced or even just have a custody dispute. I completely understand that both from the psychological standpoint and obviously from the legal standpoint, which is what I focused on with my clients.

India: (02:33)
Well let’s talk about high conflict divorces. So in your experience, where do you see high conflict divorces trending right now? Are they on the rise? Are they declining? What’s, what…tell us a little bit more about that.

Brian: (02:47)
So I don’t think there’s any necessarily definitive, um, answer as if it’s going up, going down, staying about the same. What I find is that the term high conflict can mean different things to different people. So any divorce can turn high conflict even if it doesn’t start out that way. There are several, there’s a lot of issues where divorce has come and people come in with divorce stuff and it starts off high conflict from the start. And you can see it and you know that you can prepare for that. There’s a lot of other cases where people come in, in a divorce situation or even in a child custody situation and it turns high-conflict as we go. Those aren’t always the easiest to prepare for. But I tell my clients at the beginning, you know, understand that even if you guys are in agreement right now on most of these terms, there’s no guarantee that it’ll stay that way. Um, my hope obviously is that we can reach agreement if we can on as much stuff as possible. Cause I always think it’s a lot better for the clients if they can reach agreement then rather than go to court on every issue. But just because you’re in agreement today does not mean you’re gonna stay in agreement tomorrow. It’s just something for clients to think about and something I prepare the people I work with for.

India: (03:59)
Right, right. Okay. In your experience, what are some typical characteristics of a, an HCP or high conflict Divorce.

Brian: (04:09)
So characteristics, characteristics I look for are basically things such as inability to either work together as people going through a divorce or inability to co-parent. And the biggest thing for me when there’s children involved, I look at it and if I see that parents are not able to work together about what’s in the best interest for their children and then they can’t co-parent, that to me starts sending off all the issues. That’s where things start going badly. Because if they can’t co-parent, it means they’re not going to be able to talk about exchange times. They’re not going to be able to talk about vacations. They’re not going to be able to talk about extracurricular activities or any kind of school activities that they both need to be involved in. And that’s where things start turning towards high conflict.

India: (04:55)
Right. So the next question I was going to say, can you walk us down a path of what a typical high conflict divorce can look like? You kind of started, so can you elaborate on that?

Brian: (05:05)
I can. So, um, it, it is something from the start, like I said, then you’re going to see it because it’s going to be someone coming in talking to me initially about how I want this, but the other party is way far away from what I want and they just won’t be able to work with me to try to get to a middle ground. And I’m not going to say you can reach middle ground on every issue cause you may not be able to. But when I see an inability at the beginning for people to really understand the other person’s point of view, that’s typically a good sign of okay we’ve got a high conflict divorce. Then as I said, the inability to work together going forward, the inability to co-parent. Um, those are other typical signs in a high conflict situation and it just makes it really difficult for the party you are trying to represent. Um, cause you have to make them understand that this is maybe the best is going to get. And that’s why the court system is here.

India: (05:59)
Right? So if you are someone that you may think, gosh, this is sounding like I might be in a high conflict situation with my spouse who I’m divorcing, what kind of advice can you give that person? Like what should she or he do to avoid mistakes? Um, anything you can recommend to them would be helpful.

Brian: (06:20)
So what I see a lot of times in that situation is where there’s one party who keeps all of financial records or one party who’s involved in paying all the bills or whatever it might be. So my advice would be get as much of that stuff upfront as you possibly can. Find it wherever it might be. Make copies so at least you know financially what the situation is. At least you know where all the statements are that you’re going to need to turn it into the court and to eventually have your attorney look at. Um, so that would be my number one thing. Number two would be start in your mind at least if not running it down, come up with ideas of what it is you actually are looking for from the divorce. What do you want to get out of this? What assets and debts are there? What parenting plan regarding children, do you want to see occur and at least start having that base. And then finally, of course, talking to an attorney about, well, if this is my situation, what do you see as, how’s this gonna work with? What’s a plan the program for what are the steps that I need to take with you to get from step A to step B?

India: (07:21)
Right. So I got a question for you. Just thought of, so if someone is interviewing an attorney and they know that they are in a high conflict divorce, what kind of questions should they ask the attorney?

Brian: (07:35)
That’s a great question actually. Um, so my answer would be really, I would look at like the financial aspects of this questions. Like what am I entitled to? How do I self support after this, when I start getting in on my own? How am I going to do this? What do I do with bank accounts, things like that where they wouldn’t necessarily think about that. Um, from a child custody standpoint, I always tell people to try to think of the parenting plan you want and then how you’re going to get to that parenting plan. So in other words, you know, if you don’t see your child as much as you probably can, it’s a great time to start seeing your child more and start building that relationship because this could last a long time and this can be very stressful for both the child and for you it’s a good time to really start having that relationship with your child.

India: (08:24)
Right. And I know that, I mean, I see it with my clients, they have appointments with the family court services. So can you tell us a little bit more about that and if, if someone’s facing that, what they can do to prepare?

Brian: (08:40)
Absolutely. Because as I stated earlier, child custody mediation is mandatory in the state of California. So what that basically means is in any case where there’s any non-agreement regarding, um, a child custody plan, the court’s going to send you to family court services. And those are professionals who are trained in some kind of child development or psychology, background with a masters and they will sit with you and they’re going to get both sides of the story and eventually here in San Diego make a recommendation to the judge regarding a parenting plan. So my best advice to people is you should be prepared going into that session, I actually worked at family court services for 11 1/2 years and during that time I would see so many people come in and just not be prepared. They wouldn’t know how to answer the questions I asked. They wouldn’t know even what parenting plan they wanted. It’s really helpful to come in well prepared. And so one of the services I provide, um, being the only family law attorney who’s ever worked at family court services here in San Diego, I will actually prepare my own clients, other attorneys’ clients and people who find me just in the community. I’ll prepare them for their family court services, a mediation session, which will help both them and the mediator, because when you’re going in, there’s nothing worse like I said, than the mediator going, okay, why am I working harder on these children who aren’t mine? Trying to come up with a plan that you should have. So I’ll make sure that people who come before me are prepared to go to their session for child custody mediation.

India: (10:15)
That’s really a good service. I could have used that. So I want to know some more, like what are some mistakes people make? Like, um, even just an attitude, how should they come? I know you’re not going to prepare us completely, but I know there’s gotta be some mistakes that you can think of off the top of your head to say, Hey, just be, don’t do this. When you’re going to the family court services mediation meeting.

Brian: (10:40)
Basically it’s under, the biggest thing is understand what your there for. Understand what you need to tell them, understand the plan that you’ve been following. If there’s been a plan and there isn’t, what parenting plan do you want going forward? Those are really big. And the other thing is too, you have a story to tell. You’ve lived your story for whatever age the child is, you don’t have that time at family court services to tell the entire maybe 15 year story of your child. So you have to hit the key points. And that’s what I do is prepare people to hit the key points and the points that are really meaningful for the mediator to be able to make a recommendation to the judge based on what the story is.

India: (11:22)
It’s kind of like setting an intention for your mediation, for your whole divorce process. And I’m a big believer in that as a coach is asking the client, what do you want? You know, let’s go ahead and put something out there to try as a goal to reach, you know, set an intention about this divorce.

Brian: (11:42)
Absolutely.

India: (11:43)
So I have a question that someone asked me, because I posted that I was going meet with you and I said give me your questions. So I had someone ask this question: If a divorce is super contentious, how do you recommend that the person who feels threatened or bullied respond? Should they leave everything up to you, the attorney or the or are there other resources they could use? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Brian: (12:08)
So I usually gauge the situation based upon what my client tells me. In other words, we’ve never really been able to figure anything out together. We can’t talk. This thing is just gone terrible. If I hear something like that, I certainly do not want my client talking to the other party because it’s just gonna result in more conflict, possibly court hearings to deal with the conflict. And so at that point then it’s really I want my client to talk to me and I can either talk to the client if they’re not represented by another attorney or if they’re represented by an attorney then the two attorneys can sit down and talk about the issues going forward. When I have a client who is still, while it might be contentious, they’re still able to talk to the other party, especially if it deals with their children, then I’m okay with them talking to the other party as long as they’ve talked to me first so that they understand the important things to talk to them about, and focus on the important things that we’re gonna need to move forward in the matter.

India: (13:05)
Right. So family wizard, is that only for people that have children or can you communicate to your ex spouse through that or is it just strictly for for kids and dealing with your children?

Brian: (13:17)
Good question. I mean I’ve only used it in cases with children because usually the court will make orders on that or any other kind of online source. But certainly anything that’s going to lead to less conflict I’m all a fan of doing. I mean if you find that by texting the other party, you have less conflict than email or than phone call. Right. By all means do something like that. Yeah. I’m certainly not going to want to go online and post things about the other party because that will lead to a lot more conflict.

India: (13:43)
Right, of course. Of course. Well, you know what? We are at the end of this podcast episode, but I want the listeners to know how to get in touch with you, where you’re located, give them the information that they need to get in touch with you

Brian: (13:56)
So you can reach out to me. You can call me 858-633-3529. You can go on my website, which is www.brianvictorlaw.com

India: (14:10)
Okay, perfect. Well, thank you so much for being a guest in answering these questions around high conflict divorces. Listeners, thank you so much for tuning in and have a beautiful day.