294 - Being Unprepared Turns Great Dads Into Weekend Visitors

The most dangerous part of divorce isn’t the courtroom—it’s the quiet hours between filings where patterns form, and evidence takes shape. We unpack why support alone won’t protect your parenting time and show how a command center mindset helps you close the “decision gap” that turns great dads into weekend visitors.

Being unprepared is how great fathers become weekend visitors. Most ground is lost quietly through "drift" and decisions made under pressure. Stop the drift today at TheDivorcedDadvocate.com.

Access your tactical tools:

• Risk Assessment: Identify your "quiet loss" exposure in 10 minutes.
• Protection Session: Book a private triage to ensure mistakes don’t become permanent.

Your kids are counting on you.

Transcript

From Community To Command Center

The Decision Gap Explained

Patterns The Court Actually Reads

The Drift And Quiet Losses

Flexibility Without Strategy Backfires

Silence Becomes Status Quo

Five-Step Strategic Framework

Strategic Defense Blueprint

Paternal Authority Upskilling

Operational Control In Daily Life

High-Conflict Emotional Regulation

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Being unprepared is how great fathers become weekend visitors. I'm Jude Sandval, and this is strategic defense. Fellas, if that message sounds a little bit different to you, it is. Today I'm gonna be talking to you about a very important thing, and it's probably something that we haven't focused on enough, and that over the last several years, and particularly over the last several months, has really become something that has ra has risen to the forefront of the work that we're doing here and has become just basically really in our faces here at the Divorced Advocate about what we need to be doing and how we need to be approaching things. And that is that support is just not enough. And so before I dive into this, let me just welcome James, Greg, and Bill to the Divorced Advocate community. Welcome, gentlemen. If you're not part of the community, and we're gonna be talking about more of this as as well and kind of the change of how we're gonna go from this community, which we are, and we will continue to be, but more of a strategic mindset. But check out all the resources we have at thedivorcedadvocate.com. All right, fellas, I don't have a really great script around this. I'm gonna be speaking to you from just from the heart and and and mostly ad limited this. I've got an outline here of what I want to describe to you today. But in my opening and in that statement, being prepared is how great fathers become weekend visitors. You've that is a that is a completely different mindset and shift from kind of the support-oriented, you are not alone idea of how we have been approaching or at least marketing the divorced advocate community. I've been working with a business strategist over the last few months, and we've been going into intimate detail into the business, the pain points that that you dads are uh experiencing and really what it is that we're doing here, not only in the podcast, but in the group meetings with all of our Q ⁇ As, with all the strategic alliances that we've built, and in individual coaching, uh and trying to assess that and also work then conveying that to all of the dads that are out there, including you and others that are needing to get involved into the community. And so while it's while it is absolutely critical to and and and vital to give uh emotional reassurance, the problem with just providing support or emotional reassurance is that that does not guarantee your parenting time or your role as a father. And you know, we can we can and and it has it does happen that then and I see this oftentimes is that we can you can be supported all the way to a restricted visitor schedule if you don't if you don't have a plan and you have not executed a plan to either ensure that or prevent somebody from implementing that without your without your desire. So the pivot we are we are making is we're gonna be moving from the idea of support and a support group to more of a a command center. We aren't going to to be here to to to to vent, which we don't do. We're at we're action-oriented here. So basically what I'm doing is I'm bringing I'm I'm bringing the messaging, uh, I'm bringing the messaging in alignment with what we're actually doing here within the within the community, with all of our meetings, with all of our coaching, et cetera. But we're gonna and we're and we're gonna we're gonna brand it around and we're gonna make it around more of a control center idea. It's it the the fun the mindset is less passive and reactive to more strategic and intentional. So so again, if if we're not in in and this is born out of there has been recently a lot of guys, and a lot of guys have come into the community that have already after the fact had some tremendous, tremendous challenges that's that have gone on in in their divorce. And and and it's resulted in them ending up being what I'm describing as a as a weekend visitor. And and for some of the dads that have experienced this, that's that's even a that's even an over description. That's even putting it kindly, many of them are having little to to know, hours, only hours of of parenting time. And and so, you know, this is this is a loss of influence. It's the difference between being a parent who shapes their child's uh character and a guest who's just providing entertainment on the weekends. And you guys hear me talk about it all the time, about how important you are in your kiddo's life, that there is no other thing in their life that can have a positive outcome and predict the future of them having a healthy and functional adult life, than you being actively involved in their life. The unfortunate problem and challenge with this is that the system, uh, not just the family court system, but the system, divorce system in general, is not structured, particularly if we are somebody that is passive and reactive, to being able to facilitate or or what's the word I'm looking for, or uh to make sure that we are getting the parenting time and and being active in our parent and in our kiddos' lives. And so one of the things I'm I'm describing here and that that we're we're utilizing as phrasing here is called the the decision gap. And so this is the the the difference between the lawyer gap and the strategic gap. And so if you listen to last week's episode, uh Alex talked about a conversation that he and I had several years ago. And this is this is just reinforced. Our conversation, my course, my conversation with him and others has just reaffired what what we're what I've been thinking about here and in this transition, this kind of pivot we're trying to make here. When he talked about how when we met, we talked about how he has to be strategic. See, so so the difference between this the lawyer gap and the strategic gap is the lawyers manage rights. They handle about maybe 5% of your divorce that happens in the courtroom. That's the hearings, that's the filings, that's the motions. That is not the majority of what's happening in your life. What we're doing here, and and what we've identified with the with the strategies, is that the divorce advocate manages your role as a father and helps you to protect your role as a father. And so what I'm helping you to do, and and the divorced advocate is helping you do, is manage the 95% of your life that happens between those hearings. And that's what I'm calling the decision gap. Okay. The the the decision gap is all of those times, all of those decisions, all of those things that are happening in the high pressure time that is that is going on in your life during divorce when you are not in court that has an impact on whether or not you're going to be involved in your kids' lives, how involved you're going to be in your kids' lives, what the court's going to decide, how you're going to be able to manage co-parenting or parallel parenting and and and the relationships. And so that's the that's this the strategic shift that that we're making in that mindset. So I've got an example here. A tactical anchor, and and I'm the just work with me here and listen to me through this. If you guys, you guys usually hear me polished, you guys usually hear me got uh everything scripted out. I am I don't have this scripted out for you today because I just really want to help talk to you from the heart about the the mindset that we're we're gonna be making here and the and the change that I want you to start thinking about in how you're addressing your divorce, whether that's you're in the middle of it or you're post-divorce. So the the the Tuesday night president. So like if you're getting a you know your attorney's not going to be there at eight o'clock on a Tuesday when your ex sends a high conflict divorce. So the court doesn't just read law, it reads patterns, right? Every decision that you make in the gap either builds a pattern of stability or a pattern of volatility that the system will exploit. So the the the the system the the system is structured in a way that will exploit you as a father if you are unprepared. And so what do what do I mean by that? That means if you don't know and you don't understand the process, if you don't know what it is that you are doing, if you are making mistakes, which you are going to make, I made a ton of them. That is why I do what I do now is to help you to avoid the mistakes so they don't become your per your permanent reality, right? So that's why the the the opening statement, being unprepared is how great fathers become weekend visitors. All these things that happen that eight o'clock on Tuesday night text, that then maybe you send back an angry text, or maybe you get into an argument with your with your soon-to-be ex uh and that gets recorded. These are all things, these are all mistakes that can have a pre that can have a very profound impact on what happens going forward. And so let me talk to you about what I call the the drift, right? How how you lose ground quietly. So, so basically what I see happening all of the time is that ground isn't lost in one big shigheim or or big explosion or one big event that happens. It's lost through what I'm calling the drift. And that's just incremental surrender of authority and the accumulation of mistakes, the mistakes I was just describing made during the decision gap between the court dates, right? So the decision gap is all those times between the court dates when you're not talking to your attorney, when life is going on, you're trying to handle all of this, and you're making decisions and it in and it's under pressure because you've got all of your emotions go uh going on. You've got an ex that are a wife that might be pressuring you, you've got kids to deal with, you got work, like all of this. It is the most stressful time of your life. That's why everybody, men and women, rate divorce as one of the most stressful, difficult experiences that they that they ever go through. So, so one of the things you're gonna see, I've got on the website now, is kind of so like three pillars of the c like a grid of a cost of your mistakes. And I'm gonna give you a couple more examples around that. Like one of them is flexibility without strategy. Moving on to keep the peace is not always the best strategy. Sometimes the system will not interpret this as kindness or getting along, and it can actually also be weaponized against you. And I've seen this happen so many, so many times as abandonment. And so, so if you don't know and you don't understand that, you don't understand the nuance of the system, you don't also understand what's going on mentally, emotionally with yourself or with your soon-to-be ex and how this is being utilized or potentially being utilized against you. This is what the drift is. You try to be amicable, you might try to you know try to keep the peace. A lot of the guys that come into the community are always wanting to be able to try to keep the peace, try to get through this, try to do it without difficulty and and and challenge. And while that's respectable and that's honorable, that oftentimes results and all you got to do is get on one of our calls and you're gonna hear a story, if not more than one story. And I know probably many of you are experiencing this about how that backfired and actually ended up with a dad in this what I'm calling weekend, weekend visitor status, or even worse, right? So knowing that and understanding that has to do with strategy and being strategic about when you might do that or when you should not do that, set a boundary and say no. Another one is what I just mentioned, reactionary communication, like the one angry text or an outburst, or just doing some kind of stupid thing that you might be doing. It might be trying to numb the pain and the difficulty and challenging through escaping through uh something that that can then be brought into to court, uh, whether that's a harassing message or it's going out and and doing something like drinking and getting it uh getting in trouble. So so that is another another part of that that that drift. If you're not dialed in, if you're not focused on what it is you're doing through this time period, any and all of that time frame in that in that gap is going to have an impact on what shows up in court if you end up in court and you have somebody else making the decision. So so it that's another one of those pillars. That's another one of those, one of those drifts that happens or can happen uh if you're not paying attention or if you don't have somebody that's helping you to point out and guide you through that. The the final one is the big one, and you've been hearing me harp on this, and this is also one of the reasons why over the last six months you've seen this change in mindset and shift in mindset with uh just the the communication and the guests and how we're talking about is the lack of a plan. Uh, silence is and often usually will be interpreted as agreement. Uh, if you and if and if you don't communicate what your plan is, your silence during this drift phase creates a legal precedent that is almost impossible to reverse later. And so if you've been on any of our calls, you hear me talk about the fact that the courts really, really like status quo. So if you get into a temporary situation where you moved out, right? Like that first pillar I was talking about, and then you you you you moved out, and then that starts being used against you, that you moved out, you are still doing the same things you did as a dad, right? Because you're going to work, you're paying the bills, et cetera, except for the fact when you go to when you go to a hearing or you go to a trial, and then they come back and they say, well, you know, he moved out, he's not engaged, he's not involved, he's not seeing the kids, except you were just doing the same thing you were doing before in a dynamic where you had the roles where each one of you were, you know, one was taking care of the kids, maybe your wife and you were going to work and you were the bread earner. Now you're in a whole different context. You're in a in a context of the decision is being made. Well, is this somebody? Is this somebody who the kids should be spending time with? Is he equipped and have the ability to care for the kids? And and and should we be allowing X amount of time with the kids? Now, that's how this can get reversed and get weaponized. You didn't do anything different, you didn't change anything about your life. You haven't shown up differently with anybody. You are trying to keep the peace, trying to move out, trying to make things better and do this in a in an amicable manner, except it gets weaponized against you because then it can be argued and oftentimes is argued, gentlemen. And for those of you that are thinking, yeah, Jude, I don't know about this. I get on one of our calls. I can we can we can talk about that, or let's get on the call ourselves. You're gonna see on the site also your risk assessment. We have a risk assessment now, which I'm gonna talk about here in a little bit. Let's look at your risk assessment, and we can tell you, I can tell you almost definitively what you are going to potentially be looking, looking at and be up against potentially. So you can plan for the worst and and hope for the for the for the best. But that's just an example of then what the courts, and then you end up with with no time. And we've got guys that are just are just desperately trying. And I want what my point is I want you to get into our command center now and early to avoid this stuff so that you can show up in this process, the entire process. That's not showing up in court, but showing up in that in that in that gap period between court dates, how you're showing up with the kids, how you're showing up with your ex, how you're showing up in your own life, how every single one of the decisions you're making is going to have an impact on this, and how we can design this. So, so how do how are we doing that? How have we done that? Uh, and how do we continue to do that? I have not done a tremendous job of of sharing through this podcast really what's what we do and behind the scenes, if you will, and kind of the five, the the five-point plan that we work through when we're talking, whether it's on a on a group call and and talk about figuring out what a situation for any particular guy that might be sharing or how I do it in uh individual coaching with guys, but there is a there is a five-step plan. You may have read my you may have read uh the dad's divorce uh dad's guide to divorce and and the five-step plan. I've written about it. Many of the podcasts I've talked about, it's breakdown individually some of that stuff. What we're gonna, what I'm gonna start doing with this is really change the language of this into a more strategic, intentional mindset. Because again, it's been before that before now, it's been very passive, it's been very support-oriented. So moving from that reaction to execution, there's five steps, right? And and we're calling it the operational manual for the command center. And and and the deep dive into these steps, and this isn't really a deep dive because if you listen to the five episodes before uh Alex's episode last week, this is what I talked about in each one of those five weeks. And the first one is mission definition. This is what we've what I've been describing in the past as clarifying your vision and direction. You've got to define your operational end state, right? What does winning look like? If it's just getting through it, you're already lost. I'm just gonna say that again. If it's just getting through it, if your mindset is, I just want to get this done, I just want to get through it, I don't want to deal with the pain. It's such a headache. I hear this all the time. You're you're gonna, you are going to regret that. I promise you, not for a short period of time. It is potentially going to be for the rest of your lives. We were just the rest of your life. I was just on a call with Charlie McCready, who is a parental alienation expert. He is he is part of our community. He has uh teamed up with us to help you dads that are experiencing this is just one part of of the the knowledge gap that you don't have around uh parental alienation, pre alienation, how it grows and how it can happen. But he was Talking about what he has been able to do in order to ensure that now that his daughters are of adult age, that he has a relationship with them that is going to last for decades that is absolutely tremendous. It is a it was a great feel-good story he gave as an example of his trip down to Australia to spend time with his with his daughter last month, and how he was thinking through all of the battles that he had to go through while she was being alienated from him in order to stay in her life, to get to this result of having a tremendous relationship with her and now her boyfriend, her boyfriend's family. They're talking about getting married. It was just a beautiful, beautiful story. But that doesn't happen if you don't have your mission definition. You don't know specifically what you want and where you want to go. So that's number one. Number two is your strategic defense blueprint. We talk about that and I've talked about that in the past as strategizing your actions, right? Stop making peacekeeping moves. Start making calculated maneuvers that secure your role and secure your assets. Assets are equally as important because without the assets, you don't have the ability to be there for your kids, not show up in a stressful state, etc. So having the and and peacekeeping, you can still make calculated maneuvers and not have it be a war. Okay. Now you don't always get to make the decision whether it's going to be a battle or a war, whatever you want to call it, but you can be, you can make these decisions and and and make these calculated maneuvers and still try to keep the peace. Now, you you can't control how they they react. So you've got to be very strategic. And that's what uh Alex was talking about last week in his in in our conversation, and and he's talked about in his book is being very, very strategic. It is absolutely critical. The number of guys that come post-divorce, and this was me, like some of the stuff I went through was were great decisions, unwittingly, right? And and a lot of them were bad decisions and mistakes that I had to either make up for in the time or in the past. And so being strategic about that is really, really important. And sometimes you can't keep the peace. Sometimes you have to fight a battle. And that is also a strategic defense, right? Sometimes the best defense is an offense. So, and sometimes the best offense is a defense. So it depends on where you're at. And that's why every one of your divorces that are you're listening to is different from everybody else's. Whoever might be talking to, friends, family, therapists, anybody else, they all have their very limited and narrow idea of what divorce is and how it shows up in your life and what you should do, et cetera. What we do here at the Divorce Davocate, when we're talking about strategizing your actions, we look at specifically what it is that you are experiencing, what you're going through, all of the dynamics, and work with all of that, then to go through this five-step program. The next one being paternal authority upskilling, right? This is the most critical to what I'm talking about today and the shift in mindset that we're making. You must learn communication patterns, the system, the family court system rewards. This is completely different. We talked about this on our on our QA today, also. What you need to be saying is different from what the court looks at and thinks about than what you are looking at and thinking about. It needs to demonstrate restraint, it needs to demonstrate consistency, and it needs to demonstrate stability. Those three, those three things. And so we help you. I've been I've been talking about upgrading your skills, right? That would be the third step in the in the former dad's guide to to to divorce. I'm calling it now paternal authority upskilling. This is and this is just one example, right? The communication part of it. There are many examples of your parental authority upskilling and upsk upskilling. So parental authority means just means that you are there. You can't be a parental authority, that you are there with your kiddos to be able to be a parent and be able to model the great environment and the rate, the great way that you show up in their life. So that's why it's parental authority upskilling because you are you are increasing and and and look, guys, you're not, it's just not all gonna happen overnight, right? Like you might be going through, oh shit, already, already this sounds like way much. We're in step three, and parental authority upskill, and like that sounds insane. It's this is baby steps, and it's not gonna happen overnight. It's gonna take some time. There's steps to it. Some of it is communication, some of it is working on yourself and understanding your emotions and how you show up. There's all kinds of different skills that we can work on depending where you are at. Okay, the next one number four, which we've called in the past optimizing your environment. I'm talking now about operational control. See, do you do you guys see, do you guys see the the difference in kind of the the mindset of how we're talking about being more strategic with this language and and and intentional rather than just being reactive and passive? So operational control means optimizing your environment so it supports your your restraint. If your phone, for instance, if your phone is your biggest liability, we fix that. We put together a strategy and a plan for how you don't react to text messages or emails or phone calls. Maybe it is that you are passive, like we've been talking about, and you will not move forward. You will not be intentional, you will not be active in what you need to be doing and strategic. We'll talk about something like making sure that you're blocked scheduling so that you're actually getting things done, like your financial statements in on time, that you're returning the calls to therapist or schools or anything else. We'll we'll work on some of those other environmental changes that can help you to be successful. Now, the last one used to be master your psychology. We'll call it high conflict emotional regulation. Why high conflict? This is your armor. If she cannot rattle you, she cannot use it against you in court, this is your armor. Now, I know lots of you are saying, well, she'd never do that. I'm telling you guys, I if I've I'm telling you guys, if she's mentioned the word divorce, it means that she has thought about it for a long, long time. And if you think that she has not strategized and thought about how she would go about doing this, then you are seriously, seriously mistaken. And the number of times that that guys come into coaching, talk, and once they have filings, they do discovery, have two, at least two or three right now who have said, damn, like through my discovery, I see she's been paying this attorney now for six, nine, twelve months. She's been doing this, she's opened this other account. This account's six months old. We have only been talking about divorce for a month, right? So they start to go through the discovery and start seeing, oh crap, like I am way behind the eight-ball here. And that's just logistically, that's not even mental, mentally and emotionally, which is a big issue with us as fathers and men, because the majority of the time we're the ones that get served papers. And then no matter what the circumstance or how bad the marriage might be or what the situation was, unless you guys had talked about doing that and done that and facilitated together, there is a mental and emotional, not lapse, but you're behind the eight ball with that because you have to you have to catch up with where your where your wife is in that process. She's already decided, she pulled the trigger, she's moving forward, maybe hired an attorney, et cetera. Like you are needing to figure all that out. Grief comes in, sadness, bargaining, like all of that, all of that stuff, which happens all through the process. So, so that is uh all about the high conflict emotional regulation. Now, if you guys look back, and many of you have listened to lots and lots of episodes already, and and and you just kind of look at each one of these and then say, okay, well, but this all makes sense in the context of the conversation you had with Joey Klein, let's say, right? High conflict emotional regulation. Well, Joey talks about what the intermatrix systems and what your emotions are, how they came come up, what you're doing with them, and how you're utilizing the move forward in a direction. That's where I say we've already been doing all of this work on the podcast and within the community, with our meetings, with our our uh workshops, with the one-on-one coaching. We are just shifting the mindset again from passive to strategic to to from reactive to intentional. And so you're gonna hear me talking a lot more like that, changing that a lot more. So, what's my call to action for you guys? Tactical triage. That's what I'm calling it. The so I so I I I just I I want to share. Well, I could share a hundred stories with you. There are some testimonials on the the website about what I'm calling now these five steps is the 90-day bulletproof dad protocol. Okay, so we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna define it a lot more specifically around these these five steps when we're talking about this more often by going through this this bulletproof dad, 90-day protocol. You are going to be structuring your life, whether you're doing it uh in the context of one of our group meetings, one of our QA meetings, we're gonna be talking about and identifying each of these stages that you're working on or we're working on with these meetings so that you know what they are in the 90-day protocol. I can tell you there's a guys that are in coaching that are going through this. We've already been doing it. There's already guys that have had massive success through this. And there's guys that have come in after the fact. I know a lot of you are listening after the fact saying, Hey, I missed this, I missed that. We had somebody on our divorce real estate call on Thursday. It was like, yeah, the lawyers didn't write this in it, and they didn't write that in it, which happens all the time. And and Carla, the the divorce mortgage person is like, I know that's so frustrating. It's stuff that they just don't know and they just don't see. Again, attorneys are great. They help you handle 5% of your divorce. The legal part of it, the filings, the hearings, the motions. The divorced advocate, we're helping you through the rest of it. So I just want to give you an invitation to not bet a lifetime of fatherhood on an unknown mistake, right? Go to the website, check it out. We've so it's a work in progress. And I got to tell you, guys, I'm working day and night on this because this is so important to me to get this revamped and really get this message out to even more dads. That's gonna be our second phase once we get all this messaging changed and the strategy around this, and then get all the base set up and all of the back office and everything to support all of these. Phase two is gonna be how we get this out to even more people. This gets out to a ton of people, hundreds of thousands of people over the last five years, all across the world, more than 150 countries, 1,500 cities. Just got a got a great email from a uh from a guy in New Zealand this this week, also that's been listening for years to what we're doing and has helped him through his divorce. Like we're getting, but we need to get the message out to even more people. So check out, check out the the divorced advocate com divorcedavocate.com. Go and help me out by taking the weekend visitor risk assessment. We used to call that the divorce quiz, and we're calling it now the weekend visitor risk assessment. I alluded to it earlier. We have taken that from a therapist designed that, which is tremendous because it helps to understand the mental emotional state. But what I've done now is I've I've revised that to help it help that help you to understand the mental emotional state and how that mental emotional state that you're in and what your risk evaluation under that assessment is will either help you to move in a direction of securing your role as your father or be detrimental and land you in weekend visitor status. So that's how that's how I've redesigned that. So if you can go to the website, take the weekend visitor risk assessment, that would help me tremendously. And then and then also we have I I have the uh a fatherhood protection session, right? And I'm calling that uh a risk consultation. So if you take the quiz uh and then you you can schedule a risk assessment, we'll go through that quiz and I'll let you know, like I said earlier, pretty definitively, where I've where you're at on this scale, because this scale is measured against thousands and thousands of other people who have taken this. And so what I've done is I've I've just redesigned it and made it specific for for dads, and then I can help you assess where you're at in that risk of weekend visitor to securing your role and the future that you have uh with your father, which again, fellas, is the most important thing in their lives that you are actively involved. And I know if you're listening to this, that is incredibly important to you. So I just it's just it it just wrenches my heart every time I get a guy on one of our calls that comes in. We just had another guy lat two weeks ago contacted me offline. He's been at our meetings, but he his his now ex just took their their kiddo out of state, took off, and then filed. And the court just unexplicably well, I mean, it it is unexplicable to me, gave her full parenting time in a completely different state, even though she tricked and ran away with a kid to another state and did all kinds of nefarious things. And so now he needs to sell his house where he's at. He needs to move in order to have just 50-50 parenting time with her. Otherwise, he's gonna be less than a weekend visitor, he's gonna be summer vacation dad, visitor dad on the summers. And so, man, that just freaking breaks my heart every time I hear one of those, and I hear one of those every single week. And I don't want that to be you. So, so check out the website, give us some feedback. I I appreciate you if you've listened all the way through this 40 minutes of of me rambling, just trying to speak to you from the heart and and and let you know about the what we're trying to do here and how we're trying to help you. I really appreciate it. Share this with other dads. Give us a star rating, give us a comment. The comments are a lot, are coming in more and more, and I do appreciate that. I see it on Spotify, I see it on Apple. It's helping our Apple ratings going up. That's helping us as well. Continue to leave comments. I will respond to all the comments as quickly as possible on all the social media, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Instagram. We're everywhere. So thank you, gentlemen, for listening. God bless. Stay strong. Your kids are counting on you. I will see you next week.