The Custody Blueprint: Protecting Parents Against Abuse | Reneé Rodriguez

 Reneé Rodriguez, founder of Best Foot Forward, is here to talk about the heartbreaking reality of custody battles with narcissistic co-parents. Reneé reveals how the legal system can be used to continue cycles of abuse, and why many protective parents feel even more trapped after they leave.

Inside this episode: 

✔️ What “post-separation abuse” really looks like
✔️ Why most family courts aren’t equipped to handle narcissistic abuse
✔️ How to collect legal evidence without breaking the law
✔️ Why a custody blueprint could save your sanity—and your case
✔️ The biggest mistakes protective parents make in court

Whether you're in the middle of a court case or supporting someone who is, this episode will give you strength, strategy, and hope.

How to contact:
https://bestfootforwardllc.com/workshops/
https://www.nlgfamilylaw.com/toaster/navigating-custody-battles-with-rene-rodriguez
https://www.instagram.com/thecustodyblueprint/
https://www.facebook.com/thecustodyblueprint

Transcript

Going through a divorce and a custody battle is no walk in the park

>> Tiffanie: What if there was such a thing as a custody blueprint to help you with strategy, mindset, and evidence for your court appearance?  Going through a divorce and a custody battle is no walk in the park. But going to court against a narcissist is a whole nother ball game. To help with emotional

Renee Rodriguez is a domestic violence advocate and founder of Best Foot Forward

To help with that emotional draining process is today's guest. She's an advocate and the founder of Best Foot Forward, Renee Rodriguez. Renee, thank you so much for being here.

>> Renee Rodriguez: Yeah, thank you for having me, Tiffanie. I'm grateful. I'm grateful to be here with you.

>> Tiffanie: I can't tell you how many people face this problem. I actually know of people right now who are going through this.

>> Renee Rodriguez: I feel like more people probably do know somebody than they realize because a lot of times when people are going through a custody battle, a lot of protective parents feel some shame around that, even though they shouldn't. Right. And then also a lot of domestic violence is happening behind closed doors. But when you look at people, you think everything's fine.

>> Tiffanie: Right. And you just, you never know how ugly these proceedings can get.

>> Renee Rodriguez: No, definitely not. No. I mean, it's. Look, if you like, if you're watching things on Law and Order, I like to say to clients, you watch things on Law and Order and there's this lawyer and you know, the lawyer is so put together and also so attractive. And they spend an entire 45 minutes, you know, just focused on that one client. And they eat and sleep and, you know, angst over that one client. And the reality is, is that it's a very. It. The average used to be like two to three years you'd be in a case, and now we're getting closer to three to four years that you'll be in a family court custody case. And so it's very difficult for our clients to understand. It's definitely difficult for their family and friends and people who are not in the court system to understand why it's taking this long and why there would be any question that the primary parent, wouldn't just continue being the primary parent. But that's not the reality.

>> Tiffanie: That's a long time to be stuck going through something. And I mean, I'm sure you're constantly going back and, and having like little check ins or checkups or whatever along the way, especially if the other parent is like attesting everything that you're trying to accomplish.

>> Renee Rodriguez: Yeah. And it's expensive. But unfortunately, family court becomes weaponized when you're in family court against an abuser or a narcissistic abuser, physical abuser, any type of abuser. Because when they weaponize the family court system, what they do is they're entering into post separation abuse, which many protective parents say, actually feels even worse than when they were inside of the relationship, whether married or not.

>> Tiffanie: I can understand that. And it's just, it blows my mind that the court system doesn't recognize it. Or if they don't recognize it, they don't put a stop to it. Because some of these narcissistic parents will literally drag it out for as long as they can. And you're, you're kind of like holding up everybody's time.

>> Renee Rodriguez: Yeah, it, well, it's control, it's coercive control and it's control. You know, the courts have a harder time recognizing it because the majority of the people who are in these power position, these decision making positions, they don't have a background in domestic violence. I would posit that if you're going to work in the family court system, you should actually become a fully certified domestic violence advocate. Some people argue that they should even work in DV organizations or shelters, before they do so, but I think that's a possibility. But I actually think that becoming a fully certified DV advocate, spending, you know, one to two years getting that certification really forces you to look at what are all the different kinds of abuse. It's not just physical abuse, it's all the different kinds of psychological abuse. There's spiritual abuse, there's coercive control, there's financial abuse, there's medical neglect, there's all kinds of abuse there.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: And they also understand, you know, socially what's going on. They see it from all different angles. But the problem is that when it comes to the trainings, usually when you're in a family court role where you're a decision maker, you may or may not, depending on the state or jurisdiction, district or territory that you're in, you might actually be required to take a ce, A, continuing education workshop. And what that usually looks like is it might be an hour, 90 minutes, maybe two hours of having someone come and talk about something that is related to domestic violence. And look, it might be a very good presentation. But a lot of times when people are in these sessions, the other question becomes, are they paying attention or are they catching up on their inbox? Right. And you can easily walk away with your continuing education credit but the reality is, what did you walk away learning? And what can you learn in 60, 90, 120 minutes? Something. There's some value there. But again, how closely are you paying attention and are you willing to be open to what's there as well?

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: And then what they do about it was sort of the, you know, the other thing you had brought up. Part of the difficulty of working with clients is making them understand that the law does need to be followed. I'm not saying that there isn't bias. There's going to be implicit bias that any court professional is going to be fighting against. And then there's going to be those professionals who have their biases. They're very open about their biases and they're going to stick to their biases. And there are, an awful lot of people who are in these decision making power positions who simply don't believe domestic violence allegations. Whereas we know that 98 to 99% of domestic violence allegations are made in earnest.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: What really kind of confuses that is that, you know, more recently, I would say over the past few years or so, when a, survivor comes forth and says that there's been domestic violence behind closed doors, the other side, the abuser, just says the same thing. So now we're muddying those statistics because we've got somebody who has earnestly come forth with allegations, with the truth of what's happened, and then the other side falsely comes forth and says, well, that's not the way it really happened.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: And statistically, the other thing we know, and when I say this, I know there are always people who are very upset and say, no, it's not all moms. Absolutely, it's not all moms. But if we're to have this conversation, we do need to have it in terms of what we know from the statistics. And we know that 85 to 90% of people who suffer from domestic violence are women. And out of the 10% or so who are male, here's where it gets interesting. 49% of those male victims have a male perpetrator and 48% of those male victims have a female perpetrator. So while, and look, I work with protective fathers as well, but the truth of the matter is they're a small percentage of who we work with because it mimics the reality of what is actually out there.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: Which is to say that it is largely male perpetrators, largely protective mothers who we are helping, even though we're helping protective parents in general. So we kind of have to look at then are we seeing gender bias in the family courts? And, Professor Mohanna and Barry Goldstein write about the study. We look at the Saunders study, we look at the Meier study, and both of those studies show us that there is a very skewed bias toward men in the family court system. And I think that that is something that really surprised me when I first heard it, and I think it's something that would surprise people because when you look at, let's say you're on the Internet, you're on Facebook, TikTok, whatever, then it seems like, oh, the court favors moms. The court's always favored moms, but that's sort of shaking things up. And it's. It's a little bit. It's not really paying attention to what's happening. Now. We do know that there was a time leading up to about the mid-70s when the courts had something called the tender age doctrine. And with that, they would say, well, look, these kids are so small, they should stay with mom, right? And then when they get older, we can talk about a different arrangement. And so there was a time when we believed when the family court system's philosophy was that this is the moment the children need to be with their mom, at least while they're little.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: But that's not the case now. The case now is that they're looking at the best interest of the children is the doctrine. Now.


There are eight dates that have a 50, 50 presumption on child custody

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: Look, there's nothing wrong with either of these doctrines, quite frankly. Children of a tender age should be looked at for their age, children and their best interests. Yeah, we should be looking at what in what is in the children's best interest. But let's take a closer look at what is usually determined in this day and age to be in the children's best interest. Right now there are eight dates that have a 50, 50 presumption. And so what that means is that as soon as you come to court, they're automatically going to say, this should be half dad, half mom. And that's all there is to it.

>> Speaker C: Right?

>> Renee Rodriguez: So the question becomes, is that in the best interest of the children? Now, I've been. And every time I say this, you know, anyone who's in opposition says, but that's just a presumption. That's just a presumption. If you can show that there's abuse, if you can show that there's problems, then of course they're not going to do that. But in actuality, we don't find that to be true.

>> Speaker C: Right?

>> Renee Rodriguez: So when we look at what's in the best interest of the children. If we're, if the, what we're saying is, well, the children should have equal time with parent A and parent B, then my argument is always going to be that is not in the best interest of the children. Because if you don't look at the doctrine, if you don't look at the lobbying, if you don't look at the politics, and instead you look at the children and you look at psychology and adverse childhood experiences, then I would argue, based off of what is clearly the actual research, Instead of a 5050 philosophy, I would argue that children, when there's a divorce, should continue with what they know to the best of the ability of, a family who is now in two different households. So, Tiffanie, when I say that, then what I'm saying is if you have a primary parent, the children obviously are going to do well by continuing to have that parent be the primary parent, instead of being cut in half between a parent who is just getting to learn, usually often just beginning to learn how to parent, and the, parent who already knows them.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: And we see an unevenness there. Now, of course, I'm talking generally, Right. I imagine you're going to get people who are kind of like. But, you know, Absolutely there are exceptions. I'm not talking about the exceptions because I 100% agree with everyone who's going to comment. Absolutely, there are exceptions. This is life. There's going to be exceptions. I'm talking about the work that I'm doing and what I'm seeing with clients. And I'm seeing too many abused families go into court and the abuser gets 50, 50.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: With the other piece of that 50, 50 being that it is shared legal custody. There are two pieces. When you go into family court, the terms might vary depending on what state or province, wherever you may be in. But we're essentially looking at legal custody and physical custody. Legal custody is decision making. Physical custody is where the kids are living, what their, their home schedule is like.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: In terms of where they're staying. so when I'm talking about legal custody, when we give joint legal custody to the type of clients I'm working with, then you're basically saying, I know that you fled your abuser, but now we're going to pin you under your abuser's control. Because every time you say, our, child needs a therapist, the abuser is going to say, no, they don't. And because I say no, the answer is no, because both parents have to agree. So every Time the protective parent tries to do anything, the abuser, usually with glee, basically says, nope, you don't get to do that. And that's what joint legal custody looks like. So basically, it usually ends up where the children just don't get to move forward with things as simple as dentistry or therapy. They don't get to enjoy the extracurriculars that they want to because the abusive parent says no.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: And so that's deeply problematic.


Tiffany says proving who is the primary parent is not always easy

So as you can see, I'm not a fan of the 5050 philosophy, because I think it's as simple as what are these kids used to. Obviously, if you have an abuser, they're going to say, well, that's not true. I was the primary parent. So there needs to be proof of who is the primary parent. And proving who is the primary parent is not always easy. But I will say, out of all of the things that we need to prove when we're working with our clients, it's among the easiest things for us to be able to prove.

>> Tiffanie: I mean, I completely agree with that. Because if one is an alcoholic or, you know, a drug user or, you know, they're even emotionally abusive to the children, you really don't want the children around that parent as much because there's nothing good going on there for them. So whoever is the more stable household, the more, you know, loving that can give them the care that they need, then that's the home that they need to be in. It just sucks because people end up using their children as pawn, and it's not fair.

>> Renee Rodriguez: Yes, yes. They put the children in the middle. They parentify them. they. There's, a term called parental alienation, which is a controversial term to use. And that's when one parent sensibly turns the children, against the other parent.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: I'm going to use the term parental alienation largely simply because that's the term that the court is still using at this point. So if we're talking about family court, let's use the terms they're using, no matter how we might feel about them, just for the point of this discussion. And the problem with alienation is exactly what you're saying. The children then also become weaponized against, you know, the. The other parent. And I do want to say, you know, when you're talking, I. I want to be clear that I'm definitely talking about abusive personalities. You had mentioned, Tiffanie, people who have problems with substance abuses and addictions.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: You know, if you. There are people who lose custody because of those addictions, let's say we have, you know, a mom who was the primary caregiver and then suddenly got into addictions and had to go into rehab, you know, and for a while needs. She needs to prove that she's safe again before the children can come back to her in whatever that, you know, parenting schedule, visitation schedule might look like. I think that when you have a parent who is suffering an addiction, that may be part and parcel of abuse, and it may be something that is a totally separate issue. And if you have a parent who's suffering addiction and is truly, like, you know, remediated, then I think that's a different situation. Whereas there's no doubt that abusers and narcissistic abusers, addictions do tend to be something that we see paired up with narcissistic abuse. We see, you know, all different kinds of substance and drug abuse. We see an addiction to pornography. We see an addiction to violence, you know, enjoying violent video games and becoming beyond a gun owner, becoming someone who has an arsenal with no cause for it.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: we do see those addictions come in, come into play. And that is something where we have to work with each of our clients and say, okay, is this addiction something where we can show the court, we have a lot of clients come in and say, he's got a terrible porn addiction. There's no doubt I'm going to get custody. No, not necessarily. Because what we're working with, with our clients is, okay, so he has a terrible addiction to porn. How are the children being affected by that? And it can't be an argument that he's a bad role model. It's got to be that you have endangerment, really, with the porn addictions. And we see that happen in different ways. We've had clients who get blackmailed. Their whole family gets threatened. You know, it's. It's porn addictions and sexual, you know, deviance becomes something where it's. It's very interesting in my line of work what we've discovered. That can lead to. And it can endanger the family, as a matter of fact. Or there may be marital funds that instead of them going to the children and children's activities, they're going to pornographic activity.

>> Speaker C: Right?

>> Renee Rodriguez: Because there's a lot of money that can be spent there. So. And there's various different ways. Maybe they're watching porn while the children are there. Maybe the children pick up the parent's device and the first thing that comes up is pornography.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: These are just some of the ways that a porn addiction can affect the children. But if the children don't have an awareness at all of the porn addiction, then we don't tend to push for that when we're working with clients. So every time a client comes to us and tells us here are the problems with my co parent, we really have to parse it to see well what are we actually going in with though? What will the court care about? And it pretty much has to be the stuff that is directly affecting the children, right?

>> Tiffanie: Especially when they're name calling and putting down like that is going to affect children's self esteem. And this is how they end up in abusive relationships when they get older. You have to break that cycle.

>> Renee Rodriguez: Well that's the adverse childhood experiences, that's the aces, right? Kaiser did a study that was an amazing study, you know, just an incredible study that actually a longitudinal study is kind of amazing. And that's when they discovered that fascinatingly, when these children grew up and they had these adverse childhood experiences that are listed. Anybody can look up ACEs Adverse childhood experiences and take that quiz for yourself and for your children to see, you know, are there any aces present here? And the more aces, the worse it is. And we're not, we're talking like three, three on up. And what Kaiser discovered was here's the life that you will lead. Forget trying to get custody, forget, you know what, what's happening in their childhood. Let's additionally look at, they're more likely to get diabetes, for example, they're more likely to have an early death, the suicide rates increase, the success rates at whatever career they might choose or choosing a career at all plummet. Their rates of depression, their rates of anxiety. I mean it's just, it's unbelievable what they discovered, provably discovered happens when you have enough trauma in your childhood. But and for anybody who's listening, who's starting to feel a little hopeless, there's an amazing amount of optimism in the fact that all a child needs is one well adjusted, fantastic knowledgeable parent, just one. In order to overcome the effect of many of these aces, right? So you're, it's a village. But sometimes that village is just the, the abused parent, the protective parent, getting the right kind of guidance, getting the right kind of help as to how to overcome the coercive control that their child is suffering in the other household. Because the bottom line is the chances of the abusive parent getting some level of custody is high. Because the Constitution, the 14th Amendment says that the parent has the right to parent. Are there parents who lose access Completely, yes. But in all the time that I've been doing this, it's been a handful where that has happened. By and large, even an abusive parent gets supervised, maybe in a community center, some sort of interaction with their child, whether it's good for them or not, until you can prove that it's absolutely not good for them. And that's a very, very high bar. And that's the work that I do.

>> Tiffanie: That's a hard case to prove because, I mean, like you said, you have to have at least, I don't know, 8, 9 reasons why even if you went in with too, you know, that that still might not be good enough. And it's scary. I mean, I get it. People do have a right to be a parent, but you, you need to be a decent human being to be able to do so because you're raising another human being. Like, we don't agree repeat.

>> Renee Rodriguez: Well, and I'm so glad you said that because that's, you know, that's sort of one of the things it can lead to do.


There are studies that show psychological abuse has longer reaching effects than physical abuse

>> Tiffanie: Do.

>> Renee Rodriguez: Do we really want an abuser to help raise someone who is I going to either also be an abuser or be an.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: And that's where that ACE is. But again, you can overcome that. That's not a sure thing. If the protective parent is doing the, I have to say, the incredibly hard work of getting the guidance, talking to the right people and knowing exactly what to do to overcome this. And I don't want to, you know, leave your audience, you know, your listeners hanging, but I will always recommend Christine, Dr. Christine Cocchiola, as someone who people should follow because she. This is the work that she. It, took me some years to find her. I was searching for some years to find somebody who could do what we don't do, which is speak to having that parent who can overcome the aces right to help that child not only have this happy, wonderful, fruitful adulthood of citizenship, but also just to enjoy their childhood in spite of the fact that they are under the thumb of at, you know, I was going to say at minimum, a coercive controller. But the truth is that there are also a lot of studies that show that the psychological abuse has longer reaching, more detrimental effects than even physical abuse, if you can believe it, which is an incredible thing to realize.

>> Tiffanie: Oh, I definitely believe it. I actually took the ACEs test and I can't remember. It was I either ranked a 3 or a 4 and I was like, oh. I was like, geez, yeah.

>> Renee Rodriguez: It's like, you don't Expect. And there's someone who I was just on a call with today who is a colleague whose score was an eight. And he talks freely about his story and how he was abused as a child and there were real horrors inflicted on him. and he is a leader now of, you know, helping. Of, you know, a major organization that helps to get ahead of child abuse and try to, you know, his goal is to actually prevent it even before it happens, which is not the type of work that is done very much because the funding, the grants are going to go toward the downstream stuff, right? Like, intervention and instead of prevention. And I think we, obviously we need both. But when you can see results is more likely when people want to fund that and be involved in that. Whereas thinking, really getting into that think tank and saying, well, what exactly is needed to get ahead of it? What do we need to get ahead of abuse happening at all? Of course, what I do is very, very, very narrow. I'm helping protective parents who are in a custody case with a narcissistic, abusive co parent to go in and transform their cases and increase their chances of getting the custody arrangement that is best for their children.

>> Tiffanie: I always wanted to, like, have a workshop for new and expecting parents that have been through, like, generational trauma to help them, ah, realize what they've been in and to help them transition so they can be a little bit more mindful of the things that they are doing as a parent. Because it first comes with mindfulness. You, you have to first recognize what you're doing. If you don't know what you're doing is wrong because that's what you're used to, how can you fix it?

>> Renee Rodriguez: I agree. And it's, you know, part of when I got my certification as a, violence, against women advocate. That's the type of DV advocate certification that I, that I have, that I am it. We come at this from so many different angles, and it's the kind of stuff people don't want to talk about because then it can feel like it's, you know, like we're hurting people by talking about realities and what the studies show. But I think with those studies we can get ahead of things. For example, you know, I'm a Puerto Rican woman and it's, it's very interesting to learn how different cultures might use corporal punishment.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: We now know that corporal punishment, whether it's spanking or an isolated timeout, you know, combined with shaming. Shaming, isolated timeout. These types of corporal punishment are extremely harmful for Children. But we also. One of the things that we talk about is if this is cultural, does that make it okay? And across the board, it's kind of like, no. But then how do you approach people? Right? How do you. When their own family, when everyone around them is saying, oh, just, you know, spank them. Just, you know, and the language they use is usually more coarse than that. But it's usually something like, you know, stick them in a room, don't give them dinner, you know, wash their mouths out with soap. It's kind of like you. You think of this as, like the 1960s bad parenting. And then the reality becomes, no, you know, it's still happening at, luckily, a much smaller percentage, but at a higher percentage than you would think. And so we have to know. We have to think about the fact that it doesn't matter what your culture is and whether. Let's say that we have someone who is Caucasian versus someone who's African American. You know, you'd be very surprised to hear that, actually. The corporal punishment does appear, for example, in both of those cultures.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: But it, But it does happen in a very different way for both of those cultures. Right. As a Puerto Rican, I know that the, you know, that the Latina culture has, you know, some corporal punishment as part of it as well. But I'm lucky in that our family did not engage in it. So we're not just looking. We can't blanket say that, you know, all these people practice corporate. Corporate punishment and corporal punishment. Rather, what we're looking at is that generational stuff that you're talking about, right? And what it comes down to is if this is the only type of, parenting you've ever seen, if this is the only type of parenting you've ever known, it feels to everyone else who doesn't do that, well, it's obvious that you don't engage in corporal punishment. No, it's not. It's not. Not if that's all you've ever known. So it takes work and it takes education, and it's kind of like, you know, we talk about this. We talk. We do this with our clients as well. Because we say, well, you can't say that in court, because even though it's true, but when it's the same thing as what we do with our children, right? When you have children and you say, don't say that, don't do that, the reason they say and do it again is because all you did was say, don't do that. You didn't replace it with something.

>> Speaker C: Right?

>> Renee Rodriguez: And so when we work with our clients, when we know that they're saying something that seems like it'll be fine in court, but we're like, nope, you can't do that. We help them replace it with something that is still truthful, but is saying it in a way that the family court needs to not just hear it, but understand it and go with it.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: The same thing with prevention. You know, you can't come in and judge somebody because there's corporal punishment. Instead, you have to, you have to compassionately ask questions and you have to educate and you have to be ready to say, here's what you can do and here's how you start doing it in a bite sized way so that it becomes habit. And then you expand, expand, expand until you are working with consequences in a more related way to the action rather than punishment. How can we teach consequences instead of punishment?

>> Speaker C: Right?

>> Renee Rodriguez: And then, you know, then we're making better human beings. I will say that the majority of the court system, corporal punishment is a pretty quick way to not look so good in your custody case. And there are many abusers who of course use corporal punishment. So if we do have proof of them using corporal punishment, we do show the court that. To show this is the kind of life that these kids would lead.


Most court courts are not big on corporal punishment, right

And again, most court courts, they're not big on the spanking, they're not big on the isolated timeouts versus the come and sit in the kitchen table with me. You're going to be reading a book. And let's talk about a different way to, to do that next time. What do you do in that situation next time? Right? So, I'm. It's not all timeouts. It's that throwing them in their room and making them feel shame, which is terrible for children. Right? That kind of shame.

>> Tiffanie: He was told, not by me to stand in the corner and he wasn't allowed to like look anywhere. And he horrible found that like, yeah, it, to this day he still, he's like traumatized by that. Yeah, it's like, no, that's not, that's not what I'm doing.

>> Renee Rodriguez: There's. That is, that's straight. That's abuse. That's abuse. And it's interesting because when I think back, you know, my parents, I'm of an age. We won't talk about today where my parents, my parents did do spanking. They spanked with a belt. And the thing of it is is that I was, I was the good girl. And so I think I might have suffered corporal punishment once or twice, but my brother was, you know, he probably ended up having ADHD or was beginning to suffer some trauma himself, perhaps, but he was constantly getting in trouble. And what's interesting is that the harm of him getting spanked with a belt has stayed with me, you know, and it has created, you know, it. It does create problems in children. You know, I can't speak to my brother's experience. It's not for me to speak to, but, it's. It is something. Just because a child is, you know, spared punishment and another child isn't, that child who's witnessing that punishment is also being punished is also suffering terrible fear. It's terror. Corporal punishment is terror. And when you're parenting with terror, then it's simply because it's one of two reasons. Either you are a psychopath or a sociopath, or you just don't know how to parent. And that's what you were taught.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: So more people are normal than psychopaths, Sociopaths, thank God. It may not feel like that in the moment, but, you know, so education. But, again, as I've said, and I'll say it a million times, you can't just take away something and leave them without anything because, you know, the neural pathways, they've been formed, and you have to form new neural pathways. And so if there's nothing else there, if there's no new neuropathway, then you're gonna go to that old thing before you even think. Because it's a neural pathway, so you don't have to think. It just happens instantly, which means you have to habitually form a new way of doing things.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: And in a way, that's sort of the work we are doing with protective parents. Here's how you go into court. You can't. You don't get to tell your story. That's not how you advance in your court case. Instead, you have to find a different way to tell your story as you talked about its strategy, its evidence, and its mindset.


Audio and video evidence is almost never admissible in court proceedings

>> Tiffanie: So when you talk about evidence, what kind of things do you help your clients get that will help them?

>> Renee Rodriguez: Yeah. So clients come to us, and most of the time they don't really have anything from when they were with their abuser, their abusive co parent.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: Why would they. You know, people aren't generally keeping track of some of the things that are going on until they think they might be leaving if they listen to my show or after they leave to keep a notebook. yes, yes. If it were up to me. Well, and so you know what, I'm glad that you bring that up because there was a short period of time in which what was written down and journaled and that type of thing could be a sort of outcry sort of way of being used, but it is now just considered hearsay. So when we are working with clients, we might sort of find a usefulness to some of that stuff, but for the most part, we are helping them find things that they would never have thought of looking for. That is really what will move the court.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: So stuff that you know is in your journal, in your notebook, it may go nowhere or it may go somewhere, but only so far. People can't. It just wouldn't follow the law for them to make a judgment based on someone's journal entries.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: Which the other side will of course come in and say. So we're basically going to make a judgment on somebody's diary. And so it becomes something that they're arguing against. That's the argument that we'll often hear against that. But the court can't really do much with that. However, we like journals, we like notebook entries as supplemental to other things, but we need to build around that. So we might be looking for things that the client never thought of. We might be looking for statements, we might be having them go back to the calendar. It's a lot of hard work. When people work with us, they're just exhausted.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: But we have a 90% success rate. So what we're telling them to do is actually the thing to do. Right. But it is exhausting. And we're taking whatever evidence they may have and we're really looking to build. We're connecting dots is what we're doing across the board so that we can show something. Some of the big, as you know, more recently, this definitely was not the case when I first started this work. More recently, a big, big percentage of the evidence that people bring in is now digital. And so there's a lot of audio and video and, and the first thing I always have to say is you have to make sure that it's legal in your state or province, district or territory for you to record without an all party or two party consent, which is the same thing as an all party consent in most places, meaning that everyone has to agree to being recorded. But if you're in a state, if you're in a jurisdiction where it's called one party consent, where you're allowed to, as long as one party is part of the conversation, then that conversation could be recorded. So obviously, if you're part of a conversation, if you're there and you're kind of like, oh, hello, you're at an exchange, it's going to get ugly. And you just say hi to your co parent, you're able to record that because you're talking, you're part of the conversation as well. So we have a lot of audio. And I, so I want to just. I mean, there's all kinds of evidence. But the reason I want to just take a moment to focus as briefly as I can on audio and video evidence is video is almost never admissible. except again, very, very recently, we find that video is making its way in more if it's something that wouldn't apply to a reasonable expectation of privacy. A reasonable expectation of privacy. And so what I mean by that is everyone used to be able to walk around and you couldn't video record them because without, their consent, because that wasn't okay. Now we have dash cams, we have ring doorbells, right? We have like pretty much every business, every, you know, building of any kind, every organization has a lot more cameras. It's far easier and cheaper for them to now have cameras just about everywhere. So it's schools. There's a lot of different ways then to bring in video. So I always say you're gonna have to ask your lawyer if you guys are going to be able to use video. Used to be impossible to get in, and now it's, it's possible to get it in.

>> Tiffanie: It's annoying. Audio doesn't lie. You know what I mean? People lie. Video doesn't lie.

>> Renee Rodriguez: Well, so. And here's where it gets interesting. So I'll say this for both audio and video. When we have clients come in and show us their audio and video, we reject almost all of it. Mo, we've had clients where we've gone through like dozens of audios and videos and said, you can't use any of this. The first and main reason that we have to reject things is because they've started recording in the middle of the event. So, if there's an exchange where an argument begins and they start recording, there's not a lot we can do with it, right? And the reason why is because the other side is going to say, she provoked him and that's why he acted that way. And so then it's a waste of time. And it also questions credibility. So I'll give you a little tip. We tell our clients and community to start Recording long before they get to the event and for a while after as well. An example, let's say that you are taking your children to an exchange with, with your co parent. I'm a big fan of starting to record before you tell the children that that's where you're headed. The reason that that's the point that I like before you tell them to get their shoes on and that type of thing is because if there are plenty of children who resist going to the abuser's house because they're either being neglected either emotionally or basic needs, or they're being abused physically or just very cruelly being abused psychologically, they don't want to go. Nobody believes that the children don't want to go. And so they tend to say, you know, the other parent basically, you know, coached them to not go. But if we have a parent who basically starts recording and then says, hey kids, it's time to go, their reactions are clearly coming from, you know, them because there's no coaching ahead of time. So I will tell parents to about five minutes before it's time to go to start recording and to keep it with them so that they can say that you can hear them talking. I'll ask them to do something like talk to themselves or talk through what they're doing. Oh, the, the dishwasher is. Let me empty that before we go. And that way it's very, very clear that they are next to the recording, which means they're not in their children's room saying, I'm so sorry, but you're going to have to go to your dad's in a little bit. I'll let you know when.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: So then if that parent is establishing what you're doing is you're establishing what you are doing, which means we can now see what you're not doing.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: Then that parent says, you know, it's time to go. If the kids start to resist now we see that it wasn't coached.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: We also hear the entire ride there. Yes. We're going to hear the ignition turn, we're going to hear the doors close. I prefer the parents not play music, but if the children request it, move it into the back so that if you've got the, you know, the recording happening up front that basically, you know, we, can hear everything that's going on. But music does tend to mess up recordings if it's throughout the whole vehicle. So you really want to localize it away from the recording. That way we can hear you being a great parent. We can hear what's natural.


You want to be natural with your children, because if you're not natural

The children will identify if you're not natural. So if you're suddenly in a great mood when you weren't before, the children will identify that. And then that's a video you probably don't want the court to hear.

>> Speaker C: Right?

>> Renee Rodriguez: So you just want to be natural with the kids. You want to be lovely. You don't want to ask them anything really much about their father. But if they bring up their father, and again, you know, we're here, we're saying that the abuse victim is female, then you're essentially really just kind of not asking a bunch of questions, because that seems leading, but you are encouraging them to enjoy the time, the upcoming time with the parent. Then you're at the exchange. You leave it running the whole time. Nobody needs to know it's running. And then you say goodbye, you get in your car and you drive away and you let it run for a good five minutes so that we know that you have truly, like, drove away. Feel free to go through, like a, you know, drive through and order something. We're establishing that, you know, you don't need to do this all the time, or you'd be ordering takeout constantly, but you'd be broke. But what I'm saying is, why would you do all of this? It's ridiculous, right? Except that in my line of work, I hear accusations that the kids were coached even before they got out the door, that kids were coached on the way there, and that's why they resisted going to the other parent. I've heard accusations that, you know, the parent yelled at them at the exchange or called them names at the exchange or threw something at them during the exchange that they were, you know, telling the children, I'm so sorry, you have to go with this parent during the exchange. And then they, you know. So we want to show that actually the nothing happened at the exchange except hi and goodbye. And the children went on along their way. They resisted a little, but they went along their way.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: We also established that the other parent drove away and didn't double back and like, you know, grab something from nearby and toss it at the car. Because we've got a good five minutes or so of them driving. And this time they do have the music on. Not so loud that it seems like it's drowning anything out.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: Do you see how much we put into audio and video recordings?

>> Tiffanie: I think it's brilliant. It really is. Because then, like you said, it's natural. There's no room to say, you know, well, it was this, this, that. No, it wasn't like, that was our whole exchange. I think it's brilliant. That's great.

>> Renee Rodriguez: And the only other problem. Yeah, the only other problem we have is that if people are generally, for the most part, using their phones for this, which is great, but then their phones get full and it won't receive calls or texts or anything, and so they start erasing things where nothing happened. We don't want you erasing things where nothing happened, because if they say, well, she uprooted a bush and threw it at my head, you have no proof that you did not uproot a bush and throw it at his head.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: So then, you know, we're a big fan of, you know, if it's affordable of, for example, Dropbox, you go into Dropbox, you will have to upgrade because media takes a lot, but it's pretty cheap to upgrade to a couple terabytes. And if you're paying a lawyer $350 an hour, you can pay Dropbox 20 bucks a month to hold onto your proof that nothing happened, as well as all your proof that something happened.

>> Tiffanie: Right, right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: So we ask people to offload it, but make sure that it is safeguarded in the cloud. We used to love EHDs and that external hard drives. Personally, I actually ask clients to do both. but again, it's very intensive. As you can see. The work that we do with clients is very intensive and very exacting. The bottom line is we're always just looking to present the truth and to be truthful, but we also understand how things are taken in the court. Especially, especially, especially where there is narcissistic abuse. Everyone on my team, including myself, has suffered narcissistic abuse. And so we're, We. We know, we know what we're looking for. We know how to present it. Yeah, there you go.


Most of our clients are in the United States and Canada, all throughout

>> Tiffanie: So where are you allowed to get your clients? I guess, like, is it only in your state?

>> Renee Rodriguez: Do you work worldwide? Yeah, we work worldwide. So most of our clients are in the United States and Canada, all throughout. And then, of course, we. I shouldn't say of course, but we, we do also have clients in the uk, Australia and Singapore. We, We've decided not to go beyond that only because there's just a lot of people who need our help. So we, we'd love to be able to, you know, but those are the countries that, you know, where people are looking for help the most. So we work in those five countries. So anytime that someone joins, one of our group calls, when, when they're in one of our engagements, like we have our, our flagship nine week program is where everyone should start. Hands down, people come out of that, the other end with a completely different case. I mean it's amazing. But it's. I love those calls. We do those weekly group calls because I mean you've got people in, you got somebody in Australia who's kind of like, I'm getting ready. You know, it's the mid afternoon and they'll be all kind of like, I'm getting ready to go to the gym before the day starts. And then you've got people who are all kind of like, you know, well, it's the evening here. It's really fascinating to kind of watch the time zones of people across North America, across you know, England, across Australia.

>> Tiffanie: So yeah, no, that's, I, that's why I love what I do. I talk to people, people from all over the world and that's great. It's amazing.

>> Renee Rodriguez: Yeah, it's great. Yeah, it's really great. And you get to. We actually kind of yelled it. I. One of our coaches is in Florida actually. And this week, even though we're right now in a cold part of the the season for, not for Australia, it turns out, where it's 80 degrees, I found out today. But essentially our Florida person showed up for a call in a tank top and everybody, I told her, I said, well that was just mean because everybody in your call is from like she just got a call where everybody was from. Everyone who came on is like in the middle of America or on the, the east coast of America or Ontario. We were just all like, how dare you show up in a tank top when the rest of us are in two layers.

>> Tiffanie: That's funny.

>> Renee Rodriguez: But it's fun. Yeah.

>> Tiffanie: So if somebody does want to work with you, what is the best way to go to best foot forward?

>> Renee Rodriguez: Yeah, I mean, you know, we've got a redirect. So you go to the custodyblueprint.com you have to remember the th e the in front of it, the custodyblueprint.com so you go to the custodyblueprint.com and that's also Best Foot Forward llc.com but I think it's easier to remember the three words the custody blueprint. Com and there you can get in touch with us. We. So what we've done is we've put a, A a free on demand training because you know, not everybody can afford to add another person to their team. Although of course we know that people with the Most success have a team of people, right? You've got your lawyer, you may need a. You've got your therapist, you know, you've got. Maybe you have a divorce coach, maybe you have what we do, a con, you know, a strategy team.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: but as with us being strategy, you know, against narcissistic abusers, I think that that's really where we want people to start, is in that nine week program. And that training is a way for people who cannot afford to work with us right off the bat or don't feel ready to actually already get started on the custody blueprint, the three pillars, and already start transforming their case just by taking that. You know, it's like 30 minutes of just getting your ducks in a row. Of course, you know, you have to come with a notebook and get ready to take notes real fast. But, we packed a lot into the 30 minutes to just teach people. Here's how you need to start looking at your case, because you're in court with an abuser, a charming one. I mean, I want to be clear. The. The people we work with are parents who have a. Somebody, an abuser who's showing up in court, and either they're super charming because they're the person you loved, not the person you left, or they are against all odds, astoundingly, in spite of the fact, in spite of the way they're showing up in court, somehow still winning. So narcissistic abusers, covert and overt.

>> Speaker C: Right.

>> Renee Rodriguez: And so if that's what you're dealing with, then I would say I would rather they started with a free training to kind of just get things in better shape before they come and start to work with us so that we can see their specific case and really make sure that they're presenting the right stuff and not stepping in it at any point, Right?

>> Tiffanie: Absolutely. Oh, this is all such great advice. Is there anything else you wanted to add before we go?

>> Renee Rodriguez: you know, I think the last thing I would say is that part of people who do work with us once a week, it's not therapy. I want to be very clear on that, because we don't give legal advice or therapy, but we do have a trauma recovery coach whose job is to look at how people are presenting and look at their ability to build their case. Because in order for you to build your case, you actually have to relive. When you're looking at your evidence, you're reliving abuse. And one of the things she talks about a lot is when we have been with an abuser and we've had children with them. We carry shame. We carry guilt. We are almost constantly apologizing to our children in our hearts. And so what I would say to protective parents out there is, you did the best you could. You were making the choices that you thought were best for everybody. You thought things were going to be better. And quite simply, it's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. The reason we stay with them are just as valid as the reasons we leave. So recognize the shame and the guilt and understand that that's part of it, but that it actually is not your fault.

>> Tiffanie: I love that. I love that. And that's something people actually really need to hear as much as you think they know that they don't. So I love that so much. I'm also going to make sure I put your links in the show notes. And I just want to thank you so much for being here. This was incredible information. And I'm going to pass your stuff on to someone I know who is going through this at this time, because I think she needs it. So I really appreciate this.

>> Renee Rodriguez: Thank you for having me. Again, I'm so grateful. If we end up helping just one protective parent, that means that we're helping, you know, more survivors and more child survivors as well. So thank you so much for allowing me to talk a little bit about what we do.

>> Tiffanie: Absolutely.