Ep. 68 Candace Sampson

On this episode I am joined by Candace Sampson. She is the founder of the blog Life in Pleeasantville and host of the podcast What She Said.

On this episode we talk about the family court system in Canada. Candace went through a 4 year divorce ordeal. She was awarded her family's home and once she was able to take possession the house had no utilities on for months. The house was flooded and filled with mold. The whole process left her in debt and paying a mortgage and rental for herself and two daughters. We talk about the range of emotions this process has left for her, the lessons she has learned and about how we are all more resilient than we realize.

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the filled up cup podcast. We are a different kind of self-care resource one that has nothing to do with bubble baths and face masks and everything to do with rediscovering yourself. We bring you real reviews, honest experiences and unfiltered opinions that will make you laugh, cry, and most importantly, leave you with a filled up cup.

Ashley: 0:33

I am very excited today. I have Candace Sampson joining me. She is the host of the podcast, what she said, and also the founder of the blog of life in Pleasantville. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Candace: 0:44

Thank you so much for having me here. It's an honor.

Ashley: 0:47

I originally heard about Candace's story back around Christmas time last year a lot of different posts that you had shared or some videos that were very heartbreaking and frustrating to see kind of went viral, can you tell us a little bit about your backstory and what I'm talking about?

Candace: 1:05

Absolutely. I always struggle with where to begin, but you know, I was like a lot of people just going through a divorce system, a very crappy, long drawn out system and sort of when it. Reached a boiling point for me was in December of 2021. When a judge had awarded me my home in my possession because payments were not being made on it and so on. After this long battle, I come walking into my house to find that there was three feet of water in the basement mold was growing on the walls. It had been deliberately destroyed essentially by my ex-husband. So that was I guess a tipping point for me. I went very public with my story because I just had enough. I was just done. I had been suffering in silence, you know, trying to keep this, from being a public issue for four years. And when that happened, I just thought this is, you know, Excuse me, this is bullshit. This should just not be allowed to happen. And so I went public with it. And from there, it just snowballed into a bunch of different things, seeing the best and worst of humanity. My friends rallied together. They put together a GoFundMe very quickly. You know, the bank who was threatening to seize the home on Christmas day, they really rallied. They came around, gave me some breathing space, so I could even think about what to do. So yeah, there was just a lot leading up to that moment, but I think that was the moment that you witnessed as did a lot of people. It also just brought too light for me that as unique as I thought, or as extreme as I thought my case was it wasn't as it turns out, I'm not so special, this happens all the time. It's just that we're not hearing about it. And that is the real crime in all this. It's not my story specifically. It's that it's so many stories and that the courts almost enable this really disgusting behavior from one party. And you and I were discussing before the podcast, this is often turns into a gender discussion, you know, men and versus women, but it's really just, who is the most invested in being the biggest jerk really can cause the most damage. And that's what we need to be addressing in the courts.

Ashley: 3:25

It's so frustrating that it was allowed to get to that point, like you said, the system is so broken and is really, in my opinion, such a sham that this situation does become so common and it does become this. Place where really, if you wanna be that vindictive ex, this is the place where you can cause the most financial and emotional turmoil and kind of create this shit show. And you would think that a judge would be able to see through it or sift through it or put an end to it or prioritize getting it done quickly. And that really could not be farther from the truths. And when you're in it, you're like, how is this not being talked about how is this not like organizations rallying to change it. And it really is this idea that if you talk about it, it's a, oh, it's just you, or it does become this situation where the system almost gaslights you and to be believing that you are the crazy one or you are somehow to blame and they really need more, I think even just psychological training to be able to spot maybe a sociopath or a narcissist a little bit better, because the idea of being, you know, in the best interest of the child or in the best interest of promoting healthy families or all of that kind of stuff, isn't even really a factor in any of the decision making when you're actually in the thick of it.

Candace: 4:51

Yeah. as I started up my journey through this looking back on it there were a lot of examples where I could see the clear disconnects in the system. You. Just things we know about living and trying to maintain a life and then what the courts actually do. Like an example of this is we know most people live paycheck to paycheck. Most people really don't have much of a safety net and, could be crushed financially within a, couple of months, really. So when, my ex stopped paying child support, for example that hurt financially. And the expectation somehow was that I would have to go months and months and months. And you know, to be honest, he owes me currently almost$200,000 in back pay of child support and spousal support at this point. Will I ever see it? Not likely what's the recourse. I don't know. I mean, I guess, you know, they've taken away his driver's license. They've taken away all of his federal licenses, including his passport. The next thing for him will be a court date where he will be pulled in front of a judge and ask why he's not paying what's his reasoning. And then from there, I don't know what they will do, perhaps they will send him to jail. Will that solve the problem? Not likely you know, we're dealing with somebody here who is just obviously hell bent on vindictiveness and spite. I don't know how we deal with this. What I do know is if the courts have been a lot quicker in their actions, much of this could have been prevented because it was allowed to drag on because every delay that he threw out bought him, you know, Six more months or seven more months, it just allowed this to get worse and worse and worse along the way. And that I think is a huge problem that court side need to address is the time issue. Because time matters when you are looking to pay your rent or your mortgage or buy groceries or handle things for your kids. And you are now looking at a six, seven month wait before a judge even looks at your case, you just get further and further behind. And all of these statistics by the way, are listed on the justice of Canada website. That specifically lists how divorce affects women. And this is gets a little bit gendered here because it, this is just the way it happens. Women are the caretakers, women generally stay at home. And so all of these things. Happen to women, but your income will decrease by 60%, roughly. It will take you up to six years to recover and get back to where you started post divorce. That's if you ever recover, I mean, financially, I'm never going to recover. I've been saddled with you know,$200,000 minimum in damages that he cost to the home that were uninsured. So I have to make a minimum of, you know,$200,000 after tax to pay for all of the damages in this home. That's doesn't cover what I've paid in lawyer fees what I've paid by borrowing to stay afloat all of these things add up. And so I would estimate, and I haven't done the firm math on this because they feel it might throw me into an absolute pit of depression when I do it. But I'm going to estimate that I'm somewhere in and around half a million dollars in debt, because not only did he damage my home in order to save my home, I had to pay off debt. He had acquired against it. So things like a lien that was placed on the home from the Canada revenue agency, you can't outrun them. That had to be paid. If I was going to overtake the house he didn't pay property taxes for the three years that he lived in this home alone. So that all goes with the house I had to pay that you know, these things add up and so I will just never recover it. I don't know what you do. Will it give me some great joy to see him in jail? No, not really. Like, what's that gonna solve?

Ashley: 8:55

Yeah, it is really one of those things because it's like, unless he hands you a big check, which even that would take a care of a part of it, but really that feeling of like pure frustration and rage over the whole situation, there isn't really any quick fix. That'll do it. One thing that I do wanna touch on that you brought up is child support. Now for anybody that maybe hasn't gone to court or doesn't have a court order, the frustrating thing for them when it comes to child support too, is that you actually can't go after your partner through an organization like family maintenance until you actually have a court order. So for anybody that's like, I don't necessarily care about custody or, anything else. I just want basic child support. And luckily within Canada, they basically take your last three years of tax returns come up with a general amount. So there's not a lot of room for squabbling about it, but yet it can take you having to go through. And I find with ours, basically one start to finish would take one year, whether that's our first appearance, we always bypassed the mediation part because we knew it was a waste of time and money for us. And we would go right to trial. But just even from our first appearance to trial would take at minimum six to seven months, but generally took a year at a time. So that's you waiting essentially a year just to get a court order for them to pay child support. Then it can take another three to four months, depending on how fast your lawyer is at going after that judge, to put the rubber stamp on it and give you copies of it. And then enrolling in family maintenance and family maintenance. Can't really start doing some of the things that you talked about, like taking the passport, taking the driver's license until they've accrued a certain amount of money. And a lot of the times it's, really in the thousands. So you're stuck essentially for a year and a half, two years before you can really even start getting something that was awarded to you the previous year.

Candace: 10:50

And in the meantime, you are, you know begging, borrowing and stealing to stay afloat essentially. I've had this conversation with fro, which is the Ontario version of a family maintenance, I suppose, the family responsibility office many times you know, when child support was late, I'd call and say, you know what are you gonna do about this? Well, it's only two weeks late. Cool. Could you let my landlord know that? Yeah. You know, and, when it got to three months, four months, five months, you know, they're charging interest of, two and a half percent or something, which I would like to know my question to them is where can I get a loan for two and a half percent? Because I'm out here charging stuff on my credit card so that I can feed my kids, that I can pay bills. As I wait for the courts to address this issue and, I trusted in the courts initially and I don't anymore. I think they're an abject failure to tell you the truth, because yes, the it's all there. It's all written in stone. What your child support should be. It's an easy calculation. From an outside view, it looks like it should work. But if you don't have anybody on the enforcing side of things, what do you do? Right? What am I gonna do? I'm five feet tall. Am I gonna go over and threaten the guy? No, of course not. Right.

Ashley: 12:05

And even if you did, it wouldn't necessarily result in a paycheck anyways.

Candace: 12:08

And that's not the way to go at all. That's not how civilized society is supposed to work. It shouldn't come down to threats. The courts should be doing their job and enforcing because on one side, the rules are clear. It's all codified. It's all there. Enforcement is the issue, making sure it happens in a timely manner is the issue. So hire more people. I mean, I keep saying this, if the court system doesn't wanna do its job, then get out of this. Exactly. you know because you're failing and what you're doing is you're just churning out broken people who go on to break other people in society. And this is a much larger look at how our society functions. And so it's not just me, my story. It's a lot of people's stories over the years and how this sets them back, how it hurts them, the harm that it does and then you turn around and it costs you, you know, scades of money to try and pay therapists. To address the issues that were caused by a system that let you down

Ashley: 13:23

well, and if you can afford therapists, because again, the idea of financial aid, as far as finding a lawyer is almost comical because the wait lines don't align with your court dates, or if you are somebody who maybe this isn't your first appearance in court, then they'll deem, oh, you already have a court order. You don't actually qualify for financial aid or things like that. And lawyers are tens of thousands of dollars. And if you are in a relationship with somebody who is using court as a way to just ruin your life and be vindictive, then you're not going to court once you're going to court repeatedly. So it's looking at. Do you have that extra a hundred thousand dollars to, you know, donate to a lawyer who may or may not really be able to be beneficial or help you in the end. But if you're standing in front of a judge without a lawyer, then it's like the judge will perceive different things. So it, it really becomes this game of who can present better versus what are the actual facts? What are we actually doing here? So I couldn't even imagine that it's like the loss of child support and the legal fees prior to even realizing that there's house fees. And it's so frustrating if the house is awarded to you, that there wouldn't be some sort of loophole for the CRA or for banks to be able to go after your ex instead of going after you.

Candace: 14:46

No, and there isn't, they don't care yeah, this is the first lesson I think everybody should know as they head into a divorce situation. Especially if there's a lot of animosity between two parties, is that nobody cares. There's just this perception that. You know, I got this a lot. Well, it takes two and I'm sorry, but I called bullshit on that absolute bullshit. It does take two for a marriage to break down. There is no doubt. There is nothing about my case that makes it so unique that I would say it was all him leading up to the breakdown of the marriage. I will happily claim 50% of that. I mean, I was in it too. So I'll take 50% of the blame for the marriage breaking down. What I will not and will never take accountability for is where this went. Post separation. I'm sorry, but no, absolutely not. I did everything by the book. I had my disclosure in on time. I hired a lawyer. I followed every single rule. I was patient beyond patient with every single person, including my ex. So, no, I will not say that it takes two it takes one person to derail the entire process. And my ex did it by simply not participating. Absolutely just would not participate, would not provide disclosure, never answered a phone call or an email from FRO fired his lawyer and decided to self represent. Wouldn't go to mediation would not go to conflict resolution. I begged for conflict resolution at one point over a series of five emails, I was like, look, we gotta settle this. We gotta work on this. Nope, absolutely not. So that is a system that is inherently broken. If one person can derail the whole thing that long that's a broken system and nobody cares. Like I said, nobody cares. He was benefiting because by not participating, he was just allowed to go live his Yolo lifestyle for four years. The courts and the lawyers, they weren't sitting there going, oh, I wonder how Candace is doing today. Do you think she's making all of her bills you know, they didn't care. So it really is a system that doesn't care about. You, you have to advocate for yourself. And you have to learn how to shut out the bullshit messages that are gonna come your way. Because I was tired of people saying to me, it takes two, fuck that it does not take two. It takes one in court and that is it. And that is wrong. And this is where the courts, like I said, need to have zero tolerance for this. If one person can hit all the deadlines, there is no reason why another person can't, and the minute they miss it, they need to come down on them. Not six months later.

Ashley: 17:48

Yeah.

Candace: 17:50

The day they missed that deadline, somebody needs to come down on them.

Ashley: 17:56

Yeah. There's no consequences. There's nothing like if you would think about a criminal case, if somebody, you know, hit somebody else and then decided not to show up for court, there would be warrants. There'd be consequences. There would be something family court and divorce court. There's nothing it's like, okay, well, we'll see you in six months. There's no follow up. There's no accountability of, Hey, we're creating this trauma for this person and allowing the other person to attack them and to harass them and to use court as a weapon. It is beyond frustrating that we get gaslit into believing that we're the crazy ones. And it's this idea that, you know, generally speaking, boys will be boys and that. We're supposed to just be like, nah, you know, what are we gonna do? And just figure it out. And it all falls on women, generally speaking to make all of these accountabilities for this other person and just become up with a, a way to parent and pay all the bills and do all of the things unsupported.

Candace: 19:01

Yeah, it's an exhausting, exhausting process. And then on top of it, you carry the weight of other people's judgment around with you, who can't understand why you're having such a terrible you know, because they went and had mediation. Well, that's fantastic for you. I'm really, happy for you and your conscious uncoupling. But most of us don't get that. No. Right. I mean, if things were so hunky Dory in your marriage, you'd still be together. When a marriage breaks down, there's a lot of things that can happen and it may not happen in the first month. It may be you know, six months down the road before the real animosity creeps in. But no matter what it generally is going to creep in there and the longer it's allowed to continue. The worse. It gets, people should be able to move on with their lives and like I said, the courts bear responsibility here, they need to do better. And that's going to come with enforcement. I mean, I don't know there's programs out there. If a deadline goes in on such and such a date, this person is required to have this. There should be a flag that goes up. Oh, not here. Immediately follow up with them. Agreed those consequences.

Ashley: 20:16

Where are you now with the house? Like what sort of does the renos look like? What does sort of the bank look like?

Candace: 20:24

So I have a mortgage now on the house, which is fine and great. People said to me, I heard a lot, like, why would you even want it? Why would you keep it?

Ashley: 20:32

Why would you not want it?

Candace: 20:33

Yeah, but also I have two children. I would like to leave a legacy for them. That's important to me, this is their home. They actually were born in this home. It's, there's just as much as it is mine. Why would I not want to save it? Right. That was an irritating line of questioning I got from people, like, why would you want it? Well, why wouldn't I, why would I let it go? So that's the one thing. So I do have it, we had to remediate the house because of the mold to make it safe, to live in. That was a process. So we had a remediation company come in. They did an amazing job, but that was, you know$30,000. So that was not even the GoFundMe really covered all of that, the expenses. So basically now I'm living in a house with all of the moldings have been pulled down because there was mold growing behind the moldings floors have been torn out. So we have plywood floors right now. All of the windows are gonna have to be replaced at some point, which is, you know, in a post pandemic supply short make, supply shortage world that's months away. I don't even know when that'll happen. You know, so there's all of those things to contend with, and it's not like the cute little videos you see on TikTok where they just wave their hand. And it's a sudden transformation. I'm looking at years of living in sort of. A construction zone as they make the money to pay for each thing that comes as I can afford it. And so there's some mental things to get over there, right. Because you have to learn to live with it and learn to sort of live in chaos. And don't really love that part so much, but that's just the way it is. So the bank was good though. They worked with me for sure. Because I didn't have a fantastic income to deal with. I had my partner had to co-sign the mortgage for me, which is highly frustrating for me because again, I, prior to my marriage ending, I was making over a hundred thousand dollars a year. And in the year leading up to this situation, I made$16,000. So, if you wanna know how bad it can get, that's how bad it can get, because you have to understand that when you are I'm self-employed and everything, my girls were struggling, so I dropped everything for them. I was being pulled in a million directions. I work in a business that requires you to be on and, you know, sharing your best side. I really had a hard time doing that. I was really having a difficult time, being outgoing and happy for a while, because I was really, really struggling.

Ashley: 23:13

And even if you were to try to pretend I feel like when we don't live in our authentic self, whether it's good or it's bad, it. It makes the problems worse, essentially, because you're really trying to pretend instead of being in the moment and trying to absorb everything that's going on and trying to work through it. I know that the conversations around mental health and things like that have been better. How did you find for yourself were some of the things that helped you with the PTSD or the anxiety or the rage, or just any of the emotions coming up for this situation?

Candace: 23:47

I think I have read, and I'm not kidding every self-help book on the market to pick out the best tips and tricks for kind of getting through this. And even then you know, I've never ever, you know, in my life thought about ending it until the last couple of years. And there was two times where I found myself. in a ball on the floor, crying, just wishing it was all over. And I would never wish someone on anybody. But your head goes to crazy spaces when you're put under this much strain. So it's really important if I was to give anybody advice to go into this. But I wish I had listened, heed the advice that people give you. I really sort of dismissed people in the beginning who said, oh, it's gonna take years, brace yourself. Cuz I was like, why? Like I'm not being difficult. I'm just trying to have this divided equally and then we're done. You know, but I couldn't even get him to the table that makes you wanna lose your mind. And then dealing with all of the other pressures that came along with it and started to compile because of this. I think I was unprepared. So I was left to scramble and figure out. So I would say therapy, if you can afford it. I had to stop therapy about a year into the process because I could no longer afford the hourly bill. And I had to pay for my daughters who I put their mental health ahead of mine. So I had to pay for their therapy. So that's a big one, I would say you know, carve out as many moments as you can to just calm yourself down and find spaces that. Make you feel safe, you know whoever that's with, whether it be that with a person or even if it's just being alone with your dog for 10 minutes and reading a book or closing your eyes, whatever you need to do. I leaned in hard to meditation really, and still carry meditation with me almost daily now. When I first started meditation, it was like, okay, you've gotta sit still and you've gotta breathe. But what I've learned is that meditation can happen when you're walking, when you're driving. When you're sitting at your desk, you can really pull in those skills. Once you've learned how to meditate at any time of the day, washing dishes, whatever when you're focusing on your breathing and you're just sort of pulling yourself into the moment, rather than letting your brain go away from you on a runaway train of stress and worry. so that was a big one for me. Really just staying connected with my friends. That was crucial. There were quite a few times where I carried so much shame, which is crazy. Why am I carrying shame? Right. But I carried so much shame that I tended to push people away because I was embarrassed to tell my story. And don't be embarrassed. Just, don't be embarrassed to tell your story. I mean, you know in your heart, if you've done something to cause this, and I know I didn't. I have the receipts. I have every email exchanged over four years. Every time I've reached out to therapists, teachers, to him, to lawyers, I kept it all methodically over the entire course of this process. Because I wanted a record of these communications so that I would always run through if every time I had to email him, I would run it through about three or four people before I sent it to pull out tone to, make sure I wasn't being too aggressive, make sure I wasn't calling names. You know, all of those things. I really wanted to make sure that I was operating above board through this process because I didn't wanna get dragged down into the muck. So that was important as well, just to sort of make sure that you're communicating with intent of what it is you're looking to accomplish. I would say that to anybody before you start throwing out names, as tempting as they are. I never did that

Ashley: 27:54

I feel like that's a really important point because it's like, you don't wanna get sucked in with them. It's like, you wanna keep it short and sweet so that you're not engaging because usually when people are using court or situations like this is a weapon, that's what they want. They wanna drag you down with them. So it's great to write that email, like the real email, the like, Hey motherfucker, I hate you so much and get it outta your system and then be like, and I'm gonna put you in drafts that never send you, like, just never hit send. Are you an apple user?

Candace: 28:26

I am. Yes.

Ashley: 28:27

Did you see the new update that now? And it'll be interesting to see how this plays into court, but you can now edit and unsend your messages. So it's like maybe start taking screenshots and really document everything, cuz that is the thing that's gonna help you so much in court is having every email, every text, every whatever,

Candace: 28:46

I just saw that this morning on a Facebook, actually somebody shared it and I shared my 2 cents and I will share it here. First off you would not allow your ex to walk into your home whenever they felt like it. Exactly. So kick them off your phone immediately. They don't get the right to text you just because they're feeling like throwing a wrench in your day. The first thing I did actually, because I knew who I was divorcing you know was move every communication to email. He was not allowed to call. And rage at me on the phone. He was not allowed to text me, those things didn't occur. I didn't allow it. So I moved every communication to email and it's all in one space. And that way you have a running dialogue that you can always refer back to and because nobody will ever dispute. Nobody can say to you, well, you said this, no, I didn't say that because this is what I said, it's right here. So I would say to anybody is no block them on Instagram and Facebook and text there is nothing that urgent, frankly, I check my emails frequently. I get a notification if an email comes in. So even if it was urgent, I would get a notification. I guess in my situation and now this is only with like highly contentious divorces. There are people who communicate about the kids and it's random. I'll drop them off. I'll pick them up. Like, this is not everybody. This is an extreme case, you know, what you're dealing with. And so my recommendation would be, if you were dealing with somebody like that, absolutely remove them from text messages. Don't send anything through text or Instagram or any other platform, just email you decide when to open it when you're going to allow them to enter into your existence or your space. Because there's nothing more irritating than sitting there having the greatest day possible. And you get this text message pop up in your phone that just shifts you away from that. You don't need that.

Ashley: 30:49

No, and you don't have to be accessible all the time. It's that sort of myth of, they can message me on social media. They can do whatever. And I think sometimes if we do post something, even a picture, if you are in a contentious situation, they can take that and kind of twist it and try to use it against you. So I definitely agree with you, block them on social media block them off their phone, depending on the age of your child too. Like in my situation, my daughter has a phone. If there's an emergency situation, she can phone me. She can text me. I don't really need to hear from my ex. And the great thing about email too, is if you do have to go to court and you have to print everything, it is so much easier than printing email after email, where you can see date, time. The actual full rundown versus trying to find a random Instagram message trying to figure out was that on Facebook, was it text and try to track it that way. It makes it so much simpler and streamline and you can put it in a folder so that it's not sitting at the top of your email and you have that mental Ugh feeling every single time you look at it, same thing with the text message. I used to end up getting negative text messages and then have to text like 10 people in my phone to try to bury that message so that I didn't have that visual reminder. And that stressor every single time I, looked at a device.

Candace: 32:06

Yeah. Your phone is, I think your phone is one of like the most personal things you can have. It's a private space. People should not be able to just jump in whenever they feel like it and ruin your day because, they want to, so that's one thing I didn't actually deal with over four years because I blocked them the day after I left, I was done. I put everything into email the next day and said, this is the only way I will communicate with you, because I know how you tend to twist things that I say, so it's all gonna be documented. And this is the only way I will proceed. You have to understand my backstory to understand why that was necessary, but it was absolutely necessary. And as it turns out that worked out for me because there was a lot that he said in email that came back in the courts that the judge was able to just look at that and say, okay, it is clear. What he is doing here. I mean, literally in the first couple of weeks after I had left, he wrote me an email telling me I would get nothing.

Ashley: 33:09

It's really frustrating that he kept his promise.

Candace: 33:13

Yeah. I just thought, oh, he's just, he's angry. He'll calm down. Right. But the courts, didn't allow that they all, they encouraged this. Ultimately the blame is his but the courts, they bear some responsibility as well because it was allowed to drag on and carry on needlessly.

Ashley: 33:30

Yeah. I do think that's an important thing because if there was timelines and punishments and consequences, or if they were trained, I think more psychologically to see. These are maybe some of the red flags that it's going down, this path of negativity, instead of something that maybe, you know, a breather is gonna get everybody on the same page. I feel like if they were trained maybe in that way as well, that maybe it would be faster, but it's just the way that it's going right now is so heartbreaking and so detrimental to families that if we could avoid it, we would. But a lot of these cases, we have to go to court because it really is our only option for resolution and the faster that the divorce is over, or you have those family court papers, it does eliminate the need for fighting in theory so that some of the healing and that conflict resolution can be, you know, put away because there isn't necessarily a conflict to continue fighting with depending on the situation.

Candace: 34:31

We separated in June of 2018 in November of 2018, we were supposed to have a mediation date and I was happy to go to mediation, frankly, I just, at that point, wanted it to be done. I wanted to move on, right? Let the healing begin. This was only six months into the process. And I was just ready to just go to mediation and, have somebody step in, do their job and help us resolve this. But he didn't come. Two days before mediation, he canceled and it just became increasingly clear how he was going to operate. And then a few months later, you know, we go to court for our first case conference told to have disclosure in, that came late, then he fired his lawyer and then it just became this sort of ongoing, ah, I see what you're doing now. You've picked up the shitty little handbook that's being passed around on how to screw your ex in the court system, right. How to financially abuse somebody, how to drive them crazy. So they give up and that's basically what he was trying to do is just trying to wear me down. It was a game of chicken who was gonna give first on this. So that's what it became and needlessly I reached out many times to say, listen, your relationship with your kids. Counseling, you know, he was invited to that, invited to conflict resolution with me, with the kids didn't come mediation, didn't come you know, it's just on and on

Ashley: 35:58

you can't work with somebody who doesn't wanna work with you that's that doesn't want it to be resolved.

Candace: 36:03

It's so frustrating. It's, just so frustrating because unfortunately the courts just allow this to happen. I have said it before and I'll say it again, they could have saved him from himself. Cuz what does he have now? No license, no passport, mountains of debt. I'm sure.

Ashley: 36:21

Well, in the rage because I'm sure a lot of people like you describe of your ex, it sounds very similar to mine that. They stew in it. So they get stuck in that rage and that it just fester. It's so hard when you're in that victim mentality of this is happening to me instead of recognizing, oh, I started this, I created this, it's really hard to get out of that. So it's like, they just stay in that poor me. You are to blame because at the end of the day, too, it does seem like it's all our faults and there's no accountability from the other person to recognize what their role in it was that it's like, they just get stuck. So it's like we can work through it and, pick up the pieces and try to create something new. And they just stay stuck in this like little rage bubble of not being able to grow at all.

Candace: 37:12

And I wanna talk about that rage bubble actually for a second. It's equally as important for the person on the other side, who is really being shafted. Because I can tell you as little as three days ago, I was saying to my partner, I don't know what to do with this rage. I don't know where to place it. And it comes up unexpectedly it bubbles up in me and I don't have an outlet for it. There's no place to put my rage. I'm struggling with it to be honest. And the other part of that, you know, is that these feelings, these emotions, this frustration that you have has a real impact on your health. My health has been so impacted my physical. Health, not just my mental health, my physical health, this has manifested itself as chronic pain that I now have in my shoulder and, down my arm. And across my chest, I get it. And it's brutal. And you know, it's science. We know that this happens. But you have to be such an expert at managing that, which is why I say I have read every self-help book, every thing to do on the connection between your mind and your body, that there is because I don't want to end up chronically ill or sick because of this. And so I really am trying to manage that, but it's not easy. One of the best things I read just this week is actually, I just picked it up. I'm gonna hold it up. Is this book burnout? You know it was a Brene brown podcast that led me to go pick up the book. But it talks about women and the stress cycle and how when we bottle up that stress, how it manifests and how so we have to sort of complete the stress cycle in let our bodies know that the moment of danger has passed, a hundred thousand years ago that would've been a saber sooth tiger, but now it's like, you know, a divorce court so, you know, you have to let your body know when to let go of that stress. Otherwise you just carry it around. And it starts to manifest itself a whole bunch of terrible things. It causes heart disease and cancers and chronic pain and autoimmune issues. And so that is a big, huge hurdle that I think we don't pay enough attention to is what happens to the body, through the stress of divorce and separation.

Ashley: 39:37

That is a really good point that it's really our physical health and our mental health are intertwined and we really almost gloss over that part that our stress can make us physically sick, and it isn't as easy or as like quick as, ah, we'll just get over it. I hope anybody going through the thick of this will understand that it's like you have to utilize different tools. You have to find what works for you and that it can be a long process. So if you are feeling like, why am I not over it six months from now? You don't have to be that you don't have to put this guilt on yourself. You don't have to put these timelines on yourself that it really is such an individual process for every single person. And that you have to just accept that your process is gonna take, however it's gonna take and to not get into the compare game and to just understand that that's okay.

Candace: 40:30

Yeah. And to give yourself lots and lots of grace you know, this is not an easy process. I can tell you right now that I am absolutely not the same person. I was four years ago going into this. I wouldn't recognize that person four years ago. I have developed a keener sense of self-awareness. I like to think I always had some self-awareness, but I certainly have a lot more of it now. Mindfulness, I am a lot more aware of you know, I really try to address these things and I try to think about. What's this doing to my physical health, right? This moment of stress. And so you have to be preemptive a little bit when you're in the beginning stages of divorce, you have to almost think ahead and prepare yourself psychologically for what is coming and physically by, you know, eating properly. It's easy to say. You know, I probably drowned myself in a lot of wine the first couple of years, but I got to a point where I was like this is not serving me. And I stopped, I stopped drinking for almost a year to really just reset my relationship with it because I could see as a moment of self-awareness that this was completely out of hand. I was trying to drown myself in my sorrows. You learn all these things about yourself, but if you're not aware, you can go down some pretty dangerous paths, I think. And so self-awareness is the biggest thing you're gonna need through any divorce process is just knowing yourself and how you're being affected and being able to turn it around, ask for help, seek help seek those learning and the growing experiences that come along from this and embrace them as hard as they can be. You have to look at yourself in the mirror as well, every day. So that for me was huge. While I wouldn't say I'm the same person, I was four years ago. I'm pretty happy with who I've turned out to be after four years of this process. Because I think I'm a better person for it. I'm a more empathetic person for it. I certainly give people a lot more grace in just about everything now, and of course I think the pandemic helped with that. And that's the other thing, you know, is going through this whole process in the middle of a pandemic is it was not good. I feel for every single parent out there who was really struggling with this, because, I would turn to FRO and say, Hey, like I have no child support. They'd say, oh, well, it's a pandemic. And so we've been instructed that we can't enforce anything right now. You know, that makes no sense. What about the person who's relying on this to, pay rent, buy groceries, pay for, everything. That person doesn't get a pass. So that, added to it. And I think that's also, as we know, created a lot of the hold up to the courts, and now there's this massive bottleneck at the courts where they are trying to get through all of these cases. But you'll, learn very quickly that there's people with deep pockets who are willing to pay and make everything an urgent case. And so their case gets thrown up in front of yours. And unless you have, the deepest pockets forever, you have no choice, but to just wait. Wait, your turn.

Ashley: 43:39

That's the other piece of it. I know in British Columbia, they literally put a pause on all of it. They wouldn't even hear cases for like, I don't even know how long it was, but they were just like, Nope, we're not doing it. So people were stuck in the situations that even if they had all of their ducks in a row, they literally could not get in front of a judge even to do mediation I just feel like there had to have been a better way to try to do it safely or to try to do it in a way that was effective and helpful for all parties.

Candace: 44:09

Yeah. I mean, again, it's a reflection of the system and they're understaffed on the enforcement side. In a big way and I'll give you an example, I had to go back to the judge after we found the house so damaged to say, look, how are we paying for all this? The judge vested a lot of his property to me. So, you know work vehicles an RV, things like that. She vested those things in my name, but now I am saddled with trying to get rid of them and sell them try to get ownerships switched over to me. And he won't cooperate trying to locate some of the items and the police won't help me. So the expectation, I guess, is I'm supposed to go over and demand. He hand this over to me after four years of being. You know, dicked around, I guess it, you know, like that doesn't make sense, but there's nobody to help you when you get to that point. Okay. Here it is. Here's this is, this is all yours now. Oh, great. How am I supposed to get all that? Oh, well that's not our problem. I don't know what the answer is on that. Like it's, again, it's frustrating. I mean, I was vested this RV that I got to it and it's been basically destroyed. It's been devalued to almost nothing. And yeah, I mean, I'm running at a steam to even fight it anymore. I'm at the point where I just, I, so am seeking peace that I'm losing my will to pursue it anymore. my case is extreme. I'm, you know, almost half a million dollars in debt. Just because I wanted to leave a crappy marriage.

Ashley: 45:51

I think the thing that I hope that you understand that you take away is that sharing your story and being so brave and being so vocal about it is helping so many other women or people that feel like they can't come out, or they are afraid to share their story, that you are giving them the courage to be brave. So that maybe slowly, the more that we talk about it, the more that the people that have the ability to make some of these changes in the court, We'll realize that there's such a movement behind it, that these changes are essential and have those long term effects for other families to not have to go through what you went through.

Candace: 46:30

Yeah. I mean, I was never looking to, I never went by the playbook of, you know, I've gotta destroy him. I was always very much, you know, okay. We'll just split the debt, split the assets. To me, there was never any dispute with child custody. My kids were welcome to see their father whenever they wanted. They chose not to, which was an issue that needed to be addressed separately. But as far as I'm concerned, didn't have anything to do with the financial issue. I wasn't saying I want more than my fair share on either the debt or the assets. I was just wanted to split. We were together for 20 years. That is. Sorry, but that's just the way it works. Exactly. You know but there's some misogyny that gets thrown in here, right? Like, oh, you were using me for 20 years. That's a hell of a long game. So things like that get thrown around or you deserved it cuz you decided you didn't wanna be in the marriage anymore. Well, yes, this is how we function. Why would I say in something that's not a good marriage?

Ashley: 47:36

Power to you to be able to leave, because I think too many people stay in the idea of, I should stay in that bad marriage and it really doesn't benefit the family. It doesn't benefit anybody if you know that you're better off a part, leave that bad situation.

Candace: 47:51

Well, I played that. For a long time. I should have left. Well, I did leave once and I came back. I should have stayed gone the first time, but I fell into the trap of what's best for the kids and you know, all of that you know oh, we can work it out. No, like it, you know, I played that whole game too. I stayed longer than I should've hoping that it would somehow work out thinking that it was beneficial for everybody. And then look where we are now. It wouldn't have been any better. In fact, I say this repeatedly, I thank God I left when I did, or perhaps I would've been stuck throughout the whole pandemic. In a marriage and that actually would've been worse for me at that point. So the however you end up at the court system, whenever, however, that's where the real struggle begins. It's not what happened in your marriage. There should be no shame with why your marriage ended. They end every day, right? The shame comes, I think, in how you handle yourself when the marriage ends. And, I can hold my head high. That's all I have to say because I, follow the playbook, the right playbook. I have no regrets with how I handled it from the time the marriage did

Ashley: 49:09

And even going back the shoulda coulda wouldas or as hard as it is, try not to beat yourself up about that because it's like, we really don't know if I left. Two years ago for if I left this day, if I had never married, if I had never, like, even that voice became so loud and can get you stuck in sort of that situation. And at the end of the day, we just never know. We can only go from the moment that we went and yeah, if you're going through this, keep your head held high and try to be fair because really a courthouse is not the place to be having temper tantrums and to try to punish your ex, it just really isn't. So for anybody who partner is maybe that person, just do everything in your power to help them see that that is not the case. And that it really hurts your long term family more than it hurts. Just your ex that you're quote unquote, trying to punish.

Candace: 50:03

Yeah. And, it doesn't work out in the end. It just doesn't. You know, this all could have gone so differently if I had somebody who was willing to participate in the process, but the minute they shut down, you have little recourse except for the courts and the police. And I can tell you that they are basically ineffective. And so I don't know what the answer is. I wish I had the answer, but all I can say is you have to guard your mental health and your physical health. It becomes almost a full-time job because at the end of the day, this will end. This will be over. At some point it could be a long, long drawn out process, but it will end and you'll want to be physically and mentally in the right space. When that happens, it's important. Right. It's cliche, but nothing else matters if you don't have your health.

Ashley: 50:56

True. Can you let everybody know where they can find you online if they're looking for you?

Candace: 51:03

Oh gosh, everywhere. You could find what she said, talk on Facebook, Instagram web life in Pleasantville. Same. Candice said on Twitter you know, just Google, Candice Sampson I have to tell you I laughed because you know, we all Google our names. Right. And when I went very public with my story when you typed in Candace Sampson, the first there's with Candace Sampson husband, everybody wanted to know who he was and what his name was. I have not shared that. I won't share that. I've tried to scrub mention of him from everywhere because I don't believe in internet mob. I believe in talking about the issues at hand and talking about your story, but not to sicken an internet mob on anybody, no matter what they've done, that's not deserved. But it was amusing to me that so many people were interested on who that was. I don't know what they planned to do with that information, but it made me laugh that was my search for a while on Google was who my husband was.

Ashley: 51:59

I think it's almost like just that internet detective it's like you wanna piece together the whole story and it becomes sort of that mob of it, but yeah, really fundamentally the courts are the issue. It's not even necessarily your ex on hand. Like yes, he is the catalyst for all of it, but I think the bigger conversation needs to be around family court system in probably every single country.

Candace: 52:25

Oh, I agree. Absolutely. There's a lot of layers to this. There's the misogyny that gets built into it. There's vindictive, exes there's underfunded courts. And then there's lack of enforcement. So, you know, all those things need to be sort of addressed together. And I don't know what the answer is, but maybe it's a more robust conversation that we're having when people get married.

Ashley: 52:47

Yes, that's a good point. Anyways, Candice thank you so much.

Candace: 52:54

Thank you. It's a pleasure.

52:59

Thank you so much for joining us today for this episode of the filled up cup podcast, don't forget to hit subscribe and leave a review. If you like what you hear, you can also connect with us@filledupcup.com. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode.