Sol (00:02)
Welcome to Co-parenting Beyond Conflict. I'm your host Sol, founder of the BestInterest app for CoParents. At BestInterest and on this podcast, my goal is to help you find peace in the storm. Today I'm joined by Bill Eddy, co-founder of the High Conflict Institute and one of the clearest voices in the world on managing high conflict people. Bill has spent decades as a therapist, family lawyer, mediator, teacher, and author.
And frequent listeners to this podcast will recognize his BIFF method, which many professionals often reference. It's the go-to tool for anyone navigating a high conflict personality. In the words of a fellow co-parenting professional at the AFCC conference in Seattle, Bill Eddy is like the Mr. Rogers of Family Court. He's kind, calm, and full of knowledge. Quite an endorsement. In this interview, Bill shares with us his practical,
hard-earned guidance for staying calm, setting limits, protecting your kids, and communicating in a way that keeps you grounded. If you've ever received a message from your co-parent and felt your whole nervous system light up before you even opened it, then this episode is for you. Let's dive in.
Sol (01:18)
Good morning, Bill. Thanks for joining us today. It's so good to have you on.
Bill Eddy (01:22)
Thanks so much, Sol. Glad to be on.
Sol (01:24)
Before we dive in, Bill, I I would love if you invited us into a moment this past week where you felt genuinely at peace.
Bill Eddy (01:32)
Let's see, peaceful moments. Especially after a good consultation session, after a good training session, and I've had some of those this week. I also run two consultation groups, one for therapists and one for
lawyers and others involved with family court cases. At the end of these, feel satisfied. I feel good. I feel like we had good connections. We advanced our knowledge from the discussions. Then I did a four hour training in our mediation model.
I love teaching. So I guess those were moments of peace, and satisfaction to some extent.
Sol (02:12)
I love that. What I'm hearing in that too is that this to you probably feels like a vocation. This is your calling to to teach. And so when you feel that alignment, you feel more at peace.
Bill Eddy (02:24)
Absolutely. I was a practicing therapist for twelve years, practicing family lawyer in family court for fifteen years, and then full-time mediation for 15 years. And now I've finished each of those careers and I'm teaching everything I learned from all three of them. It just feels like a real good spot to be in.
Gives me a sense of satisfaction, but also people ask me questions and I have answers now. Twenty, thirty, forty years ago I didn't have answers, but now I do and and it it does feel really rewarding.
Sol (02:59)
That's so great, Bill. I am so pleased and honored to have you on the podcast. Frequent listeners of Coparenting Beyond Conflict will tell you that we're already very familiar with your name. Many of the experts that I've brought on have mentioned your work, specifically the BIFF method has come up quite a I'd love for you to take us into
Bill Eddy (03:16)
Yeah.
Sol (03:19)
how you got started in the BIFF method and how did that evolve to where it is today?
Bill Eddy (03:25)
Great question. So after those three careers, formed High Conflict Institute with Megan Hunter. We wanted to teach primarily family law professionals how to manage high conflict cases, how to manage high conflict individuals and assist a lot of clients, but also assist professionals.
I was giving one of our first seminars in 2007 to psychologists, social workers, lawyers, and a couple family court judges. The second day, and I remember it distinctly, this is March 2007
in a seminar room somewhere. One of the judges raised her hand, said, "Bill, what are we going to do about these terrible emails? We keep getting them submitted and they're just terrible. What are we going to do?" I'd already been working with clients as a lawyer and therapist with emails. I said, well they have to be brief.
These going on and on and on just creates more conflict. They had to be straight information because when you get into an argument by email, it just spirals downhill. So no emotions, judgments, defenses, criticisms, all of that, just straight information. So they need to be informative.
And they should have a friendly tone. Even if the incoming email or text is hostile, you want to shift the conversation. And so thank you for telling me your concerns, or thank you for asking me about the school play tomorrow, things like that. It doesn't cost you anything to say thank you to someone who's upset, and it often calms them.
A woman judge says, "Well, B I F, if you add another F, you'll have the name BIFF." I was thinking, "well, you wanted to end the conversation, that would be 'firm'. You want it to be firm. Just kind of conclude the conversation. Don't put any hooks out there like, "what do you think of that buddy?" or anything. And so BIFF was born in March of 2007. BIFF will have
it's 20th anniversary next year. But what happened since then, it has really taken off more than I ever expected. I wrote a little book in 2011, "BIFF: Quick Responses to High Conflict People." Then we realized during COVID, this would be a really good time to write one for co-parents. So that came out in 2020.
Of course workplaces, high conflict divorce, but also workplaces where there's a lot of nasty communication. So we wrote "BIFF at Work", and then some of the worst email correspondence is between lawyers. And so we wrote one "BIFF for Lawyers and Law Offices" and that book's doing pretty well because there's a lot of a lot of need to calm
lawyers and their communication. A lot of times lawyers think they're helping. Their client wants them to hit the other side hard. And yet it doesn't help. It doesn't help. So that's the evolution of BIFF up to the present.
Sol (06:24)
Do I understand correctly that that the BIFF method is about taking personal responsibility for your own communication, without expecting the other side to change?
Bill Eddy (06:34)
Absolutely yes. They may or may not change. Sometimes they do, and I'm getting more and more feedback. I remember a lawyer recently saying "my client's co-parent is really difficult and nasty, and she's been using the BIFF method for three or four months now. And guess what? The other side's starting to write back in a similar format, and they
probably don't even know it's a format." You look better. BIFF responses, you look like rational and reasonable. I tell people if your emails end up in court, you wanna be the one that looks like you're being responsible. So I very much endorse that approach.
Sol (07:13)
Yeah, that makes sense. What would be a common mistake that people might make when they're first learning how to use BIFF responses?
Bill Eddy (07:21)
of the most common mistakes is trying to teach the other person a lesson. I talked about brief, informative, friendly, and firm. This gets us into what we call the three A's: advice, admonishments, and apologies. You want to avoid these. No one's asking for advice when they're telling you they're angry with you.
But admonishments, people are very tempted to admonish the other person, say, "you should know better than to do such and such." telling you again for the twelfth time." All those kind of digs, things to make you feel stronger backfire, because then the other side feels like they have to show they're even stronger than you are. And if you're dealing with a high conflict co-parent, they're better at this than you are.
So you don't want to go that way. It really is taking the high road. But while I mentioned the three A's, I want to explain apologies because people say, no apologies, Bill?" What seems to happen, especially if you're dealing with a difficult person or an angry person, is that they take apologies and turn them against you. They print them out and they show everybody else: "See?
He agrees it's all his fault. He even admitted here, he said, 'I'm sorry.'" Well, you may have said, I'm sorry for the tiniest thing, but what they hear is it's all your fault and you agree. We discourage apologies for that reason. In a sense, an apology is like deferring to the other person. And reasonable people accept that for what it is and appreciate it.
But high conflict people will manipulate it and and put you down a little further. And I've worked with many women, especially, and some men who are victims of domestic violence, victim/survivors. They get it because they're used to trying to calm the other person, and that's not their job. They shouldn't have to do that. They put themselves down sometimes
by apologizing for things they really shouldn't apologize for that were reasonable. So that's why we say no advice, admonishments or apologies. I think that's one of the early places that people make mistakes.
Sol (09:29)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense about apologies and also hearing it has me feeling somewhat sad because a lot of us use apologies in a way to help calm and take ownership and and yet it sounds like it's dangerous in these situations.
Bill Eddy (09:36)
Yeah.
Yeah, it's counterintuitive. And I'd say with 80% of people, apologies are great. I'd say I apologize to people I'm working with at least once a week. I forget something or something bothered me that didn't need to or I misunderstood. And apologies are routine and simple and and limited between most people. So I don't want to say apologies across the board.
But apologies when someone's angry with you or you think they have a high conflict personality, that's an exception to the rule. I just thought of something else I want to add about emails and mistakes. One of the biggest mistakes today that people make, is they go to AI to write their email. When they get a hostile and say, please write me a BIFF response. AI knows about BIFF.
They won't tell you where it came from unless you ask, but they know about BIFF. So they'll write a brief, informative, friendly, and firm response, but it's generic. It's like AI takes the average of the whole universe of information. They don't know you, they don't know the other person, they don't know your situation. If you lean on AI to do this for you, you don't develop your own BIFF muscle.
I've been thinking about this lately. You don't ask AI to go to the gym and work out for you. AI can't do that. Well, same thing with BIFF responses. AI can't develop your muscle, your brain, to do well at this. What I recommend is you write your draft, you ask yourself the 10 questions that we have in all the BIFF books: Was it brief, informative, friendly, and firm?
Is there advice, admonishments, apologies? How do you think the other person will respond? Is there anything now you would take out at or change? And should you get someone else's thoughts about it? So that's your 10 questions. Ask yourself those, make the changes, and then if you really want, you can go to AI or work with your program to help people rewrite what they've written.
But they need to practice writing it first, then it gets easier and easier, faster and faster.
Sol (11:57)
Bill, you actually read my mind. That was literally gonna be my next question, because I did read that article and as you know, ⁓ I'm a proponent of AI for high conflict, and I really did want to get your take. I really appreciate your your take on how AI can at sometimes be used as, you didn't use this word, but like a crutch to avoid the growth that is inherent sometimes in these types of relationships.
Bill Eddy (12:18)
Yeah.
Sol (12:23)
The thing that I would maybe push back on, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, is that I know from my own personal experience going through divorce, it was at times so challenging, mentally taxing to receive these messages feeling sensitive to them, and to feel constantly in the almost the laundry cycle tumult of that toxicity.
My vision with BestInterest is that we can help shield these parents from that feeling of never being able to catch their breath, so that they can then take that energy and focus on healing. I'm curious what you think about that sort of approach.
Bill Eddy (13:03)
Well, you mean in terms of folks rewriting the email for them so that they don't have to worry about that? The the thing I want to do is make sure that people are learning the method, because it gives them confidence and I think that gives them some sense of peace. Step by step seems to be how we learn. So I think some assistance with the goal of self sufficiency
Sol (13:08)
Yeah.
Bill Eddy (13:27)
is the way to go with this. Like I said, you're developing your BIFF muscle. I agree that you want to ease into that and that you don't want people to drown and just be overwhelmed. So I think you can assist people, but have that goal of them not becoming forever dependent on someone else to help with their responses. I think that's the key.
Sol (13:49)
I liked what you said in your article about how when you learn how to write in BIFF, you're practicing the muscle that is changing the way you think. So the interactions that you have exchanges or whatnot, you're suddenly thinking about a better way of interacting. So that can be really helpful. Whereas if you're getting the processing all done with AI, then you don't have that muscle.
Bill Eddy (13:57)
Yeah.
Right.
Right. What seems to happen, we're getting a lot of feedback like this, is people say it changes the way I think about the other person. I'm thinking more strategically now rather than emotionally. reactive. I'm thinking, okay, how do I respond to get the information I need, calm the other person? It's making people more strategic about their relationship.
Which makes them less vulnerable. It's not reacting, it's really a planned response and a system of responding. The goal in your work is to give people a sense of peace and confidence. Ultimately this will help with them.
Sol (14:50)
Yeah, I get that. I appreciate your thoughts on AI and where all of this is going. I think it's a really incredible time to to be alive and to witness this really fast emerging technology that is changing our lives in fundamental ways.
Bill Eddy (15:06)
Yeah, I think the key is that AI should be your tool, not that you become AI's tool. It's tricky. Actually let me just add a comment about the way they teach AI. They take a lot of books and they've taken six of my books to train their model, at least one of them.
and authors are a little bit irritated by this, including me. first company, Anthropic, is now settling a lawsuit with payouts to authors and publishers in partial compensation for stealing our methods.
I have a very mixed feeling about AI. I use it for some background research. I don't use it to write. I do all my own writing. But I use it for background research and I use it for summarizing large amounts of information, like outlines. There's a place for it. I think with all innovations, there's a place for them and you have to learn how to manage it rather than have it run your life.
Sol (16:06)
Yeah, you're mirroring a comment that I heard. We both attended the AFCC conference in Seattle recently, and one of the attorneys was talking to me about the experience of seeing the other co-parents messages suddenly start to look like they were coming from AI and how her client reacted to that. Seeing the em dashes, seeing the the telltale signs of this is not my co-parent, this is a computer talking to me.
And it can feel a little weird.
Bill Eddy (16:32)
Yeah. I think that's another aspect of of this. I really think people need to get better at writing with their own voice. And if they want to add a word or phrase that AI came with came up with after they've done their own writing, then maybe they'll learn from that. But when AI does the whole thing, it's like a robot.
Sol (16:53)
Yeah, that's fair. Switching gears to the high conflict parenting dynamic and how it impacts children. What are the patterns that you see in children that grow up in these sorts of high conflict households? Whether or not they're divorced, what sort of patterns do you see when they grow up?
Bill Eddy (17:10)
Children learn from their parents how to live. So if their parents are using extreme behaviors... we talk about high conflict, four main characteristics: preoccupation with blaming others, a lot of all or nothing thinking and solutions, unmanaged emotions and extreme behaviors, including things ninety percent of people would never do.
When children grow up with that, a couple things happen. One is they may absorb that as behaviors that they're now going to use on the playground, with their siblings, et cetera. Another possibility is that that they grow up learning to be a target of that flame. So we think of domestic violence, where someone's hitting their co-parent, the child sees that and they hit their sister.
They grow up learning you hit your sister, that's okay. Well, that's not okay, but the sister grows up learning to be hit, and that's not okay either. So you get these high conflict behaviors passed down in negative ways in two different forms, because it's mostly aggressive or the target of aggression. That's a lot what the concern is.
What's interesting, I read a lot of research and was reading a study that said kids as young as four and five can be impacted by high conflict parents, parents that have traits of personality disorders. The two biggest factors, problematic factors, are hostility and unpredictability.
That really goes with families where you've got one or more people promoting their own thinking in a hostile manner and being driven by their emotions, so they're constantly shifting. Things are unpredictable. One day it's like, "honey, you spilled the milk. That's okay, not a problem. I love you. Here, let me give you some kisses." And the next day,
outrage. "How dare you leave it by the edge of the table? I've told you a million times not to do that. Now go to your room" or slapping the child or whatever. The unpredictability is in many ways the hardest on kids. They can learn to adapt if they know what they're adapting to. But ideally, none of that should be happening. But yeah, we do see that, and we see a lot of
children of divorce and especially high conflict divorce particularly hesitant to get into relationships as adults. It's like "I can't trust anybody because the people I trusted turned against me, my own parents." There's various aspects of why it's hard on them and really good for parents to learn to manage their emotions and be consistent as much as possible.
Sol (19:56)
Well, and to your earlier point, in some ways some of those kids are going to be predisposed to enter into more abusive dynamics in relationships later on, because that's what was modeled for them.
Bill Eddy (20:09)
Yes, exactly. I know some of your people talk about narcissistic co-parent and some of the characteristics of narcissists are that they absorb all the attention. And so kids don't feel like they're getting attention. But also narcissists tend to pit kids against each other. They lack the empathy to go, "wait a minute, you can't treat your sibling that way."
And they may laugh and say, picking on Janie, isn't that cute. Isn't that funny?" It's not, but they act like it is and they empower one child and disempower the other. There's a lot of research and information about that, how narcissistic parents really make it hard for kids to be close to each other,
and close to their other parent. It disrupts that. In many ways, when people separate and divorce, it's easier for kids so they can really have a relationship with a fairly reasonable, balanced parent. Whereas before a narcissist was taking all the energy from the family. So that's another aspect of this.
Sol (21:15)
As a co-parent myself, I know how difficult communication can be. That's why I created Best Interest, the co-parenting app that uses advanced AI technology to automatically filter out all negativity, promoting positive communication and helping you create a healthier environment for your family. Try it now and get with code Beyond10. Link in the show notes.
Sol AI (21:37)
And now, back to the show.
Sol (21:39)
I've heard the term 'golden child' and 'scapegoat child.' Is
Bill Eddy (21:42)
I almost
was using those and didn't. So since you raised those, we can use those. That's true. People experience that. When I was a therapist, I remember one guy who had a narcissistic personality himself, and he was there because his wife was not sure about continuing with him. And he had three business partners who were thinking of pushing him out of his company.
Sol (21:45)
Ha ha ha.
Bill Eddy (22:05)
He talked about his childhood. His older brother was the golden child and he was the bad kid, the scapegoat. He grew up with a chip on his shoulder because of that. And yet that chip on his shoulder made it hard for people to get close to him. He was trying to learn how to be less anxious and a little bit more warm. But it's hard when you've had like twenty years.
treated that way.
Sol (22:29)
In a co-parenting situation where you suspect that might be happening in the other household, how can you support your kids navigating their relationship and having a healthier relationship?
Bill Eddy (22:41)
Well, here's what I recommend, because you can't criticize the other parents behavior directly or it comes back at you. And if you're ever in court and you have these texts and emails that look like you're telling the other parent what's wrong with them, that doesn't go over well with the judge. So here's a different strategy. We call these the four big skills for life. Teach your child during your parenting time
the four big skills for life. These are flexible thinking, not all or nothing thinking. Consider many possibilities. Managed emotions. We don't just blast our emotions out at people. We manage our emotions. Emotions aren't a bad thing on their own and they help us a lot of times, but we have to also manage them. We can't let them run the show. We have to work with our emotions, know what we're feeling.
Give it words to work with, etc. Moderate behaviors. Screaming and hitting and all that is not moderate behaviors. Relationships can't survive extreme behaviors more than a certain amount of time. And then checking yourself. What am I doing? What's my part in this situation? What can I do different? So we call those the four big skills for life.
If you teach your child those skills just in a matter of fact way, in a daily life kind of way, someone at the store was yelling at a clerk and you say, "was that person managing their emotions? No, not at all. ⁓ Did he get what he wanted? No, not at all." Or "that girl on the TV show, she was making a decision. She had a couple choices. Do you think she was using flexible thinking? Yeah. And did it work for her? Yeah."
So you teach these as skills that the kids can use for life, but also it helps them interpret the other parent's behavior. So let's say the other parent yells a lot or is blaming a lot. "Your mother always did this and I hated that about her," things like the child has a framework to understand that's really not a good thing.
And we're learning ourselves not to use unmanaged emotions, extreme behaviors, et cetera. When the child comes back from contact with the other parent and they say, "you know what dad or mom did," you can say, "that sounds so hard, honey. At least we're trying to manage our emotions, and at least we're using moderate behavior. And so that makes us have a happier time,
don't you think?" So you're not criticizing, you're not blaming, you're not labeling, and yet you're giving a framework to the child to cope better with a difficult parent.
Sol (25:21)
Going back to your earlier example of the gentleman who came to you having multiple things falling apart in his life and and maybe looking for some solutions, do you ever see that ⁓ high conflict personalities like this ⁓ do seek help, do change? Is that something we should hope for?
Bill Eddy (25:37)
answer really is it depends. Generally they don't seek change. And if they have a personality disorder, that's one of the characteristics of a personality disorder. It's an enduring pattern of behavior. But they also don't reflect on themselves. They feel that everything is caused by people outside themselves. So there's nothing they're working on. They don't see the need to and the possibility of that. But
there's a percent of high conflict people, including some people with personality disorders, who get enough pressure from the workplace, from family members, etc., to get some help, to get some treatment. One of the personality disorders that actually is the most
able to be changed is borderline personality disorder. And most people have heard of that by now because of the internet - with wide mood swings, sudden intense anger, blame, all of that. And there's methods like DBT, dialectical behavior therapy, in every city where people can learn to manage their emotions better, to manage their relationships better. That's a way
that there is some hope, but most people don't seek that on their own. It's usually because somebody's doing some kind of intervention with them. Now we have our New Ways for Families program, which teaches these four big skills, and judges order that. So that's another approach, the judges are saying you've got to do this. But
we always ask the judges to order both parents, they don't decide one's good, one's bad. Both parents can benefit from learning these skills and teaching them to their kids.
Sol (27:20)
also recently ⁓ launched a new book, SLIC and I was hoping you could bring us ⁓ into that a bit and tell us how that might apply to co-parenting.
Bill Eddy (27:30)
Yeah, I'm so glad you asked that question. It's our latest book, and I spoke on that at the AFCC conference idea with SLIC, we call it SLIC Solutions, S-L-I-C, stands for 'setting limits and imposing consequences.' And the imposing consequences is what we've discovered over the years is important with high conflict people.
generally ignore your setting limits. So if you say "you can't talk to me that way," because they're being rude and insulting or whatever, they'll say, "Well, I'll talk to you any way I want." don't care. Sometimes they just ignore court orders. So the idea that we have to have consequences is getting stronger and stronger. And everyone needs to learn how to
impose consequences, and when you set limits to say this will be the consequence if you don't follow this limit. Sometimes you say that, sometimes you save that in case they violate the limit. Then you tell them, "well, there's this consequence." So we talk about it as setting limits and imposing consequences in two and a half steps. That's in the subtitle.
So it's setting the limit, that's the first step, imposing the consequence if necessary, that's the second step. And we give five questions to ask yourself for imposing a consequence. The half step is half the time you give them a statement that shows empathy for them, respect for them. Let's say it's a parent and child. "Johnny, I'm not letting you go
to that other house where your friend lives because there's problems in that other house. There's things that you shouldn't be exposed to I want to protect you. That's part of helping you grow up to be a happy and healthy child. So I understand you don't like my decision and I can empathize with that. And this is why I'm doing it, because I really care about you." Someone with an employee might say, "I really want you to succeed here. That's why I'm
saying you need to take a day off and think about some of the behavior that just happened today." But a lot of times you're dealing with a high conflict person who's manipulative, and you say, "Well, I have a lot of respect for you." And they say, "No, you don't. You don't care. You don't respect me. If you respected me, you would back off. You wouldn't do this thing. You wouldn't impose this consequence on me." If you think you're going to get
that kind of response, just stay focused on what the consequence is, what the limit is, and don't worry about, empathy, attention, and respect. Usually one way to find out is do it and see what happens, or don't do it and see what happens. the general method.
Sol (30:14)
Yeah, I think many of us listening have had the experience of learning how to set boundaries and starting to set boundaries, but only going so far as as setting the rule but not actually following through with the actionable consequence. Can you take us through an example or two of SLIC in a co co-parenting type arrangement?
Bill Eddy (30:33)
Yeah, let's say you you're on the phone with your co-parent and they start saying, "you're doing everything wrong, you're uncooperative, you're irresponsible, you're all these things." Then you say, "Hang on, you can't talk to me that way." Well, that's setting a limit. They might say, "Well, you deserve me to talk to you this way, because
you didn't tell me about that one thing a year ago, and therefore you're an irresponsible parent. You say, "if you keep talking to me that way, then I'm gonna have to hang up. It's up to you. Okay, you've kept talking that way. I'm gonna hang up now. Call me back when you're ready to talk civilly. Goodbye." So that would be a conversation I've ended up having from time to time with people. And
It's uncomfortable to do that, but you get more comfortable with it and you realize you create space for yourself to be treated decently. We have five questions to ask, and one is, is it safe? If you do that, that person's gonna be knocking on your door in an hour demanding entry and they're escalating,
then it might not be safe to do it that way. And you just hold the phone over here while they're making all those comments so you don't absorb them. The way people talk to you is an example. Coming late a lot with picking up the kids or returning the kids, and having a consequence for that. "If you're more than half an hour late, I'm gonna leave with the kids and get on with my day,
and you'll have to find me to pick them up." ⁓ Things like that. Payments that are late, child support. Well, now there's the court enforced wage garnishment. I've had a lot of mediations where they agree what the payment schedule's gonna be, but they understand if it isn't followed,
then the recipient's gonna just go to court and get a wage garnishment order and they can just do that on their own and it's really automatic. So knowing about that consequence motivates people to stay on schedule.
Sol (32:31)
Many listeners hearing about this might be thinking, "well that's really nice to be able to set a consequence, but it's really hard." I have this belief that part of the reason why some of us have a hard time setting these types of consequences or boundaries is that perhaps either they weren't modeled for us or maybe we're worried about how the other person is going to react or perceive us.
I'd like to hear your take on this: if we learn how to detach from worrying about what the other people or other person will think of us, then we have much more freedom to set consequences.
Bill Eddy (33:04)
Yes. That's an important part of not being responsible for how the other person feels. You're not responsible for that. Also, giving yourself encouraging statements. One of the things we teach is to think of two statements that give you encouragement: "I'm a good parent and
those criticisms are not about me." You keep telling yourself those when you're being criticized, and you don't absorb the other person's criticisms as much. We've done that many times in practice exercises, and people say, "Yeah, the other person didn't bother me because I was listening to myself mostly." It's another protection,
saying phrases like that before I go into a high conflict situation. I call it putting on my armor. It's like, it's not about me. I'm not responsible for the other person's outcome. Change how they think, forget about it, and I feel more more ready when I've reminded myself of those comments.
Sol (34:03)
I love that. So Bill, you've worked in this industry in family law, therapy, mediation for four decades. What has changed it the most during your career in this family conflict?
Bill Eddy (34:16)
The thing I've noticed the most is restraining orders. When I started, I first was a therapist, so I had some cases where people are involved with family court. I wasn't into the family court part too deeply, but I had couples in counseling with kids that they were arguing over.
Sol (34:23)
That's right.
Bill Eddy (34:35)
But what I noticed when I started as a family lawyer is occasionally there was a restraining order. Occasionally someone was obviously violent in their relationship. But I'd say over the last 30 years as a lawyer that that's the biggest area of family law growth, is restraining orders.
Nuances around them, when to order them, when not to order them, all of that. It's a reflection of society where people are following rules less and being more aggressive and hostile to each other. I don't know that it's necessarily more people being aggressive and violent and such.
But they feel permissioned to be aggressive and violent, especially when they see what's on the TV news. You see people acting really badly. Just yesterday there was something on the news about a scuffle in an airplane and saying, "in 2025 there was 680 incidents of unruly behavior on airplanes." Goodness, thirty years ago
didn't even hear about that. Maybe there was one. So I think I think the larger culture is allowing people to act badly in families and to need the court to set limits and restraints.
Sol (35:52)
Honestly, hearing that, it's terrifying that things have changed in that direction. And I'm curious, from your experience, is our court system adapting in the right ways to handle this or are they ill-equipped to handle this type of family dynamic?
Bill Eddy (36:08)
Well, what I find that I love about the law and the legal system that we have is, it does adapt and change. It's usually too slow for my preference, but it does. I'll give you a really good example. When I started as a family lawyer, it was 1993. I think three quarters of parents
either didn't pay child support or didn't pay it on schedule. Getting child support was a really big issue, especially when I represented moms. In rare occasion it would be dads because mom had a big income. Child support was a forever difficult issue. Well, over these last 30 years, and I'd say over the 10 years after I started, child support enforcement got a lot of attention.
And now it's very routine, because if people don't pay it, then they'll garnish your wages and your boss will send it from your paycheck. The more I'm thinking, there's another. The child support's a big change, but there's another big change. When I started a significant percent of fathers
saw their children less than once a month after a separation and divorce. There was a real loss of fathers. I don't remember what the percentages were. Maybe 25 or 30 percent of dads saw their kids less than once a month. That's really, really changed. There's now much more priority in the court system and in the culture
that the dads and moms are pretty equal footing and should both have a significant relationship with the kids. There's exceptions and protections, like with domestic violence and child abuse and alienation and all of that. But it's grown to be much more shared parenting. That's another positive change, even though there's still a lot of
cases that need more attention because they're decided backwards sometimes.
Sol (38:05)
Looking into the future, Bill, where do you see us moving in terms of changing or improving the way we handle these types of cases in family court and beyond?
Bill Eddy (38:15)
I see and what my hope is, is that the courts will really get better at accountability and expectation for people to learn skills for getting along and setting more limits on high conflict behavior and valuing and rewarding people learning good skills. I think the courts
have the opportunity to rein in bad behavior. When families are intact, there's no court involvement, bad behavior often just keeps going. That's a lot of the reason for divorces. We talk about domestic violence, talk about alienation where the parents in intact families turn the kids against the other parent. I've had some of these cases.
Alienation isn't just a divorce issue. It's really a personality issue. Also I think there'll be more understanding about things like alienation because there's been competition much of the last forty years between especially moms saying, "there's violence against me."
And dad saying, "no, there isn't, the kids don't want to see me because of what you're saying to the kids." Both of these are potentially real things, and I think people need to be more educated about them because I represented a lot of moms as a lawyer who dad alienated the kids against the mom. So it's not a gender thing. Sometimes the same person is abusive and alienating against their victim of abuse.
So there'd be more knowledge about all of this and the courts I hope will have a more hands-on involvement with behavior. So that bad behavior can't go as far as it does today. I think they're getting better at it, but there's a long way to go. The biggest thing I think will be reinforcing people learning skills and having them come back to court to show that they've learned those skills. That's my hope and
our New Ways for Families method really fits into that.
Sol (40:14)
Bill, thank you so much for being on with us today and sharing your wisdom. For those listeners that would like to connect with you and learn more about your work or pick up one of your books, where can they find you?
Bill Eddy (40:25)
of all, HighConflictInstitute.com. We have a lot of articles, books, videos, consultation with me, 30 minute and 60 minute. Also, my colleague Megan Hunter, she also does consultation 30 minute and 60 minute. We also now have a second website.
It's called ConflictInfluencer.com. That's where we have our New Ways for Families online class and other classes and information for individuals. High Conflict Institute is geared a lot to training professionals, and Conflict is giving skills to individuals, including co-parents.
Sol (41:06)
I appreciate you making all of that information very accessible. We'll put the links to those resources in our show notes. And Bill, thanks again for being on with us today. It's been a real pleasure.
Bill Eddy (41:17)
Thank you, Sol. Great questions and I'm I'm excited to see the success of your work too. So onward and upward we all go.
Sol (41:25)
Thanks for joining us on the Coparenting Beyond Conflict podcast. To support our show, subscribe or leave a rating. Links for all books and resources mentioned on appear in our show notes or on CoparentingBeyondConflict.com. See you next time.
Sol (41:43)
The commentary and opinions available on this podcast are for informational and entertainment purposes only, and not for the purpose of providing legal or psychological advice. You should contact a licensed attorney, coach, or therapist in your state to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem.
