Ep.12: From hiring the right attorney to Parallel Parenting and everything in between with Carl Knickerbocker

In this episode, I talk to the amazing Carl Knickerbocker, of Unapologetic Parenting- he's a father, a husband, an ex husband, an author of not one, but two books, and to top it all off, he's also a divorce and family law attorney who has become an expert in narcissistic counter parents. We talk about the legal aspects, his tips for those divorcing a narcissist, hiring the right lawyer, and move into the ins and out of parallel parenting. This episode is full of nuggets, tools, tips and strategies to help you navigate one of the hardest journeys of your life. 

You can find Carl on social media: @unapologeticparenting or on his website at www.carlknickerbockerlaw.com, or through his books, "The Parallel Parenting Solution" and "Family Court Solution". 

Visit: https://chantalcontorinescoaching.com to learn how to work with me.

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This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not legal advice.

Transcript

0:01

Welcome everybody to The Survivor's Playbook. I'm your host, Chantal Contorines, and this is the podcast for every survivor of abuse. If abusers can have a playbook, then why can't survivors also have a playbook? And I'm so incredibly excited to have on an amazing guest. You might know him as Unapologetic Parenting. You might've read his books. He has two out the Parallel Parenting Solution and family Court Solutions as well. He's also a dad, a husband, an ex-husband. He's a divorce and family law attorney. He is the amazing Carl Knickerbocker. Thank you so much, Carl for being on today. Oh, absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you. So the first question that I have is, how did you get into this specific arena? You and I both work within a very specialized niche dealing with narcissist, coercive controllers, abusers. Oh, absolutely. That's, it is definitely not something I planned to be a part of or get into. But I think early on in the process of just sharing stories and wanting to reach out and share my experiences and share my observations with others, kind of part of my own. Healing journey, so to say, but trying to transform my experiences into opportunities to educate and serve others in the hopes that they would be able to glean something from it to make their lives better and easier for themselves and their kids. What I started noticing is. Through just describing my experiences and the things that I was going through, things that I was noticing, lawyers or people in the court system or my ex or other people just describing what they were doing. All of a sudden, thousands of other people were saying, you're describing our reality. Are you a fly on the wall? Are you spying on us? How do you know these things so well, and how can you describe them so well? And all I'm doing is just describing what the people around me were doing and just doing so in a very unfiltered or unapologetic way. And as I got more and more of that feedback, realizing this is a, an intense area of need. This is something that's not being served well out there, especially on social media and other resources. And so just wanting to bring some really good, candid, clear information and service to that area in the hopes of helping others. So that's how I got into it. And like you said, it's not something that you ever thought you would do. We don't ever expect to be experts in these areas. It just kinda falls upon us. Yeah. It reminds me of those memes that are, you, you thought you were signing up for this, but you ended up a PhD in narcissistic abuse. Yes, it's exactly what it is. Now for your clients, do you serve a lot of people who are survivors of narcissistic abuse? I'm sure people must be drawn to you because it's very rare for an actual lawyer, family law lawyer to understand this personality type. They might've read books, they might think that they understand, but to truly understand is a totally different ball game. So yeah we do see it a lot in practice. Many of our cases, pretty high percentage of our, population for clients. They are, going through very similar things and they're dealing with Xs who play all the typical games. They've gone through the severe gaslighting. We see the nasty tactics being played out in their cases and in court and in the messaging. So yeah we see it very often. I think a lot of people are either drawn to the firm and drawn for us to represent them or serve as consulting for them because of their exposure to the books and hearing my online content. But then here in the Austin area, there, there are a number of cases that come to us based off of referrals from psychologists and therapists who are like, you need somebody helping you on the legal side who. Actually really gets it. And this guy seems to really get it. And that's key because I think when you're first starting this, who you hire can literally make or break your case and. It's not just even the attorney, which is a huge piece because you are the person who has to advocate for your clients, but also the coaches that you hire, the therapists that you hire, all these professionals can literally mean the difference between doing well and really struggling. Absolutely. Absolutely. I just I haven't posted it yet, but I shot a video just the other day talking about how so often it can be the lawyer or lawyers involved in a case that really cause it to fall apart and devolve. And, picking a lawyer who doesn't really understand the dynamics of what's at play, or maybe they are, a similar personality type to the other party, to your ex, or they're just in it to dilate conflict for their own benefit. That makes it all infinitely worse. And, yeah, who you surround yourself with, the council you receive, the representation you have, and even down to, like you said the coaching, the people that are, speaking to you and informing you or guiding you. The higher quality and more reality based and more just rational down to earth they can be the better. The more that they are just spinning off into conflict, that's gonna be something that's gonna cost you a lot of sleepless nights and tens of thousands of needless dollars and. Years of conflict that probably could be avoided. And that's the thing, it's not even just your energy, it's also your bottom line. When you hired the wrong lawyer, I have so many people come to me and they've hired the wrong people and they're having to fire, their actual lawyer and rehire a new one. And that just seems oh, you just fire one and hire another. But when you hire a new lawyer, that also means another retainer. It means them going over your case history. All of that stuff adds up and it's also worth the investment in taking the time to find the right person. Do you have any tips for people who are just starting out and looking at hiring, retaining lawyers? What is your biggest tip for those people? My, my biggest, my number one tip is find the person who's not afraid to tell you no, I love that. To me, that's huge. Because there are so many lawyers who will gladly tell you everything you want to hear and promise you the sun and the moon and the stars, and they're gonna go and get some extreme result and make all of these promises. Only to completely fail on delivery because everything they were promising was not realistic to begin with. Or they'll talk a really sweet game on how, oh yeah, your evidence sounds so great and we can do this and we can do that. But they ha they never inform you that wait a second, none of that's ever actually gonna come in.'cause it's all hearsay or it's all speculation or it's all just. Inconsequential, irrelevant. And so you want somebody, I think, who is going to listen to what your case is. I'm going to be very realistic that, hey, this is what the statute says. This is most likely the outcome. This judge tends to do X, Y, and Z. These things that you hope that you're going to get most likely are not going to happen because of X, Y, and Z. These things that you think are great pieces of evidence, not so much because of these rules of evidence, and sorry to be the, bearer of bad news. But if you wanna come on board with me, I'll gladly represent you, but it's. It's going to be this and it's going to be very realistic and reality based. If you have a lawyer who's going to put the risk upfront of not signing you up as a client because they're going to tell you the truth, that's probably the person you want, and that is such a valuable piece of information. I just had a member who just had to hire a new lawyer. He was very firm with her. He was very, honest and said, this is what we can do. This is what we can't do. And I was like, this guy is a winner. Perfect. This is a person who's gonna help you. So I love that piece of information. So now we've talked a little bit about the starting, and most people believe that when you leave an abusive relationship, the abuse ends when the relationship ends. But if you've dealt with this super fun personality, you actually know the reality is very far from that belief. It is post separation abuse. Because the relationship continues. There's no such thing as the relationship ends, it just transforms. Into a different form, so you relate in a different way. And so they tend to be very creative and though they will find new ways to torture people whether it's through using the kids, through using communication, bombing you with critical communication, financial abuse slandering you online, there are all sorts of endless ways that they'll just. Change the game to something else, but you are still in relationship with them in one form or another. They're just, masters at being creative to continue manipulating the power and trying to maintain control and inflict as much damage on you as possible. Those are two key words, power and control. That's the premise of all abusive relationship is power and control. And just because your marriage might have ended doesn't mean their need to control you and exert dominance and power over you diminishes. It just morphs. It just changes. It does. And what I see a lot of times is it morphs and it changes, and now they have the added toys of running up your bills by bringing you into court. And they can use the court's power sometimes to actually. Effectuate further abuse. Yeah. So now they can find ways to, get their stamp of approval. They can get their validation when they get away with their behaviors in front of the court. And then if they can lie and manipulate and change the the evidence or the argument and convince the court that you've done something wrong when you haven't, then they have the state or local sanctioned power to punish you for things you've never done. So it, it also gives them some additional tools to inflict more damage. And even if they never take you back to court, just the threat of it. How many of your clients, how many of my clients, how many of my followers have been threatened? If you don't do this, if you don't comply with my last minute request, I'm gonna bring it to court. I'm gonna file a new motion. Yeah. That is always the, the stick in the background where they're, oh, don't make, I could always do this. Don't make me do this. They, and they do that to, evoke fear, and that's control through fear. So it's not, we need to make a decision based on. What's actually before us and make a decision that's actually best for the child, based on reality or the circumstances. If you don't do what I want, then, this is the way that I'm going to punish and control you. Yeah. Now, that kind of brings me into my next area, which is also an area of expertise. You've written about this, which is parallel parenting in an ideal relationship you would co-parent. But the premise of co-parenting means that have to come together in agreement and do things that are truly in your children's best interest. That also means being able to communicate, to take ownership for when you're wrong. And respecting your children's other parent and their time and their energy, their finances, which obviously is the opposite of what a narcissistic counter parent will do. They're only ever able to counter parent. They don't know how to co-parent. So what do we do? The solution is parallel parenting. So anytime you have somebody who is, either highly narcissistic, I always define that as a loose term of they have a lot of the traits. Maybe they're diagnosed, maybe they're diagnosable, maybe they just have enough of the traits to be that much of a pain in the rear. It doesn't matter. When they are acting that way and having those behaviors. That's the end of our analysis of whether they're quote, narcissistic or not. That can also be true for people who fall into the general bucket of cluster B personality disorders. Yeah. Antisocial, histrionic borderline. And then also situations where there's a history of domestic violence and then any sort of active addiction. Issues. Really getting into parallel parenting is going to be the way to navigate that. And the premise of parallel parenting is basically you're going to, you're gonna stay outta my home. I'm gonna focus on my home, my reality, the things that I can control. Then acknowledging that the other person, they're in control of themselves, their home, their decisions, and drawing that very clear line between our reality and their reality. They're responsible for their side of the fence. We are responsible for our side of the fence and as parallel lines trying to just not intersect or cross over at all. And so when there's that clear inability to. Collaborate when the other person clearly doesn't have any interest in listening, when there's not really a way to make collaborative decisions or things that are going to be agreed upon without significant disagreement and conflict and expense and trauma to the child and everything else, that's when you just say, you know what? I am going to be the master of my world, and you can be the master of yours. And unless there's something that forces us to have to really interact or communicate, we're just not, and it's. About peace of mind. Yeah. It's about creating really firm boundaries around your time. And yes, it sucks. You have no control over what they do or don't do in their home, and that is the con. If you've dealt with this type of personality, you can't control them. No matter what you say, they're gonna do the opposite. So it's focusing more on what you can do, on what you can control, which at the end of the day is you. Your home, your parenting, how you show up for your kids, what you do for them. It's very much like parallel play with young kids in the sandbox, right? They're together, but they're not together and they just do their own thing. And for those, you touched upon something when you were describing parallel parenting and. It's something that a lot of people have a hard time with. We have court orders and parenting plans, and we have to make decisions. And oftentimes it's joint decision making. So you both have to come to agreement, be it education, health therapy, dental, whatever you name it. And what do you and I, and everybody who's listening know. Are these people, prone to being accommodating and saying, yeah, little Harry does actually need therapy, and you just give me some, therapist recommendations and we'll just agree on one of the three. Do they do that? Oh no. What's the fun in that? There's no fun in that. There's no fun in just doing that. That would just be easy and that would actually be in the child's best interests. So there is no fun in that. So what can people do when they're going through this to try to limit that as a roadblock?'cause that will always be a roadblock. Anytime you say, Hey, they need braces. There's another legal battle if they need therapy, which I think everyone should be in therapy, and children, especially when they have a course of controlling parent on one end, should definitely benefit from therapy as well. But they will always put up roadblocks. They will always make it difficult. Why?'cause they enjoy this chaos. They enjoy this game. It's a game to them, and they need to win. That's exactly right. So one of the ways that we try to control for that is as early as possible adjust the language concerning decision making to either, give one person the vested final decision making power, which a lot of times the other side, of course is not gonna wanna ever give that up unless you're forced to. Or you can put in what's called tiebreaker language. The tiebreaker language tends to be a lot more effective, and that would say, alright, the parents have to confer. It's a joint decision for psychological care, for instance, or invasive medical procedures. And in the event that they cannot reach an agreement, then they will turn to the recommendation of the pediatrician. Or they will turn to the recommendation of the current therapist on, duration or transfer of care, whatever have you. And putting in that neutral tiebreaker a lot of times can be very helpful because then it, it becomes a matter of, if dad wants X and mom wants Y what does the pediatrician say? The pediatrician says, yeah, the tonsils do have to come out. So yeah, that's option Y. That's, let's go with that. And then that gives you at least something that if you have to push back and have a hearing on it, you know that you have a professional recommendation behind you that the court is going to side with because the language of the order sides with that. The other thing is, what we end up having to do in a number of cases is move from joint decision making to giving one parent the final decision making power. And a lot of times that kind of, that requires the establishment of a pattern of obstruction or a pattern of behavior. That then warrants the court to limit decision making power for one parent and give the other parent that final call. And usually you have to get that nice clear pattern of, mom or dad obstructing, creating problems, creating all sorts of needless litigation that actually negatively affects the children. And if you can show that over, a span of time and through a number of incidents, we've had a number of cases, one just the other week that we took to trial and took final decision making away from one parent and vested it solely in my client. So it amazing. It is possible. You just, you need to be able to show that pattern of naughty behavior and obstruction over time. And then show the judge, look, if this continues. If the child is already having problems or is already, suffering in some ways, and that will continue. So we need to make a change and judges will do it. A win for one is a win for all. So it's so nice to hear these positive outcomes for protective parents and their children. And that leads me into my next area. You talked about showing the patterns of behavior. Because we don't label in court, we don't talk about this person as being narcissistic, and it's really more for us just to make sense of what we're experiencing. But in court we show patterns of behavior and how do we show patterns of behavior through documentation. As a lawyer, what would you like all of the people who have lawyers to do in terms of their documentation? What makes it easier for you? Oh, God. A thousand pages of text messages just emailed to you or put in a binder and you just have to go through. Oh, that's the worst thing ever. No. Now they, they're granted, there are lots of law firms that love that and they're like, yes, send me everything. Send me. And why do they want that? Because it's time is money. That's it. That's absolutely it. And I had a case recently where the other side had their hundreds and hundreds of pages of messages and documentation and everything else, and they ran up this just$60,000 bill on the opposing party. And I'm sitting there at the other table, just, scratching my head because I'm like, oh, wow. They took advantage of that guy, like from the moment he came in the door. But it's, so much of it was just reviewing all this voluminous documentation and I went through the same stuff, but I just told my client, look, you know your case far better than I do. Zero me in. I want things that say this or look like this. Or, a smoking gun would be something like they say X, Y, or Z. You go. Look through it all, and then give me what you think is just the shining example because you know this person best. You know the situation and the context. So instead of me playing, needle in a haystack for$500 an hour, go make yourself a cup of tea and then report back to me and it's gonna save you a ton of money. And sure enough, my clients are able to zero in on those really great little nuggets and just give me those with, here's the reference point in these documents and then I can use that. So that saves a ton of money when people know the content of their own documentation. Yeah. Instead of just dumping it on me and be like you're the lawyer. You go figure it out. It's I don't know. Your full situation. Yeah. You're the expert on you and your situation, not me. And so when you can come in there and you've already run that analysis of, these are the high quality sound bites, these are the. Best example lines of them being belligerent or manipulative or threatening. Here's where they're cursing me out. Here's where they're lying and I busted them on it, and you've got that just bookmarked. That is gold. That's gonna save you a ton of money. That's going to flow directly into my cross-examination outline, and I'm gonna be loaded for bearer and be able to really go, effectively represent you because you've laid such a beautiful foundation. And what I really like about that is that. You pointed out survivors are their own best experts. They know this better than anybody else. And yes, it can be very triggering to go back through text and documentation and compile stuff to create that pattern of behavior. But it can also be very empowering because it validates your experience. It shows you that, Hey, I wasn't making this up. I'm not being high maintenance. This person literally financially abuses me this. Person literally puts the children in the middle of every conflict we've ever had. This person, refuses to comply with our order or files, countless motion after countless motion. And so it's very validating, can be very empowering and I love the fact that you put it back on people to take ownership for their own case. You. You take what they present you and you come up with strategies in order to effectively represent them in court. But if they can also give you the information that shows these patterns, that is like a one two punch. Yeah. Absolutely. And talking about them being their own advocates and I, there are so many times where clients will do that and they'll come back to me and they'll be able to say, here is X, Y, and Z and here are the examples. And they can really spell it out in a very concise, effective way. And it's it just jumps off the page at them and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm not crazy. I've re, I've taken this thousand page thing and I've reduced it to these 20 points, and holy cow, just those 20 points tells a very clear and compelling story, and then I'm able to pick that up. And do a cross-examination or really just, nail the other party to the wall based on what they said and what they did. And it, it's very empowering for the client. It's like they can reduce this huge thing down to something very manageable, very effective. And then they can see it used. In an effective way for them to get them the result they want. Then they say, look, I wasn't crazy. And it's so clear. It's yeah, it's clear. It's clear as day. You did a great, yeah, you did a great job reducing it. And it does, it just, it jumps right off the page when you can extract. That data and show a clear pattern of bad behavior. It's essentially, and I'm gonna age myself here, I don't know if kids still have this Kohl's notes. It's like the Kohl's notes version of your history with this person, and it's pulling out the highlights, right? It's not all the thousand times that they've done this, but the key times, and it's really creating an airtight, very succinct but clear pattern of behavior, right? You have given us so many nuggets in this short amount of time. Is there anything that you, any further tips or any last minute tips or tricks or tools or strategies for those protective parents who are either in court, out of court, but still stuck in that counter parenting chaos, that narcissistic personalities love to create? I would say the foundational thing for me in so many of my coaching sessions and everything, the foundational thing is helping. The survivor reclaimed some sort of confidence. And that's really I think, the most powerful antidote to the narcissistic exes, the narcissistic co-parents schemes and their poison is reclaiming that sense of confidence in yourself, where you can stand there and say, you know what? I'm complying with the order. I am doing all the things that I'm supposed to do and I'm doing them incredibly well, and I'm showing up for my children and I'm doing these great things by and for them, and I am I'm untouchable and they can lie about me. They can try to throw whatever mud. But I'm not creating evidence for them. I'm not breaching any of the orders and giving them any sort of in any sort of ammunition against me. And when you can really get confident in your parenting and your position before the court, that's a very liberating space and that is a really great space in which to do your next steps of healing. So just as much as you can get in and give yourself some props of, Hey, I, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. I am online, I am showing up, loving the children. They are, taken care of and supported and well fed and everything else on my time and under my roof. That's where you really start reclaiming things. We can talk strategy all day long, but one of the hearts of the matter is reclaiming your own confidence as a parent. And as a person, because so much of as Oh, absolutely. So much of abuse is about mi like totally minimizing who you are, taking away your agency, your sense of, ability in yourself, your confidence in who you are. And that's the effects of abuse, manipulation, gaslighting, vo, you name it, they do it. And a huge part of healing is just. Really learning to mute them. They like to create lots of noise and exhaust you, but if you can mute them and just they become background noise, they become like a fly around ointment is what I refer to them with my clients. They come to me and they're like this big bad boogeyman and by the end of our time together, I want my clients to look at their exes, like a fly around ointment. They're there, they're annoying but they're really just. No, there's no consequence. They're of no consequence and they really don't have the impact that you have been led to believe. Yeah. That's good. That's good. So thank you so much, Carl, for coming on today, for taking the time out of your incredibly full life to be here and to impart all these amazing nuggets. They're like littered throughout this entire 30 plus minute conversation. I'm so thankful. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Survivor's Playbook. If today's episode help you feel less alone, more clear, confident, empowered, or more educated, please share it with someone else who may also need the same validation. And if you're ready for deeper support, you can join my monthly membership or grab free tools on my website. All links are provided in the show notes. Remember, your clarity is your power. You're calm is your resistance. You are not crazy. You are not alone, and you are not powerless. Until next time, keep going. I see you.