Is your ex tracking you? Surveillance, stalking and safety when leaving

Trigger warning: This episode contains discussion of domestic and family violence, including coercive controlling behaviour. Support is available - links below.

Ex-detective Anthony Macklin has seen it all – burner phones hidden behind lounge furniture, spy apps that disappear from your screen but keep recording, tracking devices in children's teddy bears. In this episode, he breaks down how surveillance and stalking happen during separation, the signs to watch for, what Australian law actually says, and the practical steps every woman should take to protect herself before and after leaving.

This is a conversation every woman going through separation needs to hear – especially if you think it could never happen to you.

Important: If you feel unsafe at any time, call 000 in Australia; 911 in the US, and 999 in the UK. (Call your local emergency number if you're outside of those areas.) It's better to feel foolish than it is to be even slightly at risk. That's what emergency services are for.

In this episode

• How common surveillance becomes during separation – and why it doesn't only happen in obviously controlling relationships
• The technology being used: spy apps, dash cams, vehicle tracking, burner phones, hidden cameras, and more
• The signs you might be being tracked (including signs that have nothing to do with technology)
• The "Trojan horse" — what to check when your kids come back from your ex's place
• What to do if you suspect your phone has been compromised
• What the law says about surveillance (and what is okay and not okay if you're keeping tabs of your ex)
• How to build a credible evidence record
• What to set up before you leave: safe devices, safe accounts, safe network
  
  Resources and support
• 1800RESPECT (national, 24/7): 1800 737 732; https://1800respect.org.au/
• Emergency: 000
• Anthony Macklin / Rampart Consulting: https://rampart.com.au/
• Services Australia (family payments, child care subsidy): servicesaustralia.gov.au

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Before we get into today's episode, a quick note. Today we're talking about surveillance, stalking, and controlling behaviour in relationships. If that's something you're never getting right now or you have in the past, please take care of yourself as you listen and know that support is available. There are details of support services in the show notes. Today's guest is Anthony Macklin. Anthony is a former detective inspector with New South Wales Police whose career spans some of the most serious and complex areas of policing, sex crimes and child exploitation investigations. These days, Anthony works with frontline domestic violence support agencies and family lawyers. He sweeps homes and cars for listening devices, checks phones for surveillance apps, gathers evidence for family court, and helps women build safety plans when they're leaving or thinking about leaving a relationship. I really wanted to bring Anthony on because this is something we don't talk about enough. A lot of us go into separation assuming our ex will behave reasonably, and often they do, which is great, but sometimes they don't. And the technology available to someone who wants to track your movements, listen to your conversations, or read your messages is cheap. It's widely available, and it is genuinely alarming. I asked Anthony on today to walk us through what surveillance during separation can look like, from spy apps that hide on your phone to tracking devices in your children's belongings, and the signs to watch out for, what the Australian law says about what you can and can't do, and the practical steps you can take right now to protect yourself. This is not a conversation designed to frighten you. It's a conversation that I think is really important to have because its information might matter. Let's get into it. I'm Carolyn Tate, founder of Women's Divorce Academy, and your guide to turning your divorce into the best thing that ever happened to you. This is Divorce with Carolyn. Anthony, thank you for joining us today. I'm going to jump straight into the questions because I think we've got a lot to cover. From your experience, how common is it for surveillance and monitoring to become an issue when a relationship breaks down?

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Look, I think today we need to understand that the technology is so prevalent and relatively cheap. You have to assume that you're being surveilled in some way, shape, or form, especially if you've noticed any kind of controlling behavior before, or if you feel like that person is going to respond in a negative way. Whoever that might be, but I mean you that's the technological side of it. Physical surveillance and stalking is still unfortunately, as as we all very well know, quite prevalent in the community.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

And I know you just alluded to controlling behavior there. Are there particular sorts of relationships or particular demographics that it happens to? Is you know, is there any indication when someone's going through a breakup that maybe their ex is going to be someone that does that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Yeah, look, I think one of the things you want to look for is someone who's probably shown indicators of controlling behaviour beforehand, jealousy. Look, I think you you have to understand the person the person you lived with is not always the person you're they're gonna be when you break up. So what I have seen is people that were seemingly in a happy relationship but just went separate ways, and the other side of the relationship didn't much seem to care until the separation came to bear, and then after all of that, then they wanted to know who was around, what was the person doing, wanted to keep tabs on them, and and whether that's just a a fleeting response in the that you know the agitation of the moment of separation or whether that's an ongoing thing that is being persistent throughout the relationship, and you don't know how someone's gonna take take it. So when you're looking at separation, um I like to be prepared and be considering all options rather than just assuming that it's gonna be fine. Um and oftentimes the mental health effects that has on people that are suffering from that later on who all of a sudden they believe every move is being watched, everything they're doing is being questioned, they don't know where to turn for help, they don't know who they can trust. Um that's gonna stick with them for a long time and make that separation process so much more difficult for them in the long run.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Yeah. So what sort of surveillance are we are we talking about here? What do you see most commonly being used?

SPEAKER_01 4:37

I I think you have to open your mind to the fact that it doesn't always have to be high-tech and it doesn't always have to be particularly covert. And what I mean by that is we run checks for uh frontline DV uh support agencies, and sometimes we're being asked by those agencies to say go and check a car and they say, Look, the the other individual, the the offending party knows every move they're making, seems to know about conversations that are that are happening in the car, and we go there and we check the car, and we say, Yeah, there's absolutely no tracking device in the car. But you've got a dash cam and the dash cam has GPS location on it, and it also records a voice. And they're able to access the dash cam remotely. There's also things, for example, um a lot of higher-end cars have built-in tracking apps. So you think about your BMWs, Mercedes, and things like that, they have apps that allow you to track the car and know where the car is. Well, if they've ever had access to that vehicle, then they've probably got the app and can see what's happening. But also, if anybody is interested, jump on eBay, Amazon, do a little bit of a check for nanny cams, spy cams. You'll see there's a lot of innocent looking items that can be hidden in plain view that record and v videotape what's going on in the location. Now, and then going back to that point of simplicity, one of the one of the ways I saw this being done, which I had to applaud the ingenuity, although despise the action, was this individual had bought a burner phone, he'd connected it to a uh to the uh charger and plugged it into the wall and hidden it under a like a just a nest of tables right beside the the lounge in the in the ladies' lounge room and she had a flatmate. So all he would do is he set that phone to sil ring silently, and he set it to answer af after uh two rings. So whenever he drove past and he saw the lights on, he would just ring the phone and listen in. And then next time he was conversing with her, he'd let her know that he could knew this or knew that. Now, she didn't know whether to trust a flatmate, she didn't know what was going on in the in the unit. She thought that, you know, obviously he's got a this crazy device everywhere, but he's just used a very simple methodology to pull it together. Having said that, though, we also see the the reverse end of that where you see people trying to hack into devices, you see people getting into phones, um, particularly phones. There's it's very easy now to get apps that are sold as parenting apps, but are really designed to stalk and uh keep tabs on an individual. And effectively, not only will they do that under a subscription basis, they will do that and teach you how to add it onto the phone, then remove its presence from the phone. So you even though it's an app, you won't see it. So you go through and have a look, it's not there, you get concerns. What's everybody do when you get a new phone? You do the smart switch, you switch it over, it moves exactly with from one phone to the next, they've still got it. That element of stalking behavior will and methodology will continue in place until you get a brand new phone, don't do anything with it. Like don't do the smart switch. And as long as they they're maintaining that subscription, it'll keep going. And the scary thing is some of those ones will you don't have to be using the phone. They can be recording the voice around it, recording video around it. They'll get messages or your messages or your emails, even listening to and record your voice, voice activated calls. It's it's quite scary what is available out there and very cheap.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

That is very scary. Just the idea that you can't even see the app on your phone is a really alarming. How do people find out it's on their phone? Is there a way of finding out?

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Yes, so I uh I have a I'm not the tech guy in my in my outfit. I have a guy that deals in our cyber response. Uh, but effectively what we do is get the phone in or the or the laptop or the say an iPad or a tablet, and then we run checks on it. But it's not just as simple as going and having a look. You've really got to do like a a forensic download of it, then go through looking at different codes, looking for this and that, and trying to identify if it's on there, and sometimes we can tell if it's not there now, but it has been before. So that's that's one of the other things we can do there. I should say one point to mention for people if they are looking at separation is if they've got if their family is using one of the parenting or family apps like Life 360 and things like that, make sure they clear that off their phone. Because that again is a simple thing that was put in place when things were good, and then it obviously gets used in a malicious way later on. So just a quick tip if anybody's using that and is lit looking to leave.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Yeah, yeah, good advice. And so apart from obviously you've mentioned laptops and phones, are there other you know common devices that can be tapped into, like, you know, smart home devices, air tags, that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_01 9:55

Yes, yeah. So look, with regards to air tags, what you it's not exactly air tags, but what we see is a number of different methodologies used. So um I always say to people, if you've already separated and you've got uh child visitation, be careful of the Trojan horse effect. So, you know, we've seen devices put inside teddy bears, we've seen the kids' iPad getting uh hacked. We'll see it put in, you know, backpacks and things like that. The other thing you'll notice is sometimes you can get devices that uh effectively look like a USB drive, like a thumb drive, but they've got 60 hours worth of voice activated recording. So you'll find that they might be in a bag or inside a toy, and then because that's going between houses, effectively they're able to download that and listen to it at a later stage. But look, other devices we're seeing, there's there's simple things like um everybody would have seen, well, I assume everybody would have seen, maybe you haven't. There's hidden cameras that you can design and put into smoke detectors, into um wall charges for phones, into um clocks. Really, they they even sell DIY uh camera kits so that you can create your own pinhole camera and put it together for in whatever purpose you want, which means you can effectively create something that looks like it fits into the environment that you're aware of, and most people aren't going to check their house for a device until they start recognizing the signs and develop some concerns. But the list is endless, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Yeah, that's really scary. So what apart from I know you mentioned, you know, a an ex, you know, talking about things that they know that they shouldn't know, but apart from that, are there any other signs to look for that maybe you are being surveilled in some way?

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Look, most of the time people that are coming to us are saying that it seems like the former partner knows more than they should. The other thing I would say is start looking for things that are preemptive, i.e., it may not be that they know more than they should, but you all of a sudden your lawyer gets a letter from the other side, and that seems to be just about a topic of conversation you had recently, or we're about to send a letter to them and they've preempted it. So we see that at times. Sometimes it'll be when you see your ex or friends of your ex or the same person that you don't really know appearing in all the same locations as you are. It seems to be one of those things we see with domestic violence offenders that they like to just appear at the same location you are at the exact same time, even if it's not part of your routine. So it could be at the coffee shop when you're having a coffee with the your girlfriends, or they're at the shop, so they just seem to know that you're at mum and dad's place and they drive past mum and dad's place. They're not actually saying anything to you, but you're seeing them at a lot of the same times and places where you are, that is definitely a an alarm bell for you that you're being tracked.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

And if you do find yourself in that sort of situation, what should you do?

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Look, I guess first of all, start having a bit of a look around in if you've got kids, look at their toys, look at their devices. Don't let devices go between homes. I know it's expensive, but you can effectively have the kids have all their own apps and everything on their device at your place as they do at the other partner's place. So I recommend that. Your kids are always gonna have uh favorite teddy bears or something. If you can help it, try to keep the soft toys in again. You keep yours at home, they keep theirs at home. Let them have their favorite one, two, or three. But when they come back, just give them a bit of a pat down and a rub and a squeeze to see if you can feel anything in them. If you are certain that something is on your phone, one of the things you can do if you're looking for safety and privacy there is effectively you create your own Faraday box, which is just a funny way of saying prevent any signals from coming out of the phone, wrap it in foil numerous times. If you wrap it in foil with two, three layers, close it up, then you know at that point in time that phone is not tracking you. And it's not because it can't get signal in or out. So at that point in time, you're pretty safe with regards to tracking and recording, etc. And then you should be safe for that point. One of the things we like to do, however, is sometimes when we know that something is going on, whether it be a tracker on the car, a listening device in the home, or something on the phone, is we know it's there and now our client knows it's there, but the offender doesn't. So this means you can create your own campaign of misinformation. So you start sending them down the primrose path one way while you're setting up a different direction. And that's that confuses them and gives you more opportunity to escape and get out.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

And is there any point in going to the police at this stage if you know you're being listened to but you don't know how? Or do you need to figure it out first? Will the police take that seriously?

SPEAKER_01 15:10

My experience has been, unfortunately, and having been a police officer for a long time, when you walk into a police station and say, I'm being listened to, um, and there's hidden cameras and hidden bugs, they tend to lean towards a mental health assessment before they lean towards domestic violence legislation. And and look, that's premised in there to defend the police, they get a lot of those kinds of people that uh ring up and say there's laser beams and things and whatever else coming into their head. But also understand police haven't been trained in what a listening device looks like. They don't understand it. So they hear about it but they don't see it. And because they haven't seen it and police always think they've seen it all because they've seen an awful lot, they tend to think it doesn't exist. So what we found is the best thing for us to do is to find it first and then bring it forward to the police. And also remember as well, police don't have the equipment to find it, they don't understand what they're looking for. They have a very small cyber unit, which is usually just retrieving evidence off phones and other devices for other crimes. So even if they did have that, they wouldn't be able to get to it for months. So what we tend to do is we find the evidence and then we bring it forward with you. We also advise police on what the offence is. I've had a couple of times where we've been into the police stations and they didn't realise it was an offence and under what act it came under. So again, it's that thing where you have to have really been a detective to understand there's these different offences that take place or are codified in law and how it works. And so that's one of the things that helps us help you is going with you into the police station or being able to tell you what to say when you get there so they take you seriously.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Yeah, which is you know, because you've got nothing else to do, right, when you're going through a divorce or a session, that sounds like a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Unfortunately, look, the police are overworked, under resourced um in pretty much every state now. But they've got a very high turnover of staff now. And so you've got these young people that don't want to look stupid and lose face, and they're answering questions, and they really don't have any background for it in these particular instances. And it's we if you've lived a normal life, you have a lot of faith in police, you go there and you get turned around and you feel like they're the authority. So oftentimes I've had victims walk out saying, Look, I I went to the police and I felt like I was a paranoid individual walking out, and then I waited weeks before I came to anyone else to get help because I thought it was just me. And that's not what you want. I'm sure that's not what the police intended, but it happens.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Yeah, and you know, especially I think if you've been in that controlling sort of situation, you you already doubt yourself a lot and and question everything, so it's understandable that people would feel that way. What protections does Australian law actually give women in this situation?

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Okay, so there's it's codified under a number of different acts, but look, if we take just New South Wales, where we're I'm specialise in under the Surveillance Devices Act, you're not allowed to record a private conversation if you're not a party to it. And even if you are a party to it, you're not allowed to do it covertly unless you've got a number of you know, there's there's defenses to it. For example, if you felt like you had to protect your interests and you were a party to that conversation, then you may, emphasis on may, have a legal right to record it. But effectively in this instance, if anybody's tracking you, taking video of you without your permission, without your knowledge, they're committing an offence under the Surveillance Devices Act. Step then in also into domestic violence legislation. So, you know, your coercive controlling kind of legislation would cover this. Um that also comes into a into a if nothing else, it certainly comes under stalking and intimidation. So it would fall under that as well. And look, even if you don't formally qualify for a domestic violence type offence, stalking intimidation and the Surveillance Devices Act in New South Wales would cover it.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Now let's uh flip that on its head a little bit. If a woman suspects her ex is, say, hiding assets or doing something that might affect her children's safety, are there circumstances where she can use surveillance to find out more?

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Yeah, very good question. We do work with a lot of family lawyers in this space because people come to investigators like ourselves. I mean, well, we're consultants, but we do what we call litigation support, which is finding assets and doing the background inquiries and investigations for solicitors. And so in this space, we tend to get people contacting us trying to prove that someone's cheating. And I say to people, if you think your other half is cheating, you don't need me, you need a family lawyer, you need a family counselor. Don't waste your money on someone to investigate these things. However, where we are very useful is working in those spaces where you do have concerns for your child's safety, where you do have concerns that perhaps your ex-partner is hiding the fact that they're working and earning more money or they have more assets. So we will go through and do asset tracking and checking. We utilize formal surveillance, so more like you'd expect to see with following people in cars and taking video evidence and things like that. And in doing that, we've had a number of successes. To give you examples, we've been able to track people going to and from work when they said they were unemployed, but they were getting cash in hand, and that's for things like child support agency or when they've made an affidavit to the family court and then we can prove that they've lied. But potentially one of the one of the more important elements is child safety. We had a case not so long ago where it was a father that was worried about his ex-wife's new partner. The new partner had a history of violent offenses and convictions. She gave an affidavit to the court saying he's never alone with the children, he never babysits the children, and she was always there, and very rarely were the children and him in the same place, even with her. He and his solicitor had strong doubts about this from some of the things the kids had said. So, under a letter of instruction, we did some surveillance across two, three weeks. Um, we were able to show that he was at times the primary carer for the kids, alone all day with them, out and about, back at home, mother was out working, he wasn't, and effectively that client of ours got full custody of the child because of that, and based on the fact that the person that was looking after the children had an extensive criminal history. And that's something that I think a lot of people don't think about. They tend to say, Well, ask the children. Children have difficulty explaining themselves and articulating themselves, and they also often under duress from one. One stakeholder in this process. So the independent surveillance video really gives good weight for the court to make the decision, and we don't decide what's there, we just provide the evidence, the judge makes the call, and it's clear for all to see. So I think that's one of the best ways you can use us in family court matters.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Definitely. And what would you say to a woman who's tempted to do her own digging, things like going through someone's phone, checking their accounts, tracking their location?

SPEAKER_01 22:28

I would remind them under the Crimes Act 1900 in New South Wales, it's an offence, right? Here's one of the things people don't think about when they're when they're leaving an employer, when they're trying to dig dirt on their on their other half. If you access someone's data, and data has a very broad meaning, but that could be phone records, emails, anything of that nature, any files or folders on their phone, you've accessed data illegally, and that has a prison sentence attached to it, quite a hefty one. If you change anything, that virtually doubles that. And remember, everything you do usually leaves a digital signature on the device. So you're not going to be able to easily make that disappear. Now the last thing you want is to end up in a court matter and have especially a family court matter and be going through a criminal matter at the same time. Where you could have been the victim of family violence, but now you look like you're the criminal and the other person's perfect, and we don't want that to happen. I think if you've got concerns, first of all, if you don't have trust in your in your relationship, you don't have a relationship. Go see your counsellor, go work on that, if that doesn't work. Look, gather the resources, you know, just like going through the divorce academy, etc. Get the advice, go see your family lawyer, get your ducks in a row. But I I think it's funny how many times I have women coming asking if somehow I can help them put apps on a phone to check on their cheating partner. And I'm like, no, you just it's not gonna work, and you something's gonna go bad. And also, I'm not gonna put myself in that position. I don't want them in that position. But I understand where it comes from. We all want to make sure that we're we're being everybody's being honest. There's nothing worse than being cheated on.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

And I think, you know, the the biggest one I I think for a lot of mums as well is is the safety of their kids and and as you say, I think getting professional help there is is the best course of action.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

It is a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Now, if someone's in a position where, you know, suspect somebody is that they're being surveilled or they're going through, you know, potentially the family court and they've got some issues, who do they call first? I mean, do they call someone like you first? Do they call should they also be involving their lawyer, the police, you know, um domestic violence support? Because it seems like there's a suite of people that can help in different ways. Is there an order in which you think you should do that?

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Uh look, I think when you're gonna go talk to the police, it comes to a point of you really want to have something substantive in in place to be able to point to and say, this happened and that needs action. If you go into the police and you don't have something like that, I feel like you just can get turned around. Lawyers are a good place to start, but remember they're experts in family law in the court. I'm surprised at how many I've worked with that don't understand how to like getting safety strategies in place and educating people and understanding what's available to them, they don't they don't have that. So there are frontline DV support services that we work with that can give you support and advice, and if need be they will help you escape violence, they will help you move on. And even if you don't fit their criteria, they've usually got a lot of resources and elements they can point you towards. The other thing is that Rampart Consulting, look, I'm happy to take the call, give you a bit of advice over the phone and point in the right direction. Look, sometimes people ring me and they don't realise that what they've seen and experienced constitutes an offense. So I can say to them, look, just take that straight to the police and say this and this so that they understand the gravity of it. Other times it's a matter of, look, let us do it, do some checking for you, see what we can find. If someone's being stalked and followed, it's very hard to prove that, generally. But there are strategies we can put in place to make sure that we can prove that. And it gets a little bit tricky and there's a little bit of covert, black ops, G14 classified kind of stuff that I won't go into here, but it's um we have a strategy that we put in place and it tends to work pretty well. And in so doing that, we are usually able to prove that someone is stalking them because again, most people we know that stalking exists in the world and especially in domestic and family violence. However, it's often only after something terrible has happened that you see the charges laid. And so what we try to do is provide the evidence the police need to prove it before something bad happens.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

I think in that situation too, especially if someone's been in a controlling situation for a long time, even though they're leaving the relationship or in the process of leaving the relationship, and we know that's a dangerous time for a lot of women, you know, I think a lot of that behaviour is normalized so much that maybe it's hard to notice at first. Is there would you recommend doing something like keeping a journal of, you know, say for instance, if you feel like you're being stalked and they keep showing up, should you keep a journal of it? Should you keep other records, take photos, take videos?

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Yes, absolutely. The thing to remember is that oftentimes this behavior moves in a slippery slope. It starts a little bit and then it gets worse and worse. And because it's graduating, you don't always notice it happening, so to speak. So one of the things I recommend for people to do, if it's safe to do so, is to do a chronology. So even if ultimately what works really well for us and for your lawyer is in a spreadsheet. Date, time, here's what happened, and a so what. Why is this relevant? That is also really good evidence because it's contemporaneous notes take to the police. Now, if you can't do this in your situation, I would see see if you can find a trusted friend or individual that you can communicate with and then send them a WhatsApp message or some other message, and then as soon as they give it a thumbs up, they're recording it for you with time date and everything else, then delete the message. And it doesn't necessarily have to be WhatsApp, but it can be something else that works. And send it to them, and then you've got not only here's what I said, but you've got someone else that witnessed that hey, she told me this at this time. So it's not just that you made it up on a Friday night after you've had a couple of uh drinks and you're aren't happy with your ex-part.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

This all sounds really scary, and you know, that's it's a fact of life that for a lot of people this is reality. Have you seen what happens on the other side when people deal with all of this? Give us some good news stories.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

Look, uh so part of what we do, and and to explain Rampart Consulting is effectively we're all ex-police here. We're a very small firm, but we're we're ex-detectives, generally see more senior police, and we specialise in security risk management and that litigation support, that investigation space. So um, when I'm not working with people that are struggling with separation or family violence, I'm working in the corporate sector. So we're clearing, doing bug sweeps for boardrooms. I'm doing security risk management advice for corporate executives and billionaires. So from that perspective, what we tend to do is if you feel like there's something going on, we look at the holistic space and we're trained in threat management, so we understand that look, we know that once someone is on a path of intended violence, we need to monitor them and see where they're going with that. And we're looking for triggers on how to step up your security or decrease it as required. We know at certain times through a family law process you're more likely to be targeted than not. We know that in the first 12 months after you leave is probably the hottest time period that you need to be worried about, and specifically in that first kind of three months. Um so we spend a lot of time trying to work with you on strategies and make you feel safe. And the best way we do that is trying to make you feel safe at home, knowing what to do, what to look for, knowing that you've got a safe space that is clean and clear, and you can go and put your feet up and relax and know that no one's coming in, no one's listening. And I think that's one of the best things we do. From our perspective, we've worked with a lot of people that have really struggled with some very nasty individuals, and we can't protect them from everything, but we've been able to get good traction with police, we've been able to make sure that they were safe, and we've been able to help them get the right outcome for them and their children at court because we're able to get the evidence and give them peace of mind. When you constantly have someone that's keeping you off balance and off-kilter, as so many of these offenders do, once you've got clarity and peace of mind, you can actually get your thoughts together to push back, and that's what we want to give you that peace of mind and that clarity, so you can start taking the fight to them, so to speak, in family law.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

I love that, and I think it's so important, isn't it, to for everyone to feel like they have a safe space in their own home. And that's really especially if you've been in a in a relationship that makes you feel unsafe, it's you know, every woman deserves that, so that's a wonderful thing to be able to deliver. What would you say to somebody who's either thinking about leaving or in those early stages of leaving about what they can do now to shore up their security?

SPEAKER_01 31:49

Look, first and foremost, I would say be look, the the simplest way is as soon as you leave or as soon as you're thinking of leaving, if you can have a parent or a friend have a new email account and phone set up, set up individual bank accounts in your name somewhere else. And look, this is perfect world. I don't get me wrong, I understand there's a lot of people that can't do this or they can only do elements of it. But perfect world, have a safe phone, a safe email account, a safe laptop, everything ready to go from the time you walk out. If you can put some money together in a in a hidey hole, I'm not talking about halve the assets and walk out with them because you're gonna get criticized for that, but you don't know what's coming next. I've seen people that seem to think that everything was gonna be alright, and then all of a sudden they had access to zero funds and they were living in a car, and you don't you don't want that at all. So you want to have just a little bit together so that you can get to where you need to get to, so that you have safe devices and you can start doing those things and then look, start locking down. Like social, don't get on social media. I honestly just forget social media for a while. If you've got an Apple iCloud account, a lot of people think Apple is really safe, and it is quite safe, except the person that knows you best probably can guess your password, may already have access to your iCloud account, so they can see what's going on if you use the same iCloud account. So you need a different one. When it comes to being safe, if you keep working in and remaining doing those things that that person knows you're going to do, then it doesn't take a lot of effort for them to work out how to find you and what to do. So the big difficulty and the big hump to get over is trying to create a brand new you in a new space, which is often very confronting because it adds to that emotion of being uneasy to be in a new location, new space, new place, and setting up a new life. But that's where you need a trusted support network to try to help you along. And if you've got friends you can lean on or family, invest in them as long as they're trustworthy. If someone's a mutual friend, I wouldn't be trusting them. Not because they're bad, just because there's three sides to every story, and sometimes um an offender can be very manipulative and very good at trying to play the victim.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

Yeah, that's a great point. And I think we see it time and again in Women's Divorce Academy too, that women who think they're about to go through an amicable divorce or or that, you know, things are pretty friendly, and not to be a scaronger about it, often it is, but sometimes it's not, and and it it happens more often than than we think. And uh, you know, that an ex just you know can change personality, you know, after splitting. So it's not even necessarily those coercive controlling relationships. It can be something that was pretty reasonable that ends up then, you know, getting dicey. So I think it's it's good advice for everybody to just be careful and you know, get a good password manager, you know, and have those big long complicated passwords that you have to copy and paste even if it's a pain. But you know, all of those, all of those things just to shore yourself up and and and keep safe because hopefully, you know, you don't need it, but also it's good to to be safe and secure and and no woman deserves to feel feel unsafe. So thank you so much for sharing your tips today, Anthony. Is there anything else that we've missed that you would like women to know?

SPEAKER_01 35:19

No, I think I think something you just raised for me uh triggered something in my memory. And what that is is think about how your potentially soon-to-be ex-partner has responded to either former ex-partners or to someone in their life that they truly hate. Now, if what I've seen is the nicest person often has someone in their life that they cannot stand, do not like, every time that that person's name is mentioned, makes their skin crawl, they can't help but verbalize, you're gonna become that new person to them. So how they react to them, and probably and if you're think about how much more you are in regards to being a big part of their life, and how much you're gonna potentially walk away with half of everything, right? And their kids, maybe more than half. There's a lot of incentive for them to try to keep you, control you, and manipulate you. So if we plan for the worst and hope for the best, we're generally gonna be in a far better position than if we assume they're gonna be fine and then we're on the back foot from the beginning. So I just I just think a lot of the times, as you've said, Carolyn, in your experience and mine, people walk out thinking everything's gonna be fine. In reality, people turn and change. And you also don't know who's influencing them. I'm surprised at how often you see an amicable separation start to go sour when the friend circle, when the uh you know, the extended family start to get involved, they kind of never liked you anyway. Yeah, it it can get pretty nasty.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

For sure. And and I know my a great bit of advice I got a little bit too late, unfortunately, for my marriage was never marry a man you wouldn't want to divorce because you know that because it's it really is the you know the the the measure of someone I think is how they handle that conflict or how they handle, you know, people that they're not happy with. So it is really good advice. Thank you for joining us today. I will the contact details in our show notes to everyone can find you.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

Thank you so much, and thank you for having me on. And uh I think what you're doing is a great opportunity to try to support women out there. Divorce is I've been through it. It's one of the most difficult things I've ever done. And look, I wish I had wish you had been around when I was getting divorced. I could have got some good tips early on. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

If doing this alone feels heavy, Women's Divorce Academy offers clear guidance, practical tools, and a supportive community for the legal, financial, and emotional realities of divorce. Whether you're considering separation in the middle of it or rebuilding afterwards, there's something here for you. Find us at Women's DivorceAcademy.com.