Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Bringing It to Life #5: Navigating Money and Corporate Complexities in High Conflict Divorces with Guest Kate Merrill
Transcript
- Speaker 1 (00:05): Welcome to, it's All Your Fault On True Story fm, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions, those involving high conflict patterns. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie. Hi everybody. We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California where we focus on training, consulting, coaching, and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict. In today's episode, we continue with our Bringing it to Life series and we are joined by a very special guest and colleague Kate Merrill, who is a California attorney specializing in complex divorce cases involving stock options and other business and corporate issues. So this will not be a boring episode, not that any of them are, but this one's really going to be fascinating. We're going to talk about high conflict cases and money, but first, a couple of notes. Please send your high conflict related questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast where you'll also find all the show notes and links and you've been sending in a lot of questions lately. So thank you. Keep listening and we'll get to them. Speaker 1 (01:30): Alright, so I'd like to welcome and introduce Kate Merrill, who as I said in the intro is an attorney who specializes in a very unique part of the law and I'm going to let her talk all about that. In her previous life, she was a corporate attorney in Silicon Valley, so she's been in that tech industry, which is a little bit different I think, to a lot of industries. So we're going to talk about a case or two, but first I'd like to ask Kate, how did you transition from corporate into the world of family law? Speaker 2 (02:05): That's a longer question, an answer you don't want to necessarily have on a firmly show by the book, but I think for a number of family lawyers, it was their own personal experience that brought them to family law. And so I went through a very high conflict divorce in 2013, the kind of divorce where you are not the same. I don't know if there are any divorces that you're the same afterwards, but it introduced me also to high conflict personalities and I actually had a dog walker who is an angel to me. Northern California is the only place I think you'll have a dog walker who was a Fulbright scholar. Speaker 2 (02:55): And she said to me one day at the very beginning, she said, do you know anything about cluster B personality disorders? Because I had shown her a text message. I said, no. She said, you might want to Google that. And it was down the rabbit hole. As I say, once you understand and I think mostly experience what it is like to go through something like that with somebody who has high conflict, it's like going into the matrix. It's like going down the rabbit hole. You can't unsee it anymore. It's the red pill I like to say. And people who haven't had to take the red pill in my experience will never fully understand what you're dealing with. So for that reason, and there was another case I started to get interested in it, bill, you and I had talked a little bit about being OCD about certain things before he did much to my lawyers chagrin and relief. Speaker 2 (03:58): I was very involved in my case and so I learned a lot about family law. I actually went into law to help people. I was one of the people who came in to save the world. And then I ended up with an MBAI tripped one day and fell into business school and ended up being a mergers and acquisitions attorney. And to find this sort of niche in this practice that seems so woefully underserved or unidentified actually where you can actually do some real good is unbelievable nuts about what I do because I think I can actually help people in ways that there are other, there's a big hole. So that was the short version. Then I'll tell you the specifics with keeping it real and bringing cases to life was, I think it was right after I'd settled my divorce in 2013 that again I'd become close and almost colleagues of my divorce lawyer, he called me and he said, Kate, I've got this case, I need some help. Speaker 2 (04:59): And he said it's a corporate issue. And he said, I don't even know what a corporation is, let alone how this stuff works. And he had a client who has divorced getting a divorce and she had worked for a company that had recently been acquired and she had received a significant bonus in connection with the acquisition. Now this was a woman who had been severely abused. I'll put it, it was a fairly dramatic situation in which I was not involved. So I only know a little bit of the lore, but it did involve her being held hostage at gunpoint as I understand it by her, not her ex-husband yet, but they were in the process of a divorce and there were FBI hostage negotiators. I mean, this is the stuff you don't think really happens. And what I really didn't think would ever happen was his lawyer said that deal is community property, so you owe my client half of it. Speaker 2 (06:01): My first reaction was like, oh hell no, there's got, and my lawyer, the lawyer I was working with really didn't think that there was going to be anything. He just said, I need something to walk into this settlement conference. I need something. I need an argument. I don't care how high in the sky it is. I need something. I mean, this was at a point where I didn't have a Lexus or Westlaw subscription. I hadn't had one for 20 years, which is another issue, fun story. But I actually just went, it took me a long time. I had to figure out the difference between gifts and bonus and all income, all this other stuff. And what it ended up being finally at the end was that going back to absolute basics with respect to corporations, and in this case the bonus she was receiving was technically not given by the corporation because a corporation when it's bought and sold is like a house being bought and sold. Speaker 2 (07:02): The house doesn't get the money, the owner gets the money. So a corporation, when it doesn't have extra money to give as bonuses, it eventually actually comes from the stockholders. And in this case, there was just one stockholder was able to just go through the ABCs of corporate law. Once I understood that the gift issues and the implications and said this wasn't a bonus, this was a gift. And I wrote a three page memo that I still have and gave it to my lawyer, he took it into the settlement conference. He came out and I said, how did it go? And he said, what was in that memo? Apparently he hadn't read it, he just gave it to the other side, which is typical was I loved my lawyer. He was a great friend. Speaker 3 (07:55): Let me just interrupt for a moment and say, family lawyers don't really like to do math and don't really like to do money. And that's why you're really unique in that regard and why we need people to work with us who do do money. So go ahead. Speaker 2 (08:14): The math thing though, it's interesting is people say, oh, you're so good with math. You know what I'm good with? I'm good with adding and subtracting. This is not high level math. I mean, you get one of the old those solar calculators, you're good to go. It's literally all there is. It's tell anyone that I shouldn't have said that because that's my secret sauce. But anyway, it turns out they handed the memo to the other lawyer and they never heard another thing and she kept it all. Speaker 3 (08:45): How about that? Speaker 2 (08:47): It a few hundred thousand dollars, which is a good amount of money. But the deal I had been doing at the time I think was a $7 acquisition. I was running it, wow, that $300,000 was the highlight of my career. It was the best day. I mean, literally, I can still remember hearing that this woman was not going to have to give half of that bonus. This person who had so abused her, I mean silver, he tears in my eyes. I never even met this woman by the way. It was like it all made sense. I was not in a position at that point to just switch to family law. And in fact, I was never in a position that didn't stop me. Apparently stayed in contact with my lawyer and his father, who's a father, is a dear, dear, dear friend of mine today. And I blame him for my making the transition. But he was another one who actually saw the value of the corporate law and the finance, my MBA in finance, and I didn't even see it. Speaker 2 (09:52): And when I was making a career, had a sort of pause in my career as a corporate lawyer. He said, you need to try this. And I sort of fell into it. I was in his office and I was using an office there and one of the colleagues came and said, Kate, I think you might be able to help with this case. Now that was a case that this other lawyer really didn't want for good reason, but she said, this might be up your alley. Can you meet this woman? And I ended up taking this woman's case. I'd never been in court before, let alone filled out a form or any of this. I took it. And it's funny, I actually ended up being opposite of one of the, I think anyone would've recognized as premier, high-end lawyer in San Francisco. The good news is I didn't know any different. Speaker 2 (10:42): So I didn't know enough to be overly intimidated. That went well. And then I had one client and then I had two clients and I had four clients, and then it just sort of took off. Now, I will be honest with you, that has a lot of pros and a lot of cons because I did it as a solo practitioner, sole practitioner. So I didn't have anyone telling me how to file anything or it was all self-taught, but I really hate being wrong. And so that made me have to learn it from the ground up. And what that's done, I think from my practice is that I don't have any preconceived notions about how it's supposed to be. I think a lot of family laws, I see it as built on lore. It's what lawyers tell other lawyers and this is how you're supposed to do it, but nobody actually goes and looks at the actual rules. Speaker 2 (11:36): So it's almost heresy sometimes when you say No, that's not what the law is. That's not what the law says. Or that might be the way it's usually done, but it's really not the most efficient way of looking at it. And I find that everywhere and it makes it so much fun, especially now that I have enough experience that you can bring a different perspective with that MBA background. I love what I do. The other thing about corporations and why it becomes so important is because pretty much every case has something corporate or business associated with it. You're employed by a corporation or a business. And so how the compensation works, how ownership works, all that matters, all your benefits, what you're looking at, what your W twos mean, what your tax returns mean for everyone, then it's if you have investments, whether it's an investment in a financial instrument or an investment in a company and where'd you get that money to make that investment. Speaker 2 (12:42): And then there's people who have their own businesses and create their own businesses and who owns it and where's the money going and how do the accounts flow? Now I'll tell you, my MBA was a little bit of cheating, so I like to say I have an MBA because it sounds good, but I did a joint degree and actually it only took a semester extra. So that's another story. But the point being, you do not have to have an MBA to understand this stuff. You just have to walk through it. And I think people are afraid of walking through it, but it's a lot more straightforward once you start to do it. And honestly, I don't think that there are professionals out there who this is their role. I think it's a massive oversight. And my biggest piece of advice on this is going to be over and over again. You're going to have to be your own advocate. Nobody's going to be able to do it for you the way that you can do it for yourself. That's probably a whole nother podcast, but it really is. That's the unfortunate thing. I think what I found too is that people who are going through divorces are assuming that their lawyers are doing this, or if they have forensic accountants, they assume that they're doing what you're doing. We can get into that. But if there's one thing I can just impart is that you need to be an educated consumer of these services. Speaker 3 (14:04): Well, let me add to that and reinforce that. Most people don't realize that family lawyers need to know everything about every other area of law, but they don't. So like you, you know this area. And so you're not just a family lawyer, you're an expert in this area. Others like I'm an expert in high conflict custody disputes. I have not much of a clue what you're talking about. That's why people need someone like you if they're dealing with corporate bonuses or gifts and all of those kinds of things. And some people do criminal law as well as family law. So you really do need to know what's going on in the subject of a divorce, not just the divorce process. And most family lawyers specialize in one or the other, but also I'd say the majority of family lawyers are sole practitioners. And so someone like yourself, you really have this aspect you can specialize in. But some family lawyers work with firms where there's different people with the different subspecialties. And so people should always ask, are you familiar with this area of the law? But go ahead, Megan, your thoughts on this. I know you're an MBA and I'm wondering what you're thinking. Speaker 1 (15:43): Well, I mean it's interesting because Bill, you being an attorney with family law background and I was an MBA with family law, I was called a family law specialist, which I know in the legal world has a whole different connotation. But that was my title at the Arizona Supreme Court Administrative Office of the Courts. So I can here in uk, that desire for efficiency and to really dig in, those are real MBA skills. And then you add in the understanding a bit about cluster B and human behavior. It is just a really fascinating way to come into it and it works for Bill and I because he's learned more about business from me and I've learned more about high conflict from him. And so we were able to make this really work. And you've done that on your own. We'll come back and speak more with our special guest eight Merrill. Then when it comes to high conflict, I mean money and if finances especially, I don't care if it's a dollar or 7 billion, if there's a high conflict personality involved, let's say someone may be high conflict, antisocial personality, there's going to be shenanigans, there's going to be theft, there's going to be all kinds of stuff. So what is it that you see in these cases or how do you spot it? There's a whole lot of questions around this. Speaker 2 (17:15): Well, I think if you're dealing with somebody who's high conflict in anything, the high conflict in everything they to say how you do anything is how you do everything. And while that's sort of overly simplistic, I think you have somebody who's telling you a tale or somebody who's gaslighting you on something. I can't guarantee anything in the world, but I'll almost guarantee you it's mess. It's usually I try not to use the pronouns, but it's typically I'll try not to use he because it is plenty of times. She and I have plenty of cases where that's the case, just to be clear or in same sex where it spoke to you or both. It doesn't matter what the genders are, but if there's something strange, I can almost guarantee you there's something going on with the finances too. In high conflict cases, more often than not, there is the high conflict party is the person who controls the money, or at least to some aspect. And so in California, we call it the end spouse and the out spouse, the end spouse is the person who has the information, the outs, spouses the information and makes the money. They usually the same person, not always. So Speaker 1 (18:33): They're controlling the bank accounts, they're controlling the investments, they're controlling all Speaker 2 (18:38): Of it. Well, and what I find, Megan, I don't know, I think we're probably of similar generation. It's an interesting thing because people in their forties and fifties, and probably sixties as well, but sort of a large part of the population that's going through divorce is we came up with Title IX where girls and women have by law the same opportunities. You have to do sports. Now there's the same amount of money. We also grew up with women who were early baby boomers or late, what is it, the greatest? No, silent gen. I can't remember. Gen X anyway. Yeah, no, we're Gen X. Right, right, right. So the silent generation, they call before the boomers. Yeah. So basically we had moms stay at home, moms, a lot of us or traditional moms. And then this message that we could do anything and everything, and then what we end up is we get married and we're like, which one are we? Speaker 2 (19:42): And I see this over and over again, and again, it's different for everyone, but this is a pattern that I see where I have clients who have an MBA from Harvard or a PhD in aerospace engineering, and when they got married, that's who they were. And they end up having somewhere along the line making a choice or making a series of choices where they become less and less empowered. And that sort of feeds on itself. And I also think that women who, there's a certain type, in my experience, there's a certain type of, when we're talking about male female roles in male female relationships, the type of woman who marries somebody with narcissistic tendencies often have very similar personalities. I can almost get on the phone with somebody within 30 seconds say, let me guess. Speaker 2 (20:40): But what happens is that it's people who know better who know what to do, but been doing it. And I think those are the people I'm working with who have the hardest time. You have this conception or your perception of yourself and who you are in the world, and you see how the power dynamics have changed over time and how it affects everything. And there's almost this sense of shame or guilt or regret as if you've sort of broken the code of what you were doing. And the hardest thing is often figuring out what the heck happened. Because going through the financials, and this is one of the things I learned from my divorce, is that you have lawyers and the lawyers do the law, and the law is important, but without the facts, the law doesn't matter. And that's the real hard part in my view, is the facts. Speaker 2 (21:40): And the problem is that none of us actually know the facts of our own cases, our own cases, because we've got terrible memories, terrible memories. You overemphasize the positive, you discount the negative. That's how you get through it. And you don't line things up. And where the rubber hits the road is in those financial statements, you've got five different accounts. You can't look at one and know what's going on. It could be, as in my case, taking money out at this ATM, and you can look online and see a shot of where it is, and then money out of this ATM money out of this ATM, you're looking at them individually. They all look cool. When you put it all together in one spreadsheet, you're like, oh, and where was I during that time and where was he during that time and what did my text messages say and where was our kids and what else was going on? Speaker 2 (22:35): And all of a sudden, the whole thing not all of a sudden takes a lot of work, but it starts to make sense. And what that does and why I'm so can tell, I could talk about this all day, don't let me on your phone. But what happens is that it's not just about the money. It's about the story we tell ourselves and it's about our story and happening what you think happened and what you're dealing with all of a sudden not match up your memory of what was going on in the divorce. And now what you're dealing with just don't align. And I think that happens when you've been through gaslighting. It just like all of a sudden you realize what you've been led to believe isn't what actually happened. Speaker 1 (23:20): So it's kind of like being in a cult really in a way, right? In a cult that you're believing, you're drinking the Kool-Aid, drinking the Kool-Aid, drinking the Kool-Aid. You're hoping, you're wishing, you're diluting yourself, you're doing your best, you're trying hard. And then you see the facts. And I think then at that point, maybe some people become more delusional and just dissociate entirely and just keep believing and drinking the Kool-Aid while others go, wow. And it really does a number on their head, and it can do so much to your psyche and in one way or the other. I think in some ways, some people might get depressed, and I think there's, for everyone probably has to be a grieving process through that. And some will get through that grieving process and wake up real quickly and say, wow, I have been any wonder. I've been suspicious this whole time. Any wonder I have felt so belittled or so small for 25 years Now I get it. And I can't believe I diluted myself. So I kind of like to tell people if it stinks, you better investigate day one Speaker 2 (24:32): And it's the biggest opportunity of your life. First of all, I think that at some level, and this is not an assignment of blame, this is just recognizing that when you come to a crossroads, you do have some sort of choice about whether or not you let it take you down or you just make the decision that this is going to sound crazy, but this is going to be the best thing that's ever happened to you. And if you tell yourself that over and over again, people will think you're nuts, but it changes your perspective and it changes your agency in the process. There's something I'm supposed to learn here. All right, let's go. What in my experience, and also what I've found with my clients is that by going back and doing that retrospective through the money and lining it up with the text messages and just sort of this chronology, it's an unusual opportunity to go back and realize your gut was right. How often you did get to go back and do an archeological dig and say, I knew there was something up, then I knew that was something going on. I didn't have enough to really go on. But then you add it up and then what happens is all of a sudden you realize your gut, your gut is a lot stronger than you think. It's Speaker 3 (26:01): That's where they need someone like you to know, how do I analyze this? Because in many ways, we talk a lot about emotions and that we may feel things, and they may or may not be accurate logically, but they give us question marks. If you have a question mark, you want to pursue it, but I know you're talking about spreadsheets and ATM withdrawals and stuff like that. As a family lawyer, I learned how to trace separate property into community property and those things, but before I learned that, I didn't know what to go on. And yet you have kind of a feeling sometimes there's something fishy here. And that's, I just want to briefly insert here. We talked about cluster B. If people haven't heard our other podcasts, that's basically for personality disorders, narcissistic, histrionic, antisocial, and borderline. But what they have in common is often kind of a manipulative approach and a hiding approach, kind of a dual personality where they're publicly really wonderful, friendly, reasonable, but privately manipulative, domineering, intrusive and vindictive. Speaker 3 (27:24): And there's research on that. So what you're dealing with often is people who either don't know or just have an inkling but maybe have shut it out and they need an organized approach. And it seems to me that's where you come in and give them an organized approach to follow up. What is that that your inkling is telling you? I've had clients say, I know the other person's hiding money, but I can't prove it. I don't know. How do I, and sometimes we find it, and it's really exciting, like you said, and sometimes it's really not there, but they have to have explained how the business works. Like they say the business was worth a lot, and now he says it's not worth a lot. When in fact, now really looking at the business, the industry, maybe it really isn't worth a lot. So that's why you need someone with the technical knowledge that you have, but the empathy you have that you want to help people. So I want to emphasize that too, Speaker 2 (28:28): What you mentioned about the tracing, and that's actually, I find there's a lot of lawyers so good on you, bill, not that I'm surprised, but can go through the accounts for the tracing purposes. And that's typically what forensic accountants are doing. I know when forensic accountant was introduced to me, I saw the forensic investigator, the forensic psychologist, what really happened, and in reality, they have their own checklist. I mean, we all have that checklist in our heads in terms of is it marital standard of living? Is it community property, separate property? Where did it come from? Where's it going? There's two issues that I've identified as primary issues that, number one, I think we think forensic accountants do something different than they actually do clients. Because I can tell you as having been a client, when I heard forensic accountant, I thought somebody was going through the KPMG, white collar crime fraud division to figure out who was doing what as opposed to doing the tracings that are required. Speaker 2 (29:36): And it's a very different process because going through and asking the questions about where's this coming from and where's it going? And there's a Sherlock Holmes thing about the dog that didn't bark in the night and that one, it's what is not there? What's missing? And I can't tell you what it is because it's different in every case, but going through that and lining it up, if there's five credit cards, well, are they all being paid by the accounts and lining it up? Now, there are programs for doing that that are a lot more efficient, but the problem is when you're really manipulating the data, you get familiar with it and you can ask questions. But I guess what the value part is, and having some empathy for this is that so many people in high conflict situations are led to believe that they're the crazy one. Speaker 2 (30:36): And when you have it in black and white and numbers, you are not the crazy one. If you get nothing else, it has no financial implication for anything. You can have that, and that changes your perspective. You don't have this cognitive dissonance or this disconnect in your head. And that's the worst thing that I think happens in these relationships. It's not a thousand dollars a million dollars. It's your perception of yourself. Yep, that's the payoff, right? It's life changing for people. It was life changing for me, and you sort of had to figure it out how to do it myself, because nobody did this stuff. And that's why I just am nuts about what I do. I mean, I can tell you other stories too, if you want to hear, like you were saying about, I had some real quick, there's nothing real quick about it, but self-awareness is go for it. Speaker 2 (31:27): But I had a lawyer who I'm very, very close friends with now somehow got in touch with me. I said, we know he's up to no good. We can't find it. And it was an officer of a public company and they had a forensic accountant with more letters after his name that I've ever seen. It was supposed to be a public company expert. Nobody found it. This is one of the favorite things. It was sitting in plain sight, but was buried in one of the SEC filings, which is the Securities and Exchange Commission filings if you're a publicly traded company and you can buy stock and sell stock on exchanges. And it turned out this person had one of their board reclassifying what's called vetting stock. So when you have options, once they become vested, they become eligible to be shared. So they turn into something, it's sorts like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. Speaker 2 (32:32): You don't go backwards. You can't say, okay, now the frag frog's going to be a tadpole. Again, it doesn't work that way. But yet their board had done that to make it so it wasn't community property. The fun part was the board had done this three times and they all lined up to when they were having issues so that in the relationship. And so in that case, this is the leverage that gives you in a situation when you're a public company, even if you're a private company, because then you have investors and understanding high conflict personalities and how they present themselves to the world. You say not as a threat and not as, but if we don't figure this out, we're going to have to get others involved and do discovery. And there are often a lot of disadvantages to that for the party who has been found out to be holding back information. And again, when you're saying the most fun thing you can do on a day, I've had more fun doing this than I ever did during corporate law because people also take advantage of those who don't have the same amount of information. I could tell you all, which is Speaker 1 (33:56): Yeah, well, it's really a fascinating area, and I think that's one of the ways you can tell that this is potentially a high conflict situation is when you could smell it. Something doesn't seem right, something doesn't add up. You have that knot in your gut. We have to pay attention to all of those things. And if you're listening to this and about to get married, read bills and my book called Dating Radar First so that you might avoid this down Speaker 2 (34:22): The road. One other thing on that, sorry, big thing. If you're getting married, you have a prenup whether or not you're actually signing it because marriage is a contract. And in California, your contract is the California Family Code. And do you know what it says? I certainly didn't. So everyone talks about how prenups are, and I don't want to go there. Two things. Number one, you have one, you just don't know what it says. Number two is if you get hit on the head with a bolt of lightning and turn into the antichrist during your marriage, your spouse is still married to you. So you are not planning for divorcing the person you're marrying. You're planning for divorcing the person that that person turns into when they turn into the antichrist by no fault of their own. And in that way, it's not just something to do to protect yourself from that person. Speaker 2 (35:22): You're enabling that other person to protect themselves from you if you turn to the antichrist. And so I want to, if there's anything I can do with prenups is to just say, listen, they can be the biggest gift to yourself, but also at the same time to your partner because you're protecting the other person from someone else that you might turn into. So what you were saying about when you're getting married, sorry, that was one other thing. But I'd also like to make one other point about all this financial issues. I believe that professionals who are doing this kind of work, their responsibility is to give clients the information or give them the option of getting the information. If anyone decides that they just can't do it, they don't want to do it for whatever reason, as long as they have the information about what they could have or what could be done or what they're walking away from or what they're giving up, that's a totally valid decision to make. Speaker 2 (36:33): It's not about going after every penny. It's about knowing what your decision means and making sure you have somebody who is explaining that to you or figuring out yourself. Because I will tell you a lot of it, a lot of people can figure out a lot more in this if they have the mental bandwidth and time bandwidth. It's the worst time of your life in many cases. And so it's not necessarily to pick up a new hobby about learning how to read financial statements or family law, but I just wanted to make sure I got that out there too. Yeah, thank you. Speaker 3 (37:10): Let me add something and see if you agree. Last week I gave a presentation as a keynote speaker for the Institute of Divorce Financial Analysts, and they were talking about how you need a family lawyer, but you also need a divorce. Financial analysts, especially if you have finances, you don't understand. I just want to put in a plug for that. For any state province, whoever's listening country is this now is a field that's growing as divorce financial analysts, and they don't do what you do, but they explain a lot more than most family lawyers do about your finances. So consider getting one of those people to help you out. Even consulting, Speaker 2 (37:59): Because there's a big hole and that person starts to fill a hole. And my biggest concern would've been had that been an option for me, the expense. If anyone had told me when I started my divorce, how much it was going to cost me, I would've had a heart attack. I mean, I wouldn't have believed it. And so the idea that you are going to pay another professional, but again, it can often be the best money you ever, yes, if tell anyone who knows stuff about anything about finance and has any expertise in this, use whatever resource you can find Speaker 1 (38:44): As long as they have a certification or a degree or something in it, not just your friend who says, Hey, I know about finances. So with that, we probably have to wrap it up, but I'll give you the last word. What one piece of advice would you give people? Speaker 2 (39:00): Figure out what you need in the end, what do you really need and what's really most important? And pick an operating principle. Don't walk away from everything. Don't go after every penny. Figure out something in between. And also remember that you have a lot of options about how else to solve the problems. So it's not necessarily that you just get a settlement or it's your support or whatever that is. You're starting your life on a new path and how are you going to make the pieces work? This is just one of them. And how do you take care of yourself? And then one other thing is that kids and money don't mix anything you can do. And my biggest piece of advice is that you can do it at all. If you have the ability to do this, agree that child support will be based on 50 50 no matter what. Speaker 2 (40:03): So that does not impact the amount of child support in California is based on how much custody you have. You should not be basing your custody discussions. It should not be impacted by how much child support someone's paying or receiving. That is if you have the means or you're in a situation where you can do that, it's the best thing you can do because kids come first, the money doesn't matter except you have to take care of your kids. But other than that, if you've got to make a choice, you've got to have that at the first and forefront of any decision that you make If you've got kids involved in this Speaker 1 (40:43): Excellent, and what a great, great stopping point here to focus it back on the children. That is really, I think, why we're all in this business and why we do what we do and we're passionate about it. So thank you so much, Kate, for joining us on our podcast and in this episode, I think it's been extraordinarily helpful and something that people don't hear about a lot is these very challenging situations. Speaker 2 (41:10): Thank you. Appreciate Speaker 1 (41:11): It. And listeners, thank you for listening. Oh, our pleasure. Our pleasure. I'm sure we'll have you back too. Speaker 2 (41:18): Thank you. Speaker 1 (41:20): Yes. It seems like you've had some experience in it and a lot of thoughts about it, and it's extraordinarily helpful. Speaker 1 (41:33): Next week, we will continue our Bring It to Life series with a conversation about how to help those who struggle with borderline personality disorder, which affects a pretty significant part of the population, not just in those who struggle with it or maybe have the diagnosis, but their families and friends around them. So we're going to talk to a couple of people who do just that, and we'll share some information about how you can participate in that, whether you're a professional or a family member. In the meantime, send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. We'd love it if you tell your friends and colleagues about us and be grateful if you'd leave us a review. Until next time, keep learning and practicing your skills. Be kind to yourself and others while we all try to keep the conflict. It's All Your Fault is a production of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins and Ziv Moran. Find the show notes and transcripts at True story fm or high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.