A Guide to the Psychological Warfare to Expect in the Upcoming Months

This list has been assembled to show you the most commonly made threats that occur during a divorce, child custody or support matter. Our hope is that by providing this information to you, it will help reduce the worry that these threats could otherwise cause you.

1. ?I will tell them ______, therefore you will never get the children.?

______ can be an affair, the fact that you are seeing a mental health professional, an ?addiction,? to one or two glasses of wine per day or many other situations. Chances are ______ has little or nothing to do with the best interests of the children and therefore will be disregarded in any planning for the children?s lives.

2. ?Your Attorney is a dud,? or ?Your Attorney is out to get our money,? or ?Why don?t we just use one Attorney and save money,? or ?Your Attorney is really partial to me,? or many other variances.

These are ?divide and conquer? tactics. If there is a way to save Attorney fees and costs we are looking for it as well and will be glad to discuss it with you.

3. ?You?ll never get a dime if you don?t play this my way.?

The threat-maker has been accustomed to being in charge of things. That is no longer the case. The property will be divided evenly. Support will be awarded, probably in accordance with the schedule.

4. ?Why are you trying to take my money?? (or pension, children, etc.)

The Answer is simply that you are entitled to it and you are willing to share.

5. ?I?ll go to jail before I?ll pay you a dime!?

So be it. There are various ways to enforce support obligations through wage assignment. Ultimately, contempt of court can mean a jail term. However, this is rarely the case and most of these people end up paying voluntarily.

6. ?I?ll quit my job before I?ll pay you that kind of money.?

Try to get someone to witness any statement of this nature. If intent to avoid support obligations by quitting one?s job can be proven the support obligations would continue at the same level regardless of if the payer?s working.

7. ?When the Judge sees my expenses, he/she will award less (or more) than the support from the ?schedule?.?

This is not true unless there are extraordinary expenses. It should be remembered that the supported spouse will get less money than needed and the supporting spouse will pay more money than can be afforded.

8. ?You will never see the kids again.?

There are uniform acts to prohibit child napping. The Court will usually, upon request, prohibit each party from moving out of the country without the other?s written consent or a court order. A parent who plans to move to avoid visitation will find that the visitation is scheduled for much longer periods of time and involves additional expenses for travel. Failure to allow visitation is one of the reasons why the Court?s change custody from one parent to the other.

9. ?I will consider reconciling with you, if you sign this agreement.?

If you are going to reconcile, why do you need the agreement? Why must the agreement be in favor of the party making such a demand? Be extremely suspicious of any such statements.

10. ?If you don?t see this my way, the Judge will order that we sell everything.?

The court will not order the sale of an asset unless there is a good economic reason for it in the best interest of both parties. Instead, the Court will generally do all or a combination of the following:

a) Award individual assets or obligations to one or the other party;
b) Award an asset to both parties ½ and ½ because the assets, such as a limited partnership, cannot be valued, or;
c) Provide that one party receive an asset such as a residence conditional on an equalizing payment or note to the other. Where there are minor children and tight economic circumstances that Court may also temporarily award the family residence to the custodial parent with the sale and equal division to occur later.

It is suggested that anyone suffering unduly from comments and threats of this nature keep a running diary or notebook with dates, places, occasions and summaries of conversations occurring. (Do not tape record a conversation without consent, it is a felony with a heavy fine!)

It is not recommended that you phone your Attorney as each of these threats come in unless you have reason to believe that the action is being taken to implement them. The purpose of listing them here is to show how common they are and that the best thing to do is ignore them and go forward with attempting to reach a reasonable resolution of the case at hand.