Visit us at divorceandyourmoney.com for the #1 divorce resources in the USA and get personalized help. Learn about coaching services here.
Thank you for listening! Find a transcript of this episode below.
Most of the information on this podcast is focused on leveling the playing field in divorce and making sure that if you aren't the person who was in control of the finances, that you make sure that you're able to get the information you need so you can create and structure a reasonable settlement for the rest of your life and ultimately, to put it bluntly, so you don't get screwed, as they say, in the divorce process. As part of that, and part of the coaching calls that I do every week, one of the recurring themes is that many times you don't have access to essentially information that you'll need so that you can make an informed decision about your financial picture and what the best things are for you to do.
One of the things I want to discuss in this episode is a few ways to get the appropriate financial information in your divorce and make sure that you have a clear and full financial picture. This could be for many reasons and many situations this comes up. Sometimes your spouse is deliberately hiding assets and hiding money from you or misstating your financial picture. That's a very common one., sometimes in a small way, sometimes in a big way. Sometimes it could be the case that your spouse made a mistake and forgot about something. Or maybe you have a complicated financial picture and there are just a lot of different moving parts that you have to keep track of. Or maybe you just didn't really even know what existed and you're just trying to get a sense of what actually do I have. You're just trying to figure out the whole thing and get some information.
What I want to do in this episode is go through some specific tactics to help you get a clearer financial picture of what you have and what you need so that you, and your attorney, and perhaps me if I'm working with you, you can make those informed financial decisions or at least the things in this episode, I want to help you start to figure out where to look so that you can start digging and start getting on the right path financially. I'm going to go through five tips, tools, tricks, whatever you want to call them, in order to help you get financial information in your divorce if you don't have direct access to it otherwise. Five things. The first one is ask. Second is check your tax return. The third is use your memory or any clues that you may have. The fourth is a subpoena. Finally, the last one is using a forensic accountant. The forensic accountant is going to be last because it's a combination of many of these things.
Let's jump in and go through these tactics. The first one, as I said, is you just need to ask. Sometimes if you ask the question, "Hey, can you provide the latest account statements for this retirement account, or this mortgage, or this whatever?" either through your attorney or in writing in some manner, your spouse will do so. I always encourage people to ask in writing with any specifics you may have because it's good to have a record of times if your spouse doesn't comply. It's nice to have a record of all of the times you've asked and all of the times they have not provided full and complete information because that will look bad to them later on. You always start with an ask. Asking is easy, but it doesn't mean you're going to get a response. We're going to go through the other areas and eventually some of the ones that will mandate that they provide a response.
The second thing is related to getting your access to your tax returns. One of the very common things I hear actually usually multiple times a week is that your spouse or that a spouse basically forged a signature on a tax return, and you're unsure if the information in the tax return is correct, if you have some additional liability you might not know about, if the taxes are reported correctly. You never signed them yourself. You don't really know what's in there, and you're worried about the contents of the tax report. The other thing that's relevant about a tax report is that assuming that everything is in order on those tax forms that you file, tax reports are one of the most useful areas to get a sense of what assets that you have. Here's what I mean. If there is a bank account somewhere that you might not know about, let's just say at Bank of America because it's the largest bank, I think, in the US, and if there's a bank account that you don't know about and it earns a dollar in interest over the course of a year, guess what? That bank account and that dollar of interest should show up on the tax forms. If it does not, there are some bigger issues. Oftentimes you will find a lot of assets you don't know about if you're used to knowing what you're looking for on a tax return.
Here's the challenge, of course. We're talking about getting access to information. The challenge is that how do you get your tax reports if you don't sign them, if you don't have a copy of them, your signature was forged, you don't have them handy laying around, and your spouse isn't being forthcoming about them? Actually, it's pretty easy. If you go to the IRS website, they have something called Get a Tax Transcript. If you type in get your tax transcript or transcript from the IRS on Google search or online, the IRS website will pop up, and they have a form you can provide to get a copy of your transcript and your taxes. You can get, I think, three to five years worth of your tax returns. They will provide either an electronic copy or a physical copy in the mail of those tax returns. Of course, you have to fill out some information to get those tax returns, but the point is if your name was signed on a joint tax return, it's a record that you can get from the IRS as a government service. It's free, and you can get copies of your tax returns by requesting that transcript.
The other thing that you can do is IRS offices are everywhere across the country. I've had many people do this. You can go to your IRS office, identify yourself, and request copies of the tax transcript. They will provide those for you if you go into the office and ask them in person. This is one of the most important ways. I think I say it on every call where someone asks, "Well, where do I get this information? I think I don't have a full picture of our accounts." I always say, any forensic accountant, any lawyer will ask this question as well, is start with the tax returns. From there you will be able to have a lot of clues that show up in a myriad of ways on the tax returns.
I could talk about this point for a while. Even with my personal taxes, I filed my taxes. Because I've traveled quite a bit and I have a few different addresses, I missed a document. I didn't sent it to my accountant, and I filed my taxes, and the IRS rejected them. I was like, "Oh, well what's going on?" They said, "Well, you're missing this form." What happened is I had to add in this form. I went and dug it out, and I added in this form. Then I resubmit my tax. The point being is all of these items that you might be looking for, these accounts, these interest retirement accounts, contributions, other investments, whatever, will show up or should show up on your tax form somewhere, particularly if you're looking for outside assets or outside investments that you don't know about. If they don't show up on your tax form, then it might not be there or your spouse is substantially cheating on their taxes, in which you have a lot of other considerations to think about. But let's move on.
You can get copies of your tax transcript. That's important. The third thing on my list is use your memory. If you have any inclination of accounts you may have had, be it investments, be it real estate, be it a bank account statement, be it something you remember coming in the mail, it could've been a credit card, it could've been anything, any account firm that you've seen, or have a clue about, or have thought of, try and jot down as much information about those things as you can because ultimately you might actually find a way to get access to that information and use those clues or breadcrumbs just from memory. Oftentimes you know more than you think you will. Then you're going to be able to use that information to help your attorney, me, your accountant to know where to look, and know who to ask, and where to start digging. Anything you can dig up by memory, or if you remember an email, or an account, or whatever, make a list of those and collect just as much information about them as you can because they're going to be useful for the next point, which is point number four.
This is the big one. This is the subpoena. I'm sure if you've ever watched a television show that talks about legal stuff, you've heard the term subpoena. Subpoena is a very important word and legal time. Basically it is a legal document that says that the person receiving it or company receiving it needs to act in a specific way or provide specific information. I'll give you an example of what this is. Let's return to Bank of America. Let's just say, "Hey, I remember some sort of account from Bank of America that we had for a few years. I don't have the account number of information on it, and my spouse isn't providing the information willingly." You can say or your attorney can say, "All right, well we're going to issue a subpoena to Bank of America to provide all of the records related to an account with this person's name on it." Bank of America will be legally obligated to provide that information to you. It's not always mandatory, but it's 99% of the time mandatory. You can fight a subpoena, but that only happens in very rare circumstances.
I have a case now where there is a real estate under question. One of the ways we got some information from them is we had to subpoena the building management company and everyone who was connected to this real estate. They were legally required to provide certain records about who owns it, what percentages, what financial information there was about this building. They provided that information, and now we have it and can make much better decisions during the divorce process. If you don't reply or your spouse doesn't reply to the subpoena, subpoenas come with a wide variety of potential punishments as part of the case. It can include fines, jail time, and many other things depending upon your state and what's going on. Subpoenas are a great way to force or require access to information.
The reason I put subpoena fourth on this list, and this list is in a particular order for a reason, is if you've asked about some accounts and maybe you get some information, you look at your tax returns and you get a little bit more information, you use your memory and you get some more information, with all of those clues if you're starting to put together this puzzle, it's big pizzle and you're starting to put it together piece by piece, ultimately a subpoena is that tool that attorneys can use to force you to get a much larger section or pieces of that puzzle, particularly when you know where to look. If you don't know where to look, your attorney can't subpoena, I guess he or she in theory could, Every bank in town or every financial institution in the country, we're talking about tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of different places.
What you need to do is be able to say, "Hey, I have this breadcrumb that I saw on my tax return on page eight. I have this breadcrumb from my memory that we had an account here at one point. I have this breadcrumb from whatever else that I think we need to follow up on, and there's more to the story here." Let's take that information and leverage a subpoena to see if we can get some more information out of it and get a more complete picture of those things.
Then the last thing on the list after subpoena is a forensic accountant. I have episodes on the podcast with forensic accountants. I have a large series in the store in the Quick Start Guide, as it's called, with information about finding hidden assets and how to use a forensic accountant. A forensic accountant is one who is an accountant whose expertise is taking all of these breadcrumbs and putting together a coherent financial picture. A forensic accountant can look at page 17, or I'll use an example. I have some clients with tax returns that are 180 pages because there's lots of supporting documentation. They have complicated financial pictures. A forensic accountant can take a 180-page tax return and look on page 79, line 16 and say, "Hey, there is something to this account. We need to do a lot more digging. Let's track down more information about it. Here's what I know from this account, and it's probably a big one."
A forensic accountant is specialized in doing those types of analysis and basically taking all of these breadcrumbs and putting together a clear and coherent picture to the best of their ability to help you track down all of these assets that may be missing, hidden, or some other way financially questionable in terms of things that are going on. It's a very specific niche of accounting that requires a good deal of expertise. It's not cheap, so one of the things I always say before hiring a forensic accountant is, "How much money do you think is realistically missing?" because I've seen forensic accountant bills go up into the tens of thousands of dollars easily, particularly when there's a lot of complication and it's hard to get things. If you have hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars at stake, then oftentimes it is well worth the investment. Think of all these things as an investment. If you have to invest some money to get a lot more money, then it can be worth it. A forensic accountant will ask for all of these tax returns, all of the things that you remember from memory, things from a subpoena. They might help your attorney craft an appropriate one. All of these things a forensic accountant, a good one, will ultimately put together a comprehensive picture for you when it comes to finding that money or assets that are missing.
The thing about this process, and I want to step back for a little bit, if assets are hidden, it's not a guarantee that you're going to find them. Even if you do find them, it's not a guarantee that you are entitled to those assets. It can be a complicated process, and there can be a lot more to it. But you do need to oftentimes know that these assets exist. The good thing I will say in the modern world, unless your spouse was a drug dealer or had a cash business, you can find a trace of assets everywhere from an email, from a wire transfer, from a public document, from whatever. There is a transaction record of everything. The question is how much it's going to cost you to get access to it, and is it really worth it for you. If your spouse is being forthcoming, and you think they're being forthcoming, and everything seems to make sense, you won't have to go down this path of getting a forensic accountant, and issuing subpoenas, and everything else. This process takes a very long time to put together, sometimes years, when it comes to all of these things. You have to really wonder and think about what the right decision is for you.
But if your spouse is not being forthcoming and there are a lot of things, and questions, and concerns that you have, I know because I talk to you every day on coaching calls, you ask me these things. Sometimes I'll talk to you and say, "Hey, that sounds a little suspicious. I think there's more to it. Let's dig in further." I say this as well. I try and be as honest and frank with you as I can. I'll say, "Look, from what you're telling me, I understand that some stuff is missing or this sounds a little bit questionable, but I don't know if it's worth it emotionally, financially, time-wise and everything else to drag on this process given what else you've told me to date. Maybe it's not the best idea to pursue this path." Whatever the case is, you have to think about what's right for you. I just want to give you the tools and the information so that you can think about these things and ultimately make the appropriate decision.
Just to summarize quickly again how to get access to information, I talked about five things. The first is you ask. Second is get copies of your tax return, and specifically your tax transcript. The third is use your memory. You probably know a lot more than you give yourself credit for. Fourth is a subpoena, which is issued by an attorney. You can ask your attorney about that and if it's appropriate for you. Then finally is employing the services of a forensic accountant. For many people, that may be an essential item. I've seen some great work from a forensic accountant that's just unbelievable, particularly where there is a lot of money and financial complications. Forensic accountants can be the essential part of this divorce process.
Visit us at divorceandyourmoney.com for the #1 divorce resources in the USA and get personalized help. Learn about coaching services here.
Thank you for listening! Find a transcript of this episode below.
In this episode I want to discuss mediation. It's a topic that I haven't talked about in a little while, and mediation is very important for many of you. You end up hearing your attorney talking about mediation, or you end up going for it, or you're preparing for mediation, or you've just heard about it and you want to know what it is, what it's like, and whether it's right for you.
One thing I will toss out there is, mediation for many of you can be a very useful way to resolve many of the issues in your divorce. I want to go through a little bit about how it works, and why it exists, and provide some information in terms of whether mediation is something that you should consider during your divorce process.
Now, the reason people pick mediation, or even consider this mediation process is, it's one of the tools, not the only tool. But, it's one of the tools, and one of the most common tools people have to avoid going to court. Anything you can do to avoid going to court, and avoid going to trial, is generally speaking beneficial for you. The goal is, in the divorce process. I mean, aside from getting out of this process as quickly, efficiently, and in a best position possible for you and your family. The goal of this process is not to end up in front of a judge.
Now, for some of you, it's inevitable. I deal with a lot of cases, probably a higher percentage than most end up going in front of a judge just because the issues that you're dealing with are so contentious that, and you can't come to a satisfactory resolution. But, for those who can, you don't want ... You want to use, or at least consider mediation as one of your options.
I've talked about judges and courts before on the podcast, and just the one thing I'll say about it is, imagine a stranger who knows nothing about you, making in just a few minutes, the decisions that'll affect you, your assets, your kids, your support, for the rest of your life. They determine that as just a stranger. They're in charge of making some pivotal, life decisions. They don't know you, they don't necessarily care about you. You're one of hundreds or thousands of people they have to decide upon each year, and they don't spend a lot of time with you, and they're not really getting to know you. Is that how you want your divorce to be decided? That's why people don't want to go to court, and mediation is a very useful process for some of you.
Now, how does mediation work, what is it like? What is it? Well, mediation is basically the process where you, your spouse, and a neutral third party, usually a neutral attorney, or retired judge, or professional mediator. Helps you work through the issues in your divorce, and helps you come to a point where you can find middle ground, or some sort of reasonable compromise on the key things that you're thinking about, and trying to decide in your divorce.
What do I mean? Well, there are several things that we could consider and think about. You have issues in your divorce. Some things might be very clear, right? I'll just use a very simple example I see all the time. You and your spouse both probably have separate cars. In most of the cases, nine times out of 10, it's not really a dispute over who gets what car. If you drive a truck, I don't know why I said truck, I don't. But, if you drive a truck and your spouse drives the Toyota, the Toyota Corolla car. Well, you probably will keep the truck, your spouse will probably keep the car, and we move on. Nine times out of 10, or probably 99 out of 100 times, that's not going to be a contentious issue.
But, something that might be an issue is, how much of that retirement account are you really entitled to, or is your spouse really entitled to? What's the appropriate amount of support to consider? How much parenting time, and how should we work out some of the custody issues? Or, whatever other issue or consideration you may have on the table, mediation could be a way, a place, a format for you to resolve those issues. As I said, there is a neutral third person in the mediation. At a minimum level it's you, your spouse, and that neutral person talking it out.
Perhaps in a conference room, or in someone's office, to figure out these discussions.
But, alternatively, there are more ways to ... More formats to mediation. You could both have attorney's to help you during the mediation process. That would mean five people involved. You, your attorney, your spouse, your spouses attorney, and the mediator. Or, you could ... There's different options. Sometimes mediation takes place in the same room, where you book a half a day, a full day, several days, even a week to sit and negotiate the issues around the table.
Now, for some of you, being in the same room with your spouse probably is not going to be the most productive way to reach a resolution, so they have options for mediation where you're in separate conference rooms. What happens is you and your attorney, or you by yourself, are in one conference room. Your spouse and your spouses attorney are in a separate, or in another conference room. During that process your spouse ... Or so, the mediator might come into your room first. The mediator will come in and say, "Hey, what do you care about, what do we need to work through?" Let's say you go through your top three issues. Your mediators say, "Hey, you know what? I think on this point number two, you're not being totally realistic. You need to have a little bit of leeway here. Can you give up something?"
You'll listen, you'll say, "I don't know if I want to do that." The point being is you'll come up with some sort of resolution and move on. Then the mediator will say, "Okay, I'm going to go to your spouses room and let's see if we can bring these issues closer." The mediator will leave, go to your spouses room, and the spouse will ... Will say, "Hey, what's important to you? Can we work towards these kind of things?" Then the mediator will kind of go through and they'll say, "Oh, you know, you're doing well here. You might have to give up some more," whatever else. Then they might come back to your room. Or, if you're doing it all live or in the same room, whatever the case may be.
Then, the other thing to think about too with the mediators is, so their goal is as a mediator, to get you to a resolution. That is the whole point of mediation. Sometimes even the court mandates that you have to go to mediation before going to trial. The goal is to resolve as much as you can, as soon as you can, without going to court. The mediator also, if you have a good mediator. As I said, they're often a retired judge, an attorney, or a professional mediator. Part of the things they will do aside from being very good negotiators, and helping you come to a resolution, is that they will also make sure that you're doing within the bounds, understanding what's in the bounds of the law.
I've heard a mediator say, "Hey, that issue that you're thinking about." Be it, let's just say you're asking for a particular amount of support. The mediator might say, "Look, I've been a judge for the last 20 years, and now I'm a mediator. The courts in your county won't give you that much support, so you need to lower your expectations, and lower that amount. Let's go to something that's reasonable, within the bounds of the law."
Or, that judge might say, or that mediator might say, "Hey, I don't think you're asking for enough here. I think it's reasonable for you to ask for more." Something like that. Just, the overall point of this is to say is, the mediator is there. They're not there to be your friend, they're not there to favor one spouse or the other. They are there just to help you negotiate, work through thorny issues, and get to a place that's often times much more productive than just your two attorney's, or just you and your spouse going at it from opposite angles. Their goal is to get you to that agreement.
I hope that provides a good general overview of the mediation process. Some other things I want you to consider, is there are some benefits to mediation. One very clear benefit, is that you get to avoid court. I already discussed that. The second is that, it's a less expensive process in general. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, court by itself is all consuming on your part, your attorney's part, and everything else. That's already on top of the normal divorce process. It just adds an extra layer of very intense complication to everything.
Mediation is, if you're preparing for court and you're paying your attorney, that's the times when I see legal bills go into the 50, 100, 150 $500,000 mark, even when you don't have that much in assets. I've seen some astronomical legal bills, and almost all the time it's because of court. The only other time is if your finances are really, really complicated. But, most of the time it is because you are going to trial. It is such a high stakes event for everyone involved, the legal bills are expensive.
Now, mediation is a way to avoid that. Now, I'm not going to say that mediation is cheap. It is not. Mediation, a day of mediation can cost $3,000 a person often times, or more. That's on the low end. If I were called into the mediation and you wanted a day of my time, it would be several thousands dollars. It's not cheap. But, it is a way to break through, and often not only get through these issues faster, but also much cheaper than if you had gone through every issue back and forth with your attorney over months, and lots of letters, and lots of phone calls, and lots of arguments. Mediation can be very effective in that category. It's a very efficient way to come to a resolution.
Then there's the third thing for mediation. Now, if you and your spouse are on reasonable terms, I strongly recommend mediation instead of fighting it out through your attorney's. Mediation can be a very inexpensive way for some of you to resolve just one or ... If you have just one or two issues, or that you're thinking about that you just kind of need to have a third person chime in. Or, if you and your spouse are just generally civil, and you think you can kind of work it out pretty reasonably. Then, mediation could be a very exceptional process for you, and a good way to resolve things without a third party interfering, and over complicating the process.
Now, that's just a basic overview of mediation. If you get the quick start guide in the store, or work with me on the coaching calls, we have a lot of information about how do you prepare for a mediation? How do you think about negotiating? How do you really make sure that your wishes are clear, and you're coming up with some creative solutions? The nice thing about mediation is that you have a lot of options that you can, flexible options that you can work through and use. Mediation is an effective way to pursue some things you might not have thought about, that get you into the position that you always wanted all along, and everyone is as happy as they can be given that you're talking about divorce.
I would encourage you to check out some of those episodes, and some of the ways to prepare. Also, for a lot of you, you call me and say, "Hey, I got mediation in a month." Or, "I've got mediation in a couple weeks." Or, "Mediation in three months down the line. How do we prepare for this, and how do we put some information together so that you walk into the room, the mediation room ..." 'Cause remember, this might be a half a day, a day, a week at the most for most of you. How do you really prepare for that, really get clear on your goals, the things you want, and acceptable bans? When I say bans I should say, acceptable proposals that will really work for you.
Some other things to consider. Then the last thing I forgot to bring up is that, mediation isn't always a binding process. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. Often times you can, and most of the time you can go into a mediation voluntarily and you say, "Hey, we're going to work really hard to get to this agreement. But, if it does not happen, then we're not forced to sign anything that you don't want to sign." Often times it's very good, and I encourage most of you, even if you do come to a pretty good solution in the mediation room, to take a day, or two, or three just to think about it.
Just from experience, going through mediation can produce a lot of adrenaline. You can feel very wired on mediation day. Often times there's emotions, there's a lot. There's just an extraordinary amount of feelings, and moving parts, and it can often feel overwhelming. I hate to use the word exhilarating, but almost in a way. There's a lot going on. Sometimes after that's over, you might need a night of sleep, or two, or three before you sign that final agreement, unless you're just getting everything that you want in the room.
Mediation has a lot of dynamics to it, but I do and want you to, if you have the ability to, consider using it as a process as you consider your divorce. And, the options that might be best for you, whether you're still preparing for the process, in the middle of it, or are trying to work out some of the issues. Often times, mediation can be a great route to go.
Visit us at divorceandyourmoney.com for the #1 divorce resources in the USA and get personalized help. Learn about coaching services here.
Thank you for listening! Find a transcript of this episode below.
In this episode, we're going to discuss how to divorce a narcissist and when, or I should say at least survive the divorce process, and really come in in one piece, and come through this situation in the best position possible given a particularly difficult spouse to handle during the divorce process.
The reason I bring this topic up, I haven't talked about it in a while, and through the coaching calls I've had over the past few weeks, many of you are identifying that your spouses have some form of pretty severe or extreme narcissism, and are wondering, and have been asking, "Well, how do I deal with that, and what kind of strategies can I employ? What are some things that I should be thinking about?"
I'll say of course individual circumstances always matter, and if you want to talk about your case, we can do that via a coaching call, but I also want to give you some general tips and strategies and things to think about, and also for those who haven't really thought about narcissism with any depth and thinking about that in the context of your spouse, I want to go through some of the characteristics of what someone with narcissistic personality disorder, or what a narcissist is, and then also go through really just three very specific strategies to help you get through that situation.
Let's first start with what a narcissist is. The technical term, you heard me mention it earlier, is narcissistic personality disorder. It is a disorder, and it does have a clinical and psychological definition that's very specific, and I'm going to actually read off some of the symptoms of that.
One of the things I do want to bring up though, is it's a continuum, so what that means is some people would score, if I wanted to keep the language simple, some people might score 100 out of 100, as they are an extreme narcissist, but some of us, including some of us listening, still have forms of narcissism, we all do, but we might be a five, or we might be a 10, or might be a 20, but your spouse could be an 80, or a 90, or 100, or I bet some of you think your spouse might be off the charts.
What I'm going to do, is I'm going to read the definition of some of the symptoms. These come from the Mayo Clinic website, and it says that, "People with narcissistic disorder can have some of the following," and I know some of you are going to be nodding your heads as you listen to these descriptions, so here we go.
So people with the disorder can have an exaggerated sense of self-importance, have a sense of entitlement and require constant, excessive admiration, expect to be recognized as superior without achievements that warrant it, exaggerate their achievements and talents, be preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty, or the perfect mate, believe they are superior, and only can associate with equally special people, monopolize conversations and belittle or look down on people they perceive as inferior, expect special favors and unquestioning compliance with their expectations, take advantage of others to get what they want, have an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others, be envious of others, and believe others envy them, have an arrogant, or I should behave, in an arrogant or haughty manner, coming across as conceited, boastful, and pretentious, insist on having the best of everything.
That is the first set of characteristics. Believe it or not there are more, but I know just from that reading, some of you have a pretty clear sense and probably know where those behaviors come in with your spouse. Maybe it's not your spouse, and that wouldn't be relevant to the divorce context, but I know we all have friends or might know some people in popular culture who you can clearly identify these characteristics with. I will not name any names, but I think it's pretty obvious for some.
Now, the definition from the Mayo Clinic also has some other characteristics they say, and it says, "People with narcissistic personality disorder have trouble handling anything they perceive as criticism," that's very important, "and they can become inpatient or angry when they don't receive special treatment."
Now, I'm just going to give you all a little insight into me. That one definitely falls in my category. I do love special treatment, and that one's me. But anyways, other things is that they have significant interpersonal problems and feel slighted, react with rage or contempt and try to belittle the other person or make themselves appear superior, have difficultly regulating emotions and behavior, experience major problems dealing with stress and adapting to change, feel depressed and moody because they feel short of perfection, and have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, vulnerability, or humiliation.
That's a lot. That is a ton of different things, but in conversations I have with you every day, I know a lot of you are living with spouses that share these characteristics. These are daily behaviors that you are living with, and you're trying to figure out how this process is going. One of the extra challenges with someone who shares these narcissistic characteristics is that most narcissists don't think that anything is wrong with them.
One of the challenges with diagnosing narcissistic personality disorder is someone who is a narcissist will not sit down to be diagnosed, and they won't think that anything is wrong. In the divorce process in particular, which is what we're talking about, it really drags on the divorce process, because everything becomes bigger than it needs to be.
Now, while I'm not saying that the issues that you're facing in divorce are small, they are big, but what happens is usually you, the person who are listening, has pretty reasonable expectations, and needs, and wants during this process, whereas dealing with the narcissist can be just complicated, and their expectations are the opposite of unreasonable. Every time you force them to give an inch or ask that they give an inch, they react in ... they overreact, I should say, kind of in an out of control manner, and it just becomes a much bigger fight than necessary.
Compounding that is I like to say ... I had this funny thing. One of my first jobs I had when I was working on Wall Street, I was a financial advisor at a very good firm, and there were lots of financial advisors working there. I noticed something very interesting that applies to the narcissist in the divorce context.
What was interesting is the personality of the financial advisors, their clients would also share a similar personality to that advisor. What do I mean by that? So there would be a financial advisor who was very ADD, always wanted things really snappy, was kind of all over the place, and when their clients called, their clients were the same way, very ADD, a little bit all over the place, kind of snappy, and that was interesting.
Then conversely is there would be an advisor there, and he would be very thoughtful, very deep thinker, very analytical, relatively quiet, not kind of a big sales personality, and when that person's clients called, that's what they were like, the clients. They were generally very thoughtful, very analytical, very deep thinkers. It was interesting because I was sitting around, I don't know, 20 or 30 very successful financial advisors, and in general, all of their clients matched their personalities, and it was one of the weirdest things I had noticed.
Why do I bring this up? Well, in the divorce context, it turns out that narcissists tend to find lawyers with those same personality traits. What could have been even a reasonable process becomes that much harder, because not only is the spouse suffering on the scale of narcissism to an extreme degree, but their attorneys are often further complicating that situation rather than helping it.
It turns out, at least in my experience, I can't speak for everyone, but oftentimes, those with narcissistic personality disorder tend to have very narcissistic attorneys who are just a pain and a half to deal with. I can't stand them, to be quite frank. Least favorite people to deal with in the legal process.
I don't mind a mean attorney, I don't mind any form of attorney except for the narcissistic ones. I can deal with the mean ones, but those who are just full of themselves and have clients who are equally that level are the biggest pain. I think if you were to talk to any very good divorce attorney, they would say the exact same thing. Every town and every city across America, there are attorneys who share these capabilities, and also attract those very frustrating clients who are probably like your spouse if you're listening to this.
Now, all that said, let's shift gears a little bit. What do you do? What are the strategies ... and I'm really just going to go through three ... strategies that you can put into place to deal with a narcissist during the divorce process? I like to only discuss three strategies, because if you focus on these three things, you will be focused on the right things, and actually, I use the word, "focus," because one of the challenges with dealing with a narcissist is small things become big, and you can quickly lose sight of the big picture, or as I like to say, "You can't see the forest for the trees."
I only want you to focus on a few things, and if you focus on those few things, you will get through in the grand scheme of things in the best position possible. So what are those three things? The first is document everything and get organized. The second is make sure you get an experienced attorney, and the third is you're the CEO. Remove emotions from this process.
Now, I'm going to get into each one of these three things, and intentionally, this is a little bit longer episode, because I think it's a very important one, and I'm going to go through these three topics. First one, document everything and get organized. Even though you're dealing with a narcissistic spouse, it's only one part of the process.
You still have everything that you're dealing with in divorce. Your spouse's personality characteristics are just something on top of that. It's a little frustrating, but you still have to deal with all the custody issues, hidden assets, unwillingness to compromise, trying to come up with a settlement agreement.
One of the things that really helps during this process is staying ... not only staying organized, but documenting everything that's going on, and everything that's happening. When I say, "document everything that's happening," is it can be overwhelming trying to keep up with all of the major events in your divorce process, particularly with a narcissistic spouse. Sometimes I'll talk to you or work with you over a long period of time, and you'll have 100 specific examples of things that have happened.
Of those 100 examples, it's just really hard to keep track, like what's going on, because you're living with these things, but we're trying to help you from the outside, and trying to catch up on these stories, and make sure that we do the best we can for you. So here's what I suggest you do when dealing with a narcissistic spouse, is you put together a timeline, a very, very simple timeline in chronological order, of the things that are happening. If you have evidence of those things, you supply the evidence of them. I really mean one or two pages of just the main things in the divorce.
What would I do? I would take a document, or a spreadsheet, or write it by hand, you put the date. So you're going to put June 4th and the year, and you're going to say, "Spouse yelled at me for this, and this happened," or whatever. Then you're going to say, "June 18th, X amount of money was suspiciously withdrawn from bank account. Unsure of where it went." And you're going to put behind that, is you're going to put a bank statement with that withdrawal on June ... I forgot what date I already said, we'll just say June 20th.
Then you're going to go to July, and say, "In July kids were with spouse. They did not eat for 18 hours according to them. Came home hungry, no food, and were unhappy," and you're going to write that down. You might say, "On July 17th," and whatever happened. You might say, "Police were called." Sometimes that happens with many of you. You'll say, "Here's the police copy of the police report."
Whatever the different things are, I'm just making up those examples off the top of my head, but you'll have a very simple timeline with the date, one sentence or two sentences of what happened, and if you have evidence of it, any evidence of what happened. Might be text messages, might be photos, might be bank statements, might be any number of things that could have happened, and you're just going to put that together in one file, and keep it organized.
One of the biggest challenges for your attorney or for me when it comes to helping you through this process is not only ... The most frustrating thing about dealing with a narcissist is it can be very isolating for you, and very overwhelming for us trying to help you. The goal is ... and I'm going to talk about each of those.
Let me talk about overwhelming for a second. So many things are going on, it's hard for me or hard for your attorney to keep things straight sometimes in terms of all of these different things that happen. If you have proof of them, if they're relevant for the divorce process, if they're he said she said type things, and we just need to keep them in order. So maybe we show this to a judge later, or maybe something's not relevant, or maybe it is particularly relevant, but we need to be able to keep those things straight.
The other thing that's relevant about that, is I said it can be very isolating. The other thing that's particular ... many things are particularly frustrating with dealing with a narcissist, but almost universally, narcissists are loved except by their family, or I should say their spouse in particular.
I know that everyone who might interact with your spouse might love that person. They might think, "Oh, Johnny's great," or, "Oh, Jill is awesome. Love getting a beer with Jill," or, "Have a great relationship with Johnny, I always say hi to him. I know he's the best." Always walking around the restaurant, or walking around town greeting people, and everyone knows who they are, and very well liked, but when they come home, they're a terror to you, and they don't treat you well, and it's awful, and it's very isolating, because you might feel that people don't believe that this person is actually not as good as everyone thinks.
One of the ways to combat that is to really prepare yourself, and document all of these things that are happening. If you have evidence of these things that are happening, and documented clearly, it's easy to change the narrative in this divorce process about who this person is, and really get the truth about them out, and advocate yourself and fight back. Narcissists are often bullies, and they like to yell and scream and everything else, but there is a truth that is happening, and you can expose that truth when you have the appropriate evidence together.
A lot about point number one, document everything, get organized. That is crucial in this process. Point number two is get an experienced attorney. Now, I talk about attorneys a lot on this show, and I don't have a ton of additional things to add, but I do want to talk about an attorney in the context of the divorce process.
Now, my last episode was how to find an attorney if you don't know anyone, so listen to that. Also in the store, if you get the Quick Start Guide, I have a big section on how to manage and improve your relationship with your attorney. Even with some of the coaching clients, particularly those I work with over a longer basis, I'll help you strategize, well, what's the best communication process with this attorney, and how do we do it effectively?
What I wanted to bring up though, is if you follow my resources on picking an attorney, one of the questions if you know, and if you're listening to this episode, doing some additional research, and you figure out that your spouse really has some pretty severe narcissistic tendencies, well, that really comes into play as you pick your attorney.
In particular, in your initial consultation, you should be asking ... well, one is you should have this beautiful timeline that's clearly documented, and you should say, "Look, I'm dealing with a narcissistic spouse," one question you should ask, "Have you dealt with spouses like this before? Do you have strategies in place? How do you feel like we should approach this given the information we have? If this were to go in front of a judge, what do you think? Will the cost of this divorce be more because of the nature of my spouse? Can you tell me how things would change, or what I should be thinking about? Will the length of time be longer because of my spouse? If my spouse weren't like this, would you have a different approach?"
These are kind of questions that you should be asking your attorney during your initial consultation or your early consultations, because it can be very relevant as you think about who you hire as your divorce attorney. Now, I know some of you will look for attorneys that specialize in narcissism, or will have it on their website. I'll tell you this, that's probably not the best method.
Most attorneys that I know that are very good that I work with who are super experienced, they are not ... they don't necessarily have a section of their website dedicated to narcissistic spouses. That said, I guarantee you, they have all dealt with them all the time, because that is just part of this process, and part of what they do. Just because someone's website doesn't say it, I wouldn't say that's a cause for concern. I would just look for a generally very good, very competent attorney, and I promise you, they will have seen it dozens or hundreds of times, unfortunately.
So the second thing was getting an experienced attorney. Now, the third thing is you are the CEO of your divorce, now remove your emotions from this process. Much easier said than done, but let me tell you what I'm getting at. Whether you are a stay at home mom, or dad, or maybe you're the one who was out working, it doesn't really matter.
If you were a stay at home parent and you've been running the household this whole time for the last two years, or 25 years, whatever it is, you have been the CEO, the Chief Executive Officer of your household. If you've been the one at work every day for the last two or 25 years, however long you've been married, you have been the financial earner out after it, earning the money, and earning the lifestyle.
Whatever the case is, you have a lot more experience and a lot more capabilities than you probably give yourself credit for. When it comes to dealing with a narcissist, or a narcissistic spouse, one of the things that you should be doing is really treating this divorce process as if you are the CEO of this divorce process, which you are. You have many more skills, regardless of what your spouse might say to you. Oftentimes they're trying to belittle you, or they're berating you, or they're just a terror at home.
I get it, but it doesn't lower your individual value, and it actually ... you have a lot more to it than you think, and a lot more skills than you think. When it comes to deciding what the best courses of action are during the divorce, you need to take that individual person out of it to the extent you can. It's almost impossible to remove emotions from the process, but go to therapists, talk to friends. I give lots of different advice in this podcast or via the Quick Start Guide in the store, or via coaching calls on this subject, but the point is, is when you try and decide what's best for you, you need to treat it through the lens of, "All right, I have to ... this divorce process will end one day."
It might not feel like it now. For some of you it might be a few months, and for others it might be a few years, but whatever that time period is, it will be over at some point. Really, your main goals should be, "Well, when this process is over, I'm going to have 10, or 30, or 50, or 70 years life left ahead of me. How do I make the smartest decisions today regarding my finances, regarding my kids, regarding my family today, that will set me up for the next 10, or 20, or 50, or 70 years of life?"
When you think about those decisions, you have to take the emotions out of them. You have to think, "Well, what are the dollars and cents? What are realistically the best options for me, my children? If I were a third party thinking about this, and if I were giving myself advice 10 years from now, or 20 years from now, what would I say to myself today as I go through this process, or what advice should I be getting from a third party that will really ... If I were just the boss of this process, the CEO of this process, what decisions would I be making to get me through it?"
If you make decisions from emotions, your emotions can easily lead you astray during this time, but if you make your decisions through logic, you can start to cut through all the fluff, cut through the bullying, cut through the rough nights, cut through all of this, and really focus on, "Hey, here's what I want. Here are my three goals," or, "Here are my five goals." I've talked about goals on this in the podcast.
"Here's what I want for my future. I know he or she is going to say this or that, or whatever in this process, but that doesn't matter. Here's what I'm focused on, here's what I'm going to fight for for myself, here's what I need to get through this process in one piece. That is what I'm going to fight for, regardless of what my spouse decides to do or tries to do, because I'm the CEO. I'm the boss of this process, and I'm going to put myself in the best position possible for my future, and for my kids' future."
When you start to adopt that attitude, you will really shift the way that you think about dealing with divorce with a narcissist, and it will be a much better position for you for the future, and for the long-term in setting up things the way that you need to set them up. You will be putting yourself in a position to fight back, and to make the smartest decisions you can to put yourself into a position to get you into a good spot not just for the next six months or the next year, but really for the rest of your life.
So as I said, three pieces of advice for dealing with a narcissist. The first is document everything and get extra organized. The second is make sure you get an experienced attorney who has the knowledge and strategic thought and thinking, and knows how to handle a narcissist, and the third is remember that you are the CEO of this process, and you need to treat yourself as such.
Try to use logic and smart thinking over emotions during this process, even though it is a tough time for you unquestionably, but know that if you think about it, the smartest way possible, you will get through this process in one piece, and you will get yourself through this process in a position to set yourself up for a great future.