Why the Ex Keeps Taking You to Family Court

Another lawyer letter. Another court threat. Here we go again.

You know how this goes. You and your partner spend time, money, and energy going through a whole court process that ends up... usually where you already were.

You've tried giving in. You've tried following orders and doing the right thing. But nothing stops her. The filings keep coming. The legal bills keep climbing. And just when life starts to settle down again, something else comes up. A new complaint. And it starts again.

It's not just the cost, or the time, or even the stress of going to court. It's what it does to the rest of your life. It’s hard to build anything stable when every time things settle down, she comes back and disrupts it.

And you're left asking the same question. Why does it never end? Why does she never stop?

I’m going to be doing a few episodes on court over the next few weeks, and today, I'm to start with that question. Why?

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• High conflict people believe other people cause their distress, so court threats are an attempt to fix a problem she believes your partner is causing.

• She's not looking for compromise, she's looking for someone to confirm she's blameless, which is why explaining your side only makes the distress worse.

• Court gives her a stage where an authority can declare her right and punish who she blames – many high conflict people want punishment, not just agreement.

• Even a bad outcome gets folded straight into her story – the system is biased, he lied, she'll keep fighting – so her story never falls apart.

• Her identity depends on someone else being to blame, so this isn't a legal dispute finding new issues – it's a psychological pattern finding new legal expressions.

• Mediation generally doesn't work because it assumes both people want resolution.