Before you read

Important notice

This book provides general information and the author’s perspective for educational purposes only. It is not legal advice, financial advice, or mental-health treatment, and reading it does not create an attorney-client, therapist-client, or any other professional relationship with the author or publisher.

The author is a licensed clinical social worker, not an attorney. Laws, court rules, and procedures about custody, parenting plans, support, protective orders, child-protection investigations, evidence, and privacy vary by state and county and change over time, and may have changed since this book was written. Nothing here describes the law of any particular place. Before acting on anything in this book that could affect your legal rights or your case, consult a licensed attorney where you live.

The stories in this book are illustrative scenarios, not accounts of real clients or cases. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental. Sample messages and parenting-plan language are illustrations, not legal documents.

The author and publisher make no warranties that this information is complete or suited to your situation, and disclaim liability for any loss or harm arising from its use. Your decisions are your own.

If you or anyone else is in danger, call 911. If you are thinking about suicide or are in crisis, call or text 988 in the United States.

A note before you start

The stories in this book are illustrative scenarios. Some combine patterns I’ve encountered repeatedly in clinical and family-court work; others are fictionalized examples written to show those patterns. None portrays an identifiable client.

Nothing here is legal advice. Custody law, protective orders, and court procedure differ by state and change over time. This book deliberately doesn’t describe any one state’s law; where the answer depends on where you live, it tells you to ask. When I say “ask your attorney,” I mean it literally.

This book is written to fathers whose co-parent is the children’s mother, because that describes most of the men I’ve worked with. Conflict doesn’t have a gender. If your family looks different, the principles hold.

High conflict is not the same as abuse

Read this before anything else.

This book is about conflict: two parents who fight, one or both of whom can’t let it go. It is not a manual for living with abuse. If your co-parent has hit you or the children, threatened to, stalked you, controlled money or contact to dominate you, or made you afraid for your safety — or if you have done any of those things — you’re not in a high-conflict co-parenting problem. You’re in a safety problem, and the strategies here are not enough on their own.

In that situation: if anyone is in immediate danger, get to safety and call 911. Talk to an attorney and a domestic-violence advocate before you do anything else. The National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) serves men too. Follow any protective order to the letter.

Coercive control can be quiet. It can look like monitoring, isolating, financial control, constant threats to take the children, or using the court process itself as a weapon over years. If parts of this book sound less like a hard co-parent and more like a pattern of control, talk to a professional who specializes in it.

If you’re wondering whether it’s you

Some men pick up this book and, a few chapters in, recognize themselves in the descriptions of the other parent. If that happens, keep reading. Chapter 3 is for you, and it’s the most important chapter in the book. Nobody fixes a high-conflict co-parenting relationship by changing only the other person.