Mental Health Professionals = Kryptonite

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

PwBPD sent a settlement offer with zero guardrails, wrong calculations, and no way of enforcing the agreement. We sent one back with play therapy for the child, co-parenting therapy, a parental coordinator, international travel restrictions, private school, a well-defined parenting schedule, and even a tax schedule. But mental health professionals are like kryptonite to pwBPD and pwBPD just ignored the offer.

How do you settle when your solution involves their kryptonite?

[BigOof]

PwBPD sent a settlement offer with zero guardrails, wrong calculations, and no way of enforcing the agreement. We sent one back with play therapy for the child, co-parenting therapy, a parental coordinator, international travel restrictions, private school, a well-defined parenting schedule, and even a tax schedule. But mental health professionals are like kryptonite to pwBPD and pwBPD just ignored the offer.

How do you settle when your solution involves their kryptonite?

[kells76]

What's the deadline for her to explicitly ("on paper") agree or disagree with your settlement offer?

Deadlines where "her non-response is an answer" for you are the way to go.

Another idea is pitching two settlement offers, one with way more professional involvement than you want/need, the other one with the amount of professionals you want/need.

Given the choice of 200% professional involvement or 100% involvement, with a deadline to choose, she may feel like she's winning if she chooses the one with less professionals... even though it's the one you want.

[ForeverDad]

When it comes to selecting professionals such as counselors, doctors, etc, the pwBPD is very likely to shop for ones that are biased, gullible or inexperienced.  Of course.

If you let ex be the first to choose one, then your denial may not mean much if it goes to court.

So one way to limit your losses is to vet the professionals, compile a shortlist of better ones, and then let the ex choose from among the better list.  The benefit of doing this is that family court will like the idea of both parents having a share in the decisions.  That you were the first one to propose a good list, well, that's what we call good strategy.

[BigOof]

The deadline has passed for pwBPD to respond. Off to court, we go.

ForeverDad, good advice re choosing professionals. My lawyers chose some friendly professionals for pwBPD to select from.

PwBPD breaks the law every few months and D4 complains about domestic violence regularly. The long-term strategy is to involve as many mental health professionals as possible. I'm playing the numbers.

K76, you can't pitch anything complicated to pwBPD. PwBPD lacks problem-solving skills and just freezes up and acts like the victim.

[kells76]

K76, you can't pitch anything complicated to pwBPD. PwBPD lacks problem-solving skills and just freezes up and acts like the victim.

That's good info to have. I bet you can build it in if you have further deadlines about proposals. Basically, know that she won't be able to pick, and so have your two to three options all be good (as ForeverDad suggested), and have a "If Mr BigOof doesn't hear back from Ms Ex Big Oof about her selection by Day, Time, then Mr Big Oof shall be the one to select". It's a very normal sounding structure for choicemaking that puts you in the win win seat -- if she does pull it together and get past the freeze/victim and picks an option, it's one you're already OK with. If she balks/delays/etc, then that automatically lets you pick.

[BigOof]

K76, that's a really good strategy. I'll interview the options now and select my favored one.

[ForeverDad]

My lawyer claimed "Courts love counseling" and so far that has proved true.  When one parent wants counseling and the other parent doesn't, then court is likely to step in and authorize it.

My ex started my son in counseling when we separated.  He was still 3 years old and I only found out when my insurance mailed me the 3 month reauthorization.

How was I not informed?  The county's default was to grant mother temp custody and temp majority time. I got alternate weekends, a three hour evening in between and NO temp custody.  Two temp orders (separation and then divorce process) covering two years.

I learned a lesson there.  Stand up for yourself, politely.  If lawyer whispers "Be quiet, we'll fix it later" the "later" may be in the final decree, whenever that happens.  Neither my court, associated professionals nor the lawyers were inclined to fix or update the temp order.  Why not?  "Well, it's only temporary!"   My lawyer had estimated 7-9 months, the divorce was actually over 23 months!

Beware of joint this or joint that.  What that means is you two have equal authority and the tie breaker is court (long waiting list) or a mediator, parenting coordinator, perhaps a Guardian ad Litem (GAL)or similar.

Sometimes joint custody can be split between the parents.  You can try for residential parent (school, helpful to avoid her moving away with the kids), medical and mental health aspects (counseling).  If religious, etc is not important to you then you can let your ex take some of that.  Choose which battles are more important to you.  By pondering the potential future conflicts, you can avoid some common pitfalls and delay tactics she may choose.

[BigOof]

FD, my case is very similar to yours - I'm many years into a temporary order with pwBPD putting sand in the gears at ever step.

[kells76]

BigOof, you're not alone in having a disordered ex who seems to favor control even over personal advantage.

There was a member here who actually gave away her house to her ex in the divorce. I believe she had to go back to court to force him to follow through with taking it. It doesn't make sense... that's the disorder.

So she learned from that to build deadlines and consequences into every single legal document -- she couldn't rely on the fact that the judgment said "Mr Ex is to receive the house" and expect him to cooperate. For him, it was, like for your kid's mom, about the control... even to his own disadvantage. She had to pivot to phrasing in every document like: "Mr Ex shall receive the house and if he does not take over aspects A, B, and C by Day/Date, then Ms Member shall be entitled to XYZ".

Basically, the question is, how can you leverage your knowledge of her sand-gearing  to your and your child's advantage?

Make every proposal very reasonable, with a deadline, and a consequence (not punitive, just very normal sounding) for non-reply/non-compliance, so that you don't have to go back in front of a judge every time to make your ex comply with a decree.

Have as much as possible, if/when you get a chance to re-pitch proposals/offers, say "In the area of mental health, Ms Ex Big Oof may select from the following 3 providers; if Ms Ex does not inform Mr Big Oof by Day/Time, then Mr Big Oof shall select from the list". Same with education... taxes... religion... moving away... all of that stuff.