mental illness and the courts

[Justadude]

i'm curious has anyone actually brought up the concern to the courts about a parents mental health concern and how would the courts view that? mental health is not something concretely factual i can introduce as a concern.

[hell0kitty]

What we were advised is to not bring it up ourselves, just show the evidence and let the evaluator come to that conclusion.  Your witnesses on the other hand can say whatever they like along those lines.  Also, so far, every evaluator and mediator has figured out there is MI at play within 5 mins of meeting her...   They see it all of the time, so it is hard to snow them. I guess if you are not a doc, and start out by claiming they have mental illness, it is like taking 3 steps back, because they the burden of proof is harder.  They have to prove your wrong before they can prove you are right since you are not a doctor.  They have to prove they didn't just take a novice word for it and did their due diligence.

[Justadude]

thank you very much. makes perfect sense.

[livednlearned]

Bringing up mental illness when there is no official diagnosis can backfire.

Collective wisdom from people here is that you want to focus on patterns of behavior. There are the manual ways to document, like journals, logs, recordings, witnesses, etc.

Another alternative is the deposition. pwBPD are prone to emotional reasoning (lying) and don't seem to think methodically about their legal steps, so eventually that official court transcript unravels their testimony. While it doesn't diagnose the mental illness, it's pretty clear that something very unstable is going on. My ex is a former trial attorney, and has done hundreds if not thousands of depositions. But his deposition testimony was so dysregulated and contradictory -- even he couldn't overcome his BPD.

[ForeverDad]

It appears most cases never get a diagnosis reported to the court.  Court pays the most attention to the behaviors and behavior patterns anyway since a diagnosis may be reflected greatly or minimally in the person's behaviors.

Courts also pay more attention to the parenting behaviors (how child is impacted) than adult behaviors (how parents interact), so strategize accordingly.  Mention everything but give priority to the parenting behaviors.

My ex - to my knowledge, thank you HIPAA privacy law - has never been diagnosed, everyone just dances around the issue.

Bringing up mental illness when there is no official diagnosis can backfire.

Yes, you don't want your ex to be declared handicapped and you obligated to support her indefinitely.  Generally doesn't happen, but it is a real risk.

[SeekerofTruth]

All good food for thought.

Within the last month i have confronted her BPD in email on several occassions, AFTER HAVING LOST IT.  Meaning i go soo peed off after an undermining incident, pertaining to a broken agreement, i simply let loose on 3 emails within 24 hours, that called her almost every name in the book.  I know, no excuses,  I lost my cool, she got me good and i believe solicited this reaction out of me.  She is very high functioning and manipulative.  When she splits, it's as though I am some crumb.  The undermining incident involved something having to do with my business start-up.  By the end of the weekend, i sent her a lenghty email, apologizing and then mentioning BPD.  Her undermining incident occurred after a period of about 2 months of no, very low contact.

So i now have a new phone and new phone #, so we have no phone contact, no text contact.

The last few weeks I have been relentless about confronting her BPD, naming it, but also doing so in an aggressive manner, (by aggressive, i mean bold, not tiptoeing, not walking on eggshells, just like sayin sizhoprenia).  She's only replied how well she is doing emotionally, calling me out on anger and blame (when the situation has been somewhat reversed, but yeah i got angry, in fact previously therapist even said i had every right to be angry, however in my wife's eyes, no one can be angry or raise their voice, while she can go nutz).  I concluded in my last email that i would be blocking her from further emails due to a pattern of unconscienable manipulations AND that I still love her, but the marriage is broken unless she seeks out tx specific to BPD.  Instead she's been going to ACOA meetings and is no using the jargon rather effectively.

I think her splitting is soo strong, she will take on the role of pathetic poor loser ex husband.

But there are so many inconsistencies and undermining behaviors in our relationship history its going to be interesting to see how she responds to those.  I doubt she will avail herself to tx because she is also quite N/BPD and a few months ago, landed another high powered executive job so she is rolling... .Rolling right over me, like road kill.  Callous.  Contentious.  Share more later.  Thanks for the interesting topic.