Don’t miss this episode of Children First Family Law in which Krista speaks with Dr. Matthew Sullivan, an internationally known researcher, speaker, psychologist, and author of two leading books on parental alienation and parent-child contact problems. His work emphasizes solution-driven approaches, providing practical encouragement to improve coparenting dynamics to help children flourish. Dr. Sullivan is a pioneer in the field, having more than 30 years experience in family dispute resolution and clinical work in the family courts. He served as president of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts from 2019 to 2020, won its President’s Award in 2023, and was awarded the Meyer Elkin recognition for his powerful work published in the Family Court Review in 2024.
Dr. Sullivan, along with prior guest Dr. Michael Saini, together led the “Peace Talks” regarding Kayden’s Law at a major international conference, attempting to bring together what has become at times heated division among professionals as to how to best deal in family courts with important issues of domestic violence and parental alienation. He and Krista discuss at length the dynamics that have created such tension among professionals and his thoughts on how best to move forward productively for the best interests of children.
Dr. Sullivan shares his expertise on the variety of approaches courts use to determine best interests of children and discusses his perspective on ways to receive and consider the voices of children in these cases. He also shares why a mental health professional a best interests attorney, and a solutions-oriented judge can create problem-solving magic in cases with complex family dynamics.
In this episode, you will learn about:
- Kayden’s Law and the effects the legislation could have
- Dr. Sullivan’s experience with the media’s tendency to polarize domestic violence issues as seen by a recent spat with the Wall Street Journal
- Advocacy for effective balance of domestic violence reform and its role in parent-child contact problems
- Child custody evaluations and the underlying reasons they can fall short
- Ways courts approach to determine best interests and consider the voice of children
- The three players who can create a serious problem-solving team when it comes to supporting children during divorce
- The importance of getting buy-in from parents to prioritize children in divorce
- The concern of mental health challenges experienced by kids in high-conflict divorce
- Thoughts on when therapy is effective and when it’s ineffective
Resources from this Episode
Overcoming the Co-Parenting Trap: Essential Parenting Skills When a Child Resists a Parent: www.amazon.com/gp/product/0692407995/ref=sw_img_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
Overcoming the Alienation Crisis: 33 Coparenting Solutions: www.amazon.com/gp/product/1735099406/ref=ewc_pr_img_2?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
Overcoming Barriers website: overcomingbarriers.org/about-us/mission
Dr. Matthew Sullivan’s website: sullydoc.com
www.childrenfirstfamilylaw.com
All states have different laws; be sure you are checking out your state laws specifically surrounding divorce. Krista is a licensed attorney in Colorado and Wyoming but is not providing through this podcast legal advice. Please be sure to seek independent legal counsel in your area for your specific situation.
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Kayden’s Law, Domestic Violence & Challenges with the Wall Street Journal; Experiences & Insights with: Dr. Matthew Sullivan Podcast Transcript:
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 00:00
And interestingly, the sequencing of the work in a family systems model where everyone is expected, by the order of the court, to be involved. Again, we’re not going to debate about who’s to blame, but we’re going to absolutely mandate that everyone’s got work to do to move things forward. And that distinction is important, because you’re going to if you’re back in the blame game, you go nowhere, because, in fact, everybody’s got evidence, legitimate evidence, that the other has contributed. So if you can mandate, or if you can get buy in, that everybody’s got work to do. Now, we have a start.
Intro/Outro 00:34
Welcome to the Children First Family Law podcast. Our host Krista Nash is an attorney, mediator, parenting coordinator and child advocate with a heart to facilitate conversations about how to help children flourish amidst the broken area of family law. As a child advocate in demand for her expertise throughout Colorado and as a speaker on these issues at a national level, Krista is passionate about facilitating and creatively finding solutions to approach family law matters in a way that truly focuses on the best interests of kids. Please remember this podcast is provided to you for information purposes only. No one on this podcast is representing you or giving you legal advice. As always, please enjoy this episode and be sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast with others you think would benefit from this content.
We are fortunate today to have with us on the podcast. Dr Matthew J Sullivan, a psychologist who has been in private practice in California, specializing in family dispute resolution and clinical work in the family courts for over 30 years. He is a pioneer in the development of the parenting coordination role internationally, and regularly presents at conferences and trains family justice professionals about parent child contact problems in shared parenting arrangements. He was the president of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, the AFCC international organization, from 2019 till 2020 and was presented the AFCC President’s Award in 2023 and the Meyer Elkin Essay award for the article judged best in the 2024 volume of the Family Court Review. He served on the American Psychological Association Ethics Committee from 2016 till 2018 and currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Family Court Review. He is the co founder of Overcoming Barriers, Inc, which is a nonprofit organization that has developed a variety of programs for high conflict shared custody arrangements.
Krista Nash 02:28
Well, welcome today, I am so grateful to have Dr. Matthew Sullivan with us here to share his insights over many decades of work in the family law arena. Welcome. We’re really glad to have you with us. Thank you, Krista. Let’s start with just giving us some background. You’ve done so many things as I look through your well esteemed CV, and I’m just blown away with how much work you’ve done in the field regarding research and writing. I know you were past president of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts. Won a big award for them. You have that Meyer Elkin award and those sorts of things, and I know you’ve also authored a couple books regarding overcoming the co parenting trap and overcoming the alienation crisis. What I really love about that is that we’re all about trying to come up with solutions. And so I love that your sub head is 33 Co-arenting Solutions, which is great. So tell us a little about your background. How did you get to where you are and get into the field? And let’s just go from there.
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 03:25
I’m a clinical psychologist. That’s my training. And I got into the forensic area through juvenile dependency. So I did evaluations way back when of parental competency and termination of parental rights and, you know, pretty heavy duty stuff, but in retrospect, much more cut and dry, you know, juvenile stuff is awful. These issues in family court that we’ll talk about, I’m sure, so much more nuanced andmuch more challenging for that perspective.So then one of the judges, Santa Clara County in California waswhere I have practice in the public courts. One of the judges moved to family court, and obviously liked my work. So the rest is sort of history in terms of child custody evaluations, which I did for probably until 2004. I know exactly when I stopped doing evaluations, just they were not my cup of tea. I was one of those things that you’re good at, but it doesn’t feed you, right? And I also thought there was a lot of error in that kind of cross section analysis of a family’s functioning and not having a more longitudinal view.
Krista Nash 04:42
For those who are not familiar so much with child custody evaluations you’re talking aboutwritten expert reports. Basically to come into a family and say, here’s my observations, here’s my psychological testing, sometimes with parents, and here’s one.
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 04:59
To come in as a the court-appointed neutral, you have access to everything that you need to have access. So there’s no procedural biases. And your chargeis the best interest of the child, which is, of course, an imprecise kind of as we know. And it might be around timeshare, might be around relocation, might be around significant issues of health or substance misuse or domestic violence. Initially I’m sure we’ll get into that, there was this emergence of children rejecting parents, when there just didn’t seem to be kind of a good explanation for that. That was beginning to happen, you know, in the late 90s and early 2000s and we can kind of get back to what that emergence is about. But anyway, so I stopped doing evaluations, and my work, although I write and train, is as a practitioner. So I try and I work in the trenches trying to understand and intervene legal and psychological interventions. That was the first article I wrote in 2001, Legal and Psychological Interventions for Alienation. And that’s kind of been my work as a practitioner in the trenches.
Krista Nash 06:22
Well, that’s a good short summary of a lot decades career and working in this area. So I will put in our show notes, links to your research and your CV and all the details so people can go get more information as they have interest in that. I’m really trying to equip parents, especially, but also practitioners, to be more informed. So we’re not all just in some echo chamber talking to ourselves. We’re actually bringing this to the people before maybe they’re in crisis or when they’re thinking about how to handle these crises, it sounds like maybe your experience. I mean, mine is so different than yours. First of all, much shorter, less esteemed. But I found that, as I did child advocacy as an attorney and in Colorado, we can do those custody evaluations, which a lot of people like you and people around the country, I’m finding, are shocked that attorneys would even be touching that, right? First of all, is that true? Does that surprise you?
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 07:10
Well, it doesn’t surprise me, because I trained folks in a lot of and GALs (Guardian ad Litems) are almost always attorneys. They do evaluations and assessments. And obviously the question is, are they competent?
Krista Nash 07:25
Well, in Colorado, we have Child Legal Representatives (CLR) who are essentially, loosely, I’d say, the Guardians ad Litem of the domestic court best interest attorneys. But we also have the typical child custody evaluators who are, for example, Child Family Investigators (CFI) who are attorneys, sometimes,andalso mental health professional. . And then we have Parental Responsibilities Evaluators (PRE) who are the psychologist level, generally psychological testing, higher level, more expensive, more time, more significant reporting. I found before this Child Legal Representative piece got the best interest attorneys really started getting more ground and more people seeing how the efficacy of using somebody who was like, more holistically involved in the case- we really didn’t have that role. So I was doing these Child and Family Investigative reports, custody evaluations, and just found them to be so limited in how helpful they were, right? And so I don’t know if that was your experience. I mean, for me, when you say it didn’t feed you, I don’t know if that’s a financial comment as more, as much as it is like a soul feeding, professional feeding. You’re nodding. For those who are not looking like, for me, it’s like, not as effective as I could be in another role. There’s better ways to do this. Is that what you’re talking about?
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 08:33
Absolutely. I mean, there’s many aspects to that. The resources that are spent for a comprehensive child custody evaluation are daunting for most families, and they therefore suck up the resources that might be available for interventions. It’s not an intervention in the sense of, you know, it’s not about relationship healing. So that’s one thing. Number two is it’s adversarial. Child custody evaluations are adversarial, and these issues that I think we’re talking about, resist and refuse children toward parents, are fueled in the context of co parenting conflict. So when you go into a child custody evaluation, you are at war. You are trying to build your case. So that’s not helpful either. And then it takes time. Oh my god. Evaluations can take- I don’t know about your jurisdictions- but it’s not uncommon for it to be a year or even 18 months. So what’s happening during that time? I can tell you, nothing good. The child is not seeing a parent. The parent who may be the aligned favored parent is probably not doing anything to facilitate, you know, some kind of breakthrough in that. So there’s a tremendous amount of polarization that’s happening. That’s the dilemma. One of the dilemmas in this area, that time is not our friend. These dynamics don’t tend to, at least the more severe ones, the mild ones, and they’re not all created equally, certainly. I’m sure we’ll talk about that, but the more severe ones, they need as immediate legal and psychological intervention as possible. And if judges understandably say, Gosh, I don’t have enough information to determine if is this abuse? Is this alienation? Because that’s often how it’s framed by the attorneys or by the propers. I can’t you know, I’m having my initial case management with these folks. Well, I need more information.
Krista Nash 10:34
Just as an aside, you know, here I am in the trenches doing this work with families. I had two cases already this morning. One we appeared in court, and Dad hasn’t seen children in months and months and months and months, and we’ve got lots of real problems going on. We’ve had a psychologist involved, you know, I came in years into it, into the toxicity. And of course, the new attorney for Dad starts throwing around, you know, alienating behaviors and all these things. We’ve had psychological evaluations. We’ve had all the custody evaluations, you know, we’ve got, it’s a really extreme case, and, you know, I’m having to make a record with the court. The court just sitting there, wide eyed, going, I don’t even know what to do with this, you know. And I’m trying to explain that this is such a complicated area, and that, you know, we don’t need to throw these terms around.
And then I had another case where I came in this morning that I dealt with where I was dealing with a case where the dad hasn’t seen the kids in like, four years, and it’s totally overwrought. And I was able to come in not I told him, not because I’m magic, but because I’m sitting in the seat of somebody who’s not trying to be adversarial, and I’m trying to fix it, and we are fixing it like he’s like, I can’t believe that we’ve gone four years with these attorneys at war causing all this toxicity, and I haven’t seen my kids in this much time, and now all of a sudden, we’ve got a plan, and it’s involving therapy and work and all of those things. But we can talk about all this theoretically, right? I mean, there’s so much that’s theoretical that we talk about, but I think people just need to understand how hard this is affecting so many kids and families like real time, and if we don’t fix it, the risk is just so so great. You resonate with that, but it’s interesting. We’re talking about this, and I literally spent my whole morning dealing with, you know, 200 compositional cases.
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 12:13
On what you’re saying, which I certainly now focus on more. And we’re actually doing four of us this week long training I
Krista Nash 12:21
I saw that’s coming up, let’s say, you know, the online training program about parent-child contact problems, right? I saw that’s coming up in just a few days, right?
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 12:29
So a module that I’m doing is kind of right out of the block, so to speak. What gets these cases on a trajectory, which you were saying, finally, after X amount of time, it feels like we have a, you know, a path that is not entrenching, not polarizing, not adversarial, but that is incumbent when there are attorneys involved, and that’s increasingly in fewer and fewer cases. But you’re talking about cases with attorneys. They are the first responders they are, by definition, gonna get from their clients? I’ve been, you know, either from the favored parent, a protective narrative that you know my child, which is interesting, not our our child, but my child needs to be protected from him/her for these reasons, and from the rejected parent. I have been victimized by a parent who is engaged in a campaign of denigration and hate to damage and destroy my relationship. It will be framed to the attorneys who are in their separate spaces hearing from only one side. So what do they do? If they move on simply on the basis of those very polarized, limited narratives, you’re just off to the races in terms of putting the courts in a place where it’s an either/or proposition, which may be the case. Maybe it is abuse and/or alienation, but in the far majority of cases, it isn’t. It is a combination of things that have far less severity and child welfare issues, and what it needs initially is for the attorneys to talk. What changed in your case this morning is that you must have had a conversation with the other attorney and said, you know, can we do something differently here? So assuming that safety issues are not relevant. They are. In some minority of cases, there is a worry that if a child is exposed, and of course, that parent is debating that. But nevertheless, there’s a worry. There’s a ton of cases where safety issues are not an issue. It’s simply, I hate my dad. He’s mean, you know, whatever. He has a new girlfriend and, you know, those are not safety issues. Those may end the relationship forever, but that’s not a place where attorneys should be going to war and they should be working together to have some kind of healing intervention, and that’s the intervene early and get it out of a an adversarial frame. Same and starting to put resources not into litigation, but into some kind of mental health, and then having some accountability around that, of course, have to stay involved. The judge has to say, you know, in their first Case Management Conference, if what you described happens is that you have a plan of intervention where there’s some expectation that not so much everybody contributed to where we’re at equally, but everybody has a contribution to moving it in a better direction. Oftentimes, parents say, Why should I have to get involved? This is an issue between Susie and her dad, but obviously we know that that mom is critically important to support the work that Susie and dad may need to do, and probably mom and dad have their issues that Susie is well aware of and is aligning one way or the other. But when you intervene, you may find that you don’t get compliance from parent A or parent B, and there needs to be some oversight by the courts to say, “I want you back in a couple of months. Let’s see if there’s progress.” And you may see, sure enough, that the family therapy isn’t happening because mom is not getting or dad is not getting the kid to family therapy. That’s where the coercive element of the court, you know, needs to come in and say, Look, this is not okay. And no, that’s not easy, because courts don’t wield armies, and if a parent is hell bent on not cooperating at the end of the day, there’s not a lot that can be done.
Krista Nash 16:29
It’s interesting because I’m doing a few presentations, actually this year conferences with Dr. McNamara, who’s a previous, I know you know, and who’s the previous. She’s involved on the FCC board and his previous podcast, and with whom I work very closely in a lot of cases. She and I are presenting with a judge in Colorado who does this very, very well, and we’re presenting at the National AFCC conference and at a big Judicial Conference in the coming months of this year to talk about how this tribe of a best interest attorney, a really solid therapeutic team and a great judge, is the problem solving solution’ magic team’ that can really make difference in looking forward. I mean, even this morning, on that same hearing, the attorneys calling me opposing counsel, I stopped, and I’m like, can I just pause here, “I’m not opposing counsel, right? I’m not, I’m really not opposing you. I’m here to make solutions, and we need to talk, and we need to not litigate.” I feel like a broken record, but this is part of why I’m doing the podcast. Because I want parents and professionals to hear this, to hear from people like you and from me to say there is a better way. There’s a sane way to do it.
Let’s talk about where you started earlier, talking about how we start, like when this trend started toward you think this becoming more of a thing. This resist-refuse. You know, contact problems really started rearing up. What do we need to know under to understand that?
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 17:45
In the bigger socio cultural context, there have been a few forces in the last 50 years that I’ll briefly describe that have fueled this whole issue of children resisting and refusing, and the what we call now parent-child contact problems is a spectrum of factors that can contribute to a child’s expressed resistance and behavioral rejection of a parent. So parental alienation is a sub type of that spectrum estrangement, which is a understandable and rejection of a parent because of the child’s actual experience of that parent. That’s a subtype. Those are the ones that often get thrown out, you know, in 80% of cases. And then there are hybrids of those, which are, yes, there’s actually been some bad parenting that would drive a child to, understandably say, I don’t want to spend time with that parent. And there’s been parental alienating behaviors. There’s been, instead of trying to support some healing, keeping the family narrative about that parent as pathological as possible.
So what are these forces? Well, first of all, until you know, when I got in the business, back in the whatever 20th century, moms had the power and the authority over children, at least until they were in adolescence. The Tender Years Doctrine was ruled and there was no recourse for fathers to have parenting time that was anything more than visitation, unless they work with mom. And we didn’t hear when mom wasn’t workable, because fathers had no recourse. They dropped off and were marginalized, if not erased from that. So one of the things that happened is that tender years was replaced, from a public policy standpoint, by best interest, and what a great thing. Yes, well, it has some unintended consequences, which is that now fathers who felt, rightly or wrongly like they were being marginalized. This is the father’s rights movement in the 90s, 80s and 90s, they had a recourse. They could go to court. Okay, that’s a good thing. But where does that lead moms, if they feel like the courts are not doing their children or them best interest, they may just take matters into their own hands. And we know that courts are not nearly as powerful as a primary parent’s influence on their children. You know, courts get it wrong, so that can certainly fuel understandable, and has advocacy. So that’s one movement that you can see good intent, but it has created a legacy where these cases get involved in the courts.
Krista Nash 20:33
Before you go to the next movement too. I would say from my experience of seeing a lot of these cases that some of these moms aren’t wrong, right? It’s like maybe it wasn’t over and overreach to say that there are no tender years, right? It’s not that dads can’t do it. It’s just we still do have a lot of dynamics where moms are doing that work. I mean, we can say theoretically that both parent tender years can go away because dads can do that as well. But a lot of family systems are, in reality, still set up. Mom is doing that, or the kids, I don’t know. We can do nature/nurture. We can do a lot of conversations on this, but judge Bruce Cohen and I talked about this as well in my podcast with him that, you know, because he’s got 45 years experience, and he’s shared the same thing about the tender years and, you know, women’s rights movements and all these things and father’s rights. But you got a lot of moms calling saying, I still do everything I do, all the doctors, the dentist, all the school, all the homework, all the cuddling at night when they can’t sleep. What do you mean?
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 21:29
You know, just to follow on that. So then you get presumptions in jurisdictions which are pervasive now, in the US and internationally, of not only shared custody, which we think of as 35% or more, but equal-share custody. Arizona, equal-share custody is the presumption. So you know, following up on what you’re saying, if you know, fathers will go in. It’s usually fathers, not universally, and they will on the basis of what the you know, there was also another kind of principle and presumption called the Approximation Rule that kind of got some traction from what were they doing as a family unit when they were a nuclear family? And let’s try and approximate that as we now set up a mom’s house. And, you know, in a lot of cases, moms were the primary caretaker, and they did most of the care, which is particularly relevant, zero to 10, not so relevant 10 to 18. That’s the tender years part. You know, the role of the parent. You know, 10 to 18 is more facilitating the child’s
Krista Nash 22:33
Or it should be, at least, right?
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 22:37
But you know, that gets into the dynamics that if mom has a 10 year old, she may foster the dependency in order to make the case that she should still be the primary parent. But yeah, these presumptions have created issues too, and what I’m saying is that those parents will take matters into their own hands, and you know, rightly sometimes, because the courts get it wrong, and sometimes maliciously, and sometimes out of unconscious factors- anxiety. And sometimes about a child coming back to them and distorting what their experience is with that other parent in a negative way. There’s, you know, there’s so many dynamics, but then when these cases get back into court. Yeah, it’s probably not going to be helpful.
Krista Nash 23:23
So what would another impetus be toward you think the
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 23:27
voice of the child, which is emerged, important. The UN said internationally that children in court, involvement that involves them, need to have a voice. You know, nobody’s going to argue with that. But of course, there are unintended consequences of empowering a child, particularly in high conflict shared custody. Particularly in cases where indeed a parent is influencing their voice to elevate the weight of their voice and to understand where that expression, whatever it is comes from. In these resistant reviews cases, ubiquitously, the child is saying, “no’, I’m doing a a workshop with Barbara Fiddler in New Orleans. You’re going to be there. It’s no issues of consent to treatment and resist and refuse. For kids, these kids are saying, not only do I not want to go with parent B, but I don’t want to engage in interventions with parent B. So Ouch.
Krista Nash 24:26
And sometimes it is fueled by, I get the frustration. You know, these are complex family systems with so much history. And, you know, the courts are getting almost no time. I’ve had several judges on my show, and they, you know, they talk about, what do you want me to do here, people? Like, I have five minutes with you, you know, I have two hours with you. I’m making massive decisions here. So, we talk about tender years, we talked about voice of the child tendencies and trends and the way that they went. Now we’re seeing, and don’t let me leap over any if I’m missing anything.
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 24:54
Mention one other, which is, which is the advocacy for domestic violence. That’s what I was just going to say in the 80s, which was absolutely a laudable and critical and, you know, important, protective movement for women and children victimized by domestic violence has emerged and plays into this area of resistance and refusal. Because the more extreme I’ll call it, domestic violence advocates who have mobilized very effectively as protective parents, see the assertion that a child’s rejection may be not due to their actual experience of a parent as a malicious assertion to further engage in coercion and domestic violence against them as a parent and the children. and that has played out in this whole complex situation, in that someone like me who has tried to work on this issue, you know, is seen as a threat to women who are victimized.
Krista Nash 25:58
And I want to understand that a little more right, because I come in this, I’m sure too Pollyanna-ish, right? I mean, I’m newer on the scene than many of you. And I really am problem focused, you know, solutions oriented. And I am like, look, and I love, I presented with Judge Cohen and Lynn Greenberg. Judge Cohen came on and said, Can we stop the toxicity here? Can we talk about, and just for the listeners, I’ll say, at this conference, there’s a lot of dialog about, you know, we’re talking about Kayden’s Law, and I’ve already done a couple shows on that, like the new domestic violence laws in Colorado. And Colorado is one of the first states to adopt these and it’s got a lot of unintended consequences. You know, we’re all trying to noodle and figure out how to make this all work. But Judge Cohen said, you know, can we all agree that we want children to be safe? Can we all agree that parents have fundamental rights to parent? Can we all agree that this is a court of evidence and a court of law with due process? You know? I mean, why do you think this has become so adversarial, where somebody like you is considered a threat? And explain why? Like, I guess, from a more naive view, it’s like, okay, why is it so polarized? I mean, I can’t imagine. I mean, maybe people would go so far as to say they think you’re trying to injure children. And, like, why would they say that? I don’t understand, honestly. Like, I think people coming, you know, this idea that maybe some of this is about overcoming barriers and these camps and the things that these people view as really, really dangerous, help me understand, just from a very like low level, what is going on here, from your view?
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 27:29
Well, it is complex. I’ll say that one thing that does not help, which is not unique to this particular, very complex, challenging issue is what the internet has done to information. To as judge was saying evidence which is fact based, versus misinformation, versus disinformation. Misinformation is different than disinformation actually has an intent to support an advocacy position, to scholar advocacy in our scholarship circles. You know what it might say any when you talk to ask him about that there is not a pursuit of you know, knowledge about concepts and theory and applications that I used to think about was kind of what happened when I was in graduate school learning these things. That’s been kind of corrupted by echo chambers in the internet and groups that, to borrow from a different whole area, radicalize multiple vulnerable people, vulnerable parents, who may, on the one hand, have indeed been victimized by the system, because that absolutely happens, and those people are easily radicalized, or people who are just disturbed, and that is proliferating. And what parents you know get as they search, for a keyword like domestic violence or parental alienation or whatever it may be, may be really good social science research, or maybe some crazy persons podcast who engage in ridiculously delusional parental alienating behaviors, and the courts hammered them. And now their case for them, since they don’t see their kids anymore, has become a cause, and they will speak and resonate with other people.
Krista Nash 29:24
I mean, we had six hours of hearings before our most recent rounds of legislative changes, where…
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 29:30
I was involved. Kathleen was calling me, saying, Oh my God, because California was, you know, under the same onslaught by a well-organized, you know, kind of started with Kayden in the federal legislation, which is funding legislation. But their intent was to move, state by state, to restrict based on ideology, you know, which I have problems with. But boy, they were forced to be reckoned with.
Krista Nash 29:55
What I was going to say is, at that hearing, I listened intently to all of it. And I had been involved in a couple of the cases where people spoke and knew very intimately what had actually occurred in the cases and the way that they are presented by people. I mean, there are some really, really bad stories, but some of them are just like you said, like, I think there is some, there is some radicalization that can happen where, you know, they’re sharing a story that is completely like, void of what actually happened in in the case in which I was aware or involved, you know. So there’s some of those things that I think also just make it really, really complicated, you know. I know you just had, for example, we talked about, as we were preparing for this, this Wall Street Journal article that you were quoted in back in I guess that was August, right? And there was something it about these reunification camps. And, I mean, of course, the headline was, let me just pull it up here. The headline was a controversial treatment used in custody fights can keep family members apart for years, against children’s wishes. And then the quote says it all absolutely destroyed me, from the child. You know, the quote about the child, and I know you were quoted in there in a very like narrow way. It seemed in the article, you know, just a real I actually kept searching for your name, thinking, there must be more that they quoted from Dr. Sullivan. Because, I mean, come on already. And I know that you wrote a letter to the editor. Then I saw and there were something like 1000 something comments, you know, highly inflamed comments on the internet. So tell us about that a little bit.
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 31:31
I was interviewed. It was a case. And what I would say is, you know, individual cases, which is something that is a truism in the law. Don’t necessarily make good law or good policy.
Krista Nash 31:45
Meaning one family’s situation. And I’ll say to my listeners, like Dr. Saini and I talked extensively on this on my podcast with him, another leading thinker and researcher in this area, like Dr Sullivan. But he said trauma-based policy, you know, front page based policy is always like, not always, but it’s, it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous to make policy based on that. So I think that’s what you’re saying too. Like this is one based on one family and what happened?
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 32:09
And in addition to that, the bias and the presentation by the journalists of the one family didn’t even represent the one family accurately. Just at an obvious level, the father who now has custody was not interviewed, nor was the child who continues to live full time with that parent. Well, how can you get a picture?Now from a journalistic perspective, the journalists can because I talked with the journalist at length, because I was outraged when I first read, you know, read this, he said, ‘ethically, my job as a journalist is to invite and, you know, encourage and provide everyone to have an opportunity, but if they don’t weigh in, it is ethical for me to proceed.’
Krista Nash 32:55
I have a journalism degree from Medill at Northwestern, I have absolute journalistic chops, and that is just completely garbage. And I actually said this in my very first podcast on the show was my introduction about why I left journalism was this ridiculous approach that they’re doing their job somehow by just inviting comment. That’s ridiculous. I mean, you are an information provider and presenting a skewed perspective. You should know it’s skewed. You do. There’s no way you have the whole story. It’s just another sad commentary on journalism, frankly. So I mean, I just, I could pass that out, having been trained well in that field.
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 33:32
So that obviously was so then I had to figure out, given the fact that I had seen and have literally eight other letters from colleagues that were written to the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which were flaming, flamingly critical. They got no, the editors said, we’re not publishing this, these letters. So I reached back to the journalist and, you know, and we had a talk. And he told me basically what I could do, that would be accepted and that he would, you know, because he agreed with some of my critiques. But they weren’t going to go as far as where I’d like to go or where you’re sort of, yeah, let’s do, let’s do a follow up story. Yeah. So anyway, I ended up doing that, just basically saying things are more complicated.
Krista Nash 34:18
Well, I mean, your letter was pretty soft, honestly, right?
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 34:23
I got criticism from that, of course, from my colleagues. And I said, Look, this is as far as I could go without being silenced.
Krista Nash 34:29
I’m going to just read this in so people hear what you wrote back, even though this is so completely soft. I agree with your colleagues on that, but I also understand, this makes me irate. Just, I’m always irate at attorneys that ruin families with the way they do things. But I’m also irate with journalism, and I think it does fuel the problem that parents don’t get great information because it’s so polarized. The letter that you wrote back said that it said, basically, your article, courts separate kids from parents on page one, front page story, August 26 2024 and. “More than 1000 comments from readers demonstrate the passion, pain and polarization of the increasingly prevalent dynamic in which children reject a parent after divorce. These parent child contact problems are complex. There is professional consensus that children reject parents for different reasons, including problematic or abusive behavior by the rejected parent or emotionally damaging behavior of the favored parent. Family courts must determine from which parent the child needs protection and whether to reunify children when they refuse contact with the parent. The one sided legislative efforts that restrict or outlaw reunification in all cases, regardless of the cause for the child’s rejection, will harm children by failing to protect or restore healthy parent child relationships. There is a more balanced way to approach these tragic family situations. The Association of Family and Conciliation Courts and National Council of Juvenile and Family Court judges issued a joint statement on parent-child contact problems that recommends individual case assessment with children safety always as the first priority, and interventions based on the best build science with increased training of family court professionals.” So I mean, I’m so glad you at least put something in there. But you know, even when I read that, I was like, Whoa, what happened here? Because clearly the article was so skewed. What I mean, rather than just, I mean, we could bash journalism enough, and it’s just so pathetic.
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 36:13
We’re just scratching the surface. Here’s something that I’m doing with Marcia Pruitt, who’s a researcher from Smith, another researcher, we are taking the 1100 comments, which we were able to call off of the Wall Street Journal website, and all of the other letters that were sent to me because we were kind of and doing a study about that kind of, we’re just getting into it, and we have the permission from the university to do this, it’ll be anonymous. But, you know, trying to, again, apply some good social science to some of what you’re talking about, which is, how does this happen, and is this helpful?
Krista Nash 36:55
So what’s the risk? I mean, like, I guess a couple things, like, maybe just briefly, because we could talk for hours and hours and hours and hours about this, and many people have, you know, what do you think we need to really think about moving forward? Because, you know, I’ve talked with the people who brought the legislation in Colorado. They are good-hearted, well meaning people, generally. They want to protect children. Okay, so you are a good-hearted, well meaning person who wants to protect children and help families. So am I. What do you think moving forward, we could be doing to make this better, to talk to each other and hear each other? What do you think the risks are of the way the legislation reads? Now, I mean, I know it’s different in each state, but sort of generally, from what you’re seeing, happen across these states that are adopting that funding from what Kayden’s law basically is providing.
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 37:38
I think the intent of the laws, which was not realized in California. Anyway, I’m less familiar with Colorado, but we mobilized the California Psychological Association, Family Law Specialists, AFCC, to some extent, although between you and I, which is not between you and I, was a little disappointed in, you know, the passion of AFCC California. The initial legislation basically was back to there’s no legitimacy to the concept and theories around children rejecting if it’s not legitimate, ie, parental alienation, that was the premise. Secondly, there’s no scientific basis for any interventions that are applied to these issues. I mean, it was pretty back to things that I thought we had successfully combated over years. I mean, this has been the legitimacy of PA at all as a phenomenon, really? We did a study that was the Meyer Elkins award, you know, looking not only at AFCC, which is considered, certainly by protective parents, as on the extreme, even though I think we’re absolutely a wide tent that has a good consensus of views on this issue. And the NCJ/FCJ, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, these are the two premier family law organizations you know, nationally, and AFCC is international. There’s a majority consensus that absolutely kids reject parents at times for not legitimate reasons, and that sometimes there’s a subset where it is absolutely that major dominant influence of the favored parent. So, you know, I feel like, okay, we’ve established that. Now we can move on to that is a safety issue, emotional safety issue, just like emotional abuse, just like sexual abuse, just like physical abuse, they’re not all the same, and some need to be hierarchized. That’s terrible terms of child protection. But this type of emotional abuse is a child welfare issue when it’s severe. It should be handled by the courts in that way. I thought we’d cross that threshold. The protective parents introduced legislation to try to undo all of that. And then as far as interventions, wanted to eliminate, not just intensive interventions, which they succeeded in doing, and we basically advocated, saying, we will give that up if we can provide protections for outpatient interventions, because we could lose everything. Because that’s what the initial legislation was, you don’t do anything if a favored parent is not basically abusive.
Krista Nash 40:15
And the intensive programs you’re talking about are maybe just explain that a little bit like what now can’t really happen under the new legislation,
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 40:22
You can’t move families into a residential setting for, I think, more than an overnight and then there’s the whole consent issue that you know, absent the consent of, you know, both parents, you can’t restrict the parenting time of a parent where there isn’t demonstrated abuse. I’m kind of paraphrasing this, so I may not have it exact. But that takes the leverage of the courts. You know, one of the legal interventions has always been judges saying to parent that this is not okay, and you’re engaging in behaviors that are, in my view, whatever emotionally abusive or not in your child’s best interest, knock it off.
Krista Nash 41:04
You mean to the parent who is…
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 41:07
Who is not flying with the timeshare orders or
Krista Nash 41:10
Right, who’s like saying they’re protective, but they’re fueling in whatever way, like a non participation resistant,
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 41:17
There’s not evidence that that behavior is protective. You know, that’s a critical distinction, because the same behaviors in a parent can be protective, saying, you know, you need to be fearful of your father. Could be protective, or it could be absolutely alienating.
Krista Nash 41:34
My most extreme case in this was quite a while ago when I did a case where I was interviewing a little girl and her mom and somebody in the family had done a whole bunch of things, like telling the school and everybody in the neighborhood things about the other parent and firing and all these different things, you know, firing cars, firing the neighborhood, about this guy being dangerous. And none of that was founded. And the little girl all the supervised parenting time was that the kid was fine, like, happy, doing well with dad. When I interviewed the little girl, though she’s like, well, he hasn’t hurt me yet, you know? And it was, like, such a sad situation, I mean, and yet this mom was, like, there are pieces of it. It’s so confusing, really, because there’s pieces of it where a mother might really have concerns about what she knew in the family, right? Even if she, like, never called the police or never did anything, there might have been things that were coercive or that, you know. But is there not some efficacy in trying to fix it almost no matter what it is? Right? I mean, if the behavior still continues? I mean, I guess there are extreme cases where we wouldn’t want to try to at least help a kid address this therapeutically, but I’m always trying to get parents to get off of the parenting time dynamic and get onto the relational dynamic of, see, look, these kids are going to suffer their whole lives if they don’t work out in some way. And kids usually resonate with that, you know, I say to them, it’s it really, generally, if I believe you really are going to be injured by this, then we won’t do it. But almost always addressing a broken relationship with a parent in some way, maybe, okay, we’re not going to do it in an intensive, but doing it in some way, even if you’re not thrilled about it, is in your best interest, right, versus not doing it all. I mean, wouldn’t you agree with that?
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 43:16
I would, but it’s not the kid you need to convince. Oh, I know, yeah, you have to create that rationale and get sufficient buy in that they’ll give the green light to the child and support just what you’re saying this is important to you, and I’m telling you it’s important to you because they’re going to play off of You know that parents, interestingly, just from a structural standpoint. You know, when I train I say, you know, the orders are often, first of all, dyadic, that repair needs to happen between parent, A and child, so they need to engage in parent-child relationship therapy. Well, where’s the favorite parent in this? Because, you know, the favorite parent then says, not my problem, and they’re probably not going to support. If they’re going to support it, then you have a mild case. And guess what? Prognosis is going to be pretty good, but in if it’s more moderate or severe, that parent is going to not only not participate. And interestingly, the sequencing of the work in a family systems model, where everyone is expected, by the order of the court, to be involved. Again. We’re not going to debate about who’s to blame, but we’re going to absolutely mandate that everyone’s got work to do to move things forward. And that distinction is important, because iif you’re back in the blame game, you go nowhere, because, in fact, everybody’s got evidence, legitimate evidence that the other has contributed. So if you can mandate, or if you can get buy in that everybody’s got work to do, now we have a start, and then the work starts with the favorite parent and the child. The other parent has to wait in the wings for their opportunity to have parent-child work until the therapist has a sense that the work has been done, that the parent has said to that child in a meaningful way, this is important work, and I support it. If you can get that, maybe you got a chance. The other thing is, these issues, particularly in litigation, get, as you say, derailed by the timeshare issue, and you know, a parent who’s trying to build a case for alienation. Interestingly, the parent who’s building a case for legitimate estrangement is typically saying little to no contact, right? Maybe supervised, maybe not even that. There’s been trauma, there’s been whatever. Usually, the parent who feels they’ve been alienated, what are they asking for? Anything? Yeah, or they’re lasting for half time, typically, but usually something. And maybe if they got a super aggressive attorney, they’re going to make a case that, you know, that they should have full custody, but now that issue is going to really make it hard to do the therapeutic clinical work. And I had a case. I just had a consult before today, and he’s going to court. He had equal timeshare, you know, and now the child is resisting and refusing and I’m consulting with him, and he’s like, I’m about to make a case that I things should go back to the way they were. And I said to him, just don’t get hung up on that. Now you’ve got almost nothing, and if the courts with moms buy in, gave you, you know, alternate weekends and some time during the week and a normalization of the holidays and vacations, take it.
Krista Nash 46:30
Absolutely, absolutely.
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 46:33
I know that part of it is off the table, and now the issues, which is, you gotta be impeccable, and he’s not. He contributes, for sure, and their co-parenting is ridiculously dysfunctional, and the kid is, you know, being influenced by mom. It’s all part and parcel. But I told him, don’t get hung up on demanding or making the case that, since she’s the cause, which is what he believes, that he needs some kind of it’s just not child-focused, you know, it’s about the grievance between the parents that you’re trying to have the court somehow address and adjudicate who’s the agreed parent.
Krista Nash 47:11
That’s exactly right. And I tell these parents all the time, I mean, you prove to your child that you’re not the way that you’re being portrayed by, you know, or that you’re better than you used to be, or whatever, then you’re being portrayed by the favored parent by having some time and by insisting, and having this massive line in the sand that it has to be in a certain number of overnights or parenting time, or 50/50, or whatever. You can’t even get a kid out of the corner at that point. It’s like, let’s be a little winsome here, right? Like I use the analogy with kids about, you know, your best interest is eating some vegetables, even if you don’t want to. That’s my job is to make sure that you’re, you know, we’re meeting everything you need, not just what you think you need, right? And so, you know, like, you can’t eat ice cream all day long, right? We got it. But what vegetable do you want? You know, do we need to give them a whole plate of vegetables every single meal? No, these are children. Like they’re even teenagers. Are like, how about you just have some broccoli today come out of the corner a little bit, you know? And parents need to remember that too, and attorneys need to remember that, because they get in these offices with attorneys, and the attorneys like, No, you should get 50/50, and then now we’re off to the races, and we’re at war again and and the kids like, how about nothing. And now I’m seeing more mental health risk too, because kids are, I don’t know if they’re this is learned behavior, or just our anxious generation, or whatever, but I got a lot of doubling down now, of kids going, you know what? No, I’m going to commit suicide.
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 48:27
And it gets to that, or even something less severe,
Krista Nash 48:32
Yeah, like I’m depressed. I need a mental hospital. I’m cutting or
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 48:35
Or their school performance is suffering, or they just dropped out of a passionate sport that they’re in with the rejected parent, because it will be framed by the favored parent and probably the child as they’re stressed or traumatized by anticipation of more time. You’re kind of dead in the water, because you can’t say, tough luck. We’re going to continue to progress in timeshare, because you got a kid who’s going down the tubes so, but it takes an enormous amount of health, really, in the rejected parent to be patient, to understand that that they were unfairly treated by their co-parent, their child is doing the best they can. And they need to have compassion and empathy, even though they’re suffering from the unjust lack of contact, lack of ability to be there for their kid. I mean, think of how awful that is. And of course, you’re going to love an attorney who’s going to say, we’re going to get justice.
Krista Nash 49:38
Yeah and they think it’s going to happen. And I have a hearing coming up where a 17 year old, older daughter already rejected the dad for valid and invalid reasons. It’s a mixture, right? I mean, some of it is lived experience with dad. Some of it is mom, you know, the attorney for Dad is like, alienation, alienation, alienation, alienation. And, you know, I’m like, Okay, well, now the kid that was/is still left in the case is almost emancipated by age, like, a few months from being emancipated age. But we’re still going to a full hearing, because their proposal is that he has three sessions with and he’s done all the therapy. He’s thrown, been thrown in the room with dad, and he’s like, I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. And mental health concerns for this kid and all sorts of things. And Dad’s proposal to the court is three more sessions, and then we go back to parenting time. It’s like, it’s just so tone deaf to the reality of what the child needs. And yeah, I do feel for Dad, because it’s not all his fault, but it’s so unproductive. It’s just never going to result in wholeness or wellness for any of the people in this family.
Well, listen, I know we’re almost out of time. I want to end with one other thing, unless there’s anything else you want to cover, I just, I know you’ve got the book about overcoming the alienation crisis with these co-parenting solutions. Give us just a flavor of a couple of your favorite of your co-parenting solutions. You know, let’s like end on a positive note. What are you seeing that parents are doing well when they’re co parent? Because I do know, like Dr Saini’s research is, and I don’t know if you were involved in that research too, about this co parenting dynamic as sort of like this top, top thing that’s impacting kids outcomes.
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 51:06
I think the most important thing that came out of his program evaluation of our intensive program, Overcoming Barriers, which, by the way, is character questionable, in ways by certain groups.
Krista Nash 51:19
I mean, it still exists, right? You’re still doing you’re just doing it differently.
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 51:23
No, not at all. But what I was saying is we brought the whole family that was mandated. We didn’t deal with timeshare, we didn’t deal with potential change in custody. We just went to work clinically. What came out of that is the most significant finding is if you make shifts in the co-parenting relationship, the outcomes are better. If you make no shifts, if the negatively polarized view of each parent of the other doesn’t shift, prognosis goes nowhere. So yes, the bang for the buck for me, you know, I don’t see kids. I haven’t seen kids in a long time. I see the parents because co-parenting work is where the bang for the buck is. And to try and theorize how parents get into those polarized places, and what contributes, like attorneys at times. like you name it, like their own personality, vulnerability, all the things that can drive that is critically important. And then what do you do about it? That’s where a parallel model of co-parenting become so important because these folks, if they engage, are going to conflict. So we need to create structures that don’t create opportunities for them to conflict. So that’s what, that’s what that book is about. And then, you know, we framed it as, here’s a situation, a transition, a face to face transition at mom’s house, you know, curbside. You know, how many of us deal with those things right in our practice? Here’s what best practices are, you know, and so we kind of lay out good co-parenting. And here’s, here are ways that are not and the impact that they have on kids. And you know, any of these things, like that book, or like Overcoming the Co-Parenting Trap, which we wrote before, are going to reach a certain sub-population that can benefit from education. That’s not everybody. Some people have dumb spots, and you hit them with a book like that, you know, as an attorney, you say, you know, read this. And they come back and they say, holy crap, I never realized I was screwing up my kid, and I want to do things differently. Some sub-population of initial resist and refuse because they’re firing out because he had an affair or whatever. And, you know, they can get it, they can reconstitute, right? That’s the idea. Give them education about how can you handle transitions, what kind of communication, by email or our Family Wizard, or whatever you know, tends to escalate conflict. How do you deal with holidays? So things that we deal with as professionals, day in and day out, putting it in an easily accessible book will help. It will not deal with severe cases. Severe cases will take that as as a tool to to do nefarious things, right? Oh, I never thought of that, but Right?
Krista Nash 54:09
Well. And I’d also just add, and we’ll wrap up, I will say both of your books are still available on Amazon too. I was just poking around on that to make sure that they are. I’m going to link to those. Not all therapy is equal. I’m going to say too, because one of the first things I have to do on most of my cases is come in and switch around all the therapy. Because, you know, we’ve now taken a bad situation and we’ve thrown a kid and the resisted parent into a room together to triangulate with a therapist who doesn’t do high-conflict work, who’s hasn’t done anything, but with the other parent who’s favored. And we now are in a situation where, I mean, now we’ve just thrown fuel on the fire. Now we’re in a worse spot than we ever were. Did that happen a lot that you’ve seen that where therapeutic work doesn’t work?
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 54:51
Absolutely, helping hand strikes again. So as much as we focused on attorneys, child therapists in particular, who are not specialized, you know, in AFC. I chaired a three-year task force on court involved therapy, saying when you’re a therapist involved in high-conflict, you know, shared custody, it’s a specialization that you can’t simply be, you know, an insurance provider and not potentially get exploited. And as you say, do more harm. It’s not just ineffectiveness. It’s actually doing harm.
Krista Nash 55:23
That’s true of individual parents therapists too, like I was always saying right now, where mom’s therapist is calling everyone with opinions about the children from Mom only, right? And like, really elevated messages about this, you know, about what people should be doing about this stuff. And it’s like, Protective Services has already looked at it like, you know, it’s just, you can see what’s happening there with the mother is getting poison in on the side of that therapist as well. And sometimes that happens with the kids therapist as well. It’s like, well, this is my client. The client is my child, which is fine, that’s all therapeutically, right and ethical or whatever, but they’re missing that synergistic point. In fact, I often talk to when parents let me, which they usually do I will. Yesterday, I just talked to two therapists, the therapist for mom and a therapist for dad in a really high conflict case, and they’re like, why do you want to talk to me? My client said I could talk to you, but why do you want to talk to me? And I’m like, I actually don’t really want information from you. I want to share my information. I want to share what I know, what I saw when I was at this parent’s house, and what I saw in the interaction with his kids, so he or she is over here. Both of those therapists were like, oh, that’s sort of the story I’ve heard, which is what I hear from attorneys too, right? I’m like, I’m just trying to help. I’m not trying to, you know, get a complaint against you or do anything nefarious here. I just want you to understand what I am seeing and what I’m hearing from the kids. That kind of problem solving… we’re getting the therapists together to talk to each other about what we’re all seeing. You know, this is the kind of stuff we need to be doing, you know. So it’s unfortunate we have so much polarization around all these issues. I mean, I just want to thank you for the work I see you doing, contributing to this, and I’m sorry that it’s become so polarized. I hope we can all kind of get back. I don’t know. Maybe we’ve never maybe again. I’m Pollyanna-ish about it, but I just hope that all the people who are really trying to help in this really difficult area, you know, we can work together, and we can try to really bring solutions, and you know that the polarization at least goes down. I don’t, I don’t doubt that will happen.
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 57:17
I hope you know talking to you is, is a breath of fresh air, or maybe we’re, we’re echo chambering, but I have a bias that this is the kind of thing that we, we need to talk about. So thank you for,
Krista Nash 57:30
Yeah, you know, I think too, like I want to hear from, you know, I run the risk with these of, you know, getting enemies of domestic violence lobbyists and people who get upset about even having this dialog, I have not seen that to be the heart of any of the people I’ve interviewed. Many of them have been part of AFCC. But also I think that, you know, I welcome that dialog because there are things we need to do better. I mean, I say a lot now in court, you know, I think these new statutes in Colorado have so many unintended consequences that are hurting a lot of families, but in the cases where I need them, they are gold. I need these statutes in some ways, so what they have done is hopefully preventing some of those tragedies that have been extreme. It’s just, can we not all acknowledge that they can also be misused? And how do we course correct on that, right? And we don’t need to demonize everybody, because I do not think you’re trying to injure children by putting them in a camp, right? So, I mean, there’s these highlighted videos that are like, oh, let’s drag a kid to a camp. They’re inflamed, like, it’s just not the reality of, I’m sure what you I mean, you could probably do a whole nother discussion here on all the things you saw that were positive, right? Are there a few that have had bad outcomes, sure, but I don’t know. I’m sort of echo chambering as well here, but I just, I know my heart for this is we’ve got to address domestic violence, we’ve got to address child abuse, and there are things that parents have done that that should mean that they don’t have access to their children, right? And in that way, we need to not over prioritize those constitutional rights to parent. There’s things we need to do in these family courts. I’m big on, you know, we need different family courts. We don’t need just civil judges doing this. We need people who understand family law. You get it’s a whole another problem is the civil and criminal judges who come in who have zero background in this and think they do because they happen to be in a family so they they don’t know what they’re doing, they’re applying what they have to which is all these regular evidence rules to this. And we end up in a broken legal dynamic where people cannot, literally, like the court, cannot, meet your needs. It’s not going to happen. It’s just not going to happen. It’s not where the solutions are going to come. They’re going to continue to just do what they do in a regular civil case. And so that’s really broken. And then in addition to that, we need to triage cases better and get intervention sooner on those ones that are bigger, and we need to quit pathologizing the ones that don’t need it, right? So there’s so many areas where you know we need to help and we need to be really careful about the ones that you know have serious safety concerns.
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 59:58
And that’s why when you look at a brochure for an AFCC conference, you’re going to see literally two thirds of the offerings around this issue, goals or the dynamics or the interventions. So it is what keeps family law practitioners up at night, whether they’re judges or mental health professionals, and it is increasing in prevalence, you know, kind of for the reasons that I I told you, all right. Well,
Krista Nash 1:00:27
Thank you so much. And when you get that other research done on the Wall Street Journal article, maybe
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 1:00:32
We’re just getting getting going on.
Krista Nash 1:00:36
And have you and Dr. Pruitt come talk, and you’re welcome back anytime. And if you ever have ideas or insight, please, please reach out. Thank you so much for doing this with me, taking my new podcast and being a guest. I’m honored.
Dr. Matthew Sullivan 1:00:46
My pleasure.
Intro/Outro 1:00:50
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