Pete Wright:
Welcome to How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships, from True Story FM. Did you know your toaster was a fourth-dimensional device?
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show, everybody. I'm Seth Nelson, and as always, I'm here with my good friend, Pete Wright. Today we're talking about fatherhood, specifically how to be a better father before, during, and after your divorce. To help, we've invited Tim McCarthy, educator, writer. This is my favorite part, Pete.
Pete Wright:
Me, too.
Seth Nelson:
And grand master in the martial arts. His writing on integrating Eastern philosophy into Western approaches to parenting gives us an opportunity to talk about the parent-child relationship across dimensions. Tim, welcome to the Toaster.
Tim McCarthy:
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
Pete Wright:
Is eclectic the right word for your career?
Tim McCarthy:
Well, I bounced around quite a bit out of college, did everything from lifeguarding, to waiting tables, to being a bellhop, to being a houseman, which is an assistant for a maid in a hotel. Then I finally settled back in my degree in education for about 10 years, and then from there, went to the martial arts and stayed there 30 years, and 30 years in one place isn't bouncing.
Pete Wright:
No. No, that's not.
Seth Nelson:
I call that a vagabond. He started out early, he found his Caribbean island, he settled down for 30 years. Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
Well, this is an interesting subject for us, I think. We talked a lot about divorce parenting, but we're not talking specifically about divorce, we're talking about parenthood, about being a father, being the best father that you can before, during and after the divorce. And my hunch is, we'll probably land on some skills that are going to help dads whether or not they're in a divorce situation.
Tim McCarthy:
I hope so.
Pete Wright:
I hope so, too. Let's start with this conversation around four-dimensional thinking.
Seth Nelson:
Well, let's start by saying one thing, Pete.
Pete Wright:
What?
Seth Nelson:
We're both fathers.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Seth Nelson:
So any questions we're asking, we're "asking for a friend."
Pete Wright:
We're asking for a friend. In fact, my friend is always going to be Seth. I'm asking for Seth. So let's start with this. You wrote this book, Raising Four-Dimensional Children in a Two-Dimensional World. Let's start with the dimensions. What do you mean when we're talking about parenting across these dimensions?
Tim McCarthy:
The easy part is the two-dimensional world, which is where the three of us are right now. We're on the internet and we have two dimensions, length and width, and that's all you get on a screen. Whether it's on a phone, a tablet, a TV, that's your two-dimensional world, and I believe we're living more and more in a two-dimensional world.
Want to get the kids off the screens and back into life. Not completely, but at least for the most part of their day, into the real world, which has four dimensions, according to H.G. Wells. Of course, length and width. Not on the screen is depth, which separates reality from the screen. And then the fourth dimension, according to H.G. Wells, is time. If something doesn't last, doesn't have duration, then we don't really perceive it. It's not part of our world.
So that's the four-dimensional world. But I compare that, I run that parallel to the four dimensions of human potential, which are the physical, the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual. So I want to raise four-dimensional children off the screen, in the real world, but also balance them physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, which I don't think many people even realize, much less know how to do.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I think it's that second one. You're pulling H.G. Wells. Was H.G. Wells a noted parent, or are we just referring to him as the sci-fi writer that I know him as?
Tim McCarthy:
Exactly. He was the one who come up with this idea many, many years ago, and I am not a nuclear physicist or any other kind to tell you what the actual fourth dimension is like, but it sounded reasonable to me.
Pete Wright:
It sounds great, and I like the idea of going back to, especially when, one of the things that you write about is integrating the Eastern and Western philosophies and the Eastern sort of of spiritual growth, whether you're talking about some families, some people, some cultures embrace organized religion. Some just embrace more of a philosophy around how we relate to the world around us and call that their spirituality. This whole idea of turning from two dimensions to four dimensions and embracing the whole relationship with our kids, it's provocative to me, and it feels like this is where we see some potential holes once we become focused so internally on the divorce process. I guess maybe I'll turn to you, Seth. When you're thinking about... The risk here in my mind is thinking about divorce at the expense of attention focused on the kids.
Seth Nelson:
Oh, Pete, a hundred percent. We talk about it all the time on the show, is easy to say, hard to do. Live your life, not your divorce. You only have those moments with your children when you have those moments with your children. And if you are filling up that time in your head, in your actions, on your phone, dealing with your divorce... Which you should not be doing in front of your children anyway, that seems obvious to say, but not always easy for people to do. And my clients, I have them trained when I call and they say, "I'll call you back, the kids are in the car." That's a perfect answer. That's what you want.
And then from there, when you're with them, you cannot do anything about your divorce, as in dealing with your lawyer, getting your documents together, getting prepared for a hearing, whatever the case may be. What you can is help your case by taking the two-dimensional world, the screen, as Tim says, and when you're at the game and the co-parent isn't there and you video it, or your kid is smiling and you take a picture, you can shoot that to your co-parent and say, "Just want you to have this photo. She had a great game."
So there's things like that you can do, but you got to live in the moment. And what happens is, people don't. They let the system overpower them. They want to figure out how they can fix the system. They do all these other things. And I say just back off. Just back off. Live your life.
Pete Wright:
So let's look at the dimensions and think about... I'd like to hear from you, Tim, as we walk through these four dimensions, how they manifest in both, I think a good role model relationship as a dad, right? Asking for a friend, but also specifically to the relationship with the kiddo. So physically, what are we talking about? Being present or making them work out?
Tim McCarthy:
Well, if you're not present, it's hard to have much of an effect. So being, I think Barack Obama, who wasn't even president at the time gave his talk and said, the main thing you can do as a parent is to be present. If you're not there, and he went through the statistics about what happens when the father's in prison, or I mean, he's not in prison, if he's just in another city and doesn't want to pay attention to the kids, what a hole that is in the child's life. So being present physically, yes, but you got to think about the child first.
One of the things I say at the very beginning in the prenatal chapter is, the difference between being a child and a man is putting, when you get married and have a child, you put the child first, and then during pregnancy you put the wife second, and that leaves you number three. And I'm sorry, but that's being a man, in my opinion. And so you've got to care for the child, put his needs or her needs first, and then we can go through physically, mentally, emotionally.
So physically, what do they eat, and is it appropriate? Whether you're a health nut or not, be aware of what you're feeding your child, and if they're bouncing off the walls, it's probably too much sugar. Second, what kind of exercise do you give them? Are you creating a couch potato by example or by the activities you give them? Oh, here, take this tablet and play some games. No, get out in the yard, play catch, play tag, run around, climb some monkey bars, go for a swim. No matter where you live, there's fun things to do. Get out in the four-dimensional world and enjoy them. Activity, any kind of physical activity. Teach them to ride a bike, training wheels, two wheels, et cetera.
Pete Wright:
I look at this and I think, okay, you talk about the screen, the two-dimensional screen. To Seth's point, it's hard to go to events as parents where the context is we're parents, and not see the parents on the screens all the time.
Seth Nelson:
By example.
Pete Wright:
Yep.
Seth Nelson:
I agree with that, and also I think with the physical, it doesn't have to be that big of a project, so to speak. It doesn't have to be getting in the pool, or getting in the car and getting in the pool and all this stuff. It could be, our routine after dinner to start winding down is to go for a walk, and we'd go for a walk as a family. It's free. You put on the shoes, you head outside. And then, that's just time to chat and talk. Now, a lot of parents are like, oh yeah, good luck getting those kids to bed. But there's all sorts of ways you can do this.
And what I've found when I was raising my son is, the more stuff we could do together like that, and going the park, and then when he got older, it actually was Covid. We got a, and were fortunate enough to be able to do this financially, but we joined kind of a gym that was online, and we worked out three days a week in our living room during Covid, and got whatever gym equipment that could fit in our little condo to make it happen. So there's certainly things you can do to instill that kind of sense of got to get moving.
Pete Wright:
Well, I love that set too, because again, it goes to that role model behavior, right? It's not just, I want to get my kid moving, it's I want my kid to see me moving. I want to use that as a model for forever.
Seth Nelson:
And I would bet, I don't know this for certain. I would bet that the statistics are if you're working out with your kid or you're doing the fun stuff with your kid, or you're doing yoga at home and your kid's doing it next to you, they're seeing it, they want to do it, right?
Tim McCarthy:
At least up to a certain age, before they get to that, I want to do the opposite of my parents.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, right, exactly.
Pete Wright:
That'll come.
Seth Nelson:
And then you become a couch potato and they keep working out.
Pete Wright:
That's right. That's right. Okay, so let's talk about the mental dimension.
Tim McCarthy:
All right, so mentally, especially in the early years, the more attention you give them, the more... I mean, just as an infant directing their attention. Talking to them, even before they understand what the words mean. Reading to them. Spending time just with them to develop the brain very, very early. I mean, before the school years. Once they're in the school years, of course you've got the teachers, the professionals, handling most of that. But again, they don't teach curiosity and they don't teach problem solving. And so, that's where you're interacting with them, again, on their own level.
One of the things I'm proud of that I do is I divide my advice, my book into chapters by age group. So the physical needs of an infant compared to a preschooler, compared to a school age, to a preteen, to a teen are very different. Mentally, the same thing. An infant, you're just trying to get the brain to connect. It's forming thousands of synapses a second, and you're just trying to get the brain used to working, because a child who's ignored pretty much doesn't develop into a bright child. So that's something you can do.
And then, preschool years, what you can do, you don't have to put them into the preschool that gets them into Harvard, but get them to be active mentally. Questions, answers. I mean, even if you read a story together, you don't just read the story. You say, "What do you think is going to happen next? Why do you think the doggy was barking?" And just create that curiosity.
When you get into the teenage years, this is kind of mental, but also kind of spiritual. What's his agenda? When you listen to somebody, you watch Fox News, what's their agenda now? Now you switch over to MSNBC, what's their agenda? The same event happened, they had a totally different take on it. And then they start to think, well, if my boyfriend says I should have sex with him, what's his agenda? And so, just different ways of thinking that you would develop throughout the years.
Pete Wright:
Seth, did you do a lot of Fox News, MSNBC switcheroo when you were raising your son?
Seth Nelson:
I did not. I will not say which one of those I cringe at to watch, but there is one. But Tim said something at the younger years that really struck me, Pete, is that when you asked the question about the book, like what do you think's going to happen next, or why do you think the dog is barking, or how did that make you feel? There's no wrong answers, because it's just what you think. It might not... And then when something else happens, you say, "Wow, I wonder what would've happened if the author would've written it the way you thought about it. We might have a different book, a different story." So when you have these things that talk to what do they think, what do they feel? And there's no wrong answer, it really kind of creates that curiosity and safe space to be able to develop and grow in a healthy mental environment.
Tim McCarthy:
If I could just insert a simple game, the one sentence story, and we start out. I'll start, and then Seth go second and Pete go third. Once upon a time there was a huge dragon...
Pete Wright:
Named Pete.
Seth Nelson:
And then you go, Pete.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, he was the scaliest of all the dragons.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, right. We played this game with Kyle as a kid, and it goes from that.
Tim McCarthy:
And so, you can play back and forth with your child, or in a group of two or three kids, just simple games like that.
Seth Nelson:
I know we've got emotional and spiritual to cover, but how does all of them play into what's happening during or after a divorce? And you can weave in the emotional and the spiritual as well when you're talking about that.
Tim McCarthy:
Yeah, the emotional has to be the big part. Of course, the child is wondering what he did wrong or what she did wrong to cause the divorce. And so, that's a factual mental thing that you can address with the child. "You did nothing wrong. It's not your fault." But emotionally, that still, there's that tug, that what did I do? What can I do to make it better? This is all just this... And the kids don't have the emotional maturity to handle it. Seth can tell you from experience, the adults don't have the emotional maturity to handle a divorce.
Seth Nelson:
That's right.
Pete Wright:
Especially when they're compromised by a divorce, right?
Seth Nelson:
Yeah.
Tim McCarthy:
And so, you've got to guide them. Early years, you help them identify their emotions. You name it to tame it. Oh, you're feeling angry. And a two-year-old who's having a terrible two fit doesn't even know what he is feeling. He never felt that before and he doesn't know that that's anger. Name it to tame it, then start teaching methods of handling your emotions. When you're angry, count to 10. Why? Well, first of all, it gives you time, but second, it gets you out of the limbic emotional reptilian brain that wants to bite somebody's head off, and into the prefrontal cortex where you're counting and you can start thinking of a more emotional response. And so, one of the things you can do with kids is try to get them out of the emotion and into thinking about something, so that it's more rational, less emotional.
Seth Nelson:
And along with that is, Pete, on the emotional side, parents sometimes unintentionally will lean on their children and be like, "Well, I miss you when you're gone." And they think they're being helpful to tell them how much they miss them.
Pete Wright:
Oh, yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Right? They're not. "I know you're going to have fun at Mom's, but I'm really going to miss. You have a good time." But they hear the "I miss you," which then makes them feel like Dad's lonely, or Mom could be saying it, doesn't matter. This parent is lonely. I should stay here to be with them.
Tim McCarthy:
And how much of that is manipulation?
Pete Wright:
Yeah. What is the first thing that we're instilling in young kids, is that you should feel some sort of shame for leaving Dad.
Seth Nelson:
That's right. And it's not intentional. It could be, "I'm going to miss you when you're gone." You can even say it kind of like upbeat, but it can cause problems. So it should be, "I'm so excited, you're going to have a good time at Mom's," or "You're going to get to sleep in your bed that you've been used to, and you get to see your dog." All the positives. Positive, positive, positive. And well, "Dad, are you going to miss me?" "Yeah, I'm going to miss you, but I'm more excited that you're going to have a great time. Of course I'm going to miss you, but you're going to have a great time. And by the way, I got stuff to do that I can't get done when you're around."
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
Seth Nelson:
"I got to work." You can joke about it, right? Humor is a great way to get through some of this.
Tim McCarthy:
And just simply saying, "Are you going to miss me?" "Yes. I love you." And just, as tough for that is to say, especially from dads, "I love you."
Seth Nelson:
I say, "I'm going to miss you. Who's going to take out the trash?"
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right. "Who's going to take the dog out to poop?"
Seth Nelson:
That's right.
Pete Wright:
Right? Somebody's got to do the scut work.
Seth Nelson:
And that's why we had children to start with.
Pete Wright:
That's why we had children.
Seth Nelson:
That, and to take care of us in an old age.
Pete Wright:
I want to transition to the fourth dimension, specifically in the context of divorce, because to me, spirituality, and I'm not a particularly religious person, but I do truck with this idea of spirituality as another way to describe a sense of broader awareness. And I'm curious how you can create a spiritual awareness for kids, and even maybe when it matters more, as they're older kids, teenagers, to be aware and have a presence of mind to understand and find strength through a difficult process like divorce. How do those things relate? It doesn't even necessarily need to be specifically about divorce, but through grief, through a difficult transition. What are we doing to engender that kind of a relationship with our kids?
Tim McCarthy:
Well, the first thing is to care about others and to care for others. And so, especially if a child has a little brother, a little sister, you want to teach them to care for, not be jealous of, not compete with, but care for their younger sibling. And then the parent, how can you care for Mommy while you're with her? How can you care for Daddy?
Pete Wright:
Yeah. You know what that brings up? Dealing with some friends we've talked, we've done, they're regular guests on the show because they're going through a very difficult divorce. And one of the kids is a teen and said specifically to that point, "Why should I care about anything? You and mom don't care about each other." That is a message that was given to this family by a contentious divorce. And recreating connections between siblings, that parents can get divorced and still care about each other, seems really important.
Tim McCarthy:
And even if they don't care about each other, the child cares for the parent. And when I'm with Mom, how can I take care of Mom? And when I'm with Dad, how can I take care of Dad? What can I do to show that I love them?
Pete Wright:
Seth, what do you get out of that?
Seth Nelson:
Well, I think that, and I like how Tim's book is broken out with different ages, because it's really an age question, right? Teenagers are difficult no matter what. So what I find always interesting, and let's just take, you have a teenage daughter, in an intact marriage, loving family, great upbringing, doing all the things right. And I know couples like this, and the dad goes, "I cannot deal with her. My teenage daughter will be a loving little child like I remember. I go into the kitchen, I come back out and she's fucking crazy, and she's like lost her shit and is screaming."
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Seth Nelson:
Okay.
Pete Wright:
I don't know anything about that. I shouldn't have answered so quickly
Seth Nelson:
Exactly. Asking for a friend, responding for a friend. So literally, you take that same scenario and she goes, talks to her mom, and mom calms her down. You take that same scenario in a divorce, and mom's saying, "Dad can't handle her." Nothing has changed with this child. Nothing has changed with this child. And now they're saying she's got a bad relationship with Dad. They should be with Mom the whole time.
Or the reverse. They're now young men, they really need more time with Dad. Mom doesn't know how to handle them. There's all this stuff, that she still wants to baby them. And they're saying, "Fuck off, Mom. Stop asking me questions." It's all the same behaviors in intact families as when they get divorced, and then you throw the divorce on. And let me tell you, those kids are smart. They're going to manipulate it.
Tim McCarthy:
Oh, absolutely.
Seth Nelson:
They're going to manipulate it to get what they want. And if you guys aren't on the same page and aren't calling, and the best thing you can do when you're dealing with these teenagers like this is communicate and say, "Look, I'm struggling. This is how she's responding at my house. What, if anything, are you doing when this happens at your house?" And if you have a parent on the other side that wants to work with it, the answer will be, "Well, I would try this, this, and this. This is what I do." Parent that doesn't want to do it, she's like, "That never happens at my house. It must be you."
Pete Wright:
Oh, yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
But then when you're in court, you say, "Judge, I reached out to my co-parent." It's a teenage daughter. These judges get that, right? So that's how you kind of try to work through it. But what you do, if you can work it out, you kind of get the kids what they're not expecting. You're like, "No, I talked to Mom about that." "You talk to Mom." "Yeah, we talk all the time. And guess what we talk about? You. In fact, you want me to show you all the texts that we're doing back and forth about you?" That blows their mind. They can't believe it.
Pete Wright:
Because there's no gray area when you're in that space as a kid.
Seth Nelson:
That's right.
Pete Wright:
And empathy also has kind of no gray area. That draws some very hard edges, hard lines, boundaries between relationships. And so I think that, I mean, I like coming back to this. Teaching kids to care kind of gets you over that hump, right? Teaching kids to be empathetic helps them understand when you as parents are trying to be empathetic to one another, too. Again, that role model behavior.
Tim McCarthy:
And Seth was saying-
Seth Nelson:
Go ahead, Tim.
Tim McCarthy:
The parents... The kids will manipulate two parents in different rooms, much less in different homes.
Seth Nelson:
Oh, I'll tell you, my favorite answer from my mom was, "I don't know, ask your dad." I'd go ask my dad. "I don't know, ask your mom." I go back to mom. "Dad said it's fine. Dad doesn't care. It's fine, Mom." "Okay." I went back, "Mom doesn't care. It's fine." Out the door I went. Like, hey, if no one's making the decision, I'm going to take that.
Pete Wright:
I'll do it. Right. That's abdication of responsibility.
Seth Nelson:
That's right. And I was really shocked. It was whether or not I could buy cocaine.
Tim McCarthy:
And fortunately, you know a good lawyer.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, exactly.
Pete Wright:
Oh, Florida.
Seth Nelson:
It's Florida. They sell it at the gas station.
Tim McCarthy:
And just one other point though, about what if you're saying, sometimes like the teenage daughter going off the rails, mom is the better person to talk to because she understands the girl, what she's going through emotionally, and dad may be an emotional cripple and not understand and may be better off saying, "Well, talk to your mom about that. I think she'd be better, give you better advice."
Pete Wright:
Well, which is still an empathetic argument. Being able to say as Dad, "I'm not right to answer this question. I don't have the experience to be able to give you a great answer here. You should talk to Mom," is an empathetic argument. It's an awareness of the other person.
Seth Nelson:
So Tim, how does this all play into spiritual?
Tim McCarthy:
I strongly believe we all have a spiritual side, and people who are not spiritual tend to focus on the mental. They look at logic, they look at science and say that if I can't see it, if I can't prove it can't be real. So you're basically applying the laws of science, the mental dimension, to the spiritual dimension. Now, you talk to somebody religious and some of them don't even accept evolution. They want to apply the laws of their religion to everything. Again, I think they are separate and they have separate rules and separate truths.
For example, you talk to the scientist, what's the explanation of love? Oh, well you have this chemical release from this gland and blah, blah, blah. That just shows he doesn't understand the emotion. He's trying to put his worldview on something that he can't explain. I believe the spiritual realm is that way. You talk to people who are spiritually aware. It is the realm of belief, not of proof. And so you have to help your child develop in that direction.
Now, if you have a religion, you take them to your church, your mosque, your temple, you take them to Bible school, to Torah study, to study the Upanishads, whatever scriptures you have. If you are not religious, then you educate them in morality, which is the mental way of understanding right and wrong, that you set up rules, basically rules of what's right and what's wrong, and you teach your children that according to their age. Little kids, you don't lie, you don't steal. As they get older, there are a lot more nuances to what not lying means and not stealing means. So you would constantly refine what that means.
Seth Nelson:
And I think on the spiritual as well, as part of understanding that we are part of a world and universe that is bigger than ourselves, and all you need to do is look at a sunset to understand that. One of the things that I did in my 20s, that I helped deliver a 50-foot sailboat from Grand Cayman to St. Pete. And you have all these rules on the boat and who does what, and there's a hierarchy for safety and who's on watch.
There was one rule the captain had, everybody was on deck at sunset, and he literally, you were on deck watching that sunset. And those were the greatest times on that trip, just to take it all in. You got nothing but water and this little boat. And 50 foot is not a small boat, but when you're in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, it feels really small.
Pete Wright:
It feels pretty small.
Tim McCarthy:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
And I think you do that on a daily, weekly, whatever basis you can, to get wherever you can to just take a breath, just watch it happen.
Tim McCarthy:
To feed your spirit.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Boy, was that ever true during the eclipse, right? I've never seen such a collective exaltation of feeding the spirit as when people come together over something so much bigger that is so difficult to kind of wrap your head around.
Seth Nelson:
The only time I remember that, Pete, in my lifetime, was like, who shot JR. I felt like we all came together on that.
Pete Wright:
You are so right about that. You are so right. Oh my God, yeah. Who shot JR. Does it matter? No. It just matters that we all cared real hard.
Seth Nelson:
It was collective. It was bigger than ourselves. We didn't know.
Tim McCarthy:
But if I might say that, that was more emotional than spiritual.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. I don't know. For the guy getting shot, it was physical, okay?
Pete Wright:
Well, I'll tell you what, I think these, bringing it back a little bit to the divorce context, right? Not eclipses or Dallas in the late '70s, early '80s. I just get the sense that having this, that being able to compartmentalize a little bit around the four dimensions is useful, particularly if you're struggling as a parent, as a dad, to figure out where your holes are, where your blind spots are. And right now we're in, particularly in a Western cultural area, of blind spots abound, right? When you throw in divorce to that, it's just very challenging to see what you're missing.
Tim McCarthy:
And especially for dads, the emotional part. I was raised by wonderful parents. They stayed together until they died, but they did not educate me well emotionally. That happened much, much later. And so, if we can educate our kids and educate ourselves at the same time.
One of the things I love... We haven't talked about martial arts at all. One of the things I love about teaching the martial arts is that if I want to teach the adults something in a family class, I focus on the kids, and I tell the kids, "This is why you're doing it. This is how it applies to your life." I'm not teaching the adults, but they're learning it by the way I teach the children. And so, when you teach your child something, especially emotionally or spiritually, you not only relearn it, but you expand on the learning for yourself as you do it to the child.
Pete Wright:
Fascinating. I'll tell you, this has been great. Thank you so much, Tim. We already name dropped the book. Where do you want to send people to learn more about your work and your writing, and what links can we share?
Tim McCarthy:
Well, the simplest place to find out about the book and what I do is 4D, as in dimension, 4D-2D.com. And you can't forget the dash. You end up in China somewhere. That's the internet for you.
Pete Wright:
Dashes matter.
Tim McCarthy:
4D-2D.com.
Seth Nelson:
We're talking about Eastern and Western philosophies. We'll take a trip to the Orient.
Pete Wright:
There we go. Maybe you want to end up there and watch a sunset. Tim McCarthy, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. We sure appreciate it. And now, we'll turn our attention to a listener question. Seth, we've got a listener question. This one comes from "Some Random Dad Trying To Keep His Shit Together."
Seth Nelson:
That's the best name we've had so far. It doesn't sound like it's going to be a good question.
Pete Wright:
I know. It doesn't bode well. Here we go. "Recently had a finalized divorce and it seems like every stipulation in the agreement has been broken and we haven't had three weeks since Judge Tibbles signed." Shout out to a local hero, Judge Tibbles. "When it comes to contempt of court, what are the actual repercussions? In the movies, they would take you to jail, but what really happens in real life? Examples include joint bank accounts not closed, removing space from auto insurance without notification and before the agreed upon time, not allowing access in a timely manner to retrieve personal items from marital home, and just generally being difficult over everything. By the way, Seth, you are always right, and even when you were wrong, you were still actually correct." Okay, is this a plant?
Seth Nelson:
Okay, the only person that could have written this question better was me. In fact, maybe it was. Okay?
Pete Wright:
Okay. All right.
Seth Nelson:
Okay, contempt of court. So first off, you're done with your divorce, you thought it was over and now we just have to implement the marital settlement agreement. Because it says in the question, every stipulation in the agreement, which tells me they reached a marital settlement agreement. They're not mentioning kids here. They're mentioning bank accounts, removing auto insurance, getting personal items out of the home probably, making everything difficult.
Okay, first thing before I get to the legal contempt, divorce is emotional. We've talked about grief. Sounds like you're at acceptance. I'm good, I'm done, I'm ready to move on. Your now-former spouse might not be there yet. There can still be anger, bargaining. "Yeah, you can come get your stuff, but only if you do X," right? Or "Just come over and we'll have wine and you can pick up your stuff." You never know. And I'm talking extremes here, but that's some of what could be going on. There could be still anger and grief process happening there.
So first off, breathe a little bit. I know you're trying to keep your shit together. So here's what happens in contempt of court. One, you're going to love this, you hire a lawyer. Just when you thought you were done with us, okay? We review the agreement. This is what I would do. I'd review the whole agreement, because you're telling me she's not doing stuff. So what I'm going to say is, did you do everything that you were supposed to do, okay? And call your original lawyer that you dealt with if you felt you got good service. If not, call somebody else. You don't have to go to the same one.
Pete Wright:
But it's still just a family law attorney law. There isn't somebody who's like, "Oh, I'm a contempt attorney."
Seth Nelson:
No, no. Family law attorney. Okay. So now, if you file your motion for contempt, what you have to prove in court, that there was a court order that they knew about. Check, easy, done. That they had the ability to comply with the order. That's usually pretty easy to do on the type of items you're talking about. And they willfully chose not to. So, pretty easy to file.
Now what happens, Pete? You have to set it for hearing. You might take a deposition. You might just go to court. But you need to have your ducks in a row. And what I like to do is, before we file, is literally I'll help clients ghostwrite emails. "Dear former spouse, I would like to schedule time to pick up my personal belongings. Here are three dates and times that work. Please let me know if they work for you. If not, please provide three other dates and times." Boom, done.
Pete Wright:
So what are the limits of contempt of court? My understanding of contempt of court is that it is, here's the court order and you are somehow violating, like you said, the areas. But does it count as a violation if just my former spouse is being a jerk? When can I claim contempt of court? There's a scope.
Seth Nelson:
When there is a court order that is clear and enforceable, that they knew about, and they violated willfully.
Pete Wright:
And they chose to violate it. Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. So what happens sometimes is, you go to court and they say, "Judge," they say, "I was supposed to get it done in 10 days." And you can argue over what 10 days means. Is it work days, is it business days?
Pete Wright:
So that fits into the not clear part.
Seth Nelson:
That's right. That's right.
Pete Wright:
Okay. That's where I was kind of going with that question.
Seth Nelson:
But these seem to be very clear. We're supposed to close joint bank accounts. So when you go in front of these judges, they're looking for you to have done, and almost like bent over backwards to try to make this happen, and then ultimately file your motion, and then you go to court and say, "Look at everything I've tried to do, Judge." Which quite frankly isn't the requirement. It's just making you look good in court. Because the requirement is for them to do it. So I laid out what the legal definition of contempt is and what you have to prove, but it's always nice to show that you kind of went above and beyond to try to get it done. And so, it's really difficult. Okay, so now what happens? They're held in contempt of court. So what?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, do they get thrown in jail?
Seth Nelson:
It's a piece of paper. You're now in contempt of court. Okay. What's my punishment?
Pete Wright:
Is that like, do you just collect them, and once you get to five, then something happens?
Seth Nelson:
Right. So now what happens is, you get contempt of court and the judge says, "Close the bank account in 10... in five days," or "He's picking up his stuff on this day." You want the judge to come down hard, and sometimes they don't. And then they don't do it a second time. And now you come back again, and the judge gives them a stern warning. And then you come back a third time. And by this time you're like, "Judge, I want you to lock them up." As indirect criminal contempt, because there's an order, you didn't do it. It's a violation, it's indirect. It wasn't in front of the courtroom. Or it's indirect civil contempt. But how you do it, civil or criminal, if you are going for criminal contempt, you are telling the judge, "I want you to punish them," which is criminal, which means they get a public defender if they need one.
Pete Wright:
And suddenly it changes. Doesn't it change courts?
Seth Nelson:
No, it can still be in front of the judge in family law court. The judge can appoint me, your lawyer in this hypothetical, as the prosecutor.
Pete Wright:
Wow. Okay.
Seth Nelson:
And so there's this whole different thing. So you need to talk to your lawyer. Are we going for indirect civil contempt? Are we going for criminal contempt? Ask for your fees, ask for a money judgment to get your fees paid, because that's another way to have more arrows in the quiver. Now, here's the last thing. Sometimes doing nothing is better.
Pete Wright:
I did not expect to hear that from you.
Seth Nelson:
Here's what I mean. If you need to close the bank accounts and they're not closed, you send the letter, send the email, "Please close this account. You're the primary, you're responsible for closing it, and I'm the secondary, Pete." Okay. They don't close it. Okay. You send it next month, three weeks later, two weeks later, and it's starting to go into the negative. Well, that's on them, right? That's not hitting your credit. That's not messing with you. So sometimes doing nothing is better.
Now, getting your stuff, what I always ask people is, first off, what is the stuff? Is it worth the fight? We've just got to think about it. And sometimes people call me and I tell them, "Don't do anything," and they're shocked by it, and then they really think about it. They're like, "Oh, that's a good idea." But double check that you've done everything as well.
So, sorry that you're not done-done. Please keep your shit together. And the only thing wrong is, even when you were wrong. I don't even want that hypothetical in that question, but I appreciate it. Thanks for listening.
Pete Wright:
Speaking of arrows in the quiver, too many. You've given him too many. But really, we do appreciate the question, thank you so much, from Random Dad Trying To Keep Your Shit Together, we really appreciate that.
And you can also, in the general public, listening public, please send us your questions. We love your questions. Just visit Howtosplittatoaster.com and you'll see a button that says Submit a Question. It'll go right to Seth and we will ask Seth that question on this show, and you'll hear a fantastic answer just like that.
Thank you, everybody, for downloading and listening to this show. We sure appreciate your time and your attention. On behalf of Seth Nelson, America's favorite divorce attorney, and Tim McCarthy, I'm Pete Wright, and we'll see you next time right here on How to Split a Toaster, the divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Outro:
How to split a Toaster is part of the True Story FM Podcast Network, produced by Andy Nelson. Music by T. Bless and the Professionals and DB Studios. Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce and Family Law with offices in Tampa, Florida. While we may be discussing family law topics, How to Split a Toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of NLG Divorce and Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
