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Myths About Our Family Wizard

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The following is my most popular post ever. It has been updated slightly. When I started trying to bring a new High Conflict Program to Minnesota, I removed the post out of respect for Our Family Wizard. They asked me to remove it, and offered to help me get the High Conflict program started in Minnesota. Normally, I stand behind what I write and what I believe, but at the time, I thought more people could be helped with the High Conflict program than could be helped by this post. As Family Court just keeps getting worse for families, I have decided that I need to re-post this. I think it is information that is helpful to people. That is what I am trying to do. As you will note, I do find certain portions of Our Family Wizard to be convenient. The goal when I wrote this back in 2011 was to help people stay focused on the reality that there is very little any Family Court tool can do to help you when you have a hostile co-parent. That is a sad fact of reality. Below is the re-post of sad realities.

*The following is a repost from A Day in the Life Blog of Life’s Doors Mediation from 12-15-11

Our Family Wizard is a communication tool that the courts often order families to use to manage co-parenting issues. You can email through our family wizard, keep a calendar/schedule for the whole family and scan receipts to have a record of expenses for the children.

The high conflict family will still have high conflict through Our Family Wizard. While OFW does offer discounts for military families and scholarships to some families, it will cost you $99 per year or $179 for a 2 year plan. That cost is for each parent. While there are some things about Our Family Wizard that are helpful and handy, it still is another money sucking entity for the court. You can do all the same things through email or a shared yahoo/gmail calendar, etc. The reason the court will order you to use it is because court authorities can log in and review what is going on with your family. For example, if you want your parenting coordinator/consultant to read some of the emails that your ex has sent to you, you can let them know that they should review the emails and the professional can log in, select your account and read through anything they’d like.

There are myths about how it works and I’d like to clear some of those up. I have known people who get very excited about the use of Our Family Wizard. They think that finally, someone is going to see how nasty my ex is and do something about it. If that is what you believe, the first thing you need to know is that these people see nasty. They see nasty family battles a lot. It is nothing new to them. Second, if your ex is nasty, what is it that you expect the parenting coordinator or consultant to do about that exactly? They really cannot do much.

There is a scare tactic to Our Family Wizard. The courts hope that since a court authority, including the judge, can look in and read your emails at anytime, you might decide to be civil and cooperative with your ex. Do judges look in and read your emails? I highly doubt it. They don’t want to see you in their court room, why would they take the time to go read nasty emails? Do parenting coordinators/consultants read the emails? Again, that is highly unlikely. They simply don’t have time. The system is not designed for them to read every email on every case that they are involved with. Usually, if you want your PC to read the emails, you would either need to call and tell them to do so, or send them an email and tell them to do so.

Our Family Wizard can be used for people who are not involved in the family courts, but is mostly court ordered for high conflict cases. Is it a bad thing? That depends. It will take more of your money. If you are already spending a fortune for attorney’s and parenting coordinators/consultants, this is just more money out of your kids’ pockets. Think of the things you could do for your child with that money. If it is a court order though, you have no choice. Well, you do, but if your ex will make a federal case out of it, you don’t want to risk contempt of court.

Does Our Family Wizard reduce conflict? Not so much. It may decrease some of the battles at first, but once you get used to it, you let your guard down. Communications get bad once again and now you have just moved the location of the battle, from yahoo (for example) to Our family Wizard. That is the only change, the location where the battle plays out.

Another problem with Our Family Wizard is that often, a parent will email the other parent, but will start writing to the PC and cc-ing the other parent. This is not the way it is supposed to go, but it often goes that way. The way disputes work in family court, one parent can make a request of the other, if the other parent says no, then you contact the parenting coordinator/consultant. This doesn’t always happen with the crutch of Our Family Wizard. As mentioned previously, one parent will start emailing the PC at any sign of dispute. They will add your name to the email as if you are an after thought.

Our Family Wizard may work well for you and your family. It’s hard to say, but you should definitely check it out before you have to use it. There are some other programs around so it doesn’t have to be Our Family Wizard, but you and your ex will have to agree to use a different company and hope your professional is OK with it.  Most professionals will only go with Our Family Wizard.

Since your emails on Our Family Wizard are not private, you will need to be careful what you write. Written words are missing body language, facial expressions and emotion so in the absence of that, words can be taken to mean things that you didn’t intend.

Also, regarding the calendar, I have known some couples who use the shared calendar and if anytime the other parent forgets to add an appointment or send an email through Our Family Wizard, the other parent goes berserk. These things happen. It is very unfortunate and not what it is intended for, but you need to be aware that it can be used as a weapon.

Again, this can be a useful tool, if you use it as it was made to be used.  Personally, I liked the receipt scanning ability.  I could scan copies of medical payments when requesting reimbursement from the other parent.  It is also fantastic to keep track of the kids’ schedule and appointments, clear up miscommunications, etc., but it can and is often another tool to use against an ex. If you have a high conflict person to co parent with, this will just end up like anything else, a battle field.

Over the years, different companies have popped up from time to time in an effort to compete with Our Family Wizard, but they typically go out of business pretty fast.  Our Family Wizard has succeeded in making a name for themselves across the country and judges frequently court order the program for parents, as do parenting coordinators and consultants.  There are some good things about Our Family Wizard, but if you think it will stop a bad actor, it usually will not.  You also cannot force someone to sign up or use the program if they are not going to.  Some people choose to be difficult and non communicative.  If someone is acting in bad faith and wants to make your life miserable, there is usually little you can do to stop it, other than be courageous and strong in the face of the attacks from an unhappy person while spending your time focusing on the needs of your children.  No matter what.

High Conflict Central has helped many parents on communication.  We offer coaching and education for individuals and families.  One of the most helpful things our clients gain is to remove the stress of emailing with a hostile co-parent.  You know, the one who sends 25 nasty responses to a simple request.  We’d love to help you, whether you use Our Family Wizard or not.  Contact us for a free consult today and the best part is, working with us does not have to involve your ex.  It will be your work for yourself and for your children.  Contact us today.

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Co-parenting: You May Not Get There From Here

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Co-parenting, AKA cooperative parenting is an obsession with Family Court professionals.  It may even meet the level of addiction with some of them.  System-wide group think reigns over common sense and good judgment, especially when they don’t know there are other options available to parents.

Even the term co-parenting is not understood across the board.  Some Family Court professionals consider co-parenting to mean a shortened version of cooperative parenting, while others use the term meaning, “jointly or “together”.  Still, no matter how one looks at it, I wonder how anyone can do anything “together” or “jointly” if they are not doing so cooperatively.  That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

For example, if I want to paint the living room blue, but my spouse wants to paint the room red, we might have to find a compromise.  We might say, “Fine.  Let’s paint two walls blue and two walls red.  If we could agree to do that and agree on which two walls each of us could paint as we desired, it might get done and we might both be able to live with it, but we’d have to be able to communicate rationally about that and see each other’s point of view and then come to an agreement about the particulars of how it is going to work.    There would also have to be a basic level of trust that both people would follow through and not sabotage the other’s plan or destroy what the other person has been working on.

If two people could not decide between the colors red and blue or were unable to decide which two walls each person could paint (maybe there is some inequality to the open wall space available), they might decide to blend the colors.  The problem with that is neither person would be achieving anything close to their original goal and they would both have to really like purple because that is what the result would be.  It would take flexibility on the part of both people.  It would also take respect for each other’s needs or wants and the same basic level of trust as in the first scenario.  Even then, blending has different meanings to different people.  Blending red and blue could mean making the room purple or it could mean one color with polka dots of the other, painting stripes of both colors equally (and again, what is equal to one may not be equal in the eyes of the other).  No matter how the compromises happen, they still have to involve good communication, flexibility, trust, respect, understanding, balance, a sense of fairness, etc., etc.  It is still going to involve some level of agreement to resolve the situation.  Otherwise, you will end up in the same old room, with the same old paint and nothing will change.

That is the same problem with co-parenting.  People can either do it or not do it.  It may mean different things to different parents and it may even mean different things to different professionals.  When parents cannot do it, they are accused of being “rigid” thinkers.  It can be true that neither parent wants to change or wants to change their perspective, but it is often really a matter of differing perspectives.  My perspective on it is this, we have alternatives to co-parenting.  When professionals will not allow those different ideas to come into play, they are the ones with “rigid” thinking.  What difference should it make to them as long as it decreases the conflict for the children?  That is really why the professionals are in place anyway, to decrease the conflict.

High conflict Central accepts a simple fact and that is many people cannot co-parent.  Even in happily married households, parents are doing things other than co-parenting.  We don’t rule out the possibility that people have the ability to get there if they are both willing to accept the situation and are willing to change and make a better life for their children, but we don’t start at co-parenting unless it is already happening.  We actually start at where you are.  What has happened to you?  How has it affected you?  How has it impacted your children?  What is the history between the parents?  What is the level of trust?  What is the level of respect?  Where is each parent at in their healing process?  Where are you at with your parenting skills as a single, divorced parent?  How much do you know about what is happening to you in Family Court and why it is happening?  That is where we start because all of those things need resolution before you can be ready, willing and able to co-parent.  We also know that even if you get there, co-parenting only works when both parents are ready, willing and able, and can approach the situation with good faith.  If one or both parents has a strong desire to keep hurting the other, co-parenting will not happen because trust can never be built under those conditions.

Parents who can co-parent, do co-parent.  They do so without a court order or any of the watchdog professionals that get appointed to make parents play nice in the sandbox.  High conflict parents should not be asked to start with co-parenting.  There are other ways to help the children.

An excerpt from “The Parenting Coordinator and Consultant Survival Guide”:

Because these are the types of relationships present in high conflict divorce situations, it is my opinion that family court needs to get out of the business of forced co-parenting. When you have parents who only know conflicted parenting, the bar is set too high to expect them to get to co-parenting. It is too high a leap for their skill set! High conflict parents could be allowed to use the parallel parenting style, unless and until they are healed enough to raise the bar to co-parenting.
We know that conflicted parenting is the worst situation for children in the middle. We also know that co-parenting is the best style for children of divorce, but there seems to be an unwarranted reluctance on the part of court authorities to consider the benefits that parallel parenting can offer in high conflict cases. I really don’t understand the reluctance at all.  Court professionals expect parents to jump from worst to best all in one shot:

CONFLICTED PARENTING >>>>CO-PARENTING

(WORST)                                                      (BEST)

That is quite a stretch for anyone, let alone, parents who may not have the communication and relationship skills necessary to make co-parenting work. If the professionals would give up some of their own rigid thinking, we could help parents go from here to here:

 

CONFLICTED PARENTING >>>> PARALLEL PARENTING
        (WORST)                                       (BETTER)

 

At least that would be a step in the right direction and give parents a chance to settle into their own lives with the children, learning to parent separately, and if they are so motivated,  gain some important skills before they move into co-parenting. Some parents may have to stick with parallel parenting to keep the peace, but at least a parallel parenting style would move them away from conflicted parenting and offer something better for their children. If parents did well moving from conflicted parenting to parallel parenting, they may gain the confidence to take it another step:

 
PARALLEL PARENTING >>>>CO-PARENTING
(BETTER THAN CONFLICTED)          (BEST)

 

That is my hope for change in the system. I’d like to see professionals have the ability to accept change for the better even when it is not the ideal. They should seek improvement in steps, rather than demand big changes that parents aren’t always able to understand. In my opinion, at least we would get parents out of the conflicted style of parenting and everyone benefits from doing that!

For now, we have a system of professionals who don’t realize that their rigid thinking about co-parenting is just as bad as parents who refuse to change. They continue to push co-parenting against all common sense and good judgement.

 

If you find family court, the professionals rigid thinking and co-parenting to be a mind numbing endeavor, give us a call.  We love to talk to high conflict parents and help them put a stop to the nonsense.  We feel so much joy when we see you and your children experience a little peace after trauma.  It isn’t as hard as you think, and we don’t care if your ex participates or not, as a matter of fact, we prefer to work with parents one on one.  It is always a free consult, and we offer some free e-courses, as well.  Contact us to learn more!

High Conflict Central was created by Susan Carpenter.  She is a relationship coach, Author and Instructor with a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology.  Her focus is on communication, relationships, family conflict and dynamics, and gender differences in communication, stress management, parenting and conflict.  She is an expert on relationships involving high conflict divorce, domestic violence, adult children of alcoholics/dysfunction, adults who experienced trauma as a child.  Susan is also the owner of Life’s Doors Mediation in Golden Valley, Minnesota,  where she is a qualified rule 114 mediator, parenting consultant, parenting time expediter and parent coach.  She wrote the book, “The Parenting Coordinator and Consultant Survival Guide” to help parents understand that process to utilize their PC more effectively.  You can contact Susan at connect@highconflictcentral.com or by calling (800) 516-2446.