Divorcing a Narcissist with Guest Victoria McCooey
Learning to Communicate with a Narcissist
Narcissist Divorce Coach Victoria McCooey joins Seth and Pete to talk about the challenges that come when trying to get out of a marriage to a narcissist. It’s not easy! We walk through Victoria’s three stages in communicating with your narcissist soon-to-be ex that can help you more easily navigate this difficult situation through each of its phases.
Victoria has been through her own divorce from just this sort of person and has turned that experience into a powerful mission to help others do the same.
you can’t always discount the message because of the messenger
Links & Notes
Victoria McCooey Coaching:
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Pete Wright:
Welcome to How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships from TruStory FM. Today, your toaster has a new setting. Narcissist.
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show everybody. I'm Seth Nelson. As always, I'm here with my good friend Pete Wright. Today we're talking about the narcissistic spouse. Specifically, we're going to talk about how to communicate with your narcissist spouse while you're on the road to divorce. To help us, we have Victoria McCooey, a narcissist divorce coach who has been through her own divorce from just this sort of person, who has turned that experience into a powerful mission to help others do the same. Victoria, welcome to The Toaster.
Victoria McCooey:
Thanks for having me.
Pete Wright:
Oh, Victoria, it's so good to have you here. So we're talking about narcissism today. You are a noted narcissist divorce coach, right?
Victoria McCooey:
That is correct.
Pete Wright:
I binged your videos on your YouTube page and you had one that really stuck out to me and I wanted to dive a little bit deeper on it with the two of you today. The concept is you present the three stages of communication with a narcissist's spouse. I think that's really interesting because so far when we've talked about narcissists, there are all kinds of kid gloves that we have in communicating with a narcissist spouse during a divorce process. But being able to adjust the way you communicate and the way you handle yourselves in the relationship by stage or phase of the divorce process, I thought was really interesting. So I wonder if you could just kick us off by just walking through the basic premise and then we'll talk about a little bit about where that intersects with the legal stuff.
Victoria McCooey:
Yeah. Okay. So first of all, thanks so much for having me. I love to talk about this. So many people need this information, so I love it when you are putting it out there for people to find.
So I've identified that there are three distinct phases for a person leaving a narcissistic spouse. The first one is where you don't even think you can leave. You're just trying to wrangle the whole idea of how am I going to leave this toxic situation. You're not even sure you can. You're trying to get your ducks in a row, you're trying to figure things out. You're getting information, you're reaching out, you're binge-watching videos, you're doing all these things. Hopefully you're trying to get documentation in order. You're going through accounts, you're getting information that might go missing once they know you're planning this departure. So that's the first stage.
The second stage is when they know you're leaving. Maybe you file for divorce or you tell them and you try to go to mediation or there may be a custody battle. That is the stage of the actual divorce process.
And then the final stage is everything after that, when you are maybe co-parenting or sharing custody. Or even if you don't have children, you might still be settling the accounts, having to go through the motions of moving 401ks, all the other things that you're ordered to do afterwards. So those are the three phases.
In the first stage where they don't know, you want to get a headstart, you want to have the upper hand. You want to keep this a secret because it does not behoove you to come out to the narcissist that this is your plan because now they can sabotage it.
Pete Wright:
Well, it feels really risky. It feels like that's when you are at your most sort of subversive and secretive and I can see-
Victoria McCooey:
And vulnerable.
Pete Wright:
I can see how that could feel dangerous or wrong.
Victoria McCooey:
Yes. And the people who are in relationships with this type of personality, this is very uncomfortable for them. Because typically when it's a narcissistic man, they're the good girl, or they're the law abider, the rule follower, the ambitious conscientious one who is the empath and tries to fix everything for everyone.
Seth Nelson:
Right, because the narcissist is leaving a wake in his path in your example.
Victoria McCooey:
Right. So this does not come easily to a person like that, living this double life. It's very uncomfortable for them. That's why I think it's so important for them to have some kind of support through this. People who are close to them may not really get it, may have been snowed by the narcissist, may not understand the real-
Seth Nelson:
My God, he's so nice, he's so helpful. He does everything at the holidays.
Victoria McCooey:
Such a good dad though. He's such a good... Yeah. So you might not be able to confide in the people you normally go to for support. So that's why we have coaching and support groups and all these things.
Pete Wright:
And I'm wondering, Victoria, and actually Seth, at what point is it safe to turn to your attorney for support in this sort of gathering stuff? Like at what point is it too early, too late?
Seth Nelson:
It's not too early, and it's never too late because through the divorce process we can always get the documents. It just gets harder.
Victoria McCooey:
And longer.
Seth Nelson:
Right. This goes back to having someone who's educated about their finances and just figuring out where your tax returns are, your checking accounts, your credit card statements, your brokerage accounts. Now, a lot of this stuff is done online these days. It's not like you can steam open the mail and seal it back.
Pete Wright:
God. There was a day I would've eaten that up. Steam open the mail. I'm a real James Bond in my head, Seth.
Seth Nelson:
Well, and with that stunning haircut of yours. So it can be more difficult.
Victoria McCooey:
Much more difficult. I mean, they are not incentivized to let you see anything. And they don't want this to happen. They like everything where they have it.
Pete Wright:
Right. And I guess when we're talking about phase one, when you're doing all of this undercover research on your marriage, what are the triggers that you need to be watching out for that you're in a place of risk? What is the narcissistic divorcing spouse going to do?
Victoria McCooey:
It's a dance. The more control you try to take, the more abusive they have to become to keep you from taking more control. So you have to do it undercover. If they know you're snooping or getting curious about accounts or trying to find more information out about their business or whatever, they're going to figure out that you're getting too close to things they don't want you to know about, and the abuse will become more difficult to deal with. It'll escalate.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I think you called this phase the Stepford phase. Is that accurate?
Victoria McCooey:
The Stepford wife phase.
Pete Wright:
The Stepford wife phase.
Victoria McCooey:
I have to admit, I have had many men in my coaching programs, but most of my clients are women. So yeah, it's the Stepford wife phase in that you pretend that everything's fine. Everything's not even status quo, better than status quo. You pretend like you don't even know that the abuse is happening, the verbal abuse or the degrading or the whatever that is in your home. You pretend like it's not even happening, that you don't get it. You're so dumb you don't even understand. So you're just smile on your face, going about your business. You're not making any waves.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Seth, did you want to say something? I want to transition to the divorce phase.
Seth Nelson:
I'm waiting for you to get to step two. That's where I was about to chime in.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I want to talk because this is where we get the rubber meets the road. This is when you're actually transitioning to the legal phase.
Victoria McCooey:
So what happens to these people? The abused party, the one who is the victim of the narcissistic abuse is compromised. You've been in this relationship for years, maybe decades, where you are compromised, your self-esteem, your confidence, your self-worth have been whittled away. You're really fragile. You're like a shell of a person. And this is when you have to go present yourself in front of a judge, a parenting coordinator, a forensic psychologist, whomever, to prove that you're the better choice for custody. And you're not even who you really are.
Seth Nelson:
Or just to be believed on the numbers. It doesn't always have to be a case.
Victoria McCooey:
Exactly. You're right.
Seth Nelson:
So I'm going to say some phrases, and Victoria, the question is, do these sound like phrases the victim of a narcissist might hear?
I'm going to give you X number of dollars in our settlement, and if you hire a lawyer, you're getting nothing.
Victoria McCooey:
Absolutely. That's a threat.
Seth Nelson:
Total threat. I'm going to give you X, but if you go talk to anybody, that's it. And that keeps all the control with them, right?
Victoria McCooey:
Right. But what we know as people who've gone through this or on the other side is that you can't believe... Nothing they tell you is true. So it's all a manipulation to get you to behave the way they want you to behave.
Pete Wright:
And it seems like even less of it is true over the course of the divorce process. It sounds like it degrades the further you get from.
Victoria McCooey:
Right.
Seth Nelson:
So I want to focus on this point for a minute because I deal with this a lot. They know that they're being manipulated or that they've had this abuse. So the victim, let's just call the victim my client right now, and the narcissist is on the other side of this case. I will get calls. And what happens is they believe what he says. And I will say to them, "You tell me that he always lies. And if he's always lying, that means we don't believe anything that he says."
So you have to check yourself immediately to be like, this is his tactics, this is what he does, this is his modus operandi. This is it, right? I am not going to let myself take that bait anymore. I am going to change the way I respond. And that is hard. I'm not saying this is easy. How do you help people do that?
Victoria McCooey:
This is exactly where they need the help the most because they're just programmed. It's this almost Stockholm Syndrome where they want to believe everything. But they know, their intellectual mind knows that they're always being lied to, gaslighted, all these things. But they want to believe that the person is good, true, whatever.
So I don't know if you've binge-watched this other video where I talk about understanding what is real and what isn't, figuring out what is reality. It's really hard when you've been living in the bizarro world for so long, where you have been made to believe all kinds of things that aren't true. So now it's about every time something is presented to you, every word out of the narcissist's mouth, you don't take it face value ever. You have to actually analyze, you have to weigh the percentage of the chances that it's true or not. Chances are, it's not. I mean, if you look at all the things the narcissist has said to you, probably a bigger percentage of them are false.
Seth Nelson:
So let me give you some examples. You're not going to get any money out of this.
Victoria McCooey:
You'll never see your children again.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. I'm going to go through them, Victoria, you're right. So one, never get any money. They call me and I say, "Well, how long have you been married? Anything titled in your name?"
"No."
"That's okay. Did he earn money during the marriage?"
"Yes."
Did he put in a bank account?"
"Yes."
"Half that money is yours. That's still there. How much do you spend on your credit card a month for you?"
"$5,000."
"Okay, you've been married for 20 years. This is an alimony case because you don't work."
So I just try to debunk everything they say. "I will never see my children again."
And then I say, "Well, that would be the first time ever that I had a case where one parent never saw their children." Because I have had cases where children were abused by their parents, and the parents still get to see them. It's supervised, but they still get to see.
So everything they say, I have to give an example or two or three, whether it's in the law, or by analogy to other cases that I've had, or hypotheticals to have people understand the concepts. But check with your lawyer on this when they try to scare you.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Because it sounds so much like authenticity and sincerity are at very best a tool, but at worst, a weapon in the mouth of a narcissist. And you have to figure out how to handle the emotional and logical boundaries that you have to put up between you and the narcissist. Because as Seth says, the world is very different than what comes out of their mouths.
Victoria McCooey:
Now we all know the legal system is flawed.
Seth Nelson:
Whoa, whoa. How did Victoria get on this show, Pete?
Victoria McCooey:
They make mistake. I mean, things happen. But that is the reassurance I always give my clients too. And they say, "No. He says I'm not going to get any money. I'm never going to see all the threats."
I go, "There are laws in place. That's why there are laws in place. That can't happen. It won't happen."
Pete Wright:
Okay. But I have to say, because I've been involved in a situation like this, it's very close to me, that there are still people out there who when presented with those quite specific lines, decide to stick around and work it out and try to navigate because the threats feel so real.
Victoria McCooey:
There's a statistic out there, and it may be the same for men, but I just happen to know the statistic among women who are trying to leave an abusive marriage or relationship, I think the statistic is on. Try seven times before they end up leaving for good.
Pete Wright:
Wow.
Victoria McCooey:
Average, on average, seven times. Because they're wooed back in or threatened back in, sabotaged in some way, beaten down. It takes them seven times.
Pete Wright:
Wow.
Seth Nelson:
That statistic does not surprise me at all, Pete. And the reason I say that is every family law attorney I know has had clients that have hired us, reconciled, which you think, man, that's great, they're working it out.
Pete Wright:
Saving relationships, left and right.
Seth Nelson:
And then hired us again, and again and again. So it's not easy. No one is saying, this is easy. That's why we have The Toaster, is we're giving people information we hope is helpful. So you cannot believe what they say. Double check it.
Victoria McCooey:
Right. So typically I'll tell my clients, I'll tell them that statistic, and I say, "My job is to lower that number. I'm not saying the first time, you are not going to say, okay, well maybe this time he's really going to change or whatever the thing. I understand that. And there's no judgment. I know I did it. But let's get the number down a bit."
Pete Wright:
So we were in the middle of talking about this phase two about how you communicate during the actual divorce process.
Victoria McCooey:
Which has to be very different, right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah. How is it different?
Victoria McCooey:
Typically, people, if you look at most narcissist broadcast, podcasts, whatever, they say no contact. No contact, no contact. Don't talk to the narcissist. Well, have you ever met a guardian ad litem or a parenting coordinator who understood why you can't talk to the narcissist? They're going to say you're the problem, you're uncooperative, you're not collaborative, you're not working together for the sake of the children. You're not, you're not, you're not. So you're going to shoot yourself in the foot. Yeah, that's best for you. It's best for you not to have any contact.
Seth Nelson:
So if you have to talk to him, how do you do it?
Victoria McCooey:
You are polite, you're friendly, even while their eyes on you, while you're under a microscope. You're even, "Good morning. So the coach called and Janie's game has moved to seven. Hope you can make it. See you there." You're that way.
Because they're judging you. So you don't take their bait. You're very careful not to take the narcissist's bait. But you've heard of Bill Eddy's BIFF, brief, informative...
Seth Nelson:
We talk about it all the time.
Victoria McCooey:
All the time. So I came up with a different one where it's STUFF, and I'm not going to remember all the things because it's about one topic per email. Because you know what happens, it all gets garbled-
Seth Nelson:
And let me be very clear. We're not talking one topic with 27 subparts.
Victoria McCooey:
No. One issue, only information, only facts, and make sure it's thorough. The T is for thorough, in that you know what the agreement says, you know all the details around this specific topic, you know that there's no gray area. You have to work so hard to not let them get any little opening to twist it up.
Seth Nelson:
I have a little different approach to that. I really subscribe to the BIFF method, which is brief, informative, friendly, and firm. And the thing that I've seen work very successfully is not trying to not give them any openings because you'll drive yourself crazy. I just say, "What information do we need to communicate?" And I just narrow it down and narrow it down, narrow it down.
I explain to my clients that this is actually what I do when I prepare for court is I have a vast amount of information about a case and the law and how the law will be applied to the case and how this one sentence could be read one way or the other way. I have this vast amount of information and I only have so much time. So you have to try to be succinct and persuasive.
When you're dealing with the narcissist, you're just trying to be succinct. You do not try to persuade. You're just giving the information. And if they take it, they take it. If they don't, they don't. But it's less about what they're going to do and it's more about how you communicate.
Victoria McCooey:
I guess what I meant was that you don't give it an opening like, "I really hope you can make it because it's really important to Janie that you're there," that kind of stuff.
Seth Nelson:
I agree with that.
Victoria McCooey:
Okay. No wants, wishes, hopes, dreams, your opinion, nothing.
Pete Wright:
Excise that from your vernacular completely. Yeah. And I get that. I feel like what we're... The other piece that I'm inferring from the conversation also is that once you're in the divorce process, there are other people's eyeballs on these communications, that when you're sending an email like this and you're dealing with these kinds of things, that can be copied to counsel. You have to have some sort of visibility that changes the dynamic.
Victoria McCooey:
How many of your clients are on a parenting app? Now, almost all of mine are ordered to be on OuFamilyWizard.
Seth Nelson:
Where they can communicate, you can track the communication, you get the full dialogue. You see when they sign in, when they don't. You can't delete it, you can't change it.
Victoria McCooey:
You can't delete it, you can't edit it.
Seth Nelson:
And I've used that successfully. And this is no secret, Pete, we've talked about it on the show before where I use it because they sign in at 1:00 in the morning on the night that they have the children. I'm like, what are you doing up at 1:00? I mean, there's all sorts of other information that people don't realize that you get or don't get, and you get to prove the negative. Judge, they didn't even bother opening it up.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, there you go. Which I think is actually... I mean that feels to me like a significant difference from phase one to phase two is that you're on stage now, your communication as divorcing partners is on spotlight.
Victoria McCooey:
So you know, you can have experts sign into your account. You can have therapists and coaches and whatever. So what we'll do is I'll have a client email me and go, "I have to answer this email. It's really triggering, this message."
And then I can actually go look at it. I never write it for them. They craft the email and I might suggest some edits before they send it, so they get a buffer.
Seth Nelson:
I usually get my clients laughing about those emails and messages because-
Pete Wright:
As fast as you can.
Seth Nelson:
When they call me. I said, "Okay, let's go through it."
And I also point out, well, hey, there's a good point in here. You can't always discount the message because of the messenger.
Victoria McCooey:
And they're so triggered.
Seth Nelson:
They're so emotional about it. I will then say, "I want you to pretend this is written from your mother to you."
And I'll change the sender and read the line. And they're like, "Well, that's no problem."
Well, if that's no problem, then you're having a response to the sender, not to the message.
Victoria McCooey:
Exactly.
Seth Nelson:
So we got to really parse that out. And I will tell you, I've read thousands and thousands of text messages between people going through divorce, thousands and thousands of emails. Judges are over it.
Pete Wright:
What does that mean, they're over it?
Seth Nelson:
It is not persuasive for a lawyer to come into court with a thousand text exchanges. The judge is like, "Give me your best three."
Victoria McCooey:
Right. And you know what I find clients doing? They're trying to voice record everything and then they're sending 20 half hour recordings. I'm like, "Nobody's listening to that. There is nobody..."
Seth Nelson:
I listen because they send it. But we had this exact issue in a case, more than one case. This is a tactic that I frequently use. They are in an argument and the other party pulls out a phone and starts recording, or the child is having an issue and they pull out the phone and start recording. So when I have them in a deposition or on the stand, I said, "Was your child in distress during this moment?"
"Yes."
"And did you make the decision to record it instead of helping your child?"
Pete Wright:
Oh, snap.
Seth Nelson:
Like what the fuck are you doing?
Pete Wright:
Right.
Seth Nelson:
You chose to gather what you thought would be compelling evidence for your divorce case as opposed to helping your child.
Victoria McCooey:
Yeah, that's a really good point.
Pete Wright:
But man, can I see how you might get there? Right? Man, I can put myself in that position of that parent making that call and just trying to help make the strongest case possible about why I should get what I need to get. Or I should have these constituent objectives met in my case if I just had this one last bit of just the shining silver bullet evidence, Seth. Maybe it's that call, maybe it's that event in our house that I'm recording. I could see how you might get there emotionally in a moment of heat.
Victoria McCooey:
Just hope Seth is not your ex-spouse's attorney.
Pete Wright:
Hard on me as a podcaster. Jesus.
Seth Nelson:
I'm so nice to Andy though, our producer who we don't let talk.
But that's the type of thing that you have to understand when you're going through this process is you're not the lawyer, you're not the one gathering the evidence. You're just trying to get through the fucking day. And sit down with your lawyer and ask them, "What type of information do you need? When these things happen, what do I do?"
So these are conversations we have on the front end of cases, not in the middle of cases. And you would be surprised of the things that as lawyers, we have to tell our clients because it just makes so rational sense. But when you're emotional and you're in it, it's different.
Pete Wright:
It's different.
Seth Nelson:
It's just different. And so it's never that, oh my God, I can't believe our client's so dumb. It's like, God, they just got triggered. They got emotional. They were being emotional, not logical. Let's be logical about this.
Pete Wright:
Well, and those triggers are, I think feels like the key thing to learn about yourself in the process of any divorce, but divorcing a narcissist in particular. The more you can learn about yourself, the more you're helping yourself in your divorce case, Victoria.
Victoria McCooey:
Well, the stronger you can get emotionally and spiritually, financially for sure, and mentally, even physically, the better you're going to be able to react, keep yourself poised, show up in the best way when it matters, all these things. And that's part of my program. I say there are two silos that we have to work on at the same time. There's the business of getting the divorce done, but I say it's a business. It's just breaking a contract. You got into a bad timeshare and you need to break this contract.
Seth Nelson:
You can't get out of this, Victoria.
Pete Wright:
No timeshares are much harder than divorce.
Seth Nelson:
You're stuck there forever. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Wow. I wish for a bad divorce instead of getting out of a timeshare.
Victoria McCooey:
You're going to take a financial hit. You can't expect to get out without costing. So it's going to cost, but it's, in the big picture, the better option. But at the same time, you have to work on yourself. We work on self-care and doing affirmations and morning rituals and lifting yourself up. And I try to pull them out of, like you said, you're binge-watching my videos, pull them out of that because you can go down that rabbit hole and then all your consumed. And you stay in this victim mentality, because you're just all about narcissists all the time. All the time. So I try to pull them out of that and put them into consuming more uplifting, positive content.
Pete Wright:
More Ted Lasso.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, Ted Lasso is awesome. But why we're talking about that, and I really want to talk about phase three after the divorce, but one last point during the divorce. Talk to your lawyer about these issues and see how they're going to present this in court. Because in my experiences, judges hate the following; the word narcissist because they hear it all the time, parent alienation, judge, they just lie all the time. Nothing you can say is true. These type of things, when I get the initial call from a potential client and they tell me these things, I will let them know, do not label anything that your spouse has or has not done. Tell me the behaviors.
Victoria McCooey:
Exactly.
Seth Nelson:
Because that is what is persuasive in court.
Victoria McCooey:
Yes. The patterns of behavior. Absolutely. Right.
Pete Wright:
Let's transition to phase three.
Victoria McCooey:
So phase three, the ink is dry, you're divorced, all the things are done. That doesn't mean you're never going back to court, but at least you know you're not under the microscope right now. That is when we go gray rock. That's when we don't even sprinkle in the night. It's just you're a robot. I try to explain to them, you're talking to a robot. You have to communicate, you have to exchange information, logistics, whatever. But that's it. And you don't talk about, "Oh, what are we going to get Johnny for Christmas together? Or what are you getting him because I'm going to..." No. No information.
If you're bound to tell them in your agreement when you're leaving town with them, itineraries, you do it at the last possible moment you can get away with legally, according to your agreement. They will try to sabotage anything they can. They will undermine, front run. My ex-husband found out my mother and I were taking them on a cruise, the Disney cruise. So he took them the month before.
Yeah. I mean, just anything they can do to ruin, to spoil your fun.
Pete Wright:
All right, so you're a stoic in phase three.
Victoria McCooey:
Yes, absolutely a stoic. And the hardest part is not intervening on your child's behalf.
Seth Nelson:
The other thing too is remember people get divorced from narcissists that don't have children with each other. And you also have to remember, you're going to have to unwind some stuff. You're going to have to do the 401k, the transfer with a quadro. You might have to sell the house. You might have to get a quick claim deeded. So the more of that that it can go through the lawyers in your agreements or if you're in court and you're asking for things to be done, ask for timeframes.
And I do my best to not say, "Judge, I need it done within 10 days of the date of the final judge." I say, "I want it done by July 27th at noon." I am that specific.
So it just makes for a crisper cleaner agreement. Because when you say 10 days Pete, or 20 days...
Victoria McCooey:
Oh, but it was a holiday.
Seth Nelson:
The rules are different. When do you count? Is it starting the next day? Is it the holiday?
Pete Wright:
Holidays? Right.
Victoria McCooey:
That's so true.
Seth Nelson:
Just make it as crisp and clean and tight as you can. And those little things on the front end help this communication on the back end a lot better.
Victoria McCooey:
Right. And to that point, when you do share children, you have to make sure there are no loose ends. If this happens, then this happens. If that is a holiday, then this happens, whatever. You have to know everything that could fall through the cracks because you don't want to have to figure it out later.
Pete Wright:
For sure. It feels like we have poked the bear on a couple of really key points, and we could probably talk for hours and hours and hours, but I will have to save that for another time. First, please tell people a little bit about what you do as a coach for exactly these circumstances.
Victoria McCooey:
Yeah. So my niche is I'm a narcissist divorce coach, so I help people. And you're right about putting that label on. Judges hate that. And people always come to me and say, "Well, I'm not sure if I can divorce my husband because I don't know if he's really a narcissist."
And I'm like, "Doesn't matter."
Pete Wright:
Well, you don't need to be a narcissist to be divorced from.
Victoria McCooey:
Diagnosable.
Pete Wright:
He can also just be a jerk.
Seth Nelson:
Or just not good in bed. You can pick any reason you want.
Pete Wright:
A bouquet of reasons you could get a divorce.
Victoria McCooey:
Lot's of different reasons. I mean, we're all on a spectrum. You have to have a healthy dose of narcissism to have self-esteem and confidence. But if they're so far on this spectrum that it's toxic to you, it's unhealthy for you, then yeah, you need to get out of a toxic marriage. So I help them through all these stages. Some people come to me after the divorce is final and they're struggling with the custody situation and communicating there. But in every stage.
And I wanted to add, because I think Seth will like this. One of the things that I do while they're engaged with an attorney... Well, I help them figure out how to interview attorneys and how to choose attorneys, and also how to communicate with their attorney so that hopefully I can minimize their legal fees. You're shaking your head.
Seth Nelson:
Brilliant. I'm happy about that. That's great.
Victoria McCooey:
Because I know I did, and I see my clients try to do it all the time, sending the attorneys every day, pages-long emails about what happened and how upset they are. And it's like they don't need to know this. And so we figure out together if they need to contact you at all. And if they do, I edit it. I was a writer for 35 years before I started this coaching business, so I edit it so that I have headers. If you're talking about the house sale, if you're talking about visitation, if you're talking about whatever. And everything is a bullet, it's just bullet, bullet, bullet, bullet, bullet.
Seth Nelson:
Well, this is what I say to my associate attorneys when they're drafting legal documents or even letters to opposing counsel. I say, "It should look pretty."
And they're like, "What are you talking about, look pretty."
I said, "If you look at a page and there's just straight words, there isn't like a header of one, parenting issues, two, house issue..." You want to break it up and make it easier for the reader to digest.
Victoria McCooey:
Easy to digest.
Seth Nelson:
And get to where they're going for the information.
Victoria McCooey:
Absolutely. And if you need to go back and find it again, how quick is that, that you can put your hands right on it?
Pete Wright:
Sure. Well, incredibly useful. We've got links to all of your socials, especially that sweet, sweet YouTube page that I binged a heck out of. We've got links in there, victoriamccooey.com. Victoria, thank you so much for hanging out with us today.
Victoria McCooey:
Thanks so much for having me. It was so much fun.
Pete Wright:
And I think we have this whole conversation to have about dealing with a narcissist after divorce. We're going to have to table that for another time so that'll be a little plug for next time we talk to you, Victoria.
Victoria McCooey:
Great.
Pete Wright:
Thank you so much. On behalf of Victoria McCooey and Seth Nelson, America's favorite divorce attorney, I'm Pete Wright. We'll see you next week right here on How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Outro:
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.
