The Process of Divorce and Custody Modification (Ep.5)

[00:00:00] Nobody wants to end up in family court. But if you do you want an honest, experienced family law attorney by your side, to help minimize the stress mental anguish and legal costs that divorce and custody matters bring.  Welcome to In Your Best Interest. Texas divorce attorney and entrepreneur, Justin Sisemore of the Sisemore Law Firm, entrepreneur, Andrea Jones, freelance writer, Mary Maloney, and guests share insight on what to expect and how to handle family law matters, the changing landscape of family law and living the entrepreneur’s life. Now onto the show from parental alienation to substance. To new partners entering the picture, navigating divorce and child custody with an ex can be full of twists and turns. And in some instances you may even need to take legal steps to address certain issues.

In today’s podcast, we will discuss a number of divorce and custody challenges [00:01:00] and provide insight on how to approach these situations through the process of divorce and custody modification. All right. Well, welcome everybody to this episode of In Your Best Interest. Um, we’re gonna be talking a lot about custody modifications today and why, um, you would need to do that and when it’s appropriate.

So Justin, before we dive into specific issues, can you just explain a little bit in general, how the process of divorce and custody modification works? Sure. So good morning, everybody. And happy day after the fourth, you know, obviously when you’re going through a divorce action, you have paper or suit affecting parent child relationship provisions in a final decree of divorce.

So, you can only kind of predict a short period of time with respect to a child’s life, where you have some certainty of what the school’s gonna look like, where the parties are gonna live. Who’s gonna pay what expenses. And extracurricular activities, health insurance, all of those issues.[00:02:00]

So one of the things that the courts have allowed is for a modification of. Uh, and I think people often feel that that’s an easier or more simple task than it usually is. But the modification in with respect to a divorce decree would be changing or tweaking those terms with respect to the rights and duties, possession and access.

Insurance, uh, and it requires a higher burden of proof. And so that’s the distinction between a modification and an underlying suit affecting parent child relationship or an underlying divorce decree. Right. Well, one of the biggest top topics that clients ask you about, and I know we’ve talked about this before, is parental alienation and related to that also grandparent alienation.

Can you explain what constitutes parental alienation and how you approach those issues with clients? Um, and when a custody modification might be warranted, when alienation occurs. Sure. Uh, unfortunately alienation is [00:03:00] a, a very common theme and we’ve talked about this before. But it’s a very common theme that occurs when two parties just can’t put the child first.

Uh, it’s one of the main reasons why we do this business. It’s very frustrating to me to know that two adults can’t just seem to get past their differences and just understand they may not have liked their life the way they grew up, or their parents may not have had the best scenario upbringing for them, but they just don’t bury that.

And so it, it becomes a scenario where it’s either their own insecurities that I think they’re projecting on the other party. And oftentimes you see, you know, the child becoming the pawn, uh, where one party is trying to either impact or affect the other party emotionally, or there’s such this codependency on the child because some party may feel alone.

And we see that a lot today with mental health issues. People I think are more alone than they’ve ever been, uh, with more access to [00:04:00] entertainment than they’ve ever had. And so when some party feels alone or they don’t have somebody that pays attention to them, oftentimes it becomes the child.

And whenever that child is thrown back and forth from home to home, and one party feels alone and the child is then told, oh, well, what did you do at your dad’s house and the, or mom’s house? And the first thing outta that child’s mouth is, oh, we went and grabbed the snow cone for the fourth. And all that sudden you see the deflate, uh, outta that parent’s face where they just become impacted emotionally, uh, they become emotionally drained.

They become sadden. And those are forms of what we call indirect alienation. Your direct alienation is more obvious. And I think a lot of parties understand clearly what that is. That is mom’s terrible. She’s nuts. Dad’s, you know, crazy. He does this too much. The, his, his wife is terrible. The, the direct, uh, approach to that conundrum, if you will. And I would [00:05:00] say that the indirect is really where we see a lot, a lot of it as well, and that is really challenging to prove in a courtroom. Uh, and I get a lot of phone calls on that very issue and clients get frustrated with me when I tell them, no, we don’t have it yet. I call it the green banana cases, not ready to eat yet.

And the alienation is one of the, probably more challenging factors that you deal with because you have to have a third party provide that evidence generally. So it would be in the form of a child, counselor a home study, uh, or various other avenues other than the child’s testimony to back up the evidence in a courtroom to get to the burden of what we call clear and convincing evidence, which is the burden of proof.

Can you, Justin also briefly touch on grandparent alienation because that’s also an issue. I mean, grandparents have an interest in their grandkids and a lot of times they’re prevented from having access to them as well. Is there anything that they can do? Yeah. I mean, I will tell you that courts, you don’t see them protecting [00:06:00] grandparent alienation.

You, you don’t really hear those two terms interchangeable. As much anymore because of a case called Trel, which basically said that being a grandparent is a privilege and not a right. And the difference there is, you know, you actually have to show that there’s an impediment to the emotional health, safety, and welfare of a child or of the grandchild for that grandparent to have standing or the right to even bring a case to court. And so, you know, you don’t really hear as much about grandparent because you’re seeing more of a scenario where the grandparent if, if they were to file suit and say, you were saying bad things about me and I’m the grandparent, the court might just say, well, that’s just, you should have treated your child better.

Right. And it’s, it’s kind of counterintuitive because you know, you’ve got, you’ve got this whole, it takes a village scenario. We’re trying to not alienate anybody, but the grandparents themselves don’t have, uh, as much right or standing to be able to bring those kind of cases unless there’s some form [00:07:00] of conservatorship attached to.

Um, we, we do see scenarios where grandparents get thrown into an order, or they get included into an order. Some, and I use the word thrown in I know everybody loves their grandchildren, but some grandparents get thrown into being a parent again. And they may not wanna be their kids, you know, have a drug issue or an alcohol issue.

That causes the courts to look to next of kin. And that’s when they establish rights and duties for conservatorship. And that’s where you can get into grandparent alienation. But generally speaking, you’re gonna have more of a scenario where they’ve actually been named a conservator in an order.

Gotcha. While we were talking briefly about substance abuse there too. And that’s another reason potentially where, um, if that substance abuse is endangering the child that a modification might be warranted. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that plays out in the court system? Yeah. Especially, especially since COVID, we’ve seen a massive rise in substance consumption and abuse.

Right. So, you know, and I, there, there are [00:08:00] people that, that can materialize and handle certain things differently than other people can. And so, uh, one of the, one of the big issues that we see with substance abuse is it starts out as minimal consumption and then it goes to a daily and then it goes to, you know, oh, I got this and I can handle this.

And then there’s more and more pile ons and more pile on. And so with that comes the highs and lows that saps your body of the, of the things that, you know, it naturally needs to recover emotionally. Um, and so, you know, and, and again, this is not a judgment podcast. This is a, this is a, let’s talk about how we get through these things, because we’re all humans.

And I think there’s a big separation of reality. And you know, what the perception of your reality is? I, I was listening to somebody talk the other day about that. You know, most people don’t really care what the door of your house looks like. They just wanna know that it’s painted pretty and what’s on the inside of it doesn’t really matter.

And so what we’re seeing a lot now is that. [00:09:00] Masking of what’s actually going on behind closed doors and as such, you know, it, it turns into a scenario where that substance abuse becomes intolerable where you need to, uh, actually do something about it. And again, the challenge with these things are not mommy and daddy went to, 4th of July and so, and so had too many beers over the weekend. It’s where you can’t function. You’re losing the ability to ever be out in public where it’s, not embarrassing, uh, where there’s not some yelling, some, uh, serious things that impact a child. And I say that not to excuse, bad behavior when you over consume we’re adults.

And sometimes we just kind of forget, Hey, that’s not gonna be a good thing for our child to see. I, I mean, and again, I’m not casting judgment. I’ve been guilty of that myself. So. But at the end of the day, what’s important is that when it becomes a situation where everyone around you, your family, your wife, your husband, your friends, [00:10:00] everyone is telling you these things.

What ends up happening is at that point, you need to start to say, if you’re gonna protect this child, all right. This person absolutely has lost control. And I’ve tried to regain some of that and they won’t do anything about it. They won’t cut back on this, or they won’t go from hard alcohol to, you know, whatever it is or maybe it’s drugs or whatever the scenario may be.

And so at that point, you’ve gotta go, okay, well, if I leave the child in this person’s care, is the child going to be endangered because the parent is not alert enough to care for those actions. At which point you’re gonna need all those people that have been complaining to get in your corner and go and say those things.

The challenge you get a lot of the times is those people sometimes are the parents of that person. Right. And so they’re all in this. Let’s get together and have an intervention until they have to go to court for their poor baby child. Right. Or maybe they’re afraid that they’re not gonna see their grandchild.

Um, and so, [00:11:00] gathering this evidence is not always easy. Your best form of evidence, you know, is generally the recorder on your phone, the, the camera on your phone. But the challenge that I see mostly is everyone that pulls out the recorder thinks that whatever they’re saying is just clairvoyant and wonderful and, and it’s absolutely beneficial to the child and they’re giving good guidance to the other parent and usually it they’re attacking the other parent. Right. The thing I see is them wanting to gather the evidence where there’s a child sitting right there and a party is doing something absolutely asinine. And instead of getting the child out of that scenario, they’re just sitting there recording the child and they think that the court’s gonna go, wow.

That was so great that you showed me that I’m so glad I got to see that. No, they don’t, they say, hey, what are you doing, not getting your child out of that environment? And we all know that you have plenty of opportunities to gather that evidence, uh, when you have somebody that’s, uh, involved in activities that are that bad enough to go have to hire a lawyer.[00:12:00]

So try to try your best to make sure that that child is not present for that timing. You can certainly tell the same story, uh, by just showing that you got the child out of there. And you can certainly tell the same story when you record them two or three other times when the child’s not present.

Absolutely. Andrea, you as a client of Justin’s, you went through a lot of custody challenges with your ex can you kind of talk about how that process worked for you? Um, when you were trying to deal with different issues with custody and child support and how Justin helped you down those paths? Sure.

So I think the most important thing, Justin touched on that a little bit, and I think it’s very important to repeat that you have to have proof and your opinion doesn’t really matter. And I, I said this before, in other podcast, you have to take yourself or try to take yourself out of the occasion and just look at the facts.

And only if you have enough proof, doesn’t even make sense to go to court. And we’ve seen over the years, justice. Justin turns a lot of people away and they’re confused. And it’s like, why? I think I [00:13:00] have the evidence here and, and he, and he tells him like, we don’t, we don’t have enough evidence and it makes no sense to waste your time and money to go to court.

He told me that before, too, when you, as a parent get upset and you look at the situation, you think this is enough and it might not be enough. So the most I think the most important thing is yes, you have to have the proof doesn’t touch on that, how to get that proof. And then I think the other, the other issue is to really get people on your side.

I had that too. There was alcohol involved and driving drunk with the little kids in a car. How do you prove that? Right? So the other people that are at a party should take the key away and say, you have your kids here. You should not be driving, but oftentimes if it’s your best friend, they don’t do things like that.

So even friends and family, instead of just really looking at the kids and thinking about the kids, oftentimes think about themselves and their friendship or their family. And don’t really think about what, in what situation they put the kids. If they allow those kind of behaviors. And modification I have to say is not, is not an easy [00:14:00] process.

I mean, when it comes to child support or anything, if you wanna go back, wanna enforce something or you wanna modify something, it really has, you have to have the proof, which is also a good thing. You don’t want to take kids out of, out of an environment or a situation that they’re in and used to just because the other parent did one time, something stupid or said something stupid.

I think the, the judges are pretty good at looking at the entire story. And is this a one time event or is this a continuous event that we need to step in and change something? So Justin, another question for you is an issue that parents face with their exes is that they have different opinions about introducing like new love, interests into situations.

Is there anything that people can do from a legal perspective to, you know, whether they wanna protect their children or protect their interests in general, when there’s a new love interests that enter the picture. Yeah, that, and that’s, that’s something that’s really, really [00:15:00] important. As far as when you do the introduction, the we’re actually dealing with this right now with, with a close friend of ours.

And you know, one of the challenges is you know, when two parties know that they’re gonna separate and they’re gonna, you know, at some point, move on, the question is when is that time Okay to introduce the new party. That’s I, I think we’ve talked before about, that’s why we get these mental health professionals in place, you know, we’ve, we’ve got some great ones around the area and, you know, just do your homework on those mental health professionals.

Don’t think about the mental health professional being used as a weapon, uh, or a sword or a shield. If you truly want help in this scenario. I think it’s important to listen to the tone and temperature of your children and how they’re adapting and reacting to this situation. You know, I, I, as far as the courts are concerned, you will see them enter into what we call temporary restraining orders, uh, which become injunctions, which have prohibitions about time that you [00:16:00] can bring a third party with whom you have an intimate dating relationship around the child or children. And usually that’s at nighttime. Okay. And, I think that’s, I think that’s kind of just a really ridiculous thing to be thinking about that, during the daytime it’s okay to bring this third party around when the child’s most alert, but when the child’s up until 8:00 AM all of a sudden, because there’s the connotation of intimacy there physically, that’s gonna protect the child. And I see people really take advantage and abuse that, uh, that one provision in and of itself. You know, they’ll, they’ll do, they’ll go so far as to I’ve seen baby monitors where they go next door.

And they leave baby monitors in the house. Uh, just really stupid. Ways to handle this situation. So, but yes, the courts have injunctive language. I want to use this opportunity though, to tell parents, please, please, please. Don’t think about yourself in this scenario. Your child is trying to adjust to the concept of two parents separating a the thing [00:17:00] that is supposed to be their stability arm being ripped out from under them. And I do understand that there’s fault that goes into that. But when you start to say, oh, this person over here is just more normal than your daddy or your mommy, uh, because they’re more loving or they don’t do things the way your daddy or mommy do it.

You know, I think you’re missing the whole boat here, which is, and I do understand the concept of trying to show your child a good environment, a good loving, nurturing relationship. And I do understand that that takes time to get over the previous relationship. But you’ve got to remember that child is trying to adjust that half of them is now being replaced by someone new.

Okay. And that’s never, that’s never something that kids take lightly. They may give you that smile or nod and that big hug and embrace the stepparent right away. But deep down they’re hurting. Right. And, and I can tell you right now, I have seen countless examples where the stepparent step in and they’re the best thing that’s ever happened for [00:18:00] those children or child, but I’ve also seen the worst calls that I get on is when everyone wants all the lean on the step. My, my wife wants to tell you this, let me get her on the phone real quick. Or my husband needs to go through this as if you don’t have a voice anymore, get your own voice back. You have to be the voice for your own child. And what I see is.

If I’m with this person, my life’s gonna be happier. And if, if my kids meet this person, they’re gonna see normalcy. And if they can just see that they’re gonna be smarter and more loving and more nurturing and all those things, and that’s all well and good. But at the end of the day, we’ve got to try to fix the rock, the foundation, which are the two biological parents before we start navigating waters of third parties.

And especially when they have kids, other kids. That is a massive adaptation. You’re gonna see, uh, that all the different waves of emotions in your child where they start out really. Okay. I’m confused. I’m angry. I’m happy. I’m [00:19:00] sad. That’s where the mental health professionals come in and yes, those protections are in place by the court.

But where we take that another level is when you are starting to see the children really acting out because a third party. Is introducing multiple people, multiple kids. Uh, they’re doing it too soon. Uh, they’re being inappropriate in front of the children and those things have to be Causely related, not just because they’re dating somebody now, all of a sudden the court’s gonna go rip the child away and say custody the other parent.

So if there are intimate acts, if there’s crazy, acts third parties getting involved, they’re seeing, you’re seeing alienation. That’s where courts will step up that injunctive. And I can say something to that too, because I’ve been through that. The kids are so affected by you bringing somebody new into their life immediately. My ex moved in with his girlfriend immediately and the kids were little and they were so confused by the situation. And they were told, oh, this is just a friend I’m living with. And all this other tragedy, mama kicked me out the house and I gotta move [00:20:00] in with somebody. Well, clearly not another woman.

That’s first of all. And then this woman acted around my kids as if she’s the mother, which is another thing you cannot do. You should keep that so separate. So yes, I understand. We all have needs. We wanna date, but if you have kids again, put the kids first, put the kids first, the kids need to be safe and they need to see mommy and daddy and nobody else.

And not around anybody there’s enough time. I could not imagine back then to be away from my kids, cuz I was this super mom and could not imagine that my kids would be by somebody else for the weekend there. Somebody else, my ex-husband that I was not with them. And I remember Justin and his mom back then also telling me, you will need that time.

And you will enjoy that time. And guess what? Yes, you did. Cuz there are weekends when you don’t have the kids or days in a week where you don’t have the kids where you can live out your life and go dating and do all those things. And when you have your kids around, you should be mommy or daddy and focus on the kids a hundred percent.

And that effect is, I mean it’s long lasting and in a tip [00:21:00] that I have for stepparents to us, you will never be mommy or daddy, you will never replace mommy or daddy unless they’re like entirely out the picture and you step in. Be careful and be aware even what you do around the other parent and how you handle your kids.

I have very high respect. I’m remarried now. And we have together eight kids. We didn’t introduce the kids until a long time. We, we were not around the kids for the longest time. They had no idea I was dating for the longest time. And then years forward, we got married, remarried. I have very high respect for the mother of my step kids and I have never, ever, and would never act like the mama around them.

That’s still the mother. So there is no kissing and hugging and all that stuff in front of the stepmother, cuz that’s again, you’re pushing buttons. That’s the mother and she should be treated like the mother. And if I’m with my husband, we going somewhere. I have that respect. This is the mother. I am the stepmother.

I take myself back. I don’t get involved in those conversations. Yes. I’m very outspoken. As you all know, it is hard [00:22:00] sometimes, but you are not the biological parent and decisions should be made between the two of them, the biological parents. And you take yourself back behind closed doors. You can talk to your partner about your input and what you would like to see, but in front of the kids, there’s mommy and there, daddy.

And nothing else. And I see so many parents making those mistakes and it’s, it’s heartbreaking to see that you can wait. I mean, you have the whole life in front of you, but if you have little kids, why in the world after a few months, sometimes weeks, do you bring that other partner into their life and say, oh, this is mommy’s friend, or this is daddy’s friend.

And be nice to them. And. All that stuff that is not necessary. Use the weekends again, use the weekends and weeknights you have where you don’t have your kids. And then don’t go somewhere where you potentially run into your, your kids or your ex partner go someplace else, enjoy your life then. But the other times you put those kids in the world and you have a job to do so.

Be a parent, be a good parent and put the kids first and don’t put your stuff first, then you give, then you [00:23:00] can’t be a parent. I’m sorry. I, I see this all the time. I get so upset when I see those kissing and loving, and this is mommy’s new love life and daddy’s new. And then on top of that, like Justin said, introducing over and over new people.

Does the substitute, whatever substitute partner that you have, cuz you need one right away. And then that one is gone after a few months and here’s the next one. And the kids have to get used to that one. No, you should only, in my opinion, introduce somebody when you feel like this is potentially your next partner.

For a long time, then the kids would even meet them. Otherwise keep them so separate. I get so upset. So one of the things that’s most frustrating that I see with respect to what Andrea just said is the this whole morality clause that’s put into a decree and keep in mind, they called it a morality clause.

Okay. This, their separation of church. And. And they call it a morality clause. And so I think that’s really important because it’s just being a decent human right. And one of the things that I get frustrated with [00:24:00] are when some courts don’t take that seriously, when they don’t take adultery seriously, and they don’t take introducing a child or children to a new party seriously, because they’ve seen so much bad stuff that I think they get a numb to these scenarios. But it’s just really, it’s really harmful to children and it’s a slower burn. It’s a slower. You know, at least when you, you see that some of the, the physical abuse scenarios, it’s oftentimes you have a injunctive, uh, relief. That’s a media and you pull that person out of the environment or you have supervised access, these slower knife and pain points of violation of morality clauses, where you’re not thinking about the child or children and introducing them and the court doesn’t enforce those immediately. It can be very, very frustrating. And so what I want our listeners to hear is how do we deal with that? When a court doesn’t do anything about it? Well, first of all, I would suggest they [00:25:00] should. And you need to keep pushing.

And sometimes it makes the lawyer unpopular in that courtroom and the client gets this feel well, the court’s not gonna do anything. The problem that we run into as lawyers and clients is that litigation costs money. And every time we have to go back to the, to the trough, it costs money to do that. And if you are a consumer of litigation and the court’s just kind of going, well, that’s not that big a deal, or you need to kind of move forward.

Your ex is moved on and I haven’t heard anything. That’s really that terrible, you know, as far as the ex, that can be like nails on a chalkboard, if you’re consuming litigation and, and I sell litigation. So obviously I I’m speaking from the heart when I say. That is very frustrating for me too, when I don’t get that result.

And so one, one of the things we have to do is prepare ourself for that very outcome. And that’s why I tell clients until you’ve got money stored up and you’re ready to go to the mat and you’ve got the ability to expose these things. And it’s not easy to [00:26:00] do. Sometimes you’re gonna feel like you’re wasting your efforts.

And so please listeners out there, please. If you’re. Trying to figure out how to navigate this air on the side of exactly what Andrea said. I wish the world had that outlook because you can just tell from her kids and the way they. They’re all independently successful. They may have had bumps in the road, just like we all do, but they’re all independently successful and they have good self-esteem, you know, as Andrea just said, it takes the whole village to, to raise these kids.

And if you are going over to a household, uh, and disrespecting, uh, the stepparent or you’re going to a game and you’re, you’re having to show. The ex, how intimate you guys are and why that relationship is failing. I mean, come on. That’s just ridiculous, scary. And the other people step in. I think that’s the other thing you talked about earlier that people don’t speak up.

If you are the friend of somebody and sees that, why don’t you step in, [00:27:00] not in front of the kid, but take the person to decide when you’re at a party and say, dude, like really, like, why did you bring that new woman out, a new guy over here? Why in a world are you doing that in front of your kids live? You need to be again, I’m German.

And we speak our minds very clearly, but you need to, you need. You you’re protecting think about the kids in all situations. If you are a friend, a neighbor, whoever you should step up and say, you guys got divorced. I, I remember my neighbor, make them calling me and saying like, I’m gonna go over there and say something.

I was out of town and he brought that woman to my house, sleeping in my bed and all that stuff that is ridiculous. And she stepped up and she went over there and she raised hell. Be a good person. Like Justin’s said have some around and look at yourself. Would you expose your kids or want your kids to be exposed to that situation and think about it and you won’t.

So go over there and say something to your girlfriend, to your dude that you hang out with and say, this is not okay. I do not wanna see this again. If you do this ever again. Don’t bring your kids to my house anymore. I mean, whatever, step up, if we all [00:28:00] speak up more about those situations where kids are put in the middle and shouldn’t be seeing that, then we wouldn’t have those situations, but everybody’s worried about their friendship or stepping on somebody’s toes.

When it’s about kids, you need to step on toes, have a voice. Say something and make it stop. Even as a friend or neighbor, you can say something, don’t be quiet. and I don’t understand, like, that’s just to me, that’s under not understandable. The kids should be the focus they’re innocent. They have no word.

And it impacts the kids over long term. What are you teaching those kids? Mommy was around 10 years and now mommy is replaced in a heartbeat with somebody else. And daddy’s intimate with this other woman in front of me and kissing and hugging and touching and all that stuff in front of me. What are you teaching?

Teaching that child a little boy. You’re married one day, you can replace that person when she gets on your nerves, replace her with somebody else in a heartbeat. That’s what you’re teaching those kids. And that’s not right. I’m sorry. In our society. Maybe it might be right. It’s not right for me. And you should be saying so.

Yeah, especially, and, and I know we need to kind of wrap this up this point up, but as far as the entertainment society that we [00:29:00] live in now, Uh, Mary, as far as you know, this feeling like I, I must be entertained right now. I have to have every minute of my day occupied with something that makes me feel good.

What we see a lot is that jumping around from person to person and keep in mind. When we talk about courts getting numb to these things, why do you think they get numb? Mm-hmm when you hear something and see something that’s bad over and over again, your lens becomes a lot broader and it doesn’t impact you as much.

Uh, and the same for these kids, just like Andrea just said, when they see you leave the family relationship over and over again. The the, the love, the marriage, the importance that we try to put on these things starts to erode. and that’s where I want to get our society back to if we can just make one dent and one person, uh, by this podcast from listening to, from start to finish, when it goes from, how did we get from enjoying ourselves to, we have [00:30:00] to go blow each other up in a courtroom.

And if you hear it from my lens and from Andrea’s lens, uh, I think what you’re gonna understand is by the time you get to us, it’s late. Never. I never say never too late. I don’t like to use the word never, but it is late. And by the time you get to our, our office it’s usually pretty bad. And so just keep in mind, we’re trying to keep the people that don’t have to get to the office out of it.

And the ones that come here understand how you act when you’re here, because otherwise we can’t represent you and succeed. I don’t wanna represent you. My staff doesn’t wanna deal with you yelling and screaming and bringing. Three or four different men or women into your kids’ lives and alcohol and drugs and all this other stuff on a constant basis where you’re just a difficult person to deal with personally and in a professional relationship.

So just, just be decent human. Absolutely. That’s really a great point to wrap up on. So, um, if anybody wants to have us di dive deeper into any of these topics, [00:31:00] please let us know. And if you’d like to get in touch with the seism more law firm, you can call us at 817-336-4444 and you can also visit our website at www.lawyerdfw.com. And of course, please follow the podcast. And if you have friends that need information about divorce and child custody, um, certainly share this podcast with them. Thanks so much for listening today and have a great day. Thank you for listening to In Your Best Interest with Texas divorce attorney and entrepreneur, Justin Sisemore, the content presented here is provided for information and should not be construed as legal tax or financial advice. Click the follow button to be notified when new episodes become available.