Dealing with High-Conflict Personalities in Court

Perhaps one of the worst places to deal with a high-conflict personality is in court – especially if it’s your co-parent and you’re fighting over custody. If you ever find yourself in this situation, prepare yourself to be bushwhacked by Oscar-worthy performances that may convince even the most skeptical judge that you’re the one creating conflict and your co-parent is the victim.

However, if you become aware of the patterns typically followed by HCPs (high-conflict personalities), you may beat them at their own game. First, let’s have a quick look at the prominent high-conflict personalities that share the targets of blame, the all-or-nothing mindset, unmanaged emotions, and extreme behaviors:

1.     Antisocial high-personalities (Antisocial HCPs)

Antisocial HCPs are usually psychopaths, sociopaths, or share traits associated with these personality disorders. They are typically aggressive, manipulative people that lack empathy and alternate between charm and cruelty to get what they want.

2.     Narcissistic high-conflict personalities (Narcissistic HCPs)

When you think of narcissists, you think of self-absorption, grandiosity, and an exaggerated sense of self-importance. But that’s not all. Narcissists also lack empathy and are masters of control, manipulation, and gaslighting. 

3.     Borderline high-conflict personalities (Borderline HCPs)

Borderline HCPs have difficulties maintaining relationships and have an intense fear of abandonment combined with extreme mood swings. Moreover, they tend to interpret minor acts as a betrayal and truly believe that’s the case, which may make their allegations quite convincing. 

4.     Paranoid high-conflict personalities (Paranoid HCPs)

Paranoid HCPs believe everyone around them is set to do them harm, and they may carry grudges for years. They tend to have a strong confirmation bias, impose biased views on the real world and project their own behaviors onto others.

5.     Histrionic high-conflict personalities (Histrionic HCPs)

This high-conflict personality is most often associated with drama-seeking behavior and tends to paint a reality where they are the victims and often act as they perform for an audience. 

High-conflict personalities and their manipulative power in court

Even though they are quite different in nuances, these personalities will exhibit certain similar patterns in court. Typically, family law courts will simply try to get parents to stop fighting and just get along, not considering any mental or personality disorders. They also tend to assume that their client’s extreme behavior is just a reaction to the other parent’s actions, leading the court to “order” both parents to “just get along and co-parent”.  Co-parenting with a HCP is not always feasible, and in certain situations, a parallel parenting model is much more effective in reducing conflict between the parents. (See my previous blog post on Parallel Parenting).  Dealing with a high-conflict personality in court puts everyone in a difficult position and may lead to unfair outcomes that impact the children the most. 

The most common strategy you need to figure out before facing your HCP co-parent in court is emotional persuasion. High-conflict personalities tend to be highly persuasive through simple, repetitive, and intensely emotional communication. It is not uncommon for them to make false or misleading allegations that sound credible for anyone who doesn’t know the full story. To counter the power of emotional but false information, a rational parent must communicate their side of the story similarly: simple, repetitive, factual, structured, and slightly emotional, but not too emotional.

As a high-conflict certified coach, attorney for 20 years, and a high-conflict co-parenting survivor, I completely understand your struggle. High-conflict personalities may seem unpredictable, but they have enduring dysfunctional behavior patterns, and many of their actions fit within these patterns. My goal here is to prepare you for court and mediation by role-playing different scenarios to ensure you’ll stay calm in front of false allegations and outrageous lies. Let’s help you get the truth across.

Book your court and mediation preparation session here, or email me directly at info@coachmichelle.club.