In this episode, Andrew and Barbara talk with Jim and Jessica Braz, authors of Baby Out of Wedlock, about raising and co-parenting a child born out of wedlock, from pregnancy to custody.
Note: This podcast was originally hosted on Barbara La Pointe’s website, which has since gone offline. I’ve reposted the episodes here so people still have access to the materials.
Transcript
Andrew Folkler: And welcome everyone to another episode of Broken Families, where we host conversations on divorce, parental alienation, and high-conflict relationships. My name is Andrew Folkler.
Barbara La Pointe: And I’m Barbara La Pointe. Today, we are going to discuss having a baby out of wedlock, and how to skillfully prepare and raise a child out of wedlock, including co-parenting basics from pregnancy to custody.
Barbara La Pointe: To lead this conversation, we have brought on two dynamic guest speakers to help us really dive deep into this topic. Jim and Jessica, both happily married, but previously they both had babies born out of wedlock with people that they did not want to marry. They both struggled through custody battles and co-parenting, making many mistakes along their emotional journeys.
Barbara La Pointe: Fast-forward to today, a power couple in their own right. They have written a bestselling book called Baby Out of Wedlock. If you are a new parent, never married, or struggling with co-parenting, then this is going to be an important conversation for you. So without further ado, welcome, Jim and Jessica.
Jessica Braz: Thank you.
Jim Braz: Thank you, Barbara. That was a very kind introduction. We’re very happy to be here and we’re big fans of your show, and we’re looking forward to talking to you today.
Barbara La Pointe: Oh, we appreciate the opportunity to learn and grow with you. I had no idea that 40% of babies are born out of wedlock.
Jim Braz: We didn’t either, to tell you the truth. It wasn’t until after we started writing this that I thought, “Let me look that little stat up,” and I was shocked that it was so high. And if you dig deeper, you’ll see that it’s 50% of babies when you’re talking about mothers under the age of 30. So it’s a really big number.
Jim Braz: The 40% number equals a million and a half babies born each year to unmarried parents. And by comparison, there are about 800,000 divorces each year in this country. So what we’re talking about here is a number that’s almost double. And while you have a huge number of divorce books and probably a thousand different podcasts about divorce, you really have not many resources focusing on this unique niche, if you will.
Jim Braz: So that’s what our focus is on, helping these people that are the 40%.
Barbara La Pointe: That’s what really piqued my interest when I was just learning more about your practice and your book, just how significant and relevant this is. It’s practically an epidemic. So just invite you to give us a little background on your story and what you do and...
Jim Braz: Well, I’ll keep it brief, but we got married in 2016. Five or six years before that, we each had babies out of wedlock with our, at that time, significant other or partner if you will. Jessica was in a serious long-term relationship when she got pregnant.
Jim Braz: And I had been dating my daughter’s mother, but when she got pregnant, we weren’t a steady thing, if you will. And so that was back in 2009 and at the time we didn’t know each other that well but we started comparing notes and going through this battle with our other parent, with the child’s other parents, and it was very difficult.
Jim Braz: I remember trying to figure out some very basic answers like I live three hours apart from my daughter’s mother. How does that work? Am I gonna get to visit? What is joint custody? When are we gonna get a paternity test? How much should child support be? And I finally talked to a lawyer about some of these things, and I was very surprised at some of the answers. And so our two stories, you can split them in half.
Jim Braz: Mine’s the ugly story. Mine’s the story that we started out as friends during the pregnancy, and that quickly downward spiraled into a very high-conflict situation. And Jessica’s story’s a little bit better in that they had a tough time during the pregnancy and a tough time during the first year, but once they got past that first court battle, they’ve been doing things very well ever since.
Jim Braz: So I actually had three or four court battles with my ex just to fight over basic things like visitation and honoring the parenting plan that we had come together and agreed on. So that’s the story in a nutshell. We went through this hell, and it took five or six years to find each other and come together.
Jim Braz: We got married. We have another child together. We have a child of our own together now. And after 10 years, we get this question all the time from people, which is, my friend, my cousin, somebody got their girlfriend pregnant, or their girlfriend got pregnant, and they say, well, can they talk to you?
Jim Braz: Can they ask you some questions? And so last year before COVID started, we said, we ought to write a book about this because as far as we could tell, there’s nothing else out there addressing these questions.
Jessica Braz: And what was nice, too, is that I had the woman’s point of view.
Jessica Braz: And Jim had the man’s point of view. So we really helped each other and have helped other people.
Jim Braz: We tried hard to make it a gender-neutral book. So there’s a lot of books for fathers and a lot of books for mothers. The whole purpose of this book is to get to see the other person’s point of view.
Jim Braz: So it tells both of our stories. It tells both of our mistakes, and we both made plenty of mistakes.
Jessica Braz: Right, and that mine by no means was it perfect, and it’s still not perfect at times.
Jim Braz: But we think if you could just learn, if you read the book and you learn a few things, if I could give this book to myself 10 years ago, I think I would’ve had maybe one court battle instead of four, and I would’ve saved about $100,000, and my life would’ve been a lot better for those first five years that I was battling.
Jim Braz: So that’s our goal is to give this book to people that are in this situation so they don’t make the same mistakes we did, and they can just fast-forward to a better place.
Barbara La Pointe: Well, anything that would make it easier and not harder. Just $100,000 back in your pocket would be a beautiful, beautiful outcome.
Jim Braz: That’s a couple years of college for somebody, right?
Jessica Braz: And you’re, when it happens to you, you’re really thrown into the unknown. You don’t realize until it happens, and it’s such an emotional time, and I feel like the book really helps answer basic questions where someone might have to call a lawyer and it might be 300, $600 an hour, and you’re really not getting the answers that you need.
Jessica Braz: So this is to help people have that head start.
Jim Braz: So when you do get to the lawyer, you’re not wasting your money or your time talking about basic questions. What is visitation and what does joint custody mean? These kinds of things.
Jim Braz: I remember I spent a lot of time just trying to understand from my lawyer why would I have to pay that much in child support if a baby doesn’t cost that much?
Jim Braz: These are the kinds of things we cover in the book that hopefully can make people come together.
Barbara La Pointe: I like the idea of just being more prepared when you show up at your lawyer’s office. Nothing worse than showing up and having a big cry and paying $600 an hour to just vent to your lawyer.
Jim Braz: And I think the lawyers don’t like that.
Barbara La Pointe: Either.
Jim Braz: Who does that?
Barbara La Pointe: No.
Jim Braz: They want somebody that knows what they’re talking about and is not emotional about it.
Jim Braz: My daughter’s mother, she was very emotional. She thought the daughter would be traumatized if she spent any alone time with me.
Jim Braz: And these are the kinds of things that a lawyer is shaking his head saying, “You have to let the father see his daughter,” and she’s sitting there saying, “I don’t want to because she’ll cry,” or, “Because I can’t breastfeed for the next few years,” or whatever reason. And if my ex would have read this book, if it was written and she would have read it, I think we could have saved ourselves a lot of heartache on both sides
Jessica Braz: It’s really about keeping that... Sorry, go ahead.
Andrew Folkler: No, I was just gonna dig a little deeper on that note. When you were saying that you got into a, you could say a high conflict divorce battle and it cost you both probably quite a bit of money.
Andrew Folkler: And not to mention that you had a baby out of wedlock as well. So how would your book help that person who is walking your journey right now?
Jim Braz: So if you’re the person that just found out your girlfriend’s pregnant or you’re the girlfriend and you just found out you’re pregnant, and you’re in a panic, and you just told your significant other, and maybe you’re thinking to yourself, “I don’t know if I wanna marry this person.”
Jim Braz: And so this book would help you answer a lot of basic questions that I remember I had a lot of these questions that nobody seemed to know the answers, ‘cause everyone I found, they were divorcees. But people that get divorced, they don’t have questions about paternity tests. They don’t have questions about infants and overnights, and they don’t have questions about breastfeeding.
Jim Braz: They don’t have questions about stranger anxiety. Infants get stranger anxiety. And typically when you’re getting divorced, you live in the same town, and many times when you’re a baby out of wedlock situation, you live far apart. So that throws another monkey wrench. I was three hours apart from my daughter’s mother.
Jim Braz: Maybe even more. She was thinking about living in California. And so when you start out when the kids are five years old and you get a divorce and you all live in the same town and the kid goes to school, it’s like you know what’s gonna happen. If you wanna see your kids, you’re gonna have to stay in the same town, you’re gonna stay nearby.
Jessica Braz: If you decide to move away, it’s gonna be tough.
Jessica Braz: But you don’t really know when you have a child out of wedlock, or maybe you were dating them for a little while, and you think you know them, but with once all the emotions and all these changes come into play, you may not have really known them very well.
Jim Braz: Well, that’s the other thing.
Jim Braz: When you get divorced, you somewhat know your enemy, if you will. You know what you’re dealing with, ‘cause you’ve known the person for a long time. But a baby out of wedlock situation, you may not know them for more than a day. It’s possible. Right? Sometimes. So how would the book help?
Jim Braz: We start off with a chapter about getting your head around do you wanna keep the baby or not. We have some more information in Getting Your Head... I had someone read the book, and he said, “Your book really made me feel so much better about this situation. I was so upset, I was depressed.
Jim Braz: I didn’t know what I was gonna do, but after reading your book, I now felt almost happy and excited to go to this next chapter in my life.” So I think it can get your head in the right place that this isn’t a bad thing. It could be the best thing that ever happened to you. And I think that’s how a lot of people who have kids feel.
Jim Braz: After the baby comes and all the anxiety’s behind you, you start to say, “Well, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.” So after that we have some information about pregnancy. And you say, “Well, we don’t need another book about pregnancy.” Everybody knows what to expect when you’re expecting, those kinds of books.
Jim Braz: But the purpose of our chapter on pregnancy is to help each parent understand what the other one’s going through.
Jim Braz: And so obviously the woman’s pregnant, so it’s mostly for the man to understand what the woman’s going through, cut her some slack on certain things. We talk about things like should the man go to the sonogram appointment?
Jim Braz: Should the man, would you expect... I don’t know. What else did we talk about there? What if the woman is not taking care of the pregnancy like she should? What if the man wants to get an abortion and the woman doesn’t? What if the woman wants to give up for adoption, does the man have the right of first refusal?
Jim Braz: So there’s all these kinds of questions floating around that we address and put at ease. And then we move into the real meat of it, which I would say is the legal issues. And the legal issues, there’s a chapter on custody and visitation, and a chapter on calculating child support.
Jim Braz: And as you know, all the states have different laws when it comes to child custody. So we tried to be very state or location neutral and point out all the areas when you need to talk to your lawyer about this specific question because it’s different in every state. And our book is not a replacement for a lawyer.
Jim Braz: We say very early on that you’re gonna need a lawyer, but you don’t have to spend tens of thousands of dollars on one.
Jim Braz: If both parties read the book, they come together, they tell their lawyers, “This is what we wanna do. We wanna do it peacefully. We wanna do it fairly.” The lawyers draw up the paperwork.
Jim Braz: 1,000 bucks, you’re done. So there’s no reason for a battle, I think, if you get through the book. And then at the end of the book it just addresses some other issues that might come up, like what if one person wants to move or various questions you have. What if you lose your job?
Jim Braz: How does your child support get adjusted? Basic things like that, that you two I’m sure are aware of because at least Barbara has been through a divorce. But people that haven’t ever been married are not aware of this stuff.
Jessica Braz: Navigating the unknown.
Jim Braz: I remember that was really the big thing. I would stay up at night just worrying about these things, and then we would argue about them, and they were just so silly looking back at them.
Jim Braz: There was no reason to argue about when would an overnight visit start during the pregnancy. You just don’t need to argue about that.
Jessica Braz: And I always say it’s not like the movies, it’s not like the courtroom you see on TV. It’s so different. Family court is so different.
Jessica Braz: It’s not really where you wanna be.
Jim Braz: We just watched Divorce Corp this week, which I’m sure you guys have seen. And we’ve seen Erasing Family, of course, Andrew, which you worked on. Great films, both of them. It’s just hell. It’s absolute hell. It’s a.
Jessica Braz: Shame.
Jim Braz: And if our book can... you guys always talk about how you’re a solutions-based podcast and I don’t know if we can solve someone that’s been alienated, but hopefully we can prevent some alienation from happening.
Jim Braz: So I gotta think that a lot of baby out of wedlock situations turn into alienation situations.
Jessica Braz: Do you agree?
Andrew Folkler: Easily. And it is so easy to create the image of the deadbeat parent, and it’s not just dads or moms, it really is both sides. And from there, even if this kind of goes along in lines with just the baby out of wedlock issues.
Andrew Folkler: Like, if you move with your child and the parent wasn’t interested at first, but then maybe they have that epiphany or that moment of clarity, now they’re interested, but what do you do when the parent has moved already with the kids? Maybe you don’t have that contact info. And so just in general, it can create those problems even indirectly, even unintentionally, just because the parent wasn’t prepared for all of these challenges that you address in your book.
Jim Braz: It’s a tough situation for anybody. And my heart goes out to the fathers and the mothers that can’t afford to fight these battles, and then they feel they have no choice other than to just give up and, “Well, I guess I won’t be in my kid’s life.”
Jim Braz: And that to me is just the saddest thing, and it is so unnecessary. And hopefully a little education in the price of a podcast or a book can go a long way to convincing somebody or convincing a couple that’s what’s happened to you. And we say a few times in our book, it only takes one person to screw up this situation and to create a high-conflict situation. And so if you read the book, it’s great, but if you can get your co-parent to read the book also, then you’ll really see some synergies where you guys both get the big picture and work together to get this done cheaply and correctly for the sake of your relationship.
Jessica Braz: It will hopefully prevent the battles.
Barbara La Pointe: And the child. One thing we’ve noticed is that the sooner you can intervene or in conflict before it gets escalated, the less chance of alienation, the less chance of mistakes like Andrew was just referencing. I imagine your book can also prevent people from making mistakes, like just moving when you’re not really allowed to move.
Jim Braz: We have a big discussion on moving and I gotta tell you, it’s still unclear to me. I guess in some situations you’re not allowed to move without permission, especially if you’re the parent with the physical custody. But I can remember my lawyer always saying, “Your daughter’s mother can move.
Jim Braz: It’s a free country, and you’ll be allowed to see your daughter, but it might be on different terms. So if she moves to California, you won’t be seeing her every other weekend. You’ll have to go fight a battle in California, and you’ll get her for some length of time. That won’t be every other weekend.”
Jim Braz: But Jessica had a different situation, right? Slightly different.
Jim Braz: I think the difference was that Jessica and her son’s father lived close together to begin with.
Jessica Braz: We lived about 45 minutes apart, so it wasn’t.
Jim Braz: So if one of them wanted to move far away, there had to be compensation. In my situation, we started out three, four hours apart, DC to New York, and therefore you couldn’t really argue by one of us moving farther that it would cause damage, ‘cause we were already four hours apart.
Jim Braz: So I think that’s the difference and the answer to that question there.
Barbara La Pointe: So do more men read your book or more women? What do you think? Do you have a reason on that?
Jim Braz: I don’t know. I know we’ve had a nice response from two different groups. One is fathers groups and the other is mothers groups.
Jim Braz: And so it’s a little early for me to tell. We just published it a couple months ago. I’m not sure. We tried very hard to make it a gender-neutral book. We had a woman that we were consulting. So on our website we offer free consulting, Q&A, blog posts. Anybody who wants to call us, we’ll talk to them for an hour on the phone and try to give them as best advice we can.
Jim Braz: Now, we’re not lawyers. We’re not giving legal advice, but we can at least get them pointed in the right direction.
Jim Braz: We had this one woman call us and she said she had a newborn. The guy was... It kind of reminded me of me and my situation, and she was afraid of the baby would be traumatized if she sent him away with Dad for even a day or two.
Jessica Braz: She was solely nursing, so she was worried about...
Jim Braz: She said, “It was great to read your book,” because it gave her the man’s point of view. And so a woman getting the man’s point of view, the man getting the woman’s point of view, that’s really important. And I think that’s the only way in any relationship that you can really find common ground, is you try to understand each other’s point of view.
Jim Braz: So that’s what really every page of this book is about.
Barbara La Pointe: Perspectives. I hadn’t noticed that. I hadn’t thought about that, just having the female and the male perspective, but that is a very beautiful offering. And your website is so up-resourcing and generous in what it offers.
Barbara La Pointe: You mentioned you watched Divorce Corp, and that you also watched Erasing Family. And I remember we had Ginger, the executive producer, on. She said, there’s also a issue of one-night stands, where you just have a one-night stand and get pregnant.
Jim Braz: But you’re just as much of a parent, right? And the child needs both parents. I think there’s no questioning that. Every piece of research says the kid’s better off, he has both parents in his life, and whether it’s a one-night stand or not.
Jim Braz: I think, and some people might even question, “Well, do I have any rights as a parent?
Jim Braz: I only knew the girl for one night.” Yes, you do. You absolutely do. And you have not only a right, but a responsibility to take care of that life that you created.
Jessica Braz: And we were just having this discussion, too, about paternity tests. The man does have a right to ask for that paternity test.
Jessica Braz: I feel like a lot of women might be like, “What do you mean you need a paternity...” Well, I think it’s his right and I think the child’s right...
Jim Braz: The thing with paternity tests is that the woman, if she knows she only slept with one person, she’s 100% sure who the father is.
Jim Braz: The man can never be 100% sure without a test. Right? And so both parents deserve to be 100% sure. And if the woman can swallow that, get that in their head that he only wants to be as sure as I am about who the parent is, then it becomes like, “All right. Well, we need a test.”
Jessica Braz: And it always happens, no matter what court system you go through.
Jessica Braz: That’s the first thing that really happens. So you might say, “Oh, that’s insulting. I can’t believe that.” This is gonna happen no matter what.
Jim Braz: So there’s no sense in arguing about a test during the pregnancy, ‘cause it’s gonna happen as soon as one party asks for it, and it’s just one of those things the system... you shouldn’t waste any mental energy on it at all. Getting upset
Jessica Braz: Happens in about it.
Barbara La Pointe: That’s fascinating to me, and I haven’t really thought about that, and I see some differences between our countries and just the themes of the conversation.
Barbara La Pointe: But I know, and again, I’m not a lawyer either, but I know in the States sometimes men end up paying or being ordered to pay for children that aren’t his.
Jim Braz: I’ve heard that, too. It’s hard for me to understand.
Barbara La Pointe: There’s a little thing in American family law. It’s really interesting, ‘cause I know we didn’t have that little law in Canada, so that’s why I remember it.
Jim Braz: That sounds a little crazy to me. I don’t know how that could happen.
Jessica Braz: Well, many years ago, apparently they didn’t do paternity tests, really.
Jessica Braz: Now it’s, I feel like it’s done very often.
Jim Braz: I gotta think if you had a test done and you’re not the father, I have to think a court would excuse you from responsibility, right?
Jessica Braz: I think so.
Andrew Folkler: This actually reminds me of the Jason Patrick case, where I think Jason Patrick was a sperm donor.
Andrew Folkler: And this was I think way back in 2013, Jason Patrick had a whole campaign, Stand Up for Gus, because the woman who was the mother of Gus, Jason Patrick’s son, wasn’t giving the actor the time as to do his fatherly... Good. There we go.
Jessica Braz: Okay. Back on. Now we’re back again.
Andrew Folkler: Don’t worry about it, I can edit it and nobody will even know the difference.
Andrew Folkler: But anyways, Jason Patrick, he was a sperm donor or something, and the mother of his child had the child, and he didn’t even know about it until the child was several years older. And when he found out, he had this entire campaign about Stand Up for Gus.
Andrew Folkler: I think he was a child out of wedlock. Gus was a child out of wedlock as well.
Jim Braz: You say he was a sperm donor, you mean he gave his sperm to a sperm bank?
Andrew Folkler: That I don’t know. I don’t know the.
Jim Braz: She just called him a sperm donor in a derogatory way?
Andrew Folkler: It wasn’t meant to be in a derogatory way.
Andrew Folkler: But if I remember correctly... I can’t remember exactly all the details given it was seven years ago, but what I do remember was it wasn’t a traditional child out of wedlock kind of situation. But it reminds me of how much he was fighting for that, right?
Andrew Folkler: And that’s where all the paternity tests were coming in, and him trying to turn it into an entire campaign. And it was really the big thing for the parental alienation community as well at the time, ‘cause back then we didn’t have Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie duking it out in the boxing ring.
Jessica Braz: They’re still duking it out.
Jessica Braz: It’s been a long time.
Andrew Folkler: It has been a very ugly fight, that’s for sure.
Jessica Braz: It’s a shame.
Andrew Folkler: One thing... Oops, sorry Barbara, go ahead.
Barbara La Pointe: I was just gonna invite you to, let’s just perhaps evolve the conversation to co-parenting, ‘cause I know you have quite a lot to say on that subject.
Jim Braz: Good idea. Well, we do talk a bit about co-parenting styles, and we try not to say this kind of style is better than that kind of style. We just recommend that anybody making a decision about choosing a parenting style take into account their other parent. And the example that comes to mind, of course in my situation, is attachment parenting, and my daughter’s mother was a big believer in it.
Jim Braz: And I’m not even that against it as a fundamental way to raise your child, especially if you’re in a happily married situation. But when you’re... for those that don’t know, attachment parenting means you sleep in the same bed every day. You breastfeed for as long as possible, like years.
Jim Braz: My daughter was actually breastfed every day of her life till age four. Four years old. She is now 11, and when she’s with her mom, she still sleeps in the same bed as her at night. So these are the habits that... It’s really a whole situation where you’re trying to train the kid. Well, when you’re talking about an infant, you say you never let them cry.
Jim Braz: So if the baby starts to cry, you put them on the breast. And the thinking is that somehow crying for an infant is harmful. And so when I would go to visit every week, I would go to her house and do a supervised visit. This was before the court ordered my alone, unsupervised visits.
Jim Braz: But I would go down there, and the minute she would start to cry, I would have to hand her over so that mom could soothe her. And she didn’t want me to use a pacifier. She didn’t want me to use anything that would interrupt that mother-daughter attachment parenting bond. Well, that doesn’t work very well when you’re dealing with an unmarried co-parent that’s gonna have overnight visits as soon as this trial’s over.
Jim Braz: And so when you’re talking about different parenting styles, you really need to take that kind of thing into account.
Jessica Braz: You need to respect the other person’s parenting styles, but you have to also understand that it’s different house, different rules so things are gonna be different, and not argue with the other co-parent about, “Oh, you let them stay up, and they had a sundae, and I that can’t happen.” You just let it go.
Jessica Braz: They’re okay.
Jim Braz: You guys do that great. Jessica and her ex do that very well, where they really respect each other’s homes and households and different houses, different rules.
Jessica Braz: Don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s not worth it in the end.
Jessica Braz: It’s not worth it for the kid.
Jim Braz: So even though Jessica and her ex have different parenting styles, they really allow each other to function however in their own home. Their own way. Different house, different rules. And so that’s very important as the kid gets older.
Jim Braz: When you’re dealing with a baby out of wedlock, with an infant, I think it’s just important that you keep in mind that this other parent is gonna have some alone time, and so you wanna prepare the child for that rather than make it more difficult.
Jessica Braz: For them. Really respect the other parent’s time with the child because it’s very important.
Jessica Braz: For a woman, it’s emotional. You’re having your first child, especially nursing. You have that bond. But the father needs that bond, too, so you can’t keep that child from him. It’s gonna be detrimental for the child in the long run.
Jim Braz: As we were writing the book, after we wrote this section, we looked back on it and we have a psychologist friend, child psychologist.
Jim Braz: She’s on the back of the book as one of our persons that wrote a endorsement of the book. But she pointed out that no matter which style you raise the child in, in our case, we now have three kids between us, and all the kids turned out just fine, and they were all raised in different parenting styles.
Jim Braz: The only difference is me and my daughter’s mother don’t get along, in large part because that parenting style did not connect, right? Do not mesh. And this psychiatrist friend of us says, it’s much more damaging to have two parents that are in total high conflict to a child than it is to raise them in some parenting style that might be suboptimal according to somebody, right?
Jim Braz: So the conflict is most detrimental to the kid, and so that’s what you really want to avoid.
Andrew Folkler: Now in the context of deeply emotional topics such as political beliefs, religious beliefs where there might be some greater conflict of interest, and I think it’s the same with the parental styles.
Andrew Folkler: I assume then that would follow for that too, right? Just accepting...
Jim Braz: Of course. You have to respect the other person’s parenting. And I think one of the things you wanted to talk about was parallel parenting. And that’s the next iteration of this, where you really just cannot get along with the other person, and the best solution is to stop trying to micromanage their life, and you just let that parent do their thing, you do your thing, and you keep it very separate.
Jim Braz: And there’s a great book out just recently, you may have seen it, called The Parallel Parenting Solution by Carl something, Carl Knickerbocker or something. It’s brand new. It’s doing very well because it really does point out how do you have two people go through a terrible divorce, hating each other’s guts, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then expect them to get along and co-parent as if they were friends or married?
Jim Braz: It just doesn’t work. And so for many people that are in high-conflict situations, I think the parallel parenting is really the only thing that’s reasonable, that works. And the kids learn that different houses, different rules. They just don’t wanna see their parents fighting.
Jim Braz: That’s all that really matters, and if you have to do parallel parenting in order to achieve that, then that’s what you do.
Jessica Braz: Ideally, I don’t think that’s what you want, and I understand. But if you’re having that high conflict back and forth, that’s something where you might have to do that.
Jim Braz: Our goal is to create a happy co-parenting situation. And if you don’t have a nasty divorce, if you don’t have a nasty custody battle, you can have a nice co-parenting situation just like Jessica does.
Jessica Braz: Respect the other person’s religious beliefs. Talk about it before the baby’s born, get on even ground. It’s okay that you’re gonna take the baby to your church. I won’t force this or vice versa. Just have respect for the other person.
Jim Braz: And also, what’s fair is fair.
Jim Braz: In recent years, Jessica’s ex has been spending more time with his son, to the point where she started to return some child support money to him under the table. Because if he’s spending half the month with the child, then he ought to get a little kickback, ‘cause that’s just fair is fair.
Jim Braz: And so to do things like that really goes a long way, and you can get to that place if you just don’t start off with the massive battle.
Barbara La Pointe: That’s so true. So true. That just really resonated with me, Jim, when you said after you go through a high-conflict battle for years sometimes, and then you’re supposed to be happy co-parenting, it just doesn’t make sense.
Barbara La Pointe: It doesn’t happen, and that’s often overlooked in the legal process.
Jim Braz: It’s a shame that the courts almost look at it like you’re breaking their rules if you do parallel parenting.
Jim Braz: Some courts really are negative on that that.
Barbara La Pointe: Oh, interesting. I didn’t know.
Jim Braz: That’s for sure. Now, on the other hand though, some courts are also mandating these parenting apps, like OurFamilyWizard, and there’s some other competitors. And I think they’re great tools whether you’re in high conflict or not. But if you’re in a high-conflict situation, parallel parenting situation, they’re a must.
Jim Braz: You must use them.
Andrew Folkler: We definitely encourage using apps like OurFamilyWizard, or we actually brought on an up-and-coming startup, PowerSwitch. We brought on the founder of that who... very similar app where it will condense and notate, or condense and let you annotate your messaging from emails, text messages, and all the other millions of, what do you call ‘em, messaging apps that are out there now. And so it’s all very powerful stuff just to keep objective evidence so it doesn’t get ruled as cherry-picking in family court.
Jim Braz: I never used one of these apps. I wish I did, and my ex was very anti.
Jim Braz: She didn’t wanna use a shared calendar. She didn’t wanna communicate on email very much. And of course, that all plays into somebody that is trying to play games or be high-conflict because you can never point to anything and say, “That’s not right”
Jim Braz: So the apps are great, and I don’t think we need to waste time talking about how they work.
Jim Braz: I’m sure most of your listeners already know.
Barbara La Pointe: Just curious, what are some of the other major concerns that you address or that people want support around? I know you list like 12 major concerns on your website, for example.
Jim Braz: I don’t have that list up in front of me, but starting at the beginning, people are worried about paternity tests, which we already talked about.
Jim Braz: People are worried about joint, or I should say legal custody, which is the right to make major decisions. My daughter’s mother didn’t want me to have joint legal custody. She didn’t want me to have decision-making rights for her health or education and so forth, and I just wasn’t able to accept that, and that’s part of the reason we went down the road of a battle.
Jim Braz: Now along with decision-making rights comes dispute resolution, we spend a lot of time on this in the book because even if you have a parenting plan that talks about these are the different rights, you’re gonna have disputes. And to solve the disputes, I had this long drawn out silly steps of step one, step two, step three, call a friend, step four, call an expert, step five, go to a mediator.
Jim Braz: None of it worked. Just none of it worked. And so if you’re in a situation with somebody that you just don’t get along with well like I was, you need to have a real solution, and for me, the only solution was a parenting coordinator. And a parenting coordinator is a person that is like a mediator, but they have binding authority to make decisions in the best interest of the child, but they’re trying to really make the two parents come together, solve a problem in a line with their parenting plan that they’ve already agreed to.
Jim Braz: So the way these things work, and I had to fight four years to get one of these things, but we recommend every new baby out of wedlock parent to start off with a parenting coordinator. And what that means is you both have to agree in advance. You say, “All right, for one year, we’re gonna use a parenting coordinator.
Jim Braz: Not forever, but for some length of time. And if we have a dispute or a problem, we’re gonna bring it to the parenting coordinator. They’re gonna hear both sides of the story and help us come to a decision. And if we can’t come to a decision after some length of discussion, then the parenting coordinator makes the decision for us.”
Jim Braz: And this scares people ‘cause they say, “I don’t wanna give this power to some stranger.” But really it’s a godsend if you can’t get along with the other side. It is the best thing you could ever do. They will help you figure out where you’re being stubborn, where you need to budge. They will come up with good solutions.
Jim Braz: So for example, I like to take the train from New York to DC to see my daughter. My daughter’s mom liked to drive. We were constantly arguing about transitions, where are we gonna meet and so forth. And the parenting coordinator said, “Well, how about from now on you meet at the train station?” So that Jim takes the train, he’s in the station.
Jim Braz: Child meets him at the train station, and then they get back on the train. And so there’s practical solutions you can come to, but you need a third party to help you get there. So that’s one of the things on our list of 12 is the parenting coordinator dispute resolution. Of course, there’s child support questions which are all, everybody always wants to know.
Jessica Braz: And every state’s different though, so that’s something you need to look into.
Jim Braz: People, they don’t understand why would it be so much, or some other people say, “Why would it be so little?” It seems like depending on who you are, whether you’re receiving or giving, you either think it’s too much or too little. And you can have a whole podcast just about child support.
Jim Braz: There’s legal fees are a big question. This blew my mind, but in a lot of instances, one party has to pay the other party’s legal bills, or at least some of it, and that can be a terrible incentive to fight, as Divorce Corp, the movie, really pointed out. I don’t know if you have that list in front of you, Barbara.
Jim Braz: I’m forgetting what else is on that list of 12 but I don’t know, what else are we thinking.
Barbara La Pointe: About? I do have it in front of me, and you guys are doing amazing at crossing off these 12 major concerns that you address. How about substance abuse?
Barbara La Pointe: Or overnight visitation.
Barbara La Pointe: Take your pick.
Jim Braz: What was the other one?
Barbara La Pointe: Overnight visitation.
Jim Braz: Quickly, substance abuse, if you have a substance abuse problem, it’s gonna be a problem, and if you’re in a high conflict, the other spouse or the ex is gonna point that out and try to use it against you.
Jim Braz: And I didn’t really know what to say to somebody that has the problem other than take care of it. Go to rehab, right? But one of these other podcasts we did, the host made a good point, if you’re one of these people that has a substance abuse problem, you have to start taking steps to get it taken care of.
Jim Braz: Own it. Don’t try to deny it or hide from it. Just say, “Your Honor,” or to the lawyer or whoever, “Yes, I recognize I have a problem. Yes, I had a DUI. Yes, here are the things I’m doing.” “I’m going to meetings. I’m going to rehab. I’m doing this or that.” And if you can point that you’re trying to get better with real substantial steps, then no judge is gonna say, “Well, you never get to see your kid again.”
Jim Braz: They’re gonna give you something that’s part way until you prove that you’re over your substance problem.
Jim Braz: With the overnight visits, we totally sympathize. A new mother that is dealing with a three-month-old does not want to hand over a kid.
Jim Braz: But what we point out is you don’t need to argue about it because it takes about a year for a trial to happen, right? So if the baby’s born and the next day you file for visitation and custody rights, you’re not gonna get those rights for months and months, probably about a year until there’s a trial.
Jim Braz: So unless the mother wants to give you an overnight visit in the first year, it’s not gonna happen. So don’t start arguing about that on day one.
Jessica Braz: It causes a lot of anxiety, I feel, as a first-time mother, when you think, “Could this really happen? Could they really take the baby at three months old?” It really causes a lot of angst inside. And I feel like if the other party knows that, okay, I’m not gonna fight for this or maybe the lawyer gives them bad advice and thinks that this is okay, I’m not gonna fight and cause the issue or if they’re educated about it, it’ll help so much.
Jim Braz: In Jessica’s case, her ex had a lawyer that wasn’t a family lawyer. And so he didn’t know what he was doing, and he tried to get sole physical custody of the infant.
Jim Braz: And what are you talking about? Nobody’s gonna give an infant to the dad who hasn’t even been around for the first few months.
Jim Braz: And so it’s a stupid thing like that. If he had read the book, he would’ve known that that is just crazy. You’re not gonna get it.
Jessica Braz: But at the time it really made me so upset, and I remember calling my dad, and my dad was like, “Don’t worry, it’s not gonna happen.” But you still think, you see show, movies, what if it could happen?
Jessica Braz: And it’s a very scary time. And it’s just not necessary for the other party to do that to somebody, because then I was upset and it just...
Jim Braz: And if you’re the father and you have any sense, any of us that are parents know that the first few months of an infant’s life, there’s not much for the dad to do.
Jim Braz: But you can hold them and feed them a bottle and change a diaper. But I saw my daughter every week of her life during the weekends with a supervised visit but never overnight until about a year into it. And I was very worried that how’s my daughter gonna do with her first overnight visit when she’s been sleeping in her mom’s bed, breastfeeding every three hours around the clock.
Jim Braz: And I was very concerned about this. And then I got my first overnight visit. She was about 13, 14 months old, and I had a crib and I was at my parents’ house, and I had a whole plan that I was gonna let her cry it out and go in and check every five minutes or every 10 minutes and do this whole method to get her to fall asleep.
Jim Braz: And I remember very clearly, it was about 8:00, I put her in the crib. She cried for like four minutes and I’m standing at the door about to come in, and then she stopped crying, and then she slept for 11 hours straight. The poor kid had never had a full night’s sleep in her entire life because she’s always sleeping next to somebody else who’s wiggling around and breastfeeding and stuff.
Jim Braz: And so all my fears turned out not to matter one bit, and she’s slept perfectly fine every visit since then in her own bed. So again, this parenting style stuff, it’s like it didn’t matter to the child one way or the other, but it caused huge conflict between the parents.
Jim Braz: So visitation of course is important.
Jim Braz: You gotta see the kid, and we spend a lot of pages discussing about 50/50 shared visitation is on the rise. If you want 50/50 shared visitation, you’re gonna have to live nearby each other. You can’t expect the one person live in New York and the other live in DC and then ask for 50/50.
Jim Braz: That’s just not good for anybody. It’s not gonna happen. And the wrong reason to ask for 50/50 is you want less child support to pay. You don’t wanna do it for that reason, obviously. You wanna do it because you wanna live nearby and actually see the child half the time.
Jim Braz: You gotta be realistic about it, though. If you’re working a job 40 hours a week, I said to myself, I was in Manhattan, I was working a job Monday to Friday, and if I had my child half the time she’d be in daycare with a nanny rather than with her mom. And so you really have to ask yourself, what am I fighting here for?
Jim Braz: Why am I asking for 50/50 if I can’t even spend those hours with her? And I think that’s hard for some people, some fathers to swallow, but once they swallow it, it can be better. So you have to figure out what’s right for your situation. I’ve also met a lot of fathers in our journey here who have quit their job, moved across the country to be nearby so that they could get that 50/50 time, and I really commend those fathers.
Jim Braz: I think that’s an amazing, amazing thing. And I guess part of me always wonders maybe I should have done that back when I had the choice to do it and I didn’t, and so I’ll always have to think about that. But I know this show is about alienation and I’m not an alienated father.
Jim Braz: I wouldn’t say that. But my daughter definitely has a little bit of brainwashing. She’s 11 years old now, and I speak to her every day on the phone when I see her on regular schedule. And I always tell this story because I think it’s so telling. When I speak to her when she’s in person, when she’s at my house, and I put her to bed at night, I say, “Good night.
Jim Braz: I love you.” She says, “I love you too, Dad.” When I speak to her on the phone when she’s at her mom’s house, I say, “Good night. I love you.” She says, “Okay, bye.” And it’s because she just has been so trained, even if her mom doesn’t say, “Don’t say I love you,” she just knows that her mom might not wanna hear that kind of talk, and so she just doesn’t say it.
Jim Braz: And I don’t give her a hard time about it. But I feel terrible for her. What must be going on in her brain or subconscious? I don’t even think she thinks about it. Once or twice I asked her, “Well, how come you don’t say I love you on the phone?” And she just shrugged it off like she didn’t know why.
Jim Braz: But it’s sad, and so there’s some degree of alienation going on there where she thinks she’s not supposed to be the same to me as she is to her mom.
Andrew Folkler: A lot of that is wearing two different hats, is a good example. It’s like one hat when she’s with you.
Andrew Folkler: She can be a more amenable and more social with you and express her feelings a little bit more than when she’s in the presence of her mother. Then she has to flip the switch and adopt a persona that’s more in line with what’s allowed there. And it’s just a... What I explain to parents is that functions as a survival mechanism.
Andrew Folkler: It’s just, “This is what is required for me within the environment that I am in at this moment in time.” And it’s all subliminal. It’s subconscious. There’s really no thoughts about it. It’s not intended to be hurtful. But at the same time, it is just them adapting to their environment.
Jim Braz: And Andrew, I know you’ve been through this to some degree, and I thought of a question. I hope it’s not too personal, but I have a question for you, if it’s okay. So as I’ve been going through this for the last 10 years, people always said to me, “When she’s older, when your daughter’s older, she’ll understand, and this brainwashing,” if you wanna call it, “will backfire against Mom.”
Jim Braz: And I know you’ve been through this. Did you feel that your feelings towards your, I guess it was your father, are you now angry with him or in a bad place with him because of that?
Andrew Folkler: No. There’s a few elements I’ll touch on real quick. There’s a neurological element, which is the male brain fully matures right around 24, 25.
Andrew Folkler: Females is around 21. So good job, girls. But within that dynamic, the child itself relies on the amygdala more often growing up. That’s the emotional response within the brain. As adults, we are more reliant on the prefrontal cortex. That’s our logical part of the brain that also helps us deal with the complexities of social situations and as well as making higher cognitive decisions, if you will.
Andrew Folkler: The prefrontal cortex is the part that’s slowly developing over time as we grow older, and obviously the rest of our brain is as well, but there’s more of a reliance on the amygdala, which is our emotional response center. So there’s that part in regards to understanding what’s going on when you’re older.
Andrew Folkler: However, I do wanna put a very strong caveat that there’s always going to be people out there who want to give you something uplifting to look forward to. Whether they say it from a religious perspective, like it’s in God’s hands or something along that lines whether they say, “Well, the child will come around.
Andrew Folkler: They will understand.” My mother was given this same encouragement from her friends all the time. And we even had a guest speaker who was complaining about that. Her name was Penny, and she’d be so stressed hearing this and be like, “When are they coming?
Andrew Folkler: Come on.” “You can’t just taunt me with this.” It’s like, you feel like you’re being taunted by God, the universe, and everyone in it, that it’s, you’re just like, “Stop mocking me,” but I think a lot of that is well-intentioned optimism without quite fully empathizing with the pain that you’re undergoing or the emotional frustrations that you’re having.
Andrew Folkler: So that would be like the dark side of that statement. It doesn’t mean that when a child reaches adulthood that now that their brain is fully developed they’re gonna understand everything. That wasn’t what happened to me. For me, there was a moment of clarity when I realized that I could not be Andrew.
Andrew Folkler: I had to be the subservient son to a stepmother that was more focused on her own image.
Andrew Folkler: And when that realization became more clear, both emotionally and logically, I had to make the decision, do I continue living in someone’s shadow, or do I choose to live my life on my terms?
Andrew Folkler: And once you hit that point, that’s the breaking point for the alienated child. That’s where they’re saying, that’s when they defy everything. They step away, and they try and branch out and live their life on their own accord. Whether they make mistakes or not, that’s irrelevant. They’re ready to embrace that challenge because they would rather struggle, limp, and lurch than live in accordance to someone else’s, you could say rules and regulations, if you will.
Andrew Folkler: And then from there, that’s when you build that curiosity. Don actually was the one who spoke about that, where having that curiosity and wanting to know what is the other parent’s side, what is going on on their end, and what are the frustrations they have. And there’s this idiom or what’s the word? a quote that there are three forms of the truth. There’s your side, my side, and the truth. And in this instance, you would say there’s four. There’s obviously mom’s side, there’s dad’s side, there’s the truth, and then of course there is the child’s truth, is what I would add in to this.
Andrew Folkler: So as a child of this occurrence, I had to learn to see both my father’s side, my stepmother’s side, my mother’s side, and adopt my own form of truth from it. And it’s the only way I would be able to, you could say, emotionally move on without becoming what you see in some alienated cases where the child grows up out of the alienated home and then continues the alienation on their own accord because they just don’t wanna dig up the past.
Andrew Folkler: I hope that answers the question.
Jim Braz: It’s a complicated thing and it’s just horrible.
Jim Braz: I don’t know. My heart really goes out to all these parents that have this, what both you guys have gone through.
Jim Braz: And hopefully we can help a few of them avoid it.
Andrew Folkler: We absolutely will. And everything you’ve shared so far has been incredibly powerful. There was one thing I wanted to circle back to real quick is what would be the steps to go about getting a parenting coordinator set up?
Jim Braz: Good question. So the parenting coordinator comes at the end of the whole thing. So the first thing would be that you have to find a lawyer. So you need to find a lawyer in the area where the mother lives. And so that’s a first question people have, which town do I look in?
Jim Braz: You have to look in, to get a lawyer in the jurisdiction where the mother lives with the child. That’s number one. You file for, you want custody rights, you wanna pay child support or receive it, you want visitation, and your lawyer can file these things very easily. It shouldn’t cost a lot of money, ‘cause they’re all pretty standard requests.
Jim Braz: So then it’s a waiting game. And if you and the ex can read the book and come together and say, “Yeah, I agree to joint custody. I agree to this much visitation. Whatever the calculator says for child support is fine with me”, you should be able to just fill in the dots, the lawyers can fill in the blanks, and you have a solution, and you guys have a document called a parenting plan that spells everything out that you’ve agreed to.
Jim Braz: In our book, we have a whole sample parenting plan, which is actually my physical parenting plan and it wasn’t very good. My plan had all kinds of problems, and we pointed out those problems in the book. But you have a document that’s a nice long plan that spells out visitation and holidays and child support and all kinds of things, and it spells out dispute resolution.
Jim Braz: And that’s the part where you would say, let’s have a parenting coordinator be our dispute resolution mechanism. And so that is another piece of paper that says, we will use a parenting coordinator. So then on this other piece of paper you have the parents sign that other piece of paper that says, for the next 24 months, we’re gonna use such and such parenting coordinator as necessary to help us if needed with disputes.
Jim Braz: And you could agree to go on a regular basis right off the bat, or you could say, “I’m only gonna go use a parenting coordinator if a problem arises”, and hopefully you never need it. But if there is a problem, and you’re gonna have problems if you’re like most people, then it’s great to have just a mechanism in place that can solve your problems without it escalating into co-parent hell, which we see all over the internet every time you go on Facebook or anywhere else.
Barbara La Pointe: It’s a long journey. It’s a long road, 18 years or 21 years.
Jim Braz: I had to wait four or five years for a parenting coordinator. If I had had one on day one, it would’ve changed my life for the better.
Barbara La Pointe: That’s really interesting.
Barbara La Pointe: And just with respect to Andrew’s story, do you address step-parents or remarriage?
Jim Braz: A little bit. We thought maybe we’d save some of that material for the follow-up book.
Jessica Braz: Write it now, right?
Jim Braz: We address that, you’re definitely gonna have to deal with your child potentially seeing another person that’s not you more than you.
Jim Braz: If you’re the visiting parent, your child might see your step-parent more than you, and that can be really hard to swallow. But parents have to get that into their head if they’re gonna be the visiting parent because they wanted to live far apart like I did, or whatever the reason is, that’s just a fact of life that you’re gonna have to deal with.
Jim Braz: And we could write a whole other book about that maybe. Maybe we’ll work on that next year.
Barbara La Pointe: I think that’s a great idea. It’d make a great second book, and I know your first book is doing super well with over 100 positive reviews on Amazon.
Jim Braz: Almost. Not quite 100. Almost 100.
Barbara La Pointe: Close years it’ll be 100. I like to exaggerate everything a little.
Jim Braz: 100 it’s all good.
Jim Braz: Well, and like I said, we offer a lot of free advice and consulting, and we even do something called a document review on the website where if you have a parenting plan and you’re not sure, it’s a draft, your attorney wants you to sign it, and you’re just wanting someone just to look at it, we’ll take a look and we’ll point out, “Well, this is not gonna work for Christmas,” or, “This is a stupid thing you have here.” didn’t work for us, we can... might not work for you, point out some practical things. One, for example, people tend to have single day holidays. They alternate July 4th in the States, and that’s just terrible because nobody wants to shift the schedule up for one day. So make it a weekend, make it a three-day holiday.
Jim Braz: So there’s little things like that you can do to make your parenting plan work a lot better. So we’re offering that on the website. Really we’re just happy to help anybody that needs it. This is not our full-time job, but we’re spending a lot of time on it and we’re happy to do as much as we can for anybody that wants to interact.
Barbara La Pointe: Oh, that’s incredible, and I love that free complimentary service you folks. How helpful is that? It’s amazing.
Barbara La Pointe: Well, I guess we’re getting to the top of the hour, Jim and Jessica. We always like to offer our guests an opportunity to just share anything that hasn’t been said or any pearls of wisdom as we call it, with.
Barbara La Pointe: That might wanna.
Jim Braz: Well, the first sentence and the last sentence of our book says the same thing. It’s this thing we started off with. 40% of all births in the USA are unmarried parents, and it’s a huge number, and you’re not alone. And it seems like such a daunting, “My whole world just got turned upside down,” when you get that call or you look at that pregnancy test that you’re gonna have a baby.
Jim Braz: And you just think, “Well, you have to get an abortion. You have to go, you can’t have this. It can’t work.” It can work. 40% of babies in this country, it works. And the trick is just learn how to get along, learn how to avoid going bankrupt from the legal system, and learn how to be a good co-parent, and you can end up in a really great place.
Barbara La Pointe: That’s hopeful and inspiring, really.
Jim Braz: Well, that’s how we feel.
Andrew Folkler: All right. Well, Jim and Jessica, if listeners wanted to learn more about your consulting services or learn more about you just in general, or even get out there and buy your book, where would be the best way for them to do so?
Jim Braz: Sure. The book’s available everywhere, Amazon or Barnes & Noble, anywhere you wanna get it. There’s an Audible version you can get as well. And our website is babyoutofwedlock.com. Rolls off the tongue very nicely. Don’t even have to write it down. Babyoutofwedlock.com. And you can reach us there through the contact form and...
Jessica Braz: Find us on Instagram.
Jim Braz: Instagram and Facebook, too.
Jim Braz: So yeah, we’d love to talk to anybody that wants to talk.
Jim Braz: Thank you for having us, guys. We’re enjoying your show. And we look forward to seeing what you bring next.
Andrew Folkler: And I’m sure Barbara and I would be more than happy to bring you on board again sometime in the future, and especially if you’re working on that new book great. But we’ll
Jim Braz: That’d be we’ll talk to you then for that.
Andrew Folkler: It’s definitely been a information-packed hour. That is all we’ve got time for today. Once again, everyone, thank you for taking the time to be with us. And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our channel either on YouTube or through our podcast through the various podcasting platforms.
Andrew Folkler: On to you, Barbara.
Barbara La Pointe: And I also invite you to check out my e-book, Erased By a Narcissist: One Woman’s Journey Through a High-Conflict Divorce. Also on my website, barbaralapointe.com/erasedbyanarcissist. And if you would like to contact me regarding divorce, barbara@barbaralapointe.com.
Andrew Folkler: If you wanna reach me, you’re welcome to reach me at startnow@andrewfolkler.com.
Andrew Folkler: As always, everyone, thank you for taking the time to be with us today at the Broken Families podcast, where we help you discuss and find solutions to divorce, parental alienation, babies out of wedlock and high-conflict relationships. Have a wonderful day, everyone.
Jim Braz: Thank you.
Barbara La Pointe: Bye. Thank you.