Caught under their spell, married in hell.
There’s only one ending.
Divorce or annulment are inevitable.
We need legal advice..
Divorce from a narcissist or sociopath is required for millions of us. So why isn’t there a “Quick Guide” to divorce one of these monsters? I know I could’ve used one when filing – and thankfully winning – the annulment I got!
Divorce is an unavoidable legal procedure if we married a “narcissist”. That is to say, if we’re married to a sociopath, we’ll most likely be getting a divorce. This dreaded and costly legal process is another one of the frightening inexplicably hellish necessities if we’ve married a conman (or conwoman), a psychopath.
Divorce Quick Guide: Divorcing The “Narcissist”
Here’s the thing, I can easily give you the reason why the topic is not covered by websites such as mine: we aren’t attorneys. It’s actually illegal to offer what can be defined as legal advice if you aren’t a currently licensed attorney.
There is no narcissistic abuse coach or recovery support writer that I know of who is a licensed lawyer: therefore, none of any of the support and recovery coaches, narcissistic abuse platforms, or Facebook pages that I know of, can legally give you legal advice.
Divorce From A Sociopath Get A Lawyer But Present Your Case
Lawyers know the law and the “chess game” of the court. I know sociopaths and some of the legal and court proceedings. But nothing like a lawyer does.
I’ll tell you this, going to court isn’t like T.V. In real life, we put our cases together. We provide any and every piece of evidence, every person to be subpoenaed, every record. This can take hours and hours, weeks, or months. Be diligent and leave no stone unturned. Familiarize yourself with what the court considers evidence: this is not the same as how you feel.
To attain my annulment, I provided every scrap of evidence and far more than we needed in abundance. Then, I told my attorney what I wanted. In my case, I insisted on an annulment. You will need to do the same with your attorney.
Get your evidence together, mount your case and then make copies. Set an appointment with your attorney to give them copies of your bundle of proof and go over what you want.
Personally, I used the 8.5″ x 14″ format used for legal proceedings with a table of contents, numbered evidence, and indexed tabs to locate each segment and held together with a brad along the top. It came out to be something like 89 pages. I suggest you bring additional copies to court with you.
Divorce Court Evidence: Direct Evidence
All evidence classified by the court as “direct evidence” is the strongest evidence. Compile the obvious kinds of evidence, such as their children they kept secret from you, and financial hoarding and lies… Also, add things that point to lies and/or their character.
Let’s say the nutbag told you that they won a Purple Heart in U.S. Army. And they were honorably discharged for this miraculous service. – Ask the Army. Get the actual records for why they’re no longer in the military: I guarantee they did not receive a Purple Heart. The list of Purple Heart recipients is accessible online. This shockingly popular “purple heart” lie in itself is a federal crime.
Now, don’t get too excited, the Judge isn’t going to arrest them and haul them away for the lies you reveal. This im-possibilty is a huge fear the sociopath has. This is one of the reasons they fight so hard against even showing up in court…and why sometimes they simply skip it. Only the case in question will be addressed: divorce, or annulment if that’s what you’re asking for.
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Divorce Ducks In a Row
TEXTS, FB, WhatsApp Messages: This kind of app messaging is admissible in screenshot format that shows who the text is from, whom it is to, and the date it was exchanged.
Please take screenshots rather than downloading the texts. If you then print this out you’ll find that the printout is single-spaced, line after line of text. There is no time date stamp, or notation of when it was sent. The download loses who-said-what. This format is useless.
DOCUMENTS: Anything that demonstrates they lied. Lies about their identity, banking papers that prove they embezzled, or intended harm to you, deceived you about key things such as the number of children they have, exes, current marriages, criminal charges, and this kind of thing.
These can be screenshots of Facebook pages, news reports, courthouse records, property records, deeds, employment records, marriage certificates, birth certificates, state IDs, passports, airline or other travel records or evidence, banking statements, letters, emails, and texts.
Bigamy? This Makes Your Marriage Invalid
They tell us divorces and marriages are public records. You will find that in order to get a copy of these records you need the case number, a legitimate reason they determine is valid to receive the records: or that a licensed attorney has to make the request to the country records departments. So. Not so public after all.
Here’s the thing: many of these maniacs were married to someone else when they married us. If you can go beyond the notion that this seems impossible that they would have been married when they married you, and you can unearth proof of this: golden.
Recordings As Evidence: Audio Or Video
Audio only and video with or without audio are all treated differently. As far as recording a conversation, states like California, Illinois, Florida, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Michigan, and Montana require the consent of all parties to the conversation before taping is allowed. Otherwise, without permission to record, it will be illegal, and not admissible in court.
However, other states have other regulations regarding recordings either audio or video. Ask your attorney. Whatever medium you’ve got something in that you think could be helpful, ask, whether it’s from your phone, CCTV recordings, or security camera findings. Anything you’ve got, ask your lawyer or hand it to them so they can go over it and decide if it’s admissible.
Circumstantial Evidence Can Seal The Outcome
Circumstantial evidence is less direct. It likely doesn’t come from the hand or voice of the sociopath themselves, it’s evidence seen by the court as less “solid”. But, here’s the thing: circumstantial evidence can win a case. Include it.
There’s also something called hearsay. Think “gossip”. For example, let’s say one of the ex-wives tells you something he lied about. The lie might be significant and heinous… However, for this to be admissible, you’ll need the ex to be in court to testify that he told her this lie. Hearsay is …she said that he said… Leave this on your living room floor.
Shift Hearsay And Gossip To Legit Evidence
Rather than saying to the Judge, she said that he said that…whatever blah, blah blah, have your attorney subpoena this witness. This turns it into direct evidence and gives you a witness.
To subpoena someone you’ll have to give your attorney the witness’s full legal name, address, and phone number. They’ll be served with the subpoena by a document server. You’ll find the fee for the lawyer’s paperwork and the document service charged to you on your legal bill. It’s infinitely worth it.
Once a potential witness has been served, they cannot say no. They are legally obligated to appear in court. Please don’t step away from this thinking your friend, neighbor, previous prey, ex-husband or wife, or whomever it is will show up on their own. Going to the effort and expense to subpoena your witness(es) shows the court you’re serious and that you respect the process. They like this.
Annulment vs. Divorce From A “Narcissist”, A Sociopath
An annulment is not ever a shoo-in. Secular annulments have only about six qualifications across the U.S. You can be granted an annulment based on these grounds:
1) hidden mental illness 2) hidden impotence or infertility 3) coerced marriage as a minor 4) a marriage that is incestuous 5) marriage undertaken while intoxicated and 6) green card fraud…Someone who did not marry you in good faith as defined by U.S. Immigration.
Proving Misrepresentation And Fraud
We can demonstrate that they didn’t marry us in good faith by showing their misrepresentation. I won an annulment. The moment that won my case was when the Judge asked me to tell my “story”. I stayed unemotional, kept it concise, super short, and directly addressed the thing that made me see he was insincere and had lied to me. (This is not story time.)
Even then, the Judge interrupted, he wanted my reply to be even shorter! I had to be bolder than I felt as I stood there 20 pounds underweight from the trauma, my pants just about sliding off me and shaking, I’m nearly done, there’s one last thing… then I discovered his four kids… The Judge heard enough at that. Appalled, aghast, he interjected ...Four kids?!
Judges Base Decisions On Their Ethics
That was it for that judge. In his opinion having four kids, that you hide from your newlywed wife, represented fraud.
Here’s the thing: for all the legal parameters, and requirements, decisions in court are made by humans with their own life experiences, beliefs, opinions, and ethics they weigh the case against. These personal holdings are ultimately where their decisions come from framed and shaped within the law.
A Good Lawyer For Divorcing A Sociopath, Annulments Too
If you find a lawyer who can use the sociopath’s limited understanding of life and their innate motivation and instincts as a tool in the case is a thing of sheer beauty. You don’t need a lawyer who knows what a sociopath is. But ideally, they do understand this pathology in a deep way; well beyond the television idea of a sociopath or just the word itself. This actual knowledge significantly directs how the court proceeds. There are so many things a lawyer can do to slow down a case to stump the other side.
Fortunately, for me, the lawyer I found knew precisely how to play the sociopath against his own hideous self. I was so delightfully surprised by how he worked over the sociopath. What my attorney did out of his own knowledge of this pathology was key in winning my case. I’m forever grateful to him.
And as a note, to be clear, talking about the nutbag you’re extricating from your life as being a sociopath, or a “narcissist” is never, ever brought up in court. If it does come up, let it come from the Judge.
Here’s my article covering more about the details of green card fraud and how to undo your responsibilities in that area.
Legal Advice In Divorcing a “Narcissist”, the Sociopath
I do offer what is on our side, as laypeople, not attorneys the most effective information about how to win in court. The surest way to win in court – from any point going forward – is by understanding this pathology inside and out to the core. Profoundly. And with as much emotionalism of this personal hellish experience set aside as possible.
When you have a clear view of the limitations of this patholgoical mind and the two things they need; the only two things that motivate everything they do or say you are so far ahead of the sociopath themselves it’s mindblowing.
Divorce Goals Fall In Place When We Know This Pathology
I realize this might sound empty or even ridiculous and can go right over people’s heads when they’re spinning in trauma and fear and a feeling that this maniac is powerful. We’re stuck and churning in the superficial realities of social expectations or legal rules and regulations and proceedings.
A legal proceeding is exhausting, unbelievably stressful, intimidating, and daunting. Once we’re locked into a legal process each step along the way reveals more unexpected and previously unknown limitations, pieces they won’t hear in court, steps we didn’t know we had to take, things we didn’t know were legal maneuvers the sociopath’s side could make, parameters, and requirements.
Certainly, the legal machine and the Judgements that can come down can have little to do with finding what we need as “fair” recompense in these hijackings.
I can’t stress enough how the place we win in court – is found first out of court, within ourselves, and in our understanding of what a pathological predator is.
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Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
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Court Evidence Is Not Based On Our Emotional Experience
The bottom line for you is, to be legally unhinged from this person. If it’s a divorcee that’s okay! You’re done. It’s over. If you feel you want to go the annulment route, do it.
In some states, the annulment filing papers your attorney will use to file your annulment has a little box the attorney checks that is a lifesaver. By checking this box, if the Judge doesn’t see a case for an annulment ruling, the case defaults to a divorce. That way you only face court proceedings once.
Sociopaths Are Simplistic And Dumber Than Boxes of Rocks
Sociopaths only care about two things: knowing these two things profoundly and assimilating them into our cells. Being able to work with a comprehensive profound understanding is how we maneuver them out of our lives; it’s how we win. Out of court first and then in court.
We’re under their spell. Mesmerized, ensorcelled, and in a state of exaggerated, otherworldly, unknown-world malarkey. Having no idea these creatures exist we keep looking at the nuttiness through the only lens we know: that of “normal.
The thing is, nothing about them or this surreal dream-like existence is normal. Using “normal” to interpret what’s happened will not ever reveal the truth of it.
Divorce Goes Best When We’re Clear Eyed
To see through the fog, we have to step outside seeing life as normal people, and borrow their lens, to temporarily adopt even in the tiniest way, the way they see life.
Otherwise, we continue zombie-like, in purgatory, doing what normal people do in this bizarre and completely abnormal situation of entrapment as prey of a parasitic predator. Bending, giving, staying, trying, and suffering to an indescribable degree. Who we thought we were and what our life was before them, crumbling at our feet and blowing off in the wind piece by piece.
Divorce Yourself From The Fraud
Swept up into their vortex, we’re lifted from ourselves…Kidnapped, hijacked… I spontaneously spoke-felt-thought-knew this event was a “hijacking” after it happened to me… It’s as if they pilot your life.
They take over something in our “control center” and steer us into destruction while we hold up their slippery, chaotic, nonsensical life and try to keep our own together as well.
Yet, in reality, what happens is that it falls apart; disintegrates around us, and goes further into damage we’ve never seen before – and in truth had no part in making…as we’re under their spell, ensorcelled, mesmerized, hypnotized, stunned to do their bidding.
Breaking Up With Evil
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
Divorce Solidifies That There’s Only One Monster
There are dysfunctional people with their own personal narcissistic glitches. And then there are the pathological. Creatures who hijack other people’s lives and live off of them through deception. These are sociopaths. By the way, “sociopath” is slang for a psychopath. The term sociopath came into being in 1930 and was coined by a psychologist.
You might have noticed I frequently stress the phrase, there’s no such thing as a “narcissist”. This is because the term “narcissist” as it’s used on most Facebook pages and memes is confusing! It’s a conglomeration and muddle and misinformation and misconception and intermingling of the dysfunctional person and the pathological psychopath.
That’s why I say a “narcissist” is a sociopath. And “Sociopath” is a polite word for a psychopath. There’s only one monster from this recovery side of things.
“Narcissists” – Sociopaths – Are Limited And Simplistic
Their brain abnormalities limit them to never being able to feel love, like, care, or positive concern for anyone or anything outside their own skin. They do not feel the emotion of love or like. They have no conscience.
You are the antithesis of this. When you walk into a courtroom and the creature walks in too… As you’re standing there before the Judge they look to see who is lying most. Who seems most plausible? Who has solid evidence, direct evidence, circumstantial evidence, and witnesses to support any claims being made?
You’re not on trial. A divorce is granted in the U.S. to anyone and everyone without any evidence needed as far as affairs, or lies. The evidence we provide will be directed for the purposes of dividing assets and debt, and real property, or – to show they did not marry you in good faith. Because they didn’t. Not a single (or already married) one of them to any single one of us.
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