Key Points:

• You can't lower the other person's conflict. You can lower yours, and in a two-person fight that's half the fight. It's also the only half a judge will ever hold you responsible for.

• Every message you send is an exhibit. Judges read threads, and they're not looking for who was right. They're looking for who was reasonable.

• Most hostile messages don't need a reply. The ones that do need four things: brief, informative, friendly, firm. Nothing else.

• Conflict, not divorce, is what harms children. The research on this has been consistent for decades, and it means that every exchange you de-escalate is a measurable gift to your kids.

• Louisiana gives you tools when your own restraint isn't enough: parenting coordinators, court-ordered communication platforms, specific orders, contempt, and fee awards for the parent who keeps dragging everyone back to court.

What Your Response Does in Court

By Leslie Bonin

I'm a Louisiana family law attorney, and I've had my share of high conflict cases. You know if you're in one. The exchanges never go smoothly. Every email is a battle. The other parent files something every few months, or you do. The children have become the thing you fight about rather than the thing you're protecting.

Here's what I've learned about these cases that I wish every client understood on day one. The judge is not going to fix your co-parent. The judge is going to look at both of you and decide which one is the problem. And the single biggest input into that decision is how you respond.

Why Your Response Is the Only Lever

A high-conflict divorce usually has a driver, one person who generates most of the heat. Sometimes both parents do. But from the courthouse, those two situations look identical if you respond in kind. A judge reading 400 pages of texts can't easily tell who started it. What the judge can tell, instantly, is who stayed calm.

So stop trying to win the exchange. Your co-parent's messages aren't the record you control. Yours are. Richard Perque wrote about this from the judge's side in What the Judge Is Actually Thinking, it shows that the parent whose messages stay measured gains credibility, and the parent whose messages are cruel or chaotic loses it, regardless of who was right.

What Judges Actually Read

When a custody case gets contested, your communications come in. Texts, emails, co-parenting app logs, voicemails, social media. Attorneys pull them, print them, and hand them up, and the judge reads them, sometimes the night before trial.

Here's what hurts you in that stack. Profanity. Insults. Diagnosing the other parent. Threats, including "wait until the judge hears about this." Long messages. Messages sent after 10 p.m. Messages about the past. Messages about your co-parent's new partner. Messages that mention the children's reactions to the other parent. Messages that the children clearly saw.

Here's what helps you. Short messages about logistics. Confirmations in writing. Offers to accommodate. Reminders that are polite and specific. Proposals with deadlines. Silence in response to bait.

If you want a single test, it's the one Dr. Pellegrin gave in Effective Communication Strategies With an Alcoholic Co-Parent: would you send this to a co-worker you didn't like but had to finish a project with? If not, don't send it to your co-parent.

Don't Hand Them the Case

High-conflict co-parents are good at provoking. They know your soft spots because they lived with you. A message arrives that's designed to make you explode, and if you do, they now have a screenshot that shows a parent who explodes.

I've watched clients lose months of goodwill with a judge in one furious reply. I've also watched clients beat a truly difficult co-parent by doing almost nothing: answering only what needed answering, documenting everything, and letting the other side's messages speak for themselves. The second strategy wins far more often than the first, and it costs less.

Two specific traps. Don't record conversations unless you know your state's law, because in some states that's a crime; I covered this in Can I Record My Spouse? And don't go into their phone or accounts looking for ammunition, which is covered in Looking Through Your Spouse's Phone, Email, or Social Media. Both feel justified in a high-conflict case and both can hand your co-parent exactly the ammunition they wanted.

When Restraint Isn't Enough

What to do? The other parent won't follow the order, won't communicate in writing, won't stop filing, won't stop showing up. Louisiana gives the court a set of tools for this, and you should know them.

Parenting coordinators. Under R.S. 9:358.1 and following, a court can appoint a parenting coordinator in a high-conflict case to help the parents implement the custody order and resolve day-to-day disputes without going back to court every time. The PC can't change custody, but they can make recommendations and take the small fights off the judge's desk. Dr. Pellegrin explains the role in The Benefits of a Parenting Coordinator.

Communication orders. Louisiana courts routinely order high-conflict parents to communicate only through a monitored co-parenting platform, where every message is timestamped and can't be deleted. If your co-parent calls, texts, and emails at all hours, ask for this. It's a relief for the calm parent and a trap for the other one.

Specific orders. Vague orders generate conflict. "Reasonable visitation" is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Ask the court for exchange times to the minute, exchange locations named, holidays assigned by year, and a protocol for schedule changes. There's nothing left to argue about if the order already answered the question.

Mediation. Louisiana courts can order mediation of custody disputes under R.S. 9:332, and in a high-conflict case a good mediator can sometimes get an agreement on the narrow issues even when the parties can't be in a room together.

Contempt. When the other parent violates the order, file. Louisiana courts can hold a parent in contempt for violating a custody or visitation judgment, impose fines or jail, order make-up time, and award attorney fees to the parent who had to come to court to enforce. Under R.S. 9:375, a court that enforces visitation rights shall award attorney fees and costs to the prevailing party unless there's good cause not to. Repeated, documented violations are also the foundation of a custody modification.

Sanctions for frivolous filings. A co-parent who files motion after motion to harass you can be sanctioned under Code of Civil Procedure article 863, which requires every pleading to be filed in good faith and allows the court to award fees against a party who files for an improper purpose. Judges don't impose this lightly, but the request itself tells the court what's going on.

Protective orders. If the conflict crosses into threats, harassment, stalking, or violence, Louisiana's Domestic Abuse Assistance Act and the injunctions available in a divorce under R.S. 9:372 are there. Don't let "high conflict" become a euphemism for abuse. Monique Drake and Richard Perque wrote about recognizing when it has in Coercive Control.

When to Go Back to Court, and When Not To

Not every violation is worth a motion. A co-parent who's fifteen minutes late to one exchange isn't a contempt case. A co-parent who's been an hour late to eleven of the last twelve, documented, is. The question I ask clients is whether the problem is a pattern, whether it's affecting the kids, and whether a court can actually fix it. If the answer is yes to all three, file. If not, document and wait.

The parent who files over everything looks like the high-conflict parent, even when they're not. Choose your battles so the judge can see the difference.

What the Conflict Does to You

By Alicia Pellegrin

Leslie explained what your response does in a courtroom. I want to explain what it does in your body, in your co-parent's, and in your children, because that's where the real control is.

Conflict Is What Hurts Kids

Let me start with the thing that should motivate everything else. Divorce by itself isn't what damages children. Exposure to ongoing conflict between their parents is. Kelly and Emery's review of the research found interparental conflict to be among the strongest predictors of poor outcomes for children after divorce, and two decades of subsequent work hasn't changed that picture. The AFCC and NCJFCJ joint statement on parent-child contact problems makes the same point: children are at greater risk when the professionals and family around them echo and intensify the polarization.

In my evaluations, I rarely see a child harmed by a schedule. I see children harmed by exchanges where their parents won't look at each other, by overhearing phone calls, by being asked to carry messages, and by sensing that one parent's mood depends on what happened with the other. Every exchange you de-escalate removes one of those moments from your child's week. That's not a soft benefit. It's the whole point.

Why You React the Way You Do

A hostile message from your co-parent hits a nervous system that already associates that person with threat. Heart rate climbs, the stress response fires, and the parts of the brain responsible for judgment and perspective go quiet. Relationship researchers call this flooding, and it's why the reply you write in the first ninety seconds is almost never the one you should send. You're not thinking. You're defending.

The fix is mechanical, not moral. Build a delay. Don't answer in real time. Read the message, put the phone down, and come back in an hour, or the next morning. If you have to write something immediately to get it out of your system, write it in a note to yourself, not in the thread. Most of my clients who do this find that the reply they eventually send is a third the length and twice as effective.

The Three Things That Make It Worse

Bill Eddy, a lawyer and therapist who's spent a career on high-conflict disputes, identified three responses that reliably escalate: advice, admonishment, and apology. I see all three constantly.

Advice: "You should really think about how this affects the kids." It reads as condescension, and it invites a counterattack.

Admonishment: "This is exactly what you always do." It's a judgment, and it reopens the whole history.

Apology, of the over-explaining kind: "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it that way, I just thought..." It signals that your position can be moved by pressure, so more pressure comes.

Cut all three out of your written communication with your co-parent. You'll notice how much of what you used to write is gone.

What Works Instead

Eddy's alternative is the BIFF response: brief, informative, friendly, firm. It's the same standard Leslie described from the courtroom, and the reason it works clinically is that it removes the emotional fuel a high-conflict person is seeking without giving them anything to push against.

Here's the difference in practice.

A message arrives: "You're an hour late AGAIN. The kids were starving and crying. I'm documenting all of this for my lawyer and I hope you're happy."

The flooded reply: "I was late because YOUR schedule change last week threw everything off and you know it. Don't you dare act like I don't feed my kids. Document whatever you want."

The BIFF reply: "I apologize for being late today; traffic on the bridge was heavier than expected. I'll plan extra time for Thursday's exchange. Thanks."

The second reply gives nothing to fight with. It's four sentences. It owns the one true thing, offers a concrete fix, and ends. The co-parent may send something nasty back, and you don't answer that one, because it doesn't contain a question or a logistical need.

That's the second rule: most hostile messages need no reply at all. Before you respond, ask whether there's a decision to make, information to confirm, or a schedule to handle. If not, silence is the answer, and silence looks like composure to anyone reading the thread later.

Parallel Parenting, If You Need It

For some pairs of parents, even BIFF is too much contact. Every exchange generates a fight, every email is a provocation, and the children are absorbing it. When that's the situation, stop trying to co-parent and start parallel parenting.

Parallel parenting means each household runs itself. Communication is limited to essential logistics, in writing, on a schedule. Exchanges happen at school or daycare, so the parents never have to be in the same place. The parenting plan is written with enough specificity that nothing is left to negotiate. The plan the two of you can't agree on is handled by the order, the parenting coordinator, or the court.

Parents sometimes hear this as giving up. It's not. It's a clinical judgment that this relationship can't safely bear coordination right now, and that two separate, calm households are better for a child than one continuously contested one. Co-Parenting vs. Parallel Parenting lays out the model, and many families that start there move toward more cooperation once the conflict has had time to cool.

The Self-Check

I'll end with the question I ask parents who come to me convinced that the other parent is the entire problem. Sometimes they're right. But I ask anyway.

Read your last ten messages to your co-parent as if a stranger wrote them. Not your co-parent's messages. Yours. Would the stranger look reasonable? Would a judge? Would your child, at twenty-five, reading them for the first time?

If the answer is yes, keep doing what you're doing and let the record build. If the answer is no, you've just found the one part of this conflict you can change tonight.

This article is for general informational purposes only and is not legal, psychological, or medical advice, and it does not create an attorney-client or treatment relationship. Custody enforcement and parenting coordination rules vary by state, and the Louisiana provisions discussed here won't apply the same way elsewhere. If the conflict in your divorce involves threats, harassment, or violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. If you're in immediate danger, call 911.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a high-conflict divorce? A divorce in which the conflict between the parents doesn't resolve with the judgment: repeated court filings, hostile communication, exchanges that routinely go badly, and children caught in the middle. A small minority of divorcing couples fall into this category, but they account for a large share of family court time. Research consistently shows that ongoing interparental conflict, not divorce itself, is what harms children.

How do I respond to a high-conflict ex? Briefly, factually, politely, and with a clear ending. Don't give advice, don't admonish, and don't over-apologize. Answer only messages that require a decision or logistical information, and let the rest go unanswered. Build a delay before replying so you're not responding while flooded. Assume everything you write will be read by a judge.

Will my text messages be used in my custody case? Almost certainly, if the case is contested. Attorneys gather texts, emails, co-parenting app logs, and social media and present them to the court. Judges don't read them to find out who was right. They read them to see who stayed reasonable. Short, calm, child-focused messages help you. Insults, threats, and late-night rants hurt you.

What is a parenting coordinator? A neutral professional, usually a mental health practitioner or attorney, appointed by the court in high-conflict cases to help parents implement the custody order and resolve day-to-day disputes without litigation. In Louisiana the role is governed by R.S. 9:358.1 and following. A parenting coordinator can make recommendations and decisions within the scope the court sets but can't change custody.

What can a court do about a co-parent who keeps violating the order? Hold them in contempt, impose fines or jail, order make-up parenting time, and award attorney fees to the parent who had to enforce. In Louisiana, R.S. 9:375 requires a fee award to the prevailing party in a visitation enforcement action unless there's good cause not to. Repeated documented violations can also support a custody modification.

What is parallel parenting and when should I use it? Parallel parenting means disengaging from cooperative co-parenting: each household operates independently, communication is limited to essential logistics in writing, exchanges happen at neutral locations like school, and the parenting plan is detailed enough that nothing requires negotiation. Use it when every attempt at cooperation produces conflict the children can see.

Related reading: Effective Communication Strategies With an Alcoholic Co-Parent | Co-Parenting vs. Parallel Parenting: Which Is Best for Your Family | How to Survive a High-Conflict Divorce | What the Judge Is Actually Thinking | The Benefits of a Parenting Coordinator in Your Divorce Plan | DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender | Can I Record My Spouse? | Are They Really Settling, or Is This Another Stall Tactic? | Co-Parenting With a Narcissist: 6 Rules That Actually Work | Your New Partner and Your Co-Parenting Relationship