When a New York judge decides custody, one of the things they weigh heavily is which parent is more willing to support the child's relationship with the other one. Joy Rosenthal, who represented children in family court for a decade before she became a mediator, says that single factor should reshape how a divorcing parent behaves at home.
Joy Rosenthal is a divorce mediator and collaborative lawyer in New York, a family-law professor at CUNY, and, earlier in her career, an attorney for children in family court for roughly ten years. She speaks from personal experience as well, which gives her a rare pairing of legal precision and genuine empathy. She returns to the show for a wider conversation than her earlier one on mediation: what you need to know before, during, and after a divorce, with the children at the center.
Joy makes the case that the law was designed for arms-length business, not families, and that mediation or collaborative work lets people shape decisions a judge with a heavy caseload never could. She walks through the four questions every divorce answers: support, property, parenting time, and child support. She is candid about children: they stay loyal to parents who cannot care for them, they still want the other parent even after witnessing harm, and why a struggling parent should never turn a child into a confidant. She offers specific words for talking to a child about what they saw, and for taking responsibility without shifting the blame.
The last stretch is about expectations. Joy and Lisa name the costs of going in uninformed: chasing a sense of fairness the court does not measure, leaning on an attorney for emotional support a coach could give for a fraction of the price, and expecting a system that rarely punishes lying to deliver justice on schedule. Joy's course, Landing on Your Feet, and her free monthly workshop are built for people at the very beginning, before those mistakes get expensive.
As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.
🎓 What you'll learn
⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Joy's path: from representing kids to mediating divorces
5:00 Why the law wasn't built for families
7:00 Can collaborative divorce handle high conflict?
9:00 Domestic violence is not only physical
13:00 Why kids stay loyal, even to a parent who fails them
17:00 Shielding kids: your child is not your confidant
19:00 What to say when your child witnessed violence
25:00 The four things every divorce has to settle
29:00 Unrealistic expectations, and the justice myth
37:00 Joy's course and free workshop
Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Joy Rosenthal (mediation and her divorce course): https://joyrosenthal.com
🔗 Joy Rosenthal on Instagram (@joymediator): https://www.instagram.com/joymediator
🎧 More with Joy Rosenthal on this podcast
Ep 68: How Divorce Mediation Actually Works
Ep 116: Taking Your Power Back in Divorce Mediation
Ep 120: Protecting Your Kids in a High-Conflict Divorce
About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.
