The Truth About Coercive Control in Divorce
episode
Off the Fence with Karen Covy: Mastering Decision Making, Divorce & More
37 min
1 speaker
4 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the background and motivation of guest Jolee Vacchi for practicing family law?
Hello and welcome to Off the Fence, a podcast where we deconstruct difficult decision making so we can discover what keeps us stuck and more importantly, how we can get unstuck and start making even tough decisions with confidence. I'm your host, Karen Covey, a former divorce lawyer, mediator, and arbitrator, turned coach, author, and entrepreneur. And now without further ado, Let's get on with the show. With me today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Jolie Vacky. Jolie is known as the Compassionate Divorce Attorney. She's the founding attorney of Foundation's Family Law and Mediation Center, located in Worcester, Massachusetts. As a mediator, collaboratively trained attorney, and coercive controlled trauma-informed attorney, Jolie focuses her practice on out-of-court solutions for her clients to resolve their family law conflicts as painlessly and peacefully as possible.
She is uh a kindred spirit and after my own heart. So Jolie, welcome to the show.
You Karen, I'm delighted to be here with you
today. I'm thrilled to have you and I'd like to start with your story. You know, family law is a is a tough area of law to practice. What drew you to this area? Start wherever you want to start.
Sure. So as a little girl, I somehow got drawn to Law and Order and Allie McBeal. I don't know if you remember those shows back in the day. That that is what I wanted to be when I grew up grew up. I didn't know any attorneys in real life. Um, nobody in my family was a lawyer, but I set my heart on that in middle school. And when I was in high school, I ended up interning For a divorce attorney. And she became my role model and who I wanted to be when I was an adult. So I went right to college and to law school. Um, and I majored in everything that I could to do with family laws. I took family law, domestic violence law, I became a certified mediator in law school. I just I had that desire within me. Um, family is something that's very, you know, important to me.
It's the foundation of my whole world and I saw the law as a helping profession and that's how I wanted to use my my legal degree. And now everything kind of has come full circle because that role model, that um, you know, attorney I in for interned for back in high school is now a judge and I practice in front of her. So it's been a really cool experience the whole journey.
Wow, that that's quite a story. And there there really aren't that many attorneys that I know who are in family law who truly wanted to do it like right out of the gate. A lot people come from a lot of different directions, but the fact that you knew this was your calling from a young age is amazing.
And I wish I could put like, you know, put I could pinpoint something, but it just is something innately in me and I'm okay with that.
We can go with that. Well, you know, more than just being a family law attorney though, the reason I wanted to talk with you is because you've taken this even deeper, right? You are a coercive control trauma informed attorney. What is that?
Yeah. So it's a mouthful. I realize that. Um, so I'm the majority of my clients are women, and that's who I really love to represent. I resonate and I get along really well with representing women. It doesn't surprise me. I'm uh obviously a woman myself. I'm a mom. I have two young children, they're 12 and 10 years old, and a lot of my clients are young mothers who are coming to me and And you know, it's it's so interesting because people have a lot of misconceptions about divorce, as you you probably realize. You know, people think that, you know, like a big affair or something happens and blows up a marriage all of a sudden. But a lot of times when women come to meet with me, they've been thinking about divorce for years.
Mm-hmm. Like this is a usually a slow burn, and it's not something that just they magically woke up one day and thought, Hey, I want to leave my marriage. Like, no, they've been thinking about this, and like you know, the name of your pod podcast, they've been on and off the fence about this for a while.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the background and motivation of guest Jolee Vacchi for practicing family law?
0:10–6:23
2
How does Jolee define coercive control and differentiate it from ordinary relationship issues?
6:23–17:12
3
What does Massachusetts law require to prove coercive control in a protective‑order case?
17:12–30:27
4
How can survivors gather evidence and present a convincing affidavit for coercive‑control restraining orders?
30:27–37:18