Neurodiverse

Court

Expert Witness Services

Guiding Fair Legal Outcomes

Neurodiverse conflict can become intense. Most often, judges have no idea how neurodiversity is affecting the legal process.

REAL Neurodiverse Expert Witness Services

About Anne MacMillan

I built my original Neurodiverse Family Systems Theory on my education, personal life experience, and the professional experience I gained in the private neurodiverse services practice I founded in 2017.

Today, my services extend to support other professionals who have come to the new realization that neurodiversity is at the heart of many of the relationship challenges their adult clients face. Professionals can earn my Neurodiverse Family Systems Educator Credential (NFS-E) then use my practical 10-Step educational system, including quantitative assessments and support resources, to help their clients comprehend their relationship challenges and find the happiness and peace they deserve.

I have a research-based master's in psychology from Harvard University and studied developmental psychology as an undergrad. I received the Director's Thesis Award at Harvard for my original research on Level 1 autism and intimate life partnerships -- some of the first quantitative research on the subject in the world.

Altogether, I have over 50 years of personal life experience with neurodiverse family systems, over 20 years of personal life experience with neurodiverse intimate life partnerships, and 8 years of professional experience working with individuals managing the challenges of neurodiverse family systems.

I self-identify as a high body empathetic neurodivergent who just might also be a bit attention neurodivergent (ADHD). I am not autistic.

Anne MacMillan, MLA

Founder of the R.E.A.L. 10-Step Neurodiverse Family Systems Approach, Speaker, Researcher, Consultant, Coach, Educator and Expert Witness

About Anne's Practice

Neurodiverse Court Expert Witness

Many neurodiverse divorces are high-conflict divorces. When necessary, I offer expert witness statements to help legal professionals comprehend the conflict they are witnessing in neurodiverse divorce.

To put it bluntly, neurodiverse divorces become high-conflict divorces because unethical attorneys make money through manipulating autistic partners into legal aggressions that aren't to the benefit of anyone except the attorneys themselves. The attorneys make money in legal fees by taking advantage of the autistic partners' difficulties understanding how their own legal actions will affect their neurotypical partners' legal reactions. Unethical attorneys will exploit autistic people's diminished capacity to comprehend how their own actions may have affected the dissolution of the marriage by validating autistic partners' sense of victimhood and then using that sense of victimhood to convince some autistic partners to use the legal system to viciously attack their ex-spouses.

Unethical attorneys can make a lot of money by taking advantage of autism.

Autistic partners managing divorce need support and guidance from someone who really has their best interests in mind. Yet instead of having access to people who more fully comprehend their autism and will help them get their real needs met, autistic spouses are targeted by attorneys who only pretend to care for their autistic clients' interests. Without the easy capacity to discern that the attorneys aren't really on their side, the autistic spouses will follow bad legal advice that, in the worst cases, drains the families of money and eventually even destroys the autistic partners' relationships with their children.

Sadly, common court processes do little to resolve the financial bleed or prevent the harm many neurodiverse families suffer during divorce. Mediation, for example, is intended to help two partners collaborate towards win-win solutions that will benefit the family as a whole. But mediation often breaks down in neurodiverse divorce due, in part, to the common history of trauma in neurodiverse communication and also due, in part, to all the difficulties associated with fostering collaboration when one person is on the spectrum.

I help my clients save A LOT of money in legal fees.

And once a neurodiverse mediation has broken down, families feel they have little choice but to wait for a court date and depend on a judge's whims. And family court judges, comprehending little to nothing about autism or neurodiverse communication, tend to be confused about the severity of the conflict they witness in their courtrooms. Since they lack access to accurate information that would make it possible for them to make decisions that would be helpful to the family as a whole, their decisions tend to do little to help neurodiverse families recover from the challenges of neurodiverse divorce after court dates.

All of these difficulties leave neurodiverse families without access to the kinds of solutions that are available to non-neurodiverse ex-spouse who have neurologies that make them together capable of finding collaborative solutions during divorce.

Relationships are destroyed -- and the legal system fosters that destruction.

I support either the autistic partner or the neurotypical partner in managing this excessively distressing situation, doing everything I can to use my knowledge of how neurodiverse divorce often progresses to try to reduce conflict and get my clients a less expensive and more amicable outcome that will hopefully not estrange the autistic partner from their children.

When necessary, I offer expert witness statements to help families achieve these goals through helping court professionals comprehend the neurodiverse conflict they are witnessing.

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anne@REALneurodiverse.com

Text or Call: (617) 996-7239 (United States)