Kim Korven - conflict queen, the best parts of divorce, the bat sh*t crazy game

"Sometimes helping people is more important than following rules." Kim Korven, retired lawyer, former judge of tenant-landlord disputes, 'conflict queen'.

Welcome to episode 193 of Stranger Connections Podcast, which features weird life stories, quirky careers, and prank & dare stories.

Kim Korven shares her experiences as a lawyer and judge, including how divorce can be a gift you give yourself and your children.
Did you know you can divorce without a lawyer? Korven shares tips on how to spend less and co-parent respectfully. As Korven says, "YOU are the CEO of your life."

Listen in to learn:
- The bat sh*t crazy game
- You can love someone and not like their behavior
- When a couple needed a mediator to divide the absurd item
- What's the deal with lefse
- Can a couple have a respectful divorce
- A prank sprinkled with revenge
- How do we navigate a narcissist
- CAKE life community

Grab a free gift on Kim's website: a flowchart on how to divorce while committing to the kids.

TheConflictQueen.CA

[e-mail]

Find more from Kim on Instagram and LinkedIn, too!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
But it was that what my kidsneeded made me bigger than I could be.
For me, the love of mychildren forced me to grow and as
a mediator. Every now and again, like I hear from people who are
asking their six year old where theywant to live, and I said,
are you too sure you love yourkids? And then I thought, oh,
that was supposed to be an insidevoice Kim. Stranger Connections is the

(00:23):
embodiment of Lisa david Olsen's perspective ofwe're all just friends who just simply haven't
met yet. It's an exploration ofthe weirdly wonderful side of life and a
look at the single commonality we havewith each other, our differences. Slip
off your shoes, pour a cupof your favorite and let's meet this week's
barrel of quirks. Welcome to StrangerConnections, where I celebrate wonderfully weird people

(00:47):
and quirky stories. I'm your curiousbeast and post Lisa David Olsen, the
practically world famous business humorist, interactivespeaker and speaker trainer. So reach out
to me if you want to reigniteyour team or event. Today we talk
with Kim Corbyn. She calls herselfthe conflict queen, and I wasn't sure

(01:07):
if that meant she creates conflict,and then I realize she does not,
because both of us blamed ourselves whenwe couldn't connect via email. Oh no,
it's my fault. No no,no, you go first. That's
fine. So please welcome the verylovely Kim Corbyn. Thank you for being
here. Thank you, Lisa.You know, I'm just so delighted that
we're connecting the same same. Itwas not easy between email hiccups and just

(01:34):
no life here and hearing you sayMinnesota and I'm just like, you're Norwegian,
and so am I and lefsa andso yeah we did. We covered
a little bit before I hit record, and you asked where I'm from,
and when I say the state,it's just a parent that I am in
the Midwest because it's Minnesota. Yeah, there's no other way to say it.

(01:56):
Thank you for being here. AndI know about you a lot little
bit that you're a retired lawyer anda former judge of landlord tenant disputes,
so that sounds fun. I don'tknow why you'd give all that up.
I mean, everybody comes in andsays thanks you doing a swell job.
Yeah, everybody's everybody's happy when theycome to see a lawyer or when they
have a dispute and want you todecide who's telling the truth, right,

(02:23):
exactly that. And I actually,I actually was one hearing landlord and tenant
dispute and the landlord and the tenant. I helped them settle. And the
tenant seemed to be a nice guy. He was down on his luck.
And I wrote my husband's name,my second husband, his name and number

(02:46):
on a sticky note and I gaveit to the tenant. The landlord was
still there, and I said,look, my husband is cruing a big
concert. He's having trouble finding people. You give him a call. And
Lord was thrilled because, oh,this tenant's going to be able to come
up with some money to pay rent. That's owing right. But I'm sitting

(03:08):
there doing this thinking if the powersthat be knew I was doing this,
it would be an international incident.I bet, And and maybe I shouldn't
be to me if doing what's youknow, if helping people is more important
than following the rules, well,well, and that aligns with one of

(03:30):
your quotes that you say you're theCEO of your life. That's a heck
of a way to say, makegood choices because this is on you.
I mean, we need to saythis is my life and quit blaming everybody
else for where we're at. Wereally do. And of course, if
you go through divorce, you're reallydown on yourself and you're feeling like a

(03:53):
failure, and you give away yourpower, and that's how you end up
spending a lot of money that youdon't need to, right. And I
remember from being a lawyer, havingone client, she and her husband they
needed a mediator to help them dividespices. Come on, no, who

(04:16):
got the cinnamon? I never asked, Oh, I didn't want to add
to the expense, and I justhad to keep a straight face. But
I thought, you've got to bekidding. You know, they were not
done being married. If you're comingdown to spices, you are not done
being married. You had some otherdirections you could use your energy. Well,
what it says is somebody has tobe in control. One of them

(04:40):
really had to be in control,right, and wasn't about to relinquish that
power for sure. Yeah. Iworked for a short time in a lawyer's
office and one of the divorces waslike three bankers boxes full. This as
everything was on paperback then, andit was all because the two I didn't
speak to each other. And soa call comes in. The husband calls,

(05:04):
tell my wife she forgot to leavethe snow boots when she dropped off
the kid at school, and boomthere was back then, back in the
early two thousands. So that wastwo thousand dollars. I'm sorry, that
was eighty bucks for the phone callto the phone call, and I'm just
like, wow, that's so sadbecause the kid is the pawn. Well,

(05:25):
and what it is is the legalsystem. When divorce moved from parliament
to court, it was just ploppedinto civil law, which is contract disputes.
And it was done at a timewhen women and kids were property.
So the word custody is actually aproperty term. Oh wow, right,

(05:47):
So this is the backstory that peoplejust accept as a given. And I
know when I was thinking about endingmy marriage, that's when I realized I
was terrified of traditional divorce, youknow, like I'd had that woman need
a mediator for spices, and itwas like, I can't do this to

(06:08):
my kids. Yeah, And soI basically stick handled it myself and said
to him, this is what we'regoing to do. And I didn't push
any legalities for almost two years Cheapers, but it was like, no,
no, here is you know whatyou're supposed to be paying for child supports,
so keep paying the mortgage and propertytaxes. So he didn't feel as

(06:32):
rejected. Mm hmm right, itwasn't this clear me versus you. And
you bring up a good point ifyou're not being a big strong wall,
that people's defenses don't have to beready to fight tooth and nail for the
garlic salt versus the Himalayan pink salt. You know, exactly if somebody has

(06:58):
to be the bigger person than justgoing you know what, let's just let's
just work it out. Stuff isjust stuff. So I'm twice divorced,
so I'm easy to divorce, iswhat I call myself. Three times married,
so love me some honeymoons? Yes, oh good as are the best
part. Yes I am. I'measy to divorce, except you know the

(07:24):
first one. We had kids,so that got scary for both of us.
But once we realized we both justwanted to raise them in kind.
When we stopped listening to the parentsoutside of the marriage. Everything got so
much better. So, I know, how do you do that? How
do you keep you know, thethe mother in law who's all ballsy and

(07:44):
telling you what you should do,and all the other voices. You know,
we could talk about the boundaries andthe privacy well, but it's it's
really about getting Like so when Idivorced, I knew that kids love their
parents or what because I'd worked ona really ugly child protection file and a
social worker would always say that andthat stuck with me. So I had

(08:09):
this north star goal, which wasmy kids having the best relationship possible with
their dad, and I figured itwould take about five years. And so
I've actually, like, I've createdsome exercises that get people to remember,
oh, yeah, I love thisperson once and to really sit down and

(08:30):
discuss their hopes and dreams for theirkids in a way that isn't threatening or
positional. And then you just evaluateall potential decisions against what you want for
your kids. Right, So you'reusing this trans you divorce is something,

(08:52):
Oh, my kids can learn resilience. It's better for kids to see have
happy parents. And the research reallyis that it's conflict that harms kids,
right, And to that, Ijust think if you stay with someone who
is possibly abusing you, whether it'sverbally, whether it's physically, or just

(09:13):
not respecting you, and if youstay with that person because well, we
have to stay married for the kids, you are teaching them the wrong way
to be married or the wrong wayto choose a partner. So when people
think, oh, I have tostay together for the kids, my parents
did that. That was no favorand so you know, I did not

(09:33):
repeat that pattern, but that canhappen. Oh well, my parents were
crummy together, but they stayed together. So I'll just endure this. Well.
And it's interesting, right, like, because my parents are much the
same. They're still together and it'sonly kind of the last five years they've
been good together out of sixty,so it's like, okay. But the

(09:56):
interesting thing is is we expect peoplein the public sphere to have boundaries,
to be able to communicate effectively,right, not to settle, but you
know, to be able to beassertive. But we don't teach them that
at home, and we wonder whydo they have problems with it? Right?

(10:20):
And I remember when my daughter wasabout ten and she started saying,
I don't want to go to Dad's. It's boring there. We always have
macaroni and cheese on Tuesdays. AndI'm like, but honey, like here
we can eat and it's always atfive point thirty and I'm like, but
here, we eat anytime between fiveand nine, and it could be a

(10:41):
bowl of cereal. But having theconversation with her about how important it is
to be exposed to different ways ofbeing and how you can love somebody and
not like their behavior. They're notmutually exclusive. Absolutely, And you say

(11:03):
that divorce can be the best giftthat you give yourself and your children.
That's a bold statement. Not manypeople will say that. Well, that's
been my experience, and I've seenit with my son who's now an adult.
But he was afraid of his dad, Like I remember, his dad

(11:24):
allergic to cats. We went tothe Humane Society once. My son found
a cat, a kitten that hereally liked, and he's, mom,
can we bring this kitten home?And I'm like, but honey, we
can't. You know, your dad'sallergic. And he said I can get
a new dad. And I thought, oh, he's just being cute,

(11:46):
you know, he was five orsix. He's just being cute. No,
he was serious. He wanted anew dad. Ooh right, that
was the state of their relationship.And they went on and he went to
Europe with his dad for about tendays when he was twelve, and his
dad would go on all the bandtrips with him. Like, he ended

(12:09):
up with a really good relationship withhis dad. And so my son ended
up like and I was thinking hewas acting so poorly when his dad and
I were together. It's like thathe was going to end up in jail.
He was a teenager. Goodness.I mean, as a lawyer,
your mind goes to the worst possibleoutcomes. You've seen it about the future,

(12:31):
the future I saw for him.But no, he ends up going
to university, getting scholarship, endinga chair in the symphony, doing his
last year in French when he hadn'tstudied any French in nine years. He
dove into a French immersion program andyou know, and then having the courage

(12:52):
to go, mom, music isn'tfun anymore like this. So right now
he's in the Armed Forces reserves onthe coast and I'm like, you had
enough, you knew who you wereenough to walk away from that instead of
listening to your mentors. And Iknow if we'd stayed together, he wouldn't

(13:13):
be as resilient like It has beensuch a gift for him, and it
gave him space to develop a reallygood relationship with his dad. Oh that's
so cool because without the issues betweenthe parents hanging in the house or any
of that. And it sounds likeyou're a good, strong mom though,
saying, because here's something that's awfulthe parents apart putting down the other parent,

(13:39):
you can just do that. Ohthat just hurts my heart because you,
as an adult, chose to bewith that person, and you made
a baby with that person. Sogrow up and just don't make their lives
in the middle of your issues.That your example is so loving and sweet

(14:00):
that you well And they opened thatdoor. I opened it and I could
hardly stand to see my husband right, Like I am the woman who He
left his beer bottle collection here.Everywhere he would travel, he'd biograph beer,
he'd bring it home, was ona shelf in our living room.
I thought it was tacky, andI didn't dispose of them right away.

(14:24):
I think it was maybe three yearslater. He hadn't taken them into the
garbage or recycling I forget, whichI feel guilty about that now, but
I share that like I was nosaint, but it was that what my
kids needed made me bigger than Icould be. For me, the love

(14:45):
of my children forced me to growand as a mediator. Every now and
again, like I hear from peoplewho are asking their six year old where
they want to live, and I'mjust have my mouth zip shut. Well,
I shouldn't say that mediation. Iactually was rather tired and I said,
are you too sure you love yourkids? And then I thought,
oh, that was supposed to bean inside voice, Kim, but it

(15:07):
went over well. But Pard diggingthrough your wonderful website, which we'll share
that there's a free gift for listenerson your website. But one of the
things I came across is so interestingto me, and it's strategies for negotiating
with a narcissist. Negotiating with anarcissist? Is that possible? Well,

(15:33):
here's the deal. You don't negotiatewith a narcissist. Often the narcissists don't
want to work with lawyers because theywant to they want to get their own
way. And the tendency is ifyou've been with a narcissist to think,
oh, I'm just going to bereasonable and he'll be reasonable too. That

(15:58):
is a recipe for disaster. Andwhen you've been with a narcissist and you
go to a lawyer and those arethe instructions you give, No, no,
we're just going to start being reasonable. No, no, no no.
What you do is you have toinflate what you want because the narcissist
has to win, and you canstart knowing that. That's how you start

(16:21):
your strategy piece. Okay, theyhave to win. And if you're going
to go fifty to fifty head tohead in the legal system, you're going
to be torn to shreds. Imean you've worked in a lot like you
know, because it was set upfor people who tell the truth, and
it isn't about justice. It's aboutfollowing the legal rules, and everybody ends

(16:44):
up feeling bruised and nobody likes theresults. So you figure out, Okay,
what do I need from this?What is most important to me?
I'm not going to play it asif that's what's most important to me.
I'm going to add some other thingsto make this more interesting. Win on
things that I don't care about.It's maybe act like you love the bottle

(17:10):
collection, but yeah, okay,I'll give you that if you give me,
you know, the orange chair.One of the things you say about
strategies for successfully negotiating with a narcissistwas don't respond immediately. Silence is your
friend. I don't think a lotof us can do that part. That's

(17:33):
a great one. Well, Igotta write that one down. So what
I teach my clients, and I'llshare it here, is to play the
batshit crazy game. I'm listening somehowI knew I could share that here,
Lisa Beck. Yes, the batshitcrazy game. Of course, they hook

(17:56):
you with their words, and ifyou respond immediately, you're done. So
you need something to give you pause, to make you pause and to get
you out of that fear response.So the batshit crazy game is just he
says something and to stop and go, oh man, if this, if

(18:18):
this was my friend, on ascale of one to ten, how batshit
crazy would I say? This is? So you're pulling in your brain that
analyzes, but it's in a funway that you can kind of laugh about.
Oh, it's a eat okay,And you don't say your batshit crazy,
You just say, oh, well, that's interesting. I I I

(18:41):
haven't thought of it that way before, and I'm just gonna need some time
to think about it and walk away. Wow, that's fantastic. Because they
want you to yell, they wantyou to break something, they want you
to react. If I can getyou to react, I win the same
retrols on the inner people fight.That's not a loaf of bread, that's

(19:03):
that's a bag ad damn it.No, we all want to be right,
and that's where you get hooked,Like who cares about being right?
Because logic is never going to convincethem right right, So give it up
like they don't have to know what'strue to validate you, you know.

(19:25):
And if you play the batshit crazygame, what's fun is because it makes
people makes the women I share itwith they laugh, but they use it
and it helps them go oh yeah. And I always say and write it
down would happened? And the scoreso you can look back and it gives
you back your power. Not immediately, but you start seeing the trends oh

(19:51):
right, because otherwise they're in yourhead. But taking those notes and saying
that that gives your power back isfantastic. And you say to always share
how something will benefit the nartist.You just have to reframe. Mm hmmm,
Oh, you know, like havingthe kids for a week at a

(20:12):
time. That's you know, youwork so hard and you're tired at the
end of the day, and youknow, and the kids deserve to spend
time with you when you're at yourbest because I want you to have a
really great relationship with them, andhow do we make this happen? And

(20:33):
you just got more time with yourkids? Yeah, that's so great.
I'm kind of a gorilla fighter.I love that though. You're the best
kind of gorilla because it's it's you. Your example was the betterment of the
kids, and so I think that'sfantastic. So this is really good stuff.

(20:56):
The co parenting boundaries. And somethingelse that our mutual friend Carolyn mentioned
was cake life community and cake wasall in caps, which it should be,
but what is cake life community?So cake life has a couple of
different meanings, and one is conflictis kindness every day Because I don't know

(21:17):
about you, but if I'm notin conflict with somebody in my house,
or in my business, I'm inconflict with me ooh right, And it's
learning to be kind in it,you know. And it's like that conversation
with my daughter about you can lovesomebody and not like their behavior it's okay.
And then it also is a communityof women who are authentic, kind

(21:41):
and empowered. So it's a communityfor women who are going through ugly divorces
and these ladies speak their truth true. It's actually it's what it is is
it's way like, did you feelreally alone that first divorce and like a

(22:06):
failure? Oh my gosh, yes. And so what it is is it's
a community women who just they getit. Oh yeah, this is me.
Oh I could have used that man. And it involves a sister circle,
which essentially is a mastermind. Butsharing this is my biggest challenge.

(22:27):
And then being supported by women whowere going through it, it's way empowering.
And we had a session on Saturdayand I was actually talking about the
history of divorce and how it's apatriarchal institution, like and one of the

(22:48):
women in Canada anyway, we didn'thave no fault divorce until nineteen eighty five,
and she commented she found it sopowerful because she had known her grandmother
had been in an abuse of marriageand had never left. But when she
found out about you couldn't just leaveuntil nineteen eighty five, it was,
oh, that's what happened. Andone of the other women was, you

(23:15):
know, we celebrated getting married.We need to celebrate divorce. We need
a cake, And I'm like,where do you think the name comes from?
No, we need a real cake. You Oh, I almost have
to have a real cakes. Fantastic. Yeah, And it doesn't have to
be about bashing the X. Ifind this really offensive, Like Valentine stay

(23:37):
places where they have black Valentine hearts. Let's bring a picture of your ex
to rip up. That's putting yourselfdown. I think, yeah, Well,
and you know, people are peopleand hurt people hurt people. And
you can say that this person andI don't use X, I use former
spouse. You can say that yourformer spouse is behaving in a very controlling

(24:03):
manner and he isn't very nice andhe's still the father of the children.
And you don't have to be avictim, and you don't have to you
know, like, you can bestrong. I think it's more of a
Buddhist perspective of strong. It isn'trigid, but it's strong kind of in

(24:23):
a softer way, which is howI would describe me, you know,
or those gorilla tactics with it's nothead to head, but it's you don't
have to have spikes on the outsideof you. You can just be strong
within. I like that. That'smuch better. Yeah, so that's what
that's what happens in cake life.And people can join this by getting a

(24:45):
hold of you. Yes, yeah, And it's actually I might have a
price on the website. I've justI was just listening to a Dan Sullivan
book about contribution and it's like,yeah, I want more people in this.
It doesn't have to be this huge, huge investment. So it's like

(25:06):
fifty eight Canadian a month for aminimum three month commitment if that's how people
want. So that's like forty bucksin US. Very nice. And you
can go to the conflict Queen dotc A or Kim at Kimcorvin dot com
and Corvin is k O r Vlike Victor E. N dot com.

(25:30):
And you mentioned you have a freeflow chart on the website for our listeners.
Yeah, so on on the landingpage at or the homepage, I
guess it's called at the Conflict Queendot CA. There's a button right at
the top and it is for aflow chart how to divorce. It's what
I used when I thought about itafterwards what did I actually do? And

(25:55):
it starts with about how to committo the kids and interacting with lawyers this
summer close to the end, butit's just this very simple outline of what
you need to do. And there'sgreat testimonials on there. That's how I
learned a lot about what you do. But I cannot let you escape to
go eat the rest of your lasaright now until I ask you to share

(26:15):
a dare or a prank story oneyou've done it had done to you.
And I do have less in myfreezer. That's why i'm laughing, because
I stopped it before Christmas and I'msaving it. Yeah, all right,
so just don't let it get burnt. So you know how in nearly every

(26:37):
organization you will find a man who'sin a power position and he thinks very
highly of himself. Right, hedoesn't get everything right, but and he
wants more power, and he actsall nicey nice on the outside, but
when you start paying attention, there'ssome darkness. I was involved in it.

(27:00):
I was on a board of anorganization once and there was a fellow
like that. You know, mostpeople thought he was just so great,
and he was so full of himselfand it always had to be his way.
And there were also these rumors,these whispers of infidelity, because you
know, these powerful guys, womencan be attracted to them. There was

(27:22):
a group of us in town fora board meeting, and one of the
women had brought this cartoon book calledCucumbers Are Better Than Man, because dot
have you ever seen it? Ithink so. I think it's right next
to that everybody poops book a longtime ago. Anyway, So she shows

(27:45):
some of us and we're laughing about, you know, reading it, just
roaring with laughter, and somebody suggestedwe should give it to this guy,
and then we start, oh,but you know, if he knows we
give it to him, there's goingto be all kinds of retribution, because
he's that kind of guy and he'svery powerful. So it became my task.

(28:07):
So I went to the office andI got a mailing sticker label rest
to him. I got an envelopethat would hold it, saying it was
from the organization. I then wentto the post office. Oh my word,
I got a stamp on it,you know, that said the date.
And then the poor person who worksthere tries to take my envelope and

(28:32):
I'm like no, and I pullit back. No, no, it's
my envelope. As we were filingin for this meeting after lunch, we
just put it on the stack ofmail for him by the secretary. Oh,
you didn't want to run through thepost office. You just know.
We wanted to see him get it. But he's missed a retribution, right,

(28:52):
so we had to be very pretendingwe're not looking. Oh, he's
opening his mail during the meeting,you know, because he's an important guy,
he can do that. He doesn'tneed to listen to anybody. Oh
but when he opened it, thelook on his face, right, and
he's looking around the room trying tofigure out he never mentioned it, oh

(29:15):
really, which suggests that perhaps therewas something to the stories going around him.
Right, his reaction was just photosof us. I love that one.
I also love that you messed withthe person at the post office by

(29:36):
reclaiming your mail that you just paidfor. And I guess that's me.
You know, like there's time,so I just don't take no. It's
like no, it's fine, thankyou. I'm just picturing this giant veggie
tray of all cucumbers and some dipat the meeting. That would have been
even better. Oh my gosh.Well, this has been so fun and

(29:56):
I'm honored to have chatted with you, Kim Corvin. But remember we can
only be strangers once, and Iinvite you to stay weird. I will
thank you. It's been great.This has been Stranger Connections with Lisa David Olson