# She Turned Her High-Conflict Divorce Into a Movement. Here’s What Courtney Gilmartin Learned About Surviving, Documenting & Fighting Back

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/divorce-happens-6931880/she-turned-her-high-conflict-divorce-into-a-movement-here-s-what-courtney-gilmartin-learned-about-surviving-documenting-fighting-back
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/divorce-happens-6931880/she-turned-her-high-conflict-divorce-into-a-movement-here-s-what-courtney-gilmartin-learned-about-surviving-documenting-fighting-back.md
Podcast: [Divorce Happens](https://stenobird.com/podcast/divorce-happens-6931880)
Published: 2026-06-13T00:05:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/divorce-happens
Audio file: https://episodes.captivate.fm/episode/16b9a1a2-4a58-4095-9156-32be7183e0df.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/divorce-happens-6931880/episodes/she-turned-her-high-conflict-divorce-into-a-movement-here-s-what-courtney-gilmartin-learned-about-surviving-documenting-fighting-back
Duration seconds: 887

## Resource

Nobody warns you that the divorce itself might be the easy part. For Courtney Gilmartin, a New Jersey mom who started her divorce journey nearly a decade ago, the 13-month dissolution of her marriage was just the opening chapter of a much longer, harder story — one that wound through post-judgment litigation, forensic custody evaluations, parenting coordinators, and years of fighting a family court system that moves nothing like the urgent, life-disrupting pace of the people trapped inside it. In this raw and remarkably practical episode of Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell sits down with Courtney to talk about what high-conflict divorce really looks like from the inside: the emotional toll, the strategic survival, and the hard-won wisdom that comes from living it. Courtney is now the founder of NJ Protective Moms, a grassroots nonprofit focused on family court advocacy and coercive control legislation, and runs Monarch Consulting Group , where she helps women prepare for custody evaluations and complex litigation. She is living proof that the mess can become a mission. What makes this conversation so valuable is the way Courtney refuses to let the emotional and the strategic stay separate — because in high-conflict divorce, they can't be. She talks honestly about how she survived years of post-settlement chaos: the near fifty-fifty custody schedule that left her with empty weekends that felt more like exile than freedom, the way exercise — walking, Pilates, lifting weights, hot yoga — became less a wellness habit and more a lifeline. She shares one of the most useful reframes in the episode: that every professional in your case, even the ones who seem unhelpful or frustrating, can serve a strategic purpose if you approach them with the right lens. A co-parenting the…

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