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

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 therapist who can’t move the needle with your ex isn’t a failure — they’re evidence. A parenting coordinator whose recommendations aren’t being followed isn’t useless — they’re documentation. In high-conflict co-parenting situations, Courtney argues, the question is never just “is this helping me emotionally?” but “how does this build my case?”The episode closes on something that feels both practical and deeply human: the power of documentation in family court proceedings. Courtney is emphatic — your case is only as strong as your evidence. Keep records. Organize everything. Not because someone will necessarily look at it tomorrow, but because when they do, you want to walk in with credibility rather than chaos. And then she offers something softer: a reminder that you are not on anyone’s timeline but your own. Whether you’re just beginning to consider leaving, waiting until the kids are older, or trying to find your footing after years of post-divorce litigation, the pressure to move faster than you’re ready to is one more thing you don’t owe anyone. Courtney’s story is a testament to what women can build out of their hardest seasons — not in spite of them, but because of them.