The Family Court Playbook — Volume 3: How to Last the Distance

Nobody writes this volume. Every guide on family court 

proceedings tells you how to prepare your documents and 

conduct yourself in hearings. None of them tell you what 

happens to you while you are doing it.

Family litigation destroys people. Businesses, 

relationships, health, finances. It does so slowly and 

systematically — not because the system is malicious, but 

because sustained high-stakes conflict is one of the most 

damaging things a human being can endure.

This volume is about surviving it — intact enough to be 

the parent your children need, both during the proceedings 

and after they end.

PART ONE — HOW LITIGATION IS DESIGNED TO EXHAUST YOU

Understanding the mechanism — and how to counter it. 

Including how to identify when the other side is 

deliberately using delay and procedural complexity as a 

weapon, and what to do about it.

PART TWO — PROTECTING YOUR MENTAL HEALTH

This is not weakness. This is strategy. A litigant who 

is not managing their mental health is a worse litigant. 

What actually helps — and what makes it worse.

PART THREE — YOUR FINANCES

Help with fees. Legal aid — who still qualifies. McKenzie 

Friends — how to find a good one. Protecting your 

employment. The costs nobody prepares you for.

PART FOUR — PROTECTING YOUR CHILDREN

The single rule that covers everything — and the ways 

people break it without realising. What "involving the 

children" actually looks like. What children genuinely 

need from you during proceedings.

PART FIVE — THE HIGH-CONFLICT OPPONENT

When the other side is using proceedings as a weapon. 

How to recognise it, document it and present it to the 

court — without matching the conflict.

PART SIX — WHEN TO SETTLE AND WHEN TO FIGHT ON

The hardest decision in litigation. The framework for 

making it — and why the good enough outcome is sometimes 

better than the hearing you might win.

WHAT YOU GET:

✓ The survival guide nobody else has written

✓ Written by a qualified solicitor (non-practising) who 

 has been a litigant in person himself

✓ PDF — instant download, lifetime access

✓ Volume 3 of The Family Court Playbook series

Prepared litigants win cases. Expensive ones just cost more.

Also available: Volume 1 (What Nobody Tells You) and 

Volume 2 (Strategy & Psychology). Buy all three together 

and save £8 — The Complete Family Court Playbook.

For educational purposes only. Not legal advice.

Eugene Pienaar is a non-practising Solicitor of the 

Supreme Court of England and Wales.