Over a month after the publication of Jill Duggar Dillard’s latest slice of authorship, the memoir Counting the Cost, it doesn’t appear as if the rifts between the former reality TV star and her famous father are going away anytime soon, even if she would be welcome to the idea of potentially squashing their beef in time. The autobiographical work kicked up quite a bit of dust with its claims that the family patriarch and matriarch Jim Bob and Michelle treated her worse than her “pedophile” brother Josh, but it was hardly the extent of the negative treatment she’s talked about dealing with for much of her life. And now she’s opened up about things getting testy enough that her husband Derick Dillard had to threaten legal action.
For all the strife that’s been at the core of the Duggar family in recent years, Josh Duggar’s arrest and conviction have seemingly been the extent of the family relying on the law to handle their problems. But it sounds like there was at least a looming warning that such an outcome was possible, according to Jill Duggar Dillard. She appeared on the podcast Vulnerable to talk with host Christy Carlson Romano about her memoir and the family history that inspired its text. The 32-year-old discussed how she and Derick first got together under the watchful eyes of her father, and when asked about her hubby’s current relationship with Jim Bob, Jill answered with:
So it used to be really great. And I think Derick trusted my dad, and my dad trusted him. But then once we started having some differences and saying things that — we weren't falling in line with everything — it got a little rocky there, to the point where Derick had to have some really hard conversations with my dad. And more recently, to the point where he was standing up to protect me, and say like, 'This is not okay, the way you're treating your daughter.' So I think my dad got the picture when Derick was telling him basically, 'If you keep contacting her directly, then I will have to file a protective order. He's an attorney, so yeah.
It’s unclear exactly what kind of timeline Jill is referring to by saying this convo between Derick and Jim Bob happened “more recently,” but it feasibly could have happened at any point in the past few years, with the younger married couple having made strides to distance themselves from the bulk of the clan back in 2020. But it certainly could have been in the past year, as various Duggar family members were thrust back into the spotlight with the release of the docuseries Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets (available to stream with an Amazon Prime subscription), which Jim Bob and Michelle spoke out against.
Whatever the time frame, it sounds like Derick Dillard was not happy about his father-in-law’s attempts to reach out to his daughter, which would imply that said attempts were a bit more involved than just catching up over a cup of coffee. Regardless of the reasoning, the threat was made, and that may have been the last bit of noteworthy communication between the two families.
Jill Duggar Dillard continued, saying there’s a world in which relationships can be rekindled, even if they’re not at that point just yet. In her words:
So that's kind of where their relationship is right now, but we hope for the future that things can get better, but we're not rushing things either with my family. We want there to be good relationships. We want there to be trust.
Who knows if time will heal all wounds within the Duggar family? It may require at least a full year without any bombshell-dropping docuseries or memoirs being released to the public. And it’s not just her parents that Jill hasn’t been communicating with regularly. Following the release of her memoir, she also opened up about where things are with the currently imprisoned brother Josh, and said she attempted to send him a handmade Christmas card near the end of 2022, but it was sent back, which she took to mean he’d rejected the card outright.
Though Counting On was canceled in 2021 after 11 seasons — with Jill and Derick Dillard having left the series back in 2017 — but repeats can be streamed on Discovery+, while the memoir Counting the Cost is available for purchase from all major retailers.
