Thomas Marks
Lawyer
welcome everybody to a new issue of Seasons EB and flow I am very excited again today to be interviewing Thomas Marx he’s been with us before to talk about collaborative divorce and today we’re going to ask him a few questions about just the nuts and bolts process steps because sometimes people don’t get that much information from their lawyers or they’re waiting on information and they just want to know kind of like what are some of the steps what does it mean once one thing has happened so I’m first just going to let Thomas tell us a little bit about his practice and his background okay thank you Lee I appreciate it um always enjoy being on your show your YouTube channel um so let’s see I’ve been practicing coming on 39 years believe it or not I started my firm March first next year will be um 33 years ago that I started uh the Marx Law Firm we are located at 733 North Magnolia Avenue uh Orlando downtown orando Orlando uh I do uh exclusively family law uh have three Associates uh that all do family law and so that’s what we specialize in um yeah I enjoy the practice um believe it or not I know a lot of family law attorneys may not enjoy it but we’re very selective on the clients that we take and so we’re um we make sure that we represent good people because we want to do good work for good people and and so yeah I enjoyed I do a lot of collaborative
but I also do litigation so um I know how to do both so that I think that’s what we’re going to talk about today it’s the litigation aspect of it yes all right thank you well yeah I think it’s interesting it’s must be nice to be able to be selective and choose clients that you think are going to participate and be respectful to you their exes the process makes a big difference it really does and in um how you practice because you know good clients refer good people they give Google reviews bad clients refer bad clients and don’t give Google reviews so um yeah we’ve been very successful in in representing good clients and it it’s made the practice that so much better yeah wonderful all right so to get right into some of the questions um when one person files for divorce or let’s say one person hires an attorney and that attorney submits the documentation to start the process what are kind of the things that happen once that attorney has filed for divorce okay so let’s assume that the client has been served with the petition for dissolution of marriage that’s what’s filed by the other spouse in the court and so that starts the time clock ticking um the recipient of the pleading the petition uh has 20 days to respond uh in writing to the clerk of the court if they don’t file a what we call a responsive pleading which could be an answer it could be a motion to dismiss could be a number of things but if they don’t f something with the clerk within the 20 days then the clerk can default them the other attorney can file a motion for default with the clerk and it’s default centered and it’s it’s going to be a big problem for the client so they have to make sure they get something filed with the clerk within 20 days even if they just get anything filed then the clerk’s not going to be able to file or enter a default and then the other attorney would have to file a motion to get a hearing with the the judge and notify the the um the party that was served so the party that was served would at least get an opportunity to R retain an attorney to defend that or to file their answer before the hearing okay so I guess if that person who was served doesn’t have an attorney yet they can go to the courthouse and have them maybe help them respond if they don’t have time to hire an attorney I mean 20 days is a good amount of time yeah um the clerks unless the um the recipient of the of the petition unless they’re like um not able to afford an attorney and they apply for IND Indy sorry that’s the hard work for me yeah Status that they can’t afford an attorney I don’t know um if the clerk is really going to help them very much yeah it’s really better for them to at least have a consult with an attorney so the attorney can advise them and say you need to follow an answer or this is not a proper pleading so follow a motion to dismiss or something like that but get get something filed within the 20 days okay and is the 20 days specific to Florida like does each state have a different timeline so I licensed to practice in Florida I’m not um permitted to give legal advice regarding other states so I can only talk about Florida Florida okay no that’s fine that’s helpful um now when I got served and it was like the traditional like knock on your door here’s your papers and I didn’t even know that he’d hired an attorney so it’s kind of like very shocking and we had planned to do an AM ible divorce so that wasn’t kind of what I was anticipating uh but since then I learned that it’s possible to not have someone be like served like that where like you can have a letter or they notifi what are the options so that you don’t have to have that very kind of antagonistic start yeah and I really so if a if a client comes in to see me and they’re considering divorce or they think their spouse is I can call the other attorney and tell them we’ll accept service for the client so then there’s no need for a process server to hunt down the client or embarrass them at work or in the community or at home yeah because I the attorney can accept the service for the client a letter from the other attorney to the client is not sufficient to start the process it either has to be a process server handing the client or leaving uh with somebody in the house or the attorney accepting service okay okay that’s good to know um what I mean this might be kind of out of your scope but like let’s say a couple wants to try to hire a mediator first and see if they can how far even they can get through the process does the mediator then do the filing for both parties and kind of manage that or do they have to figure that out on their own yeah okay so that’s a good question actually um that’s that’s an option that I’ll discuss with clients when they come in that they uh could go let’s say the wife comes in to see me and they say it’s going to be amicable and they want to do it inexpensively then they the husband and wife could go to the mediator and the mediator could help them Reach an agreement now mediators are not allowed to give legal advice even if they’re an attorney uh because of their rules so the mediator is just helping the two parties so what I might tell my potential client is well you could go to a mediator work out the details of the settlement agreement either a parenting plan or marital settlement agreement or vote right um and then you could put in the agreement subject to my attorney’s approval within five days or something like that then or 10 days so then they can come I can look it over for them and go okay yep yep yep yep it looks good or this is really not good I’ve seen too many cases where people have given away the farm out of mediation because they weren’t represented or they trusted their other spouse who maybe didn’t disclose everything on the financial affidavit or didn’t produce all the documents and I could tell you horror stories about that but um but before they go to mediation they have to ex they really they really need to exchange financial affidavit so they can see uh what each other has and there’s something called mandatory disclosure basic uh bank statements you know savings uh checking credit card statements uh Deeds things like that so they know what they’re dealing with before they go to the mediation But to answer your question the mediator will not then do the filing for them they have to go to then a f one of them has to still file the petition for dissolution of marriage and there there’s a lot of forms we have there can be an acceptance of service at one time so there’s no service there’s an answer and waiver there can be a declination of counsel a lot of different forms and then you pay the filing fee and it’s filed and then you file the marital settlement agreement or the parenting plan and then you still have to do the fin uh the final judgment and there’s a checklist the court wants you to fill out to depending on which county it is so there’s still a lot to be done even after they have the settlement agreement signed yes okay that’s really helpful so coming back to the financial affidavit part I have some clients who have attorneys and uh the one spouse is not providing all the documentation for the financial affidavit and the you know there’s been a motion to request in 28 days that was their state and still nothing like what are the options that a lawyer would have if they’re not getting the documentation like do they end up just having to do Court hearings or what are the steps that you would do if your opposing Council and their client are not providing what’s necessary yeah okay so the first thing I would do is pick up the phone and call the opposing Council and if they know what they’re doing I’m going to tell them hey you know that the financial affidavit is mandatory it has to be produced and if your client doesn’t doesn’t produce it we’re going to file a motion for contempt and seek attorney’s fees and it’s going to make your client look bad and it’s going to make you look bad so why don’t we avoid all that and let’s work together and get it done because there’s no upside to you or your client to not produce it yeah and 99% of the time they produce it because they know they have to I have had some occasions over the last 38 and a half years where the attorney on the other side says we’re not going to produce it I file a motion for contempt the judge enters an order granting it um and then I actually had one where the attorney or the other side produced it then but it was blank and signed and I’m like okay this is not in compliance with the judge said and we had a second hearing the judge was very angry at the attorney and uh it just it was not good for them so it makes no sense not to produce the financial affidavit has to be produced unless the parties agree there is a form now that you can wave it um I don’t really like that because I say the financial affidavit is the most important document the most important Financial document in the case and there’s no statute of limitations on a fraudulent financial affidavit so if your spouse gives you a financial affidavit and it says I have these assets and these Debs and they they leave assets off then if you find out a year later 10 years later um there’s no fin there’s no uh statute limitations you can bring it up and I’ve done that so um every case is unique um but but I like that because the financial affidavit is sworn to under oath oh it has to be accurate yeah so even if the marriage settlement agreement says everything in here is final nothing you know alimony won’t be changed but if they realize down the road that something on the financial affidavit was left out you can bring it back even though the settlement agreement says this is final because there was not honest information for the decisions yeah if the judge determines that it was quote fraud on the court so um like I had a case where uh representing the wife the husband was a very successful businessman of a multinational corporation and he said um he didn’t have any stock options and then she having you know a glass of wine with her girlfriends later on Whose husbands worked there and they all these stock options came in and they were giddy like how much all their husbands were get and her husband was the B former husband now was the their boss so she knew he had to have gotten a bigger stock option yes we had to go back in the judge held that it was fraud and he had to pay my attorney’s fees he had to pay her half of those stock options wow and so in that case those stock options were a marital asset that are split 5050 or negotiation of some split yeah if they’re a marital asset then because Florida is an equitable distribution state Equity means fairness yeah and it’s determined starting point is a 50-50 split of all marital assets and debts so just to Define that for you a marital asset or a marital debt is anything that was earned or accumulated in the terms of an asset as of the date of the marriage so let’s say he got married January 1st 2000 anything they earned or accumulated after that there are some exceptions like an inheritance that is kept separate or something like that or any debts they incurred after January 1st 2000 um are considered marital unless they’re always in the law exceptions unless it was for marital waste or illegal or something like that um so oh and it’s from the date of marriage to the date of filing the petition once that petition is filed those are the two bookends for what is what inside of those two is what’s marital okay so if some uh if someone is deciding when to file that and they uh knowing that all the assets really end when the f F in they have to be aware of that yeah and I’m going to a lot of people ask you know is the data filing the petition for dissolution of marriage an important date and I always say yes because it affects a lot of things um if you’re concerned that your spouse is out there running up a lot of debt well you want to cut that off so debt they run up after the data filing would arguably be all their data 100% um and if like if the husband well stereotypically if the husband’s going to pay alimony and under Florida law we have short-term medium-term and long-term alimony cases meaning less than 10 years 10 to 20 more than 20 um and the husband let’s say they’ve been married 19 years he may want to file before the 20th year because after 20 years he’s going to have a longer amount of Alamo under the durational alimony formula yes yeah I think when we got divorced the long-term marriage was 17 years I guess it changed over time yeah it changed with the new statute so I know this may be beyond the scope and
I’m sorry if I’m talking too much no this is wonderful the legislature changed uh a bunch of stuff um there’s no longer permanent periodic gony that’s been done away with in Florida durational alamy changed like you said long term used to be more than 17 now it’s more than 20 um and now we have a formula for durational alimony which we never had before and it’s basically the difference in the uh husband and wife’s incom their net incomes so if he makes 10,000 a month net and she makes 2,000 a month net there’s a difference of eight and then it’s 35% of the difference so it makes it a lot easier because it used to be very subjective I don’t know if that in your case but it yeah there’s still five types of alimony in Florida durational is not the only type you have temporary you have bridge the gap you have um rehabilitative um you have lump sum and you have durational okay okay that’s interesting yeah maybe on a future call we can Define what each of those are yeah be happy to yeah what about um you know let’s say they file and they are living separately at that time and there’s no agreement for like temporary help um like in my case there wasn’t an agreement and um I just kind of like sold stuff to make it to me mediation like I was living on nothing but my lawyer didn’t say anything about temporary and someone mentioned it to me and but then it sounded like I would have to go to court for a hearing that’s and that didn’t sound appealing and I was like I think I can just make it to mediation but like what what do you recommend to your clients in situations like that yeah so obviously it depends dep on the specific circumstance of each client um so generally um in Central Florida all the counties pretty much require that the parties go to mediation before you have a hearing yeah the reason for that is somewhere uh around 80% of cases are going to settle at mediation and the judges you know so if the judge has and they have more than this but let’s say they have a thousand cases well 800 of them are going to settled so they only have to deal with 200 so judges love mediation yes that’s number one um so yes um unless the parties can agree then the Court’s going to have to make the decision so before you go to court you have what I call de facto it’s just the facts whether it’s can we can the parties put together a temporary time sharing schedule for the children or will they uh payor spouse typically the husband not always um will he agree to give her a certain amount of temporary alimony uh temporary spousal support the good thing about um the datea filing also is that um there’s a an administrative order that goes into effect it get served with the petition for dissol of marriage and it says You must maintain the status quo you cannot drop your spouse from insurance you can’t take her off the bank accounts you can’t drop her credit cards you know um you have to continue to pay everything that you have historically paid so that it maintains the status quo until you either get to mediation or resolve it or you get into court on a temporary relief hearing and that’s where if the mediation does not settle then you go to court for temporary relief hearing for anything from temporary alimony temporary child support temporary exclusive use and possession of the marital home temporary time sharing I mean could be a lot of things yeah okay so they’re not supposed to take the the person not to take their spouse off like the joint bank account like all of that supposed to stay in place until mediation yeah so sometimes um spouses try to be tricky and this is what you call divorce planning and they know they find out from their attorney oh there’s just going to be this administrative order you can’t once you file you can’t close that blah blah blah so they go in the day before or the week before they close all the joint bank accounts they cancel the wife’s credit cards I mean I may have just had a case come in today that just hired me that that happened so and we’re determining whether he did that after he got served with the papers or after he was aware of the filing or before and we think it was after so he’s we’re going to follow a motion for contempt okay so the steps like when you for example this is a perfect example file a motion for contempt then his lawyer gets notified from the courthouse well when you file the motion for contempt everything’s e filed now right electronically so opposing councils on the electronic filing so they get the motion okay the court gets the motion the clerk gets the motion you uh then have to this very get gets a little bit in the weeds I’m sorry but you have to like do what’s known as a meet and confer with opposing Council to coordinate the hearing date again you have to wait until after you’ve been a mediation you have the hearing and then you go in and tell the judge um what happened and if the other spouse closed everything after they got filed after the case was filed then the that spouse is going to be in trouble the judge is going to order them to put everything back they’re going to probably order them to pay my attorney’s fees and it’s going to Prejudice the judge against the person who did that so I would never advise my clients to do that because the judge is going to make the ultimate decision you do not want the judge to be predisposed against you right so if you have a situation like that and the judge now is annoyed maybe that incentivizes them to finish in mediation with the recognition that now the judge it’s not too impressed with you with that that person so maybe if like your client gives her leverage and mediation to be like you don’t want to go back in front of the judge yeah I’m definitely going to file the motion so the other side knows we’ve got it pending like I’ve got a mediation tomorrow morning I have uh a motion for attorney’s fee scheduled for hearing um on Tuesday next week and they know it’s pending so I am applying some additional pressure on them to to resolve the case gotcha so they can let’s say there’s a pending motion with a date to meet in court if they want to avoid that court date they just then Supply or agree to what the motion was and then it kind of makes the motion go away or you remove that motion once they’ve participated in what you were asking yeah so if you go to mediation and you settle the issues that were pending with the motion uh then there’s no reason to go to the hearing you’ve settled the case and typically in mediation when you enter into a settlement agreement it’s going to say that this settles all of the issues or sometimes you do have a partial settlement and you reserve on the issues that were not agreed upon you can reserve on like alimony you can reserve on attorney’s fees I always say those are the two A’s people hate to pay alamon and attorney fees yes um okay what about um a situ ation where like one of the spouses owns a business and trying to like valuate value the business is a whole huge process they could do all of mediation for everything else and kind of table that if that’s taking longer yeah that’s that is true um if you depending on the complexity and the size of the business and whether it’s personal good goodwi or Enterprise Goodwill whatever um you may need to have a financial expert do a business valuation um there are abbreviated uh business valuations that are less expensive and then there are full-blown ones that are very expensive so uh we try to do the abbreviated ones and um you know that’s fairly common okay um let me see
so let’s oh two things you said let’s say there’s a hearing or a motion with a hearing date and the goal is to then agree in mediation but what if getting a mediation date like it seems like mediation dates are always like two months out from some of these situations what are the options to to try and like get them resolved before the it has to have the hearing date if mediation is kind of still further out yeah so I think it’s really important to try to communicate with opposing Council and work together um honestly I think most attorneys are willing to do that you do have your Exceptions there are some attorneys that are very difficult and you know who they are if you’ve done it a lot and you’re experienced enough to know you’re going to beat your head against a brick wall so if they’re trying to push the mediation way out for whatever game playing or whatever I don’t know but um I will if I have to I’ll follow motion with the court to compel mediation um because they’re delaying it so okay yeah so some attorneys will say I’m not available for mediation for three or four months I’m like yeah that’s not going to work yeah um but most most lawyers will get a mediation within a month or two it’s unfortunate that it yeah can sometimes take a while to get a mediation yeah so what if like the the situation is you need that temporary agreement for support or something but mediation a month out can that be done just between the lawyers if yeah it can definitely um again if you have two lawyers that are halfway decent and willing to work together but reality is none of the credit cards should have been cancelled access to the joint bank accounts should still be there um access checking savings uh money market whatever should all still be there yeah the administrative order says that um each part is allowed to take monies from those for ordinary living expenses not extraordinary you can’t go out and buy new car or a boat right but it also allows you to take it out to pay your attorney’s fees too okay interesting um what like for a judge like what we were saying what you were just saying like some attorneys are just difficult or they want to drag it out and you know because you’re part of the community but like our judges I guess they also are very in touch with are they aware and how do they handle lawyers who are dragging it out or make it difficult to get to resolution yeah um I think judges are smart and I think judges talk and they know who are the I think mostly know who are the attorneys that are willing to work on things and get them done and who are they turn into or not judges um appreciate attorneys that resolve things and don’t clog their court with unnecessary motions so if if if you go in on a motion for contempt and it’s clear the other side Clos the bank accounts after they got served it’s not going to go well honestly um for that person if the judge decides that they have violated the administrative order so there’s really no upside to that um and again most attorneys realize that and they want to get things resolved and um I really like to try to work things out with other attorneys I have a lot of cases where I actually recommend to the client that we do like a um an informal settlement conference if I know it’s a good attorney on the other side and just the four of us can meet or we can exchange uh parenting plans or marital settlement agreements and get it done even without a mediation we can get it done before a mediation really yeah I have a couple of those now going on that’s wonderful because yeah that saves everybody a lot of money because you know mediations are expensive you’re paying your attorney the other attorney’s getting paid the mediator’s getting paid you got to pay you know for all these expenses and it’s just you know sometimes it has to go to mediation um some sometimes they have to go to court unfortunately yeah um the documentation that needs to be supplied like the bank statements what if uh the credit card statement sometimes it seems like that is something that in contentious cases they’re they’re just not providing and even when a motion has been put in place I guess until they go to court under contempt like there is n much else that can be done if they’re just not providing that yeah so if they don’t provide it you have to file a motion go to court if the judge orders them to produce it and they don’t now if you go back in again and they didn’t produce what the judge ordered them to the judge has the ability to put them in jail wow okay and judges like to say that there’s no greater motivation than somebody spending like you know the night down at 33rd Street Stockade and it’s not a fun time so most people I’ve been in hearings before when yeah that’s been ordered and everything gets provided liquidity split at that point typically yeah oh wow I didn’t realize that was even an option but that’s yeah judges have contemp Powers okay that’s really uh good to know um trying to think uh if there’s anything else that I had thought of that
um that I didn’t ask um oh what about like if it’s a pretty contentious case and then the lawyer says they want to do a deposition is that more of like an intimidation tactic like before mediation happens well well it depends on the complexity of the case and what the issues are um if I it it depends I typically you know sometimes more rarely I’ll do a deposition before mediation but I’ll certainly do a deposition before trial or before a a very complex evidentiary hearing because you want to know what the answers are going to be when you ask the questions before so um I wouldn’t do it for intimidation I don’t think most L lawyers were you do it to tie down what the other side’s going to say and to learn uh facts about the case and about assets what happened to things and issues maybe regarding the children so um depositions are expensive but they can be very valuable okay so if things are going towards Court that’s kind of when they become pral typically yes yeah and a lot of these things that I’m saying are obviously fact dependent on the specific case and N none of what I said is supposed to be considered legal advice to any specific client or potential client it’s um you know generally these are what happen in these cases legally and from my experience generally what I see happen yeah no of course um one other last question for time frame from divorce since you do both litigation and collaborative do you find that collaborative moves faster than a typical litigation or is it really just case dependent well I think it is case dependent however I can say that um I think that typically collaborative moves more quickly I’ve had collaborative cases settle after the SEC at the second meeting so we met got everything together agreed on everything we met for the second meeting hammered it out and signed the agreement so I think you know it can get done within maybe 60 days because everybody’s voluntarily getting everything to the financial neutral and the mental health neutral and they’re putting together the equitable distribution worksheet the alimony an analysis uh child sport guidelines uh the maral settlement agreement and the uh mental health neutrals putting together the parenting plan come together get it done I think typically um collaborative cases three to five meetings two is the shortest I’ve seen um whereas litigation again depends on is it going to settle at mediation or is it going to be contested if it fails that mediation becomes contested and then you’re moving toward trial and and then go going to trial is going to be longer it’s gonna be way more expensive yes typically yeah yeah okay this was like so helpful and informative I really really appreciate you taking the time and uh I it’s nice always to have you join us and I’m glad it it was helpful um sometimes I wonder if I give too much information because there just too much going on but hopefully this has been helpful yeah I think more information than less is always helpful for what I find is clients are just a little bit in the dark a lot of times I think lawyers they know all of it so they just assume it’s you know self-explanatory or they just don’t have time to explain some of these BAS basic things to their clients and so the clients are just they just get little tidbits of what’s going on and just sometimes they just want more information so I think at least something like this gives them a better big picture of what takes yeah I think information is power and and I think um letting the client know more rather than less is helpful and it and letting them know what the next steps are or what to anticipate um helps lower their stress level helps them kind of visualize picture what could happen and nobody knows exactly everything that’s going to happen but you can give them essentially the parameters of what’s going to happen in a case typically and um I think I find clients to be very appreciative of that yeah oh absolutely I think I think that’s a sign that you’re a good lawyer cuz you actually are putting yourself in your client’s shoes and recognizing how helpful that is yeah I just realize how horrific it is for so many people who go through divorce because nobody gets married typically planning on divorce they they hope and plan and pray for a lifetime of marriage with their partner and all their dreams and hopes come crashing down sometimes so it’s it’s hard I think it’s important like you’re doing a great job for clients because you can help walk them through the process and the emotional issues and so forth and I think it’s a good thing for clients to have uh a therapist too when they’re going through a divorce uh to help them you know manage a lot of the anxiety stress emotions and things like that and helps us you know I know my letterhead says attorneys and counselors at law um we end up doing a fair amount of counseling not that we don’t we’re not you know licensed mental health therapists but when you’ve done family law long enough you realize there’s a lot of it’s It’s there’s a lot of psychology and emotion that go on in a family law absolutely yeah and that’s the thing like I always encourage my clients to have a therapist and use their lawyer for lawyering and have a divorce coach for the emotional because my billing rate’s a lot less than any lawyers but yeah I think it’s inevitable that the lawyers are going to have to like sometimes talk their clients down or calm them down and uh I think having an empathetic lawyer is probably very beneficial yeah I hope so I think so yeah all right well thank you so much and until next time have a wonderful holiday season and I will see you on the backside okay well enjoyed being on your show thank you so much Lee appreciate it thank you I’ll see you soon okay all right bye
good morning everybody welcome back to another season another episode of Seasons Evan flow I am Lee Wright I’m a divorce coach and today’s interview I talking with Jackie Otero she is a mediator and we are going to be talking a little bit about mediation and how she works with her clients and uh the benefits of working with a mediator and we’re also going to talk to her a little bit about her personal experience going through her divorce and some of the takeaways that she tries to help her clients some of the speed bumps not make some of those mistakes and just the lessons learned so uh I’m just going to first turn it over to Jackie thank you so much for joining me and uh if you want to just tell everybody a little bit about what you do great well thank you for having me Lee um so yes I’m a I’m a certified family mediator through the Florida Supreme Court so I have my own solo practice it’s called quartertone mediation and I’m based in Winter Park Florida but I do virtual mediations for the whole state of Florida uh and I do everything on Zoom so this is kind of my world this is my office [Laughter] so I can help anybody in any County in Florida and uh yeah I opened my business almost a year ago I’m almost at my one-year anniversary so it’s a field that is new to me but conflict resolution is not new to me that’s something that I’ve been doing for a really long time so I actually started off um in higher education I’ve worked in higher education for the last 17 years and one of the most recent jobs that I had I was the conduct officer for a college and so all of the conduct issues came to me for resolution so as you can imagine talking with students and staff and faculty all the time about issues that come up and you think about people who are in college you know it’s not just about behavioral issues because you know in school you think about behavioral issues with maybe younger kids but in college you think about all the mental health issues that people are going through and you know a lot of people in college especially in the colleges I’ve worked at they’re adults they have families they have jobs and they’re in school so they’re juggling so much and sometimes people reach a Breaking Point and then they end up having to go to a conduct meeting to talk about how to correct that and the approach that I took was always one of trying to just restore them back to a good place not just penalize them so I had a lot of practice with conflict resolution there before moving into family media
a so what Drew you to decide to become a mediator yeah there were a few moments I think that stick out in my head so when I was the director of a business program I actually had several attorneys that worked for me because we taught law classes and I had two attorneys in particular that told me that I was good at conflict resolution and that I should consider being a mediator and it’s like it’s an attorney that you respect and they tell you something like that it just kind of got filed in the back of my mind one was actually a friend of mine who was going through a divorce and she was unsuccessful in her mediation and it was the holidays this was a couple years ago and you know I knew both people in the couple and it was just like it was paining me to see them arguing just over everything over the holidays and they were it was just like ruining their h holidays yeah offered to talk to both of them just informally I was like well how just try to talk to both of you because I had a good relationship with both of them and I ended up just having individual conversations and kind of helping them see that they weren’t very far apart from what both wanted they just could not communicate with each other and so this friend of mine is an attorney and I kind of helped with that situation and she told me you know you should be a mediator and then another attorney who worked for me and who was a professor um I helped resolve a student issue for her one time she had a just a student that was being super difficult in class very argumentative very combative and I got on the phone with a student and I had this wonderful conversation with her and it all came up about her insecurities and her anxiety over going back to school and it was all this internal stuff that she was botling up and she just needed somebody to listen to her and talk through that and at the end that phone call she sent an apology email to the professor wow and the professor calls me and said what did you say to her and said she told me in that phone call she said this is during covid so we were all working remotely she said you should teach conflict resolution so it was those like two people telling me that yes just filed it away in the back of my mind that I was interested in being a mediator and and I filed my own divorce my divorce was about 7even years ago and I was a corporate pargal like 20 years ago and so I’m pretty comfortable with legal paperwork so when I was ready to file my own divorce I just did all the paperwork myself and went down to the courthouse and filed it and I became the default friend that people came to when they were getting a divorce to be like how did you do that yes so that was kind of the other impetus just going through it myself and then also having the professional practice of conflict resolution it just seemed like a really natural way to bring it together absolutely so since you filed your own divorce um can you tell us some of the lessons that you learned along the way from that experience because there are lots of people who consider that and then are just like dear in headlights and so yeah just tell us a little bit about that process for you and what you learned sure I and I know when I’ve told people that before when they’ve gone through it themselves they’re like oh you’re crazy I could never do all that and I’m like it’s just papers it’s just a lot of papers you have to go through well I will say in so I got divorced in seminal County I’m in Orange County now but I’ve kind of grown up in Central Florida so these are the counties I’m pretty familiar with seminal county has the best prosay checklist I think so I refer it to everybody even if they’re not in seminal County oh if you’re not familiar with the term prosay that just means represented so you’re not you know represented bu an attorney you’re doing it yourself um so I would anybody who’s in Florida I would recommend that you Google seminal County’s pray checklist it’s about 20 documents and it kind of depends on what kind of divorce you have if you have children if you don’t have children um you know there’s a few kind of routes and there’s also a paternity checklist so if you’re not married but you need you know a parenting plan or you want to file for child support that kind of thing they have these really nice really nice laid out checklists that give you links to the Florida court documents and wow the Florida courts use the same templates for the entire state so they’re not really seminal County specific seminal County just has put it in a really nice list that’s very accessible so I always give that to people um beyond that I mean I literally printed everything notorized it and brought it to the courthouse and handed it to them um but now I would say you know definitely the eiling system is pretty easy to use too don’t be intimidated by it you do still they I know that they do still want you to notorized everything on paper like with actual ink but then after you have it notorized you can scan it and then e file it okay one other so that just saves you the trips to the courthouse so it’s kind of like do you want to spend the time scanning or do you want to just drive to the courthouse exactly exactly I mean for some reason
 I felt a little satisfaction in actually driving to the courthouse and handing it to them and then and then the clerk who you hand it to they’ll actually go through everything and kind of make sure that you got everything so that I liked having that confirmation too I think I would too like I feel like once it’s out out in the E you know also if they say oh this one isn’t filled out like the whole process back and forth it’s just I feel like in person for something like that makes a lot of sense yes and actually Orange County at the courthouse there they have a whole self-help center at their courthouse so you can go there and actually sit down with somebody and they’ll give you the right forms they’ll walk you through everything so that’s a really good resource for people too especially if you do want to go in person and sit down and talk with somebody um and I know that they do attorney consultations there too I believe that you do have to pay for them but they’re very cheap like I think you can sit down with somebody for 15 minutes and it’s a very reasonable fee just to get a little bit of information from somebody right that’s wonderful and I I was going to say one thing that I also learned so when I initially filed I didn’t know that you had to get a summons I thought that I would just file and then hand the paperwork over to my ex because we you know there was no secret he knew we were getting divorced he knew I was filing yeah and so I just thought oh I’ll just hand it to him and then we’ll go from there and I did that I remember handing him the paperwork and you know just saying I’ve I’ve initiated this and here’s what you’ve got to do next because you know whoever files it is the petitioner and then whoever’s responding is the respondent so they have to file a response within a certain amount of time but what I didn’t realize is that clock never started for how much time he had to respond because I never did a summons ah and so he could have taken all the time in the world if he wanted to and then after I found that out I went back to the courthouse then they sent me to the Sheriff’s Office it to me it was very confusing but I did finally have to go to the sheriff and have them actually serve him papers which I felt was so redundant I’m like why do I need to have a sheriff go serve him papers he already has everything but it was like we need it to officially start the clock on the right exactly andÂ
the I do feel like that whole process of having a sheriff bring the paperwork is so uh it creat like this okay you guys are in this possible antagonistic situation I agree like knocking on the door and like you’ve been served when I got mine it was so shocking and unexpected I didn’t even know he’d file like even though we were doing an amicable divorce he’d gotten not the greatest advice I think from his lawyer so um yeah it starts this like feeling of like oh I need a lawyer up and like yes just fear totally it’s all fear-based I agree and I think that that is probably the biggest issue that I see in our divorce system is just there’s so much fear and you know I’m in a lot of divorce groups on online just because I like to chime in and give give my tips and also tell them what I do but it’s amazing how many people as soon as divorce is talked about everybody says lawyer up you better get everything you deserve and you got to know what you’re entitled to and you got to get ready to fight and don’t be afraid to bring them to court and it’s just like everybody’s ready for battle I know it doesn’t have to be that way I’m convinced so I if you could get around like not having that sheriff like serve the paper I learned later that he could have filed a response at the same time as I filed the petition right I could have literally handed him the paper to say check off what your response is yes get that essentially both of you went to the courthouse together or you could have given him the paperwork and he could have gone and done the response at the court housee exactly so when somebody voluntarily you know submits their own response you don’t have to get that summons so that’s when I work with people now I typically work with prosay people who have not yet filed so called pruit pray right pre pre-filing and what I do is I help them get all their agreements together we do a full settlement agreement a parenting plan we’ll do a child support calculation and then I will if they want my help with the other paperwork I can also walk them through how to file the petition and the answer to the petition and then the respondent can actually file a a wave a waiver a waiver of service so they’re basically say nope I got everything I needed everything is settled and they can request the final judgment right there and then if you do it like that then it’s an uncontested divorce so that’s always my goal I’m like if I could start over or if I could advise somebody from the start I would say file an uncontested divorce if you at all can yes and I think some people think that they already have to have everything agreed upon no that like I understand there are always issues that need to be worked out that’s why you can come to a mediator like me and I can help facilitate that conversation and we don’t always settle in one session I mean that’s not always realistic sometimes it takes multiple sessions over a little bit of time to help resolve all the issues yes I’ll say one more thing while I’m on this train of thought the other thing you can do is you can also file a partial agreement when you file for divorce and that was one thing I also didn’t know so you don’t necessarily have to have a full agreement on all issues let’s say I have a client and they agree on everything except for two things like they’re not agreeing on what school zone to use and they’re not agreeing on international travel because those are a couple of issues that come up so let’s say everything else is settled I’ll write up a full well not a full I’ll write up a partial agreement um we’ll do everything they can file that and then they can ask the judge basically just to uh rule on those two things so they don’t have to go through a full trial they can just have a hearing and the judge might ask some questions and usually the judge will try to get them to agree to something even in a hearing right before they make a ruling on their behalf but I mean that can be another good way to do it so it’s it’s not quite an uncontested divorce but it’s a at least a partial agreement that that gets you a long way still through the court system yeah absolutely and if you can avoid trial in any way avoid it like that to me that’s the last straw that is like the final thing that you do when there’s just no other option left because I have sat in on divorce trials thankfully I didn’t have to do one myself but I have in on some and it is so painful the I can’t even imagine know the level of detail that is scrutinized for for each person every parenting decision every text message just it’s a brutal process not to mention super expensive yeah so try everything before you say you want to go to trial absolutely I didn’t know that you could have a judge just help you with like one or two things that’s really interesting like we finished everything in one long mediation session but I look back and our lawyers were sitting there all through mediation and it was so unnecessary the mediator worked with each of us very well she was uh a very experienced mediator and uh his attorney was giving him a lot of just encouraging him to go to court so not not an effective attorney so but if you’ve a good mediator I just think back and I’m like how much money we spent to have the lawyers sit there and do almost nothing and yeah I oh go ahead I love when I have clients who come to me before they’ve hired any professionals so that I can educate them about hiring a mediator and maybe having Consulting attorneys or learning about collaborative divorce before they hire an attorney because some of these attorneys some are wonderful and some really like fuel the fire and create that very antagonistic system and once it started and it starts to snowball backpedaling from that is so hard yes I agree so in my experience even though I did start the process myself my ex-husband did get an attorney and so once he had an attorney I actually got a very scary letter from his attorney um and it was sort of asking for everything in the Moon it was like oh he’s going to go for full custody and U child support and alimony and all these things it was basically like every possible thing that could be fought for that was in the letter and I was like so freaked out by it yes that I went and talked to an attorney and I was like well I’m I’m not going to go up against a family attorney when I don’t I’ve never done this I don’t know this system so I did end up having to get an attorney but then we did settle in one mediation kind of like you it was long one long mediation and you have to pay your attorney to sit there you got to pay the mediator so it’s a very expensive session very and but I was thankful that my attorney her whole goal was to keep me out of court and keep me out of so I appreciated that she was like she was kind of my reality check of like if I don’t agree to this at what level then will I agree to it later on after spending way more money or you know so she was good at giving me like a healthy reality check of like this is why you probably want to settle now even though it’s not exactly what you want because it’s going to be worse and more expensive down the road so I feel like I kind of saw both sides I did the prosay beginning and then I did the mediation with attorneys um I mean if there’s ever an attorney that’s encouraging you to go to trial right off the bat I just feel like that’s a huge red flag oh for sure and I recommend people go to attorneys all the time because there’s definitely a time and a place for attorneys but not every case needs them absolutely the people that tend to find me tend to want to stay out of court and they want to settle yes so I’m like nobody really just seeks out a private mediator before a divorce unless they want to settle like they’re very motivated to settle and get everything done yeah and I’m like if you don’t want to settle then don’t come to me right like go hire a lawyer and start Gathering your evidence right so I think there’s you know it’s a time in a place and every case is different um but before I have anybody sign an agreement I always recommend that they have an attorney look it over yeah I agree this is a legal document it’s G to govern your life for a long time you know at least get a consultation have somebody take a look at it and I felt in my mediation I was very pressured to sign sign sign like there in that session in that room in that physical room together and it was like if you don’t sign now and I’ve had other mediators tell me oh I never leave the room without a signature and I’m like I don’t do that but I also you know since I work with self-represented people too I want them to feel like they have time to go get a consultation to go have it looked over the second opinion I’d rather them take time and really think about it even if there are a couple more issues that we’ve got to work out after the fact right and pressure them to sign right there and then they feel awful about it afterwards yeah yeah I I see both sides we didn’t sign right there there were a few open-ended items but his lawyer who I think was so frustrated that we were working together because I think he just wanted us to go to court the the another thing I feel like is I think unfortunately my ex hired someone who advertised kind of like I can ensure you won’t have to pay alimony or anything and that’s really dependent on the situation but if you hire someone who says across the board I can guarantee this for you like they that’s false advertising and so one he was not well prepared by his lawyer when he got into mediation which put him kind of on like clueless waters you know he just didn’t have any knowledge so it wasn’t it didn’t set him up for success in mediation and so I feel like the type of professional you hire is really important from the get-go to set the tone but also to educate you in the right way because they could encourage you to go to court and then you go to court and you find out that everything that you disagreed with in mediation the judge is going to say that that makes sense so you want to hire professionals if you are using attorneys who are going to set you up for Success absolutely and I’ll give you another example when it’s a great time to bring an attorney in so I had some clients where you know we were doing it all pruit and we went through the whole parenting plan and that was that went pretty well but I think they both knew things were going to get real sticky with the finances so we did the parenting plan in one session it took I think a little over three hours and we got that done and then I started kind of setting an agenda for the next session just so I knew kind of what we were walking into and I always ask you know what are the major issues that you’d like to resolve for the next session just so I can get an idea of where we’re going yeah I knew that alimony was part of the discussion because they had both brought it up but both had no idea where to start it was like one didn’t know what to ask for the other one didn’t know what to expect to pay and you could tell that they just both felt very nervous about that conversation yeah and so we ended up taking a two week break between mediation sessions and I said I want you both to go consult with an attorney and I want you to ask all the questions that you have about alimony and I want you to think of what would be a starting point for that conversation because part of the mediator ethics and guidelines are that I cannot give legal advice that is one of the pillars of mediation I cannot give them any legal advice so I can’t help them strategize now what I will do and I did for this couple I can pull up the Florida statute like I’ll share my screen and I’ll pull up the alimony statute and I’ll say well let’s look at it together and we can see right there in the statute what it says what the guidelines are you know what’s considered a shortterm versus a long-term marriage you know different terms and percentages that are invol involved um so I can at least inform them but I can’t interpret it for them so I could tell that they just needed somebody to give them some advice before they came back and I think that’s a great time to just pay for a 30 minute or one hour consultation with an attorney you know definitely help get help with your strategy so at least you walk in knowing what maybe your starting point is um because I can’t really give you that starting point that’s that’s a little too much for me to suggest as a mediator um and I ended up taking them in different rooms and just talking to them about so how did your consultation go tell me about that right nice right so if I’m asking them I’m again I’m not strategizing with them I’m just asking them you tell me how did it go what do you thinking about it what would be a good starting point and that’s I got the conversation started with them nice and then you guys were able to come to agreement it’s wonderful yeah I mean I don’t want to jinx it by saying it out loud but so this is my first year of business um in Family Mediation I’ve had 17 clients this year and I have settled 100% so far wonderful knock on wood I want to keep the streak alive but I always say because people who come to me are motivated to settle I don’t think it’s because I have some special technique I think the type of people that come to a prosay mediator before they file divorce they’re motivated to settle yes and if you want to settle and both people do usually we can get there yes yeah I think if both parties are rational knowledgeable like have done some research and like you said looked at the statute aware of how long they’ve been divorced maybe talk to friends who have gone through the process I gathered a lot of information just by pinging different people who I knew who had gone through it I learned a lot and uh yeah I feel like you have to be an advocate for yourself absolutely and even if you have attorneys don’t just rely on them like advocate for yourself I actually have a story about that because I I had that same thought while I was in mediation during my own divorce because that was back in the day when we were still doing all physical mediations I do feel like most of them tend to be virtual now yeah but we were in separate rooms um they put us in separate rooms from the very beginning and we were fairly amicable like we this sounds you know a little weird but like we hugged at the end of mediation yeah I think that’s beautiful like we could have conversations and we wanted the for our kids like there were still good vibes there even though we knew we could not be married anymore but they put us in separate rooms from the very beginning and I kept getting these offers from the other room that I was like I I know this isn’t coming from him I can tell because I’ve I’ve known this man you know 30 years I mean literally I knew my ex-husband since kindergarten yeah so I’m like I know him this is not him this is not what he’s asking for this is his lawyer giving him what I think is strange advice like over the top advice yes so I want to say was like the first two hours of our mediation we did not get anywhere because we were just in SE rooms going back and forth with these weird offers and I asked my attorney and I asked the mediator I said can I just go talk to him and they kind of like had to meet without me and like discuss like are we gonna let her talk to him and they came back to which is so funny I’m like this is a man that I have children with like you know yes I could talk to him but I get it it’s a whole system and so after they consulted with everybody they came back and they said okay you can go talk to him and I just went in the room with him and I said can we just talk for a minute he’s like of course and we just startÂ
talking and I’m like okay I thought we had already agreed that we were going to do it this way and this and he goes yeah that’s right I I agree I’m like so why are we arguing about this and paying two attorneys and a mediator to argue something for us that we don’t need to argue about and he was like I agree and then we finished the rest of the mediation in the same room together good for you that’s I’m use that example because I’m like this is your mediation this is your divorce you’re paying all these people to be here to serve you right so make sure that they are serving you like yes the thing is people again people are so scared about divorce and they’re so intimidated by the whole thing it’s very intimidating walking into your own divorce mediation like a scary thing and I think just out of fear they let the professionals take over totally yeah I can really doesn’t always serve them you know so I’m like you’re the boss of your mediation if something is going the way you want to guess what it’s all voluntary like even if you’re court ordered to mediation you get a check mark if you just show up like you it for going to mediation even if you show up so you can leave at any time you can take a break you don’t have to sign anything like you’re the boss you know yeah like your mediation it’s your mediation you’re the one paying for these people to be here in this room together right and if you if you feel like your professionals are pushing you towards antagonizing like like you said I know this person like I know and you might not be getting along right now but if you feel like they’re being given very bad advice like sometimes just having a conversation with them either before mediation just reminding them the agreements that you made like we’re going to do do this amicably we’re going to prioritize our kids we want to save our co-parenting relationship but I also remind my clients that the like few months that you’re in that like deep divorce where you’re like around mediation time and just after emotions are so RI raised that oh yeah yeah you might not be super amicable or want to be in the same room with that person but those emotions settle over time and that you you will rebuild that co-parenting relationship so be patient like Time Heals as well so totally agree I know people who have done mediation I I have friends who have done mediation I want to say like a eight to nine hour mediation session walking out with zero agreements on anything and then they wait six months and then they go back and they settle so sometimes it’s just exactly what you’re saying emotions are too high like you I know we’ve talked about this before divorce is a business transaction you know and marriage is a legal partnership it’s it’s like starting a business with somebody yeah you know I sayÂ
I always wish that it was just as hard and just as much paperwork to get married as it is to get divorced because you think about like what does it take to get married I think I signed one document I mean yes totally I think there was much more it’s so so easy to get married but it is so hard to untangle it all at the end and so of course it’s easy for us to say this because we’re at a distance from it it’s like oh you’ve got to go in with a level head and you know treat it transaction treat it like a a business deal it never feels that way when you’re in it no I agree like that period of time like basically leading up to deciding to get divorced and then actually starting the process till you’re finally divorced like that is the hardest time you know it is like that being in limbo and mine was quick mine was like six months long so comparatively speaking that’s a quick divorce it felt like years yes I know it does just time slows it’s so stressful it does so and I totally I totally agree with you you know everything does get better over time and I do I do think once you decide to get divorced like I tell people take your time deciding to get divorced like it took me three solid years to make decision it really like I really felt like I had to exhaust every possible option before I settled on that decision but once decided then I’m like then don’t linger don’t let it drag on for years because right then rip off the Band-Aid because let’s get it done I totally agree do you want to tell us us a little bit about because I have clients in that stay orgo phase for a year or two and we just and I remind them it’s okay like this takes this is a big decision do not rush it but do you want to tell us a little bit about your process of how you finally got to that decision over those years yeah um I I mean I do think my situation was a little bit unique I I mentioned that I knew my ex-husband since kindergarten and I was very entwined with his whole family like I love his sister I loved his parents like we just did everything together we knew each other for a long time but he was suffering from addiction and that was the main catalyst of what dissolved our marriage in the end and what I think is so unique about dealing with addiction in the course of a marriage is you just you Fe you love the person obviously and I still have a lot of love for him and I always still felt like he’s a good person even to this day I’m like and he’s still suffering he’s still suffering quite a bit like it’s only gotten worse since we got divorced seven years ago and it’s very sad but it was like I struggled with do I divorce somebody who has an illness yeah you know because when I took my vows I meant them you know and I felt like okay if he had cancer would I be leaving him no of course not I would be like seeing him through that struggle and supporting him and so addiction to me you know it’s not like you’re a bad person because you’re an addict you have an illness and I saw it very close up and it got really bad like I said like the last three years were really really rough he was in and out of rehab he was in and out of AA you know getting sponsors he was he was trying a lot of different things I think it was because I made him do it to be honest I was sort of like you know managing his addiction which is also not a great place to be in which I’ve learned after many years um you know but I was sort of like always kind of trying to be that Catalyst to try to get him better because I was trying to keep our family together you know it’s like I had I had the biggest motivation to do that and it was three years of real deep dark addiction time and in and out of rehab in and out of jobs just big roller coaster yeah I remember I read a book I think it was called should I stay or should I go was like I need a formula I need a calculation to like tell me when is the right time to call this right right and of course like you know and I was going to therapy and everything I was going to individual therapy and you know couples counseling too because I thought we could just work through everything and um I remember reading this book and like kind of making you know Columns of like do I stay do I go you know writing everything down and I still was like I don’t know and I will say what what finally brought me to the point was my house was feeling like it was chaos it felt like my house was utter chaos like I would come home from work and I would not know what I would be walking into my kids were little like they were in let’s see they were in preschool you know going into Elementary School at this time and I think I had to make the decision for them I was like I need them to grow up in a more stable home and even though it’s like you’re trying to stay together because you think that’s a stable family is like a two parent house you know yes but I think I had to come to the recognition that the more stable life for them would be the one parent house that the one un stable parent and so so I think that’s what ultimately did it I was likeÂ
I think my kids need a different environment to grow up in um and I also kind of in my head I gave myself one more round of rehab and sobriety and I told myself I was like I’m gonna do one more round I’m gonna give it one more shot it was leading up to our 10y year wedding anniversary I remember because I was like we’re gonna make it to 10 we’re gonna you know I was like I’m gonna but I was like if we do one more of this roller coaster I’m out and sure enough it happened and we ended up divorced right before 10 year anniversary wow and so it was it was awful it was a really I mean it’s the hardest time of my life but I will I always tell people everything since then has been better it’s like my house is calm I think it’s a great home for my kids unfortunately I don’t have their dad as a co-parent he’s just not able to do it anymore we did try in the beginning to do some co-parenting and some time sharing it just wasn’t it wasn’t Fe so my kids actually just saw him for the first time in two years they saw him a couple weeks ago and they had a nice they had a nice like one hour reunion so it’s like you know we still care about him it’s like we wish him the best but we can’t be in his addiction with him right yeah you can’t enable or that it he has to be able to make whatever changes or choices for him and I had to come to resolution that this is on him like I can’t make him get out of this yeah so we still so hard we still hope someday he’ll come out of it and maybe come back and want to be in their lives again but it’s just you know that’s not where it’s at right now yeah yeah it’s a pro it’s a accepting that and getting your head around that is a process I’m sure I’m sure it’s very difficult to make peace with oh yeah for sure but we’re in a good place you know it’s it’s like we all wish he was better but we also just know it’s it’s not up to us so I think we’re in a place and you know my kids and I they’re in middle school now um we talk very openly about it you know and I tell them I’m like there’s no secrets here if you want to ask me any questions or if you want to know anything just ask yeah we talk very openly about addiction and mental illness and you know alcoholism like we’ve talked about all those topics and I tell you what those were never topics I knew anything about growing up thankfully I’m happy I didn’t have to know about them absolutely but you know I didn’t know anything about this stuff so I feel like my kids of course I wish that they had a dad around who was healthy but man they are going into the world knowing a lot of stuff yes I agree hopefully that serves them hopefully you know it’s like their eyes are more open to world than I think mine never were yeah I 100% relate to that I I came from my parents were together but it wasn’t it wasn’t the healthiest relationship but I had no idea that that was all I knew and I feel like I didn’t understand the complications of marriage of relationships I just saw like oh it’s okay like you just stay together and like that maybe is what marriage looks like and I feel like I was very naive and now I feel like my children understand the gravity of when you decide to marry someone like that is a huge decision and it’s not just because it’s fun and feels good there’s so many other things to consider and uh understanding their household that they grew up in like is that something that you would want your household to look like those were things I never even thought about and we met young I didn’t like we were kind of each other’s first long-term relationship now I’m like to my kids you need to have a few if you you have to take the risk of losing someone if they’re the right person you’ll come back to them but if you meet someone at 15 16 18 like like you need other experiences before you can say this is the person for the rest of my life and so it’s unfortunate that I had to go through those life lessons but now at least I’m giving them the opportunity to learn from the things that I didn’t know oh I give my kids all kinds of unsolicited advice in that area like I have told them I’m like do you want to hear my real perspective on marriage now and they’re like yeah tell us like they’re interested for whatever reason yes and I was like well here’s what I think so I was a sociology major in college I studied culture and society and I remember actually I took a class called the the sociology of heterosexuality and it was about
 how every piece of media you watch from the time you a kid watching Disney movies up to like romcoms it all is programming you to want the same thing and it’s like how many TV series and movies end with a white wedding you know and it’s like that’s the end goal for everybody is to get married and then you can start a family and you can have this whole life right so it’s like it is so deeply programmed in us and it’s all a societal construct like and you know I’m I’m sorry to my kids that they have to hear me say this stuff but I’m like you know marriage it’s a madeup thing it’s it’s a madeup thing that Society does um it’s a legal contract that you sign to basically start a business with somebody and the business is the marriage and then everything that you make and all the debts that you incur it’s it’s of that entity and you are equally responsible for all of it and I just never thought of it in a critical way I just thought I want to have kids I want to be a mom I want to be married I you know I got married at 27 it’s not that young but it’s still not a ton of life experience but I’m like you know nobody talks about how you can have kids and you can have a house and you can have the whole life you want without the legal document so when I learn about people who are living that whole life without it being legally formalized I’m like they’re so brilliant you know I was like they’re just together because they want to be together right and if that ever changes like yes I respect marriage you know my parents are still married I mean they have a very successful marriage so it works for some people yeah and I would do it differently if I was starting all over right right I do think though the the challenges like if you don’t marry but you have kids together and a house together and you do have to uncouple if that happens it is just as complicated in some respects don’t you think or because you’re still having to divide everything and sure sure and I mean you could still end up in court over those property divisions it’s probably just going to be small claims court not family court right um I do just feel like there’s you just have so much more flexibility and I know I’ve argued with people about this before because a lot of people are like oh there’s protection when you get married and I was like well I wasn’t protected by marriage not in my situation right my situation I really felt like I only got the bad end of you know what I mean so I mean I had to give up so much of that for 401K I had been building and you know I always felt like I paid for every dime of that house yet I had to give him half the profits and I get it now I get why it exists like that of course time it just felt like I was being stripped of so many things I felt like I was being punished yes it felt like I was the one trying to make it work yet I was very financially punished by it yeah that’s a really hard thing to get over yeah
 I think when it comes to addiction it that is such a very unique not unique but very specific situation that the partner who is holding everything together really is taking on so much more of the burden of the family the business the house and so yeah I took on all his debts I I took care of all his debts it just felt like I had to take responsibility for everything in order to leave yeah that is a really hard pill to swallow it was it was very hard but you know I was also like I have a good job like I’m gonna be okay you know looking back on it now more objectively like the addict in that situation also needs to be protected like what if I just left him with absolutely nothing yeah you know so he did get you know a lot of funds right to kind of give him a Runway if he could change his exactly he did have at least a financial opportunity to get a new start right you know unfortunately you can guess how that went um like he did cash out the 401K money and then it was gone so it’s like you know I I agree with it now in theory that like that parent does need financials to get going and you hope that it actually works out for them and it it doesn’t always yeah do you have you found that like from your personal experience especially with addiction that you have a unique ability to help clients I do because I’ve been there I know exactly what it’s I don’t know what it’s like to be the addict but I know what it’s like to live in a household that is dictated by addiction Yes actually kind of coincidentally um my very first clients were this wonderful couple that one of them was right out of rehab and they were very amicable they had agreed to separate they had agreed to get divorced but they did it in a really loving way it was very inspiring to see because you tell that they were both really good parents and they wanted the best and it really helped that the addict admitted their own limitations and I think that that’s what you need when we when we talk about going into a successful mediation you know it’s about taking some level of responsibility and having a reality check for what what’s Best in that situation for the family and they both had that and so I actually I wrote a parenting plan that had three different levels of time sharing and I advocate for this for people who are in recovery because I all I ever want is to see somebody come out of recovery and be successful and St recovery and be able to be a great parent like I listen to armchair expert with Dak Shepard and uh he talks a lot about his recovery and his relapses over the years and his addictions and man when he talks about like the kind of parent he is to his girls it just warms my heart because I’m like we do we need good examples of how it can be successful too yes you know like you know addiction has has a very bad reputation out there you know and it’s you know but I I try to not blame the addiction or or I rather I try to not blame you know the parent and I give a lot of respect to people that are in recovery and really trying to get better so I would recommend and I’ve done this for people kind of a stairstep approach to Parenting plans okay somebody’s coming right out of rehab it doesn’t make any sense for anybody to go straight to 50-50 time sharing yeah that it’s you want to set them up for Success so in this instance this particular parenting plan we kind of had the beginning phase which was okay just starting off in recovery maybe you’re in sober living maybe you are just getting like an apartment or have roommates or something like that let’s just say what does it what actually makes sense maybe just some Daytime visits at first maybe some you know regular weekends together maybe there’s a grandparents house where you can spend the night together at a grandparents house so let’s like start slow right yeah and then once usually I would set like a time frame on that like if that is successful for the first 90 days maybe then we can transition into phase two which is okay maybe now they have their own apartment with an extra bedroom or something like that you can set it as like a time frame to reach the next Milestone right or something happens like you get an apartment that has two bedrooms right right and when that kicks in you go to the next phase which could be every other weekend you know plus a week night or something like that so you’re kind of building on that yes once you have that for let’s say six months and things are going smoothly then you transition to 50-50 time sharing and if involve the kids too I mean obviously it depends on the age of your kids and all of that but you gotta kind of let them in on the plan a little bit it’s like well here’s what we both want we both want you to have time with both of us right we’re not going to be married anymore so we’re going to live separately so here’s what that’s going to look like we’re going to first start here and then we’re going to build up to this so it’s like you know the less uncertainty for the kids the better you know so know that there’s some goals in place and you hope that everything goes smoothly and that you kind of graduate to 50-50 time sharing but I think if you just go straight into it like there’s just too much room for error yes and you want to set yourself up for Success not fail and then have to retry and for the kids the safe feeling safe like especially if they know the one parent has struggled yeah they might even though they adore and love that parent not feel 100% safe that that parent can fully take care of them so you want to give the kids the chance to build that confidence yeah for everybody absolutely and it’s like you know when you have somebody that’s going through rehab and all of that it’s like there’s so much trust that’s broken it’s like the trust between the parents is broken the trust with the kids like there’s just a lot of Chaos in it so I think yeah just I I like to use a parenting plan as a tool to give people structure that they can like find success within right I think that’s really important so that’s that’s actually one thing I’m really thinking like you know going into you know 2025 and thinking about my business and how I want to do things I’m really excited about working more with people in recovery like that just feels like a very personal mission to me and going all psychoanalyst on it like oh I I couldn’t fix my situation so I can help other people with theirs right like that’s so gratifying though to see somebody kind of come out of it successfully and be able to parent like that’s and then what a gift to the kids no to the whole family yeah it is it really is a gift so I feel very lucky that I can work with families like this and I just feel like a very personal drive for it absolutely yeah I think that that is for someone who for a family that’s going through that to work with someone who can personally understand it but also say like these let’s make a plan for success for you guys is really just makes everyone feel more comfortable right and I think addicts a lot of time feel punished for their actions and I never parenting plan to feel like a punishment it’s not like oh well you screwed up so now you’ve got this it needs to be set up to more like let let me lay out a path that you can follow towards your goal yeah you like let’s let’s not punish you but let’s kind of turn that around into like right and each Milestone like you get rewarded so there’s like incentive if you really do want to get to 5050 whether it’s timeline or Milestone like you have you follow this plan and you get what you want exactly so it takes away uncertainty right because anytime somebody is in addiction there’s just so much uncertainty yeah I know that feeling of like I don’t know if my kids are getting picked up today from preschool like I would get calls from the preschool director you know like nobody picked up your kids today you know so it’s like I know what it’s like to live in that uncertainty area and I’m like even for people who are still married and trying to get through recovery or rehab or anything I actually met with a therapist recently who suggested to me why don’t you do parenting plans for people who are still intact with their marriage and their family but kind of offer the same thing like give them a path to kind of re integrate into the family and I’m like that’s brilliant nobody talks about that no you know so true I think there’s so much opportunity to set people up for Success yes oh I love that well Jackie I don’t want to take too much of your time this is like so informative and I really appreciate you sharing so much about your own personal story and um just really sharing how you can help other people these types of things are so encouraging especially when it comes to a topic like addiction which a lot of people keep so close to their chest and feel a little isolated with that situation so just hearing someone who’s gone through it and come out the other and and is supportive to help other people it really that’s a really wonderful thing that you’re offering thank you so much and it’s a little liberating to talk about it because when you are dealing with addiction in your home you don’t talk about it to many people yeah like you said it’s kind of like something people feel a lot of Shame about yeah you do you kind of keep it close you don’t let a lot of people in that Circle and so it’s a little bit liberating to talk about it um you know with some level of objectivity but it’s I I’m sure that so many families have been suffering through that same thing that I have so I’m like I I want to at least give people a Shot For Success whether it’s staying in the marriage or sometimes the better thing is to leave the marriage and either way you just want great parents in the mix like that’s that’s really the goal yeah so true
 like protecting the kids they aren’t the ones who chose to be involved in a divorce to have parents who have challenges and so you just want to protect them if you can yeah well thank you so much and thank you for all the great questions and you made it very easy to talk about and it’s a very difficult subject that I don’t talk about very much so thank you oh well great talking to you and I will let you know also I just want to let you know well first if you want to tell people where they could find you oh yes so I do uh mediation videos I I record lots of informational videos on social media so you can find me on social media at jackieo mediator I’m on Tik Tok LinkedIn Instagram Facebook all the places YouTube um and then my website my company is quartertone mediation and my website is QT mediation.com okay and if it’s an appropriate time I to plug that you and I are doing a webinar together yes that’s right if you happen to be watching this video before January 27th 2025 we are doing a free webinar uh we’ve decided to join forces you know Lee being a divorce coach and myself being a mediator we just thought it would be really good to come together and answer people’s questions so we’ll be announcing more details soon and registration information but it’s called starting fresh in 2025 managing in your divorce with confidence so we want to empower you and answer your questions and help you you know get off to a fresh start so more details coming soon Lee and I’m looking forward to doing that with you yes me too and I will make sure all of those details about the webinar and all your links are in the show notes okay fantastic yeah all right well I will see you very soon and it was a wonderful conversation thank you
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