Kellie Collins
Certified Divorce Lending Professional
[Music]
hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Seasons EB and flow for the season of divorce and beyond my name is Lee Wright I am a divorce coach and I interview people with every topic related to divorce and today I am interviewing Kelly Collins she is a divorce lending professional a certified divorce lending professional and she works with people to figure out what their best solution is with their family home to keep it to sell it how to plan for the future um so I’m going to let Kelly tell us a little bit more about what she does thank you for being here Kelly well thank you Lee so much for having me I’m excited to be here and talking to your audience today so I have been in real estate or mortgage for over 20 years and throughout that process there have been so many mostly women because I’m a woman most the time women come to me but men and women that come to me and after they have gone through the divorce after they have had the stressful time of writing their divorce decrees and then just we struggle to do the mortgage with maybe the way that support set up or maybe the way the divorce decree is written we can’t do it then they got to go back to court and get an amendment because they’re not they don’t qualify for six months or something like that so I actually partnered with the divorce lending Association um this past year and learned how to get in front of the problem so instead of being totally reactive we’re being proactive and helping take the stress away so that you can really plan post divorce for your living situation and I truly believe real estate is one of the best investments you can have to grow wealth for you and your family and so a divorce shouldn’t ruin the the ability to do that for anybody yes absolutely I totally agree like figuring out your real estate situation like for one your home is your security your feeling of safety and so figuring that out and hopefully doing it very strategically maybe working with professionals it gives you that peace of mind that you have a place to protect your family and sleep at night and yeah so so important absolutely when you’re going through aor course there’s so many other there’s so many things you’re coming at you that you just don’t know how to reply to and you need to have people in your corner to help you with every step and so that’s why a divorce coach is important that’s why your therapist is important that’s why your attorney is important but also people miss the mortgage side the financial planning side and things like that so um I’m hopefully here to help grow help people learn a little bit more and understand the importance of having a full divorce team in their Corner yes I 100% agree the last thing you want to do is not get support and advice from professionals and then you realize a year or two down the road that should have set up your settlement differently or asked for different things um because then it’s it’s locked and you know child support and you just have to make do so Bren and Barrett yeah exactly so getting the information upfront is worth the extra effort time and sometimes money but um yeah so um what are some things that people should be thinking about when they are trying to make the decision about whether to keep the family home or buy the other person out or or sell um so a lot of times when I’m having these consultations they can be really emotional um so one thing is talk to somebody do you have kids involved do you need that stability even if it’s for a short period of time like a year to stay put so nothing else in your life changes or is there you got to get out of that house but you can’t afford the apartment down the street that’s going to cost a $2,500 a month so let’s go try to find a house and so it’s about bringing that stability in and then so the emotional side that’s where professionals
like you come in the um then the actual practical side so I sit down I hope that everybody works out a budget based on post divorce life that’s something that most people don’t do when they’re married and so the importance of one learning how to budget what can you truly afford what is my financial life going to look like with all of the household expenses that now I’m taking on myself and what am I going to need as far as support what AM do I have an emergency fund to rely on because now I’m going to be a single income household um do how much room do I need do I have four kids and two dogs and can we fit in a little town home or are we going to need something bigger and then that also goes into well do I have to stay where I’m at and if I do how do I give my ex the equity that is theirs and it not cost me a fortune because and some people just go get a personal loan for 18 12% and you add that pay you can’t afford to live no yeah the last we want is to be totally house poor like a lot of people are very very attached to their family home and that is understandable there’s so many memories and you feel like your kids are attached to it and keeping it might be the right decision but it might not I’m trying to look at the numbers as much as the emotions is important I think um because I feel like post divorce if you keep the house but then that’s all your money every month goes to it and that means you can’t go on vacation with your kids and things like that there’s there’s a balance point where keeping the home might make everything else so much more difficult exactly and that’s by a budget and actually looking at at the numbers because numbers don’t lie yeah everything else can be manipulated but numbers are numbers yeah and I know and everybody dreads making a budg me included I hate making the budget looking at the budget trying to stick to a budget and I think so many of us just avoid it all together but once you sit down and do it it’s not as awful as it feels like it’s going to be it becomes easier after you get attuned to it but it’s not something we’re taught yeah ever and so unless you go out of your way to learn it and so my Approach as a lending professional is a little different because I help people with the budgeting piece first because we got to figure out can you afford to stay in the home um and there’s so many things that go into it but again real state is the best way historically to build wealth and so I truly believe that everybody should own real estate at some point in their life and it needs to be a part of your plan whether and in so in my personal situation I stayed in my home for two years after my divorce because that’s what my boys needed I did not want to be in that house right but that’s what my boys needed to to have that security so I took that time we stayed there I didn’t put too much money into it but then what happened is I took that time I gained Equity over those two years I had a really low payment because we bought the home 20 years earlier and um now I’ve got this beautiful home in a beautiful neighborhood my boys and I are so happy but it was because I kept the home and I was able to do that right and there’s so many other ways that people just you got to think about it on a number situation so I actually had a gentleman come to me he was trying to keep the house so that his girls will feel that continuity but they’re in their divorce decree because I didn’t catch him beforehand he agreed to within two months of the divorce 180 ,000 Equity buyout their interest rate was 2 and a half% and so he had to figure out a way to come up with that and to get a personal loan or even a home equity line of credit was going to cost him a ton of money so what we did is I laid out five different scenarios for him side by side and we figured out the best way to do it post the divorce decree but if we would have gotten together beforehand we would have chatted about maybe it would have been wor paying her alimony for a few years instead of that lumpsum buyout for sure um because it would have cost him less he wouldn’t have had to pay interest on that stuff or saying hey we’ll do the lumps on buy out and several different installments type thing those were things they didn’t even think about because got 18 million other things to go on EXA so and I think like as wonderful as some attorneys are some of them either haven’t been doing it for long enough to have thought and seen every creative option out there or they’re just not as focused on Creative Solutions when it comes to finances so I’m not at all bashing attorneys but I think it’s great to speak with someone like you who can help people look at every option like my ex and I did something that I think is somewhat unusual but um I was I got the house in our settlement but our house was in his name only at the time when we got divorced and so he agreed to keep himself on the loan for 3 years and but give me the deed under my name with the trust that I would pay the mortgage every month which I did and then within three years I refinanced and we did that just to give me time to figure everything out financially and get a decent loan because at the time we had just moved back here from out of the country so I wasn’t working and so it would have been really hard to get a good mortgage and um and then I refinance and luckily I got a great interest rate and you know now the mortgage is only in my name but um I think that depending on how the two parties are working together there are ways to make it work so that you keep more money within the family you know exactly well and divorce attorneys they’re fantastic but they are more focused typically on the children which they should be they’re focused on a lot of these other things and then mortgage guidelines I do this day in and day out and I still have to go read mortgage guidelines on a daily basis so divorce attorneys they’ve got so many other things to focus on there’s no way they could know what a guideline is and how to make that work for somebody so that’s where a lot of the divorce attorneys that I partner with they’re like go ask Kelly yeah go ask Kelly let her tell us what we need to do as far as the house and what that means for what you need in the divorce decree as far as alimon and child support and then I write it out and when mediation time comes we’re saving time because there’s no thre hour long mediation over it it’s nope that doesn’t work this is what works period we’re saving money we’re saving time on all of those things because we already know it works MH and then there’s I mean there’s the overlooked option of um loan assumptions so in your situation um a loan assumption you do have to qualify for but for most government back loans I say most um you can go to the lender and assume the mortgage oh I did not know that but it’s a process it’s not fun you have to have somebody in your corner because you’re talking with a call center person every time you call and they move slowly so you also have to make sure in the divorce decree that there’s a good six months available for you to get that done okay huh okay yeah that’s a a new thing that I did not know about so good to know yeah there’s lots of strategies out there and it’s it’s important to really just does that make sense or um a lot of times during the equity buyout phase somebody will say okay I’m just going to buy out it’ll be fine and
I actually had a client here in my town who was self-employed and they she took lots of deductions on her tax returns so when it came time for the equity buyout she didn’t qualify yeah and so in order to get her to qualify we had to get really creative with the financing do a non-traditional bank statement loan which cost more so our interest rate was going to be higher and in the divorce decree it said that he was going to split closing cost and then there was an argument they had to get attorneys back involved whether or not that included points but we had to have points on that type loan for her right and so if they would have come to me beforehand I would have given them the number like closing cost has to include this for the type of loan that we have to do for you right and she almost lost her house because he was threatened to take her back to court if she didn’t he didn’t have the equity by a certain time and she wanted to keep it for her kids yeah wow it’s it is The Upfront payment to a professional saves you so much sometimes in the long run it really does because it just save your mental ability to focus on anything in life it’s worth it yes absolutely yeah I think um when someone comes to you and they are thinking like I really do want to keep the family home and you look at their budget and it looks like it’s going to be tight what are different things you give them to think about or consider so I we consider we throw in okay are you asking for alimon and child support do you think that’s going to be something in there cuz we’re seeing a lot of the amicable divorces were’re like I’m not asking for alimony I just I want to be done but unfortunately sometimes you have to have it yeah because you’re going from a two-income household where one person is a total bread Winer the other works in a for a great nonprofit doing great work but doesn’t make any money and yes you don’t want you just want a clean split you don’t want to hurt the other person but there’s ways to do that where it’s got to be fair for both parties absolutely and so alimony child support something we look at and I’ve also had very strong conversations with yes you have this job you’ve been here for so long but it might be time to go try to find a new job where you can make more money and afford it because now you’ve got to be able to pay for all these things and nobody wants to hear that when they’re going through all the changes yeah but sometimes it just has to be said right absolutely yeah it’s the I remind my clients that like your first two or three years post divorce is kind of a refiguring out Financial settlement Foundation like it’s you’re on Rocky terrain for a little bit and so you just need to be very conscious of finances and be smart and think about careers and uh I definitely Advocate that alimon is not a bad word like you can think of it almost as like a Runway to give you a little bit of time to get yourself reestablished so that you know your kids aren’t living in one household that can barely put food on the table and another household that has every Gadget and vacations and for them that’s confusing like why is it that I go back and forth and there’s just such a stark difference like that’s not even healthy for the children let alone the parents so um yeah it’s interesting when I was I was separated for a long time before we got divorced so I had started dating during my divorce and one guy said to me I’ll give you some advice from based on like I’ve now been on dates with a lot of women post divorce and he said so many of them have said to me I wish I wasn’t so quick to just throw in the towel when things got a little tough during the divorce and I didn’t advocate for myself enough and now I’m really struggling Ling he’s like so we only had one date but it was like the best date cuz the advice he gave me he’s like just advocate for yourself you know to make sure that you have enough money and time to get yourself on your feed and I was like okay thank you that was really good like you know during the divorce when I was thinking like I just want this over I don’t care I’ll sign any settlement uh I would think about that and be like no this you just have to stick it out through the hard part of this process because you have to set yourself up to like be successful long term and you need a little bit of help in the beginning so well and that’s why having somebody else validate your finances and tell you it’s okay to need these things and makes it it will take not only the just stress about divorce it’ll cost less money because you’re spending less time in all these mediations getting less attorney time and all that kind of stuff but it’s going peace of mind after divorce because you’re I mean well I’m not going to talk for everybody I was completely emotionally broken divorce came as complete shock to me and every time I turned around and found out something new it it felt like I was constantly getting hit with like bean bags or something right and so there just came times where and I’m smart I’m in the mortgage industry I didn’t get a home inspection before I bought my house out oh goodness I know that we did we had a lot of deferred maintenance because my ex wouldn’t do anything yes so I I knew to get it but sitting there in mediation that day I had just been pelted by so many things I was like I’m done I mean we are on hour 12 and it is time for me to go eat yeah so having somebody kind of remind you and write out a list for you so you don’t have to think about it because this not your day-to-day job yes and what worked for your best friend is not going to work for you in your situation every single person situation is different so true that’s why you can’t go and ask all your friends what you do and then copy them because you might have a completely different financial situation yeah I know every divorce is unique every family situation is unique every parenting plan is going to look different it’s great to get insight from other people but then uh it’s not a copy and paste situation no you need somebody that going to Deep dive and has actually I knows the ins and outs to help you figure out okay can I keep the house or should I try to sell it um but like I just kind of mentioned just a minute ago people who are keeping a house get a home inspection make sure that after you close because everything’s your responsibility after you close on your loan and write that Tate over make sure the AC is in good working condition the roof is in good working condition there’s no termites like make sure like just like if you’re buying a house realtor is going to tell you those things do that for yourself it’s 500 bucks but that way when you’re negotiating so worth it yeah it’s so worth it you because if you your AC’s on its last leg you just gave them all that Equity oh my goodness what’s gonna happen yeah I knew when we were in our disc I knew that I needed a new roof my roof was like 25 years old and I’d already like had challenges with the insurance companies wanting to drop us and somehow I was able to like get them to let us keep stick with the roof the roof had no issues it had no leaks but they reach a point where they’re like okay we’re going to drop you and so when we were in mediation I’d already gotten estimates for a new roof so that like I had that information when we were talking about the house of like okay I’m going to have to put on on a new roof so let’s account for that cost when we’re talking about the house but yeah I think people it’s really helpful to have all of those pieces of information I had asked a realtor to give me an estimate of what they would list our house for and what they thought we would be able to sell for and then my ex ended up deciding he wanted to actually get an appraisal and I think we used like number in between what the real estate agent and the appraiser said the house was worth in order to like figure out the numbers but yeah the more planning and research and information you have when you’re in there discussing the settlement the better absolutely and I me it just it needs to be there’s so much that goes into it so i’ um I also had a client that I worked with last week she is she’s successful she’s like I’m not asking for alimon I just want to be done but I my daughter’s going to be here for another two years then she’s going off to college then I don’t need this house so she’s going to stay in the house she is going to do an equity buyout she goes I just want everything to be 50/50 we’re not going after um 401ks or anything like that I was like okay great but so when we got to it she didn’t qualify for the equity buyout my debt to income ratio was like this much too small so what we did is um there’s guidelines again um there’s a difference between a Cash out refinance and a rate term refinance Cash out refinance where you’re also paying off debt and stuff and that the rates are typically a little bit higher and you can’t go as high on the loan to value so you can only take out so much a rate term you can get a little bit of higher loan amount so what we did is I’m like well take this let’s say it’s $70,000 $70,000 you’re going to give him but we’ve got this auto loan and these two credit cards you pay those off you don’t have those you are going to you can qualify for the house and we’re going to save you $1900 a month wow and so what we did is we wrote it in the divorce decree that he was to pay off those things yes plus get his $70,000 so instead of 70 it was like I don’t know $100,000 he got it closing then he off those things she now has $1,900 a month in cash flow qualified for the mortgage and it just made everything smoother and the attorney called me goes I didn’t know we could do this yes that’s brilliant this is why you look at things yes yeah you look at the whole picture there’s so the whole picture and then you can figure out how to move the pieces in order to reach the goal of whether it’s keep the house buy the house sell the house whatever it is um absolutely yeah uh so if uh people want to work with with you to have you consult and can they have you consult with them even if they live in other states than you live in yes so
I for the um divorce mortgage planning I am not restricted to a certain state so I can talk to anybody and I’ve also got a network of other professionals all over the country so if there’s somebody that says I live in Illinois and I really want to sit down with somebody face to face I can connect them with somebody there as well so because this is something that can very easily be done via Zoom it can be done in person and we screen share our divorce mortgage planning report and I it’s a fully detailed report saying you do X Y and Z this is what you need and um I can work with anybody all over the country so it’s just a great thing to do oh okay that is awesome and um uh where if someone wanted to reach out to you I’ll put it in the show notes as well but um can you tell us where people can find you absolutely so um I will share with you the link to my landing page for the divorce mortgage planning and we also have a newsletter that people can sign up for on that page that just talks about things to think about when you’re going through divorce what Equity buyouts are and stuff like that I am also on Facebook at the Kelly Collins group and um I will share my phone number they are welcome to call or email me as well anytime okay that is excellent um I think this was so helpful I feel like we’ve covered all our questions but if you have like any additional examples or case studies that you wanted to share or anything that you think other people people should hear absolutely so um so I actually have one up so I’m looking at my screen right here with this gentleman’s case study he had an $1800 a month mortgage payment and he he’s going to pay child support because he goes I don’t care what it is my kids need something they’re not going without and so he just agreed to whatever she asked for for child support and then he goes but I’m keeping this house and so I said okay and he agreed to $100,000 Equity buyout which actually by time we got the appraisal was way more than 50% Equity buyout but um we went through five different options one was let’s let’s just get it to the lowest rate possible his payment was going to go up $700 a month because he had a 2% interest rate so he didn’t qualify due to the line of credit Equity he didn’t qualify for um the loan to value on to get a home a pck basically second mortgage for it so what we did is we went back and we consulted God with a family member they gifted him the money for the equity buyout and then we are watching rates to go to a certain point so that then and within a year we can go and refinance the home and pay off the family member he kept the house and um just child support was a lot and he agreed to it like you don’t need to agree to it you can always pay more but agree to minimum oh interesting so I wonder you could agree to the minimum what why didn’t they then like I guess agree to the minimum and then add alimony or so basically the wife was just concerned about child support she wasn’t concerned about Alam I think there was a reason why um but she was focused on child support and the calculations said he only owed $700 a month and she wanted $1,500 and he goes it’s for my kids yeah I’ll pay it but what could have happened is that he would agree to the 700 he maybe would have qualified for a little bit more mortgage we could have moved things around just a little bit um but and then he could have just wrot her a check for an extra $700 a month right it would have all been fine but because we didn’t consult with all of that first or actually probably got a little way emotional he didn’t follow all the rules but um but yeah those kind of things and then when you’re self-employed I’ve worked with multiple self-employed people trying to buy a home poost of ours so let’s say they got their Equity buyout they’ve got this $200,000 lump sum of money and they want to go buy a house right and deduct everything on their tax returns and it looks like they make $20,000 a year right they don’t qualify yeah so I need to see tax returns we need to help plan this is where we bring in another professional like the CPA to figure out how do we qualify somebody for this or can we take that $200,000 put it in a trust and create trust income oh which can then be used as qualifying income huh oh wow so lumps on buyouts can cause issues for I me especially stay-at-home moms I’ve seen stay-at-home moms get $500,000 and they need that to live off of but they’re like oh I can go buy a $300,000 house but then if they do that they’re only going to be left with $200,000 for to pull from for this income they can’t live right so we can create create a trust with that $500,000 give them some income they can keep a little part-time job and then they qualify huh that is amazing yes so clever and that’s the great that’s another really great thing about what I do in this um divorce larning Association that I’m a part of is that if we get something super complicated there’s a hundred other of us that we bounce ideas off of nice and just the focus is trying to help people divorce was so stressful for me and I’m in the business I didn’t think about half of this stuff and then afterwards I’m sitting there three months later I’m like why didn’t I ask about this why did I agree to that I know and and our attorneys they’re smart their go job is to negotiate the best deal possible but a lot of them post divorce post that agreement being signed they don’t the clients don’t go back and be like hey just so you know I shouldn’t have written it that way because now I don’t quy for anything yes they don’t know and it’s I mean so that’s where I just bring in professionals to help you through your divorce you need the mental the emotional the financial just everybody and bringing that team in is going to save you so much stress yeah it’s so true it’s like pay a little bit up front and you save so much on the back end and it’s just uh a lot of people don’t even know that these professionals are out there that’s part of it like the divorce machine all people know is lawyers and mediators and court and it’s like there’s so many other people are out there to provide support and um and guidance and um and most of us we do it because we have a heart for it and we’ve been through it and we don’t want everybody to make the same mistakes we did exactly yes you learn after you’ve gone through it you’re like man if I had known that or if someone like I’m just so glad that one guy told me that on a date but if I feel like that’s when I’m working with clients and they’re starting to get like H I just need this to be over and I can tell that they’re ready to just give everything away and that they’re going to be struggling and regretting it a year from now I’m like okay just breathe where you do not this is we can take a pause like so having other people there is that sounding board is just so helpful so helpful and I’m so glad that there’s professionals like you to help people too cuz that’s something I didn’t do either is get a divorce coach so hey friends you up and in the background and yes yeah it a lot yeah it is well I really appreciate your time and all the different ideas that you even shared today are such a good start for people and definitely if they have more questions they should be reaching out to you absolutely I’m happy to help anybody with any of their issues like this even if it is just putting together a budget awesome well Kelly I really appreciate your time thank you to everybody who has listened and uh please if you like the content subscribe like send us some comments or questions and I will put all of Kelly’s information in in the show notes so you can find her and reach out to her and thank you very much everybody have a great day
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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 and
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
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 start
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 say
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 like
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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