Hello everybody and welcome to starting fresh in 2025 managing your divorce with confidence my name is Jackie ooto and I’m a Florida Supreme Court certified family mediator and I’m joined tonight by Lee Wright who’s a certified divorce coach we thought it would be great to join forces for this webinar because we’re bringing together both the logistic side of divorce with mediation as well as the emotional side of divorce which is what the divorce coach covers so we are here to answer your questions we also have pre-written questions that we’re going to start off asking each other but then anytime you want to ask us something please use the Q&A feature to submit your questions and we’re happy to to get to as many of your questions as we can tonight in this one hour that we have together as a disclaimer up front I want to mention that we cannot give you any legal advice so please do not consider anything we say tonight to be legal advice this is for informational purposes only Lee and I also will be happy to share some of our own anecdotes because we’ve both been through our own divorces so you’ll hear both some personal you know sides of our stories as well as from our professional experience so at the beginning of this webinar we did have a very slight technical glitch so we missed the first minute of Lee’s introduction so I’m going to jump right back into the webinar when Lee is discussing why people seek out a divorce coach enjoy and stay till the end because we have a special offer that we’re giving to anybody who views this webinar so as I was saying just figuring out what’s the best divorce approach it a coach can help you with that a coaches definitely do a lot of helping you process your emotions obviously there’s grief and a lot of other emotions that come into play during divorce and so we provide support but we’re also there to celebrate your wins help you stay accountable to what you say you’re going to be doing or some people get almost like deer in headlights and they just need someone to kind of keep pushing them along we provide perspective because we have been there and we know what it’s like and we also have seen the other side so we can help you keep

 things in perspective uh if people have lawyers lawyers are really expensive so I can help people really think through their their questions so that they use their expensive professionals effectively and they’re not using them as a sounding board or a support mechanism like I know friends who did that and ended up with astronomical bills so um and the holding accountable we will also hold you accountable to stay in your best self like sometimes when you’re in it like you can’t see the forest the trees through the forest whichever way it goes and so you start sometimes like getting like a dog on a bone not letting go of something that maybe is not that important to hold on to because the emotions are in there so we can help you like realize when you’re starting to maybe hurt your own self in the process and then lastly just really helping you focus on the fact that you probably are going to have to co-parent with this person so how to start to establish that relationship set healthy boundaries what a good parenting plan might look like and helps think through that and what are your priorities in a settlement and a parenting plan what things aren’t that important to you so that when you do go meet with a mediator or working with your attorney you’ve done some of that self-reflection and you’re not just again dear in headlights like I have no idea so I guess that is the a good overview of how a divorce coach would help you yeah that’s great and you know I think about having any kind of mental health professional alongside you during your divorce I mean I know I was going to therapy during my divorce but a therapist I love therapists but they also don’t give you like a road map yes it’s more about helping you figure out you know how to get yourself to a healthy place where sometimes when you’re going through a process like divorce you want somebody who can just help you like set goals and tell you what to do right yeah a lot of that might be the benefit of having a coach for sure like therapy a lot of times is looking back what happened how’ I get here and coaching a lot of times is much more forward-looking and what are my next steps and how do I uh not make the same mistakes again so learn from them and so a lot of times most of my clients do have therapists and still have me and we work with them differently that makes sense so before somebody considers filing for divorce or hiring a lawyer what kind of things would you advise that they do you know before taking that next step yeah so I think that it’s really important to start having an open dialogue with your significant other before you split and just go hire professional I think I encourage my clients to try to make the relationship work in every way possible with couples therapy and doing their own self therapy to see if maybe they need to work on themselves and find Joy within themselves learn how to create healthy boundaries and see if there’s anything that can keep the relationship together and if not then having some conversations with their partner about this isn’t working and I’ll help them think through how to have those conversations where they can start to talk about the priorities and Val values that they want in place if they do have to like consciously uncouple rather than completely advoc like sending all responsibility to other professionals like lawyers to handle every conversation like this is your family it’s your co-parent you guys are going to have to work together or not work together at all which then really hurts the kids so be S at the front end and have some of these uncomfortable but hard conversations so that you can kind of set a baseline of how do we want to do this what divorce approach is best for us is a collaborative divorce better or working just with a mediator like you can have those conversations with your spouse and come to an agreement rather than someone hires an attorney the other person reacts and attorne attorneys up themselves and all of a sudden you’re like in an acrimonious situation and it can turn that way so quick it’s like as soon as one person gets scared and hires a lawyer and then they start sending scary letters to them it’s like throwing a grenade into the process it’s and it’s it’s really almost impossible to come back whereas if you have these conversations and then you hire a mediator and try and mediate and it falls apart and then you escalate to getting attorneys well you did try everything but if you get attorneys and then you’re like oh my God this is a nightmare where’re like at War I want to deescalate maybe we could just go to a mediator it’s chances are it’s never going to happen that way so right you have to be careful the way you start sets the tone for what it’s going to the trajectory of this whole thing it can take on a life of its own so being very careful what you do in the beginning is so important I would say too something that I see happen along those same lines is I’m in a lot of divorce groups on Facebook and social media and woo those places get really hot they get very heated very contentious and it’s like sometimes people will just ask for advice just because they’re looking for somebody to talk to and you can post anonymously but then the the Army comes out and it’s it it feels like all these wounded people come out and they’re like take them for everything you’ve got and you know like lawyer up immediately get the most aggressive lawyer in town like it’s just like mode I’m convinced that you can do it differently than that like and I know some situations are out of your control but like you can control how you approach it and if you can try to at least put a little ego aside and just try to start things off amicably see how far you can get just like what you’re saying you know there are other option down the road if Agreements are not made absolutely you but why go straight to that if you don’t have to I

 know I and I feel like you know even if like some of my clients they both have attorneys by the time they come to me and um and the attorneys are like encoura they’re still living under the same roof and the attorneys are encouraging them not to talk to each other about anything related to it and I I say like you have to co-parent with this person if you have an opinion and you want to bounce ideas off of them in a very healthy calm way like when you guys are in a good place like you happen to agree that you’re going to have a conversation like you can make a lot of progress or agree like yes we really do want to finish in mediation and just try and get on the same page the attorneys are not there for the duration of your life span whereas you two have each other if you have kids together so just working on seeing each other seeing your ex is not the enemy and it does it gets really hard I mean there’s no doubt divorce is hard but the way you show up and the way that you expect things to go affects the way things go um the one other thing like if you are hiring attorneys I always encourage my clients to one of the questions they ask their attorneys is just how can I communicate with you some attorneys are so busy and they have so many cases that you only get to speak to their pargal and it’s only through email and let’s say you have four questions and you send an email and the paralal answers to and then you get the email back and then you send the other two and then you get a response but you you don’t understand something so and now you’ve got eight or 10 emails going back and forth and then she needs to confirm or he needs to confirm with the lawyer and sometimes I think if people ask their lawyers can I set up a five minute phone call with you within 48 hours if I want to speak to you and not work with you through email and through your paralal I think it’s much more efficient and you know uses your money much more effectively but it’s important to ask the lawyer before you hire them if that’s something they will make time for or work with I’m gonna ask you one more question for now but I have a lot more I could ask you um so we can always come back to them is there any kind of like sample exercise that you would recommend to people to help them manage the whole emotional stress side of divorce so

 when I start working with clients at the beginning I do something called a best self exercise and we go through it’s not a long exercise they can even do it on their own and then meet with me just to discuss their results but it kind of sets your Baseline of how you want to show up and you recognize your Tendencies whether it’s like to catastrofy or to go to yelling when you get stressed and identify those so that you now they’re in your perceptual set so when you see yourself gravitating toward that behavior you can pause and get that like Reptilian Brain to calm down and breathe the 90 seconds it takes to get that frontal cortex to come back online and just doing this Baseline exercise at the beginning can really help you change your behavior and then you know a relationships a feedback loop so if you change the way you behave your partner is going to change the way they react and part of fights is the same Loop because it’s a rut that you both have fallen to your triggers but if you start to make a conscious effort to change your initiation then it can change the response and that can can make a really big difference yes I feel that so much I feel like so many people because like you said this is such an emotional experience to go through and it’s like if you get one text message that feels insulting or it feels degrading or disrespectful you just you want to return that energy and then some you know like that’s that’s like our Instinct you just want to H you know and it’s like you have to find a way to step out of that and you know be the

deescalation perspective it’s only going to help you in a in a settlement to deescalate the situation and try to take some of the emotions out of it I know you and I have talked about this before where you have to treat it like it’s a business transaction and I know it doesn’t feel that way at all like I’ve never had this emotional of a business transaction but really at the end of the day that’s what a marriage is it’s a legal entity and all of the marital assets and debts that you have incurred it’s all part of that that history of that business yes when you get divorced it’s dividing that business so even if you can just bite your tongue sit on

 your hands do whatever you need to do or or even like write that heated text message back but send it to your best friend or to your divorce coach or whoever it is like send it to somebody else and get it out of your system you know um but don’t be part of that escalation if you can at all help it because it’s not going to help it’s not going to help your divorce at all it’s not going to help your divorce it’s not going to help your co-parenting relationship ship post divorce it’s not helping your kids like if your kids parents can’t communicate together can’t be in the same room together at their graduation at their birthday parties and what have you like if you destroy your co-parenting relationship because of bad behavior during the divorce you are hurting your children so every time things escalate you remind yourself like what is best for my kids how can my behavior how can I change my behavior so that I’m doing right by my kids because they didn’t choose divorce and divorce isn’t the worst thing in the world for kids I do not mean that at all a very bad divorce where the parents act really badly can be H damaging to the kids divorce itself no yeah good points all right Lee let’s go to the mediation side of things for a few questions and then we’ll open it up and you all that are listening if you want to put in a question at any time in the Q&A box you’re more than welcome to and we’ll get to those next okay great so um when someone is thinking about mediation what is the process look like what is it that they should expect sure so I do all prosay mediations so that means self-represented that means people who don’t have lawyers are coming to me um I kind of just fell into that Niche uh because people see that I’m not an attorney and people who are avoiding attorneys tend to find me and come to me um so my biggest recommendation if I was going to do my divorce all over again I would say to anybody try to do an uncontested divorce it is so much quicker and easier to get through the court system if you have an agreement already in place so those are sort of my favorite media to do where they’re before you file for divorce so there’s not even an active case but the parties have decided we want to give mediation to try and see if we can settle everything before we even file so if you file a contested divorce um you’re going to get assigned a judge you’re going to have to serve your ex spouse they’re going to have to file a a response or counter petition and there’s a big back and forth that goes through then you’re going to have a hearing then you’re going to get order to mediation you know like there’s this whole process that you have to go through and in the State of Florida um all the courts do mandate mediation if you have a contested divorce yeah so and it can be a long process to get through that whole court system in a contested divorce if you file uncontested that means you already have a settlement agreement you already have a parenting plan you have put the signatures on those papers and you file them together I have seen a divorce get approved by a judge in one week like it goes real fast when you just say hey we’ve we’ve already settled everything and we just want to move forward with this yes so that I think is kind of if there’s an ideal way to you know have a divorce that’s kind of the ideal way to do it for me um in my divorce we did have attorneys and went through mediation so I mean that was kind of like the simplest way to do it with attorneys um but if you are fairly amicable you can come to a mediator like me and I can facilitate the entire process for you the catch is I cannot give you any legal advice and I cannot strategize for you so that’s you’re kind of your own Advocate when you don’t have an attorney present in mediation some people feel really comfortable advocating for themselves some people do not so usually what I recommend is what I’ll do is I’ll send potential clients a mediation questionnaire so they have a list of all the topics that we’re going to talk about in mediation because I don’t want people to feel surprised like and unprepared so I’ll send them a whole list you know here’s everything we’re going to talk about in this mediation every part of the parenting plan every part of the settlement

 agreement and I want them to be prepared you know have numbers at their fingertips you know if we’re talking about bank accounts or 401ks I want them to know what’s in those accounts be ready because you don’t want to waste time paying for a mediator while you’re looking up you know account balances so taking that mediation questionnaire kind of going through and having all that information handy but then also kind of knowing well where do I think the points of contention are going to be and what are the things that we already agree on because a lot of people agree on like 90% of this stuff already and then there’s a few hot button issues where they get caught up in but that’s where I’m the referee to the to the situation and I can talk to people see you know what are the root motivations that are driving people try to see where there might be room for compromise and the great thing about it is I do all my mediations on Zoom so I have a mute button which I love and I also have breakout rooms that I can use so I try to start people mediating together in the same Zoom room but as soon as things get messy I can say let’s take a break and go to separate rooms I’m going to talk to each of you separately that way I can go talk to you Lee in a separate room and I can say so what’s going on with this issue why are we going in circles here what’s what are you scared of here or what am I missing right so I’ll just ask a lot of questions and sometimes that’s when they uncover oh well here’s actually what I’m trying to do here and so whatever I talk to you know either client in a private room that’s still confidential I’m not going to share what you told me when we get back to the other person yes that’s the other big part of mediation it is a confidential process means everything that we cover in a mediation session is confidential you can’t you know you can’t use it in court later on or nobody can use anything you said in mediation against you later on it’s supposed to be a contained confidential process to try to see if a resolution can be found yeah I think that’s you provided so much great information I think a few things to note is so if people have attorneys in Florida like you said you have to mediate so you before a judge will see you and agree to help you work on your divorce you have to at least have gone through one mediation right and like for my divorce we both had lawyers so we sat there for a day with paying both our lawyers and an expensive mediator and honestly his lawyer he stopped listening to because is he hired a terrible lawyer I had done so much research and kind of had thought through what I thought was fair my lawyer sat there on his phone all day and we spent a crap ton of money and we had a really good mediator and she’s she did a shuttle mediation so it was preco she was going back and forth from the rooms and honestly when I look back like all we needed was her a mediator and um I just I think a lot of people they have this misperception that you absolutely you can’t mediate if you don’t have lawyers or uh there’s so many permutations people can work with someone like you and come up with a mediation uh outcome and then take it to Consulting attorneys and each of their own Consulting attorney to look at the draft and so it’s not like you don’t have an attorney but you don’t you’re not paying an attorney to sit there in mediation with you so there’s there’s so many ways and com like ways that you can mediate that I think people going into divorce do not know about and I love that option of tell people you know before you sign an agreement have your own independent Council look it over so what you could do hypothetically you could go meet for a consultation with an attorney you could pay somebody for you know a 30 minute or one hour consultation without hiring them on retainer just get some initial information from them learn a little bit about the Florida Statutes that are going to govern your divorce learn about you know the presumption of 50/50 time sharing for parents you know learn about equitable distribution you know the more you are familiar with the process I mean I know you don’t nobody wants to learn all this stuff about family law but it’s empowering when you understand more about the process so if you consult with an attorney first then go to a mediator start hashing out an agreement then you can take that agreement back to an attorney for another consult and just say I just want to pay you to look over this agreement and give me your feedback you know so I mean there are ways to do it without paying all the astronomical fees to have an attorney with you at every step of the process exactly and you know I think the empowering aspects you can advocate for yourself and for your family your family is changing it’s but it’s still a family it’s just going to be in a different shape that’s I like people to think of it like that and so you don’t want to just hand off all the decision making to these professionals who have a lot of other cases on their like they do not have to live with this agreement for the rest of their lives and so taking responsibility and advocating for yourself and doing some research and choosing the right professionals to help you will ensure that you end up with uh you know a result that you are feel like is fair and something you can live with yeah I’ll tell you a little um kind of cheat sheet Acron when you’re thinking about topics in mediation and topics to prepare for mediators use the acronym peace and it stands for parenting plan equitable distribution alimony child support and then everything else those are kind of your five major categories that you talk about in mediation I always start with the parenting plan just because you know I feel like it’s a little bit easier to get some wins when you’re talking about parenting because usually everybody can agree on one thing as a default and that’s that is we want what’s best for our child you know like if there’s going to be anything to agree on usually that’s a good starting point and so I like to go through the whole parenting plan first before we even touch finances because people can co-parent well and then things blow up when you get to finances and it can go vice versa it can go either way but after the parenting plan then we move into equitable distribution which is how are you going to divide up the marital assets and debts and one way to look at it is like we talked about like your marriage being a business entity you know what is the net worth of this business so if you think of your marriage as a business what what’s the net worth of it so how much debt do you have how many assets do you have anything that was incurred during the marriage that’s considered a marital asset or debt so once you can kind of come up with an approximate figure of what is that net worth of the marriage you’re going to have to figure out how to divide it now ites doesn’t have to be exactly 50/50 because when you go to mediation you can agree on whatever you want so some people might be more emotionally attached to their 401K some people might be more emotionally attached to a home you know a property so it doesn’t have to be even split down the middle but Equitable meaning a fair distribution of those assets and debts so we go through that and then we get into alimony um it’s interesting because I find in most mediations people know that either there is going to be alimony or there’s not going to be alimony they don’t necessarily know how much it’s going to be but they usually agree that it’s either being talked about or not um if it is being talked about but they don’t know where to start I while I can’t give legal advice I can pull up the Florida Statutes so I’ll even screen share and I’ll pull up the Florida statute under alimony and we’ll look at it together because it gives you an outline this is the maximum amount that a court can award based on how long the marriage was you know based on the need of one party and the ability of the other party to pay so I mean it does kind of give you a starting point and it caps it out and how much that could be so that’s one area where I do give people homework sometimes if they don’t know where to start with alimony I might tell them go get a consult with an attorney and then come back and tell me you know tell us what you think so that’s Pac C is child support child support is set by Florida statute it’s not meant to be negotiable between the parties so child support is meant to be a benefit on behalf of the child so that’s the way the court views it the court views it as they are giving they are awarding it for the benefit of the child not you know not to penalize or reward one parent um so there is a set calculation for child support in the State of Florida now you can ask the court to uh you know award something different than what the calculator says and I think if it’s a you know if it’s a negligible amount if it’s a small amount difference you know that can go through if you’re asking for a huge difference in child support uh a little bit

 harder to make that case um so what I do is in my settlement agreement if the parties want to agree on a different amount than the calculation I’ll put that request right in the settlement agreement for the judge to review and then the E of peace is everything else at the end so that could be anything from like what are we going to do with the pets right some people are arguing over who’s taking the dog you know I mean that’s that’s of the babies of the family right some people are you know wanting to talk about um how are we going to file our taxes um how are we going to handle life insurance like there’s a lot of kind of miscellaneous topics um that also can go into that settlement agreement so that’s kind of the overview of the the different range of topics that we go through and we’ve talked before about the prosade checklist can you kind of give people an idea of what that looks like or what it is sure so I like to refer people to seminal couny prosade checklist they have it you know available to the public every family law uh form that you need is available through the Florida Courts website so if you want to file your own divorce all the paperwork is there it just can be very daunting because there’s a lot of forms um and so what I like about seminal County’s checklist is they have a button that you can choose that says marriage with no children you know dissol dissolution of marriage with children or paternity only you know no marriage and you can click on that checklist and it gives you all the forms that you need to file and it gives you a link to download that form directly from the Florida Courts website so I use that all the time because well I did file my divorce in seminal County and I filed it myself so I just find it to be a very handy checklist um what I can also help people do is I can help direct them based on that checklist which ones they need for their case um so I do offer that as well so if we complete the mediation and we have an agreement and everything’s ready to go I’ll then kind of Coach them through that whole filing process so I’ll help them download all the all the files that they need they can fill them out if they have questions I can help them too um and then I can show them the efiling process and get it all initiated for them and how does like a situation like yours this prosay with a mediator what do you the price difference to like what it costs when when you have attorneys involved like it yeah yeah so um it’s much cheaper when you don’t have attorneys involved as you can imagine I mean I’ll give you an example of what my divorce cost because I had a pretty cheap divorce and I had we had attorneys and we did one mediation and we settled so I had to you know this is a very low end right because we didn’t have like a ton of complicated issues to resolve I paid an initial $3,000 retainer to my attorney I don’t know what he paid for his but I’ll assume it’s probably in that same ballpark we did one mediation it was 5 hours long so we paid a mediator $300 an hour we split that so we each pay 150 an hour for the mediator we did pay our attorneys you know coming out of that retainer um and then the filing fees the filing fees uh are around $400 to file a petition um in our local counties so I mean I would say it ends up being about $4,000 each and that’s for a really inexpensive divorce exactly that’s what I’m saying like that’s a simple divorce with representation yes um like that’s about as simple as it gets when you get attorneys involved so I I consider myself lucky now with the mediations that I do without attorneys there are some that I can settle in one session like one three-hour session um and the parties just split the cost of the mediator so I do an hourly rate I do charge an hourly rate of 300 an hour which is pretty standard market rate for mediators but I also have a sliding scale so it’s based on your income so if you make under you know if you’re a bit lower income it’s that hourly rate can be adjusted based on your income so I’m always happy to give that to people to take a look at if they feel that you know that would benefit them um I also offer mediation packages so it’s kind of flat fee you purchase a bundle of hours you know you’ve got you know you’ve got me for five hours it’s a little bit of a discount from the standard rate so I mean I like to offer people options I mean certainly they can pay as they go um you know but any way you slice it splitting the cost of one mediator um even like my longer mediations end up going like two sessions let’s say six to eight hours total that’s still way cheaper than having representation on both sides yes yeah absolutely well we have a question that I want to go to and um for those of you listening you’re welcome to enter in more questions so question is what route do you take when the other party is just stonewalling have been an obstructionist and abusing the legal system so Lee do you want to tackle that one what would you advise in that kind of situation so that is a very difficult situation stonewalling where they just won’t respond or they are dragging their feet with everything can be really challenging for the other partner because you try from every angle that I think is almost harder sometimes than dealing with someone who’s aggressive or uh absolutely very difficult to work with I think it depends if you don’t have attorneys then I think possibly getting a third part involved to almost like a mediator or a coach to help you sit down and be an objective third party is one possible approach because if they’re stonewalling that means they’re not responding to you but if you can get a third party involved that isn’t an attorney or someone that they look at as an opposing side that is one possible route it really the one thing that I have to say is every divorce is unique every family situation is unique and there is not like one fitall answer to any situation it’s so tailored like coaching is so tailor to that person’s situation and the lawyer that they have hired and the lawyer that their ex is hired creates the dynamic that creates the train down that track and so I without more specifics it’s really hard to give an answer to that I would say too from a mediation perspective um sometimes people do arrive to mediation on their best behavior I have seen that happen before where people are are quite contentious but they’re motivated by saving the money which is why they’re not going after each other and trying to take each other to court because going to trial is extremely expensive so maybe that’s something that could appeal to them even if they want to fight but if they don’t want to spend a lot of money you could potentially convince them to try mediation um when they get in front of me they usually are on their best behavior because I can separate them I can talk to them individually I can keep you guys completely

 separated and just see if I can the good thing is when I’m in separate rooms of people I can also you know act very sympathetic to everybody and if you don’t see me acting real sympathetic to your ex you know what I mean like it doesn’t feel like I’m on their side because I’m not taking sides I’m just trying to get people to talk to me because the more I get them to talk about the issues the more I can kind of work on them to suggest potential compromises so I still think mediation is you know it could potentially work even with an obstructionist type of person the thing is if they’re not agreeable to trying to you know mediate or or do anything to move the process along you pretty much have to just file and get that clock ticking because they do have a certain amount of time that they have to respond within otherwise you can get a default divorce so like they have to respond at some point one thing that can help is you can always once you have an active case you can request a case management conference with your judge and so that’s not a hearing it’s just like a progress report it’s like a little check-in and I’ve sat in on these cases management conferences and attorneys request them all the time but I think prosay people who are representing themselves they don’t always know that they can request that request a case management conference with your judge you can go through their judicial assistant that’s all public information you can find the contact info for their judicial assistant reach out to them and just say I’d like to schedule a case management conference they’re going to require the other person to attend and they’re going to straight up ask why haven’t you given each other your financial affidavits yet why haven’t you started a a time sharing plan yet with your kids like use the judge to call them out um because the judge will set timelines they’ll say I’m going to give you 30 days to get a temporary parenting plan in place and if they don’t follow that uh let’s say you schedule a mediation they don’t show up or something like that so 30 days passes the judge can hold them in contempt so I mean while you don’t want to get wrapped up in the court system you can also use it in kind of you know in the obstructionist example to help move things along uh a little bit more painful that way but I mean it’s kind of nice sometimes when a judge will you know give them a little lecture and tell them what they need to do to get the ball rolling yeah I also think a lot of times uh I’ve seen clients they’re struggling their attorneys are fighting filing motions back and forth and just getting to the mediation table help start the process to actually start taking shape we’re both partners can start to see like oh my gosh this could have an end date if we work with this mediator whereas before it’s just this like legal mumbo jumbo and you feel like there’s how does this ever even culminate So the faster the sooner you can get to a mediation date if you have attorneys the better to actually get things actually starting to feel tangible and it’s crazy how sometimes it takes months after you’ve hired attorneys to actually get a mediation date and that all that time is time where things can go wrong someone pisses the other one off and wants to make isn’t giving enough money and now the lawyers they’re like oh I want to file a motion to get more money and like again it things escalate whereas if you could have gone to the mediation table before some of that happened like things things were kind of at a better lower escalation point so the sooner you can get to mediation the better all right a few more details coming out um divorce case has been ongoing since 2023 has not progressed the other party has even canceled a settlement conference yeah I would stay on the judicial assistant in that case to say I want to progress this divorce what else can we do because I mean I see judges come down on people all the time when when they are having that progress check so I mean it sounds like this kind of person needs a lot of deadlines and some lectures from a judge to keep things moving unfortunately um says canceling the settlement conference saying he couldn’t afford legal fees but wants to go to trial yeah little bit of an oxymoron there um yeah and I mean I hear all kinds of stuff in these mediations sometimes time does help I mean the thing is time moves so slowly when you’re going through a divorce it’s like 6 months feels like forever um you know I have seen people go to mediation and not agree on a single thing and then six months later they try again and they settle so it’s like sometimes people just like honestly give up a little bit on the process and they’re sort of like they’re running out of like time to torture their exp spouse and it’s like we’re all moving on here so I mean hopefully time helps the situation too but I know that’s really tough it sounds like that’s the kind of situation where you do need a lawyer to get involved and to really start setting setting those deadlines through the court you know force force them to keep moving yeah I know I have some clients who have lawyers and it nothing moves like it’s it’s crazy hearing how slow things can go if you have an ex with a lawyer who doesn’t want

 things to move very quickly and it’s just unfortunate because again like the kids are being hurt like the longer you’re at War like the partner or the spouse who’s dragging their feet and making it not move they need to be reminded that like you’re hurting the kids like you need to love your kids more than you hate your ex and put your kids first and putting your kids first means getting this to conclusion so everybody can start to create their new normal and have a fresh starting point and create some norms and routines again and that happens once you settle and can move on here’s a question for you Lee how much does a divorce coach cost and how do you know if a divorce coach is qualified and reputable so how is that regulated so for one You definitely want someone who’s certified there are some people who you know go through a divorce and then decide they’re a coach so finding someone who’s certified uh the CDC is uh the biggest most recognized uh certified program for divorce coaches and you can go on to their website and they have a directory so you can find coaches there and there are some coaches who specialize more in co-parenting or high conflict divorce so there’s uh people who have Specialties uh I think think it’s really important to find someone who you feel like you have a good rapport with who you can open up to and you feel comfortable with uh there’s a range in fees it probably goes from about 70 a session to 180 a session depending on the coach and some coaches do a lot of one-on-one work some coaches do group work I do one-on-one but I’m I prefer to do group work these days because I feel like it’s much more cost effective and you co-evolve like so you learn from each other and it’s really nice to help other people so I really like working in groups but I do one-on-one as well I you just honestly have to interview a few coaches and find one that feels the right fit for you you with the right price point yeah and I mean I know you’re asking specifically for divorce coaches but I’ll answer for mediators too so I would always make sure that you’re working with a certified mediator that is certified by the state supreme court that you are located in so in the State of Florida you have to be a resident for at least six months only one person one person who’s filing for the divorce has to be a resident of the state for at least six months um so you know I would make sure that there certified make sure that they are their certific their certificate is active you can check on that through the dispute resolution center in the Florida Supreme Court they have a website and a directory of all of their mediators um you can also see if they’ve like you know been suspended or have had any ethical issues um the other thing you can do is there are other directories like there’s the Florida Professional Academy of mediators and they have their own directory too and then it gives more profile information about their background there are lots of different types mediators so there are attorney mediators there are therapist mediators um there are mediators that are you know more business trained or you know uh financial advisers so it you can come from any of those backgrounds to become a mediator so I would also think about like what do you need in your specific situation like if you are you know co-parenting with somebody with an addiction or if you have children that are special needs right like you might be looking for a mediator that has some kind of specific knowledge in the area that you need that’s where one of those directories um can be a little bit more useful because they give a little bit more bio and background information so let’s go to a few more questions here um how do you decide between collaborative divorce then having to start all over with mediators and lawyers if collaborative divorce doesn’t work are you able to provide coaching prior to figuring out which route to go so Lee I know you’re part of the collaborative divorce group of Central Florida right yeah so I work with people to decide which divorce approach is best uh I I really encourage people to go work with a mediator first and see if they can mediate like you are talking about prosay and have Consulting attorneys but some people realize that they it is too intimidating and want an attorney and if that’s the case I really encourage researching and looking into collaborative because collaborative the attorneys who gravitate to become collaborative

 attorneys their goal is to finish the the divorce quickly and amicably you don’t have to have a very amicable relationship with your ex for collaborative to work but the collaborative attorney are going into it with the agreement that they will not represent you in court so it is not in their best interest to have Things Fall Apart because they’re not going to they can make money and see a result and feel good about themselves and sleep at night getting you to closure the other thing is you work with a financial neutral and a mental health neutral so your parenting plan is done with a therap purpose present and you don’t have two separate Financial affidavits that you each submit to your lawyers and then they have to submit to each other and that’s all the hours you’re paying for par legals to input all this stuff you have one Financial neutral who you both sit down with with all your personal documentation your debts your assets and you work with that neutral to help you look at the best way to divide everything up and then those two attorneys and the financial neutral and the mental health neutral work as a team to help resolve things so it can be faster and you are working with people whose goal is to get you to a healthy settlement it’s not to create animosity or escalate or make it so that there’s a war but between you I don’t know how that how to describe it in any better way than that there are a few other benefits with collaborative nothing is uh it’s not public information anymore so a collaborative divorce approach all of your financial personal information is kept quiet so that’s one of the benefits a lot of people like with collaborative but I really think that if you are considering hiring attorney J I would explore that Avenue uh I I I think it’s a really it has very positive results and the type of attorneys you’re working with are high quality attorneys who have been litigators for a long time and have seen how ugly it can get and they move towards the collaborative approach because they believe it’s just a better approach for the families that’s great thank you um okay we have a question about have either one of you done work with senior citizens married over 45 years so I’ll say personally for me um I have worked with some clients that have long-term marriages and children who are adults so I will say the one thing that is simplified in a senior citizen divorce is there’s no parenting plan so there’s there’s no more negotiating about adult children I mean unless you have a child that is still dependent for some reason like if you have a disabled child who’s an adult but still dep dependent that could be an exception but for the most part with senior citizens it’s just about a settlement agreement I mean that is the one piece that pulls everything together to file an agreement for an uncontested divorce so I mean a settlement agreement is really going to be the same it’s going to be the same categories that we talk about um we’ll still go through all the bank accounts all the credit cards any loans any property um you know we’ll talk about taxes we’ll talk about pensions I mean so there are still to me it’s the same categories that we talk about it’s just that the numbers and the allocations might end up different right so what about you Lee well so the one thing is just to recognize what they call Gray divorce but divorces over 5 age 55 long-term marriages are the fastest group of divorces that are happening today and I think the emotional uh aspects of gray divorce are a little different than the things that uh you experience and focus on in your 30s and 40s you don’t have kids in the home anymore and there’s this whole history behind you which I mean even I divorced in my 40s but I’d been with my ex for 23 years so it still was a huge chunk of life but it’s a whole different situation when your kids have grown and so you’re starting the whole splitting process without you’re you’re going to like a totally empty household when you split apart so there are unique aspects that tend to probably be more related to the emotional aspect and less of the nuts and bolts of divorce uh practical aspects so Lee we’re already at time that flew by really fast just because I got kicked out for a minute um do you want to give any last piece of advice or tips before we before we wrap up I want to let you all know we’re both offering a discount for people that attended this webinar so hang on to us for a couple more minutes while we wrap up and we’ll share that with you yeah um I guess to just wrap up I

 would say that divorce is a very difficult phase season of life but it’s temporary and you get through it having support is really important and recognizing that there is beautiful things that happen post divorce there’s so much self-development and growth and new opportunities that would never have come your way and so it’s not better or worse they’re just different and if you can create a story in your mind that helps you set the intention for what your future you want your future to look like it can make the healing process happen a little faster so I think divorce is not easy I would never sugarcoat it but there are better and worse ways to go through divorce to get divorced and uh when you have good professionals alongside you it can help the whole process go smoother and have that healing take Place faster yeah I totally agree with that I think of divorce having three phases there’s one phase while you’re still married and you’re considering divorce then there’s that decision point that kicks off the actual divorce process and then there’s the post- divorce process so I mean for me the part leading up to divorce was the hardest that was about a threee period of just thinking should I do this or not so that was a long period of time that was very difficult yeah to me once I made the decision not that that was easy but it was like the the agonizing over the decision was the hardest then from the decision to the divorce that’s like the limbo period and limbo is very hard for you know somebody like me who likes to be in control of things like that’s very hard for me to deal with that transitional period it was I sold my house I moved I didn’t know what anything looked like anymore and so that’s a very hard period of time too but it’s finite it’s like this one little chapter you hope it’s faster than you know than not but it could be a couple years even of that transition time once you get that final divorce man it feels like a celebration is an order I know that like a lot of people think it’s weird if I tell them congratulations when they get divorced but it’s like congratulations you made it through the two hardest phases and it really does always get better like it’s just been so much better ever since then so just you know I tell people you know hang in there and take care of yourself as much as you can because there’s only so much of this process that you can control you really can only control what your own actions and reactions are right you’re never going to control the other person in the situation uh you can’t even control your kids let’s be honest like they have their own thoughts and opinions about it the whole way through too so I mean all you can do is try to protect your own peace and try to take care of yourself through the process to get through it as you know as unscathed as you can um but it definitely gets better it does it does and that stay orgo process that that you were talking about it is really challenging and I feel like the the clients who came to me in that phase they had enough time to make the right decisions for themselves with some support so that when they did start the divorce process they were in the right mindset and had a lot of information so I think even in that stay Oro phase getting some help just a sounding board with someone who is informed is definitely worthwhile absolutely and I’ll say is a mediator try to be the deescalation you know try to be the one that doesn’t escalate issues Beyond where they need to go try to be that de-escalates to do that too so I can always talk you through that as well so we have reached the end of our webinar thank you all so much for joining us I wanted to put this information on the screen please feel free to stay in touch with us if you have questions that you didn’t want to ask in this setting um and you would rather have a one-on-one conversation with us please reach out to us so we both have our websites here um my business is called quartertone mediation it’s at QT mediation.com and Lee’s website can be found at Lite coaching.com we have our phone numbers here our social media handles and then we each came up with an offer for you all tonight so I’m going to be offering $100 off if you book a three-hour mediation session with me I’ll take off $100 and for Lee she’s going to be offering 20% off a three session package so all you have to do is just mention that you were at this webinar and we’re

 happy to to give you those offers um I also offer free consultations so you can go to my website and book a free consultation um so 15 minutes and we can talk about whatever you want to talk about um you’ve pretty much heard my now so you kind of know what I do so I’m happy to answer any specific questions that you have Lee anything else before we wrap up tonight um I’ll just say I also do free consultations and you can go to my website and schedule those as well all right fantastic thank you so much for your time and for joining me tonight and everybody thanks for coming and we wish you all the best in 2025 there’s better things coming your way so don’t be scared it’s it’s gonna get here good luck everyone get through bye