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Expensive Divorce
Do you want to destroy your children, suffer mental trauma, and spend over $100,000 to WIN your divorce?
Then hire some unethical child custody evaluators, shady forensic accountants, and pitbull lawyers!
For the 95% of us who don’t have (or refuse to spend) this type of money, here are the people you SHOULD be working with:
1. Therapist: To help you deal with changes, stress, and anger.
2. Lawyer: To give you a best/worst case analysis, to represent you if you have to go to court, to educate you on family law.
3. Mediator: To find solutions.
4. Parenting Plan Coordinator: if you have children and need help creating a parenting plan.
The Therapist’s Role
Expensive divorces are not caused by RICH people with lots of assets.
Rather, they are caused by ANGRY people who want to fight.
Angry people are blinded by their fury, and intent on destroying their spouses. But divorce is not destruction, it’s restructure.
Angry people will willingly spend thousands of dollars to prove worthless things, and then accuse their lawyers, therapists, mediators of wrong-doing.
Angry people will unnecessarily prolong their divorce.
Look, you are going to be angry at some time in the divorce. You should be angry! I am all for letting out all that steam – you don’t want any of that toxic stuff bottling up inside. Therapists are best equipped to deal with angry people. They went to school for this, and are trained to handle anger.
The Family Law Attorney’s Role
Law!
Lawyers should practice law. Expensive divorces are caused by people who are ignorant of the law.
Your lawyer can and should educate you. For example, you should learn from your lawyer that California is a community property state. Thus, all property and debts acquired during the marriage and before the date of separation is community.
Family law attorneys should also advise their clients on the many options in handling your divorce, such as divorce mediation, or collaborative law.
The Mediator’s Role
Once you know you have to divide your stuff, and have to pay alimony, the MEDIATOR should help you decide the amount, and for how long. Financial issues should always be resolved sooner or later. Obviously, if your spouse runs his own business, or has massive undisclosed accounts, you may need to spend some money to ascertain these accounts. But after the numbers are out, rather than fight over which number to use – it is 100%, without exception, cheaper to settle sooner than later. You do NOT want to be the sucker that spends over $40,000 to find an account that had only $30 in it.
The Parenting Plan Coordinator’s Role
Custody is perhaps the ONLY issue that I believe could understandably take a bit longer to resolve. If there are custody issues which don’t involve drug/alcohol or child abuse/neglect, rather than litigating from the outset, it is highly recommended that you hire a Parenting Plan coordinator to help you reach a parenting plan that will work with your family.
Choose your team wisely.
Educate, mediate, and meditate.
You can and absolutely should control how much money you spend in your divorce.
Remember, after your divorce is over, the lawyers, judges, mediators, evaluators, and forensics all go away. You won’t see them again.
But family is forever.
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