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Wouldn’t a divorcing household that has resources/assets be entitled to the same practical and efficient approach that apparently is given a divorcing household that does not have the resources/assets?

Why should a divorce cost two to three to perhaps nearly five to ten times more in total simply because it is recognized that the divorcing household has the resources/assets and can bear the fees?

The practicality and efficiency with which a divorce is handled/lawyered should not depend on the amount of resources/assets in the divorcing household.

Every divorcing household is entitled to a practical and cost-efficient approach.

Divorce is for the divorce lawyers. The divorce system is a set up by divorce lawyers for divorce lawyers.

If you have a divorce lawyer, ask the questions you need to have answered. Hope is not a method. Make sure you get satisfactory answers – with supporting detail. Ask to talk to prior clients about their results.

Be aware. Be careful.

My observation is that there is a standard process for dads in a divorce that is followed by divorce lawyers almost regardless of the facts. The process involves losing most of the time with your children while being told things like “being a good parent isn’t about time” and paying a lot of money in legal fees while wondering what was done of value for all that cost — and then paying a lot of money in support for years to follow.

My observation is that part of process involves the dad being prepared by his divorce lawyer to fail his children and at the end and at some point in the case to accept that failure as inevitable. (I think the process for the divorcing wife is that her divorce lawyer incites her to “fight for her children” by some combination of agreeable “oh my goodness that is horrible” disparagement of the father and telling of “wife wins again” stories to show what “is usually done” in divorce.)

Don’t be in that process if you can help it unless you want to fail your children. (You don’t fail alone.)

Understand that if you try to not be in that process you will get all sorts of resistance those in the from the divorce industry.

Bucking the process means no easy path.

People will want to witness you fail and become weak if you don’t do it their way.

My divorce lawyer during the case would tell me about situations/recent cases where a dad had suffered a crushing and unreasonably unfair result in a divorce.

Between that and his billing but lack of attention/effort to my case/situation, it seemed like he was trying to demoralize me. I was demoralized but I was not going to give up on my daughters.

He became increasingly frustrated with me as the case proceeded as planned (but I did not give up). In the week before I fired him in a Freudian slip he angrily told me “you are indomitable”.

Right. He had worked me to the point where I was supposed to give up — which I think comes when the divorce lawyer feels that just about as much as can be billed to the father has been billed. He was a divorce lawyer with over 35 years of divorce experience. He knows when he has worked a dad to the point where the dad should give up and accept a bad result. He had reached that point. He was done with me at that point — the point where the typical dad would be convinced to give up.

I was not going to give up on my daughters.

The billed legal fees at that point (and there had been only one hearing in the case) were over $43,000. There had never been the mediation that I had requested over and over again. I was doing most of the work on the case. He had no intention or expectation of having to do any significant work on the case; the process for dads is that you work the case and then when the dad is weakened, you settle the case. The effort is not on case preparation, it is on dad weakening.

Few things can weaken you like huge legal expenses from your own divorce lawyer (combined with unsatisfactory results and a loss of hope). Having bills you can’t pay while looking at substantial future financial obligations and losing half of your assets is weakening.

Why isn’t that weakening happening to your wife?

Because that is not how divorce works. Remember that divorce is by divorce lawyers for divorce lawyers.

My observation is that divorce lawyers in the cases where they represent the fathers will bill more while in the cases where they represent the wives they will bill less — because that is how they can keep the cases going. The wives typically want the money and if they see it leaking out the door to divorce lawyers they may capitulate and settle the case and that does neither divorce lawyer any good. The divorce lawyer for the wife may “discount” fees to her while helping the divorce lawyer for the father run up full-freight fees on the father. (The divorce lawyers I suspect know how to get it back somehow, perhaps by being divorce lawyer for father in this case, for the wife in that case.) Dragging out the case for months and years also helps the divorce lawyers — the longer the case goes, the more billing (spread over more time). For the wife, the divorce lawyer billing may be back-loaded, with the final most substantial legal bill for then ex-wife coming at the end of the case after she has “won”. (The divorce lawyer for the ex-wife when he sees the “win”/case end on the horizon may step up billing, working the case more heavily at that point, for example, billing needless time “preparing” for a trial that will not happen because the case will settle.)

Be aware.

But don’t be weakened.

Be strong. Be strong enough to succeed for your children. You’ll be glad you did that for them and so will they.

Be indomitable. (Your divorce lawyer may not like it. Too bad.)

Divorce For This Century – Proposal

You didn’t have to go to court to get married. You don’t have to go to court to dissolve a corporation/business organization. Why should you have to go to court to dissolve a marriage?

Divorce is not the time, divorce court is not the place and divorce lawyers are not the people for family social work.

Divorce as it is today profits only divorce lawyers and incentivizes the conflict that every person who has been involved with a divorce knows is harmful to the divorcing parties and devastating to children of the divorcing household.

The proposal is to structure divorce as an administrative process run like an on-going mediation:

0. The filing fee for a divorce is $3,500. The fee is intended to cover the expenses incurred in the administrative process. (In addition, the fee for a marriage license will be increased to $1,500; at the time of marriage, parties will be required to file personal financial statements.) Fees also indicate the seriousness of the undertaking. Fee discounts are available to the indigent.

1. An administrator/mediator trained in -conflict resolution- is assigned at the start to manage the case/process. The administrator doesn’t have to be a lawyer or administrative law judge but will have special training. The administrative process is not a legal case but the administrator may issue and enforce orders. The administrator will assign to the case (a) a staff accountant and (b) a parenting coordinator (if there are minor children). The administrator may also assign a counselor. Divorce lawyers are not permitted to appear in the administrative proceedings. Parties may retain a divorce lawyer at their own request but the divorce lawyer will not participate directly in the proceedings.

2. The parties are required to exchange standard information disclosures (e.g., asset statements from dates of marriage and divorce filing) and proposals for settlement (e.g. for division of existing assets). The administrator may request additional information. The administrator will have the staff accountant to review financial records of the parties. The administrator may order that the parties meet with the staff accountant. At the start of the case, each party will be ordered to set up their own individual financial accounts.

3. If there are dependent children, the parents are required to meet with the parenting coordinator and submit a joint parenting plan. If the parents cannot agree on a joint parenting plan, the administrator and parenting coordinator will address that issue first. If the parents cannot reach an agreement, the initial order is that the parents will share equal parenting time during the proceeding and for two years after the divorce is final. Persons who were formerly employed as custody evaluators can be retrained and to instead serve as parenting coordinators (facilitators) tasked to help the divorcing parents reorganize their respective lives and households for the benefit of the children; parenting coordinators will remain assigned to the case and available to the parties/parents until the children reach the age of adulthood.

4. Parties are able to make all submissions made using standard fill-in forms (simple and understandable). Parties can revise their submissions during the initial months of the process. At certain points in the process certain disclosures will be required under penalty of perjury.

5. Starting presumptions: (a) equal shared custody/placement of children is best for the children and that each parent is entitled to equal parenting time; (b) equal division of property obtained during marriage is equitable; (c) the return of divisible/documented pre-marital property to each spouse is equitable; (d) no alimony/maintenance is required to either party. Evidence/proof is required to overcome presumptions.

6. The administrator initially sets up a case resolution plan. The case resolution plan requires monthly mediation sessions with the parties and the administrator; no postponements or rescheduling. The administrator will meet/mediate with parties once a month every month until case is fully resolved. The staff accountant assisting the administrator will provide a recommendation for asset division and support obligations (if any) as a starting point. Parenting plans will be reviewed and refined. The parties can submit issue lists to the administrator to be addressed in the mediation. The parties are obligated to attend monthly mediation sessions; failure to attend will result in a ticket and fine and possible contempt orders (in egregious cases).

7. If parties do not resolve all issues by mediation within 18-24 meetings/months, the administrator will decide any remaining unresolved issues. The parties can seek review/determination of the issues by an appeals panel within the administrative agency. The appeals panel consists of three senior-level administrators; the appeals panel will conduct a hearing for the appeal and then issue a written decision.

8. Child support payment obligations are not part of the negotiation. The parents are each required to submit a proposed budget for their respective households. The parents are required to attempt to prepare a joint budget for child support expenses that are to be shared, such as for activities, special medical care, orthodontia, college savings. Budgets will be reviewed by the accountant as against records of actual expenses; final budgets will be based on actual expenses of child support. Both parents will be required to pay child support into a fund based on their income and their parenting time and the budget. Each parent is entitled to withdraw a specified amount from the fund each month (e.g. by debit card); if the parents share equal parenting time, each parent is presumptively entitled to withdraw the same amount from the fund. Parents are required to submit an annual statement providing a report/accounting of the use of amounts withdrawn from the fund and on actual child support costs/expenses.

9. The administrator has authority to issue and enforce orders. The administrator may issue tickets imposing fines/sanctions for non-compliance with orders and rules/regulations. The administrator may also issue tickets and impose fines if parties make false/misleading statements and omissions. The administrator may apply to a court to obtain a contempt order (in egregious cases of non-complaince); the administrator may refer a party for criminal prosecution for making false statements. The administrator may also order the parties to meet with other outside experts if needed; the parties will be obligated to pay the expenses of outside experts.

10. If the administrator determines that the case is a high-conflict case (according to criteria), the parties will be required to pay a surcharge of $2,500. The first goal in any case will be to reduce conflict by removing any incentive for the conflict; the administrator has the discretion to return a portion of the surcharge to the parties if the conflict in the case are resolved appropriately. If a credible allegation of abuse is made, the administrator assign an investigator. The administrator will structure the case to maintain proper distance between the parties during the investigation. The investigator will report on findings from the investigation. (Abuse will be referred for criminal prosecution; false allegations of abuse will be ticketed/fined.)

11. Issues relating to “quality of parenting” are not addressed in the proceeding. The goal of the parenting coordinator is to help each parent establish a suitable household for the children. If one party/parent has objections to the parenting of the other party/parent, the objections are to be presented to an appropriate/different agency in a separate proceedings – e.g. to the child protective services agency. If the parenting coordinator sees a substantial risk to the child, the parenting coordinator may refer the case to the child protective services agency.

12. Judicial review in the trial court is available for issues determined by the administrative appeals panel (with due deference to the
administra-tor/panel). The initial determination of the court will be whether both parties participated in the administrative process in good faith; if the court determines that there was not good faith, the parties will be ordered back to the administrative process for up to one year under court supervision (monthly reports from the administrator). Otherwise the trial court can conduct a hearing or other proceedings to resolve the case.

13. After the case is concluded, in cases where there are minor children, the parents will be required to submit an annual report to the administrator in the status of the case (form questionnaire) which will remain in the file; the annual filing will be due on or before the anniversary date of the dissolution. If any issues arise after the dissolution, the issues will be presented by filing a request for relief with the agency; the request will be assigned to an administrator (the same administrator if available). The parenting coordinator will be available for handling informal issues between the parents.

Those against equal parenting time of children of divorce as a default rule complain of it as displaying a cookie-cutter mentality.* That’s the objection to equal parenting plans like the 2-2-5-5 or 7-7 or 2-3-2 schedules.

When you look closely at what happens in divorce you will see that in actuality there is no opposition to a cookie-cutter mentality.

The opposition is to the shape of the cookie cutter.

The commonly-used cookie cutter is to give the children to the divorcing/divorced wife and to turn the children’s father into an uncle with every other weekend and maybe a dinner night visitation. The so-called 12-2 schedule.

The every-other-weekend-for-father cookie cutter is apparently perfectly fine for ex-wives. Yummy they might say. (That extra blob of dough in the 12-2 parenting order makes for a tasty extra in the child support payment.)

The lesson that I learned too late in my divorce was that I needed not a divorce lawyer but a divorce accountant.

At the start of your divorce, you should retain an accountant to look at your balance sheet as it was at the time of the marriage (which may involve a bit of forensics) and then as it is at the time of the divorce filing.

Depending on how long the divorce lawyers drag out your case, you may want to have the divorce accountant look at the case again.

What an accountant can tell you is what you were worth at the time of the marriage, what assets are in your marriage at the present, and what various divisions of assets would look like.

An accountant can also do some tax planning and forecasting.

A divorce lawyer isn’t likely to tell you that you should get an accountant. The divorce lawyer is likely to try to do that kind of work despite not having the skill/qualifications – and then bill you more than an accountant would have in the process.

If your divorcing spouse is not completely unreasonable, certifications from the accountant as to the financial statements may bring about a quick and fair settlement.

Child support — covering the actual expenses that are actually incurred in the actual support of the children?

Yet "child support" in practice seems to be a way for divorce lawyers to have divorcing/divorced parents in conflict and incurring legal expenses (a) that the divorcing/divorced parents can’t afford as a practical matter and/or (b) that deplete funds that otherwise would be available for the support of the children who are supposedly to be supported by the "child support" payments at issue.

That’s a problem.

A solution would be to have both divorcing/divorced parents make child support payments into a support trust fund and then to give each parent a debit card that they can use to withdraw monies to pay the actual expenses of the children. The amount that each parent can withdraw can be set according to the actual expenses of the children in each household and the differences in income, etc.

That approach would also bring a bit of parental/financial accountability which is totally lacking at present — and without which it in some situations it is not even accurate to call child support payments "child support".

In addition, cases where the child has two "deadbeat" parents could be identified. Under the present child support regime, a non-paying parent who is a "deadbeat" (i.e. who does not get a job to provide financial support for the children) must only suffer imputed income; a paying parent who is a "deadbeat" will lose his hunting license (among other things like having to go to jail). It is possible and in some cases likely that the non-paying parent is not making a suitable financial contribution to the support of the children — which is by law an obligation of each parent.

Imputed income does nothing for the children; in fact, it harms the children because it reduces the obligation of the other parent and the total support payment.

Why have divorce lawyers conditioned to set up child support disputes as mother v. father? — that does no good for the children. Child support should be mother and father for children.

If both parents had to make child support payments by formula according to their income, no arguments, no exceptions, the result would be gender-equality that we all want to achieve in society, reduced mother v. father hostility, complete financial accountability, and a better net result for the children.

Divorce can be a lesson in disgust management.

What do you need if you are in a divorce?

1. The divorce.

2. Good outcome that makes sense for you and how you will live.

a. Protection of relationship with your children.

b. Protection of your other justifiable interests – (a) assets, (b) career, (c) way of life.

3. Sanity

If you are a sound person in a divorce then you can get a good outcome by doing the outcome planning yourself.

Collect the financial documents and take them to an accountant — jointly. Figure out how to maximize what each person gets in the divorce. If you have some issues about who gets what, look at the big picture as well as the small. Ask the accountant to find you a mediator to work through the issues.

Come up with a parenting plan that give the children equal time with each parent and the best life possible.

That’s what good people do.

Bad people do a divorce differently. If you married and are divorcing a bad person, be prepared for the sleaze and waste that divorce can be with unscrupulous divorce lawyers in charge.

Divorce can be used to cause harm to people — including children.

There are divorce lawyers who gladly will orchestrate a divorce where the assets of the divorcing household that would otherwise have been available to the children of the divorcing household are converted into billed legal fees. (You end up paying the college tuition of your divorce lawyer’s children rather than your own children.)

An insight was recently shared with me – that when you get a divorce the divorce lawyers are adversaries . not to each other but to the clients.

I never thought of it that directly but in fact the divorce lawyer that I retained was an adversary to me.

Not because I was unreasonable but because I resisted for the most part his efforts to control and manipulate me. He was the expert and how dare I question him.

A divorce lawyer is supposed to be an advocate for the client, right? Doesn’t work that way in reality.

A divorce lawyer with 30 years of experience has 30 years of experience seeing children separated from fathers — regardless of who they represent. So that is what they expect and will have happen in a case. Who are you and who are your children to expect anything different? So that is what will happen to you and your children if you put your divorce in the hands of divorce lawyers.

Divorce lawyers have a program and that is the program. If you don’t go with the program, your divorce lawyer will be upset with you. If you question your divorce lawyer, your divorce lawyer will be upset with you.

My observation is that divorce lawyers don’t think too highly of their clients to begin with – so not to go with the program that your divorce lawyer has for you makes a bad situation even worse for you in terms of the relationship.

As a practical matter, it isn’t reasonable to expect a divorce lawyer will use up his/her goodwill fighting for a client. Your divorce lawyer if your situation is like mine will sit there as a potted plant while you (the dad) are slandered and smeared by others.

The divorce lawyer deal with fathers who have assets that can be converted into billed legal fees seems to be to terrorize the fathers with all of the possible horrible things that could happen to them and their children to cause anxiety/dependence, to get into meaningless skirmishes with opposing counsel to run the billing meter, to create distrust and antagonize conflict with the other divorcing spouse to preclude reasonable settlement, to blather about legally irrelevant points to try to sound like an expert and to do no genuine case preparation because that is actual work and who wants to do actual work – and after the client has been billed near to the point of death to bully for a settlement on unfavorable terms or on terms that could and should have been negotiated as a settlement at the start of the case (tens of thousands of dollars of billed legal fees in the past).

My divorce lawyer would do things like tell me that I would get put out of my home, that he’d seen far better fathers, that he just read a case where a divorcing wife took a divorcing father to the cleaners for no apparent rationale (and when I asked him about the case/facts he’d not be able to find the case for me to read but would make the facts sound like my case), etc.

Near the start of my case, I prepared a comprehensive settlement proposal document that was ignored by my divorce lawyer and the divorce lawyer for my now ex-wife. My divorce lawyer who from time to time made Freudian slips it seems told me that it was “too early to settle” the case; I wish I knew then what I later found he meant by that comment. It was too early — for him and the other divorce lawyers who had fees to bill.

A few months later I tried to get a settlement meeting scheduled. The other divorce lawyer and my divorce lawyer were not going to let that happen if they could help it while there were fees to bill. I finally got them to schedule the meeting in the distant future and the day arrived; on the day, my divorce lawyer made some comment that allowed the opposing divorce lawyer to say “we’ll never be able to accept that or settle so let’s cancel the settlement meeting”. I got word 30 minutes before the scheduled meeting; I told my divorce lawyer that I was going to the meeting in any event. The opposing divorce lawyer was able to have stop my divorcing wife from attending by calling her on her cell phone as she was driving to the meeting. My divorce lawyer came to the meeting and sat beside the opposing divorce lawyer with me on the other side of the table. “We’ll never be able to settle” they told me, “you are unreasonable.” “How is it that two divorced lawyers each with over 25 years of experience and totaling almost 65 years of experience can’t figure out how to settle a relatively simple case like this?” I asked. In unison, they said “we never know what a judge will decide”. “But don’t over 95 percent of cases settle before going to the judge?” I asked. Again in unison, they said “you are unreasonable, this case will never settle.” Translation: We want to make sure we get $100,000 of legal billings out of this case before it ends and sizing up your assets, your divorcing wife’s vindictiveness/nastiness and manipulability, and your desire not to be excluded from your children’s lives, we think we can do that kind of billing if we keep the case going. (By the way, the case did settle about 20 months later — the day of the trial.)

Later in the case we had a trial date (the first of three) and I pressed to go to trial but my divorce lawyer insisted that he wasn’t prepared. I told him to go to trial anyway because the amount at issue was less than he would bill me to prepare for the trial (how complicated is a divorce in terms of legal-factual issues that matter?). Of course he did not go to trial as instructed; instead he told me that he had reached an agreement with the opposing divorce lawyer to mediate — but that agreement turned out not to exist. (The case went for nearly three years in total but there was never a mediation; the divorce lawyers did not want to settle the case.) He then realized that his days of having me as a client were numbered and seemed to try to bill his last few extra thousands out of me before I could pull the plug.

At one time I asked my divorce lawyer why he was such a lousy advocate for me when it came to my children. By then we were well over $30,000 in billings into the case. He told me that he “thinks children should be with one parent rather than two parents”. He suggested that I accept an unequal and unfair for my children placement schedule.

When I fired him and represented myself I ended up doing better — ultimately having with equal parenting time, which was all I had ever sought.

Some divorce lawyers actually want to get themselves fired and precipitate it by increasingly poor client treatment after they have billed what they feel is a nice sizable amount to the client.

In retrospect, it is clear that my divorce lawyer did that – degraded the relationship to the point where it had to end – after he had billed over $40,000.

Once the divorce lawyer is fired, there is no obligation for the divorce lawyer to do much of anything — all that has been billed is pocketed but nothing much has to be delivered to the client in terms of result.

That the divorce lawyer actually did no trial preparation will not be exposed because the divorce lawyer won’t have to conduct the trial. The divorce lawyer collects the fees but doesn’t produce any of the result. The client is left in the lurch.

And of course within the community of divorce lawyers clients who have had multiple divorce lawyers are given a black mark. That doesn’t mean that another divorce lawyer won’t sign on and take your case/money; but it does mean that if anything goes amiss due to the next divorce lawyer and you complain or get to a point where you are disputing an issue with the next divorce lawyer, a smear will be cast on you that you “had another divorce lawyer”.

Who is your adversary in a divorce? Your pwn divorce lawyer, for starters, if you are in a case like mine.

Divorce is not the time and divorce court is not the place for (and divorce lawyers are not the people to be involved in) family social work involving children.

All you need to do to be a divorce lawyer is to pass the bar (and not have any better legal work to do).

Divorce lawyers have no required training in children issues.

And lawyer jokes and public image did not come out of nowhere. Divorce lawyers sadly meet the stereotypes (if not also exemplifying the stereotypes stereotypically).

You have failed as a parent if there are divorce lawyers involved with your children. Period.

And if you end up transferring the college/orthodontia fund of your children to the children of the divorce lawyer you are a big failure as a parent.

Do better than that for your children.

Take counsel regarding your children not from a divorce lawyer but from the best that is inside of you and/or from a professional who knows is trained and actually knows/cares what is best for children.