It’s no secret that separations and divorces can be stressful, costly, and emotionally exhausting, and finding a solution that works for both parties involved and the children can feel impossible.
On this episode of Children First Family Law, Krista outlines the options available to those seeking a divorce or separation, particularly in Colorado. The choices individuals make in this situation have implications, and Krista shares the potential pitfalls and considerations of each one. These options include handling the separation or divorce without an attorney, hiring an attorney (or two–one for each party), coaching services, mediation, and arbitration. She explains each one’s advantages and disadvantages. Krista offers a unique final solution she developed called an Amicable Uncontested Divorce Solution, in which she works with both co-parents to create customized solutions for their particular scenario. Finally, Krista shares the importance of preserving the co-parenting dynamic to reduce trauma for the involved children. She reveals the 13 steps she uses to determine if a potential client is a good candidate for this solution.
There is a path to a more peaceful separation of co-parents than attorneys on both sides ready for war. Krista’s Amicable Uncontested Divorce Solutions offer the answer you’ve been searching for.
In this episode, you will hear:
- The implications of the choices the involved parties make during a divorce or legal separation
- Handling a separation or divorce in Colorado without an attorney and potential pitfalls and considerations
- Hiring an attorney to handle your case, what to be aware of as you research who to hire, and when you can use one attorney versus two
- The importance of prioritizing children during separation—and why many attorneys fail to do so
- Investing in a coaching service and key factors to consider when evaluating your options
- Krista’s tips for evaluating a mediator to handle a divorce or separation
- The pitfalls of mediation and how it can derail a case.
- Arbitration’s advantages and disadvantages as an option for handling a divorce or separation
- Amicable, Uncontested Divorce Solutions at Children First Family Law tailors benefits for both co-parents seeking customized resolutions.
- Minimizing trauma for children while preserving a healthy co-parenting dynamic.
- Krista’s 13-step approach to achieving an amicable, uncontested divorce.
Resources from this Episode
www.childrenfirstfamilylaw.com
All states have different laws; be sure you are checking out your state laws specifically surrounding divorce. Krista is a licensed attorney in Colorado and Wyoming but is not providing through this podcast legal advice. Please be sure to seek independent legal counsel in your area for your specific situation.
Follow and Review:
We’d love for you to follow us if you haven’t yet. Click that purple ‘+’ in the top right corner of your Apple Podcasts app. We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.
The Benefits of Full-Service Amicable Uncontested Divorce Mediation [in Colorado] How to Save Money, Reduce Stress, and Prioritize Your Family’s Emotional Health During Divorce Podcast Transcript
Krista Nash 00:00
Amicable, Uncontested Divorce Solutions, starting from A going to Z with an attorney, with both parents, and having a very highly curated, customized approach to work with both of you in a way where you are known, and potentially your children are known, and we are customizing solutions to meet your needs, the specific needs to your family and your children.
Intro/Outro 00:26
Welcome to the Children First Family Law podcast. Our host Krista Nash is an attorney, mediator, parenting coordinator and child advocate with a heart to facilitate conversations about how to help children flourish amidst the broken area of family law as a child advocate in demand for her expertise throughout Colorado and as a speaker on these issues at a national level, Krista is passionate about facilitating and creatively finding solutions to approach family law matters in a way that truly focuses on the best interests of kids. Please remember this podcast is provided to you for information purposes only. No one on this podcast is representing you or giving you legal advice as always. Please enjoy this episode and be sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast with others you think would benefit from this content.
Krista Nash 01:14
Hey everyone, welcome to today’s episode of the podcast. I’m glad you’re here. Today, we’re going to be talking about the variety of processes that you can consider if you are faced with a divorce, and this applies to a legal separation or an allocation of parental responsibilities, which is for unmarried people who have children together, who are breaking up and need to determine what the child allocation will look like in terms of parenting time, decision making and the like. So there are a lot of options out there for you, and I know it can be very, very confusing. I know I, for one, get many inquiries each week, just sad stories of people who are going through this and they don’t really know how to approach it or where to turn and a lot of times. When I do consultations with them, they will have done a lot of looking around the internet, trying to do searches where they’re looking for ways to do this best for their children. Should I do this process or this process? There are a lot of sales pitches out there that try to tell you that their way is the better way to do it. And so I thought I’d unpack with you today what I think those general categories are and what I think is the best way to go about it, because the choices you make regarding the approach you use will really have a lot of implications in terms of what it costs you, how much stress you’ll have, emotional stress, just mental health for yourself, stress on your children, stress on your future co parenting relationship, if you have children together, and just the way that you are engaging in something that can be just toxic to you and your family.epending on how you go about it, some of these systems are much more adversarial than others, and so I just want you to have a really good sense of those different options, so that you can think about the pros and cons of each and choose; what is right for you and your family.
Of course, you can’t be listening to my podcast long before you know that I’m always looking to advocate for amicable processes that do their very best to foster the flourishing of you and your kids, or even if you don’t have kids you and the person with whom you’ve spent important times in your life, I think that it is something that the divorce industry does not generally promote, which is peacemaking and doing things in a manner that respect the relationship and respect the history you have together, and don’t turn this into a litigation war where you’re spending a lot of resources and really pouring more fuel on the fire to make things worse and worse. So you’ll hear that bias from me, if you are looking for a war like winning situation, I don’t know, maybe I’ll ask you to listen to this anyway, so that you can maybe get a different perspective. Because I don’t really think there’s any case I’ve ever seen that warrants that kind of approach. Now, sometimes we have to go to court and really defend the need for children to be safe when there is a situation where there’s abuse, violence, substance use, things like that, where there are real problems that we have to make sure we’re protecting children from. But even then, the idea of coming at this from an oppositional war-likeapproach, or that there’s a winner and a loser is really a fundamentally flawed approach. I think in any case, and I think I could stand behind that. I really do mean any. I have had a couple consultations where people call me and we talk about, on a consultation, what is it that you want? In this case, what’s important to you? And the person will say, I just want to win. I want to bury that person. That’s pretty shocking. Honestly, I think it’s just pretty rare. I don’t usually hear that, but I certainly would not ever take a case like that, and I would hope that more attorneys would try to be less war-like and so I feel like I’m always beating the same. I’m here to say that you really have a choice in how you go about this, and I hope you’ll choose a path that uses the most peaceful approach, that still enables you to get out of this in a way that keeps you financially, fairly, equitably treated, and also prioritizes the well being of yourself and your children. So this specifically, though, today is going to be about the different types of mediation, or various approaches other than just straight up going to court, and why some of these are better than others. And what you need to think about this is going to be like I said, mostly specific to Colorado, although it applies more generally to many, many jurisdictions and areas, different states and different areas of the world. I do think, though, for me, in my practice area, I see cases all over from Denver to Aspen to Colorado Springs to Fort Collins, Arvada, all over the place, Golden, Highlands Ranch, you name it, around the state of Colorado and around the Denver Metro area, just every city that I had the privilege of practicing and in every court jurisdiction, and from 1000s, literally, of consultations and cases that I’ve done and on which I’ve worked, there really are only a few options and in terms of how you go about your family law case, and you really need to consider those carefully, because if you’re facing a divorce or a breakdown of your family, You want to keep it as peaceful as possible. Really think through what these options are.
So the first option is you can just do it yourself. Now, a lot of people do this. There are a lot of forms on your state websites. In Colorado, if you go to the Colorado judicial website, I sure I don’t get to it the most direct way, but I always just search for Colorado Supreme Court Family Law, and I come up with a whole section on the judicial site there that explains all of the processes. All the forms are there. There’s flow charts, the calculators are available online to look at child support and maintenance. You certainly can attempt to do this yourself. A lot of different courthouses and court jurisdictions have what we call pro se help centers. That’s help centers for people who are representing themselves, and they are eager to help you, and they usually have family law on different days or evenings where you can come in and ask questions. There are also entities that are other kinds of help centers that help you be able to just navigate this area, but lots of forms available online, lots of step by step flow charts that can really help you with that. I will tell you, though, that while a lot of people do this on their own, it really can be very stressful for people. They miss deadlines, they misunderstand the expectations of them. They feel very overwhelmed sometimes by the courts, by the system. The court is supposed to treat even parties who don’t have attorneys as if they are lawyers. Essentially, they have to face the same rules, and a lot of courts try to be gentle about that and a little bit more loose about that, and kind of make the rules more lax, but you are working and walking into a court environment that you need to make sure you know what you’re doing, at least to some extent. And if you do this yourself and you’re not familiar with the language, the terms, the rules, things like that, you really can make some mistakes that really will affect the long term consequences of yourself and your children. And while the courts do try to do their best to help you, it is something that you need to take seriously about, whether you want to take that on or not, if you are going to take it on yourself, make sure you’re doing a lot of reading. Don’t just expect that people are going to just hand you the answers you want to make sure you’re doing your part to really become a student of this area, so that you make the best choices and get the help that you need. And don’t just sit back and expect that will be handed to you. This really can be like reading and navigating in a foreign language, because lawyers created the laws, and lawyers like to make it complicated. There’s lots of times on this podcast where I talk about the Latin terms that are used, and there’s not a ton of those, but there’s a lot of very foreign sounding language and some Latin terms, literally, that are used that, you know, it can become a little bit difficult to navigate, and also just the steps and all of the statutes and the references to statutes and cases and things like that, it can become very overwhelming for people who don’t have any kind of legal background. So make sure that you are getting information that you need to be as wise as possible if you are doing it yourself, make sure you are calendaring all of the deadlines. Make sure you are giving yourself plenty of time with all the forms and paperwork and requirements you really need to make, like a project plan. So you know, like, I have to take a parenting class, I have to turn in this document, I have to do my financial disclosures. We have to do all these different pieces. We have to show up at court at this time. We have to call the court in this particular way and get a setting. There’s a lot of different pieces to it, and you have to make sure that you’re asking the right questions if you don’t understand, and that you are being proactive about it, so that you are meeting all those deadlines.
I had somebody call me recently on a case where I had gotten off the case for a variety of reasons, and this person really just didn’t, you know, had all of the information about the details of what was coming up. And very, very shortly, right before the hearing, which was months after I got off the case, and had already made this all very clear to this former client, I was contacted with questions like, Oh, can you just call the court for me and change that date because I don’t think I want to do that date. I’m not ready. And it’s like, no, that’s not how this works. You can’t just change it. I can’t call for you. First of all, you can’t do this close to this, there’s certain formalities about filing motions and doing things like that, a formal approach that needs to be done in order to handle cases in courts, you can’t just call the judge. You can’t just do it in a very loose way. There’s a lot of steps you have to take and you have to follow the rules. So that’s just one example of many I could give you, of people just failing to understand that this is a formal process that needs to be taken seriously and that it really can go against you if you don’t. So it’s just important if you’re doing it yourself, you really consider that, and you own that.
Also, when people do it themselves, there is a much higher risk that there will be mistakes made in the financial division, which can be very costly and not understanding. For example, aspects of separate property considerations, things that you maybe don’t need to divide debts that you maybe should divide or shouldn’t divide. What equitable division in Colorado looks like. Is that equal? Is it something else? How does that work? You really can make mistakes, and that’s something that I was going to say, that you can’t go fix later. There are a few provisions that allow for the reopening of cases when there was faulty disclosure, but that’s a topic for a whole nother day. So I don’t want to misspeak and say that you can never reopen a case or appeal a case that you think went south and wasn’t appropriately handled. But just know that even just basic mistakes can be made in the financial division that can really be costly when you do it yourself. So to be very, very careful, you’re being precise.
Also, sometimes we don’t even have sufficient disclosures done because people don’t understand what should be disclosed. You have certain rights to get information that you might not understand. And so again, if you’re going to do it yourself, you need to be really careful that you are educating yourself so you do it well. I think also, I’ve seen that there are a lot of different things when people do it themselves that they don’t understand regarding child support and alimony or maintenance. So that can be an area as well where people are really faltering. Now the courts are a little more careful about that, because they want to make sure that pro se parties who are doing this themselves are adequately informed about their right to maintenance and things like that. And child support cannot be waived, but even if you’re not paying it immediately, it’s something you can go back and get. But still, there’s a lot of mistakes that can be made, so you just have to be really aware and make sure that you’re properly researching the considerations that you need to look at and think about and be informed of when you’re going to court on your own.
And then also, I think there’s a tendency to make parenting plans and Separation Agreements that are very thin and kind of poorly thought out the basic forms that the courts provide that you can get that I was sharing about that website where those are available.They don’t come even close to the type of agreements that an attorney would provide in terms of the level of detail for both the parenting plan and a Separation Agreement. So for example, let’s say that you have a provision in a Separation Agreement that one person is going to keep the house and there isn’t going to be a refinance of that house right away, because the person staying in the home won’t be able to afford or won’t be able to get their own loan, his or her own loan on the home. You might have, for example, a stay-at-home parent who hasn’t worked enough to secure his or her own loan on the house, and the other parent agrees, then I’ll let you stay in the house on the loan on my name for X amount of time, and that’ll help transition us into this divorce and be best for the children. That’s a situation we navigate a lot in family law cases, but a thin plan would just say that’s all we’re going to care about. And then what happens, though, when the person doesn’t pay the mortgage or walks out on the home or a variety of other things that could happen that you haven’t contemplated, and by working on your own doing this, you really could be prone to making some of those mistakes, same with a parenting plan.
You know, what are some things that like, for example, you would never have in a very, very rarely, or at least it’s not on the prompts in the JDF (Job Definition Format) form you would not have in that JDF form,. a provision as to what you do when new significant others get brought into the child’s life, you wouldn’t have that as part of the parenting plan. It’s not something that anybody would tell you might be part of a good parenting plan.
In any case, to continue, I will just let you know that, for example, in parenting plan, like I said, those JDFs, that’s a judicial form, that’s what we call them in Colorado, do not include some of those topics, like, what happens when you meet a significant other? How is that person going to get introduced to my children? Can my former spouse have, you know, people meeting my child all the time? Can they have overnights? Would that person you know, at what point do I need to be told about this other significant other, etc? In a more rich parenting plan that isn’t so thin, we can contemplate those things and we can include them. And it usually is a good idea to include those so that we have some agreements on how we’re going to do this, so that we don’t have a blow up later, or a, you know, set of misunderstood expectations as to what that’s going to look like. So that’s just one example.
Other examples would be, you know, whose parenting time is it if a kid is sick, you know? Or should we do a step up parenting plan to contemplate when a child is a little bit older so that we don’t have to redo this later, or when we have to exchange tax returns or income information so that we can modify child support? All of those topics I just mentioned are not part of the typical forms that you would fill out on your own, and you can very much limit the efficacy, or whether your plans are actually done in a really satisfactory way that addresses a lot of things that we know might come up. And if you do it on your own, you might really just miss a huge amount of those sections. I can’t tell you the number of times people have hired me to help them on the side, but then not really brought me in very much, and then they go and they mess their whole case up on their own, because they just really thought they could just do it on their own. And just talking to me off the cuff and not engaging with actual use of me in a more full way, is something where they then later said, Oh, I wish I hadn’t done it that way on my own, because I made so many mistakes. So that is the first option, do it yourself. Now, there are a lot of people that do it themselves, and it goes perfectly fine, but I just think you need to be aware of the pitfalls and make sure that you really are taken seriously, that you’re doing it yourself, and you need to really manage that well.
The second option I want to talk to you about is just getting a lawyer. Okay, there are so many lawyers. There are, I don’t even know, tens, thousands, maybe in each state, a lot of family law attorneys. There’s lots of people on the internet. You know, there’s people, if you just go Google different things about getting a divorce lawyer in a particular town or a particular topic that’s important to you, like domestic violence lawyer for divorce, or, how do I keep my children in divorce? How do I keep my kids from my ex in divorce, things like that, or substance use and getting a divorce lawyer who does substance use, there are 1000 different things that you could search for, and I will tell you that most of the things that come up on Google and other searches are paid for by firms that have the resources to buy placement, that buy paid play, so that they come up higher and are getting your attention earlier. So just be wary of that. You should do a little bit more deep work in you know, ask around to people, you know, who’s a good attorney. Look at the Google reviews. Look at various places, and I’ve already done a whole podcast on what you should look for in a good attorney. So go back and listen to that episode if you haven’t and you’re looking for an attorney, because I have a lot of very specific suggestions and questions that you really should consider. Don’t just go pick the first one that you find without really thinking through the things that you need to consider .
Now the other thing I will talk about this category, beyond just how you choose one, is considering whether this really is a good option for you. The problems with getting your own lawyer, especially one lawyer that’s going to represent you, is almost always asking for the other parent or party to get an attorney as well. Now I have a lot of cases where I represent one party and the other person does not get an attorney. And I think that’s because I create a trusting relationship, that I earn the right to have that space where the even the opposing party can learn that I am not going to mislead or skew. And part of that is because I have a podcast. Part of that is because of my strong Google reviews and my strong reputation for being fair in these things. So I am successful in taking on that role, and I do that role a lot. I don’t know. There might have been one or two cases where somebody had then left and went and got an attorney when I’m representing the spouse or the kind. Parent, but generally, in almost all of the cases in which I start this way, the other parent does not go get an attorney. So that’s just a nice pat on my own back here that I’m able to do that. But most attorneys don’t do it, and most attorneys are too adversarial to do that.
So usually when you get a lawyer, you’re asking for the other person to get an attorney, and that means that you are doubling your cost. Basically, it can be very, very expensive and sometimes extremely so for two lawyers. Now, what does that look like? I think it can look like literally hundreds of thousandss of dollars. In the extreme, more likely than not, you’ve got cases that are tens of thousands of dollars with two attorneys. I think that’s pretty common. There are some firms that can do it for less than that, but I think you’re looking at, you know, I’d say an easy twenty thousand, no one’s going to give you exactly straight numbers, because this is hourly work. And truly, we can’t exactly predict what this is going to look like. And so it’s very, very difficult for us to predict the actual full cost, because there are so many unknowns, but you just need to know that you are really looking at potentially expensive route forward when you hire two attorneys, one for you, one for your spouse, also getting a lawyer is adversarial by nature.
Most attorneys genuinely blow up cases, and they make the fight so much worse. There are some that are known to be quite amicable and who really genuinely want to get this done in as peaceful way as possible, but most of the time, I’m not finding that to be true, and so you need to understand, and you should be able to tell that by the type of people you hire and the answers to their questions that I shared with you in that other podcast. So again, think through that, listen to that one, and see your choice of lawyer will really help determine how adversarial it is. And also your spouse’s choice of a lawyer is very determinative of that. But just know that getting a lawyer is adversarial by nature. It therefore, because of the cost and the adversarial nature of it, can be very, very stressful, very much feel like you’re in a war and that you are on one side and that the other party is on the other side. So the stress can be very, very high. It can be very draining emotionally on you and your spouse or partner, and very damaging to your children when they are not prioritized by the lawyer or you believe, you start to believe the lawyer that the children are not the most important thing. Now, most lawyers aren’t going to go out, come out and say that to you, but there’s a surprising number of attorneys who don’t prioritize the children, and that fighting about money and assets and other things spills over and affects the children in just such really dramatic ways. And you’ve heard me on this podcast talk a lot about adverse childhood experiences, Aces. There’s a lot of research that shows that even in adulthood, children who experience divorce, particularly toxic divorce, there’s a link between that experience and negative health consequences, physically, even, and certainly emotionally to children now and in their adulthood. And really, I think, very problematic about bringing lawyers on is you can set up a situation for often lifelong toxicity and co parenting, and certainly damage throughout the co parenting, possibilities of being making that peaceful throughout the child’s youth, you literally get to a point where the things you’ve done to each other in court are so problematic that you’ve spilled over into the children, into your co parenting, in a way that you just really cannot recover. And that’s really unfortunate. So if you’re going to get a lawyer, make sure you’re listening to my podcast about what to look for, who to hire, by answering those questions that are very, very important, and then just be sure that you understand that you might be going at this in an expensive way that can be very draining emotionally and can be extremely stressful and adversarial.
The third type of approach that you can do, and there’s people on the internet that sell this, is to just hire a coaching service. There’s a lot of different people who say they’re divorced coaches or who are sort of quasi coaching, mediation type shops that claim that they can get you through a case amicably. Now I think that this would be all well and good, and it sometimes works, but there are things you need to be cautious about that you need to think through. First of all, I think best practice is to look for attorneys. Okay, sometimes paralegals do this work, and we do have, in Colorado now Licensed Legal Paraprofessionals (LLPs), who are getting a little bit more training that give them a little bit more ability to do this work well and even to do some limited court work with people. But you know, there’s a reason the lawyers have to go to law school for as long as they do. There’s a reason that they have to pass a torturous bar exam to be licensed and have to take ongoing legal education to continue to work in the area. And you know, it’s kind of like the difference between going to, I don’t know, I won’t even give you analogies. I don’t want to, I don’t want to go down a path. I don’t want to go but I. Yeah, I think you just need to be careful. So you need to be careful that you’re getting what you’re paying for, and if you are in a legal situation, my personal, I mean, of course, I’m an attorney. I’m a little biased. I think it’s better to go to somebody who’s an attorney or somebody who’s got a former judicial role, but even if they’re a former judge, have they done family law? Which is the second thing you need to look for in these coaching service options is, have they done family law as a specialty, and to what extent? Or are they just somebody who did some other area of law, and they’re trying to fill out their practice this way? Or they don’t really know as much as they need to know to really be selling you what they’re selling you again. Go back to who to hire and the types of questions you should be asking also. Do they have any real experience outside of being an attorney or somebody who is a professional who’s worked in family law? Do they have real experience as somebody who works with children? Do they understand the impact on your children of the various decisions that are being made? Do they understand the developmental needs of children? Do they understand attachment questions? Have they done the kind of work where they’ve created a lot of creative plans that really meet unique situations for kids and parents, if they haven’t done that and it’s just sort of a factory that spits out the same product for almost every family, I wouldn’t say that they’re really providing you a service that is special enough for your family, and I would look for somebody that does this in a more customized way. Also, do they have ties to key professionals? Are they in the know, in the community, within your area, so that they can bring on to the case, people who might be needed, such as appraisers, who do divorce work, which is different than just regular appraisers, financial analysts, evaluations of other entities or businesses, vocational evaluators, substance use evaluators or experts, psychological evaluation, people, child advocates, therapists who really do divorce, which is such a small section of actual therapists, and can they provide for you? Not just hey, theoretically, I think maybe this teenager needs therapy with mom or dad because the relationship’s so broken. But who should you actually go to? Can they open up their proverbial Rolodex, which I’m dating myself by and saying what that is. But do they have on speed dial the people who could be really those key people who could help you, if they don’t and they don’t have those contacts, then again, don’t think you’re getting really what you’re paying for in that kind of service. Make sure that their rates are in line with what you’re getting. So you know, if they’re not providing those things, and they’re a paralegal who’s doing this for you, but doesn’t have all those connections, or doesn’t have the legal background in a way that they have more authority, or they don’t have that kind of child advocacy experience, then they shouldn’t be charging you as much. So if you’re going to get less, you should pay less and just make sure that they’re not limited in their knowledge, their scope, their experience or their creativity. I have found that a lot of these places are limited in all of those things. So you want to be very, very careful. Or if you sign up with them, make sure that the contract that you use with them lets you get out of it, because if you see red flags in these areas, you want to pivot and get out of that and go to an area that can meet your needs better.
Okay, next, and I think what are we on fourth you can do typical mediation now, mediation as a term, is generally used for a one event mediation service that is required by the court, usually later in your case, after financials have been disclosed, after you’ve been at it for a little while, but before you go to a contested hearing, particularly the final hearing in your case. And so oftentimes it doesn’t start. We don’t start talking about mediation as a type of thing until much later in the case. And if you have lawyers you’ve hired, and you’re talking about mediation, it’s really talking about doing that, usually at the end. And in that way, it is court required. It happens later in the case. And even though you might be on Googling, Hey, I just want to do a mediated divorce, you need to be careful about what the results are from that, because you might be thinking about something that’s different than what we in the family law industry think of as mediation. So mediators generally are doing that later in the case of mediation, where you come to them. Now this isn’t true. You have to look at their websites and look at what they say about themselves. Some of them approach this differently. So this isn’t a one size fits all narrative, but when you think about mediation, or the courts say you need to go to mediation, they’re talking about the array of mediators who do this as a once in time event, where you go to a mediator later in the case who doesn’t know very much about your case, and you get kind of one shot. Now, sometimes they’ll do another day with you, or you can go back to them later a little bit, but most of the time it’s a couple hours all the way up to all day. Everyone’s smile spills over to more than one day. But generally, that’s about it. Usually, if you contact a mediator, they’ll say, do you want two hours? Do you want four hours? Do you want a full day? And then they attempt to settle your case or pieces of your case that day. Oftentimes, it’s virtual. Now there are some who do it in person. But ever since COVID is way more common. That is, I don’t know that I’ve gone to in person mediation, maybe a couple, but not many at all out of the hundreds I’ve done all of them. Almost all of them have been virtual since COVID. And the way it works is that a mediator is going to have what, only the information that you or your attorney or your I will say opposing party or your opposing party attorney, meaning that CO parent and that person’s attorney provide to the mediator. And if you’ve listened to my podcast at all, you will know I’ve talked many times with people who just say how shocking it is, how little information attorneys give to the mediators ahead of time, and just how kind of lazy they are in terms of providing that information. And therefore you are really not teeing up mediation Well, if you don’t have an attorney who is going to prep and prep you well, so that you’re going into it knowing what the Zone Of Possible Agreement is, the ZOPA, if you are familiar with negotiation terms. What is that Zone Of Potential Agreement? What are your non-negotiables? What are your negotiables? What are the range of options in various categories?
The first time you talk about this with your lawyer, should be weeks before you go to this mediation. You should be preparing a letter. And if the attorney is not doing his or her job well, the letter should go to the mediator in a week ahead of time, at least a few days ahead of time, at whatever time frame the mediator requests, along with associated documents that really help that mediator understand the case, so that mediator might spend an hour before the mediation starts to get a grip on what’s going on. And I am a mediator, because I do sit in this role in many cases. I can’t tell you how I think I’m actually meeting tomorrow as I record this, and I don’t think I have mediation statements from people. So enough said, right? I have, like, bashed this narrative to these people over and over again. I’m only going to be able to help you really, really well if you provide me the information ahead of time, so I can center myself on what the situation is and get myself ready, and you’re not going to waste my time. So I think we’re set for four hour mediation. We’re probably going to mess around in the first hour just general information about the case. It’s just a complete waste of time. If the attorneys had done their job to get me the information so that I could have done that ahead of time.
Also, we find in mediation when you have not prepared well, or your attorney has not prepared you well, that you’re like a deer in the headlights as a client because you have not thought about what that zone of agreement might be. You don’t know if you’re willing to take a buyout for spousal maintenance with less money. You don’t know what the implications of that are because you haven’t talked with your attorney about it. You don’t know if you’re willing to do a step up parenting plan, or if you’re fixated on something specific. You don’t know if maybe you’re going to, you know, die on the Hill that this one school must occur, you know, must be the one that’s selected, versus some other school that the other parent wants. There’s just hundred or more hundreds of different topics that might be at issue, and if you have not talked about those, you’re not going to be able to be very successful at mediation. And I find that the lawyers that don’t prep for mediation often just don’t want to settle. They just want to check it off, and they are financially motivated to just go on to court, and they don’t really care what happens at mediation. They’re making a lot of money that day. I think mediators really should insist that people have exchanged settlement options ahead of time, so that they are least on the same page on financial the distribution worksheet or marital balance sheet and some basic parenting plan provisions have already exchanged so people have already started this process, so that you’ve been able to sleep on it a little bit and get yourself ready for this where it’s not the first time you’re hearing about it. So make sure, if you’re doing mediation, that, especially if you’re just going to mediation on your own, that you’re doing this kind of work. And just recognize if you do mediation in one of these one stop ways, it often fails, especially if that work isn’t put together particularly well ahead of time. And you really can’t think of our typical mediation process as something that’s going to resolve your case, because the mediator just doesn’t have enough information.
I actually have been, like, quite disappointed, actually, in wearing that mediation hat for people, because I have had such an amazing opportunity, both in my own cases, in working with both parties, you know, working with one party and representing one and still being able to work with the other, or in being a Child Legal Representative, where I am able to really run settlement conferences, where I know a lot about the case and I can really help navigate in an informed way. And I have really been rethinking how I do this work, and I’m gonna get into that in just a few minutes at the end of this, as to what I think is a better approach for me and maybe for you, to really do this in a way that makes more sense. I guess. I’m just saying on this mediation topic that I think even I consider myself a very solid mediator, and I get quite frustrated at people’s just approach at mediation, at the parties, at the positions of Council, and just the way, I think that it should be something that is such an effective use of time and such a good solution, and yet it ends up not being what it needs to be. It often falls short of what it should be and what we all expect it to be. So that is frustrating for me as a mediator myself, and it’s frustrating for parents who think that this is going to work, and then it doesn’t, so that then costs more and it’s more stressful and more divisive and all the things. So think about that, if you’re just going for a straight up mediation approach.
I would ask you to consider the next fifth arbitration. People Google this all the time. You know what? I just want to arbitrate my case. What does that mean? It’s important that you understand what it is arbitration while it is postured as not as adversarial, and that’s true, because you’re not going to an actual courtroom that can be a little bit less formal depending on the rules that are set up with you and the arbitrator, and you’re on the other parent or party, but it is adversarial in that the arbitrator is sitting in the seat of judge, and generally there are rules that come in that the people have agreed to, and we have to follow certain statutes about arbitration and the processes and the way that it is formally handled in ways that require evidence and testimony, and the arbiter deciding with ahead of time you know what kind of evidence rules are we going to be following? So it can be less formal, because you can work around some of those things. For example, you might agree that you’re going to allow certain types of hearsay in which is out of court statements made by people who aren’t testifying. Really, there’s a whole bunch of ways I could describe that legally, but there’s a lot of things. If you think about things said out of court by somebody else for the truth of the matter asserted, then you know, for example, that teenager doesn’t like that school, that kid is going to. In a normal court that can’t come in under hearsay if you’re bringing it in, if you’re attempting to bring it in to prove the truth of the matter. Asserted that the child wants to go to that school, right? You might bring it in for another reason. There’s a bunch of hearsay exceptions, but the arbiter in an arbitration situation has to decide what rules of evidence are going to apply, and they work on that with attorneys or with you. And it still can become quite stuffy and formal in the way that it gets done.
Also, I don’t believe just like regular mediation. I don’t believe that the people know enough in the seat of Judge or mediator to make good decisions for children and sometimes really even for your own assets, because their knowledge is not nuanced enough. It isn’t engaged enough in you at a to a level where you are known and your children are known, and there’s a level of depth of insight into your situation that is specific and customized to you. And so both arbitration and mediation can really fall short of meeting needs, because again, it can be very one-stop-shop, very in a bad way,, one-size-fits-all, is really what I should say. Also, given that it is adversarial, it really can continue to damage your co parenting dynamics long term, because you are having to kind of go up against one another with evidence and testimony and saying things about one another that, by their own nature, are pitting you against the other parent or the other party.
Also, arbitration really does remove your autonomy of being able to control the outcome, because it puts it in the hands of a stranger to make the decisions for you, and an arbitrator is that the whole point of arbitration is that they’re going to listen to everything. A lot of times we see mediation that can convert arbitration, but once that person is in the arbitration seat, that person makes the decisions. Oftentimes people who are doing arbitration are pretty sophisticated characters in the family law world, and they charge a lot, so most arbitration processes still can be quite expensive, so you need to watch out for that. And I really do think that it still continues to create sort of this toxicity to co parenting and stress for everybody involved because of the way that it gets teed up.
So those are the ways that people typically can approach this. Do it yourself. Get your own lawyer and just go through court. Hire sort of a coaching/mediation service that claims they’re going to get you through it amicably and try to work directly with that service. Do typical mediation, or do typical arbitration. The typical mediation meaning later in the case, with somebody who doesn’t know you and you know, know you well and doesn’t, hasn’t been with you, kind of for the longer haul. And then lastly, arbitrationn, which I just discussed.
What I have found and I’ll offer as an alternative to all of these. So this would, I guess, be our sixth way of doing it. But I think is potentially the best way is to use an offering that I’m calling Amicable, Uncontested Divorce Solutions. So it’s not a great word, A, U, D, S. I don’t know if we can call it that. I don’t even know if we can kinetically say what that sounds like, but Amicable, Uncontested Divorce Solutions. And this is something that we have created in my firm, and I hope others will begin to start adopting as well. It is starting from soup going to nuts, starting from A going to Z with an attorney, with both parents, and having a very highly curated, customized approach to work with both of you in a way where you are known, and potentially your children are known, and we are customizing solutions to meet your needs, the specific needs to your family and your children. I’m going to go through why I think this is better and how it’s different.
So first of all, it’s full service hand holding. You don’t have to understand the Greek of the legal language. You don’t have to know your own deadlines. You don’t have to chart and navigate this on your own. You have an attorney who is skilled and experienced in family law and in child advocacy, and her team helping you navigate this, and doing so in a very hand holding way.
Secondly, we work with both partners from the consultation all the way through the case and every step in between to find specific solutions customized to your family. It can be far less expensive because you’re using one team and you’re doing it together. Again, you ask how much? It’s really hard to know, because it depends how complicated your case is. It depends if we need to bring other people in, expert help, or how long the case takes, how complicated the assets are, how complicated the child issues are. So it really is impossible to give an actual dollar amount to it, which I understand is frustrating to people, but I can say that it is far less expensive than having an adversarial approach with two attorneys.
Next, it’s guided, really importantly, by a licensed lawyer who is an experienced family law attorney and who understands the nuances of the financial aspects of divorce, of various options for assets and debt division, separate property components, gifting and various co-mingling considerations, all of these sorts of things. And very importantly, who has done child advocacy and understands the developmental needs of kids and other needs of children, and has creative ways to approach this. In that way, then the process is informed by years of that specific work, and informed by years of negotiation training and practice being in the seat of working with people to navigate the settlement options for people and the entire process, and very importantly, somebody who just barely has gotten engaged in your case, who is just doing a couple hours of mediation or not hand holding this so much for you, they have not earned the right with you to be able to push back on you. A lot of this is highly emotional. Working with the opposing parent, you know, can be very adversarial, and I find myself oftentimes where I have attorneys who will say, there’s no way this case is going to settle, and I’m able to come on as a child’s legal representative, work with everybody together, earn the right and the trust to be able to speak some truth into people’s lives about what we can consider and what their children might need, and then be able in a way that attorneys previously have not been able to because they’re too entrenched and they understand the other parents perspective enough. And when I get into that seat where I do know all of these things and I know these people, I’ve earned the right to actually be a little bit probative in terms of pushing back and saying, I need you to not talk like that right now. I need to move us into different Zoom rooms. Or I need you to approach the way you’re doing this a little bit differently, sir or ma’am or whoever you are, because you’re derailing this. And the reason is because I know this about you, and let’s talk about why this is happening. So you earn a relational right in this full service, micable, Uncontested Divorce Service, where I have the ability to push back on people and to be a trusted partner in the process where another mediator arbitrator really would not have earned that kind of right, because they don’t have the depth of knowledge of the case or depth of knowledge of the relationship, and they don’t have the credibility, necessarily, from having been both the attorney, the child advocate, the financial person, to be able to address all these things in a credible way. Also, sometimes they don’t have enough negotiation practice and training to be able to really, truly offer nuanced pushback on people that can really push us into settlement.
I’ll give you one example. I have a parent who was insisting that the other parent not drop the teenager off at her home. And I know from being on this case for a long time that’s an irrational request, and that we don’t need to go to a police station because there really isn’t anything to this, and I was able to talk to that mom directly in a way that really was able to navigate it in a way that was better for the child. Now, there’s other cases where we absolutely have to have more creative exchange processes. But because I’m out interviewing researchers about the latest research on exchanges and how this very pivotal point in a child’s life is so needs to be handled so delicately, I can point to actual research on these things, about what we should do about this, and bring that insight where, really, I don’t know other mediators who’ve been able to do that, because most people are just are not up enough on the world of child advocacy and development and research and all of those things. So having earned the right to have those conversations and push back really helps the negotiation process. And you cannot get that- I don’t care how good a mediator you are- you can’t get that without earning the right in relationship with people with whom you’re working on these cases.
By doing all of this and working so hand-in-hand, it also really helps you be stable emotionally, because it allows the nuanced approach for the person that’s doing this with you to be able to encourage you to get the help you need to suggest or allow for life coaching or therapy or things that would really help you address some of your needs. Maybe your co parent really needs that. And again, in the seat in which I’m sitting, I am able to earn the right, I will have earned the right to share that with people in a safe way, so that they’re far more likely to go get that and do that because I’ve created the relationships with them that allow me to have the right to give those sort of hard truths to people.
By doing it this way, it really does allow for peaceful or as peaceful as possible, and far more peaceful than any other approach I’ve seen, peaceful dissolutions, legal separations, allocations of parental responsibilities and keeping it moving forward in a way that keeps the discord low and solutions high, step by step through the process. By the time we go through this full paperwork is created from the case filing paperwork through final settlements, and you’re getting these truly customized solutions where we can bring in only if we need to though experts who can give us insight that we might need if we really can’t get to something on our own children even can be heard by a child advocate or even this mediator, person who is helping you. In my case, it would be me helping if you want me to talk to kids, I can do that, and I can do that in an informed way that brings back to you ideas of what the child thinks, and what my impression from all my child advocacy to try to help you understand what might be best for your child. I’ve had some cases where I’ve actually even brought children in, older children into the Zoom conversations, or in in person conversation to talk together about what this child thinks might be best. And the power that comes in that is just absolutely incredible. Also, right therapists can be provided, very important that we find the right people. Great co-parenting advice can be obtained. Full financial division options can be considered all the way from lower asset cases to highly complex estates, using financial experts only if we need them, but really finding a specific way to help your case with the very most precise tool possible.
I think that another benefit is that this gets you through this with as little trauma as possible, with the right team, and by keeping this piece, it preserves the co-parenting dynamics and respect, it allows you to help your ex, your soon to be ex, and your kids and yourself flourish long term, both now and in your post separation or divorce life. It does, like I said, cost far less than typical approaches, and it preserves the emotional health of really all involved. I can’t guarantee that it’s completely smooth. It isn’t always completely smooth, but it is the smoothest process that I can offer, that I’ve seen that works.
So let’s just next go through before we end today, the steps that we go through more specifically, because people always ask me, What are those steps that we would do if I want to try to approach it this way? So the first step is that you would reach out to our team, with your partner or co-parent, and set up a consultation.. Then secondly, consult with both of you together via Zoom to see if it’s a good fit. If we determine that it’s a good fit, we will determine how the retainer works, and we will determine what the contract looks like, and that contract will be with both of you. And we would then get going.
We would start then in step three, with conducting an information session to teach you both about the steps in the process for your situation, whether that’s divorce, legal separation, post decree, parenting issues, modifications, relocations, allocations of parental responsibility, etc. Really, any family law topic can be covered this way, and we will explain to you what to expect and what to think about aswe begin the process and what steps we next need to move this forward. We’ll talk about timing assets, debt, get a real sense of what’s happening in your case, so that we can start really curating this to your specific needs.
Next fourth, we will begin talking early and often and likely each time about what is happening with your kids, what is happening on a temporary basis with them. How are you making this the least impact on them, or at least negative impact on them. How are you able to best co-parent them? How are you going to handle decisions during this difficult time? What if there’s a birthday that’s occurring, what if somebody’s turning 16 and can get a driver’s license? How are you going to handle that? What if something happens where a child’s getting in trouble, whether it’s a young child or an older child, or some kind of crisis happens. How do we navigate all of those things? Life continues on, even while you’re in the midst of this process.
Ultimately, working on the child issues can result in several iterations of a plan. It might just result in one plan, if we can just get through that quickly. Sometimes we have to start with a plan that has some sobriety testing, for example, or some supervised parenting time while a parent is trying to come off of substance misuse, which I’ve got lots of podcasts on, and I would direct you all to so that you come informed to me, and we’re not wasting time with me just explaining everything to you that I’ve spent five hours on my previous podcast explaining you can get that information for free and come far more informed to me. So just like coming to a good mediator in the mediation section, I talked to you about this would allow you to be more prepared and spend less money with me, so we aren’t reinventing the wheel on every topic. And I’ve got enough podcasts out there now that I’m able to say, hey, go listen to these particular episodes about your topic, and it will really give you a sense of the dynamics you’re facing in your case. And that’s an ever growing library of information and experts and documents, PDFs, videos, research for you to go look at on your own. I do that all free of charge, because I do that as a public service to the community and to anyone looking at divorce. And in these cases, I do that as well. I say, go listen to this podcast. It’ll tell you the developmental needs of children at these ages, for example, or how to handle substance use concerns, or how to handle domestic violence. I have a bunch of different podcasts on those and you know, while your case needs to be curated specifically for you, a lot of that information that you need to be able to make those good, curated decisions for your specific situation. They start with getting informed about the scope and the nature of how we look at this in court and how family law has solutions to address it. So I send you to go look at those, and then we may have multiple little iterations of parenting plans that we do, and we do that as we need them. It’s not a one-stop process. It’s a curated multi-step one that is specifically meant and addressing your child’s needs. And we will do this regularly throughout the process to make sure your kids are okay. Like I said, I can talk to your kids therapists. I can talk to anybody you want me to talk to help bring more insight, just like I would as a child’s legal representative, but without all of the trappings of being in court and sitting in a different seat to help you get to answers, whoever you all agree needs to be communicated with. I can communicate with as necessary. We can do group meetings. We can do a whole bunch of different creative things to approach this in a way that just actually gets to the bottom of it and produces solutions that are impactful for your family and really best meet you or your kids needs.
Next fifth as necessary, we will speak with you, together or separately, to determine what each of you are considering in this situation, and as that morphs through time, these cases do take Some time. It’s a 92 day basically waiting period before you’re able to get a divorce in Colorado from the time the second party is served, although in this case, we wouldn’t need to do that, because we’d likely be filing together or doing waivers of service. We’re going to try to take out steps where we can. But the cases take a few months regardless, and so things happen during that time, and somebody might get really upset or find out something that they didn’t know before, and sometimes it isn’t helpful to be in the same Zoom room. So one of our provisions is that we can be in separate places and be able to talk in different rooms and me, have me go back and forth, or we can go have a cup of coffee together, and I can do that with one of you or the other of you, and I’m not serving as either of your attorney. I am serving as a guide and coach through this entire system where I’m working with both of you. And because I’m sitting uniquely in that role, I’m able to help you both in whatever way you both agree is productive. I suppose you could come in and say, I never want you to talk with the other person without me there, and we could try that, but I will probably encourage you that isn’t going to be the most effective way to do this, because sometimes it does take a heart to heart with one parent and with me to be able to say, look, you really need to think about this differently. And sometimes that’s not a comfortable conversation to have in one setting with the other parent. But again, I would earn your trust in working with you, o that you understand why you could trust me in that. And this is generally how it works with almost all of my Children’s Legal Representative cases, a parent will talk to me first, the other one will talk to me separately, and then sometimes an attorney will be on with each parent, sometimes not. And over time, we earn the right to have more loose dialog where I’m able to navigate this in a way where I’ve earned the trust to be able to, for example, not have an attorney tagging along with me in this conversation, or to, you know, have more direct conversations with individuals in the case, or therapists or children, in a way that really can bring more information to bear. So very, very fluid and flexible on how we approach it? We approach the case in the way that best brings my experience to your situation and that’s unique to your family.
Then six, we will provide all the documents that need to be completed, and we’ll help you as you need help. Now we are not representing either of you, which is the seventh step. I will say that we will direct you to outside legal help if this process is falling short, or if red flags occur that make us know that this process has become inappropriate. Usually, I’d say 99% of the time, we can identify that early in the work, in our initial stage of this, where I can tell quite quickly that this is not a case that’s postured well for this kind of approach, and if so, we won’t move forward, and I will ethically always come forward and tell you as soon as I do know that. I think it really is pretty rare, but there are some times where we hit a speed bump that we just can’t get over, and it is something where I would be not ethically serving my role properly if I didn’t tell you both that I thought it would be best for you to go seek counsel and to go into a different direction.
The only other piece that would make that happen is if it really does, just start to fall apart, which also doesn’t really happen hardly ever, really, but if it does, you know that you can’t force somebody to have to settle and people always have the right to be able to go get outside legal help. And if they do that, then this process would disintegrate, essentially. And so you have to walk into it in good faith, knowing that this is an approach that you both want. If one person is getting dragged to it, it isn’t like or is very adversarial or very suspicious in a way that they’re not willing to listen. And you know, I’ll actually send you to listen to the podcast I did. There’s a resource on the podcast with Lorraine Bachman, who is a substance use and addictions counselor SUE), and she was on a recent episode. And in the resources there, I talked about cognitive dissonance, basically, like the way that people look at this in a disordered way, where they’re not able to think about this in any way, but the way they’re currently thinking about it, so they can’t possibly see beyond kind of their own nose sometimes. And if one of you is like that, and I can see that, I can see that I’m really not getting anywhere with you, it won’t end up being a good fit. And I will tell you that, and we won’t move forward. And I think we know that pretty early in the process. So that is just a little caveat on that.
I will tell you that next eighth we help you process the financials, we explain the required disclosures, we create the distribution worksheet, also called marital balance sheet, and go over that with you both, to help you analyze options yourself, to divide assets and debt and to really have information where you are truly informed about what your options are, and we’ll talk about that very openly.
Ninth, if needed, but only if needed. We’ll bring in experts, people to help us. Those can be financial experts, like maybe we really need somebody to do an analysis of a business to value it or give us insight on someone’s income. For example, if you’ve got somebody who’s self-employed, maybe we really don’t have a sense of whether that person’s income is X or Y, and we really might need to have somebody look at that for us, which is what would happen if you went to court anyway. But we can do it in a much less adversarial way and genuinely approach it so that everyone is getting the same information at the same time. And so we can do that. We can bring in appraisers who are focused on divorce and who understand how to do this in a way that is helpful in this situation. We can look at vocational evaluators, lenders, child experts, substance experts, psychological test people. If we need that, we need to take some of that off the table, or really consider how to help somebody who’s struggling, therapists who really understand this work. And as I shared before, you want this person, and I happen to be a person that has this, to have that deep directory of direct contact to all those people I just referred to, and all of those types of people, not just generally, but very specifically, where I can shoot an email and say, I need your help on this, and they will answer me very, very quickly with whom I have a good relationship and have a reputation that has preceded me, so that they’re willing to help. If I say, I have these people who need your help. Can you help me? We have sort of an open door to be able to get that information and to get those relationships already go before you to help you. You’re not just blindly looking through some new Google search for somebody to do that work. So. Are some people that do this work well in all those categories, and there’s some people who don’t do it well. There’s some people who massively overcharge for it. And I have navigated all of those categories in all of my work, and so I bring that very specific Rolodex of information to you. Also in doing this, we will use a scalpel and not a sledgehammer. I say frequently that many attorneys just and many attorneys take the entire toolbox and dump it all over the table and say, we’re going to use all these tools. I don’t do that at all. I say, what is the smallest tool that we can use? We don’t need to do things just because it’s the way they’ve always been done, and we don’t need to charge these people more money and do extra things just because that’s what I could charge you. We don’t do that. We use the least intervention necessary in any given situation, and we try to get you to the end as quickly as and peacefully as we can. But by knowing those experts, you know there are a lot of things that come up in cases, and there will be speed bumps, and we need to be able to know how to get over those speed bumps, and that’s where a sophisticated organization that has these deep relationships and a lot of experience can bring those very nuanced solutions to you that help you get over those speed bumps that would derail you in most cases, but have a very strong chance within our process of not derailing you because we know how to approach them. We see them coming a long way away, and we know how to avoid them or to smooth them out a little bit, and how to get over them in a way that allows us to keep moving forward.
Ten,like I said, we can talk with kids. We can do home visits. We can bring a different child advocate if you felt you needed that. We could find ways to get your children’s voices heard and analyze those situations in a customized way to help you inform your parenting plans and help address relational issues in parent child dynamics, which are very, very frequently, part of our cases, particularly with teenagers, there are oftentimes dynamics that one parent is a resisted parent by the child. There’s a lot of buzz words out there about alienation and about, you know, resist/refuse, dynamics, enmeshment, alignment. There’s just a whole bunch of different terms out there that we need to be very careful with. And there’s a body of work around how to approach those, and we are very skilled in doing that. And we do that as child advocates in many, many cases in all the jurisdictions across Colorado, and we can bring that information to bear on your case, even in this amicable way.
Eleven, I will say the timing of the case really is as you need. It is not a one stop, you know, two hour, four hour, eight hour, and that’s it. It is not driven in a really rote way that pushes it in a way that is too fast. It is focused entirely on the pace that your situation warrants. Sometimes we suggest filing the case and then holding it in abeyance, meaning putting a freeze on it, if you want to go get counseling, or if we need more significant testing done, or things like that, sometimes we need to pause work until there’s more information that comes in. So while we’re not freezing the case, we’re freezing our work for a little while, until we have all the valuations in, for example, or until we have like a psychological evaluation in, or more information on something very critical to the case. And so we can pause and wait and move forward only when we’ve obtained that piece of information. We are very good at telling you, explaining to you how to get those sorts of things to happen in your case without derailing it or getting your case dismissed. And we handle it again in a very nuanced way regarding your specifics and what you and your family need regarding timing.
Twelfth,, at any point, you can opt out of the process, either one of you and go lawyer up on your own and approach it in the typical way. In that way, your documents will not be a waste. You will already have your sworn financial statements done. You’ll have initial, probably parenting plans done, or you will have done a huge amount of information gathering and sharing that will not be wasted and can be used and should, with a good attorney, cut your costs down in the future. So I think a trying this truly problem solving, customized solution-driven option will help you potentially have the information you need, even if you have to go to another attorney, and very, very infrequently, we have found that to be the situation. Honestly, we usually are facing a lot of at heart relational issues, mistrust issues. We need to figure out how to incrementally build trust with co-parents again, and this whole process can lead you down that road in a way that genuinely helps you learn to be better co-parents, because I also work as a parenting coordinator. I am very good at teaching people how to do this in a way that is more effective than you might be able to do on your own. I’ve had all the training on this to be a parent coordinator, and I do that in a way that allows your communication to be better, to use better communication tools, calendaring, apps, tone, approach, things like that. And by working with somebody who is as settlement-minded as I am, by doing that with you both all the way through the process and me continuing to explain to you how bad this is for.your kKids, if we can’t get through this, you have a much higher likelihood of ending up on the other side of this knowing how to work together, not as a couple anymore, but in a co-parenting situation that will continue to flourish in the future, and have a lot less chance of derailing and a lot more chance of being truly effective for your kids. So that you can do things like if you go listen to my podcast with Bruce Cohen, he tells a story at the very end of that of the tale of two families and two divorces.ne side that had a very toxic situation where they really never communicated and never really fixed it, and another side that really did their very best to co parent and to learn to work together, even though the divorce was difficult, and at the wedding, you could see that the one family was there, and there were step parents there, and everyone was with the bride and groom, and it was going well. And on the other side with the toxic co-parenting, you had a parent that refused to come to her own child’s wedding because of those co-parenting dynamics that failed forever. And Judge Cohen says in that podcast, please, people don’t be those people. Be the people that can be together at a graduation, at a wedding, at a at an event, at a birthday party, who can be cordial and respectful, if somebody, if you run into that person and to be truly supportive.
f you listen to Terry Harrington’s podcast, she shared that she and her ex actually traveled to college sports games that their child was in, and her husband actually passed her ex husband, the father of their mutual child, actually passed away at a young age, and she was so, so glad that she had created a really solid co-parenting situation and seized the year she had so that her son knew his dad before that untimely death occurred.
So you just never know. And I will share those stories with you. I have hundreds and hundreds of them that I can share that will help you really understand the truly critical need for you to do this in a way that makes you be good co-parents at the end of this. And honors that you’ve had a relationship together, and especially honors that you have a child together if you do have children, even if you don’t have kids. And you want to use this approach, it’s still a great approach, because it still does honor the relationship. It’s still quite effective. Works very, very well, and gets you through it in a way that genuinely can get you to the other side, so that you know you certainly share joint friends or extended family who you know, and it just allows you to preserve the peace and relationships that you have with others and just the dignity of the relationship that you shared at the end.
So I guess thrteen, not that’s unlucky, but maybe I’ll make a fourteen,o I’m not ending on thirteen. At the end, you get a full set of settlement documents that you’ll provide the court at the beginning. You will file your case yourself, because we’re not representing either of you, so you do have to file your own court documents, but we explain how to do that, and it’s very straightforward and not hard. And if we have done the case in a typical approach where you filed the case at the beginning and then we start working, you would only have one brief virtual court appearance, at which point you’d appear and say, hey, we’re working together with a mutual person to help to settle this. And they’ll say, the person who does that initial conference will say, wonderful. They’ll do a few quick procedural things, and we will have explained to you, and you’ll be on your way probably in five to 10 minutes. Honestly, usually it’s very brief. You will file your own financial statements and certificates of compliance with disclosures that are required in Colorado. You’ll file those with the court, and we’ll explain how to do those. If there are legal questions you have on that, we’ll give you options and explain what those different options are, and you’ll make that ultimate decision, and you’ll go file the document. If you have children, you have to take an online co-parenting after divorce class, and we will direct you to that and you’ll file that certificate saying that you took the class. And then at the end, you will file all your settlement documents. The court will then hold a brief, non-contested hearing, essentially, usually very brief and almost always virtual, to be sure that you each agree to the settlement terms and the parenting plan, if there is one, and we will have provided your proposed decree, your support order, your maintenance and child support worksheet, advisements, if those are appropriate in your case. And then those agreements will issue and become orders of the court. So you really will only have to go to court for two very brief virtual situations.
Now, fourteenthth, trying to make one up on the fly here. I’m not going to do that. That’s silly. I’m just going to keep going.
All right, so that’s it. You know, my random 13 things that are the steps I’m sure I could come up with others. I do want you to know that all of these steps do have to be followed, no matter how much you just want to do this in an easy way and just get divorced. I get calls like that a lot where people say, I just want to get divorced. We just want an amicable divorce. We don’t want to do all this stuff. And there is not a shortcut around filing the documents I just mentioned. No matter how amicable you are, no matter which of the processes you want to use, whether you do it on your own or with two different attorneys, or through these various processes, you still have to go file all this stuff. Because there is a legal process with legal requirements that are required. It’s like, if you want to get married, well, this isn’t the greatest example, because I suppose you could do common law marriage, but if you want to get married, generally, let’s say you have to go to the courthouse to get a marriage certificate. Okay? Because it’s got to be registered and legal and all those things.
Same with the divorce. And to get divorced, the court has to, because they kind of consider you a business, you have to produce these financial disclosures to one another and file certain paper to get the case going, disclose certain financials and file financial statements. And because there are children involved, and the state has a significant interest in the well being of children, and if you don’t take care of them, the state ends up coming in and taking care of them. Through the whole dependency and neglect system, there is a vested interest of the state in making sure you take care of your children, and so therefore there are requirements as to filing specific plans and determinations about what happens with those children.
So because of that, we don’t just say you can just go get divorced. Can’t just go down the courthouse and sign something and be done with it. That’s not how it works, no matter which approach you take. All right, so there is no shortcut around all that, no matter how amicable you are. But I hope that this episode has given you a guide that really helps you think through the different ways you can do divorce. I’ve talked about things to think about back in another podcast before you get divorced, and things about whether you’re going to work and what your child’s day-to-day life is going to look like. And you know, u what your financial status is going to look like, how much control you’re going to have, how you will be emotionally. All these are, you know, are you safe? These sorts of key things about whether you know what happens to your community and to the extended family relationships, things like that. If you’re pondering divorce, go listen to that. I talked about the things to look for in a lawyer, and to avoid in a lawyer, that’s a whole nother topic I encourage you to listen to. I hope it’s very helpful to you. What are the ways that we can go about divorce?
I hope you’ll consider this peacemaking approach that I’ve provided to you, whether you are in the Denver Metro area, all the way to any corner of Colorado in, you know, Pueblo, Greeley, Fort Collins, Lakewood, Littleton, you know, wherever you are, Golden Cherry Creek, Broomfield, really, anywhere in Colorado, we can help you. And if you’re listening, but you’re not in Colorado, I hope you try to encourage your attorney or people in your world in family law to use these principles as you seek to approach family law in your state, if you’re an attorney or a therapist listening to this or a judge in a different state or country, I hope you’ll take these ideas and start to try to implement them in your own area, to emphasize peace and really the flourishing of children, because divorce is sadly, going to be among us, and it’s not something that we are able at least not yet- we have not been successful at stopping divorce and these family breakdowns, but we certainly have ways that we can do it better than we often do, and so that’s the whole point of my podcast. Is trying to find ways to make this messy area better, so that individual parents and their children, most especially, are able to flourish. I encourage you to be a peacemaker, and I encourage you to think about this. If we can be of any help to you in this whole approach to this amicable, uncontested divorce and family law solution, we are honored to talk with you about it and see if you’d be a good fit. Thank you so much again for listening today, and hope you’ll check in the next podcast, like and share. Send this on to people who you think this might help.
Intro/Outro 1:13:20
Krista is licensed in Colorado and Wyoming. So if you are in those states and seek legal services, please feel free to reach out via ChildrenFirstFamilyLaw.com that is our website where everyone can find additional resources to help navigate family law. As always, be sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast with others you think would benefit from this content..