- Hi, it's Karen Stewart.
Today, we're gonna talk to you about
what happens when you're at the doorsteps of divorce.
What are your options, what are your next steps?
(energetic music)
(gentle music)
Welcome to a conversation about where do I start?
Now, obviously we're talking about
where do I start when I have found myself
on the doorsteps of a divorce.
And today, I'm gonna share with you a very pragmatic
common sense equation of how to get started.
So, the first part of the equation
is a little bit of a word of caution,
and that is slow down.
When we are on the doorsteps of divorce,
often it's a result of some either difficult conversation,
perhaps one party is shellshocked,
perhaps one party is there's a dumper, dumpee.
Usually there's some intense emotion around
that defining moment where you say,
"Okay, our marriage is over."
Our natural response when we realize
that we're gonna go through a divorce or separation
is to go into a state of fear and potentially panic.
We just go into the defense and offense right away.
And I'm gonna just say,
this is a time to take a deep breath
because you're about to walk up some steps and open a door.
And you can create a stairway
that is straight and methodical and efficient,
or you can go to the dungeon of heck.
Well, we'll call it H-E-L-L, and back.
So, we're gonna try and avoid that.
So, step one, slow down.
The next part of the equation, and a very important part,
is you have to research your options.
You need to understand what it is that you can do,
and how are the ways available for you
to resolve your issues when you find yourself
in the doorsteps of a divorce or separation.
One of the challenges that we have is
that we have what's called an unconscious bias.
And that unconscious bias is
when we trigger a response that we don't really
know why we're doing it but we just do it.
For example, you call your friend.
You just find out you and your spouse,
the marriage is over and you're not really happy
with the reason you just find out why.
So, what do you do?
You call your family, your friends,
and after you get sort of downloading what's happened,
the next thing is who would you recommend as a lawyer?
And I'm not saying
that everybody doesn't need to use a lawyer.
But I am saying, in this day and age,
it's not necessary a lot of the time.
That may be where you get.
But I want you to really take the time
to research your options first,
and recognize that that response
is an unconscious bias that we have from the past.
So, obviously, that's one area, which is hiring a lawyer.
I hire a lawyer, and he hires a lawyer.
The other one is looking for nontraditional types
of ways to resolve your disputes.
So, one would be hiring a mediator.
There's lots a different types of mediators.
There's financial mediators.
There's mediators that come from a background of finance.
Mediators that comes from the background of divorce law.
Mediators are there to help you and your spouse
get to resolution without fighting out in court.
Most mediation is done without prejudice.
And what that means is it's not binding.
So, if I go to mediation, it is voluntary.
And I work with the mediator who's working
with us to help us get to an outcome
that will bring resolution without fighting it out.
There's also what's called a med-arb,
and those are people who say,
when you hire the mediator, they work as a mediator,
and then if you guys can't resolve the issues together,
the person who is mediating will switch
from a mediator to an arbitrator,
and then arbitrate the file.
And what that means is they'll basically act like a judge
and make decisions that are binding on both of you.
I will say briefly though,
I have some serious concerns about the med-arb
because you're asking someone to wear
two very, very distinct hats.
If somebody's mediating, their clients are likely
to feel more open and forthcoming
with information and stories and feelings
than they are if they feel like that person
could quickly take off the hat
of a without prejudiced mediator
and turn that into a with prejudiced arbitrator.
So, I do have some concerns about that.
But like I said, today I just
wanna give you some high levels.
Then there's what's called collaborative law.
Collaborative law is where you actually hire two lawyers,
but the lawyers agree in advance
that they will not go to court.
So, they're kind of saying, you know what?
We're gonna battle this back and forth
in hopefully a mutually respectful way.
But if you guys can't get this done with us,
you're gonna have to hire
two new lawyers to go to trial for you.
You know, that was sort of a law movement
in both the United States and Canada.
More so, five to sort of 15 years ago.
There's some fundamental flaws in that.
There's still some good that goes with collaborative law.
It's just, again, you can spend tons
and tons of time working with one lawyer,
and if you can't get to resolution, time and money,
you have to dump that lawyer and go to a new one.
And so, the intention is good but often very expensive
and maybe not the most efficient way to do it.
So, once you have done your research.
And again, so slow down, do your research.
Kind of lay it out.
And really methodically go through the pros and cons.
And that brings me to the next part of the equation.
And that is considering the consequences.
What are the consequences of your decision?
There are positive and negative
consequences to all those options.
I think it's really important you spend
the time to actually research them,
ask around, contemplate them.
And the best case scenario,
you and your spouse can sit down and say,
okay, emotions aside, our marriage is coming to an end.
We're gonna have to go through and make some decisions.
But I wanna go through it in a really good way.
And if we can't come to a good conclusion,
then yeah, I guess we'll have
to part ways and fight it out.
But that's not the intention.
So, I think sometimes if we do that together,
and we're objective about the consequences
of the process we're going to choose, guess what.
It's not about us, it's not about our relationship,
it's not about what went wrong, it's about moving forward.
And if you can go to that discussion pragmatically,
objectively laying out the consequences of the decision,
and leave your sort of self pity party,
which we all have, for another day, another time.
When a couple is parting ways, there is two things,
and there are only two things, it's money and kids.
And will notice that nowhere in that
equation of money and kids did I mention
emotion, vindication,
payback, revenge.
If you're going through a difficult time,
which you probably are if you're going through a divorce,
and you need some support or you're angry
and you're looking for some payback or some revenge,
even if you can't articulate it,
in your heart of hearts, you kind of know what I'm saying.
Go to a counselor.
If you find that you're getting off that track
of talking about money pragmatically or kids pragmatically
then you are off in a venue that's gonna cost you money,
it's gonna be a huge amount of stress,
it's gonna suck up your life,
it's gonna keep you in no man's for who knows how long.
Don't go there, just put the brakes on, no, no, no.
There's two decisions to be made here,
parenting and finances, not emotions.
So, please, if you are in the process
of doing affidavits and stuff like that,
can you please keep the emotions out of it?
That paper is filed for history, it's there.
And you can't take those words back.
And I was interviewed once, along with a judge,
and one of the things that she said
was the saddest thing is
people put these things in affidavits,
once they're there, you can never take those words back.
So, be really careful about that.
The last part of the equation is,
I'm just gonna say, looking for vindication,
and looking for some sort of payback for past wrongdoings.
We see too many people in trial
that are fighting ridiculous things.
In fact, if you really want
some education to do your research,
go into the court system.
You can go in and watch some
of the trials that are going on.
Take your time to make really smart decisions
because you can't take back the wrong decisions sometimes.
And the consequences can be huge.
(gentle music)
So, I hope that helps, I hope that helps you today.
Remind yourself of this equation
if you're on the doorsteps of divorce,
or somebody you know or care about is.
This is a great little video just
to remind them to be pragmatic in a time
that it's really, really hard to be pragmatic.
So, thanks for joining me today, and I'll see you again.
(lighthearted music)
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