The Gray Divorce Podcast: Episode 5 Alternatives to Litigation; Mediation and Collaborative Law

In this episode, I interview Rebecca Miller, a family law attorney based in Las Vegas. Rebecca has over 35 years’ experience in the practice of family law. She and I have worked together on many divorce cases with Rebecca taking the lead on the legal aspects of the case and myself working on the divorce finances. Rebecca is also a regular legal contributor to the Wiser Divorce Workshop, an educational seminar I host periodically in Las Vegas.

For the past 18 years, Rebecca has practiced Collaborative Divorce Law and divorce mediation as a major part of her domestic relations law practice.

Rebecca and I chat about the increased rate of divorce in the United States among adults aged 50 and older, and she offers her thoughts and why she thinks gray divorce has become a major legal and social issue.

The Cost of Divorce Litigation

We discuss the emotional and financial cost of litigation and why it makes sense to try to achieve a settlement as early as possible in the divorce process. It is estimated that about 90% of litigated cases end up settling. That's usually after attorneys have been paid thousands of dollars in fees and both parties and their families have gone through unnecessary emotional turmoil. Divorce Mediation and Collaborative Law are alternatives to litigation and ways to resolve the divorce much more quickly, reducing the emotional and financial pain.

Divorce Mediation and Collaborative Divorce Law

Many people are familiar with mediation as a technique to resolve disputes. We discuss how mediation works, the responsibilities of both parties in mediation, if attorneys are necessary and the creativity and flexibility the process offers versus litigation.

We talk about the formal process known as Collaborative Divorce Law. Many people hear the word collaborative and think that collaborative divorce means just trying to get along. In actuality, Collaborative Divorce Law is a form of divorce resolution that involves specific rules and structure. These include:

• The pledge not to go to court
• The involvement of a collaborative divorce team which includes:
  • An attorney for each party
  • A neutral financial expert
  • A divorce coach or therapist
  • Possibly, a child specialist

Transcript

 

Announcement: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Gray Divorce Podcast, hosted by divorce financial analyst and retirement planning counselor Andrew Hatherley. Join Andrew and guest experts as they help late life divorcees build the financial and mental foundation for a meaningful future. There is life after divorce. Now on to the show.

Andrew Hatherley: Welcome to episode 5 of the Gray Divorce Podcast today. Our featured guest is Rebecca Miller of Cooper Coon's Law Firm right here in Las Vegas, Nevada. Today, Rebecca and I will be discussing the topic of divorce options, alternatives to litigation. I've known Rebecca for, what is it now, seven years, and we've worked together on many divorce cases with Rebecca taking the lead on the legal aspects of the case and myself working on the financials.[00:01:00]

Rebecca has 36 years experience in the practice of family law. She was born and raised here in Las Vegas. In 1986, Rebecca graduated from Pepperdine University School of Law, where she was the recipient of both the American Jurisprudence Award in Family Law and the Los Angeles County Bar Family Law Scholarship.

Impressive Rebecca. For the past 18 years, and this will be a big focus of our discussion today, Rebecca Miller has practiced collaborative divorce law and mediation as a major part of her domestic relations law practice. Rebecca's also a regular guest expert at the Wiser Divorce Workshop, which I host on a regular basis on Zoom.

A quick plug here, if you'd like to be notified about the next workshop, just email me at [00:02:00] andrew@wiserdivorcesolutions.com. Okay, Rebecca, welcome. How are you tonight? 

Rebecca Miller: Thank you. I'm very well. How are you?

Andrew Hatherley: Excellent, thanks. Excellent. Trying to avoid getting a cold. It seems like everybody's coming down with something these days, but ensconced in my warm office here.

So, Rebecca, before we get into the subject of mediation and collaboration in divorce, and since this is the Gray Divorce Podcast. You know, you've been in practice for 36 years. Over the last 30 years, the overall divorce rate in the US has been essentially flat, but among adults age 50 and older, the divorce rates roughly doubled since the 1990s, and among people aged 65 and up the divorce rate has roughly tripled [00:03:00] since 1990. So I'm wondering, you've been aroun, what are you seeing? Are you seeing this phenomenon in your practice?

Rebecca Miller: I believe that is correct. I have seen people living longer and therefore working longer and therefore deciding usually in their fifties and sixties that they are unhappy for some reason. That life is short. I think Covid taught us all that and they feel that they would like to take part of the assets and the debts and go their own way. So I definitely see that. I would say most of the divorces I handle are in the age bracket. It could be as as young as mid forties to mid sixties.

Andrew Hatherley: Right. [00:04:00] Do you see any particular implications for or concerns that older people, or let's say 50 and up, gray divorce might have in divorce rather than somebody who might be in their thirties or forties?

Rebecca Miller: Well, a lot of people want to maybe retire early, and now that they're getting divorced they are not going to be able to do that.

They maybe haven't planned well enough to even retire at 62 or 65. I mean, my mom lived till 95 and a half. I have no intention of retiring in my sixties unless something really changes for me. And because that's a lot of years to live without an income or at least your major career income.

And I see that happening that people are quite concerned about the [00:05:00] finances you know. I'll throw in that I believe the number one reason people do get divorced is finances. Right? It is not what people think, right? It's not about cheating or gambling. Well, gambling goes a little bit with the finances, but it's just not what people think.

Even people having that don't have a lot of financial accounts, just arguing over debt and the fact that they don't have a lot of money and, or thinking that their spouse is a deadbeat.

Andrew Hatherley: Yeah, no, I agree. I saw some statistics. I don't have them on hand right now, but finances play a much larger role than I think is customarily believed in divorce.

You know, the other thing which I come across as a financial advisor and working with people to try and establish a financial foundation for [00:06:00] life after gray divorce. By simple fact of longevity, you don't have as much time to make up the savings and and to build that retirement nest egg.

So it's, it's kind of important that you get it right and you just can't blow off your divorce settlement or let emotions control it the way it might. I mean, many times people leave a lot on the table when they're younger. Maybe they don't have as much to put on the table. But when you're older, you can't afford to do that because you've got less time to recover.

Rebecca Miller: Yeah, that's absolutely true. I also see people deciding without assistance from someone like you, a certified divorce financial analyst, and or a CPA, they just decide, oh, I want to give my wife all of my 401k, or I want to give her, you know, half of my ira, but I [00:07:00] want to keep X, Y, and Z. And when I ask them why they really can't give me a reason, and I have to really implore them to seek that financial advice because they might be making an incorrect decision that's going affect their future. And as you said, they don't have a lot of time to make it up so it's good if maybe there's a house with some equity and then I've got a lot of assets, which sometimes I call marbles to play with and decide who's getting, which marble.

Andrew Hatherley: Yeah. I mean, typically there are more assets to play with when you're older, but in many cases people haven't managed their finances well, and this is where spousal support can play, needs to be treated very carefully because, you know, it goes away when someone dies. Right?

And let's face that a 65 year old is closer to, closer to the grave, [00:08:00] great beyond than, typically than a 40 year old. So spousal support probably needs to be treated very carefully.

Rebecca Miller: No, absolutely. Lately when I have the wife, and if she is the lower income or no income spouse, I have been suggesting, depending on the age and the health and the retirement plan of the husband, that maybe we request a lps if there's cash in the bank or we take the equity in the house. In other words, so she's not waiting around for alimony payments and he dies, or she wants to remarry. You know, those are two things that end alimony. So sometimes we have to get a little crafty and come up with an idea of what can she, and sometimes it's a he, obtain in the divorce settlement versus a [00:09:00] monthly check that could end. And we try to back it up with a life insurance policy, but a lot of times people are, are too old to get one. The premiums's going be too high, and sometimes I get lucky and there's good life insurance and there's not a problem because again, if the divorce decree indicates that someone is supposed to pay for, let's say 10 years and he dies at year two, there's eight years of money that the spouse is out.

So I have to take all that into consideration when coming up with a proposal or in my mediation suggesting to the couple, let's do something fair here. Maybe you make her monthly payments, but you also make less monthly payments than you normally would have to if you're going give her maybe more of the money from the equity or the sale of the house.

Andrew Hatherley: Yeah, no, definitely. Issues that raise to the forefront when dealing with older [00:10:00] divorce. You know, you mentioned mediation. Let's get into the the heart of our conversation here where we're talking about various options with respect to getting divorced and alternatives to the options that people may be familiar with.

And when I think of options that people likely are familiar with, it's the old lawyer up scenario where each party is is getting an attorney and , the case is being litigated or at the other end perhaps people who are getting divorced, who might be younger or have very, very little in the way of assets who might be doing it themselves.

There are other alternatives, but perhaps you could just give us a little overview of, of the various options with a focus on some of these alternatives that people might not be familiar with.

Rebecca Miller: Sure. In my practice in 36 years, I've been hired. [00:11:00] as the litigator whereby either the wife or the husband meet with me, obtain legal advice, retain me, we file for divorce, we serve the other side, they get an attorney. We go back and forth and most of the time we settle. Only 10% of all divorce cases actually go to trial in Las Vegas, and it might even be less. And sometimes they go up to the day of trial, which is why years ago I had become an arbitrator for Clark County District Court.

I hear negligence cases, which include car accidents, dog bites, slip and fall. Clark County District Court, civil court has a very good program that all cases whereby someone is requesting $50,000 or less in damages are put into the arbitration program. And I'm on of 40-45 arbitrators. So having done [00:12:00] what we call alternative dispute resolution, meaning alternative to litigation it's not just the old fashioned, we get two attorneys and fight it out and spend everybody's money and go to court and maybe not go to court. So when I was doing arbitration, there is no arbitration in in in family law. Because as an arbitrator, I actually make a decision on those car accidents, et cetera.

And if they can, if the attorneys and the parties can live with it, then they get to come out of the court system and they're done. If they want to appeal what I ruled, they sit and wait for trial for two to three years. So arbitrators where I'm making a decision based on my training, a mediation. I also started practicing that over 20 years ago as I saw family court grow from zero family court judges 36 years ago to 27 now. And it became very stressful [00:13:00] going from department to department, trying to balance out clients, trying to sometimes sitting there for three hours waiting for your hearing and then having your hearing, getting back to your office. And I also looked at the fact that people were fighting about something as simple as which hours on Christmas day they were going to have their children.

So I looked into mediation. There were people doing mediation, most of them were non attorneys. I thought, well, I can't give you advice when I'm the mediator because I'm wearing my neutral hat, but I surely can tell you the law, tell you the procedure, tell you what a particular judge will do.

All the judges now are my age, a little younger, a little older, so I know them all. Most of them are my friends and it's really helped to assist people with what we call mediation. 

Andrew Hatherley: Now let me ask you a quick question, Rebecca. When you're a mediator [00:14:00] you're more of a facilitator as opposed to arbitration, which is not used in family law.

A mediator's a facilitator and you're trying to help a couple come to an agreement.

Rebecca Miller: Right. Right. And their own agreement. Right. I don't really care what they come up with. As long as I'm there to make sure it's legal, I'm there to make sure that it's not unfair, grossly unfair to either party and a lot of times they look to me for ideas and I seem to be an idea person. I come up with all kinds of creative ways to do something with houses. I've had to do that during covid. For instance, people always think you've got to sell or someone has to keep the house and buy the other one out.

And I've come up with ideas about how about when we rent out the house and neither one of you live there and we remediate this in a year or two when interest rates go down or the housing prices go back up, et cetera. So yeah, as a mediator you can be [00:15:00] very crafty and you facilitate the couple coming up with their own agreements, whether it's about the children, the assets, or the debts or even the alimony issue.

Andrew Hatherley: Now in mediation, the couple may or may not have attorneys correct.

Rebecca Miller: Yes. Most of the ones I do, I am finding that the reason people want to do mediation is because they do not want to hire two attorneys, right? They don't want to spend the money. They have heard the horror stories of the costs that can come along with it.

I'll give you a range in Las Vegas.

Andrew Hatherley: Because I was going ask you about the money issue.

Rebecca Miller: Yeah. Most people don't know this and I even have my assistant tell people when they call, they don't realize that family law can go anywhere from 300 an hour to 600 an hour. And to give an idea, even though I have 36 years of experience I charge [00:16:00] usually 400 - 425 an hour and I find that, you know, once I tell people that they find it fair and I have a legal assistant who's about 200 an hour, so she helps with most of the paperwork and speaking to the clients about things that are non legal advice type questions. And then I work with people like you who can help with the documents, the assets, the debts, the statements organizing them in a larger case.

And I find that the couple is, is more than willing to pay just me and someone like you to get through their divorce because it is far less expensive. Right.

Andrew Hatherley: And. Rates are lower than attorney rates as well. So essentially they're getting two of us working for them, for the price of one attorney trying to do it all themselves.

Rebecca Miller: Right. And [00:17:00] then quite often I have attorneys contact me and ask me to mediate. So people who already have attorneys are in the middle of their divorce should bring up that issue to their attorneys. A lot of litigation minded attorneys don't want mediation, they don't want their cases to end early because that ends there unfortunately.

Andrew Hatherley: Right. They've got a yacht to pay for.

Rebecca Miller: I know. I'm sorry to say it makes us all look bad that we are just greedy and expensive and we don't want to settle for their benefit. And I'm just the opposite. I wanted to be a psychologist. I feel that.

On most days, a therapist. I care about my clients. I want their kids to be happy and them to be happy as much as possible and get through the process without costing a fortune. And of course then it's [00:18:00] goodwill on, you know, my part that I have a good reputation in town for settling. I'm rarely in court when I go to court now the judges are wondering why I'm there and they know that oh, if she's here , somebody's not doing their job or she's not getting the discovery she needs, or, it's pretty serious. And it's great to have that reputation. So it helps my client. . But yeah, the, the couple just coming to me and then me using and bringing someone like you on with your expertise is really the way to go.

But again, some people need that legal advice. Most of the people that I have had mediation sessions with that did not have attorneys, never hired an attorney and never went to one. I try to tell them as much as I can about the process and the law, and they appreciate that and they don't want to spend money with someone else.

Andrew Hatherley: You mentioned the costs, Rebecca [00:19:00] but the emotional stress is a lot less too, for a number of reason, but the process is a lot quicker. So it's not like you're in a nine month quagmire where you're paying monthly retainers, which could be, you know, 3, 4, $5,000, but the process can get done much quicker.

I mean, typically, how long does a mediation take?

Rebecca Miller: You know, we start with phone calls and sometimes ask them to send an email with the list of assets, debts, and issues and I don't share it with the other side that they want to discuss. And then I have my first session for about two hours I would say.

70% of my mediation cases, we settle the entire case in that first two hours. That's terrific. And then I do all the divorce documents for them. And you know, depending on the court system how long it might be delayed, I can get people divorced as quick as two [00:20:00] months sometimes three or four.

However, there are people that have a lot of assets, a lot of debts. We don't want to do it wrong, like you said, we don't want to miss something, we don't want to leave something out. I want them to get financial advice and there are a lot of people that are willing to let me continue with mediation and help them.

As long as it takes. I've had some mediations that took a year. Those are rare. I mean, the ones that stand out in my mind, they had millions and millions of dollars in assets and kept buying things during the divorce, which caused us to have to renegotiate every time about those assets and, and or if it came with the debt but that's rare.

Andrew Hatherley: That's rare. I mean the typical mediation's a month or two, right?

Rebecca Miller: Yeah. Or you know, sometimes three or four. It depends if we have to farm out a QDRO. The special court orders for retirements, right? I don't do those and [00:21:00] sometimes I need to monitor them, read them, sign off on them, have another law firm do them again. Some right now, this time of year, starting really in September, sometimes we settle a case. I do the paperwork, but we hold the divorce decree until January so that the parties can be married through New Year's Eve, which allows them to file. Joint one last joint tax return, for instance for this year, which would be 2022 next year.

If people are adamant about, I don't want to file with him and or I don't trust him or her and we need to file single for 2022, then I rush the divorce through this month in December so that they can be married this year and file single for 2022. Again, I'd suggest people get CPA advice on that. I've heard there might be something to do with still [00:22:00] having to split capital gains taxes and or if they were married a certain amount of months throughout the year as far as income is concerned.

But usually right now people are telling me, hold my divorce decree, which the judges are fine with until January 2nd or 3rd. We want to stay married through the end of the year.

Andrew Hatherley: Another alternative dispute resolution method, which is collaborative divorce law. I want to mention that we work together also on litigated cases.

I mean, not everybody is going to be a candidate for mediation, right?

Rebecca Miller: That's true. I find that some people really need the legal advice that I need to provide them and the financial advice that you need to provide them on their own, so to speak. They don't want to be in the same room with their spouse.

They need a team working for them. Exactly. And, and a lot of times I tell them, that's fine. Come in, [00:23:00] let's meet, have a consultation. If you retain me, then I'm your attorney. I give you legal advice. Again, when I'm wearing my mediator hat, I can't give the parties legal advice against each other. I have to be more neutral.

So, we can still settle we can still somewhat mediate the case, but sometimes it's important that you and I are in somebody's corner and we're on their side in providing them advice, especially if they're the spouse that did not know very much about the finances or have access even to financial accounts.

I still see that every week.

Andrew Hatherley: Yeah. Where they're in desperate need of advice.

Rebecca Miller: That's right. And the only way I can give that to them is if they come in alone and retain me. And they're usually the person that's been referred to me and is calling me in the first place.

Andrew Hatherley: I mean, that's [00:24:00] also going to happen.

The litigation's pretty much going to be necessary also in cases where there's legal issues involved or abuse or high conflict personalities as well to a certain extent. Wouldn't you agree?

Rebecca Miller: Yes. And sometimes I want. Most of the time I actually want the other spouse to go to an attorney because the spouse that's hired me is telling me what their spouse thinks, which is completely wrong, right? We've been reading the internet or watching Law and Order, which has nothing to do with family law. 

Andrew Hatherley: That's homicide, that's not divorce.

Rebecca Miller: Yeah, sometimes there's a family law situation on that I've noticed and it's been a while since I watched the show. Exactly. Or they talk to their neighbors or their friends.

Well, who knows which judge out of those 27 they had or when they got their divorce. You cannot compare. No two family law cases really are like, I have not been bored [00:25:00] once in 36 years. I might get frustrated or stressed, but never bored.

Andrew Hatherley: No, there's a lot of variety. So let's discuss a little bit about collaborative, because we've got maybe 10 minutes left here.

Collaborative really hasn't caught on in Las Vegas like it has in California and some other areas. And when I say collaborative, I'm referring to a capital C, collaborative. It's a process in which attorneys and financial advisors and coaches need to be trained in what's called a collaborative process.

How does that differ from mediation, Rebecca?

Rebecca Miller: So my understanding is collaborative divorce law came out of Canada originally right. And was very successful and it's sort of a mixed bag of what we've been talking about. The parties each hire an attorney that is trained in collaborative divorce approach.

[00:26:00] Basically still each having somebody who can give them private advice, but also having an attorney basically like me who believes in settling and keeping your business out of the court system yet being able to provide my client with legal advice and the success rates in Canada were something like 80-85%.

And when I took this training it's probably been 20 years, 18 years ago, the one of the professors that taught the class he was a professor at a law school, but he had his own office. He said that 75% of his cases in his law firm were collaborative which means no court. And I was so interested in that concept and that was amazing to me. He was in the Bay Area. and again, it's been a lot of years, but [00:27:00] in Las Vegas we've had different groups meeting and attempting to get collaborative divorce law going, because I really think it's a good process for people to have their own attorneys sit with the four of you at the table, which I actually do in my litigation cases.

If I get along with opposing counsel or they're not causing any disruption and or the clients are somewhat friendly, sit at the table, put the issues on the table, like a puzzle. And now you've got all these puzzle pieces and the four of you as well. Bringing in other professionals such as you, because I know you're training collaborative on the financial end to sit and figure out who should receive what, who should pay, what, what did we do with the children, et cetera.

So yes, it's a team approach. I know that people think it's a little expensive because there's so many people that need to be paid, but again, it [00:28:00] seems that it works best for cases where there are assets, there are good incomes, there's child issues, and in my opinion, I don't think it's that expensive.

Andrew Hatherley: It's certainly a lot less expensive than litigation. I mean, you're right a collaborative case tends to be for a couple with assets, but if a couple has assets in a litigated case, they could end up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars where in collaborative, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but if I remember my collaborative training correctly, one of the key elements of collaborative is that everybody signs on at the beginning of the process to resolve the divorce negotiations out of court. And if somebody gets bee in their bonnet and wants to blow up the process, then the attorneys are obligated to recuse themselves and the parties need to start all over again.

So that's kind of like a [00:29:00] poison pill, I guess in the process that keeps people on track.

Rebecca Miller: Yeah, that's exactly true. You sign a a pledge basically that the four of us are going to work together, bringing other professionals to assist us and just keep working at it and working at it until we settle every issue.

Then we will file with the court and do the approximate 12 different docents that are required in Nevada to get an uncontested or any divorce, actually. That's actually happened to me once, I think it was only once, when I was doing collaborative divorce law more regularly. I had the husband and a friend of mine actually had the wife and the wife was stuck on the issue of a lot of alimony from day one. And even though we settled the child issues she wasn't happy and decided she wanted out of the collaborative process. [00:30:00] So we had to end and they both had to go hire litigation type attorneys, and I sent him to someone. It was very good.

And they went all the way to trial, which again is not a normal thing to do. And he called me and told me what the settlement was, and it really wasn't much better than we were coming up with in the collaborative process, but yet they spent another year fighting.

Andrew Hatherley: Yeah. This is divorce though.

This is what happens when emotions get in the way, right? You know, it's the worst. This is likely the largest single most important financial decision in people's lives. The splitting of the net worth that's been built over a number of years, and the emotions are running so high that people just aren't thinking straight.

And as you said at the outset of the [00:31:00] conversation, 9 times out of 10, even when both parties hire an attorney in a traditional litigated process, they're going to come to the point where the next step is a trial and larger checks being written. And they say, okay, we better get this settled.

Well, that may be after nine months. Why not just get it done at the outset and get it done in two or three months? But people aren't thinking straight and or they're not educated about the process. One of the points, I'll plug our workshop again, is why we want to help people understand the options available to them.

They're not likely to go to trial anyway.

Rebecca Miller: No, and the problem is people hire true, what I call, true litigators that are all about litigation. And even though some of our court rules in our ethics say that we attorneys are supposed to meet, we're supposed to [00:32:00] attempt to settle, we're supposed to write each other letters prior to filing a motion in court for a particular request.

There are so many attorneys that don't do that. They want the big retainers. They're going to bill a lot by the hour. They're going, you know, many hours at a higher rate, and they just have no concept of settling until either the money runs out or the clients are tired of them, tired of listening to them.

And maybe they're on the eve of trial. So unfortunately sometimes it's attorney driven, right? And people don't know how to get out of that.

Andrew Hatherley: It's an unfortunate situation where people really need legal advice, but they don't always understand that legal advice from one attorney may not be the same as legal advice from another.

If one attorney such as yourself is more settlement oriented and another is much more litigiously.

Rebecca Miller: Well, the [00:33:00] other thing I find that people think that there's this thing called divorce jail. That they are going to go to court and tell the judge how horrible their spouse was to them, or how he or she cheated or how they wouldn't work.

They played on the computer all day or said they were day trading trust. Heard it all and I laugh at it because I tell people there's just no such thing as divorce jail. You're not allowed to talk about grounds for divorce other than incompatibility. And the only time the judge wants to hear about somebody having a boyfriend or a girlfriend is if you can prove that they're spending thousands of dollars on that boyfriend or girlfriend.

And I'm not talking, you know, lingerie, flowers, candy, and a trip even. It's got to be more like, you know, he bought her a condo. Or some big jewelry item. Or paid for her student loans or, basically it's called [00:34:00] community waste. Used a lot of the community funds, wasted it on someone else. 

I actually had somebody recently talk to me about abandonment. She said her husband abandoned her and she wanted to sue him for divorce. So I had to say, well, you don't really sue for divorce and he's not going to jail for abandoning you. 

Andrew Hatherley: People are looking for justice, right.

Rebecca Miller: Yeah, that's not going happen.

So, no. People need to get realistic and they need to understand, let's just at least get along enough to compromise and settle our case and divide all these assets. We work so hard. To obtain and maintain and not get into debt. I used to do bankruptcy. A lot of my bankruptcy cases were connected to my divorce cases.

So after the bankruptcy, one of them would come to me and say, I want a divorce from him or her because it's his fault. He gambled too much, et cetera. It's his fault. We filed for bankruptcy, or they [00:35:00] got divorced first and then they were in bankruptcy because they couldn't afford to pay the debts when they were separate.

Andrew Hatherley: We're almost up on time. Rebecca, are there any last thoughts that you would like to mention with respect to our conversation on alternatives to do it yourself and litigation.

Rebecca Miller: Well, I would just implore people to definitely contact someone that can give them legal advice. Trying to do the paperwork yourself doesn't work out.

If you don't cross every T and dot every I, the law clerk for the judge is going send it back to you. You're going miss out on things. Definitely look into mediating. If you feel that your spouse won't mediate or won't get along long enough to mediate. I usually call both spouses and have a little phone call with them and the judge myself before I allow them to come in and meet with me because I don't want a failure. And if I feel that [00:36:00] their specific alone time with me is divorce legal advice. Then I just say, well, you can come in, consult with me, retain me. We can bring in someone like you, Andrew. And get the ball rolling.

So whether it's litigation, a half litigation type, a hybrid case, I guess we could call it. Sometimes it sounds like it's going be litigation. And then the other side decides not to hire someone and at least cooperate with what we want. And I always implore couples to speak to each other if they're on speaking terms to and living together, especially keep talking.

Just if you guys come up with something you both agree to. Even if only one of you is my client, I'll put it in the paperwork as long as again, it's legal right, and it's financially sound right?

Andrew Hatherley: That's such a better alternative than going to the bitter end and having a judge in the course of a couple of hours.

Make determinations with how much [00:37:00] can he really know about the lives of the parties?  And of course it's somewhat arbitrary because not all judges are the same, right?

Rebecca Miller: Absolutely. I call it name that mood on any given day. Just depends. I used to go to court early when we went to court a lot more and sit there and watch the cases ahead of me.

I liked my client to judge the judge and then I would sit there and determine, okay, what kind of mood is she or he in today? So that I know how to approach certain things. There's a lot of psychology to family law and getting divorced and or, you know, we can deal with cases. I mediate all kinds of cases.

It could be working on, you and I have done this before, worked on a, a post-nuptial agreement and or a prenuptial agreement. You know, pre-marriage planning, right? Pre divorce planning post divorce. Who should get what? [00:38:00] If there's a divorce, it's not boring, is it? Yeah. I tell people all the time, you do not need to be wealthy to do a prenuptial agreement, especially if you just have a house, a car, and if you got a job with retirement starting to be earning on your end, you do not want to share that down the road when you're 65, right?

Andrew Hatherley: No, definitely Rebecca. If listeners want to contact you, well, what's the best way to get in?

Rebecca Miller: Well, my office number is 702-998-1500, and my email is Rebecca, rebecca@cooperkoons.com. That's the name of the law firm, and that is spelled c o o p as in Peter, e r c o o n as in Nancy, s as in sam.com, and I am on email, on and off all day no matter where I am working.

And [00:39:00] someone's always at the office, usually 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM

Andrew Hatherley: I can attest you're the fastest email in the West . Thank you. I should mention that if listeners would like to know about the next Wiser Divorce Workshop please email me at andrew@wiserdivorcesolutions.com. And if you are going through divorce or thinking about it the pre or during stages please visit my website, WiserDivorceSolutions.com and if you are recently divorced and looking to establish a financial foundation for life after divorce, please visit my website at TranscendRetirement.net.

Rebecca, thank you very much for your time. We really appreciate it. And I know you've given us a lot of useful information today and I'm sure our listeners will appreciate it.

Rebecca Miller: Thank you, Andrew. Appreciate you having having me on and seeing [00:40:00] if we could reach out and help more people.

Andrew Hatherley: That's the goal. Thanks very much. You're welcome.

Rebecca Miller: Take care.

Announcement: Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of The Gray Divorce Podcast. To learn more or get in contact with your host, you can visit Andrew's website TranscendRetirement.net. Also, please feel free to rate, subscribe, and leave a review wherever you'll listen to your podcast. That helps others find the show and we greatly appreciate it.

Thanks again for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode.

Andrew Hatherley: Information provided is educational only and should not be construed as legal or tax advice. Each situation is unique and should be discussed with your tax or legal advisor prior to implementation. Andrew Hatherley is not an attorney and does not provide legal advice. Information provided is financial in nature.

[00:41:00] Advisory services offered through Hatherly Capital Management LLC and Divorce Financial Analysis Services offered through Wiser Divorce Solutions and affiliated company