During thirty-five years as a matrimonial lawyer, I’ve seen too many folks stumble over the same duet of obstacles: (1) lack of knowledge and (2) anxiety.

Non-Lawyer Sherpas

So where do you find the divorce advice and information that will allow you to calm down and think clearly?

Your first instinct might be to look for a lawyer. And that makes sense. But first, you need to make sure your emotions are not clouding your judgment or preventing you from absorbing information, and that you understand your own financial situation thoroughly. Other professionals—who charge less than lawyers—can help you get there.

If you’re skeptical about therapy and counseling, or if for some other reason you’ve never tried it, now’s the time. A family counselor can serve as a sounding board, offer perspective, and restore your emotional balance.

Or you can meet with a certified divorce financial analyst (CDFA)or certified financial divorce practitioner (CFDP). CDFA/CFDPs can help you get a handle on your finances, prepare financial affidavits, explain things like tax deferral and retirement plans, and prepare projections of disposable income under various spousal support and child support scenarios. And they charge far less than attorneys.

Finally, see if there are any certified divorce coaches near you. During the traumatic early days of a marriage break-up, an experienced divorce coach can also provide counsel, while helping you to deal with your spouse, empathize with, and care for your kids, and learn some divorce basics including whether your case is right for alternative dispute resolution (ADR) methods such as mediation. And again, divorce coaches charge a whole lot less than lawyers.

These divorce professionals can also suggest sources of free, plain-language information about family law such as the websites of your state’s court system and state bar association. They might also recommend divorce books—maybe even mine, Divorce, Simply Stated (2nd ed.)!

And then… Embrace the Tiger!

Once you’re breathing freely again, are capable of making relatively unemotional judgments, can empathize with your children again and deal with your spouse, it’s time to think about ADR and to go about choosing a lawyer.

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Paralegals’ billing rates are much lower than those of attorneys, so you’d prefer that paralegals perform the more routine tasks in your divorce case. But you can avoid fees altogether by having someone else perform paralegal tasks. Who? You!

Discuss with your lawyer doing work yourself such as gathering, copying, scanning and organizing documents. If you don’t have access to a scanner for hard copies, see if you can use your lawyer’s. Otherwise, consider buying one yourself to organize key documents electronically. You can recoup the cost plus more with what you save on paralegal charges.

With some direction by your lawyer and her paralegal, you can also summarize, index and analyze documents such as bank and credit card statements and even tax returns.

Of course, you have to actually HAVE the documents to organize them. Although it may not feel great to do, look for bank and credit card statements in your home where they are normally kept. Then look in as many other places as you can . . . as soon as you can. Securing documents early on can save the cost down the road of having your lawyer and paralegal track them down.

Make copies of as many documents as you can. If you suspect that your spouse might conceal information, decisive action may be necessary. Consider consulting with a forensic computer expert about seeking a court order to inspect your spouse’s computer.

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There’s something really special about sitting in court with your lawyer waiting for your case to be called while the clock ticks away dollars from your wallet into your lawyer’s. And it’s especially painful if you’re waiting for something like a status conference that you could have handled (with a few minutes of instruction) yourself.

“Unbundled representation,” also known as “discrete task” or “limited scope” representation allows you do to that, by separating out or “unbundling” tasks for which you most need a lawyer, such as contested court proceedings, preparing settlement agreements and legal research, and paying only for those.

Tasks that you might be able to avoid paying your lawyer (or her paralegal) by handling yourself include:

• Preparing routine court filings such as motions for continuance
• Handling perfunctory court appearances such as status conferences
• Obtaining, copying, scanning and organizing financial documents
• Preparing a draft of your financial affidavit or “disclosure statement”

Unbundled representation is not for every client or every case.  A successful unbundled representation arrangement requires the following:

• A client able to manage certain tasks customarily handled by lawyers
• A written agreement clearly specifying the respective responsibilities of attorney and client
• Adherence to relevant state ethical rules and laws
• A client educated about how unbundled representation works, its benefits, and its limitations

Note also that unbundled representation has a number of potential downsides:

• The line between the respective responsibilities of lawyer and client can become blurred, leading to confusion and tasks being neglected
• In an arrangement limiting the lawyer’s role to providing advice, clients do not always know when to seek that advice, and thus may miss important guidance
• Clients who feel they can handle, for example, a “routine” court proceeding may find out otherwise when they hit the courtroom
• An unbundled representation lawyer who is responsible for very limited portions of a case may not be in a position to negotiate an overall settlement

However, in the right circumstances for clients and lawyers who communicate clearly and work well together, unbundled representation can save, well… a bundle. To find out the extent to which your state permits unbundled representation, visit the American Bar Association’s Pro Se/Unbundling Resource Center at: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/delivery_legal_services/resources/

Then discuss with your lawyer an arrangement that will avoid you paying her to drive to (and back from) court, wait around for an hour, and then spend 30 seconds reporting to the court that your case is nearing settlement and requesting a final hearing date.

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If you can afford a divorce lawyer, you should hire one. There’s too much at stake and too many complexities in divorce to risk “winging it” without expert advice. However, you can save some money by delaying hiring a lawyer while you take care of some things yourself. Here are some tasks you can probably handle without a lawyer’s help:

• File for divorce yourself using forms available on your state’s court system website
• Use a certified divorce planner or certified divorce financial analyst who charge substantially less than lawyers, to
  • Help you organize your financial paperwork
  • Help you prepare your financial disclosure statement
  • Discuss with you other divorce-related issues such as pensions, alimony deductions, etc.
• Consult a divorce coach if necessary regarding organizing your finances and dealing with non-financial issues such as caring for, and making decisions about your children

Note that you should use this approach only if:

• You have consulted with a matrimonial attorney who indicates that there are no pressing matters requiring immediate legal representation such as pendente lite (temporary) support or custody issues
• You and your children are not at risk of harm from your spouse
• You have very little money available for attorneys’ fees
• There are experienced CDPs or CDFAs in your area

If you’re going through a divorce, you have enough problems. You don’t need to add a crushing legal bill to the pile. Under the right circumstances, you can limit legal fees by limiting the amount of time your lawyer spends on your case.

Learn more about saving legal fees in
Divorce, Simply Stated (2nd ed.)

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Q: When does a 3-minute call from a divorce lawyer who charges $300 per hour cost MORE than the same call from a lawyer who charges $400/hr.?

A: When the $300/hr. lawyer charges in increments of 2/10 of an hour, and the $400/hr. lawyer charges in 1/10 increments.

Wait… WHAT?

The great majority of divorce lawyers charge by the hour, or portions (“increments”) thereof. Hourly rates depend on factors such as expertise, reputation, geographical location… and maybe how much they’re shelling out for their kids’ college educations.

Clients correctly consider hourly rates a key consideration in choosing a divorce lawyer. The problem is that hourly rates don’t tell the whole story.

Based solely on their hourly rates in the above example, you would expect “Attorney 300” to charge you $15.00 for that 3-minute call, and “Attorney 400” to charge $20.00.

But they won’t.

Why? Because neither of those lawyers charge for the actual minutes spent. Instead, “Attorney 400” charges in increments of 1/10 (.1) of an hour (6 minutes), and “Attorney 300” uses increments of 2/10 (.2) of an hour (12 minutes). And what makes incremental billing so expensive is that when lawyers bill in 6 or 12-minute increments, those increments are minimum charges. A lawyer using .1 increments charges a minimum of 6 minutes for anything she does on your case—even if it only takes 2 or 3 minutes. And a lawyer using .2 increments bills even more in extra fees—a minimum of 12 minutes!

While your heartbeat is receding from atrial fibrillation, remember that minimum increments impact only to tasks that take less than 6 minutes for .1 increment billers, and less than 12 minutes for .2 increment billers. Nevertheless, minimum charges add up. While they won’t make Attorney 400 cheaper than Attorney 300 over the course of a divorce, they substantially narrow the difference between Attorney 300 and a lawyer charging say, $350.00/hr., making Attorney 350 a more attractive option than would initially appear to be the case.

Read more about saving legal fees in divorce in Divorce, Simply Stated.

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Among the most frequently asked questions by new divorce clients is: “Will my kids be okay?”

The answer is that whether the children do well or poorly depends largely upon whether the adults act appropriately.   
Easy to say; not so easy for the adults to accomplish.

Good, mindful divorce parenting requires you to conscientiously and thoughtfully address your kids’ needs at a time when their world has been turned upside down. The problem is that your world is in turmoil as well.

So how do you protect your kids with all that swirling around you? 

First, identify the four principal needs that are shared by just about all kids in divorce: They are:

1. An end to their parents’ fighting
2. An end to uncertainty about where and with whom they will be living
3. A return to some degree of normalcy in their lives 
4. Security in knowing that their parents will continue to love and care for them

Then, try to keep those four needs in mind as you deal with your children and your co-parent. If you find acronyms helpful, try one that is particularly inappropriate to the very un-fun divorce experience (and thus easy to remember), FUNS:

Fighting
Uncertainty
Normalcy
Security

You can measure your (and your co-parent’s) parenting by the extent to which it meets, or fails to meet, those four needs.  If you find that you and your co-parent are falling short, give thought to how the parenting can be adjusted to be more responsive to the children in ways that may not be immediately apparent.

That may require a higher level of introspection than you’re used to. For example, if you’re avoiding quarrels in front of the kids, that’s great. But there’s more to it than that. Kids can also be upset by the animosity they sense between you and your co-parent that might be left over from an argument you had outside their presence. That means that you have to work on not provoking, or being provoked into unnecessary arguments at ANY time, so that the children won’t have to deal with the resulting tension. Like I say, mindful parenting during divorce is easy to talk about, not as easy to do.

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In the “exit interview,” with the fictional filmmaker, Laura dials back her initial confidence, conceding that the custody evaluation process was “a little more difficult than I expected” (19:56). The demands of that process interfere with the kids’ activities such as nine-year-old Nick’s football practice (04:47) and twelve-year-old Emily’s participation in an advanced ballet class that she fears will be jeopardized by a conflicting appointment with the psychological evaluator (8:09; 09:56).

Lawyers don’t negotiate parenting plans “behind closed doors.” In fact, most matrimonial lawyers would prefer that the parents work out child-related matters by themselves. And that’s as it should be because the most successful parenting plans result from parents putting aside their emotions in order to plan for the co-parenting that will continue for years after the divorce.

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As with all the myths that the parents articulate in the opening sequence, the statement that judges protect children from emotional harm during divorce seems, at first blush, reasonable enough. But the fact is that judges generally aren’t involved in custody cases until trial. That’s too late to prevent the harm the custody evaluation process can do to children.

While family judges conscientiously protect what they determine to be the children’s best interests, they cannot protect them from the rigors of custody evaluation. Judges don’t supervise that process, and it has been completed by the time a case comes before a judge for trial.

The evaluation process can humiliate and compromise children in ways that don’t occur to parents or even to divorce professionals. For example, in Talk to Strangers, Emily is embarrassed when Maria Castillo, the Court Services Counselor arrives as Emily is getting off her school bus. During the ensuing home visit, Nick gamely tires to defend his family, tries to hide his teddy bear from Castillo, and defiantly repositions a toy dinosaur that Castillo had picked up to look at.

Likewise, Nick is embarrassed when his mother pulls him from football practice for a meeting with the children’s counsel. Later, his humiliation is completed when he returns to try on the last remaining team jersey in the box; a jersey multiple sizes too large. “Nice dress!” taunts a teammate.

In many ways, large and small, children’s lives are disrupted and derailed during the custody evaluation process. No one can protect them from that except parents who work out their differences over the children, rather than allowing the court system to take over.

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