Everybody has heard that divorce is incredibly expensive. Is it true? Does divorce have to be expensive? In this episode Kevin and Pat discuss the factors that makes divorce so expensive, let you know what to watch out for, and tell you how to keep costs under control.

Episode 7 Transcript:

Kevin: I’m Kevin Handy.

Pat: I’m Pat Cooley.

Kevin: and this is episode seven of Divorce Rulebook Podcast. Why does divorce cost so much and what can you do about it? So pretty much everyone has an idea that divorce is really expensive. They heard about their friends going through divorce, they’ve seen articles in the newspaper, TV shows and movies about it pretty much universally accepted that divorce is really expensive. So, Pat, is that true? Is divorce expensive?

Pat: Absolutely true. Ironically, it doesn’t cost too much to get married, but divorce is very expensive.

Kevin: Well, sometimes I think whatever you spend on your wedding, plan on spending that on your divorce, or at least that on your divorce.

Pat: At least that’s right.

Kevin: So, yes, divorce for the most part is expensive. And it doesn’t have to be. I mean, there is a range. I’d say if you have a super simple case, no kids, no assets, been married for six months or whatever, you can get divorced for $500. $1,000, right?

Pat: That’s right. That’s a real simple divorce.

Kevin: We call it. Yes. But 98% of you listening out there are not going to be in that category. So the range really is all over the place. I’d say for a couple with assets and kids, I’d say anywhere from 5000 to more.

Pat: I have to agree. And the range is so wide, we’ll talk about it, but because of the many issues that can be in your case yeah.

Kevin: So I wrote down and I’ve tried to do some research about this in the past and it’s really hard to come up with a good number, but I think the average is probably between 25 and $35,000 per person. So you’re talking $50 to $70,000 for a divorce. And that’s a litigated divorce. The couple’s hiring lawyers, they’re going to court at least about a couple of issues. So your traditional litigated divorce, I think, falls in that range. I think that’s fair.

Pat: I agree. Yeah. Just to comment that sometimes the degree to which you spend money is kind of equivalent to the degree of animosity in the case.

Kevin: Yeah. So I wrote down, I have some notes here about how much it’s going to cost depends on a bunch of different factors. Number one, in your case, every case is individual. It depends on the facts of your case, what issues are involved. Depends on the parties. Like, do they get along? There’s a lot of animosity are they looking for a fight? Right?

Pat: That’s right. Absolutely.

Kevin: Depends on the attorneys you hire. The attorneys can be, quote, bulldogs. They want to fight a lot. There could be ones that are climbed to saddle. Depends on the judge. You get assigned to your case, right?

Pat: Absolutely. We try to look who the judge is and try to help, you know right from the get go whether this is a judge who we expect is going to cost us a little bit more.

Kevin: So when clients come into our litigation practice, that’s a really typical question, hey, how much is going to cost me? There’s so many variables that it’s almost impossible to predict how much any individual case is going to cost. I mean, even people who think they’ve got an agreement, they often blow up and turn into litigation.

Pat: Well, that’s why you’ll find most divorce attorneys don’t fix flat rates because it’s impossible. It’s impossible. Given that large range we just talked about. You can’t charge $5,000 and have a case that’s going to cost you $50.

Kevin: So I think something that’s interesting is that how much it costs does not really depend on how much money you have. You and I talk about this all the time. Rich people with lots of money often have the cheapest cases because it’s going to be a 50 50 split. They kind of worked everything out. They’re not fighting about every last dollar.

Pat: They also have more expectancy of financial security in the future, so they know they’re going to be okay when they move forward.

Kevin: My point is, there’s enough money to go around. So the idea that rich people are driving up these huge legal fees is not accurate at all. And poor people, they just generally don’t have enough money to litigate. So they’re the ones just doing these basic, simple divorces are walking away from each other. I’ve seen a lot of cases where people have just been separated for like, ten years. They’ve already separated. They’ve lived separate lives. And they just come to us and they’re like, hey, we just need a piece of paper with the divorce. And that ends up being pretty cheap. So it’s really the middle class that ends up paying these huge bills for divorce, don’t you think?

Pat: I do. People in the middle class, they’re fighting for stability. They’re fighting for time with their children. They’re fighting for making sure their financial future is certain.

Kevin: Those cases where there’s enough money to fight over, but not enough money to go around, they’re the ones that are really tough. And of course, cases involved in custody that really drives up fees as well. We’ll talk about that. So people who are thinking about going to divorce wonder, why is it so expensive? Where is all that money going. So in this podcast, we’re going to talk about, number one, what makes divorce so expensive. We’re going to talk about know what to watch out for and what you’re potentially getting yourself into. And then number two, what can you do to keep those costs under control? So let’s start with the first topic, why is divorce so expensive? And I have, number one, attorneys. So do you want to comment on that?

Pat: Pet well, sure. Attorneys are expensive. They’ve put in a lot of time and effort learning the trade and being educated. And they’re going to charge in a divorce typically an hourly rate.

Kevin: Yeah. And the hourly rates will be, I’d say three hundred and fifty dollars to four hundred dollars an hour on average. It varies by region and everything, but that’s like the going rate.

Pat: That’d be the average, although I’ve seen it as high as $600 an hour. Even better.

Kevin: Yeah. Listers out there shouldn’t think that lawyers are pocketing all that money. That money is going to support their staff, support their office. The lawyers aren’t making $350 an hour, but that’s what they charge because they have to cover their overhead and then pay themselves. So one thing I think you say often, that’s pretty interesting, as I throw out the number, just say a divorce costs on average $30,000 per side. You always point out that Realtors who come and sell your house will take 6% of it and often turns out to be $30,000. It seems like they did nothing. Whereas when we work on a case, we’ll spend two years working on this case, and our fee comes out to be about the same. So that’s something for the podcast listeners to think about. Like in comparison to say, selling your house, it’s really, actually not that expensive.

Pat: That’s right. And ironically, a Realtor could list your house and sell it the next day, and they still earn their 6% commission. And it’s a large number compared to an attorney. And the amount of work an attorney has to put in to get you to the end of your case.

Kevin: Yeah, because those numbers represent literal hours that the lawyer has spent. It’s not just a commission. So one thing that I noted was duplicate efforts, and I don’t think most people understand, how do these bills get run up so high? When you hire a lawyer and your spouse hires a lawyer, everything that happens in your case ends up going through four people. So your client wants to do something, so they tell you, and then you have to communicate the other lawyer, and then the other lawyer has to communicate to their client, and then it comes back. The communication comes from their client to the lawyer, to us, to our client. So there’s no simple way to communicate or to discuss things in divorce, because everything has to go through four people. So that’s something that really runs up the bills that people don’t understand.

Pat: Yes. And I’ve had people say, why don’t you just call my spouse? And people got to understand that lawyers have a code of professional conduct as well, and we can’t talk to the other clients. So we have to go that process you just explained, we have to go through the lawyers.

Kevin: Yeah. Just because that’s true, it makes everything exponentially more complicated, and it creates delays as well. You get an email from your client, hey, can you write this ladder? Well, all right, you’re busy. Maybe it takes a couple of days to write the ladder. You send it to the other side. Well, then they’re going to sit on it for a couple of days and send to their client, and then finally they get a response and then take them a couple of days to draft a letter. So just a simple communication might take two or three weeks. It’s really kind of crazy when you think about it. And I said this before, every case is unique. And so the lawyers in the case are going to have to learn the facts of a case. It’s not a cookie cutter approach. Everything involves meetings and discussing the facts and looking at the documents in the case, which is really time consuming. I’m curious what you’re going to say about this. For attorneys. I also have the three eyes, which I think raises the pricing cases instigating, intransit, and incompetent. I also have inefficient. So I actually have the four eyes. There’s a lot of lawyers out there that, number one, are instigating. In other words, they egg their clients on for fights. They push them to fight about everything.

Pat: That’s right. Just comment on that, Kevin. You have people that are in a tough situation as it is, and there may be a situation where there’s a third party involved in an affair. The best way to keep your costs low is to focus on the finances. But these lawyers you’re talking about that are instigators will put in letters constantly reminding their client of the affair and call the other side’s girlfriend, the paramore, or use things like that to continue to fuel the fire and thus make it cost more.

Kevin: Yeah, they’re stoking the flames of animosity and just makes everything much more difficult to saddle. Keeps people in a litigious mindset. Intransigence, I wrote down some attorneys just absolutely refuse to saddle. They want to take everything to court. They take ridiculous positions and refuse to back away from them incompetence. What do you think about that one?

Pat: Well, there’s certainly plenty of that around. I mean, there’s a lot of lawyers.

Kevin: And they’re all looking for work, and.

Pat: They’Re all looking for work. So you want to make sure you get somebody who’s competent. We talked about that in a prior podcast, and you might want to listen to our podcast about attorneys and how you choose them.

Kevin: I think our previous podcast, episode Six, is how to choose an attorney. We talk about incompetence and inefficient. Attorneys are often inefficient. We just talked about the whole process being inefficient pricing.

Pat: One comment. Kevin on inefficiency. So, for example, if your lawyer says, I charge $400 an hour, but they say, I just saw another lawyer who charges $150, remember, the newer lawyers who are charging lower hourly rates will probably spend considerably more time on your case, and that is inefficient. So sometimes most often, it’s better to hire the more experienced lawyer because they’ll get it done in a more efficient.

Kevin: Way, and they know what’s worth doing, what’s not worth doing, or when to let the other side do something. Efficiency can really save a lot of money. I put down pricing as a black box, just like healthcare attorneys charge hourly rates. But how long does something take? You have no idea. Something actually needs to be done. And then we see attorneys who, I don’t know if I should say intentionally overcharge, but have these systems for charging their clients more money. And here where we are. Once you send a document to the other side, you can file a certificate of service. There’s attorneys that will, and you can attach it to the document when you send it and just do it all at once, or you can do it separately and charge another 50 or $75 to do it. And there’s attorneys who do that, and I know it’s a money making scheme on their part because there’s no reason to do it that way.

Pat: Just as a highlight, another good example of that is when you get a letter from the court address to both attorneys that there’s a court schedule, and you can see that it’s addressed to both attorneys, and then the other attorney sends it to you and fills your client or send you an order they know you already got.

Kevin: Right. They sent you the letter from the judge that you’re copied on.

Pat: So you want to watch out for that.

Kevin: Yes. So there’s a lot of that out there. So anyway, that’s why attorneys I put that as the number one reason that divorce is so expensive. Now the parties are the number two reason that I have that divorce is so expensive. Frequently they’re just completely unreasonable. They have unrealistic expectations.

Pat: Yeah, I agree with that. It’s tough. It’s a difficult situation, but you have to be reasonable. But if your attorney saying that something that will happen in court, don’t keep wishing for something that they say isn’t going to happen.

Kevin: Yeah, that’s on my list is that the parties fail to heed the advice of their attorneys. It kind of goes together. They come in with unrealistic expectations. They have the idea that they’re going to, quote, win at their divorce. And when the attorney says, look, hey, supports a mathematical formula, here’s what’s going to come out to be, or your case is going to likely be 60-40 split of assets. The clients will frequently not believe you, but not want to listen to you. They’re looking to hear what they want to hear. And a lot of times those clients will go from attorney to attorney until they hear what they want to hear. And it’s rare that we’re wrong in the way we predict what’s going to happen in court.

Pat: That’s right. I can’t tell you how many times it’s been the unreasonableness of the position a party is taking that causes the case to drag on and cost more.

Kevin: Another reason is the parties tend to engage in, I’m going to say avoidance. I don’t say they’re lazy, but so when you’re getting divorced, it’s like sort of having the worst tax audit you can imagine. You’re going to have to dig up documents from three years ago, five years ago, produce all your bank statements, your retirement account statements, and we’ll get discovery from the opposing lawyer sent to our clients and say, hey, fill out this discovery, get us a document, and they don’t do it.

Pat: Well, thank you. I’ve got kind of two opposite cases as an example of that right now. I mean, I’ve got one client, I send a discovery, it comes back in a neat pack. Every question is answered, every exhibit is identified. They’re an engineer, right? Yeah, that’s a good one. Engineer. Bankers are usually pretty good at this.

Kevin: They come back in binders with, like…

Pat: Tabs and everything, and then I have another one. I send the documents, they don’t answer them. I follow up and charge you. They don’t answer them. I have them come in for a meeting with me and charge them, and we still can’t get all the answers. Then we got to do pulling teeth to get documents and paperwork.

Kevin: Yeah. And then they’re like, well, can you write to the bank? And so what should cost the clients? Essentially zero. Cost them like, $10,000. Because they have the lawyers doing all the work of gathering documents and begging them to answer questions. And then frequently they’re so bad they won’t give you anything. You have to go to court, and the courts like ordering them, and you have a hearing, like, it can get really expensive just because the clients don’t do, like, the minimum of what they’re supposed to do.

Pat: Yeah. Just from a judge, I heard this, that when someone was complaining and crying about the discovery they had to do, and the judge said, just give them everything. Give them two bankers boxes worth of stuff, let them go through it and pay for it. But they’re fighting it. It’s just going to cost you money. And in the end, they’re going to get it.

Kevin: They’re going to get it. You’re going to have to turn it over. Someone’s going to have to do the work. It’s just a question of are you going to pay your lawyer thousands and thousands of dollars to do it, or do you want to save that money and just do it yourself. I would say that’s a huge driver of the cost in divorce litigation. We sort of talked about delay with discovery, but sometimes clients intentionally want to delay the divorce or put their head in their sand or uncooperative. So the other I’m talking about the other party. So if you have a client that wants to move the divorce along and the other party doesn’t want to divorce, that can really drive the cost because it’s like pulling teeth to get anything out of them to move the case along. And they may have that strategy because they want to stay in the house. They want to stay on someone’s health insurance plan. They want to extend support Alani Pendente Lite or alimony beyond the time they would normally get it. Of course, that all really drives up costs, and sometimes that’s intentional. Thinking about that made me think of a quote that says, a bad lawyer can delay a case for years, and a good lawyer can delay it even longer. Yeah, sometimes that’s the strategy of one side.

Pat: That’s right.

Kevin: So we’re going to take a break here, and then when we come back, we’re going to talk about the court system and judges and how custody can also be drivers of the cost of divorce.

Pat: Hey, podcast listeners, are you thinking about divorce but are worried about the cost and animosity associated with the traditional divorce process? Well, Snap Divorce has a better way for you to divorce. Through divorce mediation, snap Divorce eliminates everything bad about traditional divorce. With Snap Divorce, there is no court, no dueling lawyers, and no endless delays. Our experienced attorney mediators help you and your spouse resolve your divorce fairly easily and amicably. Best of all, Snap Divorce does it for a reasonable flat fee. Schedule your free consultation now@snapdivorese.com.

Kevin: Okay, so we’re back now. So the next point that I had for what really drives up the cost of divorce is really the system, the court system and judges. What do you think about that?

Pat: That is, I would say, one of the major factors, again, in driving up the cost of a divorce. I think in almost any jurisdiction now, some jurisdictions will schedule for a hearing, and you’re the only one there, so you know your hearing is going to go forward. But a lot of jurisdictions, when they’re scheduling you before a judge, will schedule five to ten cases on the same day, and you can sit around with your lawyer for an entire day and not be reached and then go into another day. So that’s a process that just lends itself to expense. Paying your lawyer to sit around and really literally just to sit around, people will say, well, why don’t you stay in your office? But the courts don’t allow you to do that.

Kevin: No, if you’re going to court, you’re going to pay your lawyer to sit around a whole lot, like, for hours and hours. Like Pat said, you may pay your lawyer to sit around all day, and guess what? The court doesn’t even hear you, and you get moved to another day. One point I thought was just the whole system is very complex. Everything from how you file to how you get a hearing to the motion practice. You have to think about the court. The whole court system developed over hundreds of years from England. The whole thing is not designed to efficiently dissolve matters. I think you’re trying to jam what is essentially personal matters into a system that was for resolving commercial disputes or things like that. And all the rules and complexity of it really add to delay, and I don’t think your lay person can comprehend how bad the system can be.

Pat: The problem with family law, as you said, is it’s not the big corporate actions. That where there’s millions of dollars. The parties are dealing with a fixed asset amount of assets, fixed dollar amounts, and the more they spend on lawyers, they’re just spending it on their property. They’re spending it out of what they have to distribute in the end.

Kevin: Yeah. And you have judges in there that have zero experience with family law. In fact, most judges that are elected or appointed probably have zero experience with family law. So they might be coming from the corporate world, and they’ve got in their mindset of like, all right, how does corporate litigation work? And they’re thinking like, oh, I have the lawyers write briefs, and they submit proposed findings of facts and conclusions of law. That stuff is so expensive to do. And you’re hitting with clients that they make $75,000 combined, and the judge is telling them to do stuff that’s going to cost $10,000 just to make their life. That drives up the cost significantly so the inexperienced judges don’t know how to cut to the chase. In other words, you’ve been in court. Sometimes the good, experienced family law judges will be like, they’ll start and say, look, what’s the issue? And let’s say, okay, you’re fighting every Saturday night for who gets sick. Let’s focus on that. And unexperienced judges are going to be like, let’s hear about the whole case. Let’s let the parties talk about everything from ten years ago. And so you get these hearings that are just these on the bus hearings about everything. I put down judges also who fail to enforce their own orders and allow basic litigants and lawyers to get away with things. What do you think about that one?

Pat: Yeah, that’s a very frustrating one because you work so hard, you put in a lot of time, you’re paying your attorney for all the time they’re putting in. You get the great order that you want, and then the other side violates the order, and you go into enforce it. And you hope you tell your client, maybe we’ll be able to get an order that he has to reimburse you your attorney’s fees. But it takes a lot to get that. Judges, for some reason, are reluctant to do it. And when they do do it, they short change you anyway. They won’t give the lawyer the true fees that they spent. They’ll cut it down to some nominal amount. I want to say, yeah, I find.

Kevin: It very frustrating when judges wouldn’t force their orders discovery. There are no tourists for it. In discovery, you’re looking for documents from the other side. They don’t give them to you, so you file a motion to compel. So then there’s an order to compel, and they don’t give them to you. And then you file a motion for sanctions, and they’re ordered to give them to you within 20 days, or there’s going to be sanctions. They don’t give them to you. Then you file the hearing for sanctions. Now, you’ve got, like, three different orders that have said the original discovery, they have to give it to you. The motion compelled, they got to give it to you. The sanctions, they give it to you. You’re three orders in, and you show up in court, and the judge is like, well, I don’t know, let’s give them some more time. And they don’t give you attorney fees. You’re like, nine months into discovery at this time, and nothing’s happening, and your clients like, what’s going on? And this is par for the course. This is completely normal and divorced license, and I think it’s totally shocking for.

Pat: People, which is, again, why it’s better for you to at least cooperate at the outset with the discovery. Get that stuff in, get it before the attorney so they can figure out your case without going through all of this expensive court proceedings.

Kevin: All right. The final major issue that I have written down that really drives the cost of divorce is custody. Do you want to take that one?

Pat: Sure. No doubt. Custody is a very expensive endeavor, particularly if you’re fighting, unable to really reach an agreement. Custody cases are fact specific, so the judges have to hear the facts, and everybody wants their case to be heard. But just keep in mind that it can take not just a day, but days to litigate custody.

Kevin: When we say days, you mean days spread over the course of months?

Pat: That’s right, that’s right. Because the courts aren’t efficient enough to schedule you day after day. So if you go on the day you’re scheduled and you don’t get finished, they’re going to put you out on their next available date, which could be six weeks, eight weeks later, and so on, until your case is finished.

Kevin: Yeah. And a typical custody trial, maybe three days of trial, maybe four days. I’m not talking full days. I’m talking like, you get 2 hours here, 3 hours there.

Pat: That’s right. And custody is not just you file and you go to a hearing before a judge. Most courts have an intermediary kind of mediation session, and they talk about the case and what you should do. They might send you for a custody evaluation. Then you got to pay experts. You pay a psychologist to analyze your case, talk to your kids, talk to you. So that’s another expenditure that happens frequently.

Kevin: That they’ll be ordered a court ordered custody evaluation from an expert. Jeez. Now they’re probably looking seven to $10,000 for the evaluation, plus another five to $10,000 to show up in court to testify, right?

Pat: That’s absolutely right.

Kevin: That’s on top of your lawyer fees.

Pat: Yeah. I just want to we talked a little bit about endless hearings. Example of a case I had years ago. We started the hearing, and because of the process, I explained where you get scheduled two months later, we had five days of hearings over a year and a half, and we still weren’t done. My client finally gave up. We never finished the custody trial. Yeah, that’s the kind of thing you can look at, and it’s thousands of dollars later.

Kevin: And as time goes on, things change. And so every time there’s a three month delay, well, maybe the fast have changed. Now your lawyers, he or she’s forgotten the details of your case, they got to reprep for the next hearing. It’s expensive, and custody is always modifiable. So guess what? You may litigate a custody case for 18 months. You finally get an order, and three months later, the other parent files to modify and you get to start it all over again.

Pat: And if you have young children that can go on until they’re 18 yeah.

Kevin: One reason custody is also hotly contested, not just for actual time with the children. A lot of times, custody affects financials. So in our state, how much Cussy time affects how much support you pay, so that’ll drive people to litigate custody.

Pat: And I don’t think more often than not in my cases, people aren’t driven by financials because of greed, but rather because of need. They’re looking at what they really need to survive on the other side, what.

Kevin: They can afford to pay.

Pat: That’s right. That’s right.

Kevin: I don’t think anyone’s doing it to be greedy, but it’s where people have so much money, and like, when they’re paying the other parent money out of their pocket, it can be painful. And for not getting enough money, it can be painful.

Pat: That’s right.

Kevin: And so they’ll fight for, hey, I need that one extra custody day so I get more support or pay less support. It happens frequently. So basically, we got the four horses of the apocalypse, which make divorce so expensive. Attorneys, the parties themselves, the court system, and judges. And finally, custody. So next up we’re going to cover our tips for how to reduce costs. How do you keep down your legal fees? So we’re going to take a break. When we come back, we’ll talk. About our tips to reduce your legal fees.

Pat: Hey, podcast listeners. Are you thinking about divorce but are worried about the cost and animosity associated with the traditional divorce process? Well, Snap Divorce has a better way for you to divorce. Through divorce mediation, snap Divorce eliminates everything bad about traditional divorce. With Snap divorce, there is no court, no dueling lawyers, and no endless delays. Our experienced attorney mediators help you and your spouse resolve your divorce fairly easily and amicably. Best of all, Snapdivore does it for a reasonable flat fee. Schedule your free consultation now@snapdivorese.com.

Kevin: Okay, we are back. So our tips to reduce your legal fees. How do you keep costs under control in your divorce? I have, number one, mediation. I don’t always be plugging mediation because we’re mediators, but it really is a great way to keep costs down if you can do it, don’t you think?

Pat: Oh, absolutely. Without question. It immediately have costs that could be associated with a typical divorce because you’re sharing them now, right?

Kevin: Well, you’re sharing maybe if you’re going to get a business evaluation or a custody or something like that, they’re immediately shared instead of each of you in your own right.

Pat: And in mediation, you don’t have the issue of attorneys attitudes and their own feelings. And so instead of having this for people that you talked about in the process, you now only have you and your spouse. I mean, you can always obviously consult attorneys when you’re going through a mediation process, but at least you have a forum where you feel like that person, that attorney mediator is trying to do what’s best for both of you moving forward.

Kevin: Yeah. So we said the average cost of divorce litigation is probably $25 to $35,000 per side. I would say the average cost of divorce mediation is $7,000 total, all in from start to finish, you’re divorced. Does that sound accurate to you?

Pat: It does.

Kevin: It can vary depending on the state, depending on the collection of case. But we had the divorce mediation practice, and on average, that’s where the fees come in, in the $7,000 range and can even be less if people are coming in. They pretty much worked out an agreement.

Pat: Yes. I want to say I think that is driven in part the lower cost is driven in part by the fact that the parties are motivated to agree and they recognize what we’ve told you about the costs and delays of litigation. And so they’re looking for a different way to resolve this. So they’re geared towards resolution.

Kevin: Of course, we do understand that there are a ton of cases out there that people aren’t going to be able to do mediation because they can’t get their spouse so great or just there’s too much animosity. So the next tip I have is hire a reasonable attorney. And you mentioned this earlier. You listen to episode six of our podcasts on hiring an attorney. The attorney you get can really be one of the most important factors in controlling your costs.

Pat: And listen to your attorney.

Kevin: We’re going to get to that.

Pat: But, yes, you’re hiring the attorney because the attorney is going to help you in this.

Kevin: Yes. Do as much as you can yourself. We talked about this before discovery. Gather the documents yourself. Fill out form. If your attorney sends you a form, fill it out completely and carefully and legibly. Don’t brain sloppy ink and just do a half job and send it back to your attorney because they’re just going to have to fix it. We make people come in, redo it. We sit there with the person to redo it going to it’s run up your costs.

Pat: Well, my mentor used to say that there’s three things we do. That’s how easy it is to do a divorce. Three things. We identify assets, we value assets, and we distribute the assets. Well, valuing them, that’s easy. Once you have the documents and experts you need and distributing them, well, that’s where your attorney comes in with their expertise. But identifying the assets, remember, your attorney doesn’t know at all what you have. You’re the one who’s going to inform them. So that comes with the gathering the documents. Do as much as you can upfront to eliminate that part of the process. Identifying your assets. Put everything on the table.

Kevin: Yeah. Realize not everything is your attorney’s job. You’re going to have to do some work here and a good amount of work. All right, next tip. Only use your attorney for legal matters. You’re laughing.

Pat: I’m laughing because it calls to mind custody, because that’s the easiest one that I can think of where I get many calls about things that I don’t particularly consider a legal matter. What do I do if my spouse doesn’t drop the children off in time? I can help you. But if I don’t think the baby should be having a pacifier, well, I’m not so sure that’s a legal question, right? That’s not what you ask your attorney.

Kevin: I think early on, when people hire lawyers early on in the case, they’re calling every other day asking questions about, I don’t know, my spouse isn’t returning the kids clothes or just personal stuff or they just want to talk. They need a sounding board. And then using your attorney as your therapist or your friend is a very expensive way to sort of let off steam. Find someone else to do that. Find a friend, a family member, someone you can talk to. Make sure when you’re calling your lawyer, you have a very specific legal question.

Pat: And you ought to have it written down because then stick to that topic. Don’t talk about the family and all of that. It’s really nice, and I’m sure your lawyer like to hear about it. But stick to the legal issue that you have, the legal question that you have that you want to ask.

Kevin: All right, the next tip I have is be cordial to your spouse. So by that I mean provoking your spouse, making your spouse angry, upset, having your lawyers send letters about their paramour or even if they got one, it’s going to upset them. It’s going to make everything more litigious. It’s going to make it much more difficult to settle everything. You don’t have to be kind, but you have to be professional. Like, don’t provoke the situation.

Pat: Well, consider this. Our job is to get two unfriendly people to sit down and strike a deal. Don’t make it worse, right? You already have your differences. Don’t make it worse.

Kevin: I think you mentioned this before. The next one was listen to your attorney and follow your attorney’s advice. I think you covered that earlier. Be reasonable. So this kind of goes to all the other ones. If you listen to your attorney advice, what is a realistic outcome? Be flexible, be willing to settle.

Pat: Being reasonable means be willing to compromise. You can’t just dig in and stick to your position. You’re going to have to compromise. So accept that.

Kevin: Yeah. And the next one was I have tried to settle custody. It’s the same idea. If there’s anywhere to be reasonable, it’s custody. Because custody fights are going to be probably the number one driver of costs in your case. If you pick a custody fight and you’re going to court in custody, it’s going to cost a ton of money.

Pat: It’s also going to drive the cost on your other divorce related issues, the finances. Because if you’re so angry and have such animosity against each other and you begin to the custody battle where you throw stones and you tell all the bad things about the other person, remember, our job is to get too unfriendly people to settle. You’re going to drive your costs up if you’re throwing the stones in the custody matter.

Kevin: So if you get it resolved right, everything’s intertwined right. If you’re reasonable in one place, it’s going to help you reasonable somewhere else. Now your spouse is going to be more willing to saddle, helps everything go better and it just gets you the result. You’re probably going to get to anyway. Be reasonable, try and saddle. That’s the way to keep your costs under control. Finally, I just have avoid court at all costs and this goes with everything else. If you’re reasonable, you want to saddle, you’re going to avoid court. And if you’re not, you’re going to end up in court. That’s all I have. Do you have anything else that you can think of about how to keep costs down

Pat: Well, I did just something crossed my mind that we didn’t mention. And it’s just a word of advice. As you’re going through the divorce process, don’t lose track of the costs. You should be getting monthly statements from your attorney and they should have what they’re billing you for and how much they’re billing. Don’t be afraid to question it, but definitely keep track of it, because you can’t just take those bills and put them in a cubby hole. And you shouldn’t have an attorney who isn’t billing you on a regular basis.

Kevin: That is a great point that you made. I think you mentioned the earlier podcast. If you didn’t, it’s worth mentioning now, you had a client come to you from their prior attorney, and what the attorney charge them? Like $25,000?

Pat: Well, he said I gave him 5000 to start, and then he asked me for another five, and he asked me for more. And, yeah, he was up to $20,000, and I got about less than a one inch file from the other attorney. So I can’t tell you, I mean, I didn’t see any billing statements, but I couldn’t tell you what he spent it on. So I said to the client, do you have your billing statement? He said he never got a single bill.

Kevin: Never got a single bill. And the attorney charged him $20,000.

Pat: Yeah, and the more amazing things, giving them money.

Kevin: Right, I see that frequently. Pat is absolutely right. You need every month you should get a bill from your attorney that should be itemized and exactly what they did. Hey, I spent 12 minutes on a phone call. I drafted this document. Go over it, make sure that the work has been done, that you saw the work has been done. Really, keeping an eye on the bill is important. Attorneys make mistakes. And sometimes you question stuff and say, hey, I saw the letter you wrote. Did it really take 2 hours to write that? And sometimes your attorneys will give you a break on that.

Pat: That’s right. So keep an eye on it.

Kevin: Very important. All right, well, I think that wraps it up. I’m Kevin.

Pat: And I’m Pat.

Kevin: Thank you for listening this episode of the Divorce Rulebook Podcast.