September 30, 2019 • 26 mins
Laura listens today to the voices of several real men and women who share their own stories about their divorces. She shares tips for anyone considering divorce including what to avoid and what to expect from the process.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you for listening to this podcast one production available
on Apple Podcasts and podcast one. Hi there, I'm Laura Wasser,
and if anyone knows how much divorce sucks, it's me.
I've been practicing family law for over twenty five years,
and I've worked on thousands of divorces from the top
of the food chain all the way down to my
(00:21):
very first case, which was my own divorce when I
was twenty five. It has become my life's mission to
destigmatize divorce and create a community around what is already
a difficult time. We call it the evolution of dissolution.
So welcome to the Divorce Sex Podcast when we talk
about breaking up, getting divorced, and moving on. My firm
(00:47):
represents high net worth clients, rich people, which is great
for me and the lawyers of my firm, but the
truth is that the majority of divorcing couples cannot afford
our services. All the time, I have people call me
and ask, can you help my friend's sister who lives
here or whatever, But they don't have enough money for you,
or they don't want to spend the kind of money
(01:08):
that your firm charges. I never had anywhere great to
send these people. In response, I wrote, it doesn't have
to be that way and created it's over easy dot
com to educate people about the divorce process and to
disrupt the conversation about how people actually get divorced. In
the US. You shouldn't need to have an attorney in
(01:29):
order to disentangle yourself from your marriage. We're offering a
fresh perspective and online tools to dissolve a marriage without
bankrupting yourself or destroying your family. It's over Easy. It
is totally free until you've actually input your information and
want to file something with the court, and it's available
now in all fifty states. For those of you who
(01:50):
are skeptical about being able to keep things amicable, let
me put it this way. You know your kids better
than anyone, and you know your finances better than anyone.
Or if you don't know, you will know, you certainly
will care more than anyone. So while allow the courts,
the state, or anyone else for that matter, to make
decisions which will impact the well being of your children
and your bank account. We're going to get into this
(02:11):
through the experience of courageous divorces, whom we've interviewed for
the launch if it's over easy. In hindsight, each of
them wishes they've done it differently. Today's show is the
first in a new series of special episodes highlighting real
divorce stories. After you've listened, leave us a review and
tell us if you can relate for me. The divorce
process was confusing, and it was also tricky because I
(02:33):
worked with my ex wife. She was a few deaths
down and I'd have to see her every day. It
also made it very contentious between us as our lawyers
tried to work this out. I'd have to walk by
her desk or there'd be a snide comment. And the cost,
the cost just seemed to keep adding up time after
time after time. And I get it, but you know,
(02:54):
I didn't realize that the retainer would go so quickly.
I didn't realize there were certain aspects that I should
be looking for ahead with that divorce that would protect
me in the future. Ultimately, I just really felt lost,
and I spent I don't know, you know, twenty years
as an investigative, you know, television news reporter, really thinking
I knew the processes, thinking at least I had a
vague understanding of, you know, what was going on how
(03:16):
it was going. But when you put that emotional card
into the divorce on top of it, the how contentious
it can be between both parties. You know, all my
rational thinking, you know, really went out the door. And
you know, I just really felt taken advantage of by
both attorneys on on either side. You know, we didn't
have a whole lot to have to split up, and
(03:38):
and it should have been more simple than what it was,
and a lot less money than what it was. And
ultimately I'd find out twelve years later I wasn't even
protected in the areas that I should have been. So
I feel like Rob's story is a lot like other
people's stories, having to deal with something business related in
a rational manner while you're going through a really emotional time,
(04:01):
and then adding to that the fact that you're really
depending on somebody else, your advocate, your mouthpiece, to make
a deal for you. I think if you are invested,
and if you are able to learn enough about the
divorce laws in your state in order to apply those
laws to your situation. I couldn't help him with where
(04:22):
his desk is in the office and having to have
his wife ex wife walk by him. But I can
definitely tell you that. I think it would have gone
easier and perhaps most importantly, in this scenario, they would
have saved some money that they obviously both needed in
in the second halves of their lives. Um, certainly this
next woman, Police Baxter, from San Diego, California. Her story
is similar, if not a bit more colorful. Hello, I'm
(04:48):
Police Baxter, and I am fifty four years old and
I live in San Diego, California. I'm on my yacht
today and I wanted to talk to you about divorce
because I've had to happily married ten years now. So
there is light at the end of that tunnel. It
really genuinely is. But for me, here's my big thing
about a divorce. When anybody tells me they're going to
(05:08):
get a divorce, the first thing I said that. The
first thing they say is it's gonna be amicable. I'm
gonna split everything fifty fifty. We're not gonna fight, and
we're gonna make sure we don't give everything to the attorneys.
We don't want to waste our money. Okay, that's not
what happens. That's not how it's gonna go down. Um,
you're married, you're fighting. You don't want to be together,
(05:30):
so you're gonna suddenly divorce amicably. No, because maybe one
person cheating, Maybe someone has a partner whisper in their ear.
Don't give her the house. Why are you gonna pay
all that child support? Because people have their own agendas.
So it starts out, Okay, let's get divorced, and then
it gets super complicated. So um. The person that benefits
(05:52):
from that is the attorneys because when you call them,
they want to be helpful and seem really nice. And
the don't be fooled when you call him and they
being all sweet and nice, they're charging you. That's how
they make their living. They're not just being a compassionate
person to talk to their You're paying them. It's like
a psychiatrist. You pay them, So don't fall for it.
(06:14):
Have a plan. My thing is be prepared to fight,
be prepared for attorney bills, be prepared for anything that
can negatively happen. Because there's a really good chance that's
gonna happen. And if it doesn't, bet you saved all
that money. No one you know, no, no one was harmed.
(06:38):
And the making of this video. So the other thing
that I found from my second divorce is I had
his passport and documents and we were living in Europe
and I was thinking, no, we're gonna divorce because we
just don't want to be married together and it's gonna
be nice, and I go, here's your pass here's your documents. Oh.
(07:00):
Had I not done that and held onto them as
like a little bargaining chip for later on when he
started his garbage, then I could have said, well, I'm
not going to need documents and pastward. That's kind of mean.
But that's what I mean by being prepared, be smart
about it, have something to bargain with. Um, you get
(07:22):
through it, obviously, And I am going to be renewing
my vows right now shortly for ten years married to
my lovely husband. And there he comes, where are you? Yeah? Um,
so that's it. That's what That's what I got. Well,
I have a lot more to say about it, but
(07:42):
I only got two minutes to talk about it. So, um,
it's not gonna happen nicely. You're gonna fight, it's gonna
be expensive, it's not gonna be amicable. Go into it
knowing that. So if you go into it knowing this
is gonna end bad you started different from the beginning. Mentally,
you're prepared aired for that. I hope it makes sense.
(08:02):
So for police who clearly realizes how helpful a platform
like It's over Easy could have been for her first
or second divorce, we say thank you for telling us
about your experience. Again, maybe a couple more red flags
would have been the fact that her second husband's first
wife told her that he was going to bankrupt her. Also,
(08:23):
you know, I've heard many, many times that people get
so frustuated with their attorneys. And this is a function
not only of the kind of law that family law
attorney's practice, but of the fact that people aren't completely
clued in on what it is a family law attorney's
job is. One thing I agree with her about is
that if every communication has to go through the attorneys,
(08:45):
it's going to cost more than it should. And even
if you have an attorney who was the most well
meaning and the most responsive and the most explicatory. So
if they tell you yes, every time you call me,
it's going to cost money, we still will have to
call them certain times. With That's over Easy, we really
lay out this platform for you. We enable you to
learn about the process yourself and then engage in it.
(09:07):
I don't know how much we can help you if
you've married a con artist. But obviously she ended up
on her feet because she was talking to us from
her yacht, so fully spoke about her. You know, three
thousand or retainer. I don't know very many attorneys that
would charge actually that little for a retainer. Generally, retainer
is going to be somewhere upwards of five thousand dollars.
(09:29):
We did research when we were beginning to develop It's
over Easy, and found that the average divorce case in
the United States is fifteen thousand dollars. And It's over Easy.
We charged fifteen hundred dollars. That's all in, and you
really do cut out the middleman, which for many many
(09:49):
couples is incredibly helpful. A lot of the things that
get lost in translation, like a game of telephone that
we used to play when we were little, are things
that you really when you have the direct commune occasions
throughout a weezy platform, you can end Chris Kannappa, age forty,
Los Angeles, California. Here's the thing about divorce, though, there
never if you have the child, they're not done until
(10:10):
the child has grown up or whenever that court says
that child is done. It could be eighteen or could
be twenty four and some states depending on whether the
kid is done with high school or college. Reality is,
I've been dealing with it for seven years with court
from either the parenting plan aspect or the you know,
the other part of the divorce. We deal with the
household stuff. First, she filed for divorce, and we went
(10:32):
through that process to split of the marital assets, wrote
up the parenting plan, and then which was seven years ago, right,
but even you know, that process took nine months to
get through. But then she kept fighting me to bring
me back to court. Like, I'll give you an example.
She sued me and found a contempt motion. She said
I lied on our tax returns of court. She did
(10:53):
this two years after a court was settled, so I
got dragged back in. At one point before she ran
up to California, she was with another guy. She was
fighting for full custody. So I had a custody battle,
like I literally had to pay the psychologist shrinks and
they're going to evaluate me for my parental fitness and
all this bullshit. Well, I paid the money, went through
(11:13):
the process the last minute she she dropped it if
I added it up, and probably twenty thousand that I
was out of pocket just from from him screwing up
and some colts I had to pay the court because
he screwed up some dates and didn't find motions in time.
Inherently curis conflict and the legal process. You have lawyers
(11:34):
who are trying to defend you, but at the same
time they're trying to get to make a living, So
the longer it drags out, the more they make money.
And that was one of my my prompts with the
whole process. If you can do it, and I don't
know if this is legal to me, say it without
a lawyer, and maintain peace with each other, assuming there's
no mental illnesses or anything else involved. That's the way
(11:57):
to go. You gotta hold you know, put your emotions aside.
Your anger, saddnesth is bitterness, and if one of them
wants to lead the marriage and you know, you both
got to sit down and uh and reasonably discuss the dissolution. Really,
because the conflict that creates, I mean, it's just totally
life changing, destroying. So as Chris says, I mean, I
(12:17):
say to clients all the time when they come into
my office. Listen, the more you argue, the more money
I make. If you can get on the same page
with things, then we can distill it into an agreement,
and that agreement can be the one that you guys
live by, or if you need to be flexible in
change that you can getting me at nine d dollars
(12:38):
an hour involved to determine who drives to soccer practice,
or who has Wednesdays, or if in even number of
years Christmas is yours or his doesn't make a lot
of sense. I mean, you don't have to have a
lot degree to be able to do this. And it's
funny that Chris said, I don't know if this is
legal to say, but can you get divorced without a lawyer? Well, yeah, dude,
(12:59):
of course it legal. It's legal to do, and it's
legal to say. I am amazed that people don't realize this. Folks.
We are offering you the opportunity to read and educate
yourselves about divorce and then if you are going to
actually be getting divorce, you can do it on your own.
We will help you, you know that, saying if you
if you you know, give a man fish, he has
(13:21):
food for one day, but if you teach him to farm,
he has food for the rest of his life. I mean,
hopefully you're not getting divorce for the rest of your life,
but we're giving you the information and the education and
the tools to do this on your own. We are
there to help. We have professionals who you can opt
out of the program momentarily, you know, seek their assistance
(13:42):
for certain issues, and then come back. But honestly, if
you've got kids, particularly, don't you owe it to them
to figure out a way to do this that makes sense,
save money for their college education, and save the toxicity
that you will otherwise spend. Because as Chris said, this
goes on until and he says until their you know
age out. Whether that's eight one, I don't know what
(14:04):
states at the twenty four, and I haven't heard of that.
But the fact is it's their whole lives. You're always
going to be dealing with your co parent, and so
let's do it in a way that makes sense. I mean,
what Chris spoke about is his lawyer missed deadlines. I mean,
I hope his lawyer would have maybe given him a
break on the fees if the deadlines were missed. But
with you buck stops there. You miss the deadline, that's
on you. You're not paying somebody else or paying for
(14:26):
somebody else's mistake. His wife bringing him back to court, However,
many years later, she would have had intimate knowledge of
his finances signed under penalty of perjury. She wouldn't have
had to take him back or necessarily been second guessing
if she had been in the weeds in the first
place getting that kind of information, and it's over easy.
We also have great parenting calendars, parenting plans, examples for people.
(14:50):
So many people say to me, look, we know we're
going to share custody equally, but what does that look like.
I've got a fourteen year old or I've got a
three year old. And because I've been doing this for
a while, because I've been speaking to many, many people
in the family law community, whether it's attorneys or financial
planners or mental health professionals, I asked, what makes most
(15:10):
sense for a three year old? What's a kind of
custody schedule that makes the most sense, Versus what's a
custody that makes the most sense for kids that are
in you know, middle school or high school. Generally, and
again it's case specific, it's best for younger kids to
have more frequent and continuing contact. So you do something
like a two to three plan or a two to
five plan and check out. It's over easy to see
(15:32):
what that actually means. Older kids can go week on,
week off alternating with parents. A lot of it depends
on where the parents live. These are things people should
be thinking about as they're getting into their dissolution process.
If we're going to live an hour away from each other,
that's going to impact what we're doing for custody, where
the kids go to school, how long they're in the car,
where we're gonna trick or treat with them, all of
(15:53):
those things, and we have helpful hints about all of
that on our website. Other tools to determine what an
appropriate amount of spouse or child support could be Figuring
those things out. Judges don't know any better than you do.
They're sitting up there with some kind of a guideline calculator,
plugging numbers and spitting them out. God forbid they plug
the wrong numbering where they're too new to realize what
the different nuances are. We can help you with that
(16:15):
so that you're armed with knowledge, which will make it
better for your negotiating with your spouse or or about
to be x and make it easier to figure out
what it is you need. I say to people all
the time that say I have no idea what I spend.
You know she's in charge of all the bills, or
he pays everything from his office. You will know. And
(16:35):
I say, you'll never be in this position again, because
now you're gonna know. You're gonna be the master of
your own destiny. Figuring that out now makes more sense
than figuring it out after two attorneys have gotten into it,
taking a bunch of money to represent you, and then
you're now left holding their bag on your own. Get
into it on the on the front end. Obviously, it's
difficult to put your faith into somebody else's hands. And
(16:57):
we do this a lot with family attorneys, and most
of them are great people, problem solvers. But again, the
way these forms have been set up and again and
and they're they're older, and they're difficult, and they're confusing,
but we can help you with them. They were meant
for people to be able to represent themselves and self
fill out the forms. So look at them. See what
(17:18):
it is that you can You generally will know your
name and some states ask for Social Security number. You've
probably got that somewhere. UM, I hope you know the
date you got married. Some people don't really know the
date they separated because that's a tougher one. But we'll
explain that to you. See what you can do on
your own. Did p your toe in the water and
let us see if we can help you, because again,
all of this information is information that by the end
(17:40):
of the divorce process, whether you're represented or not, you're
going to want to know. So maybe on the front end,
start checking it out and let us help you filling
out those forms that you need to dissolve the status
of your marriage in the state where you live. Hi.
I'm Eryl David. I'm sixty three years old and I
(18:02):
live in Los Angeles, California. But I think I personally
had the single worst divorce of anyone I know. My
fees were a court of a million dollars, not the
that's not including the you know, the p I or
the therapist I had to hire afterwards. Enduring it was
a nightmare for me. I had a beautiful home in
(18:22):
bel Air, and that home was sold just to pay
for attorney's fees. It never went from s grow into
any checking account for either of us. If you have children,
you think that you're keeping them from getting hurt by this,
You think that maybe it's not affecting them. I'm here
(18:43):
to tell you that it does. It was impossible to
navigate on my own, which is what was happening, and
I dealt with more than one attorney. The second attorney
I ended up calling, but that was after three years
of just trying to make this train stop, and I
(19:04):
called another attorney and said, please, all I want, all
I want is peace. At one point, you just get
to the you just get to the point where you
want peace in your life, and you just wanted over um,
which is what it took. It took six and a
half years and a twenty one day trial in my
case to get this over and um. That's a big
(19:28):
part of your life when you think about it. To
devote that much time to something that's just built with
negative energy. It was awful. It was terrible, and I
ended up in a situation where the judge actually called
myself and my UM, my second attorney in and said
we're aware of the fact that this is not fair.
(19:50):
I see very clearly what your ex husband is doing,
and I can't solve any of it for you. I
really really could have used someone who understood the system.
And that's the one thing. I never understood the system.
I'm not an attorney. I don't I'd never I'd never
been in a courtroom until that time. With this platform,
(20:11):
you don't have to go through what I went through.
You can have it over easy, quickly, without the expense,
without the emotional draining of your resources. And I only
wish that there has been something like this platform for me.
I think that UM, it would have really made our lives,
(20:34):
UM and our future much better. Oh, Cheryl, I mean,
nobody's divorced the last six and a half years, and
nobody should have to undergo a twenty one day trial.
As to the two fifty thousand dollars that it cost
to get it done, it must have been a while ago,
because again I've seen more than that be spent, and
couldn't that money have gone to better things, whether it's
(20:57):
her family, her kids, nonprofit organization's um you know, world peace,
world hunger. There's no reason that it should take that long,
particularly if, as she said, her husband was willing to
get things done early on for a small amount. Um
we are here, we are available. Part of it sounds
to me like it might have had to do with
(21:18):
some of the psychological blocks and what we always say
it it's over easy. It's important to get the kind
of counseling that you need, not only to be able
to effectively communicate with you're about to be X, but
then to be able to wrap your head around the
fact that there needs to be closure and you need
to move on. And like she said, at one one point,
she just called her attorney and said anything, I'll do anything.
(21:40):
I just just give me the piece that I need.
We want to do that from the outset. And I've
said this before on the podcast. So many people have
said to me, if only I knew then what I
know now, And I thought to myself, how do we
give people that kind of knowledge? And that's why I
wrote the book, That's why we of the podcast, That's
(22:00):
why we have It's over easy to make you know
then what you will know later. We're giving that information
to frontloading it, getting you to a place where you're
not going to say at some point I just need
this to end. It's going to end fairly quickly after
it begins. You're both going to be equal partners and
(22:21):
making sure that that happens and moving forward. Worst case scenario,
you hit a wall and you have to have to
opt out. But wouldn't it be better to find that
out at the beginning and see what you know? It
is a It's an incredibly empowering experience to be able
to learn the law in your state and then attempt
to apply it to what's going on with you. Um,
this may be the last thing that the two of
(22:43):
you do as a couple, and it doesn't have to
be a fun experience or a reconciling process, but at
the same time, it is a way that will really, really,
I think and I have seen help you with that
bridge through to the next phase of your life. What
we for you here as your full divorce resources is
(23:03):
a community not only other individuals who are either going
through it or have been through it, but all kinds
of accessible tools to use. Beyond this divorce SUX podcast,
We've got It's over Easy TV, which has I think
helpful videos and about things like what's the best way
to separate, how to talk to your kids. What kind
(23:23):
of mental health counseling could be you know, appropriate or
or helpful to your family? What is your data separation?
What does that mean in your state? On the actual platform,
we've got the insights blogs, so we have people that
have written articles about certain things, people that have written
articles about what happened to them. We've got professionals, We've
got anecdotes, We've got what not to do. Our social
(23:45):
media is at it's over easy. We've got a Twitter page.
There's so many different resources that we are bringing to
you so that you can be the master of your
own destiny. You know, we want to be able to
help you through it and from more than anything, so
that we can change the face of divorce. We call
this the evolution of dissolution. It never made sense to
(24:07):
me that during my twenty five years of practice things
hadn't really evolved in family law, and I feel that
it's incumbent upon me and those of us who feel
like minded to change that conversation. Thank you, Rob Police,
Chris and Cheryl for sharing some of your stories with us,
and thank you all for listening. Divorces many things, and
yes it will be stressful and even though we say
(24:29):
it's over easy, we know divorce isn't easy. In fact,
we know divorce sucks. It's terrible, it's painful, it's heart wrenching.
Those parts of it we are guessing people will go
through with their spouses, their support systems, their mental health professionals,
and their families. I want the legal and business transaction
part of this to be easier for you, guys. This
(24:49):
is what we call the evolution of dissolution. Divorce is happening,
but it doesn't have to be destructive and contentious. Leave
a review for us at iTunes and tell me what
you think of today show, or share your divorce story
with us and maybe we'll have you on our show.
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Plan
Thank you for listening to this podcast one production available
on Apple Podcasts and podcast one. Hi there, I'm Laura Wasser,
and if anyone knows how much divorce sucks, it's me.
I've been practicing family law for over twenty five years,
and I've worked on thousands of divorces from the top
of the food chain all the way down to my
(00:21):
very first case, which was my own divorce when I
was twenty five. It has become my life's mission to
destigmatize divorce and create a community around what is already
a difficult time. We call it the evolution of dissolution.
So welcome to the Divorce Sex Podcast when we talk
about breaking up, getting divorced, and moving on. My firm
(00:47):
represents high net worth clients, rich people, which is great
for me and the lawyers of my firm, but the
truth is that the majority of divorcing couples cannot afford
our services. All the time, I have people call me
and ask, can you help my friend's sister who lives
here or whatever, But they don't have enough money for you,
or they don't want to spend the kind of money
(01:08):
that your firm charges. I never had anywhere great to
send these people. In response, I wrote, it doesn't have
to be that way and created it's over easy dot
com to educate people about the divorce process and to
disrupt the conversation about how people actually get divorced. In
the US. You shouldn't need to have an attorney in
(01:29):
order to disentangle yourself from your marriage. We're offering a
fresh perspective and online tools to dissolve a marriage without
bankrupting yourself or destroying your family. It's over Easy. It
is totally free until you've actually input your information and
want to file something with the court, and it's available
now in all fifty states. For those of you who
(01:50):
are skeptical about being able to keep things amicable, let
me put it this way. You know your kids better
than anyone, and you know your finances better than anyone.
Or if you don't know, you will know, you certainly
will care more than anyone. So while allow the courts,
the state, or anyone else for that matter, to make
decisions which will impact the well being of your children
and your bank account. We're going to get into this
(02:11):
through the experience of courageous divorces, whom we've interviewed for
the launch if it's over easy. In hindsight, each of
them wishes they've done it differently. Today's show is the
first in a new series of special episodes highlighting real
divorce stories. After you've listened, leave us a review and
tell us if you can relate for me. The divorce
process was confusing, and it was also tricky because I
(02:33):
worked with my ex wife. She was a few deaths
down and I'd have to see her every day. It
also made it very contentious between us as our lawyers
tried to work this out. I'd have to walk by
her desk or there'd be a snide comment. And the cost,
the cost just seemed to keep adding up time after
time after time. And I get it, but you know,
(02:54):
I didn't realize that the retainer would go so quickly.
I didn't realize there were certain aspects that I should
be looking for ahead with that divorce that would protect
me in the future. Ultimately, I just really felt lost,
and I spent I don't know, you know, twenty years
as an investigative, you know, television news reporter, really thinking
I knew the processes, thinking at least I had a
vague understanding of, you know, what was going on how
(03:16):
it was going. But when you put that emotional card
into the divorce on top of it, the how contentious
it can be between both parties. You know, all my
rational thinking, you know, really went out the door. And
you know, I just really felt taken advantage of by
both attorneys on on either side. You know, we didn't
have a whole lot to have to split up, and
(03:38):
and it should have been more simple than what it was,
and a lot less money than what it was. And
ultimately I'd find out twelve years later I wasn't even
protected in the areas that I should have been. So
I feel like Rob's story is a lot like other
people's stories, having to deal with something business related in
a rational manner while you're going through a really emotional time,
(04:01):
and then adding to that the fact that you're really
depending on somebody else, your advocate, your mouthpiece, to make
a deal for you. I think if you are invested,
and if you are able to learn enough about the
divorce laws in your state in order to apply those
laws to your situation. I couldn't help him with where
(04:22):
his desk is in the office and having to have
his wife ex wife walk by him. But I can
definitely tell you that. I think it would have gone
easier and perhaps most importantly, in this scenario, they would
have saved some money that they obviously both needed in
in the second halves of their lives. Um, certainly this
next woman, Police Baxter, from San Diego, California. Her story
is similar, if not a bit more colorful. Hello, I'm
(04:48):
Police Baxter, and I am fifty four years old and
I live in San Diego, California. I'm on my yacht
today and I wanted to talk to you about divorce
because I've had to happily married ten years now. So
there is light at the end of that tunnel. It
really genuinely is. But for me, here's my big thing
about a divorce. When anybody tells me they're going to
(05:08):
get a divorce, the first thing I said that. The
first thing they say is it's gonna be amicable. I'm
gonna split everything fifty fifty. We're not gonna fight, and
we're gonna make sure we don't give everything to the attorneys.
We don't want to waste our money. Okay, that's not
what happens. That's not how it's gonna go down. Um,
you're married, you're fighting. You don't want to be together,
(05:30):
so you're gonna suddenly divorce amicably. No, because maybe one
person cheating, Maybe someone has a partner whisper in their ear.
Don't give her the house. Why are you gonna pay
all that child support? Because people have their own agendas.
So it starts out, Okay, let's get divorced, and then
it gets super complicated. So um. The person that benefits
(05:52):
from that is the attorneys because when you call them,
they want to be helpful and seem really nice. And
the don't be fooled when you call him and they
being all sweet and nice, they're charging you. That's how
they make their living. They're not just being a compassionate
person to talk to their You're paying them. It's like
a psychiatrist. You pay them, So don't fall for it.
(06:14):
Have a plan. My thing is be prepared to fight,
be prepared for attorney bills, be prepared for anything that
can negatively happen. Because there's a really good chance that's
gonna happen. And if it doesn't, bet you saved all
that money. No one you know, no, no one was harmed.
(06:38):
And the making of this video. So the other thing
that I found from my second divorce is I had
his passport and documents and we were living in Europe
and I was thinking, no, we're gonna divorce because we
just don't want to be married together and it's gonna
be nice, and I go, here's your pass here's your documents. Oh.
(07:00):
Had I not done that and held onto them as
like a little bargaining chip for later on when he
started his garbage, then I could have said, well, I'm
not going to need documents and pastward. That's kind of mean.
But that's what I mean by being prepared, be smart
about it, have something to bargain with. Um, you get
(07:22):
through it, obviously, And I am going to be renewing
my vows right now shortly for ten years married to
my lovely husband. And there he comes, where are you? Yeah? Um,
so that's it. That's what That's what I got. Well,
I have a lot more to say about it, but
(07:42):
I only got two minutes to talk about it. So, um,
it's not gonna happen nicely. You're gonna fight, it's gonna
be expensive, it's not gonna be amicable. Go into it
knowing that. So if you go into it knowing this
is gonna end bad you started different from the beginning. Mentally,
you're prepared aired for that. I hope it makes sense.
(08:02):
So for police who clearly realizes how helpful a platform
like It's over Easy could have been for her first
or second divorce, we say thank you for telling us
about your experience. Again, maybe a couple more red flags
would have been the fact that her second husband's first
wife told her that he was going to bankrupt her. Also,
(08:23):
you know, I've heard many, many times that people get
so frustuated with their attorneys. And this is a function
not only of the kind of law that family law
attorney's practice, but of the fact that people aren't completely
clued in on what it is a family law attorney's
job is. One thing I agree with her about is
that if every communication has to go through the attorneys,
(08:45):
it's going to cost more than it should. And even
if you have an attorney who was the most well
meaning and the most responsive and the most explicatory. So
if they tell you yes, every time you call me,
it's going to cost money, we still will have to
call them certain times. With That's over Easy, we really
lay out this platform for you. We enable you to
learn about the process yourself and then engage in it.
(09:07):
I don't know how much we can help you if
you've married a con artist. But obviously she ended up
on her feet because she was talking to us from
her yacht, so fully spoke about her. You know, three
thousand or retainer. I don't know very many attorneys that
would charge actually that little for a retainer. Generally, retainer
is going to be somewhere upwards of five thousand dollars.
(09:29):
We did research when we were beginning to develop It's
over Easy, and found that the average divorce case in
the United States is fifteen thousand dollars. And It's over Easy.
We charged fifteen hundred dollars. That's all in, and you
really do cut out the middleman, which for many many
(09:49):
couples is incredibly helpful. A lot of the things that
get lost in translation, like a game of telephone that
we used to play when we were little, are things
that you really when you have the direct commune occasions
throughout a weezy platform, you can end Chris Kannappa, age forty,
Los Angeles, California. Here's the thing about divorce, though, there
never if you have the child, they're not done until
(10:10):
the child has grown up or whenever that court says
that child is done. It could be eighteen or could
be twenty four and some states depending on whether the
kid is done with high school or college. Reality is,
I've been dealing with it for seven years with court
from either the parenting plan aspect or the you know,
the other part of the divorce. We deal with the
household stuff. First, she filed for divorce, and we went
(10:32):
through that process to split of the marital assets, wrote
up the parenting plan, and then which was seven years ago, right,
but even you know, that process took nine months to
get through. But then she kept fighting me to bring
me back to court. Like, I'll give you an example.
She sued me and found a contempt motion. She said
I lied on our tax returns of court. She did
(10:53):
this two years after a court was settled, so I
got dragged back in. At one point before she ran
up to California, she was with another guy. She was
fighting for full custody. So I had a custody battle,
like I literally had to pay the psychologist shrinks and
they're going to evaluate me for my parental fitness and
all this bullshit. Well, I paid the money, went through
(11:13):
the process the last minute she she dropped it if
I added it up, and probably twenty thousand that I
was out of pocket just from from him screwing up
and some colts I had to pay the court because
he screwed up some dates and didn't find motions in time.
Inherently curis conflict and the legal process. You have lawyers
(11:34):
who are trying to defend you, but at the same
time they're trying to get to make a living, So
the longer it drags out, the more they make money.
And that was one of my my prompts with the
whole process. If you can do it, and I don't
know if this is legal to me, say it without
a lawyer, and maintain peace with each other, assuming there's
no mental illnesses or anything else involved. That's the way
(11:57):
to go. You gotta hold you know, put your emotions aside.
Your anger, saddnesth is bitterness, and if one of them
wants to lead the marriage and you know, you both
got to sit down and uh and reasonably discuss the dissolution. Really,
because the conflict that creates, I mean, it's just totally
life changing, destroying. So as Chris says, I mean, I
(12:17):
say to clients all the time when they come into
my office. Listen, the more you argue, the more money
I make. If you can get on the same page
with things, then we can distill it into an agreement,
and that agreement can be the one that you guys
live by, or if you need to be flexible in
change that you can getting me at nine d dollars
(12:38):
an hour involved to determine who drives to soccer practice,
or who has Wednesdays, or if in even number of
years Christmas is yours or his doesn't make a lot
of sense. I mean, you don't have to have a
lot degree to be able to do this. And it's
funny that Chris said, I don't know if this is
legal to say, but can you get divorced without a lawyer? Well, yeah, dude,
(12:59):
of course it legal. It's legal to do, and it's
legal to say. I am amazed that people don't realize this. Folks.
We are offering you the opportunity to read and educate
yourselves about divorce and then if you are going to
actually be getting divorce, you can do it on your own.
We will help you, you know that, saying if you
if you you know, give a man fish, he has
(13:21):
food for one day, but if you teach him to farm,
he has food for the rest of his life. I mean,
hopefully you're not getting divorce for the rest of your life,
but we're giving you the information and the education and
the tools to do this on your own. We are
there to help. We have professionals who you can opt
out of the program momentarily, you know, seek their assistance
(13:42):
for certain issues, and then come back. But honestly, if
you've got kids, particularly, don't you owe it to them
to figure out a way to do this that makes sense,
save money for their college education, and save the toxicity
that you will otherwise spend. Because as Chris said, this
goes on until and he says until their you know
age out. Whether that's eight one, I don't know what
(14:04):
states at the twenty four, and I haven't heard of that.
But the fact is it's their whole lives. You're always
going to be dealing with your co parent, and so
let's do it in a way that makes sense. I mean,
what Chris spoke about is his lawyer missed deadlines. I mean,
I hope his lawyer would have maybe given him a
break on the fees if the deadlines were missed. But
with you buck stops there. You miss the deadline, that's
on you. You're not paying somebody else or paying for
(14:26):
somebody else's mistake. His wife bringing him back to court, However,
many years later, she would have had intimate knowledge of
his finances signed under penalty of perjury. She wouldn't have
had to take him back or necessarily been second guessing
if she had been in the weeds in the first
place getting that kind of information, and it's over easy.
We also have great parenting calendars, parenting plans, examples for people.
(14:50):
So many people say to me, look, we know we're
going to share custody equally, but what does that look like.
I've got a fourteen year old or I've got a
three year old. And because I've been doing this for
a while, because I've been speaking to many, many people
in the family law community, whether it's attorneys or financial
planners or mental health professionals, I asked, what makes most
(15:10):
sense for a three year old? What's a kind of
custody schedule that makes the most sense, Versus what's a
custody that makes the most sense for kids that are
in you know, middle school or high school. Generally, and
again it's case specific, it's best for younger kids to
have more frequent and continuing contact. So you do something
like a two to three plan or a two to
five plan and check out. It's over easy to see
(15:32):
what that actually means. Older kids can go week on,
week off alternating with parents. A lot of it depends
on where the parents live. These are things people should
be thinking about as they're getting into their dissolution process.
If we're going to live an hour away from each other,
that's going to impact what we're doing for custody, where
the kids go to school, how long they're in the car,
where we're gonna trick or treat with them, all of
(15:53):
those things, and we have helpful hints about all of
that on our website. Other tools to determine what an
appropriate amount of spouse or child support could be Figuring
those things out. Judges don't know any better than you do.
They're sitting up there with some kind of a guideline calculator,
plugging numbers and spitting them out. God forbid they plug
the wrong numbering where they're too new to realize what
the different nuances are. We can help you with that
(16:15):
so that you're armed with knowledge, which will make it
better for your negotiating with your spouse or or about
to be x and make it easier to figure out
what it is you need. I say to people all
the time that say I have no idea what I spend.
You know she's in charge of all the bills, or
he pays everything from his office. You will know. And
(16:35):
I say, you'll never be in this position again, because
now you're gonna know. You're gonna be the master of
your own destiny. Figuring that out now makes more sense
than figuring it out after two attorneys have gotten into it,
taking a bunch of money to represent you, and then
you're now left holding their bag on your own. Get
into it on the on the front end. Obviously, it's
difficult to put your faith into somebody else's hands. And
(16:57):
we do this a lot with family attorneys, and most
of them are great people, problem solvers. But again, the
way these forms have been set up and again and
and they're they're older, and they're difficult, and they're confusing,
but we can help you with them. They were meant
for people to be able to represent themselves and self
fill out the forms. So look at them. See what
(17:18):
it is that you can You generally will know your
name and some states ask for Social Security number. You've
probably got that somewhere. UM, I hope you know the
date you got married. Some people don't really know the
date they separated because that's a tougher one. But we'll
explain that to you. See what you can do on
your own. Did p your toe in the water and
let us see if we can help you, because again,
all of this information is information that by the end
(17:40):
of the divorce process, whether you're represented or not, you're
going to want to know. So maybe on the front end,
start checking it out and let us help you filling
out those forms that you need to dissolve the status
of your marriage in the state where you live. Hi.
I'm Eryl David. I'm sixty three years old and I
(18:02):
live in Los Angeles, California. But I think I personally
had the single worst divorce of anyone I know. My
fees were a court of a million dollars, not the
that's not including the you know, the p I or
the therapist I had to hire afterwards. Enduring it was
a nightmare for me. I had a beautiful home in
(18:22):
bel Air, and that home was sold just to pay
for attorney's fees. It never went from s grow into
any checking account for either of us. If you have children,
you think that you're keeping them from getting hurt by this,
You think that maybe it's not affecting them. I'm here
(18:43):
to tell you that it does. It was impossible to
navigate on my own, which is what was happening, and
I dealt with more than one attorney. The second attorney
I ended up calling, but that was after three years
of just trying to make this train stop, and I
(19:04):
called another attorney and said, please, all I want, all
I want is peace. At one point, you just get
to the you just get to the point where you
want peace in your life, and you just wanted over um,
which is what it took. It took six and a
half years and a twenty one day trial in my
case to get this over and um. That's a big
(19:28):
part of your life when you think about it. To
devote that much time to something that's just built with
negative energy. It was awful. It was terrible, and I
ended up in a situation where the judge actually called
myself and my UM, my second attorney in and said
we're aware of the fact that this is not fair.
(19:50):
I see very clearly what your ex husband is doing,
and I can't solve any of it for you. I
really really could have used someone who understood the system.
And that's the one thing. I never understood the system.
I'm not an attorney. I don't I'd never I'd never
been in a courtroom until that time. With this platform,
(20:11):
you don't have to go through what I went through.
You can have it over easy, quickly, without the expense,
without the emotional draining of your resources. And I only
wish that there has been something like this platform for me.
I think that UM, it would have really made our lives,
(20:34):
UM and our future much better. Oh, Cheryl, I mean,
nobody's divorced the last six and a half years, and
nobody should have to undergo a twenty one day trial.
As to the two fifty thousand dollars that it cost
to get it done, it must have been a while ago,
because again I've seen more than that be spent, and
couldn't that money have gone to better things, whether it's
(20:57):
her family, her kids, nonprofit organization's um you know, world peace,
world hunger. There's no reason that it should take that long,
particularly if, as she said, her husband was willing to
get things done early on for a small amount. Um
we are here, we are available. Part of it sounds
to me like it might have had to do with
(21:18):
some of the psychological blocks and what we always say
it it's over easy. It's important to get the kind
of counseling that you need, not only to be able
to effectively communicate with you're about to be X, but
then to be able to wrap your head around the
fact that there needs to be closure and you need
to move on. And like she said, at one one point,
she just called her attorney and said anything, I'll do anything.
(21:40):
I just just give me the piece that I need.
We want to do that from the outset. And I've
said this before on the podcast. So many people have
said to me, if only I knew then what I
know now, And I thought to myself, how do we
give people that kind of knowledge? And that's why I
wrote the book, That's why we of the podcast, That's
(22:00):
why we have It's over easy to make you know
then what you will know later. We're giving that information
to frontloading it, getting you to a place where you're
not going to say at some point I just need
this to end. It's going to end fairly quickly after
it begins. You're both going to be equal partners and
(22:21):
making sure that that happens and moving forward. Worst case scenario,
you hit a wall and you have to have to
opt out. But wouldn't it be better to find that
out at the beginning and see what you know? It
is a It's an incredibly empowering experience to be able
to learn the law in your state and then attempt
to apply it to what's going on with you. Um,
this may be the last thing that the two of
(22:43):
you do as a couple, and it doesn't have to
be a fun experience or a reconciling process, but at
the same time, it is a way that will really, really,
I think and I have seen help you with that
bridge through to the next phase of your life. What
we for you here as your full divorce resources is
(23:03):
a community not only other individuals who are either going
through it or have been through it, but all kinds
of accessible tools to use. Beyond this divorce SUX podcast,
We've got It's over Easy TV, which has I think
helpful videos and about things like what's the best way
to separate, how to talk to your kids. What kind
(23:23):
of mental health counseling could be you know, appropriate or
or helpful to your family? What is your data separation?
What does that mean in your state? On the actual platform,
we've got the insights blogs, so we have people that
have written articles about certain things, people that have written
articles about what happened to them. We've got professionals, We've
got anecdotes, We've got what not to do. Our social
(23:45):
media is at it's over easy. We've got a Twitter page.
There's so many different resources that we are bringing to
you so that you can be the master of your
own destiny. You know, we want to be able to
help you through it and from more than anything, so
that we can change the face of divorce. We call
this the evolution of dissolution. It never made sense to
(24:07):
me that during my twenty five years of practice things
hadn't really evolved in family law, and I feel that
it's incumbent upon me and those of us who feel
like minded to change that conversation. Thank you, Rob Police,
Chris and Cheryl for sharing some of your stories with us,
and thank you all for listening. Divorces many things, and
yes it will be stressful and even though we say
(24:29):
it's over easy, we know divorce isn't easy. In fact,
we know divorce sucks. It's terrible, it's painful, it's heart wrenching.
Those parts of it we are guessing people will go
through with their spouses, their support systems, their mental health professionals,
and their families. I want the legal and business transaction
part of this to be easier for you, guys. This
(24:49):
is what we call the evolution of dissolution. Divorce is happening,
but it doesn't have to be destructive and contentious. Leave
a review for us at iTunes and tell me what
you think of today show, or share your divorce story
with us and maybe we'll have you on our show.
(25:10):
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