Favorite Quick Divorce Tips from Top Family Lawyers

What are your three favorite quick divorce tips for clients? Family Lawyers Share Favorite Quick Divorce Tips. How can I be a good client for my attorney in my divorce? How do clients deal with divorce?

Q: What Are Your Three Favorite Quick Divorce Tips for Clients?

Melissa Avery:

I have three main tips for my divorce clients. The first one is to just stay off social media, if possible. It really is a minefield. There are so many ways that it can harm someone’s case and very few ways that it can help. So, if possible, just stay away from social media.

Also, I think you should give yourself time to think and process before you react to the different things that happen in your case. Very little that happens in a divorce is a true emergency. Just like we tell our kids, if they’re angry or upset, not to immediately send an email to the person they’re angry or upset with, I think that’s good advice for clients in a divorce case to just pause and think things through before they react.

And finally, on the practical side, when you want to communicate with your attorney, try to group all your communications into one email a day. Don’t just pop off emails every time something comes to mind. If you can group it all together, you’re going to save yourself a lot of money, and that’s going to be really helpful in the long run.

Steven Peskind:

Number one, I would say is look at the big picture and do what you can to try to avoid becoming mortal enemies with the goal that someday you’ll both dance at your children’s wedding. So that’s number one.

The second tip I would give to people is don’t spend dollars to fight over dimes. Be sensible by choosing your battles.

I would say the third advice that I would give to people is to be honest with their lawyer, because if we’re getting bad information, we can’t help them as effectively.

I would say those are probably three bits of advice I give on a regular basis.

Barry Gold:

My first tip would be to run something by me first as the lawyer. The client’s power to undo vastly exceeds my power to do. It’s better off to address something before it becomes a problem. If I’m your lawyer, bring your question to me, please. That way I’m not trying to undo a problem that could have been avoided in the first place.

Second is some advice that might seem a little unusual from a divorce lawyer.  Of course, the client has to follow the court’s orders, and in Tennessee, the statutory injunction, but some clients have this view that their life is completely on hold while a case is pending, like they’re a car that has to park and can’t move anywhere while this is going on. My advice to people is to respect the court’s orders, follow the injunction, don’t do the things you aren’t supposed to do, but meanwhile, there are healthy things you can be doing, and you don’t have to wait for the divorce to be over to do those things. In other words, your life is not completely parked while this is happening.

The third piece of advice is just a little bit more practical, and that is something that especially first-time divorce clients don’t know, but they will get through this. Millions of people have. This will come to an end. There will be a life on the other side of it and there will come a time when, maybe they can’t look back and laugh at it, but they’ll be able to look back with at least a wry smile or gratitude. They will get through this and there are better times on the other side of it.

Joe Booth:

My three favorite divorce tips for clients may be a little different than what some other attorneys may have. My first is to recognize the need for empathy. It provides incredible guidance for people to be able to figure out what the other side is doing, and it’s a little bit more rational of an approach, which puts some reasoning and foundation behind it. And ultimately it allows you to sculpt and propose solutions that fit the other side’s needs as well as yours, so you wind up with a win-win.

Probably my second most valuable tip is to recognize how we get so anxious that we want to either fight or flight when neither one tends to work. People overreact and want to do a lot of things quickly when often the hallmark of success is branded by patience and a willingness to let things sort of settle in.

Finally, my third tip really does have to do with the idea of not looking at a divorce as a zero-sum game, in the sense that you’re going to win and they’re going to lose. Many attorneys market under the idea, “We will win your case.” It’s really far more appropriate to say, “We will do the best we can for your family and make this transition in your life the most fruitful and verdant possible.”

Randall Kessler:

What’s a quick tip for divorce? Number one, be honest. You might think you’re going to get away with lying, but judges like people who are honest, and more importantly, judges hate people who are dishonest. We all remember Bill Clinton. “I did not have sex with that woman.” People didn’t get as mad at him for what he did with Monica Lewinsky as they did for pointing at the screen and saying, “I did not have sex.” Don’t get caught lying. And by don’t get caught lying, I mean don’t lie. As a lawyer, I’d always rather catch the other side lying than just about anything else. I’d rather catch the other side lying than cheating or doing drugs, because when you lie, you’re lying to the judge. That gets the judge offended. If you cheat, you cheated on your spouse. The judge is not as offended because you didn’t do anything personal to them. So, tip number one is to be honest.

Tip number two, help your lawyer. Ask your lawyer what you can do to help. We charge people a lot of money to organize receipts. We get grocery bags filled with receipts and we have to organize them, and we charge by the hour. Figure out what your expenses are, figure out what your income is, figure out what your assets are. Put it together in a spreadsheet and send it to your lawyer on a silver platter. You should know what you have. You should know what you earn. You should know what you spend. By the time the divorce ends, you’re going to know what you earn. You’re going to know what you spend. You’re going to know what you have. The question is: do you want to pay a lawyer to figure that out for you or do you try to do it yourself? Do as much of that yourself as possible.

And number three, push your divorce lawyer. Some divorce lawyers will sit back and just react to whatever is in front of them. So, if you haven’t heard from your lawyer in a while, there’s nothing wrong with calling and saying, “Just checking in. Can we schedule a time to talk? Can we have a meeting?” Ask your lawyer for updates. Some lawyers are good about it. Some aren’t. But if you don’t feel like you’re getting updates, it’s okay to ask.

Scott Friedman:

My three favorite quick divorce tips for clients: One is stay off social media. Two is to be honest with your attorneys. Three is take care of yourself and your children.

Miles Mason:

My three best tips for divorce clients are to first understand your divorce lawyer’s life. Most of the time, your divorce lawyer’s life is complete chaos. There are several reasons for that, that are not that lawyer’s particular fault. Some clients will call in because of a physical abuse situation and police officers are at the house. Other lawyers get caught in court by judges and can’t get away and can’t make a phone call.

My second-best tip is to write down everything and batch your questions. When you’re worried at night about a particular topic, write it down and give your lawyer an opportunity to understand the context of your concern. Sometimes writing out the stories in a narrative format is the best way for some lawyers to process information. Law school was all about reading and writing and learning through a visual method.

And finally, a great tip is to ask questions. Your lawyer doesn’t know what you know or don’t know about the process. You’ve got to get comfortable with the process to trust in your lawyer. For you to have any kind of decent outcome, you have got to have a good working relationship with your family lawyer. So, when you write down your questions in batch, when you get to a critical mass, call the lawyer, and schedule a telephone conference. It’s almost impossible for any family lawyer to pick up the phone and answer and talk to you or see a particular email the instant it comes in. It may be 24 hours or more before your lawyer has the ability to even see the request for a phone call. So maybe ask for a meeting the week following and understand between trials and other court actions and depositions, sometimes that scheduling may take a little longer than you would like. Other times it’s going to be very quick. However, just because your lawyer gives you a quick setting, as far as getting into the office or a phone call, don’t assume that lawyer’s going to be able to do it the next day or week in the future. Because as I mentioned, life is in chaos and that’s the nature of family law. It just is.

Thank you for contributing your experience and expertise to our “Top Family Lawyers Answer Divorce Questions” video series.  You are the best!

Randy Kessler
Atlanta, Georgia
Kessler & Solomiany, LLC
ABA Family Law Section, Past Chair

Melissa Avery
Indianapolis, Indiana
Broyles Kight & Ricafort, P.C., Of Counsel
ABA Family Law Section, Past Chair

Joseph W. Booth
Lenexa, Kansas
Law Offices of Joseph W. Booth
ABA Family Law Section, Co-Chair of Publications Board

Scott N. Friedman
Columbus, Ohio
Friedman & Mirman Co., L.P.A.
ABA Family Law Section, Past Chair

Stephen N. Peskind
St. Charles, Illinois
Peskind Law Firm, PC
ABA Family Law Section, Author

Barry L. Gold
Chattanooga, Tennessee
McWilliams, Gold & Larramore
TBA Family Law Section, Past Chair

Miles Mason, Sr.
Memphis, Tennessee
Miles Mason Family Law Group, PLC
ABA Family Law Section, Author

To learn more, visit our blog category, Divorce Tips, and our video, What Can You Not Do During a Divorce?