Last week I summarized 12 steps to financial security during and after the divorce, and here’s the first one:  getting a handle on your emotions.

If you want financial security you need to have equanimity, that is, self-possession and calm amid the crapstorm.  In child custody cases you’ll need to be imperturbable when the other parent tries to throw you off center.  For financial issues you’ll need to channel your inner mathematician, someone who can make wise decisions under pressure.  You need the ability to bring the joy, even when others try to tear you down.

You really can be calm, and even joyful during your divorce process. I’ve lived this and watched countless others live it too.  Here are some ideas about how to get through the post-announcement doldrums.

Bad emotions will cause you to make bad mistakes.  Among these mistakes are:

• Sending nasty text messages and e-mails that can be used against you later;
• Posting nasty things on social media;
• Dumping your case on an aggressive divorce attorney and creating a plan for revenge rather than for happiness;
• Purposefully withholding your children from the other parent;
• Getting arrested for domestic violence.

Understand that whether you’re leaving or being left, this is going to be emotionally difficult.  It’s the nature of the beast.  But you can come out ahead if you can see a happy future, one in which you are achieving your highest values and aspirations.  It’s hard to see it now, but you can see it.

I would urge you to write out a detailed description of what your post-divorce life looks like, as though it’s already happened.  Write about that big house by the ocean that you finally have, and the great school district where your kid are now getting straight As.  Write in detail about how you finally wrote that “Meditation through Painting” book, got a spot on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and went on to make seven figures selling instructional videos.

Talk about your dreams as though you’ve already accomplished them.  This will set your subconscious to work on making your dreams into reality.  Dream big, and read your dream sheet out loud to yourself every day.

By contrast, nothing can destroy hope faster than dwelling on what is lost, plotting revenge, or trying to hold on to the past.  Don’t dwell on what a jerk your ex is.  Instead, think ahead to the great life you are now creating.  Don’t let anger or resentment set in—these will cause you to make bad decisions.

Keep in mind that the best revenge is always living well.  Reach for your dreams; it will drive your ex crazy.  Then, when your ex tries to draw you into conflict, all you’ll hear is “blah, blah, blah.”

Next week I’m going to talk about your divorce plan of escape.  Until then,

Love your family,

Protect your finances, and

Reach for your future!

Thomas D. Ferreira, Esq.

The post YOUR FIRST STEP TO FINANCIAL SECURITY AFTER DIVORCE-COMING TO TERMS WITH YOUR FEELINGS appeared first on Carlsbad Divorce Mediator and Legal Document Assistant.

Most divorce and child custody lawyers will spend their free consultation (or one that they will charge your credit card $350 for) convincing you of how much you need them.  According to the standard pitch, you are in extremely deep voodoo, and the only way out is to hire them to fight for you.  And the more you fight, the more money they make.

Tammy and I founded Divorce Life Solutions(tm) to help people avoid the biggest mistakes divorcing people make.  The truth is, your divorce case can and should settle without expensive litigation.  That’s not going to happen if you simply dump your shoebox of documents on the lawyer’s desk and say “fix this.”  Here’s the secret sauce that will save you huge bucks and lead to financial security, and to a secure relationship with your kids:

1. Understand and deal with the immediate emotional trial caused by every divorce.
2. Develop a plan of escape.
3. Get all your papers together in a neat, tabbed binder.
4. Spreadsheet everything you make, spend, own and owe, with realistic numbers based on the past.
5. You can do most of the legal paperwork yourself.
6. Use unbundled attorney representation so that you only pay for what you need.
7. Use an experienced, trained divorce mediator to assist with difficult negotiations.
8. Pursue long-term goals and let go of the need for fairness and revenge.
9. Don’t use dollar services to fight over penny issues.
10. Take charge of your own financial life when the proceedings are done.
11. Take the time, energy and money that you would use in the court process and devote it to your relationships with your children.
12. Life is too short to be angry and bitter—be joyful in your life; it will drive your ex crazy!

Consider Mabel, who lawyered her way into full custody of the kids and a hefty alimony award and spent $50,000 on her lawyer, half of which the court ordered her ex-husband to pay.  Mabel’s ex seldom saw his children, who are now surly, disrespectful teenagers.  Mabel’s ex paid his $3,000 per month support order for 2 years and abruptly announced that he would pay no longer.  Since he was willing to go to jail or live on a park bench rather than pay the support, he quit his 6-figure, 60 hour per week job and hung out a shingle as a handyman.  After that, he had no wages to garnish and has spent through his retirement account.  A couple of years later he unexpectedly dropped dead of a heart attack.

Now consider Julie, who decided to take charge of her life and avoid litigation.  She urged her ex to try mediation and resolved her case for about $4,000 in mediation fees.  She agreed to a step-down spousal support (alimony) order and went back to school to achieve her childhood dream of being a registered nurse.  Now, her ex is not her favorite person in the world, but he pays his support on time and is a huge help with the kids.  One day, the ex got drunk and drove his car into a ditch, rendering him paralyzed from the waist down.  Not to worry; July is now making $120,000 per year working for Tri-City Hospital as an RN, a job she finds greatly fulfilling.  In the process she has set an example to her children of how to take responsibility for your own life and make yourself a success by the sweat of your own brow.  And, she is immune from the consequences of her ex’s irresponsible behavior.

Which mother would you rather be?  I am in the process of writing an e-book for sale that will go into greater detail about the best way to divorce with your financial security intact.  Stay tuned, and until then…

Love your family,

Protect your finances, and

Reach for your future!

Thomas D. Ferreira, Esq.

The post CARLSBAD DIVORCE LAWYER AND MEDIATOR SPILLS THE BEANS-12 WAYS YOU ACHIEVE FINANCIAL SECURITY WITHOUT A LAWYER! appeared first on Carlsbad Divorce Mediator and Legal Document Assistant.

Sometimes it’s better to settle for less.  You may be thinking, wow, did a lawyer just say that?  Yes, you heard that right.  I don’t mean getting less value; I mean getting more value.  If you’re wondering how accepting less money or less support could possibly lead to your getting more value, read on.

Win-lose—the paradigm of our litigation system:

Attorneys have minds like steel traps.  If there’s a closely-held business we need a professional evaluator to apply the discounted cash flow method of evacuation, using the Gordon Model Multiple.  Or if spousal support is in issue we need an in depth analysis of all 14 of the Family Code section 4320 factors.  Each lawyer argues and fights to push the needle in their direction on each individual issue, and such issues are resolved one-by-one in isolation.  On the spousal support question, we might spend half an hour on Husband’s income, half and hour on whether and how much income to impute to Wife, whether it’s legitimate to consider unearned stock options as income available for support, and on and on.  Here is a diagram of a typical result for such a negotiation:

Here the lawyers have neatly divide an asset, such as a business, into equal 35 percent shares for each of the divorcing parties.  It’s certainly even, but the combined shares of Husband and Wife are 70 percent.  The red area is the attorney’s cut.

The win-win paradigm of mediation:

One way to make the pie bigger it to cut out the divorce attorney’s share by doing your own legal work—but this has a high degree of difficulty.  And, we can do better than that. The chart below illustrates how intangible values can actually make the pie bigger:

An “intangible” is something that’s worth something to a divorcing spouse that can’t be directly measure by a professional evaluator or lawyer.  How much money would you pay to have a good relationship with your children?  If you have a complicated and nasty hearing coming up, how much would you pay to avoid it?  Here is a partial list of intangible values:

1.  Avoiding painful hearings and trials.

2.  Teaching respect and tolerance of others to your children by example.

3.  Teaching children to respect their mother or father.

4.  Having happy, well-adjusted children.

5.  Moving on with your post-divorce life.

6.  Having an asset that has sentimental value.

7.  Living in proximity for co-parenting.

8.  Being able to co-parent peacefully and civilly.

9.  Fairness and equity.

10.  The dignity of being self-supporting in a career you’ve always wanted.

I’m not suggesting that you always put these intangible items on the table during negotiations.  But it helps to consider them when deciding how much to offer and when to settle.  And, it starts you to thinking about solutions that benefit Husband, Wife, the children, the extended family and friends.

Many people lose their sanity and happiness during painful and expensive divorce litigation.  But as the most wise person to ever live said, “what profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?”  Remember to…

Love your family,

Protect your finances, and

Reach for your future!

Thomas D. Ferreira, Esq.

The post The Value of Intangibles in Divorce Negotiation appeared first on Carlsbad Divorce Mediator and Legal Document Assistant.

This is not to disparage our truly fine family law bench.  Where I practice, mostly in North San Diego County at the Vista location, I am often amazed the compassion and understanding that our family law jurists bring to their decisions.

But the overwhelming majority of people who find themselves in our courtrooms have unreasonably high expectations of what a court can do to help in any given situation.  To see why, I’d like to take you on a little journey through the minds of the people involved.

Let’s start with you.  In the universe of your relationships to your soon-to-be-ex and to your kids is a body of information or truth about what is happening, and what is good for your family.  A subset of that truth is your understanding of what’s going on.  Another subset is what your ex understands or believes is going on.

Visualize your understanding of what’s going on in your case as a window, the larger blue area in the diagram above.  You then go to your attorney, spending an hour (at a cost of $350) for an intake.  You present documents like text messages, pictures, tax returns and the like.  This information, recorded in your case file and in the lawyer’s brain, is a smaller window inside the larger window of everything you know.  Your child custody or family law attorney can’t see everything in your window; he/she must look through the smaller window of his/her knowledge of your life.

Now comes a 20-minute Request for Order hearing.  The tools that your divorce lawyer has to present the case include written declarations that you sign, documentary evidence that he/she will lodge with the court on your behalf and maybe two or three sentences from you during the hearing.

The lawyer must expand, as much as possible the judge’s window on your life, but by necessity that window is very, very small.  That’s why it’s so darn difficult for your judicial officer to get your case exactly right or see it from your point of view.

The moral of the story is that you and your ex have the biggest windows into your lives and family, and are therefore in the best position to make those important decisions about how to share childrearing responsibilities, how to divide your estate, how you will be supported, in short, how you will accomplish your goals for your post-divorce life.  This is your family, and the decision maker should be you, and not your lawyer, or the person who has the smallest window, the judicial officer.

In mediation we take the time to explore how you and your ex can accomplish your goal of divorcing inexpensively, avoiding expensive and upsetting hearings, and accomplishing your goals.  In mediation you don’t have to follow the California legislature’s or the judicial officer’s view of how your family should be constituted.  If you come in to our free workshop this coming Saturday (February 4, 2017) at 1:00, we’ll show you how to do this.

Hoping to see you soon, I urge you to:

Love your family,

Protect your finances, and

Reach for your future!

Thomas D. Ferreira, Esq.

The post CAN THE COURT REALLY HELP? SAGE WISDOM FROM YOUR CARLSBAD DIVORCE LAWYER AND MEDIATOR appeared first on Carlsbad Divorce Mediator and Legal Document Assistant.