5 Additional Mistakes Men Make When Facing Divorce

[Music] well welcome back to another cordell and cordell town hall i'm scott trout ceo and managing partner of court allen cordell we'll continue to bring you information for guys before during and after divorce and all things regarding family law today is no different we're going to be joined by a panel of cordell and cordell attorneys from around the country we'll be discussing uh a second part series of the five more mistakes guys make when facing divorce this is the continuing series that we've done on our 10 stupidest mistakes guys make that we used to do in person around the country we also have a book on this topic as well and i know that many guys going through these seminars and and hearing about this information they relate we've all made those mistakes and we certainly can recover from them and that's the point of today's conversation in our town hall keep in mind that obviously our panel isn't licensed in every state around the country neither am i i'm licensed in missouri illinois and georgia we cannot give you legal advice during this town hall and we don't want you to make uh understand that this is an attorney-client relationship either what's important is to get you and to have your facts presented to your attorney uh in a setting in which it's more conducive to giving you advice obviously if you need a consultation we're available you can call us at 866 dad's law go to the web at cordellcordell.com you can find out more information you can do a consult via zoom in person on the phone whatever is most convenient for you uh during these uncertain times we will have an opportunity for you to submit a question in the q a section uh where we'll address those questions and you'll get answers from our panel today you can do that right now let's go ahead and put your first name and your state and if you're among a state in which our panel is licensed we'll certainly try to get that to them to get you the most appropriate answer that we can but doesn't replace that consult we encourage you to do that we want you to take notes this is informational educational and we want to spur a conversation between you and your attorney and obviously if you need one we're certainly available around the country including the united kingdom if you don't want to submit a question today you can submit those to coronavirus.divorce at cordell law dot com we'll address those questions in our podcast that we have twice each week i encourage you to check out our youtube channel and across social you'll find out more information more resources and things just like this addressing topics for guys not just in divorce but again before during and after and all those things affecting guys in the middle of family law cases so let's go ahead and get to it keep in mind q a section i know you have questions go ahead and submit them now we'll gather them we have some already and we want to address those for you sometime in the second half of our town hall today so let's get right to it and introduce to you our panel of cordell and cordell attorneys coming in baltimore repeat guests we have coumada kamara shandon welcome hi scott thanks again for having me as scott said i'm from the baltimore office and i'm licensed to practice in maryland i've been with the firm for three years and i've been practicing for eight a fun fact about me this is my fifth consecutive year being named a rising star by super lawyers magazine thanks cubana glad to have you and joining us um from marietta georgia adam sutton welcome adam hey scott glad to be here um yeah i am a um senior litigation attorney here with the firm i've been with the firm practicing um in georgia for the last five years i've been practicing law in general almost exclusively family law for the last 10 years my practice all around the metro atlanta area i'm also a member of the multiple different county bars and a former president of the state bar's dispute resolution section thanks adam bringing you attorneys from around the country trying to get you different perspectives we're going to join by lauren gilbert and dallas office welcome lauren good morning my name is lauren gilbert i'm a litigation attorney in the dallas office and i have been fortunate to be with the firm for two years and i've been exclusively practicing family law in the dfw area for the past five years thanks lauren rounding out our panel for today coming from midvale utah we have jacob arjanto welcome hey scott glad to be here jacob arianto in the salt lake city office i'm a litigation attorney and i've been with the firm for about two years thanks jacob as i mentioned we're getting some questions already coming in the q a section i encourage you to do that now we want to answer the questions that you have and and get you some information and point you in the right direction so go ahead and do that we're going to gather the questions that we have that are rolling in we'll address those just after the midway point somewhere around there as we continue to go along monitoring how many questions are coming in so that we can get through all of them during that second half period of our town hall today if you don't want to ask a question live again you can submit those at coronavirus.divorce at cordell law.com so before we get to the five mistakes i'm going to give you a chance to get a pen and a paper and get ready to take some notes but let's go to a real quick break and we'll be right back and start our town hall even in the toughest of times there are usually opportunities for relief many husbands and dads listening now are struggling to stay current on alimony and child support orders you should know that this crisis may allow you to modify your support obligations but time is of the essence if you're a guy needing help right now not someday when things are back to normal call us at court allen cordell this is what we do welcome back all right let's get started you know when we usually do these seminars in the evening in a live audience and we have a lot of questions that come in and we all get guys that say yep made that mistake but we'll talk about those mistakes and how we recover from them uh and gonna go through some of our experiences with our panel kumara i want to start out with you and in my seminars that i give on this topic and in the book we've written obviously for me this is the most appropriate place to start and it's about moving out um guys i'll do a consult and they'll say you know should i do i i already moved out what happens kind of you know what are the consequences is that a mistake and oftentimes i always start out by saying it is a mistake to move out and and i i'm very interested in your thoughts but let's start out with for guys that are watching right now and are listening if they're thinking about relocating or getting out of the marital home why should they stay in the marital residence scott there's a lot of good reasons to stay um first of all you don't have to leave i think a lot of people assume that the man has to leave the house um but you have all right to be there until there's a court order or you guys have an agreement otherwise i would certainly wait until that point to leave the house the other you know good thing about staying in the house is your maximum exposure to your kids you're staying with your children you're showing you're putting them first and you're gonna be as involved as possible it also reduces the risk of you know your wife withholding the children and you have to comply to her terms in order to see them so it is best to stay in the house especially for you financially as well you're not going to get stuck paying a mortgage and the rent or living with your family for an indefinite amount of time until you get a court order um but i will say there are some downsides to staying so in my jurisdiction in maryland if it's a contested case and there's um you know hasn't been adultery hasn't been any physical abuse you have to have a one year separation period and you have to have a one year separation period before the time of filing which means you've had to have been separated for that time the clock doesn't start until you move out so that is the one cautionary tale i will say about moving out but for the most part i would not do it unless you're coming to a temporary agreement with your wife or there's a court order saying otherwise yeah you know we talk about why stay and i think when i give this you know topic into seminars where i talk to guys frequently the biggest thing for me is a status quo is may not be the status quo if you move out when you mention it when you talk about if you move out you may have an agreement with your wife or your spouse that says oh yeah things are going well we'll just see each other we'll split the kids 50 50. magically things change when you move out and now you've turned into uh every other weekend father and you can't control it uh i've always said it's about being a passenger on that bus and there's a reason you stay and that is you get the same access that you had during you know this period of uncertainty and whether or not you're gonna move out then you know otherwise moving out right i mean you're gonna see your kids every day and you have some control right yes that is true um and it is the best solution like i said people can and i've had this happen to a lot of clients as people can you know your wife could keep your kids and dictate how you see them you know if she has to be present or if you can only see them every other weekend um so it is beneficial for you and your relationship with your kids to stay in as long as possible as you mentioned the downside i mean you know the false allegations the arguments some things in which they say oh he threatened me uh he's abusing the kids we know that perhaps at least in my experience you know i've been doing this for 28 years it is probably the most abused statute or law and that is in in some respects origin protection where if you stay a downside could be a false allegation that's raised against you and now it impacts your custody right if they claim and say oh yeah he was you know abusive to me both physically and emotionally in front of the kids while you stay isn't that a downside that is certainly a downside in staying and i mean in maryland that happens a lot where people will file a protective order just to get the other party out of the house and that that is unfortunate but that also you know you can kind of minimize the damage you can stay in a separate area of the house um you know focus on the kids and try to document as much as possible you know even though you're in the same house try to communicate to your wife by text or in writing um this is the age of the internet so if you have security cameras in your house that the other at least you'll have that evidence to show it did not happen and kind of just swing back and you mentioned it a little bit about um why stay and that is and i've referred to this as doubled how double household expenses inevitably i can tell you when a guy moves out um again they have an agreement uh and here's the way i describe it when you got married imagine you know you sat on the same side of the table your spouse was next to you you had friends family on the other side now because you're in the middle of a divorce those roles have changed your spouse is now on the other side of the table and you don't have necessarily that those types of agreements that you think are the bond that keeps you together and so when you move out i can tell you from experience lawyers on the other side are going to tell your spouse don't pay the household expenses don't pay the mortgage don't pay the utilities let them go in the default put it on him or her just to make sure that they pay it so it is a conversation the point of i think and i'm curious your input on this is um having a conversation with your attorney to make sure it's the best choice because every choice and every action you take as a consequence it's a domino effect and obviously we may conclude that this is the best course of actions to move out but the point of of this mistake and showing what we see collectively uh is our experience of what it is so you know hey if i choose i may be facing double household expenses i'm just curious as your input to round out this topic yeah i think that you definitely may be choosing to pay your own rent and your own mortgage um and also you know if you go move in with a relative you might be i've had this happen so many times you might be stuck there for a year um so you really need to think about what the consequences will be when you leave and that's uh definitely a discussion you should have with your lawyer you know i always weigh out because of this one year separation period here i kind of always weigh out the consequences with my client um and the ability to file for a divorce before they're separating yeah then i think that's a good transition point as we go to lauren but before we get there lauren i want to talk obviously with you about waiting for your ex or your spouse to file or filing first but quickly guys are sitting here thinking well i moved out i just made all these mistakes in fact everything you said is coming true it is not too late to have a conversation perhaps about getting back in the house so schedule that consult with your attorney if you have one have this conversation how do i get back in the house is it appropriate does it give me an advantage so all is not lost that's what we started out with by saying there are things you can do to change course so again it's not the death knell if you haven't made that choice have a conversation with your attorney prepare a strategy so we were talking about expenses lauren i want to talk about waiting for your spouse to file you know oh i'm just going to let her do it because or him do it i want the blame to be on them but i know you've referred to this as kind of the wild west as it comes to expenses so maybe you can talk a little bit about why guys should be thinking about filing all right well absolutely it is the wild west you know you guys were talking about you've got this period of uncertainty and so until there's a court order saying who has to do what it's up on you up to you and your spouse on who's going to have the kids when who's going to pay what expenses who's going to use what property there's no rules really in place uh the and so if you're just waiting on waiting on your spouse to file there's you've got this period of uncertainty you know are my bank accounts going to be withdrawn down to zero who has to put money in the joint account to pay joint expenses uh when do i get to see my kids and so it's chaos it's the wild west and so you if you're dealing with this uncertainty or you want to prevent that uncertainty to go from coming into place you want to go ahead and file and start getting your foot in the door a lot of counties not every county but a lot of counties have what's called county standing orders that are essentially band-aid orders that try to minimize some of that chaos and so they'll say hey you can't drain the bank accounts you can't kick the other person out of the house you can't move out of state with the child you can't sell his golf clubs for a dollar and so they're designed somewhat to keep the status quo a little bit but there's still no order saying who has to pay expenses and so the only way to get that is to file for divorce and schedule a temporary orders hearing with the court to address those interim concerns for your case yeah and i think the uncertainty it's a it's an excellent point because the biggest stressor uh for guys either going through a divorce or a modification or some sort of a paternity order whatever it may be is not only not understanding the process not understanding the law but the uncertainty of what tomorrow brings i don't know what's going to happen and it's amplified when if you have concluded that your marriage is irretrievably broken and if there's no way to preserve it then why are you waiting um the point is is that that uncertainty of well the bills aren't going to be paid or she stops contributing towards the mutual household expenses and still living there and so now you're driving your debt up because most guys i meet with are living paycheck to paycheck and it creates stress and uncertainty i think it's an excellent point about filing first i'm i'm a big advocate of moving forward when the timing is right when you've made that conclusion you know i don't want to encourage divorce unless divorce is it's appropriate right so that's a conversation again have that conversation with your attorney decide whether or not you know it's appropriate because i think even getting temporary orders you know you if you're in need of financial assistance or you know maybe i just met with someone the other day where his wife is the primary breadwinner he has stayed at home with the kids and she has stopped contributing at all so he has no money so in order right to get the temporary assistance a temporary hearing you have to file right lauren right absolutely you're not going to get any leave from the court unless you file so uh sometimes what i advise clients too is sometimes we go ahead and file and we just leave the case pending but those county standing orders that i talked about they at least provide some of those minimal protections because without any core orders there's nothing saying like i said who has to contribute what household expenses you know what happened like if somebody goes and spends all the money in the joint bank account and drains the savings well you don't really have much relief to get from that if you don't have a case on file with the court and are ready to go and have a hearing so if sometimes i have clients that say you know what i want to go ahead and file just so i have some of those minimal protections in place and then let's kind of pause take a beat and see if we can work on our relationship in counseling and if we decide you know what after all we want to stay married well then that's on the divorce attorneys to say all right well we'll just dismiss your case and proceed on your merry way yep i mean finally you know i always say it's filing with a purpose and so that means having a strategy and do i need to file should i file is there a financial compelling reason uh those are the things but i think the overarching when i talk about filing first and typically uh if you've attended one of the seminars around the country i've given it's usually i give this as number 10. only reason being is i want to draw attention to it to close out but i think we did this now early because there are guys where there may be bad facts you know not every guy that comes in the door is 100 clean and whatever it is it could be that yeah okay i argue a lot or yeah i spend too much money or i drink too much whatever it is i've always said to clients uh there hasn't been a set of circumstances are facts absent child abuse right that i can't deal with that i can't put a strategy together to put you in a position to accomplish your goal you can't say you're going to but we're going to put together something and so why filing first may matter right right is you may have bad facts which means strategically filing first gets you to present facts first right uh yeah so typically how it works is if you're the petitioner in the case then the order of operations when you're actually in the courtroom whoever motion it is gets to say their piece first and then the second party in my jurisdiction you call them the respondent they get to speak second and so by getting to file first that means that you're essentially framing the case for the judge the first time the judge hears about your cases from your mouth and so you're able to frame those issues better and also in cases where a spouse wants to file for emergency orders or things like that sometimes that can happen if you're not already part of the case they can run off to court and get a restraining order without any advance notice to you and surprise you don't get to see your kids for two weeks until you can get a court hearing whereas if you file first they have to at least in my jurisdiction provide notice to you in advance of that saying hey i'm filing emergency orders so that you have an opportunity to be heard before the judge issues an emergency order yeah judges are you know i think when we think uh you talk about filing first judges are derailed by emotion they're human they have an attention span you know cases may go days i've had a case particularly went almost two weeks i just can't imagine the judge being able to pay attention for every minute of every second of every cross exam and question and so getting an opportunity and i've told the story and i'm not going to get into it when i was practicing in georgia about filing first i was able to present a case so strong that the judge stopped listening by the time the other side got up and did any evidence they'd already prejudged the case and that's the point that doesn't work every single time but it's about having the conversation i think if you listen to any podcast or watch any town hall that we've had it really is premised on have a consult and have a strategy session it's worth it because you're investing everything you've earned everything you've worked hard for your kids your property your pension your retirement all of it and so i think lauren that's great points about you know dealing with bad facts first deciding whether or not filing first is appropriate um so great great point and i think that of course gets us into the next topic and i want to talk to adam about and we talked about this and i've always cautioned we use the word neglecting the kids and i don't want you know i've never intended that to mean uh from the legal term of neglecting them and i'm curious how you feel adam and i really mean this in terms of keeping the traditional parenting roles that you've had can hurt you right yeah unfortunately you can and i i interpret that the same way no nobody is accusing anybody uh forgetting to feed the kids or doing anything crazy we're talking about neglect it it really goes to the fact that there in most households there are traditional roles and they kind of develop naturally let's say you're the primary breadwinner you're working 60 plus hours a week to pay the bills it makes sense with you and your wife as a team as a unit that maybe she handles more of the day-to-day parenting it just works out that way as a matter of time it doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong it just means you're working as a team now when you're facing a divorce though you kind of have to take a step back and look at that kind of think of it as an outsider looking in and really the outsider we're talking about is the judge so we're not saying you neglect your kids we're saying that if an outside a person from the outside looks at this family dynamic and as unfair as this is attaches a number or a percentage to who's doing what then the question is who's doing what is mom doing 60 70 percent of the quote-unquote parenting um there may be good reasons for that but the judge is going to look at that first and if that's where we're starting from where mom is really the 60 70 plus percent parent it's extremely difficult then to come back in a contentious litigation case to say well we want dad to have primary custody or shoot even we want dad to have 50 50. first thing the judge is going to say is well what have you been doing judges love the status quo it is you know to a detriment they they get stuck on the status quo and it really kind of matters in two areas when you look at custody there's you know physical custody and legal custody which is like decision making for the kids first you know the the traditional role that y'all you and your wife have had works when you're in the same household but you're gonna have to think about it is you're not to be in the same household you're going to have to have two households that that's just that's the nature of divorce you just that's how it has to work so you got to kind of start thinking now of okay if there's going to be two households how do i want it to work and then go ahead and start building that working on that now uh before the divorce before the divorce is filed um you know if you've been just naturally kind of seeding some roles to mom i'm not telling you to jump in her face and cause an argument and just you know just dominate everything but you can start being a more active role you can start doing more of the day-to-day things and i and i acknowledge what i'm asking you know you're still working that 60-plus hours that you're doing you're still coming home exhausted you're st but i know this sounds terrible but when you're in the divorce you've got to do more that's just that's the reality of what you've got to do because you've got to look at it from the outsider's perspective and the judge he's not going to look at you know he's going to look at his excuses uh well you didn't spend time because of this or that or that but the reality is mom found the time that's not fair that's absolutely not fair but that's what we've got to deal with um that's yeah i mean and i think it is a good point because i've always said there are no winners in divorce it's degrees of losing and at some point i can guarantee the one thing i can guarantee that everyone is going to walk away with less than what they had to start with and that is perhaps less free time less property maybe less money and so the point i think we talk about kids is i've had that conversation it's like look hey i know you maybe relied on your spouse to go to parent teachers and i know maybe you had an agreement that she would handle the dentist you got to start going you got to get involved in those play groups you got to know who your kids teachers are you got to know who their friends are you got to just do it and it it is we've actually sent clients to individuals whose job is is to work with them to become more organized and understand how to redo their life because they really are starting over afresh and that is a difficult thing to do a lot of guys aren't organized they've got to become more organized it is a substantial change and when we talk about you can't wait till the case is over to do it you got to do it during the case beginning of the case if you want to have a shot at a number of things physical custody but then not only that but legal and i want to talk about legal custody because that's always a a challenge to um appropriately tell clients what the difference is between physical and legal and maybe you can talk quickly about legal custody and decision making yeah yeah i'll do that just with a quick disclaimer this can vary wildly from state to state every state has its own rules on this i can tell you how georgia does it and based on my experiences dealing with other lawyers a lot of a lot of other states handle it this way physical custody is easy to understand it's literally just where the kids spend their time who they spend their time with and how much legal custody is a bit more nuanced it really has to do with access to information and decision making for the kids if for example you and your soon-to-be ex had joint legal custody that means you both have access to teachers doctors medical records school records just as if you're still married um that is a must-have in a divorce by the way do not get talked into any sort of sole legal custody that cuts you out but moving past that so joint legal custody there's still things you got to deal with there when it comes to decision making georgia recognizes four big areas of decisions your state may vary a little bit the big four education non-emergency health care religious upbringing and extracurricular activities with joint legal custody you and your your spouse are supposed to our ex-spouse at this point are supposed to discuss those issues and come to an agreement but even if you can't somebody's got to have a type got to have a tie breaking power there somebody's got to make a decision and those matter here's a good example with education most people are just you know if a teacher says hey your son needs a little more help or your son's qualifies for a gifted class most parents aren't going to argue with that but what about school choice what about in the realm of covid19 are we doing in person schooling or are we doing remote schooling those are big issues and parents don't agree this can impact your physical custody too let's say you and yours your ex-wife have 50 50 custody well if she's got tie breaking on education what if she moves further away and enrolls the kids closer to her guess what that impacts your time to wrap back to you know our original subject area here is about um neglect here's how that here's how that comes up to a judge judge we want education decision making no judge we want education decision making judge um we will be involved with the teachers we will be involved we will go to the the the uh parent teacher association we will do this we will do that the judge is going to sit back and ask well who's been doing it and that is the ball drop when it comes to legal custody this is stronger than physical custody when it comes to legal custody judges are adamant about the status quo if mom has been taking care of all the doctors visits filling all the prescriptions um you know talking to specialists you're going to have a really hard time getting the medical decision making because she's the one that's been doing it now that doesn't mean again that you take it over right now but you've got to think about it there's something to be said about just sharing in some obligations even if that means you've got to take an afternoon off work maybe um it starts with just asking the right questions being a point of contact i can't tell you how important that is um when when there's an issue at school who do the teachers call do they call mom do they call dad do they notify both um i know traditionally you say well my wife always told me about that i didn't have to but she's not going to be your wife and remember we're sitting at different sides of the table now so that's that's what you've got to do here and that's why it matters for legal custody i mean i can't stress enough how important how much judges look at that status quo yeah now that's not to tell you it's com you cannot overcome it you just you create extra work for yourself that you could avoid by just being proactive now yeah absolutely you know um i think it's so critical because you talk about this legal custody you talk about what matters again i've seen it far too often lawyers just dive right in they file a divorce and they don't have this conversation about what really you know you should do and in positioning guys particularly in this industry in this area of law that's important so let's kind of keep moving uh we have just about i'd say five or ten more minutes we're going to get to our answers or questions and answer session there are quite a few rolling in remember do it now in the q a section if you have a question submit that and we'll get to it here shortly we have two more to go we're going to roll through those very quickly jacob uh this is a topic i spoke on with dr phil i was the kind of the expert of the day we talked about social media uh this was at the very beginning of social media um so i'm very curious your thoughts as to whether or not you should you know be actively engaged in it is there potential to reveal too much obviously what's going on in divorce what are your what are your thoughts hey scott i think this is an excellent topic because i think that uh all too often i see that clients reveal too much on on social media or the opposing party serves up a nice bad fact and so one of the first pieces of advice i give my clients when they come in during an initial meeting is that in a divorce perception is reality however the court perceives you i think what will control the outcome to a certain extent how the court chooses to apply statutes code and case law and so i i tell my clients that a divorce you know unlike other types of litigation is as much a public relations campaign as it is a lawsuit the image that you're putting out there has to be genuine it has to be responsible you need to demonstrate all sides of being a responsible mature parent i think that that culturally we've we've kind of adapted to the proliferation of social media and using it as a tool to vent thinking that it's just an extension of contacting our friends and family uh not really being cognizant of of kind of the bad things that can happen by putting things out there and so uh you know it's always uh uh i i always caution my clients to ask you know are you putting this out there for consolation and validation uh is it something that you think is benign and may have kind of uh you know a a bad uh repercussion uh i don't know the case for social media but but i think you certainly could lose it yeah i've had i can tell you when you say that you can lose a case i've had plenty of uh used against me and it's rare that i use it for me you know i'm not presenting evidence of my own clients social media posts uh i wouldn't say oh yeah this is why we should have custody because typically uh you're not posting on social media to help defend why you're necessarily the right person to be you know the primary custodial parent right exactly i mean i'd estimate that in 20 to 30 percent of my cases there's a a social media post a message uh some type of communication on facebook instagram or twitter um that's that's filed and admitted into evidence uh you know a couple examples that i've had is uh i've had uh there was a party served with a protective order who then the next day uh posted that they wanted to buy a gun um there was a party that was making kind of disparaging comments about the other uh you know what could possibly have been perceived as benign uh but they were friends with the ch children on facebook and thus kind of uh violated you know a court impose restraining order where the parents not you know involved in children litigation um and that one is probably you know one of the more you know sneaky and less sinister uh types of behavior but you know it's it's kind of um it's kind of a thing that courts take seriously because they don't want this to impact children you know negatively also uh an opposing party uh on made a facebook post where she bragged about lying in court and that was filed as an exhibit against her and so you know my advice simply is look there's no reason that you should be posting about your divorce or your custody dispute uh on social media you should set your account to private uh you should be you know very hyper vigilant about the image that uh you know could conceivably be portrayed especially in our culture now when things are kind of uh looked at very sensitively um and you know ultimately you control you know don't don't do anything that would undermine your image as a as a as a responsible parent and be be cautious about uh events or pictures that convey recklessness uh and be conscious about how you the court would perceive what you put out into the social medias yeah i agree and real quickly before we move on and cover our last topic in two minutes you know i just had a client uh particularly who filed a temporary motion saying that they needed spousal support they needed child support they needed attorneys fees and they were having trouble paying their bills and what do they do they post on facebook that they're on vacation in florida and on the beach it's not a good image when that's the first thing that's going to be flashed before the judge of someone who acts desperate and isn't desperate so thanks jacob it's a good point oh real quick lauren oh uh one of my comments that i always tell clients is anything that you post online can and will be used against you in a court of law but i would also caution too that you want to watch out what your friends are posting online about you as well that's something that i've been able to do a little bit of digging it's one of my favorite parts of my job is to just snoop on people online and see all right well what's their significant other posting about them because you might have put your facebook profile to private but that other person didn't go and now i see you hanging around people with the chat with the children that you're not supposed to be or oh hey i see you driving around without a seatbelt on with a kid's unbuckled or something along those lines or a significant other bragging about your new job and now we've got child support issues so you'd have to not only be vigilant about what you're posting but also controlling your image for how other people are posting about you as well yep absolutely it's it's a big no-no and you know immediately guys right now you know putting their social media in private as we're speaking so it's a good move uh last one we're going to cover very very quickly because we have a lot of questions we want to get through uh coumada and adam i want to kind of turn to you both and i think this is important about ways to save money you know we're always looking for ways uh to help your attorney to try to minimize attorney fees and expenses and and so one of the mistakes is that guys aren't uh fully participating meaning helping their case committed kind of talk about how guys can be a partner with their attorney definitely the biggest thing in your case you have to know is you're kind of responsible for getting evidence obviously your attorney can subpoena documents but you really need to make sure you get all your documents together um you know things like text messages like i was saying earlier you know communicate in writing because that could be evidence that you really need i mean your word only goes so far and i have clients who we go through what's called the discovery process where you change evidence from the other side and then at the last minute they're giving me good evidence but i might not be able to put it in trial because we didn't provide it in discovery so really evidence is the big thing and making sure you're engaged following your lawyer's advice they do tell you to keep things in writing do that and get a text backup app put it all in one pdf yeah adam what do you think about uh helping you know create a list of things and documents and questions and issues for your client yeah i like to joke that accountant accountants are the best clients because they are so organized and so on top of things i guess because of their job but organization goes a long way jumping back to the discovery this can save you so much money you're going to get a list of things to provide when you show it to my office you just drop a stack of documents at the front desk guess what you're paying me probably and my paralegal to go through that organize it get it you know get it in a fashion that i can understand it and before sending it to the other side it really helps if you know even something as silly as just organizing things with post-it notes to say this is what this is this is what this is this is what this is summary pages are spectacular they save so much time i use them if i'm going to pro provide a lot of documents as exhibits to a judge i always give the judge a summary page um do that you know the most and i always tell clients all the time the more work you can do that's the less work i have to do which saves you money so absolutely be engaged and be organized another thing to do is i know this sounds silly but ask questions it is okay not to know it is okay not to know how to provide documents it's okay not to know whether you to organize things or some or not it's okay not to know what you know what the next steps are what you need from me what should what i should be you know what i as a client should be doing it's okay not to know that but be proactive and ask i tell my clients all the time it's a cliche but there is no dumb question it doesn't exist ask it i won't get mad um so that's you know i think that's the two best ways that you can help your attorneys be organized and ask questions right i think it's just something about lawyers this is a helping profession profession we love to answer questions we really do so ask away and the more even if it's a case that's not very combative that we hope is going to settle early the more you know the more equipped you are to help me negotiate so questions questions questions i i guarantee you we've got tons of answers for you we just you just gotta ask yep absolutely all right let's get to the q a section and portion of our town hall we have a number of questions if you haven't submitted it do it now we're gonna race through in the 19 minutes that we have left to get to as many as we can i'm gonna stay with you adam uh d.l in california uh submits this question uh dl's in a custody case where mom is accusing dad of having some mental health issues the question really is this there is a non-treating or non-psychiatrist pediatrician that has a deposition coming up this pediatrician submitted appears to be an affidavit on a based on a 20-minute meeting with dad prior to the child's birth uh the question i guess gl has is kind of curious as to what questions should be asked at the deposition what issues should be going into in the deposition and what documents should be requested of this non-treating perhaps physician i know this sounds like kind of a an obvious answer but when it comes to documents you want everything this is someone who's giving expert testimony to basically talk about you as a person you need to know everything about their background about their credentials you need to know everything about how how they were retained how they um you know came to um came to this conclusion any reports any inter-office reports inter-office communications communications between you know the other party and this doctor i i reading this scenario made me cringe a little because i could see how this would happen but you've got to get to the bottom of that by just figuring out what in the world did this doctor actually do i think that would be my priority at a deposition because real estate this is it's a divorce it's not a personal injury case you're not going to win and lose it in a deposition i i would look at this deposition as my point of finding answers yeah so i want every record i can grab of his and my questions to the deposition will be focused on what did you do to get to this conclusion it wouldn't even be so much about beating up the expert we'll do that at trial what i want is the ammunition that we can use to beat up the experts yeah and deal said that he'll get some documents tomorrow apparently and obviously i think you're right adam is it's it's more of an you know putting this this uh doctor in a corner how much time did you spend are you a psychiatrist are you an expert in that field are you familiar with all the psychological issues you know of patients now do you often you know diagnose patients with psychological issues are you you know just put them in a corner so that by the time you get to trial after reviewing all the documents now this person is pretty much worthless other than i saw someone for 20 minutes i am not a i'm a pediatrician and that's all i can do right i think that's what dl should do all right let me let me go to kumuda uh bill has a question uh bill's wife is on ssdi and the question is is she allowed to receive alimony um when she's on ssdi it depends um so basically alimony in every state obviously varies i know there's one that doesn't have it at all um but that would be considered you know what her financial circumstances are so if you make you know substantially more she still may be entitled to alimony because part of alimony is for her to be self-supporting but then the other part could be that she needs to you know she wouldn't be able to earn enough to maintain this lifestyle that you had during the marriage so alimony still could be awarded even with the ssdi but i think usually it is considered a circumstance that she would be able to support herself yeah i think it depends on the state i mean if you look around uh there are clear case law that talk about the definition of income is is money from whatever source whatsoever and it can be an offset to its calculation and so certainly um and then the second part bill and i'll just answer i wanted to know if buying someone out of the house is income and it certainly isn't it's a property asset and it goes into the proper distribution so bill i would encourage you to find you know i don't know what state you're in uh just do a google find out kind of the ssdi rules there are plenty of case law i know that the states that i'm licensed all of them have guidance from the appellate courts on how to treat ssdi relative to both child support and spousal support so it's a good transition derek has a similar question about maintenance spousal support alimony jacob i'm going to go to you so derek wants to know if there is a calculation he can use to figure out roughly how much maintenance he's going to be obligated to pay he hasn't fouled yet he's just trying to get ahead of it trying to understand and i know this is state specific so jacob i'll just let you talk about your state and then i'll talk about mine yeah that's a that's a great question scott and a pretty complicated question at that in utah alimony is need based which which makes alimony both an art and a science uh you know just to kind of give you a simplified version uh there's four factors that the court will generally consider but i i really think that it boils down just to two and that's need and ability to pay uh and there's some exceptions to that obviously uh but but essentially how you compute that is the court's gonna look at your exp during the marriage they're gonna um then adjust those expenses and the science really is having somebody that can come in and evaluate her expenses and really kind of mathematically compute that and present that as fashion in the court but there is unfortunately no unlike child support where in utah child support is essentially based on on a matrix where it increases uh proportionate to income alimony you know it isn't the same you may have people with different incomes paying similar spousal support amounts simply because their lifestyles buried and that variance allows a similar number uh but really the you know the unfortunate answer is no there's no um there's no simple way to calculate alimony the best is to kind of review the finance and use at least review the financial proposing party uh and to determine to determine the need and then determine the ability to pay of the presumption right and and i think i'll tell you from a missouri standpoint similarly no maintenance calculation no guidance it is support based but i can tell you when you have a conversation with your attorney i can tell you if you go into particular county what is likely to happen there is an unwritten way that they're doing it so for example anywhere between 20 and 45 percent of available net income i know that's a pretty good big range but i'm at least being able to narrow it down for you if you're in kansas i think kansas is a maximum of 121 months texas may be the same there are states in which there are calculations i think illinois just started transitioning to a calculation based but it is important do some research uh gather it there are some states very similar to child support so let's go to lauren todd has more of a general question and i'll kind of read it to lengthy so lauren todd's wife told him she was not happy last july they've been cohabitating since then nothing formal they've been trying to play or he's been trying to play financial provider for the family role model for the kids friend to his wife they're getting along more as friends and co-parents she has a boyfriend she doesn't know why that should change their arrangement you know he's still processing his feelings she's getting the best of all worlds he's a sole provider and the question really is you know he's being taken advantage of this is the you know right in the alley of filing first right for todd yeah absolutely i think that this is as long as you're emotionally ready to file for divorce i think this is something that needs to happen you need to file uh one of the other strategies or considerations that you want to think about in filing for divorce is if you have a problem with something the longer that you let it go on the less seriously the court's going to consider it as a bad fact so if you're allowing her to you know have a boyfriend and you're not doing anything about it the kind of the legal term of art is called condemnation so is that is it really that big of a deal one of my concerns would be well what benefits is the boyfriend getting out of this is she going on dates with him and you know spending marital funds on her relationship with her boyfriend what's the boyfriend's involvement with the children is she bringing the boyfriend around the kids these are things that go to court you can get some orders in place absolutely regarding that and the longer you let this go on the worse it is for you it is she's made the decision i think for todd and that is the marriage is over she's chosen to bring someone else in and i think this is the example where you think what what can go wrong if i do nothing and wait for her to file well she could become disabled and now you're on the hook for perhaps long-term spousal support um a number of things she could bring someone into the home that is abusive to children uh she could bring drugs alcohol you could be arrested you could be charged i can go on and on but the point is in the added she's having her cake and eating it too there's no reason for her to change anything because you're paying for everything and giving it to her and in texas the the stopping point for property division is the date of divorce and so meanwhile you're allowing your wife to have a boyfriend and you're still continuing to accrue community property that's going to get divided so the longer you let this go on the more she's going she's getting out of the financial impact of the divorce yep all right kumar thomas works in law enforcement um wife has demonstrated willingness to make false allegations of physical abuse in the past he willingly moved out because he didn't want to push his luck and get in trouble with an allegation you know coordination that he's a law enforcement officer she refuses to coordinate nights that he can spend in the guest room with one of the boys who's autistic and really once the only way he can spend time with him is in the home what consideration should thomas give when deciding if he should simply assert his rights and face false accusations or play it safe and just be accused of abandonment well scott i think that you know you kind of have to balance out um i think you kind of have to find a good middle ground obviously you should show the court that you're taking any chance of visitation you can get until you get a court order which may take some time um but you really want to document as i always say what happened your visitations who was there just in case something happens and she does pull out a false accusation you have those documents i don't always recommend calling the police but in some situations you may be the one who jumps the gun and that looks a lot better um if police need to get involved but that i think just building evidence and making sure that if there's another witness or something like that that you have the evidence to show nothing's happened yeah so let me keep moving i know we have about 10 more questions and we're running out time so i'm going to go to you adam i'm going to move fast so let's try to answer these in like 30 seconds just like that sean did not move out it's been two years she's not his wife has not acquired a job a vocational expert says that she's rated well and good to get a job she's blaming sean that she can't find a job because of him she has filed but still fights to make me pay for everything uh any options to force her to move out since he has a great job and her refusal to get one uh and the fact that she cannot afford the expenses and he can't afford to move out so really becomes you know the question of getting her to move out can he do that and she's now seeking to do the same for him claiming that he may physically harm her [Music] um we'll i'll start with the bad news for being quick i i'm reading this near i don't see a good mechanism to get her out i mean you you're the breadwinner she's not if she went out where would she go and i think if you're in court anyway you've be you find the answer to that question does she have family nearby can she move in with her mom and dad does she have brother or sister you need to be able to answer the question to the judge to where she goes in the short term check with your lawyer because this varies from state to state but protect yourself against the false allegations of abuse georgia for example is a one-party consent state to recording i know it feels weird and awkward you buy an audio recorder you stick it in your pocket and you protect yourself if you record nothing fine but if there's an altercation you've got proof of what happens and that proof will carry the day so protect yourself and basically find an avenue of where she can move out that is your best shots of dealing with this i think in a little over 30 seconds yeah right and then sean had the follow up real quickly and i think you answered it without even me asking the question he wanted to know if judges are focused on facts and kind of ignore the ranting and the raving and the complaints that are really hearsay and then you know now again they're derailed by emotion but i think you're right uh simply using a recorder an example where she may say look i'm gonna get you kicked out i'm gonna claim that you abuse me perfect evidence but you gotta clear with your state to make sure it's a one-party consent so use caution and it just needs to before you do that so let me go on real quickly jacob anonymous question how do you address child custody when parents are considering to start the process of a divorce and want to live in separate states after the divorce ohio and michigan ohio's original state of residency but they've been in michigan for only five months so how do you deal with a custody case when the parents want to live in separate states this is a good question scott i believe in most states all but if not one that in order to for our court to make a determination regarding custody you have to reside in that state uh for at least six months months it has to be the home state of the of the minor children uh more accurately so uh jurisdictional issues are often one of the more complicated issues but uh to the short the long and short of it is is it's incredibly important i think that the two parties uh live within proximity together at the time of an initial determination the reason being is that if for example the mother were to be determined the primary caregiver to moving outside of the state making the determination is likely to leave you playing off the back foot looking at less custody than you would be receiving if you lived you know within a a distance joint physical custody would be practical yep all right it's got kind of real quick and then we're short on time but i caught on that one there was a five month mark there you need to talk to a lawyer right now because the the statute is referring to the google ucc jea that's what most states follow most of them have a six-month regis residency requirement for jurisdiction so if you don't want this case heard where they're living now you got to deal with it now because when they hit that six month mark it's pretty black and white you're going to be stuck in that other state at least litigating that case yeah finding it fighting something you don't want to have to travel to and from so it's a good point i'll answer this one real quickly um barry says my children are over 18 so no custody issues and not a lot of contention that being said doesn't matter who files first and berries in california well really depends on a number of things and we've talked about bad facts if there are allegations perhaps against you and property division may be an issue or attorney's fees may be issue of course you want to again why wait the point is is only bad things can happen if your marriage is over she could be hit by a bus and be completely disabled and now you're on the hook for long-term spousal support if she's fully capable and working making a good wage you don't want her to be laid off during this pandemic you want the court to be considering things while she's fully employed so yeah it does matter i think it's important but again it's a conversation you want to have with your attorney uh you you know it's important because i don't have all the facts so make sure obviously we have offices in california give us a call 866 dad's law lauren what's the difference between physical and joint custody that's by larry all right so physical custody refers to who has actual physical possession of the child when and legal custody has to deal with who has the actual uh legal decision making rights information rights things like that so in texas we call it a little bit different so we call it conservatorship and possession and access but the process is essentially the same so conservatorship we've got joint conservatorship and sole conservatorship so regardless of which one both parents have the right to talk to teachers talk to doctors have a general idea of what's going on but as far as you know the difference between joint and soul is when it comes down to it who has those actual big decision-making rights for these kids educational decisions invasive medical decisions psychological legal decisions you authorize your child to enlist in the armed forces early or get married you know before they're of age those big questions that's uh the difference between joint and soul conservatorship in texas or that's what's referred to as legal custody in other states yep all right uh kuda we're hurrying up i know we're at the one o'clock mark but we're going to kind of get through as many as we can here robert has two kids therapists have seen both of them uh concluded that mom is alienated parental alienation syndrome the one of the children but not the other the question really becomes what can robert do with that so one of the things robert can do is ask for an attorney for his children to break the therapist privilege and basically find out what the alienation is you know they don't necessarily have to follow the therapist recommendation it's the judge that makes the decision so if there is an attorney that can waive privilege you can get those records in the judge can also order something called reunification therapy um to help that relationship get back in order with the younger one it's possible the court could give them different schedules not necessarily split custody but more time with the younger one and then less time with the older one building up yep absolutely okay let me go adam my spouse has a business it's all cash now she's on unemployment uh because of cobin 19. how is he supposed to navigate you know that business valuation issue when perhaps it's an all-cash business we've talked about this in a podcast before about all cash businesses yeah that's how that's going to be really tough that's um all cash businesses are one of the most difficult financial things to deal with um you're gonna have to find other ways to prove her income if she's stuffing the money in a mattress that's really tough if she's putting it in a bank account that's the most helpful thing you got to really track where the money's going and judges will look at that they'll they understand what a cash business is if there's deposits they'll add up those deposits and they'll run that math just like it was a regular old paycheck so that's the key test is where is the money going if the money is just going um under the bed or between um between the mattresses you may end up needing to retain an expert who can really dive into her business and basically give an expert opinion to the judge to say judge a business of this of this size doing x shouldn't produce an income of why i hate to advise that because i know experts are expensive but it's better than the alternative which is just taking her word for her income and we talked about this on a podcast where this is kind of the age where you see all these cash businesses makeup and you know beauty goods and evening parties and it's an all-cash business but it's sourcing that it's finding again social media posts where they're advertising for you know the sale interviewing people that purchase through them showing that you know where the receipts and you know subpoenaing the books and digging into the business if they filed a tax return you know it's interesting people are not that good they can't hide money forever so you can source it you can trace it and you know good lawyers will find bad people hire a lawyer get filed now uh last question i think that we can get to and this is a tough one um i'm going to go kumara real quickly and i'm going to ask the rest of you if your input so we'll start with coumada miles wants to know if a foreign divorce is recognized in the united states and how they proceed to enforce that while you're here in the united states as perhaps living here so what you need to do is in the state of residency you need to do what's called a registration process sometimes they'll ask for the official copy of your judgment of divorce and then you can go ahead with proceedings in your state once that's registered uh what do you what do you say adam um i i agree i i've dealt with this um i guess with the mexican court order jamaican italian irish haitian maybe i think i've dealt with i i've only had an issue with enforcement once um if we had 20 minutes i'd tell you that story because they went all the way to the court of appeals big crazy mess but other than that and we ended up winning by the way it was enforced um so i've never run into an issue where it wasn't enforced do talk with your local lawyer because some states call it registration we call it domestication it's the same thing and um once you go there's there's specific statute based steps you got to go through but there's ways to handle it yeah jacob and uh go real quickly for you yes scott so uh like my colleagues said that the process would be registration would be similar if you were uh registrating a a domestic foreign order from another state when the when the orders from out of uh the country there's a different process and the recognition in utah would depend on uh uh compatibility with the laws here if it were procedurally the same yeah so yeah lauren and then i'll chime in i have one more question after that and then i'll address but lauren yes so you're going to have to uh register domesticate the foreign order here and so typically that will involve some sort of certified copy to make sure you didn't just type up something on you know microsoft word and they're saying it's a real deal the court may also consider does it comport with what we consider due process you know sometimes there's issues with enforcing orders uh that were issued under sharia law i've seen that so you're really going to have to talk with an attorney in your jurisdiction to see all right this border that i have isn't going to work and also another consideration that you're going to have to deal with is if it's in a foreign language getting it appropriately translated as yeah we've had that before and in my atlanta office we did that so rh real quickly has submitted a real late question i can answer very quickly because it's on point just really the question from rh was when should they retain a divorce attorney you know we talked about filing first rh i know you came in late in the seminar but check that part out when we late we talked about filing first again it really is a simple question what do i have to gain and what do i have to lose and if if the loss outweighs the gain we're filing and that is you know again disability especially during the pandemic that's your biggest concern is someone your spouse getting sick and if you're the breadwinner or if they have an opportunity to become employed it gets worse if the marriage is irritatingly broken there's no reason to wait only bad things can happen moving forward i just don't see it again timing is an issue we want to talk about income where you are during this pandemic you know you want to be at your your low point not your high point so encourage rh schedule that consultation let's touch base again and find out when you should be filing but again the marriage is broken you got to do it so thanks to the panel for joining us today i know we ran long but we wanted to get to as many as we could again check us out cordellcordell.com check us on social and check out our youtube page we're going to see town halls that date back to when the pandemic started and we've had podcasts going on we have a couple hundred on uh on the youtube channel you can check it out by topic you can find a thing that works for you give us a call 866 dad's law we're happy to meet with you via zoom we can do it via facetime we do a phone or we're appropriate around the country and where you're comfortable we can do it in person so check out next time tune in to our webcast or our podcast coming in twice each week and until next time have a great week [Music] you

Channel: Cordell & Cordell

Views: 4,312

Rating: 4.7647057 out of 5

Keywords: Cordell and Cordell, divorce mistakes, how to avoid divorce mistakes, mistakes during divorce, divorce tips, divorce guidance, family law mistakes, child custody mistakes, child support mistakes, legal mistakes during divorce, alimony mistakes, spousal support mistakes, how to get divorced, divorce financial records, divorce testimony, divorce interviews

Id: xcP7eGlqwmY

Length: 67min 47sec (4067 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021