In collaborative divorces in College Station and Houston, we look at post divorce cash needs to help us see options for splitting investments, property, etc. Wives are fine with listing their expenses. They want to show their husbands that their needs are authentic and accurate. These husbands are glad to see that I am going to show their wives – in black and white – that they can’t keep up the spending level.

You guys don’t feel you need to do a budget. You know how much you make. Your personal spending needs are modest. She’s the one who has been spending all the money. She needs the budgeting, not you.

Bingo. There’s the mistake. You need to let her see your living expenses. They may be modest, but they are not as modest as you think. In my experience, people consistently and reliably underestimate their expenses by at least 50%, many times 100%.

I worked with a couple a few years ago. The husband wanted me to work with his wife on her expenses. He told his attorney we didn’t need to look at his expenses. He said he made enough money that he was going to be just fine. He said he had modest expenses. We got well into the collaborative divorce process when he started to put his own numbers on a spreadsheet. He stayed awake that night thinking that he was offering a settlement he couldn’t afford.

The next morning, I showed him that he wasn’t worried enough. He was underestimating his living expenses. The divorce went on pause while I nailed down his true expenses. He backed off his settlement offer. You can imagine how well that went over with his wife and her attorney.  After all, he had been saying for months that his expenses were modest. His mistake and the aftermath of it slowed down that divorce by about three months.

Guys, you need to show your living expenses early in the collaborative divorce process. You need to show, in black and white, that you are not an endlessly deep pocket. Listing accurate living expense is time consuming and boring. If you don’t want to do it yourself, let your financial neutral do it. Be accurate. Be honest. Don’t guess.

I have a lot of collaborative law divorce clients. These people are working together to have a private divorce that they control. During the divorce, they are commonly both using the household checking account for their living expenses.

If you have chosen a collaborative divorce and/or are able to communicate with each other, you can both keep using the joint checking account until you are divorced. Many of my clients go this route. They both have had access to the bank account activity. They choose a date just prior to the anticipated date of divorce. On that day, they print online account statements and “freeze” the balances for the purpose of division. The attorneys and other advisors hand over their final invoices prior to that date. Those invoices are paid from the joint account before the account balance is divided. This eliminates the need for the couple to reimburse each other for spill over divorce expenses.

Yeah, I know…. Duh.  But a recent Wall Street Journal article, Why So Many People Can’t Make Decisions, offers some useful tips to those who are going through a divorce (whether litigation or collaborative law) and those professionals who are assisting them.

Shades of gray people have more trouble in relationships. They can’t seem to make decisions and when they do, they regret them. It’s easy to see that troubled relationships may end in divorce, but the key concept here is the difficulty in making decisions during the divorce negotiations. Having to make decisions on how to divide the family wealth and debt is sure to make anybody stop and think carefully before committing.

Black-and-white thinkers tend to focus on what is important to them. If your spouse is one of these, pay attention to what is important to him or her. Focus on those things to find a way to reach a compromise in your divorce.  Shades-of-gray people are overwhelmed with too many choices. If your spouse is one of these, try to pare down the number of options for dividing property or sharing time with the kids.

You can avoid making the big divorce decisions altogether by choosing the litigation route and tossing the decision to a judge. Or you can maintain control of your divorce by choosing the collaborative law process. In the latter, you get to make quick or slow decisions. You can pare down your choices or expand them. Collaborative law divorce is a process than can be molded to fit black-and-white thinkers and shades-of-gray thinkers, even if they are husband and wife.

This couple is demonstrating unusually mature and intelligent behavior for what the public has learned to expect from entertainment celebrities. This is role model behavior here.

Given the length of their marriage, their separate and combined careers, their separate and community property and their children, this collaborative case must have been complex.  They kept it private while working to a collaborative resolution over a number of months.

For what little there is to read on this divorce, go to http://tiny.cc/zoof0 and http://normatrusch.com/blog/.

Litigated divorces take a lot of time and energy. The divorcing parties have no control over the requirements and time involved. This can drive a person to seek excessive control at work.  That, in turn, can cause coworker anxiety, distraction and wasted time. The experts quoted in this column recommend the reader hunt down the boss, stand in front of the boss’ office door at 7:30 am and meet with the human resources manager and the CEO. This may be effective, but it sure does eat away at constructive work time.

If you are considering a divorce, for the sake of your own job as well as that of your coworkers, learn about collaborative law. It is a divorce method that lets you be in control of the process, the time demands and the pace. For more information, visit the Collaborative Law Institute of Texas website.

There are strong financial reasons to choose the collaborative law process for your divorce. But, when put in perspective, your children are more important than those financial reasons.

I recently came across an Esquire magazine article by Chris Jones entitled The Things That Carried Him. http://www.esquire.com/print-this/things-that-carried-him.This feature story is about thirty-year-old Sergeant Joey Montgomery’s final trip home from Iraq. It is impossible not to be drawn into the journey and not to be touched by the sadness and pride that everyone in his small town felt for this hero.

Somewhere in the middle of the story, Chris Jones describes the recent history of how soldiers’ bodies are now brought home from war. They are treated with deep respect and caring by the men and women who participate in the journey. These men and women never knew these heroes.

Where does this intersect with divorce?

Chris tells one story of a military pilot who “flew a boy to Stockton, California, where the soldier’s parents, divorced, were fighting over the funeral arrangements, and neither showed up”.

I’ve advised on a lot of divorces. In the beginning of both the traditional litigated cases and in the collaborative law cases, the parents are wrapped up in their hurt and anger toward each other. As the cases go on, the litigated divorce parents continue to focus on themselves but the collaborative divorce parents begin to heal and move their attention back to a balanced life that embraces their children. Collaborative couples learn to stop being centered on each other with animosity and start effectively communicating.

This young man from Stockton had parents who never seemed to have looked up from themselves and their animosity towards each other. I guess they never learned to communicate effectively. Perhaps the collaborative law process had not yet arrived in their community. It is there now.

You never know what will happen to your children. If you are looking at a divorce, please choose the collaborative law process so that you won’t remain so self absorbed that you choose to fight with your ex-spouse rather than honor your hero child. Don’t choose to abandon your beloved child’s coffin on the tarmac.

Here’s an insider tip: We neutral professionals only like working with the best collaborative attorneys. Those are the attorneys we’ll tell you about. Our reputations are on the line. When a collaborative law case goes bad, it hurts us too.

We like to work with collaborative attorneys who repeatedly attend interdisciplinary collaborative training courses. How frequent? I’d say every third year. The training courses I’m talking about are two-day interdisciplinary training courses. The best training courses include role-playing among the three kinds of professionals — attorneys, financial professionals and mental health professionals (aka coaches). The not-so-good training courses are just lectures.

You should choose a collaborative attorney who attends both the role-playing interdisciplinary training courses repeatedly over the years. An attorney I often work with, Norma Trusch, created and teaches the Collaborative Law Institute of Texas interdisciplinary role-playing course. She is a collaborative law attorney who really knows her stuff.

I have attended three role-playing interdisciplinary training courses and one lecture-only training course over five years. I am also a substitute trainer for the Collaborative Law Institute of Texas interdisciplinary role-playing course.

Collaborative law is an area that does not require licensing or credentials. There is nothing to stop a professional from saying they are collaborative when they are not adequately trained in collaborative law. This means that you, the consumer, need to ask questions and get referrals.

The collaborative process takes the nightmare out of divorce. Spouses learn to communicate with each other instead of becoming bitter enemies. They can get through birthdays, holidays, graduations, weddings and the joy of grandchildren without the rancor of a bitter divorce to haunt them.

The benefits of a collaborative divorce …

Spouses learn how to work together and communicate during and after the divorce. This benefits themselves and their children.

Spouses and children will have reduced anxiety because the hostility of an adversarial divorce is missing.

Your divorce will probably cost less when it is a collaborative divorce. Just the use of one neutral financial professional will save you money because in an adversarial divorce, you and your spouse will each hire your own experts.

Your collaborative divorce process can be much quicker than an adversarial method. You will progress at the speed you desire, not at the mercy of the court’s calendar and deadlines. This results in saving time and money.

Since everyone is working together toward a mutually acceptable settlement, you and your attorneys are in control of the divorce process. The lawyers support each other while advocating for their clients.

Without court hearings and pleadings, you get to keep your privacy. Collaborative divorce is a confidential process.

Here are some salient points from that presentation that help readers get an idea of what factors affect the speed of a divorce.

Communication
Couples who communicate well have an easier time getting through a quick divorce. The inability to communicate slows down progress and decisions. This is important for both the financial decisions and for the decisions about the children.

Financial Knowledge
When there is an imbalance of knowledge about the finances or business, the divorce process takes longer. The financial neutral needs to spend time with one spouse to bring them up to speed.

Truth
When one or both spouses have a liberal definition to honesty, the process cannot go at a high rate of speed. The collaborative process stands on the principles of transparency and honesty. The collaborative team will adhere to these principles even if one spouse is trying to play Hide the Ball.

Financial Complexity
If the financial property is complex and involves items that are not readily valued, the case can take longer than hoped. Examples include family limited partnerships and offshore trusts.

Professional Team
Another factor in how fast a case can go will be the professionals themselves. In my experience, a team that has worked well together before is more likely to be able to move the case to resolution quicker.

In about 15% of their cases, the day after these mediations, their clients call and say they have changed their minds. They have second thoughts about those settlement agreements. After a good night’s sleep, those agreements don’t look as reasonable as they did the day before when they were tired and stressed.

Unfortunately, the mediation agreement they signed is irrevocable.

Had these clients chosen to use the collaborative divorce process, they would not have had to make these agreements after nine hours of grueling negotiations. In collaborative divorce cases, the clients get as long as they want to process, think about, get advice and mull over their possible settlement options. I have been on dozens of collaborative cases and have heard about many more cases. Never have I seen or heard of buyers remorse in a collaborative case. Certainly 15% sounds like a low rate of buyer’s remorse. But when it is your remorse, it is 100%,