If you have been divorced or heard of an unpleasant one, then I am preaching to the choir when I describe the emotional and financial devastation that can take place on emotionally vulnerable couples who become involved in the adversarial system that IS divorce court. I was the son of a disputed divorce. I taught emotionally disturbed children from dysfunctional families for many years, was a divorce attorney for eight years, and now I only do divorce mediation. Having witnessed our legal system from all sides, I can safely say that the whole context of how family disputes are resolved in court today is not in the best interest of families. This is a call to arms. I’m not even going to pretend this is an unbiased “news” article.

We who fight on the front lines on a daily basis, working with the emotionally vulnerable who feel as if the rug has been pulled from them, know that the last thing a troubled family needs is the “help” of a lawyer who may be putting gasoline on the fire. to fill their pockets. Most of you probably don’t know that family law attorneys are the ONLY type of attorney in California whose fees are protected by law by the equity in the family home. Divorcing couples may not know that they agreed to a bond at their homes and a possible forced sale at the end of the case when they sign their attorneys’ fee agreements. People should know that they will get more and lose less by cooperating with their ex than by litigating the matter.

Most people know what assets you have. No matter how much they earn, many people live from paycheck to paycheck, and there are usually no hidden Swiss bank account problems. While this is the norm, any home equity couple who hires attorneys will soon see why the average contested divorce in our state costs $ 20,000 in attorney fees PER SIDE. And that’s just an average. Most of the time, the more equity your home has, the higher the fees. Read Bleak House by Charles Dickens and you will see that little has changed in the last 150 years.

First, the attorneys will participate in expensive discovery procedures, serving interrogations and subpoenas for the production of documents. There will be depositions and then the hiring of expensive forensic accountants and other experts, just to keep the case going. When couples trust their lawyers, it is difficult for them to see that they are being manipulated. It does not have to be this way!

We need a wave of people demanding that the contradictory family law system be replaced by mediation. My own practice shows how false the contradictory alternative is. I have a 100% track record with over 150 couples. When an attorney has the powerful intention of helping people find their bottom line fairly, efficiently, and economically, cases are resolved without the expense, drama, and irreparable harm to the children and their co-parenting relationship, damage that is almost always the result of a bloody and adversarial battle. Attorneys who are paid by the hour have no incentive to finish it. There is an inherent conflict of interest between the attorney, who wants to earn more money, and the client, who wants to save more money. When you work with a fixed fee, there is a motivation to help couples reach a reasonable resolution without delay.

Experienced attorneys know what the outcome will be in most cases. This is a community property status, and everything that falls into that category is divided evenly, and separate property is well defined by law as well. It is not that complicated. Now, there may be cases where a business requires a forensic accountant’s valuation, but it is not necessary to have a battle of experts to attest why the husband or wife should receive more or less money.

We have all seen the theory of critical mass at work in our own lives. For those unfamiliar with this theory, the simple explanation is that when enough people (believed to be between 3% and 5%) are moving in a certain direction, the rest of the population follows. Think I Pods, cell phones, recycling, healthy food, ending the war in Vietnam, etc. It takes some time to reach the tipping point, but whether it’s 5% or 20%, at some point, when enough people support something, change manifests throughout society. We can create a transformation in the way legal services are delivered not just in the area of ​​family law, but across the board. Mediation is applicable to all areas where people have disputes.

As with anything unfamiliar, it takes a certain amount of education to show people the possibilities before they are willing to jump on the train. But if law schools teach lawyers to foster cooperation when marriages break down, more and more couples will hear the message of peaceful divorce and not necessarily think that divorce = court fights. We need more divorce attorneys who are serious about their responsibility to protect their clients. I have never understood how these “zealous advocates” can justify depleting a client’s college funds for their children so that the attorney’s son can go to private school while the client’s son is lucky enough to have lunch money. When people are informed and demanding something better than what is currently available, more and more law students will study mediation and develop a skill set that supports working with people who are breaking up.

My mission is to help transform the way people get divorced in this country. I ask that you join me in this crusade. Encourage your friends and family to work together if they have to get divorced. You can divide a cake in two ways or, if lawyers are involved, in four ways. How will you get more? Do you really have to separate the child? Don’t you think YOU are in a better position to say how your child should be raised rather than lawyers, judges, and other “experts”? You don’t want to start World War III with the father of your children !!! Your child should be your main focus, not how much money you can get by paying or not being there when dad comes to pick up the kids. That kind of high-conflict drama is totally unnecessary. Not only must consumers demand a new type of divorce, but more attorneys must acknowledge the harm done to families by legal practice as it is now established. I hope more lawyers will go, like I did, and say, “NO MORE!”

We need judges to recognize who the most egregious lawyers are and sanction them, rather than presenting them to young lawyers for emulation. We need an informed public to tell their legislatures that it is NOT OK to give the Bar Association the right to vacate the family home through litigation that only comes to an end when there is no more money to be made. The system is broken and we have to fix it. Generations of children have been caught in the middle of fights against parents who are often encouraged to fight by attorneys who come out on top. The more we focus on mediation and promote it as the legitimate solution to family law problems, the more momentum we will have. Who’s with me?