Video – Divorce Mediation Attorney Bill Leininger Explains Collaborative Divorce in New York and Florida

Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media

All right, Bill, so let me ask you a question here. Explain a little bit about this term, collaborative divorce. It’s got a lot of moving parts in there. So, can you explain it so our viewers understand what that means and whether or not it’s applicable to their situation?

Bill Leininger – Divorce Mediation Attorney – Staten Island, NY and Sarasota FL

Divorce mediation developed approximately 30 years ago, especially in the South—Florida, Alabama, Texas. A little slower in the northern states, maybe 20 years ago then. But it was meaningful; people didn’t want to spend $20,000, $30,000, $50,000 on a nasty divorce. They wanted to protect the children from the effects of having a nasty divorce.

But then about 10 to 15 years ago, some divorce lawyers and divorce mediators said, oh, we have a different way of handling this. And it’s going to be a little bit more complicated because each party is going to retain their own divorce attorney to counsel them—to say, that’s a crappy divorce, I don’t recommend it, or to say, I’m going to speak to your spouse’s attorney and we’re not going to accept that. We want, you know, to have a different expert work on the case. And because of that, it became the rage.

And 10 years ago, I took my first training in collaborative divorce. About six years ago, I took my second training.

And when you do collaborative divorce, you generally are involved in some type of collaborative law group. I was involved in a collaborative law group, and we would meet every month or every two months, and we’d discuss our cases and such. And you would see recurring patterns. Yeah, I’ve had 20 people come to me for divorce collaborative for a consultation, and only one hired them.

And did you ever get feedback? Yes. The feedback is, it sounds great in theory, and the theory, by the way, is you both use experts that you agree upon. For example, you don’t have two forensic evaluations of the business. You have one. You have one custody expert who’s going to interview the children, interview the parents, and make recommendations and things of that nature.

So, at first glance, it makes sense, more information. But then the thing we keep on hearing was, everyone’s on the clock. I’m paying $300, $400. $500 an hour to the divorce lawyer. I’m paying $400 an hour to the psychologist. I’m paying $250 an hour for the financial expert that’s going to propose how we divide up the assets from a tax point of view. And have all these other ones.

And I say, at the meeting, I would say, I don’t know about you guys. But I’m getting 90% rejection on collaborative divorce.

And what’s the reason? Invariably. We’re just average people. I’m a cop, I make $130,000. And my wife works in a corporation, she makes $80,000. We don’t live in a fancy home, we live in a $600,000, $700,000 house. Why do we need five or six experts?

And then I would hear the people who ran this organization… I’ll never forget, one of them said to me, listen, we have all these people who are paying their dues, their annual dues, and they keep on saying, I’m not getting any business. So therefore, we’ve got to have financial plans because they have to get, they have to make enough money that it may….

And then why do we have to have two real estate…? We have a lot of real estate and they’re trying to make their 6%. So, it became a situation where I concluded as follows.

In 90 to 95% of the cases, there is no need to have two lawyers and to have custody experts and financial experts. We’ve handled these divorces for 10, 20, 30, 50 years, but why is it only now…. And the conclusion is there has to be special things. You may have a problem with autistic children or something of that nature. We’re bringing in a psychologist. It is very, very helpful.

But what people forget is if you have parents who love the kid, they’ll agree for me to, I’ll give them a list of three or four autism experts, and they’ll pick one of them. There’s only going to be one that you’re going to have to pay for, not two. And in that type of way, in financial planning, they’ll say, we barely have anything left after we pay out that. Maybe we save $100. Why do we need a financial planner?

So, the theory, and this is after doing this for 10 years, I came to the conclusion that collaborative divorce is necessary where there’s substantial monies. A couple million dollars, you don’t do it on a W-2 for a teacher and a cop. It makes no sense. And all it’s doing is bringing in unnecessary experts, more people to know your business.

So, my conclusion is, unless it’s a case, at least three, four million dollars of assets, or there’s particularly big issues about the children—autism, someone that has a drug addiction problem that’s affecting all the family, some special things that it’s going to affect. And where the people recognize it, they’re going to spend 200, 300, or 400% more than a divorce mediation. You can’t think you’re going to get a $5,000 or $6,000 or $7,000 divorce when you have all these experts, think about having four or five people and they’re all pressing their timers on the table. You’ll have a heart attack worrying about how much the fees are going to be.

So, I think it’s in theory, it sounds great. As someone who grew up, you know, as a lower middle-class kid, it makes no sense for the average couple. So, it sounds great in theory, but I don’t recommend it in 95% of my cases.

Now, when do I recommend it? Substantial assets involved and substantial problems like the man who says, “I don’t own that restaurant”. You can’t show any corporate documents that show my name, and I only make $400 a week. So, you want $20 a week to support, ha ha ha. You get a case like that, divorce mediation is not going to work. Because once that person, that man or woman, has laid down the law, this is what I earn. Well, that’s what would be put into the support formulas.

Every state has child support formulas. Some states have, you know, formulas for alimony. It’s not going to work. And therefore, then you have to go and hire a divorce lawyer and probably pay him about $20,000 to $50,000 retainer. So, very, very small number of cases.

Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media

Okay. Well, Bill, thank you very much for collaborative divorce. That’s going to be a topic that people search online, so I appreciate your definition.