Rachel (00:00.6)
Forget the drama you've seen on TV. Real divorce starts with gathering information and making big decisions about your life, your stuff, and your kids.
In this episode, we're walking you through what every divorce includes, no matter how you do it. We're breaking down the options from DIY and mediation to collaborative divorce and full legal representation and helping you figure out which path makes sense for your situation. Welcome to the Divorce Queens podcast where real women get real about divorce. I'm Taylor Wins, divorce coach, family law attorney, and mom of four.
I'm Rachel Kennedy, family mediator, parenting consultant, and divorced mom of three. We are here to cut through the noise and bring you the legal, personal, and practical sides of divorce because getting divorced isn't just a legal process, it is a total life transformation.
So whether you're thinking about getting divorced, in the middle of the chaos, or trying to rebuild after it's all over, you're not alone. Grab your coffee, your wine, or your walking shoes, and let's get into it.
All right, so we get a lot of questions and a lot of consultations and a lot of DMS about this one topic, and that is what happens in the process of divorce. And the answer realistically is it depends on how you decide to go through your divorce. We're talking about what happens in that actual process of divorce. Are there certain things that have to happen in every single divorce? Sure, there are.
Taylor (01:36.61)
You ought to make some decisions about custody and parenting time of the kids and where the kids are going to be when you got to make some decisions about your finances, splitting those up, whether or not one person is going to pay support to the other. And then ultimately you have to file some final order, judgment and decree with the court so that the court can sign it. It can be a legal binding document, but other than making decisions and filing a document with the court, that's the final order. The rest of divorce can be.
Handled and you know a thousand different ways. Did you so I think like we're gonna go like lowest outside involvement to like highest outside involvement and I say lowest outside involvement that means like you and your spouse are Taking the most control over the process all the way up to like your hands off Okay, as much as anybody can be when they're getting a divorce So starting with like the lowest outside involvement, I would say where you have the most control
whether or not this is a good thing would be having a completely and totally DIY divorce, right? Which I 10 out of 10 as a divorce professional do not recommend. Like for of my own reasons, it's not, ask me, it's not a vibe. But there are people that are like, hey, we're capable of doing this. We get along. We're gonna do a totally DIY kind of experience. So.
There are every great once in a while people where I truly believe, yes, you are the purple snowflake. You are the rainbow haired unicorn who is able to really do a DIY divorce well. And those people tend to be individuals in a short term marriage. They don't have any children together or they don't have any minor children at least. They don't own property like there's no house. And when they got in the marriage, they have their own stuff.
and the marriage was super short, so now they're leaving with their own stuff. And they basically just need to like, pen it out that this is legal, right? Like I'm taking my retirement, you're taking yours. I'm taking my bank account, you're taking yours. But other than being short term, no kids, no house, and everybody pretty much is on an equal footing. Like no other than that, I think like most people shouldn't do a DIY divorce. But if you do a DIY divorce, there is some self-published
Taylor (04:00.428)
You know, here in Minnesota, I can only speak to that. I can't speak to like Wisconsin or wherever else. But there is stuff published by the legislature on the Internet. Right. So if you go to Mncourts.gov, they've got some packets where basically you can like download the packets and the packet will walk you through how to do a DIY divorce. If you decide to go that route, what you can expect is that you'd probably go out to the Internet and you would download that packet and it would tell you the requirements for a joint judgment and decree.
then you would need to go out and you would need to collect, you know, as much information as you can find available to you on the things that are asked in that document. So you can expect to need to be able to report on your retirement accounts, what your addresses are, whether you have children, the ages of those children, their names or dates of birth, if you have outside children, right? And you're gonna do this big fact-finding data and document collection process between you and your spouse to get all the information out there. Once you have that information, you're gonna need to make decisions about how to split it up.
And then you're going to fill out this judgment and decree, however many pages it ends up being on the internet, you'll download it and you'll need to file it with the court. For a lot of us who have access, like good stable access to the internet and to a computer, like a desktop computer, you're going to be able to do this all online, right? And then you could file it online. The legislature publishes how to file online. That's all there for you. But if you don't have good access to
a desktop computer and you don't have stable internet and you still want to do a DIY process like that, you can go down to like pretty much any courthouse or a law library, which, you know, there are some actually inside of some of the public libraries throughout the metro area, the seven county metro, and you could pick up a packet, like a paper packet, and you could fill it out by hand. Then you could go down to the courthouse and file it. And you can expect to pay a filing fee of like 385 ish dollars.
to file for divorce. That's kind of it, like very anticlimactic, very low, hopefully low drama if you're trying to do it by yourself. But that would be if it's uncontested. If you're trying to DIY a contested divorce, like what you can expect is a little bit different. Instead of doing a joint process, what you're gonna need to do is go get those forms from the court and you're gonna need to fill out a petition.
Taylor (06:21.87)
You have to fill out that petition completely on honestly, accurately, fairly, whatever. And you have to serve the other person. That means you got to go out and you got to get some third party who's over the age of 18 to find your soon to be acts and serve them the papers like on TV, like you've been served, right? Like give them the papers. Then they have to swear to having given them to your soon to be acts and then they get filed with the court. And then you're like kind of plunged into this world of you're on the court's timeline now.
Okay, so like you're gonna file the stuff with the court, you're gonna get some mail back from the court that's gonna say, you filed the case, a judicial officer has been assigned for an initial case management conference, like a first step hearing, and then you're gonna have to fill out some paperwork, take a parenting education course on the internet, and then you need to show up at that hearing. Like you don't get to just not show up. And when you show up at the hearing, the court's gonna direct what actually happens next in your divorce. So they're gonna tell you, hey, have you tried mediating?
Have you gotten any evaluative stuff done on your case? Nope. Okay, you need to go out and you need to take care of that. And then you're going to be kind of shuttled into some sort of meditative process or evaluative process where you make some decisions and get some feedback about what's going on in your divorce setting. Hopefully you settle in mediation because if you don't, you go back to court. So you get to show back up for the next hearing, which is a pre-trial conference. And at that point in time, the court's going to tell you like,
You have to tell me what all the issues are for trial. Are we trying to figure out custody, parenting time, spousal maintenance, child support, asset division, the house, debt, whatever. And you got to tell the court all that stuff. And then the court will give you a timeline. You've got to now do discovery back and forth. You got to ask them for their documents. You got to give up yours. And you need to then create exhibits and file a bunch of stuff with the court because guess what? You're going to trial.
And so if you can't resolve it, which a lot of pro se people don't realize this, it's like, you don't just throw it against the wall and hope it sticks. Like you have to do some work in trying to resolve it. Otherwise you will find yourself in a trial before the judge. And you may not know like what the rules of evidence are for what you can share with the court at a trial. Right. So it can get really sticky pretty quick if you don't try to make some resolutions. Yeah, it can be the wild west, but that's kind of like the over under on a totally
Taylor (08:45.39)
10 out of 10 do not recommend DIY divorce. Rachel, I know that's like not your vibe. So what do you think about your specialty and your qualifications in your field and how you do divorce?
Well, I'm a mediator. And I can say piggybacking off of what Taylor just shared, I see a lot of people coming back to me for post-degree things because they had a DIY divorce and then it didn't work because they didn't know that they had to figure out.
What time somebody's picking up the kid for Christmas or who's paying for the t-ball fees or whatever. They like didn't know they had to figure that stuff out and they didn't figure it out and they can't figure it out and they're back in my office mediating.
You know what, Rachel? The one thing I've been seeing with the DIY divorces is like the discovery process didn't happen. So one party didn't get the bank statements and the mortgage statement and whatever for the divorce. And they have these trials and none of the information is available to the court. And the court says, well, I can't make any findings. So I'm just going to kick the can and it's reserved. Right. And you can literally go through these trials as a pro se party.
a pro se party being a person who's not represented by an attorney and have the court literally divorce you and say, but I can't award anybody anything. And I've had a few of those come through my office. Like what court side.
Rachel (10:12.492)
No parenting time figured out. They have no child support figured out or, or they just write something basic. Like the parents will work out appropriate parenting time. They'll agree. Yeah. I'm sure they will. Yeah. And then they're back in my office six months after they've been divorced because, know, or six months after it's final because they cannot figure it out. So anyway, maybe enough on DIYs. so what I actually really like doing is
Three.
Rachel (10:41.662)
mediating the whole divorce process. I do some post-degree, I do some other things, but I actually really like doing the whole divorce process with people. I mean, I'm pretty open with my clients and obviously you know this, but I'm divorced and I had a really messy, awful divorce and however people do it, whether it's totally DIY or totally represented or whatever, I'm just really passionate about like, it doesn't have to be
super horrible combative, I mean once in a while it is, but it doesn't have to be nearly as often as it is. And so my little part in that is I like to mediate whenever possible. And my favorite is doing the whole divorce. Usually it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes people have no attorneys at all. Sometimes they have attorneys kind of hands off, like not really there.
but they'll come to mediation, then they'll go back and meet with their attorney and say, this is what we talked about, and then they'll come back to mediation or whatever. And some people bring their attorneys to mediation and they just really kind of want the, so there are different ways to do the mediation. But basically what we do, at least in my office, I know mediators do some details differently, but I think overall it's a fairly similar process. But.
We, mean, like Taylor said, there are just a bunch of things that you have to talk about that you have to figure out. We talked through all those things. There are also things that are not like required by the court, like we talked about specifically what time you're picking the kid up on whatever day or who's paying the tee ball fees or all those things. I really like to talk about those things too, again, because I tell people.
I see people back for post-ecre things all the time and I know what the issues are that brings people back. So let's try to get ahead of that and talk through those issues during the divorce so we can craft a really good memorandum so that hopefully I won't see you back. So in my office, we do two hour sessions. I think a lot of mediators do longer sessions and I guess that's what works for them, but two hours I think is a great amount of time.
Rachel (13:01.838)
and we just kind of chip away at all the issues. Sometimes it takes two visits, sometimes it takes eight visits. It just depends how long it takes us to get through all the issues. And then in between our sessions, I'm working on what's called a memorandum of agreement, which is just a pretty well, it's like kind of an outline format. All the things that the court wants to see about parenting time, child support, spousal support.
Are we selling the house or is somebody keeping the house? What are we doing with cars and credit card debts and 401ks and all those things, all the, all the different things that we talk about. just kind of work through those things with clients and then write them all out in this nice little document. and then the people get the document at the end. and then there are kind of three options, as to how those get filed.
One is they can then take that memorandum and go back to the court forms and file it on their own if they want. They've just had the professional support in talking through the issues, knowing what issues to talk through in the first place, getting that experience, and then they can still file on their own if they want. The next kind of tier is hiring a Scrivener, which is an attorney who's not actually
representing either party, just basically taking the memorandum, compiling all the legal paperwork and filing it with the court for you. And then kind of the highest tier is either you've had attorneys with you through the mediation process or you hire attorneys at the end to look through your memorandum, talk through things, make sure everything looks good. And one or both parties can hire attorneys and then it gets filed that way. Yeah.
One thing I wanna mention because I do hear this come up somewhat often is sometimes people will hire one attorney and like think that the attorney is looking through the memorandum like with both parties interest in mind. Do you wanna speak to that part, Taylor? Cause I hear that a lot.
Taylor (15:17.078)
Yeah, a lot of people will go out and get one attorney because they don't see why they there's a need for two attorneys. But I think to speak to that, you have to understand the role of attorneys, right? Like an attorney by trade and definition is an advocate for their client. And under the rules, at least in the state of Minnesota, you cannot represent more than one person's interests where their interests diverge or could diverge like
in an adversarial process, which unfortunately divorce in the courts is considered an adversarial process, which sucks because we want families to be able to like get a divorce well so that they can transition and their kids can be great. But it's well settled that one attorney should not be representing two different people in a divorce because by nature, your interests have diverged from each other. So people will get one attorney and the attorney oftentimes is saying,
Okay, I only represent you, but because the parties, he calling people parties, but because like these, you know, soon to be exposes, whatever you want to call them, these parents, whoever they've done all this work to try to reach this resolution, right? They feel like they're on good footing. They feel like they're still rowing in the same direction. So they don't always hear and understand when an attorney says, I only represent Joe Abby, you're not represented, right? They're like,
That's fine, right? And sometimes it leaves people in a situation where had they gone out and gotten just some eyes on the document after the fact and made sure they understand the legality and the implications of some of their decision-making, they might have made a different decision. Not always. I think mediation really empowers people to just make the decision that works for them and isn't like, my rights, I gotta get my rights, right? Like that's trash.
you know, do what works for your family. But some people just really truly don't have an understanding about the implications of things that they agree to. And if they had just that last check and the check and balance, they may have made a different decision and then we wouldn't be back later trying to maybe fix some things.
Rachel (17:31.85)
Yeah. And one other thing I want to point out is because I get this question so often too. Taylor said that an attorney is representing one person and mediators are like way, way far on the other side of the spectrum. So I cannot represent one person. I don't ever, I have to remain neutral. And that's one, I would say potential drawback.
to a strictly mediation process. I honestly, a lot of times I do believe in it. I think it's great. And obviously I believe I do good work and whatever, but the one potential drawback is I can't tell people that they're like making terrible choices or something. Like if, I kind of try, but I can't give legal advice and I can't be on one person's side.
So I do try to explain, you know, typically people do this particular thing this way, or typically the court will like to see, you know, this or whatever. But at the end of the day, if people want to agree to what they want to agree to, I can't stop them. Which is why I think sometimes if things, not some, a lot of times, if things are more adversarial, you're better off having attorneys.
somewhere in the mix. Whether you want to hire them at the very beginning or whether you want to bring them in just to check over your memorandum or anywhere in between, that can be a good check and balance because a mediator can't like give legal advice or advocate for one person. Yeah.
Yeah, and I wish we could all be respectful and collaborative and all the things, but sometimes we have parties that just aren't going like they're just not. It's not like, you know, I might have some experience in this, but sometimes there are people that it doesn't really matter. Like their job in their mind is not to resolve things. It's to
Taylor (19:43.948)
do a combination of getting their way and making the other person miserable. And I'd say that's a great like enter now attorneys situation.
hard when you've got one person who really wants to be collaborative and put the kids first and then you've got one person who's just you said you know they think they're rowing in the same direction it's like you've got the one person who's just gonna row backwards all the time yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and yeah i mean those those are really tricky cases for
And maybe put some water in the boat. Yeah. We'll go down together.
Rachel (20:19.83)
I mean, I'd say even when there are attorneys involved, those are really tricky cases when one person is just really determined to sink the boat. As a mediator who believes very strongly in mediation, there are some of those cases of just one party is being excessively difficult. You kind of have to call attorneys in or it's not going to go well.
Yeah, or anywhere at all. I'm having, yep, I've seen that too. Well, I guess I could talk about getting an attorney and kind of like the extreme of getting an attorney and like the full representation, start to finish attorney model, which is a lot of the traditional model of divorce, but I actually sat in a training today where nationally some crazy percentage of all divorce is filed pro se.
which I thought was really interesting, but I think there are, there's a big chunk of people that still need an attorney, see value in it because of dynamics like Rachel, like you were just talking about, right? And so talk about that too. So a lot of times how, since I am an attorney, how I get my clients and how we start the process is somebody will come to me by way of, you know, referral or whatever for a consultation and we'll have an initial consultation. We'll go through,
you know, basic information that I would need about your divorce. So we'll figure out, okay, you guys got kids. Do we have, you know, assets, whatever, and we'll talk about it there. I'll talk about, you know, my firm and how we support people. And then ultimately we'll make a decision. Are we going to move forward together? When we move forward together, for whatever reason, I end up having the client who's the petitioner. So like, we like to start divorces at my office, like go us, that's what we do over here. And so
If you're the petitioner, you have some options about what you're going to do. And I always like to do what is the least adversarial way to begin the divorce so that I at least give my client the opportunity to have something that's, you know, somewhat respectful, somewhat collaborative from the sense that we're working together, somewhat amicable, right? And we're going to get out of this in a way that's not going to burn our family to the ground. So
Taylor (22:38.474)
When we start the divorce as the petitioner, we'll go ahead and we get some documents pulled together that's just like, hey, I'm me, you're you, we were married here back then, these are our people, we've got stuff, give me a divorce, right? That's pretty much the initial document. It's very like bare bones and blank. And it's just something that starts the process. And so,
We usually do that and it formalizes the fact that a divorce is going to happen. We have that sent to the other person along with a nice little note where we say, Hey, I'm representing, you know, Sue Ann over here and your divorce and call me if you have questions or concerns. Here's a whole list of stuff I need from you to get this divorce process going. Documents, finances, et cetera. And by the way, I will be collecting those from Sue Ann and I'll give those to you too. Let's get rolling. And then.
It goes one of two ways, right? The other person's on notice that they are getting divorced and either they hire an attorney or they don't. If they don't hire an attorney, I tend to have a little bit harder time or slower time getting through the process unless these people are perfectly like, we still are gonna be best friends, right? Because where there's an attorney and there's not, there's a power imbalance there. And it causes a lot of times the person who doesn't have an attorney to be a little bit skeptical.
of things that I might set forth, things I might ask them to do. And so we do always find ourselves in that initial case management, like that first hearing, because they need to hear from the judge that they actually have to give me their bank accounts. And they need hear from the judge that I actually get to see their retirement. And they need to hear from the judge that they do need to respond to my correspondence. Right. And so that we always end up there. If we have attorneys on both sides, typically we're all like, look, guys, we're not going to file this case. We're going to skip over.
the initial hearing, we're gonna cut the nonsense, cut the noise, let's get these parties into mediation and see if we can figure something out. And at a minimum, we try to do some, it's kind of like, you know, some quick dealing to see if we can get many agreements, because that always helps the tone of the divorce long-term going forward. And we find when we can do that, you know, my office can get clients, you know, to, through and out the other side of a divorce with good sound representation.
Taylor (24:56.142)
good decision making and empowered, like an empowered way of choosing what they want in like 12 weeks. I mean, it doesn't have to be anything crazy. Now where we have like, need financial evaluations and we have businesses and whatever, like, well, you're going to be here a while because we got to hire a bunch of people to figure it out. But where we've got two attorneys and everybody's like, we're going to do this guys. Like you can get out of a divorce really quick. So that is a really, really cool thing. But much like with that.
You know when I was talking about doing a totally DIY process on your own you've got to expect that in your divorce that There's gonna be that same decision-making process There's likely gonna be some mediation that takes place like you're gonna have to work through some of these things that you can't agree on or that you're at an impasse with with the third party before you get the opportunity to have any sort of court trial or be heard by the court which like
8 out of 10 don't recommend. mean, like I 10 out of 10 do not recommend a DIY divorce, but I 8 out of 10 do not recommend going to trial unless your ex is so horrible and awful and like Satan reincarnate that then like just stay out of an actual trial type proceeding because it's a very, expensive and it's emotionally taxing. But you know, you can expect, like I said, the decision making process mediation, maybe going to court for a settlement conference. And then if one person's represented and the other person isn't,
after the papers are filed, you will have to make a court appearance to make sure that everybody understands what they signed off on. The cool thing, if you both have attorneys, you literally could go get a divorce and never see the inside of a courtroom for any reason whatsoever, which I think is really awesome. And I think it's good for people. I think it's good for the family system when you have attorneys that are working together towards resolution to do it that way, because you literally could be shielded and insulated.
from an initial case management conference, a pre-trial hearing, from a status conference, from a final hearing where those are emotional too, right? But just to let you know, the final hearing where you have to read your agreement onto the record, those are really highly emotional because it is that final time that you're married to that person. Even if you wanted to get a divorce, it's still like, my gosh, this is real. When I got divorced, we did it pro se.
Taylor (27:13.272)
but I'm an attorney. like I had been in practice. I knew everything that needed to go into decree. I still would not recommend going pro se if I had to do it all over again. I would never do that again. Don't do it. It's not smart, but we did. Right. And so then I remember the first time, which is a story for another time of the times I divorced my husband. but the first time it was in person. So we had to go down to the Apple Valley courthouse. We had to
sit in the galley of the courtroom, like right, let look like church pews. We had to sit in the galley, like, and he like came and sat down next to me, which is another issue we could talk about, right? Like why that he felt that was necessary. But anyways, came and sat down next to me. Then we had to stand up in front of the judge at council table and the judge asked us questions and said, what, give me your legal name, give me your date of birth. How many children do you have? How old are they? What are their dates of birth?
Do you have a bank account? Do you have a job? The decree says here that you agree that you're gonna pay child support in this amount. Do you agree to that? When you made that agreement, were you under the influence of drugs, alcohol, mood altering substances, or anything that could inhibit your ability to enter into this agreement right now? You're not? Are you sure? Okay, great, right? Then you have to go through that. And that's very emotional. You're like standing here and you're like, the feelings, I can't even tell you what that feels like unless you experienced it.
But if you have to do that if you're pro se, but then also if one person is represented and the other person isn't, you still have to have that hearing. And so back to what I was saying about if you have two attorneys, you could be insulated from all of that because even if you only get the two attorneys at the very end, you've mediated everything, you agree to everything, and the attorneys are just looking over your agreement, signing their names to it, and it's getting filed, you could skip that and never have to have that experience, which is a little bit...
It's a little bit heart wrenching. The soft side of Taylor, says.
Taylor (29:12.93)
there's not much of her left some days. Okay. So there's also with attorneys and mediators and financial professionals and mental health professionals and divorce coaches, a process and at least in Minnesota, but it's, it's international called collaborative divorce. So Rachel actually put me on to collaborative divorce and I'm going through the training right now. And it is like, so amazing. Rachel, you want to talk a little bit about it?
think it's great. Well, I think it's really kind of takes the best of each discipline, I guess, or whatever. But you've got attorneys. But when you start, you're agreeing to be collaborative, which means you're not going to court. You're not trying to like pound the other one into the wall. You're trying to work together and be collaborative. And so you've each got your attorney. You might have a mediator. You might have a financial person. You might have even like a
I think they call them family specialists. like, they're in like child development and that kind of stuff. there's just all these people who are committed to keeping things collaborative, respectful, clean, graceful kind of just, you know, yeah, divorce sucks. Okay. How can we help gently guide your family into
the next chapter versus what you're talking about with at least sometimes what we're talking about with attorneys and you know in general when things just get really ugly and we're in court all the time and we're you know going to trial because we can't agree on custody and all those things that can happen those don't happen in a collaborative process.
Yeah, it's really cool. I'm no expert yet, but I definitely intend to be because I think it's such a good model for almost everyone except, which maybe I don't know enough about it yet, but everyone except the person who wants to drill holes in the boat so we can all go down together. I don't know what you do with that person other than go to court, but I would like to believe
Taylor (31:24.494)
that 95 % of people are not that person. And so it is worthwhile learning about and being exposed to this option to have a collaborative divorce before you consider going the traditional adversarial route. I've even had cases and clients where we've had some ugly factors involved. And this is not a plug for not being safe if you're in a...
situation where there's domestic violence. If you're in a situation with that, do whatever you need to do to be safe. Like start there, worry about the rest later. But I literally had a case that had domestic violence in it, where when I was sitting in the collaborative training, I was like, this specific couple could have made it through a collaborative process. Like there are enough safeguards that could be put in place. And there was enough at least mutual love for the children.
and enough understanding by the person who had been victimized as to the other things going on in the person who was perpetuating the violence and things onto the family that they could have done it. Like when I sat there and was listening to it, I was like, wow, this couple could have made that work. And so I think there's a lot of cool stuff in that movement that can change the trajectory and the landscape of how families are experiencing divorce.
Because as I know for you and me, Rachel, as mothers, divorce is like a transitional event. It's not the whole thing. And now we have children that have to this, call it an alternative lifestyle if you want to. That's maybe different from their friends, that may be different from their peer groups, that maybe their teachers don't understand. And we have a job, like a duty and an obligation to make...
the best of this situation for them because they didn't ask for this. So it's super cool. But yeah, I was hearing about the collaborative process and the cool part of it is that it lets specialists do what specialists do and the specialists are neutral. And so Rachel mentioned a financial person. So you get a financial neutral who's somebody like a certified financial divorce analyst or they're a financial planner or they're a CPA and they can run.
Taylor (33:40.942)
the financial projections for you and not just how do we split out the stuff that we have. They can help you look creatively at child support and spells of maintenance, not based on what some stupid calculator on the internet says, but I'm like, what is your actual cash flow? Like, okay, how much money are you spending? How much money is she spending? Okay, where can we shift so that nobody's poor, but nobody's got way more than the other, you know, like how can we manage cash flow?
Okay, and then we could do that for six months and then how can we increase cash flow for the other party or whatever? So they can run all these projections and these models that I think are outside the scope of what a lot of attorneys are doing and then a mediator probably like on their own probably wouldn't do it. But we're talking about like giving you directed suggestions, right? They're neutral, but they're just like, what about trying this, right? And it's in a really interesting way that I haven't seen.
in seven years of doing it in like the quasi traditional manner. The same cool thing or another cool thing with the neutrals was the family specialist that Rachel talked about who's trained in child development and maybe has done some couples work and things with couples in their practice. They are able to do child inclusive work as well. So they do some work where they
deal with the child directly so that the child feels like they have a voice depending upon the maturity of the child, whether or not the child wants to participate in the process at all, what they understand and what they know. And they can involve the child in a very healthy way in the process of divorce so that they have say in things without being the decision maker, right? It gives them an avenue for their voice to be heard. And they are never asked things like, who do you want to live with?
Do you like this person more? They're never asked any of that stuff. They're like, how do you want us to refer to when your time at your dad's house versus your time at your mom's house? What should we call your homes? Your homes, right? Not dad's house and mom's house. What should we call your two homes? How can we give you new language about this? What do you want your parents to know? What do we need to help you be able to explain this when you have to go to school?
Taylor (36:03.756)
Right? And so it's including the child in this very healthy, focused way that gives them a foundation for like the way that their life is changing. I think it's, it's like top-notch stuff, if you ask.
It's, it's really exciting.
Yeah. So that's our plug for like, everybody should go out and get a collaborative divorce, but yeah. So those are like all the legal processes or ways to get through the legal process of divorce.
Thanks for hanging out with us on the Divorce Queens podcast. If you loved today's episode, be sure to hit subscribe and leave us a review. It helps more women find the support they deserve.
You can find me, Taylor, on Instagram at momlawyeredivorced and you can find Rachel at RachelTalksDivorced. Got questions? Need a pep talk? Want to share your story? Slide into our DMs. We're here for it.
Rachel (36:59.074)
Divorce is not the end of your story. It is the beginning of your comeback. See you next week.
