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Joel: So many guys that I know — and I guess it has to do with being around 50 years old — have gone through divorces. I’ve fortunately never been through one and I know very little about divorce. But I brought someone here, Joe Dillon, that I’m excited to have. He’s with equitablemediation.com and he helps people on either side to get through a divorce in the way that hopefully is the least amount of pain possible. Whether you’re going through a divorce, you’ve been through one, or you know someone — I think this is going to be a big help. Thanks for being here with me, Joe.

Joe: Thanks for having me, Joel. I appreciate it.

Joel: So how did you get into this? Tell us briefly what you do for people who are potentially going through it.

Joe: I’m a divorce mediator. I’m a neutral third party and I work with both sides to help them resolve all the issues they have to get a divorce. I bring options to the table, help them do the discovery forms and worksheets, and we basically help them avoid using lawyers or going through the court process. It’s a more peaceful alternative, far more cost-effective, and takes months instead of years. We try to tell people: if you’ve got kids, if you want to maintain your sanity and your financial health, you definitely don’t need to burn things to the ground. The folks we work with recognize that. They reach out to us because they don’t want to do that, and it’s very rewarding.

Joel: I’ve heard this kind of saying out there — that when a woman asks for a divorce, she’s probably been contemplating it for a couple of years, but it always catches the guy by surprise. Is that true?

Joe: One hundred percent. There’s a law firm out of the UK that did a study about two years ago. They asked everyone who came in to see them how long they’d been contemplating divorce, and when they averaged it all out, it was two years and one month. So typically, one person has been thinking about this for years. And because 70% of divorces are filed by women, that would indicate that a majority of the time it’s the women who’ve been thinking about it. It does catch the guys off guard. My wife Cheryl always teases me — she says, “You’re such a fixer. You always want to fix everything.” And guys are like, “No, but this can be saved. We don’t have to get a divorce.” Meanwhile, the wife has been thinking about this for a long time. The guys have maybe had an inkling but floated along in their own bubble. When the wife finally says, “This is it, I have to move forward,” it really catches them off guard. That’s part of the difficulty for guys in divorce — they want to fix it, they’re surprised by it, but the truth is the writing’s been on the wall for a while and they probably just haven’t recognized it.

Joel: That’s just what I’ve noticed too — maybe they weren’t very aware all this time. So what could a guy do to avoid being in this situation? Not when he comes to talk to you — what should he have been doing two or three years ago?

Joe: I’ll totally stereotype myself here — if somebody had said to me, “You should go to couples counseling, you should go to therapy,” I’d have been like, “I don’t think so.” It’s funny, if you look at our bookshelves — I’m an avid reader and so is my wife — I’ve got books about guys being taken hostage in Moscow and shooting their way out, and my wife is reading about finding your inner child and discussing it with your parents. We’re on complete opposite ends of the spectrum, and a lot of that comes down to the love languages.

For guys, the big thing is recognizing that your wife is not you. She’s different than you. She has different interests and she needs different things. In your world, just because you did X, Y, or Z — like I came home and said, “Honey, I put in a new home gym. Isn’t that great? Now we don’t have to go to the gym and we can save money.” My wife looked at me and said, “Are you implying that I need to lose weight?” And I’m thinking, all I thought was, great, we don’t have to get in the car when it’s 42 degrees below outside and we can work out.

It’s about checking in with your spouse. Asking the classic questions: how was your day, how are things going — and really just trying to stay connected. Making those efforts even when they’re small. We call them touch points. Recognizing that someone did something, saying please and thank you, a hand on the shoulder as you walk by, asking where they want to go on vacation. Going back to my home gym example — I was so proud that I bought this $5,000 Smith cage and rack, these grand gestures. My wife said she would have been happy with a set of 5-pound rubber dumbbells from Target.

We always try to go big. Wives are probably looking for something a little smaller. So my advice to guys is: pay attention to the small stuff. Make the small moments happen. Because that’s a lot of what shows up in our mediations when people are arguing, and wives are saying things like, “I never wanted any of that. I just wanted you to be home on time for dinner once a week. Take the kids to the dentist once a year.” All that little stuff. Keep an eye on it, because that’s the stuff that matters most.

Joel: I got good news, Joe — you and I would be happily married with that gym in the garage.

Joe: That’s right, man. My garage is a three-car garage and it’s a full gym, so there you go.

One thing I’ve done occasionally with my wife is ask, “What could you use more of from me? What could I help more with? What would be better for you?” It’s a little deeper than just how are you doing, but that question worded that way actually gives me something.

You mentioned books — Dr. Gary Chapman and the Five Love Languages. He’s phenomenal. I’ve actually included his lessons in my book, giving him full credit. I think every couple should take that test. It’s free, it’s online, and you find out what really moves your spouse or partner.

Joel: And I’d add one more step — not just asking where you’d like to go on vacation, but actually planning the trip. Being the one to make it happen instead of being a passenger and letting your wife do all of it. So why is it that 70% of divorces are started by women?

Joe: A lot of our clients are in their 50s. They’re either empty nesters or the kids are seniors in high school or freshmen in college. We’ve practiced a long time and we’ve seen how gender roles have shifted. Women are active in the workforce, holding leadership positions. Many of them have felt very strongly about their roles inside the home — raising the kids, maintaining everything there. And then when that role is done, I believe there’s a part of them that says, “I’ve done my time, I’ve played my part, and now it’s my time.” We’re all starting to see that.

I’ll keep this family-friendly, but as the world around us spirals out of control, a lot of us are just thinking, “I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, so I just want to have some fun and live my life.” That’s what’s happening. They come to a place where they say, “I’m not angry at my husband. I don’t hate him. He’s a great father, a wonderful guy. I still love him, but I just want different things in life.” We hear that all the time. And that goes back to what we were just saying — guys, if you understood what your wife wanted and were checking in on those things, the different things she wanted might become things you want too.

My wife, for example — if she had her way, she would fill our house with dogs. Volunteering at an animal shelter might not be high on my list, but she wants to be involved in that. So I’m going to show an interest and go with her, feed the animals, take them on walks. And then, of course, we came home with dogs.

Joel: How’d that work out?

Joe: It didn’t work out great. But have you ever seen people want to file for divorce and then go through the process and have regrets?

Joel: That’s actually my next question — have you ever seen regrets?

Joe: Absolutely. I just had a client recently and they took the agreement all the way to the end. That’s the beauty of mediation — you’re in the process right before you enter the court system. And we all know what the courts are like. My parents litigated their divorce when I was a teenager and it was a disaster. It took years. They spent tens of thousands of dollars — back in the ’80s, which would be hundreds of thousands today. Once you’re in that system, you’re not getting out.

But in mediation, you’re outside of that. You’re negotiating in private and confidentially. Sometimes folks get to the end of the process and look at each other and realize it’s like a high-stakes game of chicken, and somebody finally says, “What are we doing here?” I’m a neutral third party, so I can’t push them toward divorce or toward reconciliation, but I will jump in and say, “I was asking myself the same thing about you two.”

Sometimes they just need someone like me. I’ve had the good fortune, as a guy, of speaking that language — but I was also raised by my mom and grandmother, so I’ve got that side too. When I’m talking to a couple and I can say to the husband, “What I think your wife is really trying to say is…” and then vice versa, it’s almost like I speak multiple languages. And when they start hearing that, they realize they’re actually on the same page — they just weren’t listening to each other.

It’s like when I was in France with my wife. She speaks French, which is pretty cool. We were in a restaurant and there was a couple from England, and the guy was just yelling at the waitress louder and louder in English, thinking volume would somehow help her understand him. My wife just called her over and told her in French what the guy wanted. That’s kind of what happens in mediation. They’re just yelling at each other, and I say, “You two are saying the exact same thing. You’re just not listening to each other.” So I bring the temperature down. Let’s start asking some questions instead of making accusations.

Joel: You got me curious — if 70% of divorces are started by women, what happens in a woman-and-woman relationship? Is that a higher percentage?

Joe: Interesting question. Despite being a same-sex couple, people still fall into what I’d call stereotypical gender roles. There’s typically one partner who’s more nurturing and home-based, and one who’s more career-oriented and external-facing. We’re not treating people based on stereotypes — we’re just trying to figure out what their interests and goals are and how to speak to them in those terms.

What’s interesting about same-sex divorces — and we’ve worked with both men and women — is that they tend to be more high-conflict. My philosophy is that same-sex couples have fought for so long for the right to marry, and once they finally have it and it ends in divorce, there’s this sadness that falls over them. Almost a disappointment in themselves. Like, “We finally got the right to marry and we’re going to end just like everybody else.” You can see that in a way you don’t always see with heterosexual couples, where divorce is more normalized. And yes, we’ve had more female same-sex couples than male same-sex couples.

Joel: I wanted to ask this earlier — how did you get into this?

Joe: My parents litigated their divorce. So I’m that classic case — sat in the back of the courtroom. My dad was so mad at my mom that he never spoke to me or her again. The last time I saw him was in the hallway of the courthouse, and then he took off, got remarried, had another family. I eventually found out he died through a letter. That was basically my parenting from my father from my teenage years on.

My background is in finance — I have an MBA. A lot of people think you have to be a lawyer to be a mediator, and you don’t. When you think about divorce, three of the four issues are financial: alimony, child support, property division. The fourth is parenting, which doesn’t necessarily have a financial component, although kids do cost money. My background is in negotiation and finance. I have training at Harvard’s Program on Negotiation and at Northwestern. In my corporate days, I used to do high-dollar contract negotiations, financial contracts, working with teams of lawyers, salespeople, and clients — buyouts, mergers, that kind of thing.

Eventually I got downsized from a job and just didn’t want to go back into that grind. My mother-in-law, of all people — and I get along great with my mother-in-law — mentioned she had a friend who was a mediator. I spoke to her. She mediated for the Jersey City Police Department, helping both sides negotiate contracts. And I thought: kid of a litigated divorce, want to avoid that; finance background, and divorce is about money. And the rest is history. I’ve been doing it ever since.

Joel: People avoid court, reach amicable agreements, know they can still co-parent their kids. That’s the outcome.

Joe: That’s the soapbox lecture I give them. Don’t be like my dad. Don’t cut your nose off to spite your face just because you’re angry at your soon-to-be ex-wife. Don’t cut your kids out of your life. And I’ve gone through a lot as an adult trying to reconcile that — wondering what I did wrong, thinking I was an A student, an athlete. I never got that answer.

Joel: I think you know the answer — you probably did nothing. Those were adult things, and you were a kid.

Joe: I know. It’s just hard to feel that when you’re in it.

Joel: Give me some advice for the average guy whose wife just said she wants a divorce. Where do we go from here? Because that’s where I think so many guys are lost, and they often don’t even talk to friends about it.

Joe: The first thing you have to confirm is whether she’s actually made up her mind. Sometimes that’s a symptom of frustration. Think about your own friends — sometimes you’re so mad at somebody you just don’t know what to do, so you freak out on them. Your wife saying “I want a divorce” might mean, “I’m frustrated, I’m angry, I’m at my wit’s end.” So the first thing is to check in and ask: have you been thinking about this? How long? Have you spoken to someone other than your friends about this?

Because more often than not, women will go to therapy, talk to a counselor, use that time to work through their feelings and make the decision. If the answer comes back that yes, she’s done all those things, you can be pretty sure there’s not going to be a chance to change her mind. Women are good at this. They’ve planned. They’ve thought it through. They’ve made their decision. So guys, don’t try to convince or cajole. It’s not going to happen.

We call that the reluctant spouse. We have an internal name for it, and we just know who this guy is when he walks in. Here’s a little fun fact: it takes two people to be married, but only one to file for divorce. So now you have a choice about how you want to go through this process.

On our website we have a guide on the five options for divorce — do it yourself, do it online, mediate, collaborate, or litigate. And you think through which one fits your situation.

As a professional negotiator, there are two questions you can ask that are so powerful. They always start with either “how” or “what.” How can we fix this? What can I do to make it better? Notice it’s not blame or finger-pointing. This is the crossroads, the moment on the bridge: how did we get here? What can we do to change this? That may require counseling or therapy. My wife Cheryl made me read the Five Love Languages — her words, air quotes — but I’m glad she did. We discussed it at dinner. We also read the Gottman book on marriage and workshopped it together. That’s what your wife is looking for — you acknowledging there’s a problem and getting involved in the solution rather than making excuses.

So guys: check where your wife is. Is she saying she’s been thinking about this for a long time, or is she just so frustrated she doesn’t know what to do? Those are the two paths.

Joel: Communication is probably one of the main issues that leads to this.

Joe: And what’s funny is that when we start out — before kids, before we really get into it — we have shared goals. When my wife and I first got married, we asked each other everything: do we want to have a kid? Do we want to start a business together? Do we always want to live in New Jersey? Do we want to move? And then as life goes by, a lot of us just let those goals die on the vine. Your list and my list become completely different and now we don’t have anything shared to work toward.

Cheryl and I started Equitable Mediation about 18 years ago and she’s been working with me pretty much ever since. As unusual as it might be — and it can certainly be challenging at times; she’s probably listening in the other office right now — it’s also rewarding because you have a common goal, something you’re both working toward together.

Here’s another tip for guys. My doctor told me this, and I love this guy — he’s all about treating you as a whole person. He said, “Part of my job is to keep you healthy, and part of that is making sure you have a healthy marriage.” He gave me an assignment: he and his wife each take a legal pad, sit somewhere nice — at the beach, in a park, wherever — and write down their bucket list of everything they want to do. Then hand each other the pads. “I guarantee you’ll learn something about each other.”

Sure enough, I looked at my wife’s list and saw she wanted to spend more time in New England. I had no idea. She went to college in Connecticut, so she wanted to go back to Boston and Connecticut. This exercise brought that out into the open. And on my list, I’d always wanted to do a river cruise through old Europe — through Slovakia and that region. My wife said, “You hate boats.” I said, “I know, I get seasick, but this seems safer. It’s not in the ocean.” So then we each have something to talk about. Great exercise.

Joel: I love that your doctor realizes it’s not just about blood pressure — it’s about your emotional life too. So speaking of emotions, can you walk us through what a guy typically feels going through this process? I want to normalize it for guys who might be feeling alone right now.

Joe: A couple come to mind. The first is disappointment. A lot of guys define themselves by their roles. My background is pretty old school — my dad was 100% Irish, very much a provider mentality. When guys don’t fulfill that role, when their wife wants a divorce, they feel like they failed. Like they weren’t the provider, weren’t the safety keeper. And I want guys to know: you can be disappointed, but it’s not your fault. We all do the best we can. Feeling disappointed is perfectly normal.

The second is fear. I hear guys talking about parenting plans and their biggest fear is they’re not going to see their kids — that their wife is going to hold the kids away, that they’ll be sitting home alone with a frozen TV dinner on Thanksgiving. It’s okay to express that. Being an all-in parent is awesome. It’s okay to say, “I want to do everything I can to see these kids as much as possible and also to support my ex-spouse as much as possible.”

The third is anger. The anger comes through the rejection — you don’t want to be married anymore after everything I’ve done? We see this a lot with high-net-worth guys who have been on a plane three weeks out of every month, traveling internationally, not seeing their kids, coming home burnt out. They’ve got the multi-million dollar house, the cars, the vacations, and they say, “Look at all I’ve done for you. Look at all I’ve given you.” Meanwhile, the wife just wanted him home for dinner. She doesn’t care about the house. She just wanted to sit down as a family.

Then guys start to take that anger out through the process — trying to pay less child support, less alimony. And that’s a mistake. The divorce process should not be a moment to exact revenge. It’s a moment to self-reflect, because it takes two to tango. We all get into arguments with our spouses and in the moment think, “I can’t believe you did that,” and then later, when we’ve cooled off, think, “Yeah, I was kind of a jerk.”

Joel: Disappointment, fear, anger — that’s a process you see a lot of guys go through. And what do you mean by “trappings”? Why is that the word?

Joe: Because the guys feel compelled to keep working these high-pressure jobs, and what happens is — and this goes back to shared goals and communication — I would be retired right now if I had a dollar for every time a client said they can’t believe their spouse doesn’t recognize everything they’re doing for them. The guy is like, “I’m working this job. You drive that car. You wear those clothes. You’ve got the Pottery Barn furniture.” And the wife is like, “That’s great and all, but the trappings are that we’re now trapped in this lifestyle — because I didn’t want this big house, you did. I don’t need the fancy car.”

I live in Southern California and there are more Porsches on the road here than almost any other car. I drive a Subaru Crosstrek because I have a dog and I want to throw him in the back. I don’t want a fancy car. But these folks have gotten trapped in cars and houses and lifestyles, and if they could step back and realize that none of it really matters — what matters is the relationship.

When my wife and I started Equitable Mediation, we were eating nachos for dinner pretty much every night. It was a big deal when we could afford guacamole — we’d been getting by with just cheese and salsa. But we laughed, because we knew we were in this together and it was what we wanted to do. We’d watch reruns of CSI: Miami, our plate of nachos in front of us. We were so happy. We never lived beyond our means, never let our debt get away from us. Humility counts, because it’s the relationship that matters.

Joel: I know people who just don’t understand why my wife and I live the way we do. We’re in a nice house in a great neighborhood, but we drive used cars. Friends have asked me why I don’t buy whatever I want. And I’ve told them that at 50, I’ve learned none of those things made me happy. In fact, buying more things just creates pressure and stress. And then you’re chasing the next thing and the next thing. And when you buy that house that’s four times bigger, the property taxes alone — the electric bill, the cleaning bill — it all adds up.

You’re an expert on divorce and you see that these things make it worse. I hope someone hears that and can communicate it to their spouse. A simpler life, in my opinion — and clearly in yours — is a happier life. Okay, so someone is going through this, or knows someone who is. When is it too late? Can they contact you halfway through?

Joe: The best time to contact us is after you’ve made the decision to divorce, but before you’ve entered the process. That way, the gloves aren’t off. You haven’t each retained lawyers. You haven’t started throwing depositions and demands back and forth. Certainly we do have people who get on that path and then realize, “What the heck are we doing? Let’s get off this roller coaster and mediate.” But the decision to mediate really sets the tone.

Think about it this way: if you and I had plans and I showed up 15 minutes late and you said, “Hey, good to see you,” and I said, “I’m so sorry I’m late,” you’d say, “No problem, let’s get to the game.” As opposed to, “Joe, you wasted my time. You’re so disrespectful.” The tone just changed. And that tone carries. Whatever your first step is, that’s the tone you’re setting. If it starts on the right foot, the process will be amicable, you’ll come to an agreement. If you start on the wrong foot, you know the path.

So as soon as you think about divorce, think about mediation. And the beauty of mediation is that it’s non-binding until you make it so. If you get to the end and you’d feel better having a lawyer review the agreement just to make sure it’s fair, that’s totally fine. You’ve already made your agreements — you’re not walking into the lion’s den. And we have colleagues who are mediation-friendly attorneys, so when a client wants to have someone look it over, we can point them to the right people. A mediation-friendly attorney will support you and maybe say, “Here are a couple of suggestions, but overall this looks good.” That’s a very different experience from picking the wrong attorney who will flip everything over because it’s all billable hours with no end in sight.

Joel: So often in the dad’s groups I’ve seen online, everyone’s first advice is to lawyer up and go hard. And what you’re saying is that’s the first statement you make — and it sets a damaging tone.

Joe: That’s a tremendous mistake. Guys say, “I don’t want to get screwed.” Well, you’re going to get screwed if your attorney’s bills are $200,000. A litigated divorce is going to cost a hundred to $200,000. And if your wife has been working inside the home as a stay-at-home mom, where do you think that money is coming from? Not her paycheck. It’s coming from your savings account.

I’ll tell you a quick story. I was at a networking cocktail hour, standing talking to a colleague, and I overheard an attorney I knew — someone who was very much the billing type — say, loud enough for me to catch it: “I am so happy this case is going to trial. I just got the tuition bill for my youngest from Stanford and this is really going to help me.” I had to put my drink down. That is unfortunately the prevailing thought pattern in that system, because it’s set up to bill by the hour.

We do flat-fee mediation. That’s an important distinction. We have no interest in extending the process because we’re in the box with you. We’ve already told you the price. The more time I spend, the more it costs us. We have every incentive to get you finished and done well.

We get Christmas cards from former clients. I love that. They email us: “How are you guys doing? I’m getting remarried.” That’s what I want to hear. I want to hear from you socially, personally. I don’t want to be talking to you professionally a year from now.

Joel: So someone who’s convinced they need to learn more — equitablemediation.com?

Joe: Exactly. Go to the learning center — there are courses, articles, podcasts, videos. We have a YouTube channel. Our goal from the beginning was to put as much information out there as possible. When my mom was getting divorced, the only person who could answer her questions was a lawyer, and every question cost money by the hour. My mom was barely working at the time. So I decided I’m just going to put as much out there as I can. All-you-can-eat buffet — come on in, read, learn, take what you want. And then if we can help you, there’s a button to get a free consult.

If it’s just you and you’re early in the process, you’ll speak with my partner Cheryl. She’s our divorce coach and helps manage the emotional side of things. If you and your wife have both decided mediation is for you, then you’d book a meeting with me, because I have to work with both people at the same time — I’m neutral and can’t meet with just one side. We practice in California, Washington, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The information on the site is useful nationwide, but if you live in one of those six states, we can help you directly.

Joel: Excellent. Equitablemediation.com, go to the learning center, and reach out through the website if you want to talk. Joe, thank you so much — not just for being here, but for what you do. This is a lot better than being taken to the cleaners by battling it out. You saw firsthand the effect a litigated divorce has on children. You had to live that. So what a responsible and peaceful way to go about it. Thank you very much.

Joe: Thank you, Joel. I appreciate it.

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Bridget: So, what on earth is equitable mediation? That is what we’re going to dive into today. Joe Dillon, an equitable mediator — can you please enlighten us? What is equitable mediation?

Joe: Well, thanks for having me first of all. As a divorce mediator, I help couples reach mutually beneficial agreements — peacefully, amicably, out of court — so it’s a lot more efficient time-wise and cost-effective. Our whole goal is to really focus on building agreements that are, as right there in the name implies, fair and equitable for both parties, not where one side wins at the expense of the other. That’s always our focus and that’s where our name originally comes from.

Bridget: And this is something that you have been providing — and correct me if I’m wrong — to families, because it’s not just the two people splitting up. There are other people impacted. And you’ve been doing this for 18 years.

Joe: That’s a great point. People forget that yes, it’s the spouses that are getting divorced, but there’s a whole bunch of people who are impacted — obviously children number one, but even friends, other family members, neighbors, and things like that. We find that when couples get through the divorce process in a more amicable and peaceful way, they can still maintain some cordial relationship with each other, with their mutual friends, with each other’s families. Because guess what — you’re going to be seeing each other for pretty much the rest of your natural-born lives if you have children. So you might as well get through it as best you can rather than burning the entire bridge down.

Bridget: You know, Joe, I think that is commendable that you’re able to give people divorcing a different self-perception — where they understand that they can be part of something that is not as devastating as a traditional, nasty divorce. I believe that’s been rewarding for you and in turn rewarding for your family. However, here’s the big news and one of the reasons I was so excited to talk to you today: what you’ve learned from your work helping divorcing couples — you’ve now flipped the script. You have written a book for people that are married, to help protect and enhance their marriages so they don’t end up needing the services of Equitable Mediation.

Joe: Yeah. Coming out later this year is the goal. The working title is Every Marriage Is a Negotiation. What I’ve learned as a negotiator — I’ve been a professional negotiator for about 30 years now, in private practice doing divorce mediation for 18 — and all the patterns I’ve seen and witnessed over and over… I sat down one day and was just banging it out in Word, actually using my headset and spitting out these scenarios. And I’m like, man, people fall into these buckets. You don’t want to discount what they’re going through or say, “I can’t believe they didn’t see that coming,” because we’re just not trained for that. But when I looked at all the clients I’ve had and all the patterns, you can bucket them into about 5 to 10 different categories. And what I really boiled it down to is the inability to effectively negotiate.

As a professional negotiator, I love reading the books — Getting to Yes, Never Split the Difference, all the classics, these treatises on business negotiations. But you don’t want to crush your enemy in a marriage. That’s not a good idea. That’s the person you’re sharing a bed with — you’re going to be watching Netflix together on the couch tonight. On the other end, you get those more therapeutic books — love languages and things like that. And while I’m a huge fan of therapy, in the practical world of negotiating what to watch, where to have dinner, where to go on vacation, those books don’t really apply either. I noticed there’s this gap. How do you manage those things practically?

What I’ve noticed is you build up what I’m calling the “bank of goodwill.” If somebody agrees with you a couple of times, you remember that, and you’re more likely to say, “I don’t want to go to Las Vegas on vacation, but my spouse let me buy that guitar and let me go on vacation with my friends — so I’m going to say yes to this, because I realize you have to give to get.” That’s really what I’m trying to teach people: a process and methodology by which they can have these conversations productively and avoid winding up in my office.

Bridget: I think that is just really fantastic — you identified the gap and you’re filling it. Is this something that will only work if both people read it?

Joe: It’ll work if both people are willing to participate. That’s the key in negotiation. Most people think of negotiation as two people, and you need two willing participants. Even if you’ve got somebody who is difficult, you can always get to what in Getting to Yes we call the position behind the position. Sometimes when people are saying no, it’s not for the reason you think it is. It’s our job as the other person in a negotiation to look behind that reason and get to it. That’s a common failing in marriages.

I was having this conversation literally with my wife Cheryl last night. She was talking about her relationship with her mom, and she said, “Every time I talk to my mom and it doesn’t go well, she’s upset and snippy with me.” And she said, “But I know it’s not really about what she’s complaining about — her neighbor cheating at cards. It’s really because she’s upset that her brother hasn’t called her.” It’s that other thing that’s not really the thing. And we are so quick to react to the first thing presented to us — “Well, who cares if they cheated at cards?” — instead of going, “Are you sure that’s really what it’s about? What’s really going on here?” It’s the willingness to listen and ask the right questions that elicits the conversation, engages the negotiation, gets to the heart of the issue, and helps you come to resolution. But it does take practice — it’s not something we’re normally trained to do. That’s what I’m hoping to give people the skills to do.

Bridget: That sounds fascinating. It also sounds like it may have applications outside of just a spousal relationship. Could this improve your communication skills overall with other key relationships?

Joe: Absolutely. When I first wrote the outline — I have a publisher and a consultant helping me — they looked at me and said, “You’re going to be better off if you can really niche down and define this audience and where do you have credibility?” It was actually a friend who was kind of looking at me, waiting for the obvious answer. Because I was writing it for the guy who wants to go on the Vegas boys trip, or the person who wants to get another dog, plus the marriage stuff. And he said, “What do you see all day? Where does your authority lie?” And I said, “Wow — marriages. I’ve seen thousands of couples and the patterns that develop.” So I’ve now started niching it down, which has created a bit of a rewrite. But I’ve got plenty of material to draw from anonymously — we want to keep confidentialities. These are archetypes, personas that fall into certain patterns. It’s easy to write about fictitious characters without naming names because I’ve had 200 clients that fit a single pattern.

Bridget: I think the niche is really going to serve you well because there’s such a need for it. Do you believe this book would be most beneficial for people in a relationship that is still fairly strong wanting to make it stronger, or could it help people who are already in tension and at odds?

Joe: I think it’s more the former. How many people do you know who go to therapy because things are going great? Nobody just sits around one day and says, “Hey, I think I’ll go to therapy — life is awesome.” So when you get to that place, we don’t want to say it’s too late, because therapy is a wonderful step and people can really benefit from it. However, what we see in a lot of relationships is when people are working on themselves, they suddenly get in alignment with their higher self — as my wife-coach Cheryl would say — and they realize their goals are no longer aligned with their spouse’s. And that’s what leads to divorce. I very rarely see people who say, “We went to counseling, it worked for a while, but our kids got older and we just mutually decided.” It’s usually that they couldn’t fix it.

We really want to emphasize that people should make an investment in the most important relationship of their life. They spend all this money on the wedding, all this time having kids, decorating, picking out the best neighborhood — spend a little time building those skills. And our ultimate goal — you heard it here first — my wife and I would love to have seminars for newlyweds, teaching them how to do this.

I’m Catholic, so you know with Catholicism you have Pre-Cana, where you sit with the priest. My wife is not Catholic, so she was like, “We have to do what? We have to talk to who?” We had a very nice priest — it was just an hour, very lovely and spiritual. But it’s not tactical. It doesn’t address what are you going to do when something hits the fan? How do you get through it as a married couple? Because guess what — that will be more of your life: when the dog throws up on the carpet, the kid touches the hot stove, and your spouse announces, “By the way, I just bought a new guitar.”

Bridget: What I hear you saying is the fan is going to turn on at some point, and something will be heading in its direction.

Joe: Correct. One hundred percent.

Bridget: If you and Cheryl create these seminars for newlyweds — what a great wedding gift that could be. And I’m pretty confident that’s not something that’s widespread or readily available out there.

Joe: Yeah. In a nonsecular way, just in the practical way. We all know from getting through life that life is hard and it’s gotten harder, and you really need practical, tactical skills. As much as people say “how romantic” — it’s not that. You just need to realize that life is a series of constant decisions and landmines you need to navigate through. As much as you might want to get swept up in the romance, more of life is less romance and more tactical, right-now things that happen.

Bridget: You mentioned that part of the goal — not just in the book but in the work that you do — is allowing people to live in alignment with their highest self, clearing their vision where they can see themselves in that light. Could you explain a little more about how you’re hoping it will come about in the book and how you’ve seen it come about in your current work?

Joe: Certainly. My wife Cheryl is my partner in Equitable Mediation. I’m the divorce mediator; she is the divorce coach. Working with me is required if you’re going through the divorce process. Working with Cheryl is purely voluntary, and there are folks she really helps move through this process. She works with clients one-on-one, confidentially — we don’t know what each other does with our respective clients. But broadly, what Cheryl tries to help people understand is that divorce is not a failure. She herself was divorced, and rather than looking at it as a failure, she helps people ask: what lessons, what learnings can I take from this? What did I learn about myself? That this relationship did not put me in alignment with who I am or what I want as a person.

Getting people to understand that — as painful and difficult as that might be when you’re in the middle of a divorce — planting that seed gives people the ability to say, “Okay, that was a wonderful period of time. I had a wonderful spouse. Maybe I raised wonderful kids. I had a nice home. I did all those things. That’s a great chapter. I’m going to close that chapter and write a new one.” It’s okay if you’ve outgrown that relationship. If you’ve moved on. Not that we want people to casually throw relationships away, but if you get to the place where you’re really thinking about who you are as a person, what your values are, what you want your life to look like — “Does this relationship serve me in doing that?” — that’s what I mean.

Our clients for the most part are people who still love each other, respect each other, care for each other. I’ve ended sessions and walked out of my office thinking, “Why are they getting divorced?” There was something they couldn’t move past, and my job is not to repair the relationship — it’s to help them end it. But it’s really getting into that space where you realize there’s something else perhaps out there, a different part of yourself calling you to go explore that.

Bridget: What do you do as the CEO of your own life and leader of yourself? What are you doing to live in alignment with your own highest self?

Joe: One of the things about what we do professionally is it’s very easy to get wrapped up in the drama. People are in a place of pain and they’re lashing out, looking for an audience. Couples will sometimes want to argue in front of you like you’re mom or dad — “See what a bad person they are? We didn’t go to my family on Thanksgiving.” Part of what I’ve said to myself is: I’m going to remain a neutral peacemaker. I’ll stand outside the box, float above it — my higher self saying I am here to serve a greater purpose. These folks might not realize that yet, but I want to remove that trauma from both themselves and their family and their circle of influence. By remaining true to myself and how I practice — what I’m willing to do or not do — that really helps me maintain professional distance while still caring as a person and a human. That’s what allows me to continue doing this for 18 years.

Knowing what you want out of a practice, what you’re willing to do, what you know is best for clients, and staying true to that — that’s really the key. And it is hard. There are people who really want to pull you in, and sometimes you just have to understand this is part of the process and stay true to yourself.

Bridget: I believe that you draw on strength from your own childhood and your own personal experiences, and that that has inspired you in Equitable Mediation and in your life passion. If you feel yourself wanting to click the end-Zoom button, do you have a mechanism to stop, reconnect, and remember why you’re so passionate about this?

Joe: One of the things I always start our mediations off with is some “rules of the road.” I share with clients upfront what mediation is and what it is not. By laying that down, I’m not scolding them or being parental or lecturing. I’m simply explaining what we went through and what this is and is not — let’s proceed as adults.

And I always go back to this: my parents litigated their divorce. I’m an only child, so I was in the crosshairs of that. It was one of the most terrible experiences — I never saw my father again after court. It was a disaster. I continue to draw on that experience, knowing that there is another way this thing can go. These folks might not know it because they’re not in it. But if I don’t help get them through this, that’s the path they’ll be on — and that will, whether they know it or not, ruin their lives and more importantly their kids’ lives. That’s what draws me back. I could have been a veterinarian, a professional baseball player, a fireman. But this is where life put me. This was the path the powers that be put me on, and I’m going to take that gift and use it.

Bridget: You’re being a steward of the gifts that were given to you. You’ve enhanced them and attached them to an emotional commitment — that if you can help even one child, that will make you feel successful.

Joe: And that’s perfect. Early on in my career — my very first year in practice — we were building some traction and I was getting a lot of clients, and I felt terrible. After sessions I’d sit in a room quietly. My wife was like, “Is everything okay? Leave me alone, you know…” And then finally she asked what was going on. I said, “Every time I finish with a client, I think: good job, Joe — another marriage you ruined.” And she said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s reframe this. Not another marriage you ruined — that’s another family you saved.”

As soon as she said that, I thought, wow. Wisdom from the mountaintop. And that became my mantra. That ripple effect — those kids are going to have a shot at having a healthy marriage, and they’ll have a shot, and so on and so forth. Like that Buddhist stone thrown in a pond and the ripples that spread out. That’s what really drives me and keeps me going through all these clients and relationships I’ve helped peacefully end.

Bridget: On a completely random side note — from doing this podcast and having some fantastic veterinarians as guests — if you look at overall mental health and happiness, divorce attorneys are actually happier and have stronger mental health than veterinarians.

Joe: It’s actually sad that there’s a mental health crisis among veterinarians. I did not know that.

Bridget: I learned it through the beauty of the podcast. But what a brilliant moment where Cheryl was able to stop you early on and reframe it for you.

Joe: And that’s really what it is. Language is so powerful, and there are many ways to look at things. One of the things I try to impart to clients is that sometimes people ask, “Why did this happen to me?” And it’s — no. This just happened. This didn’t happen to you, this happened. Now what? That’s it.

What I unfortunately saw growing up: my mom was 45 when she got divorced and her life essentially stopped. She’s still alive, but she never dated, never had friends, never went anywhere, never went on vacation — because she was so wrapped up in her identity as a wife. When that relationship ended, that was it for her. And I think, you’re going to live a long time. You need to rebuild and go on. It was like time froze for her. I can understand the trauma — it was a nasty divorce. But you need to work through trauma. That’s where counselors and therapists are invaluable. Unprocessed grief and trauma stay with you and define you. What we try to impart is: don’t let this define you. You still have a life ahead.

Sometimes in session, I’ll even bring some levity. I have a bit of a character. When we’re doing a parenting plan, I’ll say, “Okay, we’ve done the nights, weekends, and holidays. Now — you’re remarried, and it’s Christmas. How are we going to resolve that?” And they look at me like, “What did you just say?” I go, “You guys are 37. You’re not going to get remarried?” “God, no.” I say, “Okay, no problem. Let me grab my data chart…” But you try to give people that vision down the road — “I can’t see it now, but let’s plan for it.”

Bridget: You’re planting the seed of what is highly probable, and letting them address it while they’re still in the safe environment that’s been created by Equitable Mediation.

Joe: Exactly — because now’s the time to have this conversation, not five years from now when somebody announces they’re engaged and the other person is angry about it. Let’s talk now.

Bridget: You and Cheryl co-own the company — you’re the mediation services and she’s the divorce coach. When you were talking about the trauma your mother went through, it made me think: what if there’s someone out there who is stuck post-divorce — maybe it was three years ago, they’ve tried therapy, it’s not working? Could they seek out services from the divorce coach after the fact?

Joe: Certainly. Absolutely. There’s a difference between coaching and therapy. Therapy focuses a lot on the past — what happened? Coaching doesn’t ignore that, but it focuses on where do you want to go? That’s a subtle but powerful mind shift. When we keep talking about the past, we get stuck in our victim story.

I’ll use a silly simple example: we have a dog, and every time I sit down she wants to go outside. Then when I finally get back to my bowl of cereal, she’s barking at the door to come back in. And I just start to spiral — “Why can’t I just get a break? I always do everything around here.” And then Cheryl says, “Calm yourself.” It’s 100% language. We all have that victim story. We want to make sure we think: this didn’t happen to me, this happened. Where do I want to go?

Cheryl has helped people post-divorce think about what’s possible. One of the things you run into — and I am totally guilty of this as an only child perfectionist — I will only do something if I’m already good at it. And my wife says, “How are you going to play the guitar if you don’t start out bad and practice?” I’m like, “Then I don’t want to play the guitar.” She goes, “This makes no sense.” Coaching can help you by saying your life might not look like that now, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get on the path, trip, stumble, fall, climb, get up, dust yourself off, and keep marching forward. Having that coach to plant the seed for you when you’re unable to plant it yourself — that’s really the power of coaching.

Bridget: When you think about the future — you’ve already shared the big goal of developing seminars for newlyweds, there’s probably going to be another book after this one — what else is on the horizon? As you look at living in alignment with your highest self, what else is coming?

Joe: For me, it’s teaching. I’ve enjoyed teaching in the past in a limited capacity — I’ve done some instruction as an assistant for people who teach divorce mediation trainings at Northwestern University. I used to live in Chicago, and in other mediation organizations. I really enjoy having knowledge and imparting it on another generation, not letting that knowledge die with you. We’ve amassed a lot of experience. My wife and I have built businesses together — we even had a cooking school for children as a side venture. She had an executive recruiting business before I met her. We’re very entrepreneurial by nature.

I would love to teach this next generation how to start and run their own business. Even in mediation, what gives me joy is seeing clients come to an agreement themselves. I didn’t tell them what to do, didn’t hoist a settlement on them like a judge or lawyer might — I guided them. That’s what I love. I love guiding people toward a resolution, toward a positive place. And for me, that would definitely be teaching. I’m currently in the process of applying and feeling my way through the academic world, which I’ve learned is radically different from the entrepreneurial and corporate world — it’s a very slow process. Starting now in the hopes that I’ll be teaching in a year or two.

Bridget: You’re looking to do this at the university level.

Joe: Yes. I’ve done it at university levels through training and continuing education rather than at the degree level. I have a master’s in finance and my background in entrepreneurship spans the past 20-some odd years. I run into a lot of young people who are entrepreneurial and want to start their own business, and there are so many things you can read in a book, but unless you have somebody sitting across from you explaining not only what you need to do but how you’ll need to behave and feel when, for example, your website crashes right in the middle of a major advertising campaign — there is no book on that. But I’ve been there. You need to tell people, “Okay, this is going to happen, and this is how we get through it.” Those are the things I really hope to impart. That’s where my passion and my goals will be.

Bridget: I can see where that ties in with living in alignment with your highest self, because you value impacting people and creating a path forward in a variety of ways — not just in dissolving a marriage.

Joe: Mediation itself is educational. You teach people what is a parenting plan, what is child support — you’re constantly educating people. If you’ve seen our website, you’ll know we have this whole resource center. I’ve been writing articles and publishing ebooks and courses for 17 years, always about educating the public. And truthfully, where that came from was my mom.

I remember growing up — she had questions but couldn’t really afford her lawyer. She’d been home most of my life and had just gotten a job when she got an inkling that my dad might leave. I remember her having to save money to buy an hour of the lawyer’s time. She had this pad on the kitchen counter where she’d write down her questions, so that when she had enough saved for that hour, she’d go in and go through them. I remember that and thought, well, that’s wrong. Knowledge should be free. Of course, if you want customized, tailored information you need to pay a professional — but broad general information that answers frequently asked questions? That’s something I wanted to build as a resource. We’ve had a million visitors to our blog over 18 years, and I’m just hoping that somewhere along the way somebody read something that changed the trajectory they were on, and gave them answers they couldn’t otherwise afford.

Bridget: How prevalent are familial estrangements within the immediate family in today’s society, and what kind of impact does that have on your work?

Joe: In the mediation space, it’s less common than perhaps in the litigation space. In what I’ve seen, even in cases where there has been an estrangement, it typically happens with teenage kids — they’ve got a lot of emotions pent up and they’re directing those emotions toward one parent they think is at fault. And really it becomes a function of time.

What I learned over time with my own situation is that there are really three sides to every story. I was raised as an only child with my mom, and from her worldview, my dad was the enemy and she was the saint. I don’t doubt that for a minute. But I’m certain there were also things she did that made my father say, “It’s not worth having to engage with her in order to see my son, so I’m just going to back off.” As you become an adult and you process all of this in your 20s, 30s, and 40s, you realize — huh, there was another side to this story. I just was never told it as a teenager.

So we try to explain to people: this sometimes is a function of time. It can also be a function of going to counseling with your child by yourself as the adult, understanding how you can support them. And here’s the kicker — even if you’re going through the divorce, still go to counseling. Not marriage counseling — it’s no longer about repairing the marriage. It’s how do we be good co-parents? How do we continue to thrive as what I call a “detached family unit” — total oxymoron, I know, like jumbo shrimp. But you want people to understand they’re going to need to co-parent, and therapists and counselors can give you very valuable advice on how to do that.

If you’ve got a parental alienation or estrangement situation, if mom and dad can behave as a unified front — and I know it must be terrible for the parent who’s on the short end of that — it may not be something you’ve done. It may just be the intense emotions this child is experiencing. Just continue to be there for them.

I have a friend who went through this — I won’t say his name out of confidence — but finally, after many years, the tides turned. One day his child looked at him and said, “Huh, you were right.” Talk about the long game — this was decades in the making. But it took forever, and not from any pressure on his part. This adult person had finally evolved to the place where the light bulb went on, and they came to him and said, “You know, you were right.” So there is hope for those parents who are listening.

Bridget: You mentioned the way you and Cheryl both approach the idea that divorce does not mean you’re a failure, that it is not something that happened to you — it is something that happened. Do you also empower people who are in an estrangement situation with that same message?

Joe: Absolutely. And also letting them know that — for example, when we think about parenting plans, we have to outline overnights. People get really hung up on that. They want 50% of the time. We practice in New York City and New Jersey, so anyone who’s ever lived on the East Coast knows that traffic in and out of Manhattan is terrible. When somebody who works on Wall Street and lives in Princeton, New Jersey says “I want 50% custody,” I ask: you’re going to leave your office at — if you’re lucky — 5:00. You’re not home till 7:30. You have a five-year-old sitting out front of daycare. Who’s picking that kid up?

We try to explain to parents that it’s not about the physical proximity of parenting time. It’s about being there — asking questions, showing up at the dance recital, being on the sideline at the soccer game. It can even boil down to child support. Some states like New Jersey and California use an income shares model where the number of overnights directly impacts the calculation. Don’t sweat that. That’s really you being supportive. That’s your way of helping your kids through this process, even if you’re not physically there. My hope is that one day they’ll look back and say, “Hey, I was still able to play soccer, get a cell phone, have a roof over my head and live in that house.” As an adult, they’ll look back and say, “Mom — you did that. Dad — you did that.” And you’ll have that moment. It might not be today, tomorrow, next week, or next year. But my hope is you’ll have that moment, because they will ultimately recognize the sacrifices you made.

Bridget: Well, this has been fascinating, Joe. I’m so excited about your book coming out, and the minute you mentioned the seminars for newlyweds — chef’s kiss. That is a phenomenal idea. I hope you and Cheryl continue to develop that. I would also love to extend an invitation for Cheryl to join us on the Interstate Podcast — I think that would be fantastic.

Joe: I’m sure she’d love it.

Bridget: Equitable Mediation. Joe Dillon, thank you for being our guest and sharing everything you did today.

Joe: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. It’s been a great conversation.

Bridget: And if you’re listening to this episode of the Interstate, I hope you’ll join us again. Have a great day.

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Getting Real with Grief: How Mediation Can Break the Cycle of Intergenerational Trauma That Divorce Can Bring

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Randi Cutler Hall: Hello, hello fellow humans. Welcome to Getting Real with Grief. This podcast is here to benefit you and to benefit humanity by bringing one of the most uncomfortable and misunderstood subjects into your everyday conversations. I’m your host, Randi Cutler Hall. Grief chose me at three years old when I experienced my first major loss. Ever since that, I’ve been obsessed with how we grieve and heal. While I’ve spent my life tending to grief, I’ve been professionally providing grief support since 2014.

Throughout this journey, I’ll be sharing my expert tips for navigating grief and loss and highlighting grief stories that have catalyzed positive change in the world. When I’m not here on this podcast with you, you can find me working with clients, hosting groups and retreats, and facilitating intentional endings through divorce ceremonies and memorials. Sometimes you can even find me right there with you, down on my knees, shedding tears, numbing or screaming. Get ready. This is the podcast you pretended not to need. Yeah, you. I see you. But actually, this is going to meet you in the realest and truest places of your heart. So let’s get into it.

On today’s episode, we are going to be talking about something challenging but really meaningful. We’re going to be talking about grieving the loss of a marriage and what to do when you have already made that decision, and then how to move into and through the divorce process in an intentional way. I’m so grateful and honored to have my guest today, Joe Dillon. He is the Co-Founder of Equitable Mediation Services and he and his wife Cheryl own and operate a divorce mediation and coaching firm that serves clients online throughout the whole United States to help make this process more intentional and less contentious and to help people get through what can be otherwise a really painful and excruciating process. Joe, thank you so much for being here. I’d love to send it over to you. Tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you’re doing in the world.

Joe Dillon: Thanks for having me, Randi. It’s an important conversation and perfectly put. My wife Cheryl and I believe in getting through the divorce process as peacefully, amicably, and cost effectively as possible, and minimizing whatever potential collateral damage there might be to relationships with your children, your friends, and your family. Something you said is so true — it’s to move through the process in an intentional way. Societally, we are taught that divorce has to be a conflict. It has to be a disaster. We need to get a lawyer and fight it out and fight for what we’re entitled to.

We’ve been practicing now coming up on 18 years, and I’ve been mediating for 20. We are proof day in and day out that it does not have to be that way. The feedback from our clients certainly reinforces that. Folks who have come to us over the years have said the same thing over and over — “I spoke to my friend and they got through this process so wonderfully and they’re so grateful to you, and we want to make sure we do the same thing.” That’s the reward — to really hear that people are making that conscious choice to move through the process in this intentional way. And then it allows them to begin that healing process that’s necessary, the grieving process, the loss of that marriage. That’s what I hope we can spend some time exploring today.

Randi: I’m just hearing you name the possibility, the outcome — the banking of the evidence that it doesn’t have to be so tragic and ugly and traumatic and harmful. When a lot of people think about the divorce process, they think about the worst of people coming out. You really see the ugly in somebody. It’s really beautiful and meaningful to think about you and your wife and your firm really prioritizing people having a different kind of experience, so that they can get to the grieving — because this is the severing of the marriage and the death, if you will, of the marriage. I hear you saying let’s do that civilly and with some dignity and let’s try to have the most positive experience you can, so that then you can grieve the relationship and move forward with your life. Absolutely important, especially with such a high divorce rate these days.

Joe: Something you said is spot on — if you get through the process the way we want you to, then you can grieve the loss of the marriage. If you don’t, you have to grieve the divorce process, and that can take years. And then once you’re done with that, you have to grieve the loss of the marriage, and that can take years too. Suddenly 5 to 10 years go by and you’re still wrapped up in this and not moving through it. Everyone moves through grief at their own pace, and I’m not saying they should feel compelled to hurry. But we want to focus on the things that matter — the relationship, the loss of that, the introspection that comes or should come with that — so that you can move forward. Everyone deserves happiness and you can move forward and find that happiness again. But if you’re mad about the ruling or the statute or the thing from the judge, that’s not important. The loss of the relationship is what we really need to be focused on, not some procedural element that happened in a courtroom. Unfortunately, in contentious divorces, that becomes the primary focus of grieving rather than the marriage itself.

Randi: What a different lens this is coming from. I’m imagining the amount of time you get back. In some ways it feels like you’re giving people their life back — giving people an opportunity for a fresh start where they’re not needing to lick their wounds for such a long time. They can just recognize this wasn’t working for whatever reason, find a way to end as amicably as possible, and then move forward. I’m so grateful to you for wanting to do this work and making this your life’s work. How did you get into this? What’s your personal connection with grief and with some of this work?

Joe: My parents litigated their divorce. I am the poster child of what not to do. I watched the certified letters arrive from each attorney. I sat in the lobby of my mom’s attorney’s office. I sat in the back of a courtroom and watched my parents screaming and yelling at each other. There was a moment in the process where my parents were talking about who was going to pay for me to go to college. I was a good student and I wanted to go to a private university, which was far more expensive than the public universities. At the time, my dad was probably making 10 times more than my mom. She had just gone back to work — she had been working inside the home to raise me. He wanted to share the college costs equally. My mom said, “You make 10 times more than I do. How is that going to work?” So they went to court to fight over it. He wanted a 50/50 split.

I’m sitting in the back of the courtroom as a teenager. My mom made me put on a jacket and a tie and get a haircut. I’m watching them screaming and yelling and going back and forth. My mom’s lawyer argued that my father had to pay a little more. The judge said 60/40. Then my dad started yelling at the judge — literally yelling at the judge. The judge banged the gavel and said, “OK, now it’s 70/30.” Then my dad got up and was about to approach the bench and his lawyer had to grab him. The bailiff came over and the judge said, “Would you like to try for 80/20?” They locked my father back down in his chair. This is me at 15 or 16 years old witnessing this.

Then everybody went out into the hallway, and there I was standing with my mom. My father came over — I hadn’t seen him since he had moved out two years prior. I had had no contact with him. My mom said, “This is your son. Don’t you want him? He’s an A student.” He grumbled something and walked away. That was the last time I ever saw or heard from him. I got a letter about 35 years later from his lawyer that he had died. That was it.

I never had the chance as a kid to go through that process and grieve my parents’ divorce. It took me a good 20 to 25 years to really process it because it was this stunted emotional thing that happened that I had no context for. My mom didn’t send me to therapy. I was an only child. I had nobody to talk to. As I realized what was happening and what it meant to be a child of divorce, and as I moved into what I do now professionally, it was such a natural transition to say: in a nutshell, I want to help families avoid what happened to me.

I get to work with client couples every day and it’s very rewarding. We talk about intention, but we also need to talk about authenticity. If you’re going to give people messages like I need to give them, you need to come from an authentic place. I can look people straight in the eye and say, “Listen, I have literally sat in the back of a courtroom and watched my parents argue. Trust me when I tell you, you do not want that for your kids. It will mess them up for a very long time.”

People can grumble at each other, but I can usually get them to a place where they recognize that this is not the way to do this. And then by doing that, we can get through the process far more amicably. We can focus on being good co-parents. And then, as we talked about, you can really focus your efforts on grieving the loss of that relationship — not grieving the process. My mom never got through the trauma of the process, let alone being able to grieve the marriage. She never had many friends. She never dated again. She was 45 when she got divorced. I’m older than that now and I still think I’m young. I feel like it was a life robbed from her — she never got to go through the healing process that she undoubtedly needed. That’s my story as to how I got here. It’s a strange one, but true.

Randi: Thank you for trusting me and trusting our audience and really sharing. I can see how it fuels you. I can see what’s at stake from a very personal place, and that when you’re looking at your clients in the eyes it comes from a really authentic place. That’s the thing that can really get through to people — when people feel like you understand, like you’re showcasing why it’s so important. It feels bittersweet to hear that you are sort of the evidence to bank of “don’t do this, because this is all the ways it can cause harm to yourself, to your life, to your children, to your legacy, to your finances, to your security.” But I’m also recognizing the beauty that you’ve made of your life given these circumstances — while also honoring that you’ve had to do a lot of this from an empty cup and without the modeling of what it could look like if it went well. A teenager sitting in the back of the courtroom, enduring this, witnessing the ugly come out in people — witnessing people fighting in survival mode and having parts of their life really robbed from them when it could have been so different. What a missed opportunity.

Joe: That’s an important lesson for everyone — you can let your pain define you or you can let it fuel you. When I first started as a mediator, I would finish a session and Cheryl would ask how it went — we keep strict confidentiality between us; what clients talk to her about is emotional support, what they talk to me about is financial and tactical. I would go, “Good job, Joe, you just helped end another marriage.” She looked at me and told me something very powerful that stuck with me. She said, “Don’t look at it that way. You’re not destroying their marriage. They came to you voluntarily. Their marriage was over before they came to you. You’re helping them avoid what happened to you. You’re helping them move on with their lives in a more intentional and constructive way.”

As soon as I shifted that perspective — from destroying a marriage to helping prevent intergenerational trauma — so that these couples could model good behavior, everything changed. My dad disappeared. My mom was a train wreck. She did the best she could and I’m grateful to her for everything she did. But it wasn’t like I had a mom who was fully present, because she was dealing with her own stuff. I didn’t have siblings to work through it. I didn’t have a counselor or therapist. You’re sitting there with your grief and your pain and you’re not really sure what to do with it. As a teenager, you’re already filled with all kinds of emotions.

As I think about it now, I’m not a particularly religious person but I am a spiritual person. I think about the Buddhist mantra where you throw a stone into a pond and it creates ripples. I think of myself as the stone being thrown into the pond. My hope is that these ripples will mean that this family can spend holidays together, that those parents can be at the baby showers together, at the weddings and the graduations, that they can go see the grandkids. All of a sudden you’ve got this ripple effect where those kids have seen a model of good co-parenting, so they’re less likely to divorce, and if they do, they’ll behave differently. That’s what drives me. When people really sit down and think about it that way — that what you’re doing right now is going to impact people who aren’t even born yet — that’s a pretty big message, but it’s an important one to share.

Randi: Absolutely. Something I’m really appreciating about what you’re talking about is that people are coming in at a moment that has the potential to be a chapter in the story, and you’re helping them write that chapter in a way that ideally doesn’t let the rest of the story be consumed by it. I see the lens you’re coming at this with — OK, here you are in this moment, and this moment is hard. Yes, you have to divide the stuff and figure out the childcare arrangements and the financial piece and all of the logistics. But I hear you also offering the big picture. What we’re talking about is not just this moment when our kids are six and eight. It’s the moment where our kids are going to graduate, going to have a wedding, going to want us to walk them down the aisle, going to want us to be at their baby shower and be there for all the life milestones. It’s really hitting me — the way you are giving people a way to have there be so much more to the story than just that one chapter they’re writing during a divorce.

Joe: Absolutely. When I graduated high school, this is another story that really reinforces the point. I went to a small high school with a small auditorium. On the day of our graduation, there was rain in the forecast. The school said if it rained, everyone would get only 2 tickets — just mom and dad — because that’s all we could fit in the auditorium. If it didn’t rain, bring whoever you want because it would be on the football field. The threat of rain was coming. We got 2 tickets. My mom had one of them and wanted to give the other to my father. He was not going to come unless he could bring his girlfriend. My mom tried to explain it wasn’t her being difficult — the school had literally given her two tickets and she was taking one of them as mom and he could have the other. He refused to come. The bitter irony was that we actually had the graduation outside. The weather did hold, but he still didn’t come.

I remember just being there, looking around. My aunt and uncle came, all my cousins were there — it was great. But as a kid, you still look up in the stands looking for your parents. He chose not to come. And that’s part of that whole short-sightedness — you don’t realize that as the adult, your behavior is going to imprint a moment on your kid that 40 years later they still remember, and not in a pleasant way. That’s what we try to share with folks. It’s here, it’s now, it’s raw, it’s real, it stinks. But this too shall pass if you work on it and help usher it forward.

Randi: If you want it — at the end of the day, it’s a choice. Sometimes people will say, who are your favorite clients to work with? And it’s the clients that want to work, that want to make the change, that are invested. At the end of the day, you can give people all the tools, but if people want to choose it, you have this path and these resources for people who want to make that choice and move it forward well.

Joe: You’ve got to be engaged. I can’t do the work. We’re like a personal trainer. I can show you how to use the machines. I can help you lace up your sneakers. I can stand next to you. But I can’t lift the weights. You have to lift the weights.

Randi: Totally. I’m also really touched professionally, hearing this and understanding the grief process in the ways that I do. I also lived through a really contentious custody battle. That was a lot of my early life. I’m just really touched — what I would have given to have had this process, to have had these options for the different parties involved in my life. Many of my listeners know my story — my parents died when I was three years old and the question became, where are these kids going to go? It was my maternal grandparents and it was my dad’s brother and sister-in-law, my aunt and uncle. There was a very contentious custody battle trying to identify what’s in the best interests of the kids, what’s in the best interests of the adults, who is going to uphold the values of these parents the most. It was a really hard and horrific period of time. I was very young, so I wasn’t in courtrooms in the same way, but the ways it affected and fractured my family — it cost my grandparents their life savings. It ended up being a very unnecessarily contentious process that then took an entire family away from grieving my parents and grieving this whole situation. We could have come together in a different way. In a deeply personal way, I’m really moved by what you’re describing because I can see how from the earliest parts of my life, this could have redefined what my family looked like and how we showed up for each other.

Joe: People don’t realize that kids are sponges. If you don’t believe that, say a swear word in front of a 2-year-old and I promise you within an hour that kid will be running through your living room yelling it. We don’t even realize that kids are listening. They’re on all the time.

Randi: And learning what it looks like to relate, what conflict resolution looks like, what it looks like when you’re upset and need something and how to get your needs met. There’s a lot being modeled in those moments.

Joe: Something you said is very important to mention — “what’s in the best interests of the children.” As a professional negotiator, that’s where my training comes in. My training at Harvard, for example, is in professional negotiation. When you talk about negotiation, we have two schools of thought — interest-based and positional. Positional is what most people engage in. Yes or no, right. If I win, you lose. If we go to this restaurant, you’re going to hate it. Interest-based is about finding the shared ground, finding the common interest, finding what’s best for everyone involved.

Unfortunately, as a species — limited resources, survival of the fittest, social Darwinism — whoever’s biggest and strongest takes what they need. That’s part of what we’re all DNA-programmed to do. And unfortunately, that positional stuff shows up in our relationships, in our divorces, in all the places where if it didn’t, we’d be far better off. When you think about asking for something or talking through something, whatever it is in your life, try to think win-win. Try to think, what outcome is going to benefit everybody here? That’s also going to help with reducing conflict. Interest-based rather than positional-based — that’s an important message to remember.

Randi: That’s really, really an important piece. And something else you said earlier was that you can either be defined by the pain or help it move you forward, turn it into something meaningful. In some ways, to get a little meta, that’s sort of the purpose of this whole podcast. I see you in the motif of the wounded healer — not in a cheesy sense, but in the sense of really taking something, going through something, and not wanting other people to suffer the way you suffered. Coming to be able to help and contribute in the world from the pain that you know, letting that be the fuel that serves you. I’m really seeing the ways your story has you — you decided to alchemize the pain, you decided not to let it define you, and you decided to make it into something that is serving the people in the moment you’re with, but also many, many generations forward and the fabric of how we relate as a society.

Joe: It’s really rewarding. We’ll hear from former clients who are getting remarried, or we’ll get Christmas cards from them. We’ve even met up with some of them — who wants to meet with their divorce mediator and coach? But we’ve actually built nice working relationships with people. Long after their divorce is over, they reach out and say, “I know you guys live about an hour from us. Would you ever want to meet for coffee?” Of course, why not? That just goes to show you the power of going through the process in an intentional manner and being able to grieve it and move forward.

And now as the mediator, you’re sometimes looking at a former client with their new partner and you need a cover story — did we work together? Did we used to shop at the same Costco? And then they’ll say, “He knows you were my divorce mediator.” And I go, thank God. You’ve got to be quick on your feet.

Randi: I know that as a therapist. I don’t want to out you. I usually negotiate with clients ahead of time about what to do if they see me out in the world.

Joe: Standing next to each other at the produce section trying to pick out apples — yeah, that’s awkward.

Randi: Can we get into some of the nitty gritty? You have so much knowledge about this process and how to help it go well. What is it that you want listeners to know, especially if they are at the point where they’ve made the decision to end their marriage and are now moving into the beginning or middle of the process?

Joe: The first thing I’d always say is get educated. There are a lot of resources out there. I remember as a kid sitting in the lobby of my mom’s lawyer’s office. Part of it would always be that she had to save up enough money to be able to go pay for an hour of his time. She would come in with a litany of questions because she wasn’t really working full time and she didn’t have information. She was getting information from unreliable sources — friends and family filling her head with all kinds of stuff about what you’re entitled to and how things should work. They’re not lawyers. They’re family. They defend you and protect you.

When we first started, I decided I was going to blog and provide information freely. My goal was to say, information should be free and freely available. If I’ve got knowledge as a professional, I’ll write an article about it. Go read it. I hope you find it helpful. If we can help you, let us know. That has worked for us over the past 18 years. Over a million people have visited our website. You think to yourself, who am I? Just a kid whose parents had a terrible divorce who chose to do something about it. But the feedback has been that the resources have been invaluable. So start at our website, equitablemediation.com. We write content that applies nationwide, and we also have content specific to the states we focus on. Go read and get educated on the process. If you can dispel some of the myths, that will help you as you enter the process. For example, the common myth that mothers get 100% of child custody — that’s still out there and fathers assume they’ll never see their kids. That’s not how this works. I’d guess 80% of our clients have 50/50 parenting plans. When we first started, it was 10%. We’ve tracked this over the years. Yet that myth still persists.

The next thing is to learn what your options are. I want everybody to mediate, but not everyone can. It takes a certain level of emotional maturity and the ability to negotiate on your own behalf. For example, if someone is suffering from substance abuse or has a mental condition that would preclude them from negotiating in their own best interest, that’s where we want them to have an advocate — that’s where they would need a lawyer. Or if someone’s not fully disclosing assets, if there’s concern about financial impropriety, that’s also not mediation-friendly. On our blog, in the Learning Center, we have a resource on the five options for divorce. It asks you a bunch of questions, gives you a quiz, and helps you identify which process is right for you.

Then once you’ve done that, you really need to go in with an understanding of what it is you want and what you’re willing to give. When people enter these negotiations, they always come in focused on what they deserve, what they’re entitled to, letting their anger fuel them. At the end of the day, I can promise you — I’ve seen thousands of these things — one person doesn’t get everything and one person doesn’t walk away with nothing. You have to give to get. That’s what we were talking about with interest-based negotiation. It doesn’t necessarily have to be dollar-for-dollar 50/50. If I have an interest in keeping the house and you’re closer to retirement and want to keep the 401K even though it’s worth more — I’ll make that trade. So if you’re educated, you’ve chosen your divorce process, and you’re willing to give to get, that’s going to get you really far. It’s going to help you move through the process in a much more expeditious and cost-effective fashion.

I jokingly say to my clients: you’ll know I did my job if at the end of our mediation, both of you look at me and go, “You were OK.” When both of you are slightly annoyed with me, I’ve done an excellent job — because that means I forced you to think about things. I challenged you. I questioned you. I made you give things to get things. They kind of laugh and say, “You know what, that’s about right.” I’m like, look, I’m a nice guy, but I have a very specific role here. We could be friends later, five years down the road. And then when they smile and laugh about it, I say, now the healing begins. Now the hard work begins. I’ve helped you do all the paperwork and the technical stuff. But now this is really where you need to dig in and say, let me work on myself so I can see what role I played in this relationship and its outcome so I don’t repeat it moving forward — and so I can show up as the best version of me for my friends, my family, my kids, my co-workers.

That’s really where we try to get folks to. It’s kind of a ritual to acknowledge that this marriage was sacred and this was a meaningful period of life. Not all of it perhaps, but there’s always going to be something — even in marriages that weren’t 25 years long, even if they were five years long — happy moments you can reflect on. That’s what’s got to fuel you to say, it wasn’t all bad. These are the things I enjoyed. It’s now over, and it’s time for us to move forward.

Randi: I heard the importance of getting educated and learning what your options are. Then being able to choose what you want and what you’re willing to give up — what are my hard lines, what are the places where there’s wiggle room? Then having clarity about that opens you up for the final piece — which feels so foreign, honestly — being able to move forward and look for your own role in how things unfolded so you don’t repeat it in future relationships. That piece feels so absent from today’s divorce dialogue. But the whole process is about leaving not so contentiously that you can actually do the grieving work of the relationship and the personal work to help set future relationships up for success.

Joe: Absolutely. As we say, you move into, through, and past the divorce process. Those are the three steps, and we don’t want to discount any of them. We don’t want to make it sound like, “Oh, I’m past it, I’m over it.” Being past it just means you’re past the paperwork, the negotiation, the child support discussions. Now you’re standing on the other side, coming outside, looking around going — now what? That’s where the work begins. That’s where the smart folks understand it’s a good idea to take a pause and not jump into a relationship right away. It’s a good idea to examine what happened and what role you played in it. As much as we like to point the finger, it takes two to tango. This thing didn’t go sideways just because of one person — well, maybe it did, but it’s hard to really say there’s just one person that caused a marriage to end unless something is completely egregious. In mediation, we don’t see a lot of that, because people tend to be self-selecting and want to work together.

We’ve had cases where we’ve been unable to get people to agreement, and it hasn’t been because of our process or our work. It’s just been something so extreme that even if I had known it in advance, I would have said, mediation is not going to work for you. This is clearly litigation territory — forensic accounting, dissipation of assets — things that are outside the normal purview of a functional divorce. And that sounds like a contradiction — what does a functional divorce mean? But the truth is you can have a functional divorce. The relationship may not have been great, but we can move through this as adults. That’s the takeaway.

Randi: And I hear that comes from a commitment to wanting it to be amicable. My husband and I, when we first started dating and then got married, made a commitment to each other — we’re 14 years in and we need to remind ourselves of it often — to keep it awesome. What do we have to do to keep it awesome? And the commitment was, how do we keep making it feel good for each other? That being the priority and the value. If we want to have an awesome relationship, what changes do I need to make and what changes do you need to make to keep it awesome? I hear a shift to your frame being — how do we keep this not contentious? How do we come out the other side being able to bear each other? How do we come out the other side willing to prioritize being a part of our children’s lives going forward? The people who benefit from this most are the ones willing to commit to having a good process and having it lead somewhere amicable.

Joe: You don’t want it to destroy you. You have to live your life. Especially when kids are involved — these children need you. They need you focused and there. Kids can appear to be resilient, but they do need their parents. Anyone listening with children knows that kids are amazing at finding the fissure in a relationship. If they ask mom and don’t get the answer they like, and dad gives them the answer they want, they’re going to dad every time — or they’re going to pit mom and dad against each other. Those kids, they aren’t not clever.

As parents, you need to be united. Now think about a divorce situation. You’ve established two separate households and you’re co-parenting. Kids are going back and forth. What about screen time? Diet? Exercise? Maybe one parent smokes and the other doesn’t. These are all things you never gave second thought to before, but they become magnified and important when you’re trying to have a unified front.

Randi: Those are hard enough when you’re married.

Joe: Exactly. And now if you go through a contentious divorce, you’re going to feed the kids microwave pizzas just to spite your ex-spouse. You’re harming your kids. We want to get you through that process so you can put that away and go, OK, what do we need to do to raise these awesome kids?

Randi: And when there’s kids involved, whether you like each other or not, you’re in each other’s lives for as long as your kid’s life — and hopefully that’s longer than your own life. So you’re still signing up for a forever deal. It’s just — do you want to like the person you have to collaborate with, or not?

Joe: One of my favorite stories that I hope resonates with folks — my cousin went through a rough divorce. It wasn’t exactly the greatest divorce she and her ex-husband had. But they had one son, and the father never blinked twice about getting him whatever he needed. I think he realized as his son moved into his teenage years that he needed his support. Whether he was fully conscious of it or not, he made a choice. My cousin got remarried, and he and her new husband became the sports coaches for the son together. I remember going to one of my cousin’s games and sitting up in the bleachers. The new husband had his arm around the ex-husband and they were both cheering for the kid. I’m looking at this going, this is awesome. This is exactly what we’re talking about.

Put that in a Hallmark card — jumping up and down and high-fiving each other because they recognize that regardless of how I feel about you, it’s all about this kid who’s on the field. We want him to succeed and we want to support him. It was a pretty awesome moment. You couldn’t write a better storybook ending. That’s what we want to share with folks. When you mediate, you can have those moments. If you’re litigating, the new husband is going to hate the ex-husband because of everything that transpired. That kid just wanted to run across the field and do his thing and have people cheering for him. That’s all he cared about at 12 years old. He wasn’t caring about courtrooms and battles and child support.

Randi: Yeah, really reinforcing — let’s focus on what really matters, the bigger picture. My hope is that listeners who are in this process hear that that’s possible. Even just as an example — I want to have the two dads on the sideline cheering. You can have that too.

Joe: You can. It’s a choice. It’s a conscious, intentional choice.

Randi: That’s really beautiful. I want to move into a different realm — the realm of grief. One of the things I do with clients who are navigating divorce and really wanting to honor the ending of a relationship — they’ve made the decision, sold their house, gone through the process, the divorce is final — is something I call a divorce ceremony. I also do this for relationship endings without marriage. We do some of what you shared — a looking back, what I learned in this relationship, who did I become, what am I grateful for to this person, who am I on the other side, what wishes do I have for this person as they move forward. We do a whole intentional honoring of the relationship in service of creating closure. It’s almost like the funeral of the relationship — the death and then the funeral after all the logistics. Are there other ways you see couples honoring endings, or ways you and your business help people bring closure?

Joe: I think people underestimate that we all go through the grieving process, and the funeral is a great example. Why do we have funerals? It’s because we need that sense of community. We need to talk about that person. We need that closure, that finality. As we walk out of the cemetery, it helps us close the lid on it.

One thing I like to do with clients is have a moment of reflection where I remind them of what they’ve successfully accomplished. 98% of our clients are able to come to an agreement through mediation with us — so essentially all of our clients. I say to them, let’s take a moment and reflect on what you did. You managed to get a divorce using mediation. You managed to sit together — we do it virtually via Zoom — and go through what I would argue is the single most difficult negotiation of your life. You did it willingly. And you came to agreement. Look at the impossibly difficult thing you did.

And it’s great when kids are involved, because you can use the example: so now when Olivia comes home from high school and she’s decided to shave half her head, dye the other half purple, and has a nose ring — and you flip your lid and call the other parent — just remember, you were able to get through your divorce. You can get through that too. They laugh and it’s a moment of levity, but it’s real. I say, look at the hard work you did. You should be proud of yourself. I know it wasn’t easy. I appreciate you letting us guide you through this. Remember this moment — because I promise you there are going to be bumps in the road. Arguments about new spouses, child support, the kid coming home with the shaved head. Think about the work you did here and how you got through this extremely difficult thing, and that will serve you well.

It’s a choice. You can choose to react or you can choose to turn toward each other. Your kids are going to need you to turn toward each other as parents, despite your marital status.

Randi: I love that. There’s a therapy term called externalizing the problem — taking the problem and placing it outside of the two people rather than between them, so they can be on the same team both looking at the problem together. I see you doing that, bringing it back home to say, look at this intense negotiation you just lived through together. It feels like a last moment of pointing out how they were a team.

Joe: That’s part of the idea — to remind them that despite getting a divorce, you can still do great things together and work together as a team. That’s especially important in co-parenting.

Randi: And taxes are still going to come up that year. Things come up. And that person, in some ways, will always be a part of your story and identity.

Joe: Absolutely. You want to be able to talk about them fondly. Say you’re dating now and you go on a first date with someone and all you’re doing is talking about how terrible your ex is — the other person is going to think you obviously haven’t let this go, you obviously haven’t processed what happened. Whereas if you get on that first date and say, “Yeah, I ended this relationship with a really nice person, it just didn’t work out, but I’m grateful for the time I had with them and what they taught me” — the other person is far more likely to see that as real maturity.

As we move through these processes, if we want to get remarried or enter a new relationship, we have to make ourselves open to that. And grieving what we’ve lost is one very powerful way to do that. I was engaged before I got married. I explained to Cheryl — I said I got a box, I put those things in it, I looked through it, I picked them up and looked at them, and then I put a lid on the box. I processed it. I keep it handy to remind myself of what could or couldn’t be, or what I might have done differently. But I have put a lid on it. I sorted through the items, I picked them up, I looked at them, I processed them, and now I’m ready to move forward. I’m a visual guy.

Randi: What I appreciate about that metaphor is you’re not tucking it away and you’re not burning it. What you’re doing is containing it. It’s something you’re not afraid to look at, something that doesn’t unravel you if you do. But it’s there. It’s contained. It had its moment. It had its chapter. And now we’re on to a new chapter.

Joe: Exactly. 100%.

Randi: Really beautiful. I’m just really heartwarmed by the whole scope of this conversation. As we’re closing out, is there anything more you want our listeners to know, and anything you want them to know about your practice?

Joe: If you’re entering the divorce process, there’s often a lot of reflection on failure. “What did I do? I can’t believe this is happening. Am I a failure?” One very powerful thing to remember — Cheryl reminds me of this, and we all have friends who do this — is the phrase, “I can’t believe this is happening to me.” It’s not happening to you. It’s happening because divorce happens. It’s also happening to your spouse, to your kids, to your friends, to your family. I’d encourage folks who are going through or thinking about divorce to make that subtle mind shift from “why is this happening to me?” — which is victim mode — to “this is happening. How can I move through this process the best way I can so I can grieve this loss and move forward?” That is the more constructive dialogue.

I know it’s hard and I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. But I want people to listen to that shift — from victim mindset to “I can do this” mindset. I say to clients, I know you’re not happy to be here, and I’m totally OK with that. We’re not planning a vacation. I’m not a travel agent. But I appreciate you being here, because you’re choosing to be here and choosing to move forward. If you’re facing a divorce — this isn’t happening to you. It’s perfectly normal. Lots of people do this. People grow, people change, people evolve. Sometimes people evolve and they’re not tethered together and they just sort of fade apart. Nobody did anything wrong. It’s part of the process. It’s now your job to acknowledge it, honor it, recognize it, heal, and move forward.

Randi: I love that so much. I’ve heard a different version of that phrase — “it’s not happening to you, it’s happening for you.” That can turn it toward seeing the opportunity in it. But even just the refocusing — it’s happening, and taking the personalized “taking it personally” out of it, just acknowledging this is happening, it’s happening to all of us involved. I can see how that subtle language shift moves you out of victim mode and out of seeing only your own experience without seeing the ripple effects on the whole system. Thank you for that reminder.

Joe: It helps people get through. As far as us — if anybody is in need of information or thinking about the divorce process, our website is definitely the best place: equitablemediation.com. There is a Learning Center where you’ll find all kinds of articles, ebooks, videos, and podcasts.

We practice specifically in six states — Washington, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Those are places we’re very comfortable with how divorce works. We have practiced in other states as well, so if you’re not in one of those six, you can still reach out. We might be able to help if it’s somewhere we’re familiar with. You can also schedule a call with Cheryl — Cheryl coaches nationwide. No matter where you’re listening from, if you’re going through the divorce process, I think the combination of therapy and coaching is such a powerful combination. It’s two sides of the same coin — it’s unpacking and moving forward. Coaching can be very tactical, which is what’s nice about it. Cheryl’s background is as a certified divorce coach, with a background in psychology as well. In her previous career she was an executive recruiter. A lot of times people going through divorce need to reinvent their careers, and she can help them in that very tactical way. It’s a sense of self — I need to establish my own identity.

Randi: How do I rebuild my whole life?

Joe: Exactly. She works with clients throughout the US and has even worked with clients in other countries. We always say — if we can help, we would love to. And if we can’t help, we can certainly direct you to someone who can. As long as you’re willing to be engaged in the process, you can certainly mediate your divorce.

Randi: Joe, I’m so touched. I hear your commitment and your passion for providing resources and getting people educated — not just for the people who are your clients, but for the world, for expanding people’s ideas of what this process can look like. I really feel the sincerity and the heart in what you’re doing, your own personal experience feeding into it and seeing all of the clients you’ve been able to support through this process. Thank you so, so much for the work that you’re doing.

Joe: Thank you for having me, Randi. I appreciate the opportunity to share. I hope someone out there finds this in their moment of darkness and it’s that little candlelight that says — OK, there’s a way through.

Randi: This is your sign. If you were looking for a sign, this is it.

Joe: This is it. We’re here for you when you’re ready.

Randi: Thank you so much. What a gift to have you. What a beautiful conversation.

featIf you’re a business owner or self-employed professional facing divorce in New York, calculating child support is more complex than for W-2 employees. Your income fluctuates, business expenses blur the lines between professional and personal, and tax returns don’t always tell the complete story. Understanding how New York approaches self-employment income is essential to reaching a fair agreement.

How New York Defines Income for Self-Employed Parents

In New York, child support calculations use Child Support Standards Act income. For business owners, this includes all business income before expenses are deducted—wages or salary you pay yourself, business profits or distributions, and any other compensation from business operations.

The starting point is your tax returns: Schedule C for sole proprietors, or K-1s for partnerships and S corporations. However, tax returns aren’t the final word.

New York applies percentages to combined parental income up to $183,000: 17 percent for one child, 25 percent for two, 29 percent for three, increasing for additional children. For income above $183,000, treatment becomes a matter for negotiation based on the children’s needs.

The Add-Back Question: What Business Expenses Count?

Not every expense that reduces your taxable income for IRS purposes reduces your income for child support purposes in New York. The state adds explicitly back certain self-employment deductions that provide personal benefits.

New York law explicitly addresses two categories. First, depreciation deductions that exceed straight-line depreciation get added back. If you’re using accelerated depreciation methods to reduce your taxable income faster than the asset actually loses value, that excess gets added back for child support purposes.

Second, entertainment and travel allowances get added back to the extent they reduce your personal expenditures. If you’re deducting business meals you would have eaten anyway, travel that combines business with personal vacation, or vehicle expenses for a car you drive for both business and personal use, the portion providing personal benefit gets added back.

Beyond these statutory add-backs, what counts as reasonable versus unreasonable business expenses becomes a key negotiation point. Equipment purchases that genuinely expand your business capacity are typically accepted as legitimate. Salaries paid to family members who perform actual work at market rates are generally considered reasonable. Professional fees, insurance, and operational costs necessary to run your business usually aren’t questioned.

However, excessive expenses that seem designed to reduce your apparent income artificially raise concerns. Paying yourself a minimal salary while reinvesting heavily in the business right before or during divorce proceedings invites scrutiny. Suddenly deducting large amounts for equipment or renovations that weren’t part of your regular pattern creates suspicion. Running personal expenses through your business account undermines your credibility.

The Lifestyle Analysis Reality

Lifestyle analysis compares your actual living expenses against reported income. If you report earning $50,000 annually but maintain a $4,000 monthly mortgage, drive a luxury vehicle, and live a $100,000 lifestyle, the numbers don’t match. Bank statements and spending patterns reveal what your income actually supports.

This isn’t about catching people in lies. Business owners sometimes don’t realize how much personal benefit flows through business deductions—such as cell phones, vehicles, meals, and home offices. That’s thoughtful tax planning, but those benefits represent real income for child support purposes.

Why Documentation Matters

Thorough documentation is your most important asset. The burden of proving your income rests on you as the business owner.

You’ll need at least 3 years of personal and business tax returns, including all schedules. Profit and loss statements prepared by an accountant carry more weight. Bank statements for business and personal accounts help complete the picture. Corporate entities need to file corporate tax returns and prepare financial statements.

Clear separation between business and personal expenses protects you. Mixing personal purchases into business accounts or paying yourself irregularly creates ambiguity that rarely works in your favor.

For variable income businesses, multiple years establish patterns. If your income genuinely fluctuates based on market conditions or projects, documentation is crucial. One unusual year shouldn’t define an ongoing obligation if it doesn’t reflect the typical earning capacity.

How Business Structure Affects Income Evaluation

How your business is structured affects income evaluation. Sole proprietors report via Schedule C, making business income straightforward but requiring careful distinction between legitimate and personal expenses.

Partnerships use K-1 forms to show distributive shares. What matters is what you were entitled to take, not just what you withdrew. Money left in the partnership may still count as available income.

S corporations are unique. You might pay yourself a modest W-2 salary while taking larger distributions. Both get examined. If your salary seems unreasonably low, your income might be attributed to reasonable compensation for your work.

Regardless of structure, how you organize compensation for tax purposes doesn’t necessarily control for child support purposes.

Transparency as Strategy in Mediation

When navigating child support as a business owner, transparency is your most effective strategy.

Attempting to hide income or inflate expenses typically backfires. The tools for uncovering financial manipulation are sophisticated, and consequences extend beyond paying correct support. Discovery destroys credibility on every divorce issue.

More importantly, manipulation creates adversarial dynamics that make mediation impossible. Once trust breaks, you’re headed for litigation, where you lose control and spend more.

In mediation, complete transparency creates productive negotiation. When both parents see the whole financial picture, honest conversations about reasonable support become possible. You can discuss averaging variable income, distinguishing necessary from discretionary expenses, and handling legitimate reinvestment needs.

With my finance background and MBA, I’ve helped business-owning couples navigate these complexities. We analyze financials together, discuss reasonable expenses, and create a shared understanding of available income. This collaborative approach maintains credibility while protecting legitimate business interests.

Practical Approaches for Business Owners

Several strategies help business owners reach fair agreements. Using multiple years of returns to calculate average income smooths fluctuations. If your business is seasonal or project-based, averaging provides accuracy.

Agreeing on reasonable expenses before calculating support saves conflict. Rather than arguing line items, discuss expense categories and reach an agreement on deductions versus add-backs.

Including review provisions in building contracts makes sense for variable-income projects. Annual or biennial reviews with adjustment provisions protect both parents and ensure appropriate support as circumstances evolve.

For businesses that need genuine reinvestment, mediation enables creative solutions. You might base support on actual distributions rather than total income, or agree to higher support when business is strong, with provisions for lean periods. These flexible approaches aren’t available in litigation.

Moving Forward with Confidence

Child support calculations for self-employed parents and business owners in New York require navigating complex financial territory. What counts as income, which expenses are deductible, and how to present your financial picture accurately all require careful consideration and expertise.

Mediation offers a path to work through these complexities while maintaining control over the outcome. Rather than having decisions made for you based on rigid formulas applied to financial information that may not capture your complete situation, you can engage in informed discussions about what’s fair and workable for your family.

With expertise in both financial analysis and mediation, we help business-owning couples create child support agreements that accurately reflect income, account for legitimate business needs, and provide appropriate support for children. The combination of financial acumen and mediation skills allows us to guide you through the technical aspects while facilitating the difficult conversations that arise when finances are complex.

If you’re a business owner facing divorce in New York, the path forward doesn’t have to mean contentious litigation over financial records and arguments about every business expense. Mediation provides an opportunity to approach these issues transparently, negotiate fairly, and reach agreements that work for both parents while adequately supporting your children.

If your income includes bonuses, commissions, or stock options, or fluctuates significantly, calculating child support can be complex. New York includes all variable income sources in calculations, but how they’re treated requires sophisticated financial analysis and careful planning.

Everything Counts as Income

New York takes a comprehensive view. Year-end bonuses, overtime pay, commission checks, vested restricted stock units, and signing bonuses—all count as income. This makes policy sense but creates practical challenges when income varies significantly. If you earned a $50,000 bonus last year but expect only $20,000 this year, how does that get treated? If commissions swing between $30,000 and $80,000, what number gets used?

These questions have real financial consequences and can either facilitate cooperation or fuel ongoing disputes.

The W-2 Default and When It Misleads

New York typically starts with your most recent W-2. If it shows $120,000, including a $20,000 bonus, that entire amount gets used. This is simple and objective—but challenging when last year doesn’t reflect current reality. Changed jobs? Different bonus structure? Worked exceptionally overtime that won’t recur?

You can’t simply say “ignore my W-2.” You need documentation and a credible explanation showing why historical numbers mislead about the current earning capacity.

Averaging: Smoothing the Volatility

When income varies year to year, averaging over multiple years works well. Instead of last year’s $150,000 with a $40,000 bonus, average three years at $120,000, $150,000, and $130,000—yielding $133,000.

This makes sense for commission income, project-based work, or fluctuating bonuses. It prevents artificially high or low calculations from being based on a single unusual year. The key question: how many years? Three often strikes the right balance, but it depends on your income patterns. With financial training, I help couples analyze patterns, identify trends versus anomalies, and determine appropriate periods.

Base Plus Variable Structures

Another approach: separate base salary from variable compensation. If you earn $100,000 base plus $25,000 average bonus, calculate child support on the base with an additional percentage applied to bonuses when received.

Basic support might use $100,000, with 17% (one child) or 25% (two children) of any bonus paid within 30 days of receipt. This creates predictability while ensuring windfalls get shared proportionally. Tax treatment matters—bonuses are subject to different withholding than regular salary, affecting after-tax cash flow.

Equity Compensation Complexity

Stock options, RSUs, and other equity compensation add layers of complexity. When RSUs vest, they create W-2 income. If 1,000 shares vest at $50, that’s $50,000 of taxable compensation—even though portions get withheld for taxes and you may not sell remaining shares. For child support, that $50,000 counts.

Stock options are trickier. Grant creates no value. Vesting gives you rights but no income. Only exercise and sale create taxable income—and child support income. This creates timing mismatches. Support might be calculated on $200,000, including projected equity, but cash flow might not materialize on the same schedule as tax liability.

Sophisticated planning is essential. We model different scenarios: exercise and sell immediately, hold for capital gains, or defer to future years. Each has a different cash flow and tax implications affecting the real economic cost.

One-Time Windfalls Get Special Treatment

Signing bonuses, litigation settlements, or inheritances aren’t recurring income. New York recognizes this. While such amounts might be considered when evaluating overall resources, they typically shouldn’t drive ongoing monthly obligations. A $50,000 signing bonus doesn’t mean income is now $50,000 higher every year.

Cash Flow Versus Income

Child support income isn’t the same as cash flow. You might have significant W-2 income but limited cash due to illiquid equity, required business reinvestment, or debt obligations.

If $150,000 income includes $40,000 in RSUs you’re holding for capital gains, you don’t have that cash today. Yet child support based on that income creates an immediate cash obligation.

In mediation, we address this directly. Perhaps support on equity is paid when shares are sold rather than when they vest. Or different percentages for base versus equity, reflecting cash flow reality. These solutions require financial sophistication to model correctly, such as net present value, after-tax positions, and price volatility scenarios.

Tax Treatment Matters

Variable income creates tax complexity, affecting support economics. Bonuses often have withholding rates as high as 37% federal plus state and local. When you receive a $30,000 bonus, your take-home might be $18,000 after taxes. But child support gets calculated on the gross amount.

RSUs create more complexity. Automatic tax withholding at vesting might not suffice for high earners—you might need additional cash for taxes, reducing available funds. With my MBA, I help couples model after-tax cash flow under different structures, ensuring arrangements make economic sense.

The Modification Challenge

Variable income creates modification risk. If support is set at $150,000, including a $40,000 bonus, but next year your bonus is $20,000, do you seek modification? If it rebounds to $35,000 the following year, does the other parent?

Constant modification is expensive and undermines stability. Building flexibility into initial agreements prevents battles. True-up provisions, bonus tables, or base-plus-variable structures reduce the need for modifications while ensuring fairness.

Why Mediation Works for Variable Income

In litigation, you argue about whether last year’s income is “representative,” whether bonuses are “recurring,” and how to project future earnings. A stranger makes determinations without understanding your compensation structure.

In mediation, you have sophisticated conversations about how income actually works. You know whether bonuses are discretionary or guaranteed. You understand commission structures. You provide context about unusual years.

More importantly, you craft tailored solutions—three-year averages with annual true-ups. Base amounts with clear bonus treatment—equity compensation is handled differently than cash bonuses, reflecting liquidity and tax differences. When income comes from multiple sources—$120,000 base, $30,000 average bonus, speculative stock options, variable consulting—each stream gets handled appropriately.

The Value of Financial Expertise

Variable income requires sophisticated analysis: income-smoothing techniques, tax treatment of different compensation arrangements, present-value calculations for deferred structures, and cash flow modeling. Having a mediator with an MBA becomes invaluable here.

I help analyze compensation structures and model approaches, understand tax implications, and create arrangements that work with your financial reality. We review years of data to identify patterns, model cash flow under different structures, and calculate after-tax costs. This analytical rigor creates confidence in arrangements.

Moving Forward with Clarity

If income includes bonuses, commissions, overtime, or equity compensation, child support requires more than formula calculations. You need thoughtful analysis of how compensation works, realistic cash flow planning, and creative structuring accommodating variability while meeting children’s needs.

Work with a mediator bringing genuine financial expertise to complex situations. Don’t leave decisions to litigation where nuance gets lost. Create arrangements that reflect actual circumstances, accommodate variable income realities, and minimize ongoing conflict. Your compensation structure shouldn’t fuel perpetual disputes.

On March 1, 2026, NY State updated it’s child support income cap, raising it to $193,000. But suppose you and your spouse have a combined income exceeding $193,000? In that case, you’re facing one of the most unpredictable aspects of New York divorce: how child support gets calculated above the statutory cap. For high-income families, this uncertainty can be financially significant. Understanding how this works—and choosing mediation over litigation—gives you control over an otherwise uncertain outcome.

Understanding the Cap Structure

New York applies a straightforward formula to combined parental income up to $193,000: 17% for one child, 25% for two, 29% for three, 31% for four, and at least 35% for five or more. This formula is mandatory and predictable.

Once your combined income crosses that threshold, predictability ends. New York doesn’t require the same formula for excess income. Instead, multiple approaches are possible, and the outcome depends heavily on how you navigate the process.

Three Approaches Above the Cap

Apply the Standard Percentage to All Excess—Continue using the same percentage. With two children and a combined income of $300,000, that means 25% of the $107,000 above the cap. Straightforward but may exceed actual needs.

Apply the Percentage to Some Excess—Set an effective cap between $193,000 and actual income. Using $250,000 as the effective cap, even when the actual income is $300,000. This middle-ground approach is common.

Use Specific Factors Instead of Formula—Abandon the formula for excess income and focus on factors New York identifies as relevant. This is where mediation becomes most valuable.

Ten Factors That Matter Above the Cap

New York identifies ten factors for evaluating child support above the cap, and understanding these shows where negotiation leverage exists.

1. Financial resources of both parents and children, including assets and trust funds, matter beyond just income.
2. Physical and emotional health considerations become essential, especially for individuals with special needs who require ongoing medical care or specialized services.
3. The standard of living your children enjoyed matters—if your family traveled internationally or provided specific educational opportunities, those patterns count.
4. Even tax consequences can affect everyone’s actual financial position.
5. Non-monetary contributions both parents make toward care are considered.
6. Educational needs—private school, special education, or college planning—should be factored in.
7. Substantial income differences
8. The needs of other children either parent supports (though only if those children have fewer resources available).
9. Extraordinary visitation expenses can be factored in when they substantially reduce the other parent’s costs.
10. Any other relevant factors ensure that unique circumstances are considered.

Why Litigation is Unpredictable for High-Income Cases

There’s no single “right” answer above the cap. Judges have enormous discretion—one might apply the formula to $500,000 of income while another caps it at $250,000 with identical facts.

This creates three problems. First, genuine unpredictability makes settlement negotiations harder. Second, high-income litigation gets expensive—easily $50,000 or more in fees. Third and most important, litigation removes your control. A stranger who doesn’t know your family makes the final decision about your finances.

How Mediation Changes the Equation

In mediation, you control the outcome. Instead of a judge deciding, you and your spouse negotiate an agreement that works for your family.

The flexibility above the cap becomes an advantage. You can apply percentages to a chosen income level, put funds into educational trusts instead of monthly payments, or agree on amounts reflecting actual expenses. With financial expertise in the room, we model scenarios, understand tax implications, and ensure numbers work for both of you. Which means I can help you understand the real economic impact of different approaches.

A Real-World Example

Consider a couple with two children and a combined income of $350,000—$200,000 from one parent and $150,000 from the other. The first $193,000 calculation is straightforward: 25% equals $45,750 annually, divided proportionally.

But the remaining $157,000? Simply applying 25% adds $39,250, bringing total support to $85,000 annually. That might be appropriate for some families with significant expenses or special needs. For others, it exceeds actual needs.

In mediation, this couple examines real expenses. Private school costs $40,000 annually. Extracurricular activities and summer programs cost $15,000. Healthcare and therapy for a child with learning differences costs $8,000. When you add housing, food, clothing, and basics, the real number becomes clear—and they can agree on an approach reflecting that reality rather than leaving it to a judge.

Protecting Children’s Lifestyle While Being Fair

Your children shouldn’t suffer financially because you’re divorcing if they’ve grown up with certain advantages—quality education, travel, enrichment opportunities—maintaining those matters. At the same time, support should reflect actual needs rather than simply applying percentages to large numbers.

In mediation, we have honest conversations about what your children truly need. What does maintaining their standard of living actually require? These discussions benefit from financial expertise—understanding after-tax impact, modeling different scenarios, and finding solutions that work for both parents.

Educational Expenses Deserve Special Attention

Above-cap income becomes particularly relevant for educational expenses. New York allows educational expense awards beyond basic support, but they aren’t automatic—they depend on factors like parental educational background and family history.

In mediation, you address this directly. Apply the standard formula to a specific income level for basic support, then separately address educational expenses through specific allocation or 529 plan funding. This creative problem-solving is difficult in litigation but natural in mediation.

Looking at the Complete Picture

Child support doesn’t exist in isolation. You’re negotiating property division, possibly spousal maintenance, and other financial aspects. For high-income families, these pieces interact significantly.

Spousal maintenance affects both parents’ incomes for child support purposes. Asset division generating future income matters too. This integrated approach is a strength in mediation—instead of fighting separate battles, you see how the pieces fit together and make trade-offs that reflect your priorities.

Why Financial Expertise Matters

Above-cap calculations involve complex analysis. High incomes come from multiple sources—salary, bonuses, equity compensation, business income, and investments. Understanding how these work and interact with child support requires real financial acumen.

My MBA and extensive financial training have become particularly valuable here. I help you understand business income calculations, equity compensation treatment, variable bonus handling, and structures accommodating income fluctuations. High-income situations also involve tax complexity, where after-tax cash flow analysis matters significantly.

Moving Forward with Control

If your combined income exceeds $183,000, you face significant financial decisions about child support. Litigation means uncertainty, expense, and loss of control. Mediation means clarity, efficiency, and the maintenance of decision-making authority.

Work with a mediator who brings both extensive divorce mediation experience and advanced financial expertise to navigate the complexity of high-income child support. Your children deserve parents who move forward cooperatively, and you deserve a process that preserves your resources.

The flexibility in New York’s above-cap approach isn’t a problem—it’s an opportunity. An opportunity to craft arrangements truly serving your children’s needs while being fair to both parents. An opportunity to maintain control over critical financial decisions. An opportunity to resolve this collaboratively rather than contentiously. If you’re ready to navigate this thoughtfully and keep control over outcomes affecting your children’s well-being, let’s discuss how mediation can help.

When you’re facing divorce in New York with children involved, one of your biggest questions is: “How much will child support be?” The answer starts with understanding what income actually counts—and in New York, the definition is broader than most people realize.

This isn’t just about your salary. New York takes a comprehensive approach to defining income, which means you need to understand both what counts and what is deducted. As someone with an MBA in finance, I’ve helped countless couples navigate these calculations in mediation, and getting this right from the start makes all the difference.

How New York Approaches Child Support

New York uses the Child Support Standards Act (CSSA), which applies an income shares model. Both parents’ incomes are combined, then a percentage is applied based on the number of children.

For 2025, New York applies these percentages to combined parental income up to $183,000: 17% for one child, 25% for two children, 29% for three children, 31% for four children, and at least 35% for five or more children. What trips people up is that the income used in this calculation isn’t what you report on your tax return, and it’s definitely not your take-home pay.

What Income Gets Counted

New York takes a comprehensive approach. The starting point is your gross income—what you reported (or should have reported) on your most recent federal tax return. This includes wages, salary, bonuses, and commissions. But it doesn’t stop there.

Self-employment income, business income, investment income from stocks or bonds, and rental income all count. So do workers’ compensation, disability benefits, unemployment insurance, Social Security benefits, veterans benefits, pensions, retirement income, fellowships, stipends, and annuity payments.
Here’s where financial expertise matters: New York also considers “perquisites”—employer-provided benefits such as meals, lodging, company cars, or club memberships. If these benefits reduce your personal expenses or provide economic value, they can count as income. The question is: does this benefit put money in your pocket or reduce what you’d otherwise spend?

CSSA Income vs. Taxable Income: A Critical Difference

Your CSSA income for child support is not the same as your taxable income. For taxes, you get numerous deductions—mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and retirement contributions. For child support? Those don’t apply.

New York uses “adjusted gross income,” which starts with your gross income and subtracts only specific allowable deductions. This means tax planning strategies that minimize your tax liability don’t reduce your child support income. The calculation focuses on your actual earning capacity, not your tax optimization.

Allowable Deductions

New York permits only specific deductions when calculating adjusted gross income. The most common are FICA taxes—Social Security and Medicare. These mandatory payroll deductions come right off the top.

If you live in New York City or Yonkers, you can deduct local income taxes. Note that state and federal income taxes are not deductible for child support purposes.

Other allowable deductions include child support you’re paying for other children under a court order or written agreement, alimony or spousal maintenance paid to a former spouse (not in your current case), and unreimbursed employee business expenses that don’t reduce your personal living expenses.

For most W-2 employees, the calculation is straightforward: take your gross income and deduct approximately 9% for FICA and local taxes if applicable. If you earn $100,000 annually, your adjusted gross income would be roughly $91,000.

Self-Employment Income: Added Complexity

If you’re self-employed or own a business, the calculation becomes more complex. New York recognizes legitimate business expenses that reduce taxable income. However, not every tax deduction applies to child support.

The key is distinguishing genuine business expenses from personal expenses flowing through your business. New York adds back certain deductions, including depreciation amounts exceeding straight-line depreciation, and entertainment and travel expenses that reduce personal expenditures.

Example: You own a consulting business with $200,000 in gross income. You deduct $30,000 in expenses, resulting in $170,000 in net income on your tax return. But if $5,000 were business meals primarily benefiting you personally, and $3,000 represented accelerated depreciation, those get added back. Your CSSA income would be $178,000, not $170,000.

This isn’t about whether expenses are legitimate tax deductions—they may be perfectly appropriate. The question is whether they represent cash genuinely unavailable to you, or expenses providing personal economic benefit.

Rental Income Considerations

Many people assume rental income for child support equals what they report on Schedule E—rental income minus expenses and depreciation. Not quite.

New York considers rental income and allows deductions for genuine costs of maintaining the property for rental purposes. But depreciation—a paper loss, not an actual cash outlay—may not be fully deductible. If you provide substantial services beyond basic maintenance, the income may be treated differently.

Why Accurate Income Calculation Matters

Getting the income calculation right from the beginning sets the foundation for everything else. When couples enter mediation without a clear understanding of income calculation, they propose arrangements based on incomplete information, leading to frustration and agreements that may not hold up.

In mediation, we work through your actual financial situation together, examining income sources, identifying what counts, and calculating adjusted gross income accurately. This transparency helps both of you understand the numbers and creates trust.

Financial expertise makes this process smoother. With my background in finance and training from Harvard and MIT, I help you understand the nuances that matter for your specific situation—whether dealing with variable compensation, equity awards, business income, or multiple income sources.

Beyond the Basic Calculation

Income calculation is just the first step. New York also requires parents to share certain expenses beyond basic child support: children’s health insurance costs, unreimbursed medical expenses, and work-related childcare expenses. These get divided between you proportionally based on your respective incomes.

Understanding your complete picture—basic support plus add-ons—helps you plan realistically and ensures fair contributions to your children’s needs.

The Mediation Advantage

In litigation, you submit financial affidavits, attorneys argue over what counts as income, and a stranger makes decisions about your finances without understanding your family. The process is expensive, adversarial, and often produces ill-fitting results.

Mediation offers a different path. We examine your financial situation together in a transparent manner. You both see the same information, understand the calculations, and discuss what makes sense for your family. When questions arise about income or variable compensation, we work through them collaboratively.

This approach is especially valuable with complex income situations. If you have bonuses, stock options, restricted stock units, or equity compensation, determining child support income requires careful analysis. In mediation, we explore these complexities and find solutions that work for both of you and reflect your actual financial reality.

Moving Forward with Confidence

Understanding how New York calculates child support income helps you make informed decisions. You’ll know what to expect, can plan accordingly, and can engage meaningfully during mediation.

Every family’s financial situation is unique. We don’t use one-size-fits-all approaches. Whether you’re dealing with straightforward W-2 income or complex compensation structures, we develop a personalized mediation plan tailored to your specific circumstances.

Choose mediation and keep control of your family’s financial future. Work with a mediator who combines advanced financial training with extensive divorce mediation experience to guide you through these calculations accurately and fairly. Your children deserve parents who move forward cooperatively, and you deserve a process that preserves resources for your family rather than diverting them to legal battles. If you’re ready to take a peaceful path that gives you control over decisions affecting your children’s future, let’s discuss how mediation can help you navigate child support and all the other vital issues in your divorce.

If you’re navigating divorce or separation in New Jersey with children of different ages, you might have questions about how child support works as children grow. Maybe you’ve heard that child support amounts change when children become teenagers, or you’re wondering whether you need to plan for adjustments as your young children age.

Here’s what you need to know: New Jersey recognizes that teenagers typically cost more to raise than younger children. The child support guidelines include a specific adjustment to account for this reality. Understanding how this works—and what it means for your financial planning—can help you approach these conversations with clarity and confidence.

The 14.6% Adjustment for Children Age 12 and Older

New Jersey’s child support guidelines include a 14.6% upward adjustment for children who are 12 years old or older at the time the initial child support order is established. This adjustment recognizes economic research showing that teenagers have higher expenses than younger children.

If your child is 12 or older when your initial support calculation is made, the guideline amount is increased by 14.6%. That adjustment then remains in place for all future support determinations for that child—it doesn’t go away as the child ages.

Here’s a practical example. Suppose the basic child support calculation for a family shows a monthly obligation of $1,000. If the child is under 12 at the time of the initial order, the obligation is $1,000 per month. If the child is 12 or older at the time of the initial order, the guidelines apply the 14.6% adjustment, resulting in approximately $1,150 per month.

Why New Jersey Makes This Distinction

The reasoning behind this adjustment makes sense from a financial planning perspective. The child support guidelines are based on economic data on child-rearing costs, averaged from birth through age 18. Research shows costs increase as children age—teenagers need more food, larger clothing, higher activity costs, increased transportation, and more expensive technology and healthcare than younger children.

When an order is established while children are young, it remains in effect through the teenage years as expenses naturally increase. The averaged guidelines already account for this progression. But when a child is already 12 or older at the initial calculation, they won’t have those earlier “less expensive” years to average out. The 14.6% adjustment ensures teenagers receive appropriate support reflecting their actual age-related costs.

What Does NOT Happen Automatically

Here’s something critical to understand: New Jersey does NOT automatically increase child support when a child turns 12. The 14.6% adjustment only applies if the child is already 12 or older when the initial child support order is entered.

This is a common misconception. Parents sometimes assume that when their 10-year-old turns 12, child support will automatically increase by 14.6%. That’s not how it works. If the initial support order was established when your child was under 12, that order continues without the age-based adjustment, even after the child turns 12.

A recent appellate case, Dunigan v. Wilson, specifically addressed this issue. One parent argued that child support should increase by 14.6% when the younger child turned 12, even though the initial order had been established years earlier when the child was much younger. The court rejected this argument, making clear that the adjustment applies only to the child’s age at the time of the initial order—not when the child later reaches age 12.

This distinction matters enormously for your financial planning and for how you approach your separation agreement.

Planning Considerations for Parents with Young Children

If you’re divorcing with young children, understanding this age-based adjustment helps you plan for the future more realistically. You know that your children’s actual expenses will increase as they age, even though New Jersey doesn’t require automatic child support increases when they turn 12.

This raises an important question: Do you want to build in your own adjustment mechanisms to account for increasing teenage costs? Some families choose to establish support amounts that remain stable throughout childhood, understanding that both parents will naturally spend more on teenagers. Others prefer to include provisions for reviewing and potentially adjusting support when children reach certain ages. What matters is making a thoughtful decision that works for your family’s circumstances.

The Actual Cost Differences Between Young Children and Teenagers

Understanding what actually costs more for teenagers versus younger children can inform your planning conversations. Common patterns include substantially higher food costs (especially with adolescent boys), more expensive clothing in larger sizes, escalating activity expenses as programs become more competitive, increased technology needs for school, transportation costs including driving lessons and teen insurance, multiplying social expenses, more complex healthcare, including orthodontics, and college preparation investments.

How to Approach Age-Based Planning in Mediation

Mediation offers you the opportunity to discuss these realities openly and plan thoughtfully for how you’ll handle increasing expenses as your children age.

Rather than fighting over whether support should automatically increase at certain ages, you can have honest conversations about your children’s actual needs and your financial capacities. Some families agree to review child support when children reach specific ages. Others handle increased costs through direct expense sharing for categories like car insurance or activities. Some establish the initial support amount with teenagers’ projected costs in mind.

The key is to approach these conversations with your children’s needs in mind rather than positioning for financial advantage. When you both understand that teenagers genuinely cost more, you can work together to ensure adequate support while being fair to both parents.

Why Litigation Handles This Poorly

Litigation struggles with age-based child support planning in ways that mediation doesn’t. When you’re in court, discussions about future cost increases become adversarial arguments rather than collaborative planning. One parent fights to lock in current amounts, the other demands automatic escalations, and both get pushed toward extreme positions rather than realistic planning.

Judges have limited ability to craft nuanced solutions. They apply the guidelines for children’s current ages without helping families plan for transitions years ahead. Orders often address current needs but don’t anticipate how things will evolve.

The rigidity of litigation-driven orders creates problems. If your order lacks review provisions and your teenager’s expenses significantly exceed what support covers, you’re back fighting in court. If it includes automatic increases that become unnecessary or unaffordable, you’re similarly back in court.

Mediation enables forward-thinking, collaborative planning that accounts for your specific children and circumstances. You can build in flexibility for future adjustments, establish review mechanisms that don’t require court intervention, and create provisions that address your family’s anticipated needs.

Planning for Families with Children of Different Ages

If you have multiple children at different ages, the age-based adjustment adds complexity. New Jersey’s guidelines calculate support based on the number of children, but apply the 14.6% adjustment to the entire calculation if any child is 12 or older at the initial order. In mediation, you can discuss whether this approach makes sense for your family, or whether you want to structure support differently better to reflect your children’s actual ages and costs.

Building in Review Mechanisms

Rather than trying to predict precisely how expenses will change as children age, many parents build review mechanisms into their agreements. You might agree to review support amounts when specific events occur—such as when children start high school, get driver’s licenses, or at predetermined intervals. These reviews create structured opportunities to reassess whether current arrangements still work without requiring adversarial court proceedings. Some parents also specify that certain expenses, such as teen car insurance or high-activity fees, will be handled outside basic support and shared proportionately.

Moving Forward with Realistic Planning

New Jersey’s 14.6% adjustment for teenagers reflects the economic reality that older children cost more to raise. Understanding when this adjustment applies—and when it doesn’t—helps you plan realistically.

If your children are young, you know expenses will increase as they age, even though New Jersey doesn’t require automatic increases at age 12. Thinking through how you want to handle this progression now saves conflict later. If your children are already teenagers, the guidelines recognize through the age-based adjustment that expenses are genuinely higher.

Working with a divorce mediator who understands both the financial realities of raising children at different ages and New Jersey’s specific guidelines makes an enormous difference. I can help you think through realistic projections of how expenses will evolve, structure agreements to account for these changes, and build in flexibility for the unknowns you’ll face years from now.

This is precisely the kind of future-focused planning that distinguishes mediation from litigation. We don’t just tackle immediate challenges—we help you anticipate what’s coming and plan for future changes affecting both you and your kids. You’ll move forward confidently, knowing you’ve created a framework that can adapt as your children grow.

You can have honest conversations about what raising teenagers actually costs, acknowledge the realities both parents will face, and structure support arrangements that work for your specific family. Whether your children are toddlers or teenagers, thoughtful planning now lays a foundation that will serve you well throughout their childhood and beyond.

Suppose you’re navigating divorce or separation in New Jersey with children who will eventually attend college. In that case, you’ve probably heard something surprising: New Jersey is one of the few states where divorced parents can be obligated to contribute to their children’s college expenses, even after they turn 18.

This adds complexity to your financial planning. You’re not just thinking about child support through high school—you’re also considering how to handle what could be one of the most significant expenses your family will face: higher education.

Understanding how college expense obligations work and approaching these discussions strategically can help you reach agreements that serve your children’s educational aspirations while being realistic about your financial capabilities.

Why New Jersey Is Different

In most states, child support obligations end when children reach age 18. Parents have no legal obligation to pay for college, though many choose to.

New Jersey takes a different approach, recognizing that in today’s economy, post-secondary education is often essential for young adults to achieve financial independence. New Jersey’s framework allows divorced parents to contribute to college expenses based on various factors.

This doesn’t mean every parent must pay for college regardless of circumstances, but you need to address this issue thoughtfully as part of your separation agreement.

How College Obligations Differ from Child Support

College expense obligations are separate from child support. Child support typically ends when your child graduates from high school or turns 19, whichever occurs later. College contributions are a distinct obligation with different considerations.

Child support is calculated using established guidelines based on income and parenting time. College expense determinations involve individualized analysis of factors such as parents’ financial resources, children’s academic abilities, the standard of living children would have enjoyed in an intact family, and the availability of financial aid.

From a financial planning perspective, college expenses—tuition, room and board, books, fees—differ dramatically from ongoing child-rearing costs. They’re typically larger, more concentrated in time, and more variable depending on educational choices.

Factors Affecting College Expense Obligations

Multiple factors come into play when determining college expense obligations: parents’ financial resources (both income and assets), the child’s academic performance and aptitude, the standard of living during marriage, the availability of financial aid and scholarships, and the relationship between parent and child. Understanding these helps you approach negotiations strategically.

Starting the Conversation Early

One of the biggest mistakes parents make is avoiding college expense discussions during divorce because the children are young. They think they’ll figure it out when the time comes.

This creates problems. When children are approaching college age, and you haven’t addressed this in your separation agreement, you’re back to negotiating at a time when emotions are high, and deadlines are pressing.

The better approach is to address college expenses in your initial agreement, even if children are young. You don’t need exact dollar amounts for events a decade away, but you can establish a framework for how decisions will be made and costs shared.

Framework Provisions for College Expenses

Rather than predicting exact costs years in advance, establish a framework that guides without locking you into specifics that may become inappropriate. Your framework should address the type of schools you’ll consider (in-state public universities, private institutions, out-of-state schools), how costs will be shared between parents (many use the same proportionate income split as child support), what expenses will be covered (tuition, room and board, books, technology), and how the child will contribute (summer employment, work-study, modest student loans).

Caps and Limits

Many parents include cost limitations, providing predictability and protection. Common approaches include capping parental obligation at the cost of a state university (with the child covering any difference for more expensive schools), limiting support to four years of undergraduate education, or establishing maximum dollar amounts with inflation-adjustment clauses.

The Financial Aid Conversation

Understanding financial aid is essential for realistic planning. For divorced parents, financial aid applications typically focus on the custodial parent’s income and assets. Merit-based scholarships can significantly reduce costs. Some parents require children to maximize financial aid efforts as a condition of parental contributions.

Balancing Aspirations with Reality

Balancing children’s educational aspirations with family financial realities requires honest conversations and realistic analysis. You need to consider not just whether you can technically afford college expenses, but whether doing so is sustainable given other obligations and retirement needs. Overextending for college when you haven’t secured your own financial future creates long-term problems.

Why Future-Focused Planning Makes Mediation Essential for College Expenses

Here’s what makes college expense planning uniquely suited to mediation: you’re making decisions today about events that might be 10 or 15 years away, requiring forward-thinking, collaborative planning that litigation cannot provide.

In litigation, discussions of college expenses are treated as adversarial either-or questions. Attorneys fight over positions, pushing parents toward extremes—either overly generous commitments that become unsustainable or inadequate provisions that fail to serve children’s needs. The adversarial process makes nuanced, forward-thinking conversations impossible.

Litigation produces rigid provisions that don’t account for enormous uncertainty. You have no idea what colleges will cost, what financial aid will be available, what your income will be, or what your children’s academic trajectory will look like years from now. Litigation pushes you toward fixed commitments that may become completely inappropriate when the time comes.

The timing is terrible in litigation. You’re making these decisions during one of the most stressful periods of your life. Attorneys are focused on finalizing your divorce, not on sophisticated long-term educational planning. College provisions are often treated as an afterthought rather than given careful consideration.

Most problematically, litigation creates adversarial dynamics around your children’s education. When you’ve fought bitterly over college provisions during divorce, that conflict carries forward. Every decision about applications, school choice, and expenses becomes a potential battle.

Mediation offers genuine future-focused planning that serves your children’s interests while being realistic about financial capabilities and building in needed flexibility for decisions years away.

We don’t just tackle the immediate challenges of your divorce—we help you anticipate potential speed bumps and plan for future changes that affect you and your kids. For college expenses, this means thoughtful conversations about your family’s educational values, realistic financial capabilities, and the creation of frameworks that guide decisions years from now without locking you into inappropriate specifics.

We can explore: What did you envision for your children’s education? How have expectations evolved? What are you realistically able to contribute? What role should your children play? How do you want to approach school selection together when the time comes? These conversations lay the foundation for cooperative decision-making throughout the college years.

In mediation, we build in the flexibility you need. We create frameworks that account for income changes, establish review mechanisms as the college approaches, and build processes for making joint decisions. You’re not locked into rigid commitments made during divorce—you’re establishing collaborative structures for making decisions together when you have better information.

The cooperative foundation you build around college planning carries forward powerfully. When you’ve worked together to create thoughtful provisions, you’re far more likely to continue that collaboration through the college years. You’ll visit campuses together, review financial aid packages jointly, and make decisions cooperatively because that’s the pattern you established.

This future-focused approach helps you move forward confidently, without looking back. You’re not creating provisions designed to punish your ex or protect yourself from worst-case scenarios. You’re planning for your children’s educational success in ways that reflect your family’s values and capabilities.

Ongoing Communication and Flexibility

College expense planning requires ongoing communication as children grow. The framework you establish creates the foundation, but you’ll revisit details as college approaches. When children reach high school, start having specific conversations about college plans and financial realities. Your agreement should anticipate the need for flexibility as circumstances, income, and children’s academic trajectories evolve.

Moving Forward with Expert Financial Guidance

New Jersey’s approach to college expense obligations means you need to think about higher education costs as part of your comprehensive financial planning during divorce. The most successful approach is to establish a clear framework in your separation agreement that guides expectations and cost-sharing, while remaining flexible enough to adapt.

This is exactly where having a divorce mediator with financial expertise becomes invaluable. With an MBA in finance and extensive experience helping families plan for major expenses, I can help you think through the financial implications of different approaches to college expenses. We can analyze what contributions are realistic given your income and other obligations, run scenarios for different cost levels, and structure agreements that protect both your children’s educational opportunities and your own financial security.

We help you anticipate the speed bumps that might arise—income changes, children’s evolving academic interests, shifts in financial aid policies—and plan for future changes affecting both you and your kids. You’ll move forward confidently, without looking back, knowing you’ve created a solid foundation for supporting your children’s education cooperatively.

When your family’s financial picture involves complexity—variable income, business ownership, or sophisticated assets—having someone who can help you think through how college contributions fit into the larger financial landscape becomes even more critical.

You don’t need to make rigid commitments during the stress of divorce or surrender these critical decisions to litigation. In mediation, you can engage in thoughtful, forward-thinking planning for college expenses, building a cooperative framework that will serve your family well for years to come.

Suppose you’re navigating divorce or separation in New Jersey. In that case, you’ve learned that child support is calculated using state guidelines that provide a formula based on both parents’ incomes and your parenting arrangement. These guidelines are designed to produce fair results for most families.

But what happens when your family doesn’t fit neatly into the guidelines? What if you have extraordinary expenses that the guidelines don’t capture, or circumstances that make the standard calculation seem inappropriate? This is where deviations come into play.

Understanding when deviations are appropriate and how to calculate them fairly can help you reach an agreement that truly serves your children’s needs and your family’s unique circumstances.

What Is a Deviation?

A deviation is a departure from the child support amount that would result from applying New Jersey’s guidelines. When you deviate, you’re either increasing or decreasing the support amount based on specific factors that make the guideline amount unjust or inappropriate for your situation.

The guidelines are presumptively correct, meaning that New Jersey assumes the guideline amount is appropriate. To deviate, you need specific reasons why it wouldn’t be just or appropriate for your family.

Deviations aren’t about one parent wanting to pay less or receive more. They’re about ensuring the support amount accurately reflects your family’s actual circumstances and serves your children’s best interests.

The Framework for Deviations

New Jersey recognizes that no formula can perfectly capture every family’s unique situation. The child support framework allows parents negotiating agreements to deviate from the guidelines when appropriate factors are present.

Several specific factors can justify deviations, though the list isn’t exhaustive. What matters is that any deviation must be supported by specific reasons why the guideline amount is unjust or inappropriate for your particular circumstances.

Common Reasons for Upward Deviations

Upward deviations increase child support above the guideline amount, typically arising when children have needs or expenses exceeding what the guidelines anticipate.

Extraordinary medical expenses are a common reason—your child’s healthcare needs exceed normal childhood expenses due to chronic conditions requiring ongoing treatment, specialized therapies, or expensive medications, even after insurance. The basic support amount might not adequately cover these costs.

Special educational needs can also justify upward deviations. Maybe your child has learning disabilities requiring private school placement or intensive tutoring, or talents warranting significant investment in lessons or coaching.

Childcare costs significantly exceeding typical amounts for your area might support an upward deviation, particularly if necessary for parents to maintain employment.

Another factor is when one parent has received significant assets in the property division. If one parent received substantial marital assets—the family home with significant equity, retirement accounts, or investments—that parent’s ability to pay support might exceed what their income alone would suggest.

Common Reasons for Downward Deviations

Downward deviations reduce child support below the guideline amount, often due to circumstances that make the guideline excessive given actual needs or genuine constraints.

Obligations to other children from different relationships can support downward deviations. If a parent is already paying child support for children from a prior relationship, their ability to pay guideline support for subsequent children may be genuinely constrained.

Substantial parenting time just below the shared parenting threshold might justify a deviation. Perhaps one parent has 26% of overnights—just below 28%—but is still incurring high direct costs.

Significant non-discretionary debt obligations sometimes justify deviations, such as overwhelming medical debt from serious illness or other unavoidable financial commitments.

Another situation involves older children whose direct expenses are genuinely lower than the guidelines assume, such as teenagers who don’t need childcare.

Factors That Don’t Justify Deviations

It’s equally important to understand what doesn’t justify deviations. Lifestyle choices and discretionary expenses typically don’t support departing from the guidelines.

Choosing to live in an expensive area doesn’t justify a downward deviation. Voluntary career changes that reduce income typically don’t support downward deviations. New family expenses—such as remarriage and a new spouse’s spending preferences—don’t justify reducing support for existing children. Your children’s financial needs come first.

Why Deviations Become Battles in Litigation, but Opportunities in Mediation

Here’s what you need to understand about deviations: they represent precisely the kind of nuanced, family-specific analysis where litigation fails spectacularly, and mediation excels.

In litigation, deviations become adversarial fights in which each side brings in experts to argue competing positions on whether circumstances justify departing from the guidelines. You’ll pay attorneys significant fees to fight over whether your situation truly warrants a deviation, with each side taking extreme positions designed to create negotiating room rather than honestly assessing what makes sense.

The adversarial process encourages parents to exaggerate factors supporting their preferred outcome. A parent seeking an upward deviation might inflate expense estimates or overstate needs. A parent seeking a downward deviation might maximize perceived constraints while minimizing actual resources. The truth gets lost in strategic positioning.

Litigation also tends to create all-or-nothing outcomes. Either the deviation gets approved, or it doesn’t, often without the nuanced middle ground that would actually serve the family best. You miss the opportunity to explore creative solutions such as partial deviations, temporary adjustments that evolve as circumstances change, or alternative approaches to addressing the underlying issues driving the deviation request.

The documentation burden in litigation becomes overwhelming. Attorneys demand extensive proof of every claim, turning the process into an expensive evidence-gathering exercise rather than a practical discussion about what makes sense. You spend thousands on expert reports and documentation that could have been spent on your children.

Perhaps most importantly, litigation makes deviations feel like victories or defeats rather than practical solutions. When you’ve fought hard for a deviation, you become invested in that position even if circumstances change. When a deviation gets imposed over your objection, you resent it even if it’s actually reasonable. The adversarial process poisons what should be a collaborative assessment of your family’s needs.

Mediation offers something fundamentally different. You and your co-parent can examine your circumstances together, honestly assess whether the guideline amount really makes sense given your specific situation, and work collaboratively to determine what adjustment—if any—is appropriate.

In mediation, you can have transparent conversations about your family’s actual needs and constraints. You don’t need to exaggerate or minimize—you can share the real information and discuss what it means for child support. When both parents see the complete picture, you can reach agreements that feel fair because they’re grounded in reality rather than adversarial positioning.

Mediation also allows creative solutions that would never emerge in litigation. Maybe you agree to a modest deviation now with provisions for adjustment if specific circumstances change. Maybe you address the underlying concern by means other than deviating, such as directly sharing certain expenses or adjusting other aspects of your agreement. Maybe you recognize that a temporary deviation makes sense while a particular constraint is in place, but shouldn’t be permanent.

The collaborative nature of mediation also helps you avoid the trap of fighting over deviations that ultimately don’t serve anyone well. Sometimes, an honest conversation reveals that what seemed like a need for deviation is actually about other concerns that can be addressed differently. Other times, it becomes clear that a deviation makes so much sense that both parents quickly agree once they understand the circumstances.

Negotiating Deviations Collaboratively

In mediation, deviations offer an opportunity for creative problem-solving that serves your family’s actual needs. Transparency is essential. If you’re seeking a deviation, share the supporting information openly. If your co-parent proposes a deviation, approach their reasoning with good faith.

Sometimes, deviations can be structured creatively—by setting basic guideline amounts with provisions for additional contributions if specific expenses materialize, or by allowing temporary deviations that adjust as circumstances change.

The goal is to reach an agreement that both parents can live with and that adequately supports your children, given your family’s actual circumstances.

Moving Forward with Expert Guidance

Deviations from New Jersey’s child support guidelines provide essential flexibility for families whose circumstances don’t fit neatly into standard formulas. Understanding when deviations are appropriate and how to calculate them fairly helps you reach agreements that truly serve your family.

The key is approaching deviations thoughtfully. They should be based on specific, documented circumstances that genuinely make the guideline amount unjust or inappropriate. The deviation amount should be calculated through careful analysis rather than arbitrary adjustment.

This is exactly where having a divorce mediator with financial expertise becomes invaluable. With an MBA in finance and extensive experience handling complex support calculations, I can help you determine whether deviations are warranted for your situation. We can work through the financial implications of different deviation amounts, objectively examine your family’s actual circumstances, and structure arrangements that are fair to both parents while adequately supporting your children.

When your situation involves factors that might justify deviation—extraordinary medical needs, educational expenses, obligations to other children, or other circumstances that make the standard calculation inappropriate—you need someone who can help you think through the analysis rigorously. We can quantify the relevant factors, calculate reasonable adjustments, and ensure your agreement reflects your family’s actual needs rather than strategic positioning.

In mediation, we can explore creative approaches that litigation would never allow. We can structure deviations that adjust over time, build in review mechanisms for changing circumstances, and address the underlying issues in ways that work for your specific situation.

You don’t need to fight expensive battles over whether your circumstances justify deviations, or surrender these nuanced decisions to someone who doesn’t know your family. Working together in mediation with expert financial guidance, you can navigate these complex questions and reach agreements that genuinely serve your children while being fair and sustainable for both parents.

When approached collaboratively and grounded in your family’s actual circumstances, deviations become a tool for tailoring child support to your unique situation rather than a source of conflict.