Latest / Financial Survival Network / The Future of Divorce in America -- Joryn Jenkins #5799

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The Future of Divorce in America -- Joryn Jenkins #5799 · Financial Survival Network

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Welcome you are listening to watching the Financial Survival Network. I'm your host,
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Carrie lets Well Financial Survival, Financial Health, Driving in the New economy.
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One of the most injurious events that can take place in one's financial life.
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In your financial life is divorce. When it's handled traditionally and perhaps not in
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the best interests of the parties being divorced, it can be financially devastating where
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all parties concerned. But my next guest is working to change all that.
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Your name is Jenkins. You're an attorney. You've specialized in family law,
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matrimonial law. You're in my adopted home state of Florida. So retired semi
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retired y. Yeah, yeah, You've got a unique take on this and
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you're furthering the concept of elaborative divorce. Tell us that what made you realize
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that the system really had to change that it wasn't really serving the party's interests.
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You know. It's funny, Carrie, because I come out of commercial
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litigation, business litigation, breach of contract. You know, I never did
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personal injury. But with those types of things where it's really just about the
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money, it's just really about the money, and so their business decisions and
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quite often, um, there's no there's no intensity, there's no you know,
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it's just business. And then I started doing family law, to be
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honest, because I opened my own practice. And as a female, Oh
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gosh, I hate to think how many years ago, twenty five years ago
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that was a thing. Well, I've been practicing forty three years now.
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So so I opened my own practice. I was teaching for a while.
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I opened my own practice, and all my buddies in commercial litigation wanted to
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do me a favor, but they didn't. They wanted to keep the commercial
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stuff for themselves, so they would send me their divorce cases. And so
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here I am learning this new area of law, and I'm thinking this is
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just kind of odd. It doesn't seem to work all that well. Nobody
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wins, there's no real winning. Quite often i'd leave the courtroom, and
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I had technically won, but my client was where they hadn't been poor before,
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they'd spent everything they had to win, and they weren't all that thrilled
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with the results. So eventually, you know, you start to realize,
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if nobody's winning in the courtroom, isn't there another way to do this right?
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Well, there are usually two winners in every matrimonial case, and that
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is the opposing counsels. Although my experience in this, and I spent a
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lot of years my family had a business of printing up cases on appeal in
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the Northeast. Really thousands of these matrimonials go by and the you know,
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it was just a lot of time as the attorneys would just be adding gasoline
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to the fire to keep it going and keep you know, I hate to
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agree with you. I hate to agree with you because I don't like casting
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aspersions at an entire profession. I think it's unprofessional to do that. But
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and in fact, I was very, very involved with the American Inns of
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Court, which the tenet of the American Inns is to advance professionalism, civility,
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and credibility in the profession. And I was very, very active in
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that, But there's no question that in family law you find the dregs of
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the profession to a large degree. Now, not me, obviously, I'm
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a very good lawyer, and there are plenty of very good lawyers, but
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you do find the dregs. And I find that also in bankruptcy law,
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to be honest. But when I say dregs, I don't mean just the
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poor lawyers. I mean the lawyers who really aren't quite as ethical as you
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would want them to be, who push the boundaries, who actually put themselves
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ahead of their clients, and the lines are very hard to see technically speaking,
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they really are. For example, if I file a petition and I
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ask for custody of the children, and the way, I'm going to use
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old terminology because those are the real black and white kind of terms. We've
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moved beyond those by now. But let's say that I was asking for and
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I'm dad, and dads don't usually get custody in the old days. But
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I ask for custody, one hundred percent custody, and I ask for child
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support, and I ask for alimony. What the heck, let's let's ask
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for that too. Well, the lawyer's actually not doing that because he's a
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jerk. He's doing that because things change during a divorce, especially if it
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takes five years to get divorced, which they can. And maybe my client
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loses his leg during the divorce and actually does need alimony at the end of
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the case. So the lawyers are cyaing, to put it briefly, But
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so sometimes you know, are they really cyaing or are they just making more
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money? It's hard to tell. Yeah, well, I can recount a
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story to you that I have personal knowledge of. It's my was my sister's
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divorce took place in Cook County, Illinois. Oh, Chicago. The definition
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of an honest judge in Chicago is one who's fixed and stays fixed. And
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I can tell you that at this point, the statute of limitations is a
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run. My sister has passed away. Both sides bribe the judge, and
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he still decided against my sister. Oh, my lord, Well, I
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know this for a fact. Okay, this is not he said she You
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know you heard it fifth hand. I know it, Harry, That's the
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worst story I've ever heard. Yeah, I can see that without any question.
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Went on for nine years. Yeah, I had one that went five
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years I represented the mom. The baby was fourteen months old when they filed.
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Mom was a stewardess but had stayed home during her pregnancy. Two weeks
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after she delivered, Grandpa shows up in the hospital. Grandpa was a lawyer
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by the way, a jag, so not really technically practicing law. But
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he shows up in the hospital and he says to her, you know,
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it would be good if you had a second child, just a you know,
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one to hold in reserve. And I'm not using the right words that
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he had used. I'm drawing a blank on them right now. But basically
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what he was saying was I already have a successor now my grandson, and
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I'd like another one just in case something happens to the first one, which
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you know. She she's, you know, two days after giving delivery,
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she's beside herself with you know, how dare you. A year later,
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husband files for divorce. She's still not working. She goes back to work
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to finance her legal fees, my fees. Eventually she sells her pre owned
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condo from Miami. She sells it to fund my fees because that's how much
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money we're spending. Meanwhile, Grandpa is drafting all of Dad's pleadings, and
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I know this because they were so poorly written, and because the lawyers kept
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changing, and then right after a lawyer would change, something would get filed
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that wasn't signed by anybody. No lawyer signed it, so Grandpa was really
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inserting himself. Eventually I got Mom her fees from Dad, who, by
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the way, Dad was just a pawn. Grandpa was running the show.
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But we went on for five years. They appealed rulings that I had technically
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one four times. There was one appeal where they were asking for fifty fifty
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time sharing, which by now, by the time this case happened, which
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was actually only fifteen years ago, was not so unusual and we were not
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really fighting it, except that Mom lived fifty miles away, which made it
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very difficult to do fifty fifty times. Showing you can't do it every other
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night, can't do it every other other night, hard to do it every
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week because how's kid going to get to school in between Dad's going to drive
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fifty miles each way? Doesn't make sense. So eventually I suggested to the
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judge in the middle of trial that Mom would work all weekends and she should
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get week days and Dad should get all weekends. That's what the judge ordered,
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and Dad appealed, and after he lost the appeal, No, get
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this, you're shaking your head. Get this. After he lost the appeal,
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he then gave Mom back two weekends a month, so he went to
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a standard old fashioned dad time sharing every other weekend voluntarily, you know.
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And how many thousands of dollars got wasted? I guesstimated that she had spent
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and it wasn't really a guestimate because I was her lawyer two hundred and fifty
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thousand dollars in five years. And Dad probably spent given that he had to
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appeal four times, and all I had to do was defend an appeal,
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so a lot easier, less work. He probably spent around two but Grandpa
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was doing the pleadings. He probably still spent two hundred thousand. He went
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through eleven lawyers plus four appellate lawyers, and in the end he wound up
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exactly where he would have been had he settled. And you know, he
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blows thought. Lawyers they're just there to stir up the pot and you know,
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get fees. When I had clients came to me, I would just
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say, well, just settle this. You know, the best thing a
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lawyer could do. Oh yeah, encourage the parties to settle. And that's
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effectively what you're doing through collaborative laws, like work out an agreement, avoid
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the courtroom. And sometimes I do it completely from a financial perspective. If
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you're not suing used to be thirty thousand, If you're not suing for fifty
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thousand or more, you're wasting time and money and headache and heartache. Don't
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litigate over fifty thousand or less because you're going to spend fifty thousand. Easy.
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Easy, Yeah, yeah, it's so true. And but most lawyers
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won't do that. And the primary function of a lawyers should be in any
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given case, to avoid litigation wherever possible. Abraham Lincoln said it best.
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So what we do in collaboration, and that's collaboration with a big C.
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I know we use that term a lot these days, but we started using
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it twenty years ago. For this particular method of approaching a dispute. The
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lawyers both sign an agreement that they will not go to court. Now,
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what does that mean? Can the clients still go to court? Sure?
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The client can pull the plug on the collaboration and the lawyers are fired.
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Technically, each of us would then help our client find a new lawyer.
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We'd prep the new lawyer. But we're out. And what that does,
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and you know, I know, you know this, what it does It
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takes the impetus away from the lawyer to stir the pot, so the lawyer
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is all in on let's get this settled. What can we do to make
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it acceptable to both sides to accept this resolution that we've come up with.
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And in order to do that, we use a financial neutral, someone who
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is not someone who's objective. If the parties have financial issues between them,
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we use We often use a family counselor to help them talk to each other.
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I had a gal come out of her divorce and she had in the
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middle of the divorce, she'd run out of the conference room crying, and
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I'd found her in the parking lot and I said, what's wrong, Yeah,
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come back in, Well, you know we can do this, and
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she said, he doesn't listen to me, never listens to me, and
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she just went on and on. I said, no, no, no,
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come back in the room. Will help him, hear you. We
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finalize that case. A couple of months later, and her comment to me
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at the end of the case was, you know, I learned to listen
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to my husband again. I don't think she remembered that she complained that he
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didn't listen to her. She said, I learned to hear him again because
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when someone else says the same thing that he said, Yeah, I couldn't
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hear him, but if you said it to me, I heard it and
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I understood it better. So I learned to talk to my husband again.
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Pretty and they still got divorced. But I am one where we're walking out
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of the courtroom and the woman throws her arms around them, the guy's neck,
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and she says, you know, I hope you know I will always
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love you. We may be divorced, but I will always love you.
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I love war stories. So basically, the lawyers pretty much disavow their financial
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interest in stirring the pot as it were, right, I agree too,
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Yeah, there's still a fee to be had, obviously, sure, not
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like the litigation fees and all that. Well, but if you go to
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trial, you're going to spend one hundred grand if you collaborate, and I'm
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going to make a hundred grand if you collaborate. I'm going to make on
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average ten or twelve grand I'd rather do ten of those cases than one of
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the other kind a lot less aggravation. It's so hard, do you know.
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I remember the old story you get out of law school. The client
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comes to you and they tell you, oh, I've got this case.
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You wouldn't believe what that snob did to me, blah blah blah, and
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you're all gunglow, you'd like idealistic attorney, and then you know, the
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whole thing gets started to talk to the other attorney and then he's, oh,
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but you know, here's like what happened. Here, here's his side
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of the story, and it's like, oh oh. And it's also so
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much fun when when your client is caught lying on the sand. It doesn't
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happen to me very often, but I did have a client who assured me
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that he wasn't on any dating sites. And this was, you know,
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twenty fifteen years ago, when that wasn't all that common. And he gets
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on the stand and the other side holds up a picture of a website and
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not only is he on there, but he's lied on there about his name,
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his age, and his income. And his status and either and either
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lied about his income there or he lied about his income in court. And
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to me, I don't know which one it was. I'll never know,
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but it didn't matter because are you lying now or were you lying then?
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Yeah? Oh yeah. Those are the kind of cases your dream as a
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being the attorney doing the cross exam, not having your client make you look
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like an idiot. Oh listen, Carrie. I had a case. What
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was it. It was not a breach of contract, but a couple bought
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a rest stop, a roadside diner, and shortly after they bought it,
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the interstate gave notice that they were closing down the exit off the Interstate that
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led right up to the diner. And my clients were convinced that all the
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people in the neighborhood had known ahead of time that that was going to happen.
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And we litigated for a year and a half trying to find the proof,
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and I finally got into the offices at the Department of Transportation. So
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the other attorney and I and my client went and they went to the Department
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Transportation and the guy said, we were supposed to do the deposition, but
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the guy said, here on my files help yourself. We go into the
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files and there are three, no four letters from the prior owner to Dot
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said, begging them not to close down the exit and to change their minds
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about how they're going to handle that held them out in there on the spot.
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To the other attorney said, boy, I'm sure glad you found them.
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I don't know what I would have done if I had been the one
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to find him, because we were all going through the records, and I'm
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sure he would have been honest about it, but it would have really caused
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him pain. Yeah. Well, it's basically, you know, blowing up
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your case. Yeah. No lawyer likes to do that, which is why
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people need to settle so jored. What is it about today and not just
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matrimonials, but all sorts of disputes, cases where people just dig in and
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you refuse to do the rational thing. Why what are we going through as
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a society a world where we can't play nicely with each other? Well,
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part of it is in for a diamond for a dollar. You know,
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you spend a little bit of money and you feel like you have to keep
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spending money. Part of it is you don't drive the train the in theory,
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your attorney's driving the train. But actually, think about this, it's
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not your attorney driving the train. It's your attorney and the other attorney and
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the judge, and all three of them are struggling over the steering wheel.
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To a large degree, the judge is driving the train, but really the
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judge is an objective third party observer. His calendar is intrinsic, but there's
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not too much that he does that decides where the train's going to go.
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The two attorneys are struggling with the judge looking on, and sometimes the judge
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does, like the judge in Florida will often send you to mediation. Well,
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twenty years ago, there was no such thing as twenty years thirty years
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ago, there was no such thing as mediation. I remember when I got
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divorced. Two a year marriage, very simple, never combined our finances,
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nothing like that. And I said to the lawyer, why can't we just
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agree. I just need to walk away from this. I'm you know,
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I'm done. And the lawyer said, no, no, no, I'll
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file a petition. We'll get you, we'll get it done. Don't worry.
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That was my only option. File a petition, go to court and
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It wasn't until halfway through that I realized that there was this thing called mediation.
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And I called the guy up and I said, no, no,
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no, this is what we're doing. We went to mediation. It was
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done, you know, in two weeks. It was done. No big
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deal. But there was a judge in the bronx. It was the assignment
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judge, and he had a sign on his desk that said settle or pick,
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which meant either you're settling the case now or you're going downstairs to pick
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a jury immediately. And oh and that like that guy had the highest settlement
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rate of an each landed. It was a horrible guy. Like people dreaded
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it. But but I'd heard of judges doing that. Not quite that,
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obviously, but but yes, certainly in small claims court here. Wait,
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often you'd show up for your preliminary hearing and you'd get a choice. You
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either come back later in the week and pick a jury, or you go
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to mediation right now. With this guy right here who's sitting in the jury
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box waiting for cases to be assigned to him. The jury box was full
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of mediators, which I thought was very smart. Well, you know,
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in my opinion, one of the biggest problems is that these judges, many
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of them out there, could never hack it practicing law, and through their
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connections, whatever political connections, they got to become judges, kind of like
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teachers. Those who can't those who can't do teach, and those who can't
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practice become judges. And so many of these cases. If you have a
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strong judge who really was strict with the parties and didn't let any interminable delays
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take place anything else, really held them to their feet to the fire,
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you could get rid of these cases. But we don't have enough of those
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judges. That's right. Many judges are are wishy washy, and they would
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defend themselves by saying, you know, I'm just giving the parties time to
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work things out, to realize that they don't have a case too. You
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know, they've got they've got all kinds of excuses. But you do find
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that the stronger judges get their cases run through the system a lot faster.
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Yea. And ninety eight percent of all the cases anyway that don't get settled
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right away get settled on the steps of the courthouse after you spend ninety thousand
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instead of a hundred. Yeah, so why did we have to go that
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far? And I always thought one day maybe I'll become a judge. I
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did this and I was a small claims court, the mediator in our arbitrator
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rather in New York City, and you know, I just like, cut
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to the chase. Don't give me, you know, in a dry cleaning
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cases, stupid cases. It's funny. I just finished an arbitration this morning,
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and it's a three panel arbitration. So I was one of the arbitrators
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and I wrote to the chief arbitrator and I said, look, when you
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draft this decision, you really need to try and explain to the plaintiff why
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she didn't have a case. She had no case. It was a food
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poisoning case, and there was no connection. She was sick that night,
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and not even a doctor who said, oh yeah, you had food food
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poisoning, much less you had food poisoning and it was caused by your lunch
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that day. She just did. But you know, older woman, she
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didn't have a clue. She was representing herself. So I said, you
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know, you really need to make sure that because I don't draft the opinion
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that the chief judge, it does. And so that's what he did.
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As a matter of fact, I just got off the phone with him when
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when you called, just clarifying a few things because you don't want an arbitrary
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This was a non binding arbitration, so she had the option of accepting the
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ruling or going back to the judge. And you want to help get rid
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of the backlog of cases, and you want to help keep people from going
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through the angst of litigation. She talked a lot about how long this had
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dragged out and how painful it was, and well, yeah, of course
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you're reliving the pain of two days in the hospital, throwing up and not
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being sure if you would live or die. Every time you get deposed,
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and you deal with it, you know, put it behind you, move
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on. Yeah, no, I can imagine. So obviously we have to
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head for this because very few people out there. The corporations can afford to
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litigate till the cows going rome and the cows never come home. But individuals,
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unless they're extremely well healed, can not afford to do it. And
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even those who are don't want to do it because they know it's a waste
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of money and time. Family law judges will tell the clients look do you
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want to spend what money you have your kids college education on getting divorced?
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Why can't you find a middle ground? And we, in collaboration, we
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help them find that middle ground. Quite often a financial person will come up
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with something that neither the lawyers thought of and certainly neither of the clients thought
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of. And sometimes the facilitators, the communications people who usually have a mental
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health background, will come up with solutions that nobody thought of. So it's
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a it's an interesting process. Brainstorming with a team of board professionals and your
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X you can come up with some very interesting scenarios. I've created time sharing
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agreements that no judge would ever order on his own. He would never because
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it's just not normal, but it works for this family. I had a
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divorce where the guy was a deputy sheriff, the wife was hang on no,
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the wife was a deputy sheriff, the guy was a fire fighter,
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And turns out they could both go to their bosses. They had enough seniority
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to choose a schedule that they wanted. They each designed their own schedule and
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ultimately, bottom line, they each had one hundred percent time sharing with their
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daughter. It sounds crazy, right, But the daughter was away with one
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parent or the other, and you know they both enjoyed pretty much full time
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time sharing. They slept when she was with the other parent and worked.
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Yeah. Well, it's always good when there's a as happy and ending as
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there can be to these matters. They can get contentious, all the emotional
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baggage that's saved up well. And the problem is that when you're in the
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middle of the stress of a divorce, it's hard to think clearly it is.
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And so we actually work on distressing people during this process, not just
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take deep breaths. That's it's more than that. Remember remember that visit.
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You know how when people are planning a vacation, that's they say that that's
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almost as good as or even as good as going on vacation. It's the
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same idea. Remember your wedding. How did you feel when you were getting
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married? Were you happy? Were you you weren't sad? Were you you
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were you know, remember that feeling and try and recapture that now, that
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will help you calm down and think about how you want to resolve this really
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and believe it or not, it works. Oh yeah, I know,
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And go back to happier times, bring those feelings forward. Well, sounds
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like this is the way to go. We need to see it in more
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areas of the law so you can get rid of all these cases because the
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caseload has exploded. Yeah. I've been involved in the legal system since I
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was a little kid, and I've just seen the number of cases go up,
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up, up, and the satisfaction with the system and with lum Yeah,
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with the legal profession has gone into the toilet. So this is the
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way to go. People want to find out more about what you're doing,
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or connect with you, maybe even hire you as a consultant. How do
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you do that? I have two websites. One is my practice website,
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so that's Open Palm Law because an open palm holds more than a closed fist.
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And the other, as you might guess, is Jorn Jenkins dot com
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and that's where all my marketing materials are. So I have a slew of
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books. You can see some of them behind me. That many I've written
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about the collaborative process, and I have many of my stories in those books
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which are kind of fun to read about, not to live, but to
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read. Yeah, definitely a vicarious experience there We're sure. If you've got
27:56
a question for Jordan, you can always shoot us an email well at Kerry
28:00
Lutz dot com. Make sure you go to the show notes this interview on
28:04
Financial Survival Network dot com. You can just click through to Jordan's sites and
28:10
while you're there to sign up for your free newsletter Darn been a pleasure.
28:14
Thanks so much for stopping by you as well, Carrie, have a great
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day. Thanks for listening to Carrie Lutz's Financial Survival Network, your solution to
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today's trying times. For the latest, go to Financial Survival Network dot com.
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Financial Survival Network now more than ever,