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In this important discussion with the team at Speaking Out on Financial Abuse, I address financial abuse in marriage, common ways assets are hidden during divorce, and how mediation can protect financially vulnerable spouses while maintaining dignity throughout the process.

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Disclaimer

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Anything discussed in this podcast should not be construed as legal, financial, or emotional advice. It is for informational purposes only. If you are in need of such advice you MUST seek the guidance of a qualified professional where you live.

The transcript below was auto-generated and may contain errors or omissions.

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Speaking Out on Financial Abuse: Joe Dillon on Mediation vs. Litigation

Host: Lorie G., Speaking Out on Financial Abuse
Guest: Joe Dillon, Equitable Mediation Services

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Lorie: Hello and welcome to Speaking Out on Financial Abuse – stories of survival and hope after financial abuse in a marriage or romantic partnership. I’m your host, Lorie G. Are you thinking of divorce but afraid to go further because you fear you’re going to lose your shirt and your sanity over an indefinite period of time? Our guest today has another option for divorce that might save you a ton of money and years of legal agony.

Today I’m excited to welcome divorce mediator Joe Dillon. Joe is co-founder with his wife Cheryl of a full-service divorce mediation and coaching business that serves a wide portion of the United States. Joe is going to tell you how to get out without losing your mind and without losing your future. Joe, welcome to the program.

Joe: Hi Lorie, thanks for having me.

Lorie: Where in the world are you now and where are you originally from?

Joe: Right now I am in Southern California in the San Diego area. Like the old song goes, it never rains in Southern California, but here we are in the middle of July and it’s pouring, which is very odd because we usually stop getting rain in May and it doesn’t kick in until about December.

I’m originally from the New York City area, from northern New Jersey, with a stop in Chicago along the way. I’ve definitely gone coast to coast and it’s been interesting seeing the country and getting to know different cultures. I can tell you all the stereotypes about Southern California are true – people love to surf, everybody’s very laid-back, it’s all about the beach. Being originally a native New Yorker, it’s all about go, go, go.

Lorie: What was money like growing up in your own household?

Joe: My parents were pretty cooperative when they were married. I’m a child of a litigated divorce. My dad worked in construction, so he got paid every Friday. He’d take his check to the bank, they’d cash it, and they’d sit down at the table Saturday morning. I remember they had this system with envelopes – they’d put money for the electric, water, mortgage. They worked together very well.

But when I got a little older, probably about 11, things started falling apart. My dad started going out more, buying things. My mom wasn’t working outside the home – she was busy raising me. When she saw that, she got a part-time job because she was wondering what was going on.

Then they litigated their divorce, and it became a really drawn-out, contentious battle. One thing I remember as a kid – I was in high school when the divorce finally settled – is that one day the alimony checks just stopped coming. My dad just decided he’d had enough and wanted to spend that money elsewhere. I came to learn he was getting remarried.

They both spent a lot of money on the divorce, and my mom just didn’t have the money or emotional bandwidth to go back after him and get the alimony agreement enforced. That’s a form of financial abuse – you take this legally binding agreement bestowed by the courts and just decide to ignore it, counting on the other person not being able to enforce it.

That’s when my mom started working multiple jobs. I was becoming a junior and senior in high school, getting to college time. So that’s what I saw – they went from being very cooperative to very antagonistic. It was an unfortunately powerful message that things can change in the blink of an eye.

Lorie: When you say litigated divorce, you mean using attorneys and going to court as opposed to using a mediator. What’s the difference between hiring a divorce attorney and hiring a mediator?

Joe: The attorney is going to fight for their client and their client only. They’re going to represent and advocate – they’re only concerned about that one person’s interests. As a mediator, I’m concerned about both parties and their kids. I advocate for both of them and their children when applicable. I want the family unit or the detached couple to have the best agreement – not just the husband or just the wife. I want them to collectively have the best agreement.

When I go in that way, I explain that I work for both of you, acknowledging that to come to agreement, you’re going to have to both give and get. If you want to get something, you’ve got to be able to offer something in return. With attorneys, it’s “I want to get something, but I’m not going to give anything in return,” and that just grinds and grinds.

Attorneys are very focused on the law, getting what the statutes say. Their thinking tends to be very much in the box, very linear, and they’re just concerned about the settlement. As a mediator, I tend to be outside the box. I try to be creative and come up with settlement agreements that work for the couple – unique agreements that fit their own profile.

I’m concerned about not only their agreement and how they get there, but also their emotional well-being. I know from seeing my parents that litigated divorces will destroy you. They drag on for years and destroy your nervous system. It’s bad enough your marriage is ending – now you have to go through another two to three years of hell to end it. Mediation takes a few months and helps you move on with your lives.

Lorie: I can imagine that must save a huge amount of money to use a mediator as opposed to an attorney.

Joe: Litigated divorces cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. People say, “Oh, that’s not going to happen to me,” but yes, it is. You focus on those two or three issues where you’re just digging in on your positions – “This is black. No, it’s blue” – and you’re not getting anywhere.

As a mediator, we focus on what we call interest-based negotiations. That’s my forte, my background. Instead of arguing about what we think the answer should be, we ask: What do you have an interest in doing? I have an interest in putting my kids through college. Great. I have an interest in not spending a lot of money on divorce. I have an interest in keeping the house. Great – let’s find something you can offer to the other side so they’ll be agreeable to let you keep the house.

This reframes the conversation. It’s not a screaming match where the loudest voice wins or the most expensive attorney wins. We’re trying to get you to understand this is a cooperative process where you can spend thousands instead of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We even had a client who called us after litigating for seven years and spending close to $800,000 on their divorce, and it still wasn’t resolved. Obviously something was preventing them from agreeing after seven years and $800,000.

Lorie: What are some of the common things you see a partner do to try to hide assets or income during divorce?

Joe: A lot of mediation is centered around debt, believe it or not. If you’re spending money out of a joint bank account, someone’s going to notice the balance goes down. But if you’re amassing debt on a credit card that’s only in your name and you grab the statement or use paperless statements, the other party has no idea what you’re doing.

We see several instances. One is the rise of the internet millionaire or billionaire – folks convinced they have this great app or startup investment that’ll make them billionaires. They keep throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars at startups while the other person has no idea how much money they’ve promised or invested. Of course, 99.99999% of these fail.

Another thing is day trading – trying to beat the market with margins and options. I have an MBA in finance and that’s complicated even to me. Those losses are accruing in an investment account that might not be visible to the other spouse. They’re not sitting on some credit card or being drawn out of a checking account. These are losses that are accruing, and this person may have to come up with $80,000 – that’s an ugly surprise.

But the most common one I see is gambling, and that’s my soapbox issue. I’m sick and tired of everything being sponsored by FanDuel and DraftKings. I’m trying to watch a baseball game and some little scroll crosses the bottom: “Odds of Kyle Tucker hitting home run 1 in 600. Place your bet now.” We’re an addicted nation.

When we think of addicts, we think of the drug addict in the alley, but there are a lot of addicts addicted to the dopamine of gambling and risk. They’ve got the app on their phone and they’re just amassing debt or doing online poker or betting on sports, dissipating assets left, right, and center.

When we think about financial abuse, sometimes we think of someone being overtly abusive, withholding money, using money as a weapon. But financial abuse takes many forms, and one is spending our money on nonsense like this – bankrolling your bookie from your kid’s college fund.

Lorie: How do you balance it when you notice you have a more aggressive partner and a more passive individual at the mediation table?

Joe: One of the things about being a numbers person is you like structure, process, spreadsheets. Over many years, we’ve developed a structured process we take clients through. Sometimes they push back because sometimes someone thinks they can use mediation to get around the legal system and pull one over on somebody.

What they don’t realize is that someone like me with a financial background lives for this stuff. I love digging into numbers and asking pointed questions because I want to help my clients, but I’m also genuinely interested.

Some people think mediation will be less invasive, that because I’m not a lawyer, they can walk right over me. What I remind people is that I don’t require you to have an attorney in mediation, but you always reserve the right to have a lawyer review your agreement. If I see something concerning, I’m going to require you to do that.

The number one mistake a client can make with me is saying, “Why do you need a copy of that?” As soon as I hear that, my alarm bells go off. I put up the red flag and say, “Why do I need a copy of that? Because I said so.” If you push back, I’ll tell you about what a forensic accountant does, what a lawyer does, what a judge will do.

Just because I’m not representing one party doesn’t mean I’m not advocating for both. If I see someone being taken advantage of who’s at a disadvantage or financially illiterate, I’m the playground bully you’re going to bring to the fight. I’m trying to explain what we need and how this works.

Lorie: How did you become involved in this part of the legal field?

Joe: I’m not a lawyer by trade. My background is MBA in finance and negotiation. When I was working for corporations – publishing companies – I was director of sales administration with the sales department and legal department reporting to me.

Sales people just want the sale and their commission – they’ll give away the farm. The legal department doesn’t want to give an inch. Meanwhile, the poor customer who wants to give us millions of dollars is saying, “When you figure out your internal squabble, let us know and we’ll cut you the check.”

I was mediating between the customer, attorneys, and salespeople to get everyone to agree to terms. I realized I enjoyed helping multiple parties come to agreement. So I took coursework at Harvard University – the Harvard program on negotiation taught by Fischer and Ury, who wrote “Getting to Yes,” the modern treatise on interest-based negotiation.

After some years in corporations with downsizing and buyouts, I was having lunch with my mother-in-law who said I should be a mediator. I spoke to a friend of hers who was a mediator for the police union in Jersey City. I thought about where I could do the most good with my background in finance and negotiation, and decided on divorce mediation because my parents litigated their divorce.

When you think about divorce, you have child support, alimony, and property division – three of the four issues are financial in nature. Even parenting plans are inputs into child support calculations. So three and a half of them are financial, and my background really comes in handy.

I try to help people avoid what happened to me. I literally had to get a haircut and put on a suit at 15 years old to sit in the back of a courtroom so I looked nice and the judge would give us good child support. That’s how I spent my teenage years – in the lobby of lawyers’ offices. I’m the walking billboard of what not to do.

Lorie: What are some digital courses you offer?

Joe: We have four courses. One is free about what divorce mediation is. Of our three paid courses, the first is our financial preparation kit – it helps you wrap your brain around tactical steps to prepare. We have proprietary budget workbooks to help you plan and show what your marital spending looked like. We teach you how to put together a budget for moving forward because you’re going to be a separate financial entity once divorced.

The second is our planning for divorce course that expands on that and goes into emotional aspects – caring for yourself, telling your kids, caring for your kids through the process, explaining parenting, child support, alimony, property division.

The third is how to negotiate a divorce course, which is my favorite. It teaches actual negotiation tactics that professionals use – there’s a lot of psychology, technique, and preparation that goes into this. A colleague calls it “soft power” – it’s not screaming “This is what you’re going to get.” It’s going in calm, organized, with what you know you’re willing to give to get what you want.

The financial prep takes a Saturday afternoon. The planning course and negotiation course each take four to six weeks if you do one module per week, though you can do them faster.

Lorie: Can you explain what a divorce coach is?

Joe: When I work with people, I’m focused on financial matters, tactical matters, drafting agreements. I’m a nice guy, but my job is to help you move forward, not handle the emotional aspects of divorce.

A lot of folks make their attorney their best friend, complaining about how their spouse didn’t pick up their jacket or never goes to family events at an hourly rate. That’s not the person you want to talk to.

A divorce coach like my wife helps you work through emotions and feelings, diffuse tensions, work on strategies and negotiation techniques so when you get in session, you’re not triggered. She works on strategy, mantras, keeping you calm, helping you formulate your strategy for moving forward.

Even in situations with financial abuse – and I want to be clear, men and women can both fall prey to financial abuse – she helps them say, “I deserve this. I want this. This is what I need.” She helps them work through that and stand up for themselves. She’s like your cheerleader, an educated best friend with professional background in psychology and certified professional coaching.

Lorie: How long does the average mediation last?

Joe: For us, probably somewhere between 10 to 14 weeks because of our structured process. We meet with you up front, formulate strategy, negotiate, draft, review. Then you’re at the mercy of the courts – some have no waiting period like New Jersey, while California has a six-month waiting period.

The good news is the substantive part of your divorce is the negotiation and drafting. If you can get through that in two to three months, you’re just waiting for the powers that be. Litigated divorces probably take 2 to 3 years, and scheduling is much harder with two lawyers and two people versus one mediator and two people.

Lorie: You charge a flat rate, which is different from the endless gravy train of attorney fees.

Joe: Exactly. When we meet with prospective clients, I gather information and share how our process works. I go away and put together customized options – we don’t have the same flat fee for everyone, but based on the level of service you want, we can offer basic mediation or more comprehensive services.

The flat fee says to them, “I’m willing to put my reputation on the line to say we can finish this, and I’m counting on you to do it with me.” It’s not open-ended – I want to move you to agreement, not rush you to agreement, but keep us focused on the end game.

We have a 98% case resolution rate. We lose one client every 2 to 3 years, usually because of financial impropriety – a tax return that wasn’t filed because they owe $300,000, another family in another country, a bank account, or a business startup someone drained their 401k for that no one knew about.

Lorie: What’s your advice for somebody considering divorce – should they hire an attorney or secure a mediator?

Joe: I’d always say start with mediation first. Talk to mediators and be transparent. I tell prospective clients, “I want you to get the best result in your unique situation, even if that means not working with me.” A good mediator will ask questions and get a feel – that comes from mediating for 28 years.

Sometimes I’ll tell people right at the end of our initial meeting, “I don’t think mediation is a good fit, or at least we aren’t a good fit for you.” The good thing about mediation is it’s not legally binding until you say it is. You can always try it, and if it doesn’t work out, you can escalate to attorneys.

Even if you don’t come to a full agreement in mediation, you still save time and money because you agree on some things. You bring that to your attorneys and say, “Here’s everything we’ve agreed on. Let’s just focus on this handful of issues.”

Lorie: What’s your advice for someone who has had very little financial control in a partnership and doesn’t have much financial understanding but has agreed to use a mediator?

Joe: Build your team. That team includes a financial advisor and a CPA. Offer to take them to lunch, buy an hour of their time. These folks have spent their lives studying this – it’s their job and how they earn a living.

Buy an hour with a CPA to pepper them with questions and gain financial understanding. Reach out to a brokerage house – you can find younger professionals who are more willing to give you education. When your settlement happens and you walk away with some amount, you’ll have a professional who can help you grow it.

An accountant and financial professional can really help you understand where your knowledge gaps are so you can fill those blanks in.

Lorie: Where can people find you?

Joe: You can find us at equitablemediation.com – be sure to spell it mediation, not meditation. We practice in six states: Washington, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

If you’re in one of those states, you can book a free info call with Cheryl. Click on the learning center button for hundreds of blog posts, podcasts, videos, and courses organized by categories. Get educated and get knowledge, because knowledge is power. You don’t need to know everything, but you need enough information to ask intelligent questions.

• Website: equitablemediation.com
• States served: Washington, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania
• Free information call available for residents of served states
• Learning center with extensive resources and courses

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In this episode of Divorce Discussions, I sit check in with Angie Weber to discuss why the traditional attorney-first approach can be emotionally and financially draining, and how mediation empowers couples to take control of their divorce.

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Disclaimer

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Anything discussed in this podcast should not be construed as legal, financial, or emotional advice. It is for informational purposes only. If you are in need of such advice you MUST seek the guidance of a qualified professional where you live.

The transcript below was auto-generated and may contain errors or omissions.

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Divorce Discussions: Joe Dillon on Mediation vs. Litigation

Host: Angie Weber, Director of Divorce Support Collective
Guest: Joe Dillon, Equitable Mediation Services

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Angie: Hello and welcome to Divorce Discussions. I am Angie Weber, the director of the Divorce Support Collective, where our mission is to reimagine the process of divorce through collaboration and support from contemplation to thriving post-decree. Today I am joined by Joe Dillon, a pioneer in divorce mediation who has been helping couples navigate the end of their marriages with dignity and financial wisdom for over 17 years.

As co-founder of Equitable Mediation Services, Joe combines his MBA in finance with specialized training from Harvard, MIT, and Northwestern University to guide couples toward agreements that protect both their emotional well-being and their financial futures. As a child of divorce who witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of attorney-driven litigation on families, Joe brings personal experience combined with professional expertise to help couples focus on creating agreements that work for everyone, especially the children.

Joe believes divorce doesn’t have to be destructive. With the right guidance and expertise, couples can part ways while protecting what matters most. Thank you for joining me today, Joe.

Joe: Thanks for having me, Angie. Glad to be here.

Angie: Why is there this misconception that the only way to do divorce is to get a lawyer and fight and battle it out for years?

Joe: That’s a great question. When we watch TV – I’m a huge fan of Law and Order and CSI – everything’s wrapped up in an hour. We see that and think, “This judge is benevolent and they’re going to decide, and in 60 minutes I’ll be done.” But what people don’t realize is that in those crime situations, they’re entering a court of law where there are clear rules – we can all agree it’s not a good idea to kill somebody.

The family court system is different – it’s a court of equity. There are no clear-cut rules like “if you do this, then this happens.” It’s all open to interpretation. People get confused because they think if they go to court with a lawyer, it’ll be wrapped up in a day or two. What they don’t realize is that it’s a negotiation – constant back and forth.

When lawyers are involved, it’s like that game of telephone. You tell your lawyer, the lawyer tells the other lawyer, the other lawyer tells your soon-to-be ex. There’s so much miscommunication and time lost, and money of course, that the emotional stress builds, the bank accounts drain, and everybody feels trapped.

I’ve been practicing mediation for 28 years and in private practice for 17. I can tell you from experience there is a better way. In mediation, couples are empowered to make those decisions. That’s why I’m here today – to educate people that there are alternatives. You don’t just need to “lawyer up.” Your divorce doesn’t have to be a disaster. Yes, you can get an agreement you both think is fair. Yes, this can cost you a lot less money, time, and emotional heartache.

Angie: When people go through mediation, are there times when lawyers will be brought in to help?

Joe: It depends on the mediator. We say if you feel the need to consult with an attorney, we are totally supportive of that, but we do not require it. Some mediators do require their clients to retain attorneys. At Equitable Mediation, we do not. We believe you’re adults and can make your own decisions.

That doesn’t mean I’m not watching the proceedings. If I see something concerning, I might require someone to speak to a lawyer. There are things lawyers can engage with the court system for – if someone’s withholding information or hiding money, you need a court order to start digging through that. But thankfully, in mediation, that rarely happens. People who come to mediation tend to want to engage in good faith negotiation and avoid the circus of attorney-driven divorce.

I’d say probably about 95% of our clients choose not to involve an attorney, but the choice is entirely up to them.

Angie: What should couples look for to determine if mediation is right for them, and what are red flags that suggest it might not be?

Joe: The number one thing is you both need to be on the same page. In our experience, one person is typically the driver of divorce. Statistics show that the average person who files for divorce has been thinking about it for two years and one month. The other person is kind of two years behind the curve.

Mediation requires active participation by both parties and full disclosure. If I ask you for a bank statement, tax return, or pay stub, you have to be willing to give it to me. The worst thing you can say to a mediator is “Why do you need that?” That raises red flags immediately.

The third thing is respectful communication. Divorces can get heated – even the most amicable ones. It’s a disagreement by default. When friends disagree, we raise our voices, and that’s okay as long as we’re being respectful. But if we’re starting to name-call, slander, scream and yell, that’s not going to work.

Red flags include disclosure issues, mental incapacity, substance abuse, and domestic violence. With domestic violence, there’s usually a significant power imbalance, and those individuals may not even be able to communicate directly with their spouse.

But if you’re willing and open to engage and disclose, mediation can work for pretty much anybody who wants it to work.

Angie: Even in mediation, emotions can get high and voices can get raised. What are some tips for helping clients come back to that collaborative style when tensions escalate?

Joe: The first thing I do is remind them that at some point in their past, whether at city hall or in a banquet hall filled with 200 of their closest family and friends, they stood up and said, “This is the person that I most love, care, and respect.” I’m not asking you to repair your marriage or not get divorced – that’s not my role. But let’s recall that at some point, you were on the same page or best friends.

The other piece, especially when children are involved, is asking “What would your kids think of you if they were sitting in the room right now?” As a child of divorce, when my parents were screaming and yelling, it didn’t matter if I locked myself in my room – I could still hear them. Kids can sense that tension even when parents think they’re hiding it.

Here’s a little trick I use: I figure out how long they’ve been married and look at their kids’ ages. I’ll say, “You guys have been married 10 years and have a three-year-old. Do you realize you’re going to be co-parents until your child gets out of college for the next 19 years? That’s nearly twice as long as you’ve been married. Would you like that period to be miserable or pleasant?” That reframes it – they realize they’re going to see a lot more of each other post-divorce.

Angie: What other professionals or support do you recommend people get during divorce?

Joe: Three people come to mind. Number one is a counselor. People look at me like, “We’re getting a divorce. Why do we need a marriage counselor?” You don’t need a marriage counselor per se, but you’re trying to evolve your relationship to become co-parents. Even while you’re divorcing in mediation with me, still go to therapy, whether together or individually, because you need to manage these emotions.

My partner Cheryl, who’s also my wife, is a divorce coach on our team. She provides emotional support. My background is finance and negotiation – I’m very tactical, financial, paperwork-driven. But it’s not money that drives divorce, it’s emotions. If we don’t resolve those emotions, you’ll be stuck in circles.

Number two is a financial advisor. A lot of us think only millionaires have financial advisors. If you have $5,000 in the bank, I want you to talk to somebody. You’re going to become an independent financial entity responsible for building your own financial future. All those little moves you make now will add up to big dollars when you’re 65 or 75.

I saw this with my mom. She gave up her share of my dad’s pension to reduce the equity in their house. She worked in retail at companies that went bankrupt, and between Social Security and her pension, she had about $1,200 a month. She didn’t plan for her financial future after getting divorced at 45, and that really harmed her down the road.

Number three is an accountant. I have an MBA in finance and still hire an accountant for my taxes and have a financial advisor because it’s complicated. You can make a lot of mistakes, and these professionals can guide you through keeping your financial house in order.

Angie: What’s the number one financial mistake you see people make during divorce?

Joe: Here’s my famous phrase – learn it, live it, love it: “Do the discovery before the deciding.” People come into mediation and the absolute worst thing they can say is “We’ve got it all figured out.” I know immediately this will be one of the most challenging cases I’ve ever had.

Somebody went on the internet, talked to the cashier at the supermarket, and their friend’s college roommate’s brother-in-law got divorced and told them what they’ll get in alimony. They come in with all these decisions, and I start asking questions because part of my job is to poke holes. When I ask questions, one person says “I didn’t know that” and wants to change their mind. Then the other person jumps in with “But you said we agreed to this!” That’s when it spins out of control.

The financial mistake people make is they don’t collect proper information to make decisions – budgets, pay stubs, tax returns, balance sheets. If I gave you a jigsaw puzzle and the box was half empty, you’d say “Why would I do this? I don’t have all the pieces.” Don’t make decisions without complete information.

Angie: How do you help couples create realistic post-divorce budgets that actually work?

Joe: We have proprietary budget worksheets with about a hundred different categories. It’s so easy these days with credit cards to have things on auto-bill. I ask people to dig through their credit cards and bank statements line by line. I’ll review it and say, “Really? You’re going to spend $75 a month on groceries? Really?”

We have resources – the USDA has a website tracking average grocery costs for families. I’ll say “They estimate you’ll spend $878 a month, not $75.” We push back because we’re trying to set you up for success. We want to challenge you so you get it right out of the gate with a good foundation.

We also show them how to track inflation using the consumer price index. We ask what kind of raises they’ve gotten. “No raises over the last five years? Well, this gap might get bigger. You need to find areas to trim. You can’t do five vacations a year and have that $2,000 car payment.”

We become the financial disciplinarian. If you’re slightly annoyed with me, I’ve done my job because I’ve challenged you and balanced the playing field. Once a year, go back and look at that budget. Pick 10 categories and track them. Notice when your mortgage went from $2,000 to $2,700 a month and plan for that.

Angie: What states do you work in?

Joe: We work in six states: Washington, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. I’m originally from New Jersey, lived in Chicago, and now live in the San Diego area, so you can see how our practice has moved over the years. These are very mediation-friendly states – not all states are as supportive of the mediation process.

If you’re not in a state we practice in, there are web directories and Google searches to find mediators. On our website, there’s an article on how to hire a good mediator. We also have a guide on how to hire a lawyer because sometimes mediation is inappropriate. I’ll tell clients when I don’t think mediation will work for them, and I want them to get a good attorney – one that’s supportive and cooperative, not just looking to bill hours.

Get educated, get out there, and if you live in one of those six states, we’re happy to talk to you. You can schedule a free call with us.

Angie: Thank you so much for your time today, Joe. Listeners, make sure to get connected with Joe and check out those articles so you’re best equipped and empowered. Stay tuned for more Divorce Discussions, and if there’s additional support we can help you with, go to divorceupportcollective.com.

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Contact Information:

• Joe Dillon, Equitable Mediation Services
• Website: equitablemediation.com
• Free consultation available for residents of Washington, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania
• Angie Weber, Divorce Support Collective: divorceupportcollective.com

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In this episode of the Don’t Pick the Scab Podcast, I sit down with David Webb to discuss how mediation can help men 40+ navigate the emotional and financial minefields of divorce with clarity, confidence, and fairness.

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Disclaimer

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Anything discussed in this podcast should not be construed as legal, financial, or emotional advice. It is for informational purposes only. If you are in need of such advice you MUST seek the guidance of a qualified professional where you live.

The transcript below was auto-generated and may contain errors or omissions.

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Don’t Pick the Scab Podcast: Interview with David Webb

David: Welcome to Don’t Pick the Scab podcast. Today we welcome Joe Dylan, a seasoned divorce mediator with a unique blend of financial expertise and deep personal insights. Joe specializes in guiding couples through complex divorce negotiations, helping them reach fair agreements that protect both their emotional well-being and financial stability. His empathetic approach and strategic guidance make difficult conversations more manageable, especially for men over 40 navigating the challenges of divorce. Joe’s experience can provide invaluable clarity, ensuring that men can move forward with confidence, fairness, and financial security. Get ready to learn how effective mediation can transform the divorce experience. All right, Joe, tell us about yourself, and I got some questions for you.

David: Welcome to the Don’t Pick the Scab podcast with the premise of connecting men over 40 with the tools and community to thrive in their divorce recovery either before, during, or after a divorce.

Joe: Thanks for having me. A little bit about me – I’ve been mediating 28 years, in private practice for 17. My background is actually finance and negotiations. I have an MBA in finance, so it’s a non-traditional route. Most people think of mediators as either lawyers or mental health professionals, and about 90% of divorce mediators fall into those two buckets. The other 10% are the classic “other,” and of that other category, I’m probably one fraction of that 10%.

I really feel like having this kind of background brings clarity, focus, and analysis to the process and helps people make better decisions. When you think about it, three of the four issues in a divorce are financial – child support, alimony, property division. So 75% of your divorce involves numbers. By using a process that focuses on the numbers, we’re able to help clients have realistic settlements that help couples understand what’s possible rather than what they’re entitled to or what their friend told them they should get. That’s where we take a lot of emotion out of the process. We treat it like a business transaction, and at the end of the day, our 98% case resolution rate speaks for itself. We’re able to guide almost everybody through. It works. It might not be the most fun you ever have – I’m not here to be your best friend. I’m here to help you avoid your divorce blowing up so you can see your kids, have some money in your bank, and move on with your lives.

David: What led you to become a divorce mediator? What do you find most rewarding about your work?

Joe: I am the classic case of “this won’t happen to me.” My parents litigated their divorce back in the 80s, before mediation was really a thing. Mediation’s been around since the 60s – California started divorce mediation in 1961 – but this was back before mediation was common. They had the lawyers, they had the courtroom battle. It went on for a few years with screaming and yelling. I sat in the back of the courtroom – good times. My father’s Irish, my mom’s Italian, so two very calm, mellow nationalities with placid personalities like Lake Placid.

It was such a battle that they got so mad at each other that the last time I saw my father was in the courthouse hallway when I was 15. That was it. I didn’t see him, never had parenting time, never heard from him again. In 2019, I got a letter that he died and that was it. So that was my relationship with him basically. In those years before he moved out and then they were fighting and not talking, I really only had a relationship with him for about 10 years.

As I got older, I always found that I avoided conflict. I was always the peacemaker. I always wanted everybody to stop yelling. I was working in corporate for a while, doing big, high-powered financial negotiations, multi-million dollar contracts, working with lawyers and legal teams and clients and customers. I was having lunch with my mother-in-law one day and she said, “I have a friend who’s a mediator. I think you would be good at that.” This was going back to probably 2007. I had been mediating in a corporate setting, just not in the divorce world.

Back in 2007, I started taking classes and in ’08, we opened up Equitable Mediation. Really, it’s my experience as a kid of divorce, a litigated divorce, watching my mom struggle financially because she gave up my dad’s pension in exchange for the house. She was only working part-time at the time, so the numbers didn’t really work out. She worked three jobs, and I just watched this whole thing unfold and thought, “Man, it doesn’t have to be this way.”

That’s the story I bring to this process because I can tell you the way it could go sideways. There are a lot of ways. But if we focus on certain things, you have a far better chance of both getting through this as amicably as you can, still remaining co-parents. That’s the key. Your kids don’t care about your marriage – you’re not husband and wife anymore, but you’re still mom and dad. They still want you at the soccer games, at the graduations. I didn’t have any of that.

That’s really my motivation every single day. I tell people, “Your kids don’t care what’s going on here. They want mom and dad, and they want to see you guys on Christmas.” That’s really the personal story. In our profession, you’re not supposed to get in the box with the clients, but I stand really dangerously close to the edge because I care about these people. I see what’s happened to them. That’s my story and what inspires me to do this and keeps me showing up every single day because I feel like every day I go home, that’s another family I may have saved. Those kids will see their parents model that and then that’ll improve their marriages. You know that saying about throwing a stone in the pond and it creates infinite ripples? That’s how I feel about this. I’m kind of proud of that because at the end of the day, I can say, “Hopefully, I’m making the world a slightly better place despite this terrible circumstance.”

David: What are the differences between corporate mediation and divorce mediation? What are the similarities and differences?

Joe: In a corporate setting, there’s really one path forward. I was negotiating sales contracts, so you either get the sale or you don’t. Really both parties seem to want to make a deal. It’s very rare where a customer or a salesperson are going to walk away if they’ve agreed on the price. Then it really becomes a matter of the terms, so there’s a stronger affinity to want to complete your negotiations at that point.

In divorce mediation, however, it’s a voluntary process. We have a phrase called BATNA, which is best alternative to a negotiated agreement. If David and I are going to go out for pizza tonight and you say you want Chinese food and I say we agreed on pizza, my BATNA is to tell you I’m not going out with you, I’m getting pizza. I still get what I want.

In a divorce, there’s really what we call a WATNA, which is the worst alternative to negotiated agreement. Meaning, in mediation, you’re litigating if you don’t mediate. It’s going sideways. We have to really work hard to keep the parties there because a lot of them don’t think that’s going to be bad. They’re like, “Well, if we can’t work it out in mediation, I’ll just get a lawyer. Don’t worry about it.” And I’m like, “You guys have no idea what you’re about to step into.”

In corporate, they’re more willing to make a deal. Everybody’s posturing, lawyers are firing off letters, the mediators are trying to get the sides together, but as the mediator in a corporate setting, you know they’re going to come to terms eventually. You can just put on your big girl and big boy pants and do what you get paid for. But in my world of mediation, I have to work really hard to keep parties there. That’s the biggest difference.

David: How does your financial background enhance your ability to mediate divorce cases?

Joe: I think it’s the key. Guys will appreciate this because a lot of times people come in – I don’t know if you’ve heard of this magical place called the internet where you can learn anything you want, and all of it is true, 100% correct. Throw in one of those chat bots and you’re an expert.

People have this disconnection from reality. They think about what they’re entitled to or what they’re going to get. “Well, I talked to my friend and she got $10,000 a month in alimony and I’m going to get that too.” It’s like, “Yeah, her husband was the CEO of a company and in your case, the husband works as a cashier at the supermarket making $65,000 a year.” We need to bring you back to reality, and there’s a lot of screaming and yelling.

With our process, there are two things we do. First, we do a budgeting process. We have the couple together – this is difficult, but together – work on a joint budget. It’s all of your spending for the previous 12 months because in my experience, there’s a household financial manager. In my house, it happens to be my wife. You can quickly figure out in a couple which one it is. When they do that budget, it’s an exercise in reality because then the uneducated person says, “Wow, we spend $800 a month on groceries or the kids’ karate lessons are $1,000 a month.” It’s like, “Yeah, where have you been?”

We get them to do an individual budget that maps out their forward-looking 12 months as individuals. How much do you need? When you’re getting in those conversations about support, particularly alimony, and one person who was the lower earner is saying, “Well, I need this and I’m entitled to or I deserve $10,000,” I say, “Well, okay, here’s your soon-to-be ex’s budget. If they give you $10,000, you have a $5,000 a month surplus and they’re short $4,000. Does that make sense?”

When you show the numbers to people, I truly believe people in their heart of hearts know what’s right and can be convinced to be reasonable if you show them the information. They might not be happy that I’m right, but we do that budgeting process.

Then we have a balance sheet. Again, treating it like a business transaction. Don’t tell me that you decided you’re going to keep the house. That’s one of many items. I give them a worksheet that puts all their assets and all their liabilities on there. Then we take a look at it as an entire picture. It’s like a portfolio. You wouldn’t save for retirement by just buying one stock. You’re going to buy multiple things, spread out your risk, take some assets, take some liabilities.

We show them the whole picture and say, “Okay, here’s the whole picture. If you get this, what are you going to give in exchange for that?” That’s negotiation. It’s not just take, take, take. If I’m going to go out to the movies with you and we’re going to dinner beforehand, I shouldn’t let David pick both the movie and the restaurant. At least we’re engaged in something that’s fair and balanced.

By having those two processes, it really helps the uninitiated because a lot of people don’t love numbers the way I do. It puts it out in front of them and then they look at it and they’re like, “Yeah, this makes sense.” It’s hard to argue with it. I always play the devil’s advocate – “If I missed something, I’m not a rocket scientist here. If I missed something, convince me. Talk to me.” Ninety-nine times out of 100, the numbers are right there. Numbers don’t lie. That’s how we really keep them on track using those processes and it really helps take that temperature of the room down because it becomes all about the facts.

David: What about that 2%?

Joe: The 2% is angry. Basically what happens is the 2% is the individual who does not want the divorce because they know that if they get the divorce, it’s not going to be as charmed for them in their lives. With those folks, they just haven’t processed their emotions. They pick the scab. They really are so angry at what’s going on because they want to control the process. They want to be the one to file for divorce. They want to be the one to walk out. “How dare you do this to me?” It’s like, “Well, wait a minute. I didn’t do this to you. This is a failing of everybody. It takes two to tango and you have to take a hard look and be willing to take a hard look at the role you played in what happened.”

Some people just aren’t willing to do that. It’s always blame, blame, blame. You know what though? You got one finger pointing, you got three pointing back at you. That’s the classic case. Guy to guy here, men are notorious for this because we’re fixers, we’re controllers, we’re caretakers. We’re men of action. Maybe stop taking some actions and start doing some thinking and some reflecting and some quiet time. Maybe get yourself some chamomile tea – no shame in that – and sit quietly with a book at night and say, “Yeah, maybe I could have done things differently.”

Those are the 2%ers. Unfortunately, they’re the ones that come to the process probably too early. They should have taken some time to process their emotions, work with a divorce coach, work with a therapist, get that anger out so that they could come to the table and be ready to negotiate.

David: But the 2%ers don’t realize when you throw it to the wind and then the judge decides, it can go any way. They’re just making decisions.

Joe: Absolutely. I tell people all the time – I’m a big fan of crime shows, CSI and all this stuff. In 60 minutes, we can solve a complex murder case. But what people don’t realize is that’s a court of law. We know it’s bad to kill somebody. You don’t have to be a lawyer to know you can’t do that. When we see those shows on TV as courts of law, we go, “Well, the person comes in and they’re guilty and it’s very clear-cut.”

In divorce, it’s what we call a court of equity. Meaning whatever a third party – a judge – decides is equitable. What does equitable mean? It doesn’t mean equal. It means fair and equitable. And it’s up to that third party who, by the way, has met you about all of five minutes to tell you what you’re going to get and what’s going to happen for the rest of your life.

Judges are people and they’re wonderful people. Talk about somebody who takes it on all day. These are people who are listening to every single thing. They have a split second to make a decision on what they think is fair. Even though some states – we practice in multiple states, but I’ll pick California – there’s a guideline for child support and there’s a guideline for alimony. But notice it’s a guideline. It doesn’t say this is absolutely the number. Parties can agree to something else. A judge can agree to give something else. It’s just a starting point.

People aren’t clear that if they make a deal in mediation and then they wind up trying to get it litigated, it may actually turn out worse for them because this third party doesn’t know you. That’s why we tell them try to control it in the mediation space. You get to make the decision. You get to control the outcome rather than letting the third party who doesn’t know you dictate what you get.

David: What are some of the biggest misconceptions about divorce mediation?

Joe: Probably the number one is that I’m going to tell you what you’re going to get. People are like, “Well, you’re going to tell me how much alimony I get or how much child support.” I’m like, “Well, no. I’m going to show you guidelines. I’m going to show you ranges. I’m going to share with you options. I’m going to share what other clients did. I’m going to analyze your situation with you. I’m going to work together to help you guys ask questions and negotiate and go back and forth. But at the end of the day, I’m never going to tell you what to do. That’s what a judge does. A judge decides.”

Mediation is ideal for people who want to be empowered, who want to make their own decisions. I work for both people simultaneously. It’s a tight rope. Think about it. In order to get one person to give something so the other person can get it, I’ve got to be really careful so I don’t look like I’m just advocating for the party who’s getting something. Then I have to remember to shift gears and go the other way and say, “Well, if they give you this, what are you going to give them in exchange?”

It’s a really fine balancing line. People have to understand that you have to come here because you want to make those decisions, not because you want me to tell you what to do. I can share with you what other clients have done – I’ve met thousands of people and looked at their cases. You look at their situations and go, “Yeah, you guys remind me of these five clients I had and let me just throw those options on the table. Let’s see if those work.” But that’s the key. You want to be told what to do, you hire a lawyer and you go to court. You want to be empowered to do it yourself, you work with somebody like me.

David: In your experience, how do men typically handle the emotional aspect of divorce negotiations?

Joe: For the most part, they don’t. My partner, who’s also my wife, Cheryl, she’s a divorce coach, so she works with me here. I handle the financial, tactical, paperwork stuff, all that process stuff. She handles the emotional stuff and it’s totally voluntary. You don’t have to work with her, but you can schedule one-on-one sessions with her. My work is always with both parties at the same time. She’s only working one-on-one.

A lot of that stuff is really the key because the anger will eat you up. It will destroy your life. It’ll destroy your relationship with your kids. It’ll destroy your relationship with your ex. What I see is our clients tend to run between ages 45 and 55. I’m 56, I still think I’m young. I still have plenty of years left on this planet. Let’s split the difference and call it 50. Imagine if you get divorced at 50 and you live to age 95. That’s 45 years of being angry. Why would you do that to yourself? The other person isn’t sitting at home thinking being angry at you. They’re off doing their thing, having their life, having a good time, maybe dating or remarried or whatever.

It’s really important to take that time to process those emotions, to work with somebody you’re comfortable with. There are divorce coaches for dads, divorce coaches for men. You don’t have to work with my wife who’s female. Therapists, all those things that are important for guys to do because we’re just rubbing dirt on it. “I’ll be fine, I’m okay.” You might think you are, but underneath the surface is what’s really percolating.

That’s really what I want listeners to take away from this. If you don’t work on you and you don’t work on you internally, guess what’s going to happen? You’re going to meet somebody else and they’re going to think you’re cool and charming for a few years and this pattern is going to repeat itself. We call them repeat offenders. Obviously you didn’t take the time to figure out what went sideways the first time because now this is the second time or the third time. That’s what you want to help people avoid.

There’s no shame in it. We’re humans. We’re fallible. If you’re not learning, what are you doing? You have to learn and grow. Those guys, those 2%ers who come in are usually the guys who are really angry. They’re probably never going to look at themselves, but hopefully you get some guys in the process where there can be breakthrough moments. These people have been in such dysfunctional relationships, they’ve been in these places where they’ve been arguing for so long. Then there’s this moment in mediation where perhaps the wife cries or breaks down and then the husband is like, “Well, I never knew that. Why didn’t you tell me that?” And she’s like, “I’ve been telling you that for 15 years.” Maybe this is an opportunity to learn about your listening skills, for example.

David: What kind of strategies do you recommend for men to stay focused and calm during mediation?

Joe: I say this as a professional negotiator, not as a divorce mediator, not to make light of the situation, but there’s a reason they call negotiation game theory. It’s a game. If you realize, first of all, the absurdity of it – that you go into something not knowing the outcome, not knowing what’s going to happen – I think part of it is going in with a plan. One of those plans is to remain calm and do whatever it is you need to do.

It’s pretty funny. Off to the side of my desk, I have these little rocks, these little stones, these flat stones that sometimes if I’m stressed out, I just pick this thing up. It’s nice and smooth. One of those skimming stones. I just rub it in between my fingers and I feel instantly better. Find that token or that breathing or that song that you play internally in your head that calms you down. Because if you go in knowing that this too shall pass, I’ve got a plan, I will remain calm, I will go forward with my plan, I will adjust as needed, then you don’t fall prey to the emotions. You don’t fall prey to the trap.

You want to know that it’s going to get bumpy. It’s going to be hard. It really is. But I think if you go in prepared, that’s the key. A lot of people come in like if I say to them, “Say you got in a car in New York and you just decided to drive to California, a small town in California, not Los Angeles, that you could probably easily find, and you didn’t have a GPS and you didn’t have a map. Do you think you’d get there?” Maybe, but it wouldn’t be an easy mission. You need a road map. You need a plan. You need a path. Find your calm, find your center, have your plan, and know that there’s going to be bumps. You have to give to get and that’s really what’s going to get you through this process. There’s no other way around it.

David: How can men ensure that they’re achieving a fair and equitable settlement when they’re using a mediator? What are some things they can look for?

Joe: I always say cash flow is king. Numbers don’t lie. You do those budgets we talked about. At the end of the day you want to make sure that the parties will live roughly on par with each other for some period of time. Most of our clients have kids, so I’ll talk to the guys with kids about that. As much as you just want to exact revenge and you want to get that pound of flesh, we had a client couple – he’s the CFO of a bank, wife worked inside the home raising kids. He had a great lawyer. She had a terrible lawyer. He got to keep the beach house, got to keep the house, kids got all the game systems over there, he’s got the car, all the stuff. She is literally living in an apartment that is adjacent to a railroad track.

Now you’re a 12-year-old boy and you say to yourself, “Well, gee, do I want to go to mom’s house at the railroad track or do I want to go to dad’s house at the beach?” This is a New Jersey client. I’m like, “Listen, man. That’s the mother of your kid. You want your kid to have… because you got a 50-50 parenting plan. So half the time your kid’s going to be miserable living by a railroad track.” You got to think through that stuff. Even though you really want to get that pound of flesh, you got to say, “Well, by giving support to this now ex-spouse of mine, what I’m really doing is creating an environment for my kid and I’m really helping.”

That’s what I think can help people understand what’s fair. It’s not about the hard dollars or the numbers. It’s about the lifestyle. It’s about the circumstances. It’s about is it fair that I can buy both the PlayStation and the Xbox and the Nintendo Switch, whereas my wife is maybe having him do crossword puzzles on pieces of paper? Those are the lifestyle choices we want people to focus on rather than the hard dollars. Are you able to make ends meet? Can you both drive a car? You want somebody driving a 25-year-old car driving your kid around to soccer practice? No, I wouldn’t.

Those are the things I’d say to people to look for. That’s how you know when you’ve got fair agreements in terms of support. When it comes to property, like I said, you use that balance sheet. You look at it all laid out there. The phrase I use is I like to call it the salad bar approach. I love salad bars. I’m obsessed with salad bars. You go down the line – you get the lettuce, the tomatoes, the cucumbers, the carrots. The idea being that you want a little bit of everything. You don’t want a plate of lettuce. You don’t want a plate of just tomatoes.

When you look at it all in one place, you can say, “Well, we each got a car. I got a 401k. You got an IRA. We’re going to sell the house, split the proceeds. I take on this credit card. You take on that credit card.” When I look at the big picture, it looks fair as opposed to just focusing on one asset. Like, you got the house. Yeah, but guess what? The house has a $500,000 mortgage on it and you have a 401k worth $600,000. You got to look at the big picture to understand and that’s really the takeaway. Look at the overall big picture, look at the lifestyle and look at the balance. That’s how I would say to figure out what’s fair.

David: How do you help clients navigate sensitive topics like alimony or property division?

Joe: Those are the big two other than the kids. We always start off with non-numerical things, lifestyle. We talk about what you’ve been doing. What has your life looked like as a married couple? Did you make a decision where one of you was going to stay and raise the kids and work inside the home? Did you move around a lot? Did you buy this house recently or has it been a long time? What are the expectations you each have for your lives moving forward?

When we start getting into the numbers, we first start with those budgets again, to level set. What’s realistic here? What’s needed? You can’t have an intelligent conversation about how much alimony somebody’s going to pay or receive if you don’t know how much somebody has to give or how much someone needs. By putting those factual things out on the table, we sort of deflate the balloon early. We say, “Look, here’s the bottom line. This is what it costs to live.” I’m originally from New Jersey. I lived in Chicago for a while and I live in California now. These are not cheap places to live. When people get divorced in these places, they say, “Oh, well, you could get an apartment for $800.” It’s like, “Yeah, if it was 1995, maybe, but that was 30 years ago.”

By using that factual information, deflating that balloon, that helps with alimony. The same goes with property division. We talk about goal-based negotiation. What’s your goal? Is your goal to keep the kids in the house? All right, let’s find a way to do that rather than, “Well, you got this and I got that.” What’s your goal? “I want to retire early.” Okay, sounds like you might be more interested in keeping more of the retirement assets. What are you willing to exchange for that?

You see the difference? It’s not about the dollars and cents. It’s about the goal. It’s about what’s the endgame here. That’s how you do it. That’s a great mindset for guys to have when they go into negotiations. Not “she’s not getting a penny” or “I’m not giving X dollars.” What’s the goal? To keep our kids in the house? What’s the goal for me to retire? What’s the goal? That’s a nice way to look at it.

David: How has divorce mediation evolved over the years, especially for men over 40?

Joe: The good news is, here’s a great statistic that we track. When we first started practicing, the first year I started keeping track of this, I think it was 2009, we had probably about 10% of our client couples agreed to 50-50 parenting plans, where you had true joint custody, shared custody, physical custody. Now it’s about 85% of them. To a kid who didn’t see his dad, that is really heartwarming because it sends a really strong message that both parents are instrumental in raising kids.

I have to give my mom the biggest shout out because when a 14-year-old boy starts having some questions about girls, normally you’re going to turn to dad, and mom handled that conversation with aplomb and was very open and honest, and even grandma kicked in which I thought was amazing. Those are the things that you don’t think about.

That’s been one of the major evolutions. I think people are starting to recognize and especially they’re recognizing that I don’t have to go the contentious, expensive legal route where I’m going to most likely get the short end of the stick. I can go to the mediation space where it’s going to be more fair, more balanced, save money, save time, and come out with a 50-50 parenting plan or a 50-50 split of assets or something that I get to share how I feel. I’m not just a paycheck or a meal ticket. Hey, listen. Guess what? I want to take the kids on vacation, too. I don’t want to have that apartment over the bakery in downtown. I want the kids to want to spend time, not go, “Oh, dad’s place smells.” You want to make sure that it’s balanced.

I’ve seen that evolve over time. Mediation has become a better space. Here’s a fun fact. Fun air quotes in my world. Not a lot of fun, but 70% of divorces are filed by women. Yet 50% of the people who initiate mediation in our practice are men. So that tells me that they see the value. Even if they’re not the one driving the divorce, they say, “You know what? I think I could get a better deal here. I could get a fairer shake.” And I believe in my heart of hearts, they’re absolutely right.

David: Well, Joe, you have dropped the mic, buddy. Where can men find you on the internet?

Joe: Best place is our website equitablemediation.com. Not spell it meditation. Totally different vibe. Equitablemediation.com. What you’ll notice there, there’s a learning center. I encourage everybody to click on the learning center. I have been blogging for 17 years. I’ve been writing all kinds of articles. One of our number one most visited posts is “How to Survive Divorce as a Man.” I kid you not. It is one of our most popular posts. 25 tips. I’ve interviewed my male friends who are mental health professionals, male clients, former clients, what do they do? Even my buddies I know who were divorced.

Guys, get out there, read, learn. An educated client is a good client for us. Get in that learning center. There’s videos, there’s podcasts. Just absorb information and just know that there’s experts who can help you. We all as men want to say, “I can do it.” Heck, man, I’m an only child. I’m the worst at this. I’m like, “I can do it. I don’t need your help.” Take the help. This is what we go to school for. This is what we’re professionally trained in. Learn, read, gather information, but then work with a professional. Hit up that learning center on equitablemediation.com. When you’re ready, there’s a button says “talk to us.” Click it, schedule a meeting with Cheryl, free call, see if mediation works for you, and happy to help you guys in any way we can.

David: All right. Well, Joe, I appreciate your time, man. We’re gonna do this again because we just scratched the surface. We could do this all day.

Joe: Love to come back. My pleasure.

David: All right, sir. Hey, I appreciate you taking time to hang with me and we definitely have you back.

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In this episode of “Going Solo: Life After Relationship Loss,” I join host Cece Shatz to discuss how divorce mediation can smooth the transition from married to single life. I answer frequently asked questions about the mediation process and explain how choosing mediation can resolve your divorce in just 2-3 months compared to 2-3 years of litigation. And we explore how engaging in a more peaceful divorce process helps minimize both emotional and financial damage to you and your family.

This conversation provides practical insights for anyone seeking a less adversarial path through divorce while protecting their well-being and resources during this major life transition.

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Disclaimer

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Anything discussed in this podcast should not be construed as legal, financial, or emotional advice. It is for informational purposes only. If you are in need of such advice you MUST seek the guidance of a qualified professional where you live.

The transcript below was auto-generated and may contain errors or omissions.

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Going Solo Interview Transcript: Joe Dillon on Divorce Mediation

Host: Cece Schatz, Going Solo Network
Guest: Joe Dillon, Equitable Mediation Service

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Cece: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Going Solo, Life After Relationship Loss. I’m your host, Cece Schatz. Today we have a really great show about mediation for those going through divorce and trying to figure out an easier way than arguing and fighting to make your family life miserable.

We have the expert here today – Joe Dillon. Joe, you’re a pioneer in divorce mediation. You’ve been helping couples navigate through the end of marriages with dignity and financial wisdom for over 17 years. You’re the co-founder of Equitable Mediation Service, and you combine your MBA in finance with specialized training from Harvard, MIT, and Northwestern University. Tell us why you decided that mediation was so important that you were going to devote your life to it.

Joe: That’s a great question. My parents litigated their divorce, so I’m a child of a litigated divorce. My high school years were consumed by my parents’ divorce – sitting in waiting rooms at my mom’s lawyer’s office, sitting in the back of courtrooms or in hallways at the county courthouse. That’s not really how you want to spend your life.

Their divorce was so terrible that they fought and fought. It took years to unfold and my mom never recovered. She was about 45, and then she never dated, never made any friends, really didn’t rebuild her life. My dad was so angry at the settlement that he stopped talking to me and my mom. The last time I saw him, I was 15 years old in the lobby of a courthouse where they had been arguing over who was going to pay for me to go to college. In 2019, I got a letter in the mail that said he died.

That story really imprinted on me – there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. I wish everybody could mediate. Not everyone can, but you’d be surprised. If you act like an adult, put your kids first, and really focus on the damage it’s going to do to you both financially and emotionally, then you can mediate.

Cece: Thank you for sharing that. Parents need to know that because when they’re in the midst of divorce and fighting about their futures, sometimes they forget about their children’s futures too. It’s not just about the dollar signs – it’s also about the mental part, and that can affect kids as they continue on.

Now here in Florida, we have mediation built into the process, but people don’t take advantage of it. Let’s talk about how people can really use that mediation time when they’ve already gotten an attorney and filed their paperwork.

Joe: There’s court-appointed mediation that varies from state to state, but you can always go to private mediation. I’m a private mediator – I don’t work through the court system. A good lawyer is going to say, “Let’s try mediation first. What’s the worst that can happen? It’s non-binding. We don’t come to an agreement, you don’t have to stick to it. Then we can go the legal route.”

One thing people don’t know – statistically, 2% of all divorce cases get in front of a judge. The judges don’t want to see you. They’re busy with other things. They don’t want to listen to you about the toaster or holiday disputes.

But even before you get into that process, you can work with a private mediator. You can search for “divorce mediator near me” and find somebody like myself who will mediate before you even retain an attorney. When you’re done with us, you can have an attorney review everything and go through the formal process.

The advantage is you’re off the clock. When you file papers and get court-ordered mediation, you’ve got a court date with pressure to settle by a certain day. These are big decisions, especially for folks in their 50s and 60s who’ve been married a long time with a lot to unwind. If you go to a private mediator, you control the clock and can enter the court system when you’re ready.

Cece: I totally agree. Why not take control of that? If you can do it beforehand with a private mediator, you can sit down and figure out what you truly want and where you envision your life to be in the future. A mediator will help you do that.

So what’s the first thing someone should do? How do they get their partner on board with mediation?

Joe: First, understand that mediation is a voluntary process – both parties have to be willing. You can’t convince someone to mediate if they don’t want to. The first step is getting your spouse on board.

On our website, we have a guide on the five options for divorce – by far our most popular resource. It covers the pros and cons of each option, what you need to do and understand. By reviewing that, maybe with your spouse, you can say, “This is the option that sounds best for us.”

As a neutral third party, I emphasize that I don’t represent either person – I advocate for both of you. I want a solution that’s best for the collective, your kids, your family, and your future. By having a meeting with both spouses and me, I can help set that tone.

Often one person finds us first, and the other person thinks, “That’s your mediator.” I clarify – I am not your mediator, I am our mediator. Getting that buy-in from a spouse by having them feel part of the decision is key.

Cece: Let’s talk about cost. The difference between mediation and going the argumentative route with attorneys is significant, right?

Joe: Absolutely. As we say to clients, it takes two people to be married, but only one to get a divorce. Whether or not you want that divorce, it will happen. It’s simply a function of how much time, money, and emotional capital you want to spend. You can either do it the easier way and start building your new life, or fight and pay a lot of money and still wind up in the same spot – except instead of two to three months, it’ll be two to three years with an empty bank account.

Cece: Sometimes people spend a lot of time arguing over something that may not be essential – like candlesticks. How do you handle issues that seem mundane but aren’t mundane to the person?

Joe: When I was taking training at Harvard, I learned about the book “Getting to Yes” – a classic on negotiation. One key principle is looking for the reason behind the reason. With the candlesticks example, it’s not about the object. There’s some hidden reason this person is negotiating this way.

A good mediator won’t keep going at the candlesticks directly – they’ll circle around to see what’s under the hood. Usually, you’ll find out it’s not about the candlesticks at all. It might be, “I had to walk the dog more when we were married” – something completely disconnected from the item at hand.

When you get to that “aha moment,” it pops the balloon and lets all the air out of the argument. Once you find that underlying issue and address it, the rest of the conversation flows because you’ve made a breakthrough.

Cece: This is the beauty of mediation – it allows people to slow down, take a breath, and get to the bottom of what’s bothering them. Let’s talk about what all a mediator can do, because I want people to know there’s a vast amount of things you can help with.

Joe: There’s a real misconception out there. People ask, “You mean you can help us come to agreements on child support?” Of course! All the issues required to get a divorce – property division, alimony, parenting plans, child support – a good mediator can help you resolve.

Because of my background in finance, I take an analytical approach. When I help people craft an agreement, I want it to be realistic, executable, and something they won’t look back on 12 or 24 months later and think is terrible or unfair.

A good mediator guides you through what lawyers call the discovery process – exchanging all information. We’ll frame out all the issues, negotiate through what we call the four big brackets: parenting, child support, alimony, and property division.

But mediation really shines when dealing with other issues the courts don’t handle. For example, I’m a proud pet parent, and the courts don’t have pet parenting plans. But a mediator can help you craft a pet parenting plan and pet support agreement.

The result is what’s known as a memorandum of understanding – a detailed document with all the language you agree to that becomes your roadmap for moving forward.

Cece: That’s great advice. I love that you can have someone else review it, and if issues come up later, you can go back to the mediator. The reality is you get control of your life – you and your partner are in the driver’s seat.

Joe: Exactly. Let’s just talk about what you want to do, what your goals are. People forget that in family court, it’s a court of equity, not law. Equity means fair, but not necessarily equal. It’s what you both think is fair, and that might not be 50-50.

If you enter the court system, a judge might think something is fair for you, but you might not agree. In mediation, you decide what you think is fair and take that to the courts saying, “This is what we want.”

There’s no magic rulebook. Sure, there are guidelines, but if you read the statutes, there’s no formula. It’s all conversation and negotiation, which is what we do in mediation.

Cece: So wherever you live, in any state, there are mediators available. Do your homework, find one you think will work for you, and see if this is the route you want to go to have control of what you’re going to do.

Joe is in California. If you’re in that area, reach out to him at equitablemediation.com or email jdillon@equitablemediation.com. Any last words for our audience?

Joe: The sooner you get through your divorce, the sooner you can rebuild your life. I don’t know how many years any of us have on this planet, and I wish very healthy, long lives for everyone listening today. But why waste them in a courtroom? Why waste them being angry and fighting? Just get through the process, rebuild your life, and move forward.

Cece: That’s great advice. Remember, you can use a mediator not only during your divorce but also after. If you find yourself in a situation where you need to work out another agreement or revamp something as your family grows and moves forward in life, get a mediator and sit down to figure out what needs to be changed.

Thank you for being with us on Going Solo, Life After Relationship Loss. This is Cece Schatz reminding you that the next chapter of your life is not yet written.

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In this episode of “Lawyers & Mediators International,” I join host Mac-Arthur Pierre-Louis to discuss my unique approach to divorce mediation in “Don’t Let Your Divorce Become a Disaster.” I share my personal backstory about how my parents’ contentious divorce shaped my commitment to protecting children from high-conflict situations. And explain my philosophy of “looking through the windshield, not the rearview mirror,” focusing on future solutions rather than past grievances.

The conversation covers our 98% settlement rate, the role of divorce coaching, and our early adoption of virtual mediation technology that now serves clients across multiple states.

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Disclaimer

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This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors. Anything discussed in this podcast should not be construed as legal, financial, or emotional advice. It is for informational purposes only. If you are in need of such advice you MUST seek the guidance of a qualified professional where you live.

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Podcast Transcript

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Don’t Let Your Divorce Become a Disaster

A Conversation with Joe Dillon of Equitable Mediation

Mac: Welcome to the Lawyers and Mediators International Show and podcast, where we discuss law and conflict resolution topics to educate both professionals and everyday people. Catch regular episodes on YouTube and anywhere you get your podcast. Just remember, nothing in these episodes constitutes legal advice, so be sure to talk to a lawyer as cases are fact dependent.

Hey everyone, welcome back to Lawyers and Mediators International, where we talk about the law and conflict resolutions to educate the public, professionals, and everyday people. Welcome back, and in this episode I have guest Joe Dylan. He’s a mediator who’s going to be talking to us today about conflict, especially when it comes to divorces—divorces with kids, without kids. So Joe, how are you doing today?

Joe: Doing well, thanks Mac. Thanks for having me.

Mac: Well, thank you so much for coming on. I’ll be sharing your website while we talk, as we always like to do. As we start off these things, we want to get to know you, so why don’t you just spend a couple minutes to share yourself to the public, to the audience. But don’t share too much because I know you have quite an interesting backstory I’d like to get into a little bit, because that backstory really gives you the passion as to why you do this work? But yeah, tell us who you are in just the basic details.

Joe: Certainly. So I’m a mediator. I’ve been mediating for 28 years, been in private practice in divorce for 17. I have an MBA in finance, so that’s interesting when it comes to divorce. Because other than parenting plans, you’ve got child support, alimony, property division—they’re really financial matters when you think about it. I use that background to really help parties understand what’s fair and equitable, and I know we’re going to spend some time today talking about that as a concept, because fair and equitable—those are loaded words? They all mean different things to different people. But I try to bring that analytical bent along with some personal experience, which we’ll explore in a bit, to the table, because I know of what I speak.

That’s me in a nutshell. As I go through my career and I do this, a lot of satisfaction comes from it because you can really help people avoid court, avoid drama, and as you’ll learn a little bit about my story, I have experienced that firsthand.

Mac: Yes, well, similar to you, I do a lot of mediation work and I touch a lot of divorce cases, and so we both know they can become very hectic, emotionally stressful. I liken people doing their own divorce to going to the dentist and doing your own dental work—not a wise idea? It can be very painful. So you want expert help, and sometimes those experts are lawyers, but sometimes—and especially in Texas where I’m based—we’re required to go see mediators before we go see a judge. So often times those experts are mediators like yourself who can help.

So let’s talk about your backstory. You are, as you’ve described in your own biography online and you’ve discussed it elsewhere because I’ve seen you everywhere on different podcasts, and you’re going around quite a bit to share your story. But tell us about your childhood and what happened and what you experienced, because you went through—your parents went through a divorce and it impacted how you came to see relationships. I’ll let you tell the story, but go ahead.

Joe: Absolutely. So I grew up a classic suburban kid in New Jersey—I’m originally from New Jersey—and my parents litigated their divorce. Now this was back in the ’80s, really mediation was kind of a glimmer in the eye of some places? It really hadn’t become mainstream. And they really just fought and fought and fought, and it really dragged on through my high school years? So it was really, when you’re a kid and you’re supposed to be out and playing sports and working your after-school job and with your friends, a lot of it was just waiting for some letter from a lawyer in the mailbox or some drama or sitting in the waiting room of an attorney’s office because my mom had an appointment or sitting in the back of a courtroom. So that’s not an ideal way for a kid to spend their time?

And there were some really powerful messages. One of them I will never forget—and in fact I will remember to this day—his name was Judge Friend, I kid you not. And my mom was sitting there in our living room one day, she’s just crying, she’s upset, she’s like, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I hope we get a good judge.” And I was a teenager, so I knew enough to ask like, “What does that mean?” ? And as you know, in your line of work, because you and I are child support evangelists, if you will—so that’s what I appreciate about you—she said, “Yeah, I’ve heard that he likes kids and that if we get him as our judge, we’ll get good child support.”

Now, as professionals, if you and I sit here, we’re like, “What? You have to hope you get a judge who likes kids so that you can have money?” So thankfully a lot of that’s evolved, with the child support acts and guidelines that have come out.

So that was one thing, and then the other part of the puzzle was they were so busy fighting that I was an only child? So I just had myself, I was to my own devices, and they were so mad with each other—and specifically my dad with my mom—that after I saw him in court, this was I was probably 15, 16 somewhere in there. The last time I saw him in court was in the waiting room of the courthouse, like out in the lobby, and then they were just arguing over who was going to pay for college for me to go to college, and that was the big argument. Screaming and yelling, my dad was literally restrained because he was going to go after the judge because the judge kept making him pay more and more because he was getting angrier and angrier. And so finally, that was it. And that was the last I saw or heard from my father.

Then in 2019, I got a letter that said he died. And so from age 15 until at the time I guess I was about 50—that was it. I never saw him, heard from him, knew where he was, and it was really all because of that litigated divorce.

So when I get into session, people have most likely read that about me, and it’s not just platitudes, it’s not just words when I say, “Listen, you two, I know exactly what’s going to happen to you and your kids if you don’t figure it out here.” And so that’s the story I bring, and it’s not a story—it’s my life? And that’s the bent I bring into the room, and I believe people resonate with that and appreciate that, because we all say, “No, that’s never going to happen to me, never going to happen to me.” Well, it happened to me. It does happen, and I don’t want that for you?

Mac: Exactly. No, well said. I mean, thank you. I’m sorry all that happened to you. In a way, from where you sit, you can kind of tell the future? When people come to you, you’ve already lived this, and human nature being what it is, you can kind of tell, I’m sure, when people are in front of you where they’re going, and it’s not a good road.

Joe: Exactly.

Mac: Yeah, so when it comes to children, I think about the destructive part of divorce being the worst aspect because kids naturally want their mom and dad. They want their parents in their lives. And children are not just innocent, but I like how one person put it—they see you as their superhero, and a superhero cannot be a bad person? But in every superhero story, there’s a villain, and a lot of times one parent will cast the other as the villain in the story. And so naturally, when the child goes to the mirror, they’re going to look at themselves and feel that division, like, “Well, if one parent is saying the other one’s evil, basically what does that say about me?” Because I’m an identity of both.

So I guess that’s the encouragement out there for many parents who are listening—you have to both be the superheroes for your children so that they identify with that. So how has what you went through impacted now what you do?

Joe: Well, along with the personal experience, another thing that happened—and again, my recollection, it’s been a while, it’s a bit fuzzy—but I seem to remember that my dad would get paid on Friday. This is back in the ’80s when people got paid weekly, and he’d get paid on Friday, and the checks for child support and alimony would probably show up on like Monday or Tuesday? Because he was living close, I have no idea. And then one day the alimony checks just stopped because he decided that he wasn’t going to pay anymore.

And my mom, at the time, she had been working part-time. She really raised me probably for the first 11 years of my life, and then saw the writing on the wall and thought, “Maybe I better get a job and try to support myself.” And so she was working part-time, which then became full-time, and she had spent so much on attorneys and the process and was so burnt out by it that she just couldn’t go through it anymore? She just couldn’t go fight to get the alimony turned back on, if you will.

So the destruction of the process just wore her down so much that she couldn’t even fight for what perhaps she was legally entitled to? That was in her agreement. And then I think the child support may have also stopped? This was pre-enforcement days and things like that.

And so now here we are, me and my mom. She had tried—she kept the house? And so that’s another thing that’s a lesson that’s learned. She basically exchanged any s she had to my dad’s pension and retirement in exchange for buying him out of the house as part of the settlement. And that left her with zero in retirement. So she had no retirement, she had this house now that she had to take care of. My dad was in construction, so whenever anything went wrong, he fixed it? Now it’s me and my mom, and I’m not very handy, I will tell you that? I’m not very good with that kind of stuff.

And so here is a woman who should be getting money, can’t get up the strength or the financial resources to get what she is entitled to and deserves. She’s now got this home that she’s trying to manage, this teenage kid, and she’s just like, “Okay, what are you going to do with this kid?” ? And I watched how that really wore down on her, and so she had to pick up multiple jobs. I didn’t see her. She’d come home at 9:30 at night, leaving a teenage boy alone until 9:00 at night. Thankfully I was a good kid. I didn’t burn down the house or do anything, but I didn’t have parents. I didn’t have siblings, I didn’t have parents, and it was a really lonely existence.

And as much as I so appreciate what my mom did in trying to support me and keep the house and do all those things, I really wish my parents had talked, put my interests first, and said, “Okay, what do we collectively have to do so that you, mom, can work a job—because you have to work—but you don’t have to work three jobs, and I can spend some time with each of my parents?” Because my dad was really involved in my life up until then. He was the baseball coach and the scout leader and all of that stuff, and then poof, just disappeared. So that was particularly shocking.

And so when you see conflict in a divorce and you see the collateral damage, it’s not just to the people involved, the spouses—it’s to the kids, and it’s not just to their lives today, it’s to their lives 10, 20, 50 years from now? Down the road. And that’s what you and I, I’m sure, we both see.

Mac: Yeah, yeah. And so therefore, that’s the work you do at Equitable Mediation—that’s the website. And so I read somewhere that I think you had said that life is best viewed through the windshield and not through the rearview mirror. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, why is it so important to do things to help people resolve their cases in a way that’s going to put them in a good path forward?

Joe: Exactly. That’s my favorite quote. We know from our practice that mediation is a forward-looking process. And our job, whether people like this or not, our job is to help them craft an agreement that’s going to govern their relationship, their parenting, their financial relationship from what I call day zero—the first day you walk in my office—forward.

Now, did you always go to your husband’s or wife’s family on Thanksgiving and that was unfair? Sure, okay. Did so-and-so never do the laundry or pick up the groceries or leave their shoes in the hall? Sure? We all do, by the way. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is where do you want to go? If you’re going to continue to pick up old grievances—and quite frankly, I tell my clients this up front, it’s not to be cruel, it’s not to be flippant, it’s not to sound like I don’t care. People who know me, they’re like, “Joe, you care way too much, you get way too involved.” But it’s because it’s destructive if we spend all our time trying to go through all these past grievances. We’re never going to be able to do the thing that you said you both wanted, which was to end your marriage and move your lives forward separately. And let me help you do that?

And so that’s the whole looking through the windshield. We want to see where we go, because another personal aside is that the divorce really destroyed my mom. She never dated, she never had any friends, she became that kind of shut-in lady where if the ball went in the yard, you didn’t want to go get it. Like, it was like that stereotype. And it broke my heart because she really—she was a young woman at the time, she was 45, and I say that as I’m older than 45 now, so I still feel young? And so she had her whole life ahead of her, and this just destroyed her because she kept looking back, looking back.

And when even after she was divorced, I remember one night sitting at Christmas, and it was I think about 20 years later, and she’s like, “I wish my husband was here.” And I was like, “Mom, you’ve been divorced for 20 years. Like, we need to understand this. You never went to therapy, never got any help.” And so I really, I’m very, very, very adamant about helping people look forward for the myriad of reasons that I just shared.

Mac: Yeah, no, I can see that’s genuine, definitely. And so how do you deal with people who might, for lack of a better word, be stuck in the past, where they have so much hurt and wounds that they’re just, I guess in a way, clouded where they cannot move forward? And I’ve had them come to my office where we’re mediating these kind of difficult and very strenuous cases. How do you deal with that?

Joe: Well, one thing you’ll see from our website—my partner, who’s also my wife, you can figure that out by our last name—she is a divorce coach. So she’s a certified professional coach, and we take the tact that divorce has three parts. It has tactical—you got to gather up all the stuff? Fill out all the forms, write up all the agreements. Financial—all the money, figure out the dollars and cents and what goes where. And the biggest one—emotional. And it’s the emotional one that gets people in trouble?

People will say that they’re arguing over child support or alimony. But what they’re really mad about is, “We always went to your family on Thanksgiving!” That’s really what they’re mad about. And so Cheryl partners with us, and clients will work with me always one-on-one? As a neutral, I’m always working with both parties. I don’t caucus one-on-one. Cheryl, on the other hand, works with clients one-on-one, and so that’s the opportunity for them to help clear some of that emotional baggage, clear those grievances. She helps them kind of get out of their old story—that’s what she calls it. “This is your old story, and it’s not serving you well? Because look where it got you. So let’s write a new story.”

And that’s her goal—is to get people to say, “Yeah, I do have self-worth,” or “Yeah, I am going to spend holidays with my family,” or “Yeah, I could get a job.” And as soon as they turn that corner and they recognize that humanity of themselves? That self-worth? Because of all the messages they’ve probably been getting over the course of their relationship, that’s when they seem to turn the corner and say, “I’m going to make a change, I’m going to move forward, I’m going to rewrite my future,” because we all have the ability to do that?

You read those stories about people getting a college degree at 85? Why are they doing that? Because they have the ability to change their future and move forward? And so Cheryl plays a very integral part of that. And I will make no bones about it, because as the mediator, when I see a client like that, and then when I see them in the next session, even though it’s purely confidential and I have no idea if they spoke to Cheryl, I’m like, “They had a coaching session.” You could tell.

Mac: Exactly, so you’re like, “Yeah.” So let me ask you about the word “Equitable Mediation.” I have to keep looking at it because I keep wanting to say “equitable divorce,” because that’s the natural thing that we always say, equitable divorce. But why did you name it Equitable Mediation? And before you answer, that word in the jurisdictions that I’ve worked in tends to—it’s a legal term, and so we sometimes talk about courts of law and courts of equity. And in family courts, they’re courts of equity because judges do have discretion to try to bring balance and justice in certain circumstances.

And in Texas law, for example, it’s not 50/50 when it comes to division of property. It’s fair and equitable division of the marital estate, and so sometimes what might be fair and equitable in a certain circumstance might not be 50/50, but it’s just and, okay? So why did you pick that word, Equitable Mediation?

Joe: Yeah, what a great segue. Perfect introduction to it. Equitable, to me, means fair but not necessarily equal. And when I think about equitable, it can mean different things to different people. So, for example, it’s pretty funny—so I’m an only child, just as a personal note. So as long as I get everything, it’s fair! That’s how I am. Hey, what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine. But all kidding aside, equitable can mean a lot of things to a lot of people.

And I’ve had cases, as I’m sure you have as well, where even sometimes when you look at the settlement, you look at the agreement, and you raise an eyebrow, you’re like, “Are they sure about this?” But sometimes people have a particular affinity for an asset like a pension or a house or something. And so a judge, for example, let’s take a house—they might say, “Well, the house is worth this much money, and the 401k is worth this much money.” And maybe the house is worth less than the 401k, but one person is willing to exchange that house for that retirement plan.

And so as the neutral third party, it’s not my job to tell them they can’t do that or try to persuade them, but I do wonder. And then I think to myself, “Well, that’s the house where their child took their first steps. They played catch in the backyard, and those memories are priceless.” So now this person says, “Yeah, sure, okay, I exchanged X for Y, and it’s worth less, but to me, this is worth more.”

And that’s the sense I want to convey. I want you to both walk away with what you think is fair, what you think is equitable, what matters to you, even if it doesn’t add up to 50/50 at the bottom line. And along that line, I went through probably a hundred different names, and I was really—when I first started out, I was trying to come up with something that didn’t—my wife is like, “Just use your last name.” “Dillon Mediation.” I’m like, “Yeah, that’s not creative.” Yeah, heck with that! And then I, after writing—sometimes when you write words, they start to lose their meaning—and I got to it, and it just hit me, and that was it. And the rest is history, as we would say.

Mac: Exactly. Pretty cool. And so back to the house thing, the example you just gave where one person might have a certain affinity to a home because that’s where they lived and that’s where their kids were—I hear this a lot, I see this a lot, where sometimes in a divorce, one spouse wants to keep the home and the other wants it sold. They may have, to them, justified reasons as to why. Sometimes it’s because they want it sold because maybe there’s something connected to justice in their mind, or there was pain there, and it’s not a financial reason, it’s more of an emotional reason? And on the flip side, the person who wants to keep it is doing it for a similar thing.

So when you, in your practice, help people to think outside the box and to craft solutions that is not just going to be the “sell it and split the money half and half”—how do you do it? Because you have a 98% settlement rate in your office, so people who go to you for mediation walk away with an agreement, more or less. That’s the goal, of course. So why are you so much higher than the national average in settlement rates? How do you do things outside the box for the example I just gave, for example?

Joe: Certainly. So first, I’ll give a plug and a shout-out to Harvard University. So back in the ’90s, I took a program at Harvard, the Harvard Program on Negotiation, and as a practitioner, I’m sure you’re familiar with the book “Getting to Yes” ? So these are the guys. And they taught it, and it changed my life. It changed how I look at the world, and this is even—that’s how I got into mediation. So that was like 30 years ago? So I’ve been mediating 28.

And what it really taught me is that conflict isn’t about what you see on the surface. They had a phrase for it—they called it “conversational jiu-jitsu,” like martial arts. And they always said to look for the position behind the position. Dodge the blow, parry, use the other person’s momentum. And so I always remember that, and in my mediations, I’m always doing that. I’m always asking questions, moving people in a direction, kind of herding them around and kind of trying to get behind the answer.

And a lot of times when people are in mediation, and even probably prior to that? In my experience, at least, there comes a point in a marriage where people are so far apart from each other, they don’t even yell at each other anymore. It just doesn’t matter. So now they’re quiet, and they feel like it doesn’t matter, the reasons don’t matter, that nobody cares. And so, of course, I care. I want to hear it. I want to hear why you’re so mad, why don’t you want that person to keep that? Let’s get that out on the table.

And sometimes those breakthroughs take a while. Sometimes they might take a session or two, they may take hours. But we’ll keep chipping at it because I know that there is something behind that. That person is hurt by something, that they weren’t recognized for the role that they played doing X, Y, or Z? And when we get to that, that’s the aha moment. That’s where, as professional mediators, we stay quiet? We let the tears flow, we let the emotions bubble up, and then we can make the breakthrough. And that’s what we do.

And part of why I believe our case resolution rate is so high is that we don’t limit the number of sessions people can have with us. We are committed to the process. Now, that’s probably not the greatest idea sometimes? Because you’re like, “Let me get this straight, Joe. You’re willing to stay here?” I was like, “Yeah, I’ll be there till midnight? I’m not leaving until this is done.”

And so people kind of like, “I don’t know what’s wrong with this guy,” but I believe, Mac, that tells them that I’m in this with you. I’m as committed to resolution as you are. I want this for you. I don’t want you in the courtroom like me and my parents. And I think they get that, and they’re like, “Wow, he really does care? He’s really in here with us.”

And so when we can have that moment and that freedom and that we don’t have the pressure of, “Well, you’re on the docket, the judge will see you from 10:15 to 10:30, and you have to decide now,” that’s where the agreements happen. And that’s how we do it. We really let the conversations breathe, really try to dig behind the reasons, and when you get that reason—and man, I’m telling you, it’s, “You didn’t let me buy that new car 20 years ago.” “What?” And the other person is like, “I had no idea.” They’re like, “I love that car. I really wanted it.” And it was like, “Wow, okay, here we are.

Mac: So, well, I do wish that the law would catch up with mediation, because sometimes the law and the rules we have to live by—they’ll tell the parties to go to mediation, and down here in my jurisdiction, we might say “go to a half-day mediation or a full day.” And what we mean by that is it’s either four hours from like 8 to 12 or 1 to 5, or a full day would be like 8 to 5, okay? And they’ll pay for lunch in the middle. And so that’s a structured approach, fine. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that human beings are just going to be able to magically agree to everything? Sometimes it’s going to take multiple sessions, multiple days. And I wish more lawyers that I work with would know that when they bring their clients to me, like, “Hey guys, just because it didn’t work out in four hours doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep on going.”

Joe: Exactly, exactly. And the example I give? So I like to exercise—that’s how I keep myself prepared and ready for my clients. And so I go to the gym, and sometimes you go to the gym and you see these guys in there for two, three hours? They’re like, “The more I lift, the bigger I’m going to get.” And what you realize is that—I’ve done my fair share of studying like physiology and exercise science—and there’s a point with the human body where you’re not making progress anymore. And if you’re an amateur, that’s about 30 minutes. And if you’re experienced, like me, that’s about an hour. And if you’re a professional, that’s about an hour and a half.

And so when you take the example of mediation, you’re taking amateurs and expecting them to come to resolution. And where the magic happens is much like with the gym—you go work out for 30 minutes, you take a day off, next day you work out for 35 minutes, day off? And that’s where the growth comes. And that’s exactly what happens in mediation. And I know it, you know it—the magic happens when that person goes home at night, has their cup of tea before bed, is reading their book, those thoughts are swirling in their head, and they’re like, “Yeah, guess I was being a little harsh today.” That’s what we, as practitioners, need people to do.

Mac: Yeah, people who sleep on it sometimes make a more educated decision after the fact.

Joe: Of course.

Mac: So in the last couple minutes we have, let’s talk about technology a little bit. I understand that you started doing these virtually back in 2011. Now, I pride myself on being somebody who was really into tech, and I was going around helping train people, mediators, to get on Zoom and to do all this, but you were doing this like 10 years before. So where did the vision come from, and why?

Joe: It’s interesting. True story. So we get a phone call—we were practicing in New Jersey, we practice in multiple states as you probably know—and this is a New Jersey client, and this husband calls. He calls my wife, who happened to pick up the call, and she comes in my office, and she’s like, “Joe, I have this gentleman. He just called, and he really wants to work with us, but his wife has, I think it’s called agoraphobia, where you have a fear of leaving the house, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. And so she wants to mediate, but she won’t leave the house, so she won’t come to the office.” We were practicing in person at the time, and I said, “Oh boy, okay, what are we going to do here?”

And back in 2011, we really didn’t have super high-quality video. We had screen sharing like with WebEx and join.me and those kinds of things? And so Cheryl and I are sitting there, and she goes, “What if we did it with telephone and screen sharing?” I’m like, “Let’s try it with telephone and screen sharing. Do you think that would work?” And so we put our heads together, and so she calls the gentleman back, and he’s like, “You could do that?” I’m like, “Well, you’re going to be the first, so I hope it goes well.”

So we made up some little PowerPoint slides—they were hilarious. We made up an Excel spreadsheet to kind of put up a budget and a balance sheet, and we just screen-shared. We didn’t even—I don’t even think we had a video camera at the time, and so we were on the phone. So I’ve got a phone in one hand, I’ve got a mouse in another, and by gosh, it worked. And they were so happy and excited about it.

And so we said, “Well, gee, that’s interesting.” And so we started offering it to clients to see what would happen. And at first, people were like, “Yeah, I want to see you, I want to see you.” And then after about two years later, we said, “Okay, what if we’re going to say to folks, this is the primary way?” And because we found that doing it remotely, it helped people actually communicate better because they didn’t have to be in the same room and didn’t feel the stare of the ex, soon-to-be-ex, or the presence of that person? They were able to speak more freely, and they felt safer.

And as we started explaining that and how it’s more efficient and you can take it from wherever you are—because a lot of our clients, with my background in finance, we tend to get a lot of like business owners, executives, people who travel a lot, who have irregular hours? So we tend to get those folks, and that’s what really launched it back then.

And then after a while, I think finally in 2018, we made the jump to say we’re just doing only online. And so when the pandemic came and everybody else was scrambling, I was like, “Well, this is what we do This is just normal to us.” And so we have our process and our forms and our worksheets and all of our online, all virtual. And that’s why we mediate in six different states, and that’s how we can do it, because currently I’m located in California now, and if I had to go see a client in New York City, I’m not getting on a plane back and forth for a day. That would be hard.

Mac: Well, that’s amazing. Yeah, I’m glad to see a fellow tech geek like me.

Joe: Absolutely. Yeah, I love that about you. I was like, “Hey, you got an online mediation school here.”

Mac: Yes, awesome. So I’m sharing your site again. So what’s the best way people can get a hold of you? Just your website?

Joe: EquitableMediation.com. Yeah, talk to us. You see that button there—we have a free 15-minute call, which usually turns into a half-hour call because we’re cut of the same cloth. And so you can schedule an exploratory call with Cheryl. She’ll tell you a bit about our services, about us, see if mediation is a good fit for you. You could also schedule coaching with her. And then if it seems like it’s a good idea, then you can schedule a meeting with me and you and your spouse, and then we’ll just have kind of an exploratory initial meeting there as well. And we just really want to help people, just like you. We want to help.

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I recently had the pleasure of joining Jude Sandvall on The Divorced Dadvocate Podcast to discuss “The Art of Peaceful Divorce.” In this conversation, we explore how couples can navigate the divorce process with dignity and respect, focusing on strategies that minimize conflict and prioritize the well-being of all family members involved. We discuss practical approaches to mediation, effective communication techniques during difficult transitions, and how to create solutions that work for everyone.

Whether you’re considering divorce or currently in the process, this episode offers valuable insights into making one of life’s most challenging experiences as peaceful and constructive as possible.

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Disclaimer

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This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors. Anything discussed in this podcast should not be construed as legal, financial, or emotional advice. It is for informational purposes only. If you are in need of such advice you MUST seek the guidance of a qualified professional where you live.

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The Divorced Advocate Podcast – Episode with Joe Dillon

Jude: Hello and welcome to The Divorced Dadvocate divorce support for dads where we help dads create a healthy and less traumatic divorce. My name is Jude Sandoval and I’m your host. I created this podcast and The Divorced Advocate community as a result of my own high conflict divorce and because you as a dad deserve all the resources necessary to thrive through this challenging time. I encourage you to check out our website at TheDivorcedAdvocate.com where there are resources that correspond to this episode as well as free access to our membership community where you will find live meetings, free workshops and courses, private discussion groups and more. And now on to this week’s episode.

Hello and welcome to the show. Thank you so much for listening today. We’ve got an important topic that I realized that I have neglected to do any kind of episode or really education or sharing on in the five years that we’ve been recording this podcast. My guest today reached out to me and it clicked in my head and it was a natural fit to get together and chat with him.

Before I introduce him, I want to remind you to go to TheDivorcedDadvocate.com and check out all the resources that we have there so that you can get the help that you deserve and need. We’ve got everything from free to paid resources wherever you’re at in your divorce whether you’re just contemplating or post divorce. We’ve got something that can help you out there so check it out at TheDivorcedDadvocate.com.

My guest today is a trailblazer in divorce mediation. He’s been helping couples end their marriages with dignity and financial clarity for over 17 years. As co-founder of Equitable Mediation Services, he brings an MBA in finance and advanced training from Harvard, MIT, and Northwestern to guide couples toward fair lasting agreements that protect both emotional well-being and financial stability. He launched virtual divorce mediation in 2011, nearly a decade before it became the norm during the pandemic. The results speak for themselves – Equitable Mediation Services has a 98% case resolution rate, which is remarkable and is far above the industry average of 70%. Please help me in welcoming Joe Dillon.

Joe: Thanks for having me Jude, very excited to be here.

Jude: Joe, thanks for reaching out. Like I mentioned, I have been remiss in not really diving into this. I think we’ve talked about positives of mediation and finding attorneys and everything else, but we haven’t really dove into mediation and the positives and the negatives and how you get a 98% case resolution. I think I was telling you right before we started recording I’ve been in mediation six or seven times and I’m over six or seven, so I’m really curious to know how you got to that too.

But before we jump into some of that, just share a little bit about for 17 years now why you keep showing up to arguing couples every single day and helping them to figure out what they’ve got going on.

Joe: Yeah, that’s a great question. So a little bit about me – my parents litigated their divorce. You know, a therapist would probably have a field day with me because they’re like “Well dude, this is totally why you do this, right?” But you know they litigated this back in the ’80s and this was before really mediation was a thing.

So I started thinking about it – they fought for years, they spent so much money, and then literally the last time I saw my father I was 15 years old. I was sitting in the back of a courtroom, in the hallway my parents were still yelling at each other in the hallway. My dad walked out of the courtroom and that was literally the last time I saw him or spoke to him again. Then about five years ago I got a letter saying he had died, and so that was it.

When you look at that, when you think about that as dads, you know dads are important role models and they’re important players in kids’ lives. To not have a dad in my life – my mom of course did a great job, did the best she could – but there’s roles that dads play that are really critically important. I just wish that they could have put the lawyers aside, talked to each other as people directly because I was sitting right there by the way, and said “You know what do we have to do that’s in the best interest of this kid here?” Because I’m an only child.

So every time when I get, as you said, I get into the room and I get into the space, I think to myself I want to help couples avoid what happened to me. I want them – I say “Look, you are not going to be husband and wife anymore, but you’re always going to be mom and dad and that is a role that will not change.” So I think that’s what keeps me showing up every single day knowing that there are families out there who are still at the birthday parties together, still sitting at each other’s graduations, can be at the wedding together. I didn’t have any of that, so you know I feel like I really missed out and so that’s really the deep answer. I hope that’s not too deep for the audience.

Jude: Yeah, no, well I think that adds some credibility as well to that. It’s obviously sad that that’s what has happened, but I think that many of the dads that are listening can relate to some of that. One of the things I have noticed in doing this work for so long now is that some of this stuff is generational. So my parents were divorced, my parents’ parents were divorced as well, and it seems to be a thing that gets carried on unless there is a mindset like you just mentioned which is “Hey, we need to reframe this.” We might not be together but we’re going to be parents and we need to be looking at this from a different perspective.

Which, if somebody is healthy and is in a healthy mindset, doesn’t have mental emotional challenges going on or something else, then mediation probably is something that’s positive. So share with us then why mediation is positive and maybe some misconceptions around mediation and going to mediation.

Joe: Yeah, so I think the thing that for me with mediation is that think about when you have a lawyer – two sides have a lawyer and the lawyers are communicating and it’s this sort of faceless interaction. You’re not seeing that you’re hurting the other person. Supposedly this was a person that you at some point in your life pledged your undying love to, so even at a bare minimum you’d want to treat this person like a human.

Because of the adversarial nature of the legal system, the lawyer is hired to win for their client and they don’t care who they hurt on the other side as long as I win and I get the best settlement. That’s happening from both sides. Mediation removes that and puts the two people face to face, and I think that’s really what the key is – it’s sort of like, I’ll say this to you, we both have websites and if you had say a commenting section that was unmoderated on your website, it’s real easy for somebody who doesn’t have to register to come in and make some snarky comment and then just send and walk away. But if I had to look at you and give you my name, my address, my phone number, a photo of myself, it would be a lot harder for me to do that.

Mediation’s the same way. If I’m sitting across from you, it’s a lot harder to yell, to be mean, to call names, and quite frankly to try to pull one over on the other person. If you’re staring at somebody and the other person looks at you and goes “Come on, really? Really?” you can’t in good faith – like you said you have to have the mental acuity of course – but you can’t in good faith say “Oh yeah, absolutely that’s true.” You’re like “Yeah, you’re right, I’m kind of joking, you know?”

So it takes a lot of the air out of the balloon, a lot of the emotions, and by doing that negotiation directly you can clear up a lot of misconceptions, get people to treat each other like humans, and I really think that takes the temperature down and it’s really to me the key to the whole process.

Jude: So do you require couples to sit in the same room while they are mediating? Now you do it virtually, and I guess along that same concept do they have to be face to face with each other? Because I’ve been in mediation both ways.

Joe: Yeah, so I’m always of the mind – what you’re referring to, there’s two kinds of mediation. The kind of mediation I do, everybody’s in the room quote unquote. Now if you’re on one Zoom and the other person’s on a different Zoom, sure no problem, we’re each in our own separate video feeds, but I’m always working one-on-two.

There are some mediators who work in a fashion that’s known as shuttle mediation like the mediator shuttles back and forth between the rooms. I find that kind of breeds mistrust because the one party sitting there now just waiting – what are you thinking? What’s that mediator saying that my husband or my wife? If you’re all in the room, like think about when you were a little kid, how rumors got started and that game of telephone or whatever it is. If you’re all together you can clear up that rumor real quick, but if somebody goes into a different room, says something, they come back – even as a practitioner, let’s just be quite honest, this is a hard enough job without me having to remember what one person said, told me, what I can’t tell the other person. I’m not going to be able to do that.

So you get everybody in the same room, it makes the conversation go a lot better, clarifies any issues, and it really does like I said reduce that conflict.

Jude: Okay, so is that – do you feel like that is one of the reasons why you might have a much higher success rate? Because I think probably the majority of times, and this was by request of my ex, we were in separate rooms and even when we did virtual mediation we were in separate rooms so she would never ever have to look at me, never have to be directly communicating with me. Is that – do you feel like that is one of the reasons that you have such a high success rate?

Joe: I think so. I think having people one-on-one, even if they’re say for example taking the Zoom call from a separate room – you know there’s obviously power dynamics in relationships, so some people are comfortable sitting next to each other, some people aren’t, and they want to be able to speak up. So if that means you’re in the bedroom and you’re in the guest room or whatever it is on Zoom, fine.

But I do think that leads to that because it does really like I said take the temperature down, clarifies a lot of issues, and also let’s be honest – this is not the most fun someone has ever had, getting a divorce. Do you really want this process to drag on for years and years? No, you want to move through the process in a structured and organized fashion. You don’t want to sound like “Oh this is a business transaction and we’re going to move you through,” but you don’t want it to drag like my parents – it was like three years. It’s like what are you doing? Who is benefiting from this? Lawyers. That’s who’s benefiting from this. Are you getting on with your life? No. Am I getting on with my life as your child? No.

So again that also expedites the conversation, it gets people to move through the process faster, come to a conclusion, and I say this guy to guy here – I’m half Irish, half Italian, so I’m very stoic. You know, don’t worry about it, suppress your feelings – that’s how I was raised. A lot of guys don’t realize that there’s going to be this emotional avalanche at the end that they need to let happen and they need to welcome it, and the sooner they get there the sooner they can have the breakdown, rebuild, and move forward. That’s really what my goal is to try to help them do that as well.

Jude: Well so you bring up a good point – there are a lot of emotions that come up in this process. Finances is probably one of the biggest ones that people get obviously wrapped around the axle on. How do you manage that when you’re in the process, when those emotions start to get whether they get heated or whether they get sad or fearful? I think probably if you really want to do a psychoanalysis of it, which we’re not going to do today, but it comes down to fear on both sides – fear I’m not going to have enough, fear I’m not going to be able to provide, whatever it is. But how do you manage that?

Joe: Yeah, so as you know I have an MBA in finance and so I bring this financial perspective to it because you’re absolutely right. Think about the topics in a divorce – parenting, child support, alimony, property division. Three of the four are financial, and by the way in most of the states we practice in the parenting plan is an input into the calculation of child support, so I’ll say three and a half.

Going back to what we were talking about before about looking someone in the eye and being able to say to them something serious and have them take you seriously, what I like to do is I have this process that I’ve developed. So I first start people out by preparing these budgets – these are budget workbooks of my own design. We do a joint budget and that shows me what your marital lifestyle looks like. What that does is it says “Look guys, are you living at your means, below your means, or beyond your means?” Because guess what? Soon as you separate households, life’s going to get more expensive, and if you were going into credit card debt while you’re living together, there’s no extra money hiding around for extra alimony or child support. So we level that playing field first.

Then we get the apart budgets and we say “Look, here’s your lives comparatively post divorce. Is it fair that this person’s sleeping on his friend’s couch in the basement while this person is still staying in the house? Look at the numbers – this person’s spending I don’t know $7,000 a month, this one’s trying to spend $1,500. Is that really fair? Is that good for your kids? Do your kids want to visit dad in the friend’s basement?”

So you have that first conversation to level set to say “Look, this is what we’ve got financially. There’s no lies here, here it all is.” So that’s the first thing that we do.

From there, the second thing that happens is we do a balance sheet and we put all the assets and liabilities out on the table because what I found is a lot of people like to talk about stuff piecemeal and what they do is they pick one thing like the house or the car or the 401k or whatever and they just go after it. I’m like “Guys, this is like a big – you got to look at the whole picture.”

When we get it all out on the table it’s like “Well here’s all the statements” – because I asked him to give me copies of the statements – “here’s a spreadsheet with all your assets and liabilities. There is no money hiding in a bank account, here’s all the credit reports, here’s all the research we did on all your open accounts.” What you see is I’m trying to do is I’m removing the emotions before we even make decisions. So I like to say do the discovery before the deciding.

As guys, I am Mr. Guilty of this – I am a solutions-oriented guy, I want to fix the problem right away, I go right into solutions mode. What you need to do is you need to go into research, step back, lay it all out, then you can have the conversation so that’s how we approach it – take those emotions out so the conversations can be more productive.

Jude: Well so those are two things already that I can tell that at least in my experience has not happened – being face to face because that does humanize it and does make it different, and then what you’re talking about with that preparation upfront and having full financial picture, knowing everything that’s going on. I think you said pulling credit reports too so that you can see what credit – that’s something that I’ve never heard of and I think that’s a brilliant idea because then that puts to rest any mistrust or anything or any ability to lie about anything period if you’ve got that and you’re able to trade that and look at that and know “Hey, this is what it is, there’s no money here, this is what we’re dealing with.”

So it sounds like you do a lot more upfront preparation with the couples before scheduling and having them show up so that there’s more going on, which I think is brilliant honestly.

So how do you get – one of the things that I run into the most is when one party just doesn’t have a realistic expectation when they’re coming into mediation. And it happens all the time, you know, and it doesn’t really matter who it is, whether it’s the man or the woman. But one party seems to just not have a realistic expectation often times. How do you move past that then when somebody shows up – even if you have all of the documentation and the credit reports and your spreadsheet developed in your MBA program and everything else – and then somebody had showed up thinking, because most of us don’t check the statutes like you mentioned, the child support is going to be tied to the number of nights that you have in a parenting plan. So one person has not done the work, doesn’t know the statutes, doesn’t understand, maybe had this misconception that their life is going to be the same post divorce if not better post divorce, they’re going to maintain the exactly the same lifestyle with two households now, which makes no sense but again we’re not thinking logically often times through this process. How do you mitigate that when there’s one person that just is completely unrealistic?

Joe: Yeah, great question and that does happen frequently. So the way I handle it, there’s two parts to that. The first we’ve already talked about are those budgets. So what we do is when we do the joint budget, let’s just use some silly round numbers – let’s say a couple living together spends $5,000 a month on their living expenses, their house and their car and their groceries and whatever. Then when we take their apart budgets and we review them and we add them together, one person is spending $4,000 and the other one’s spending $3,500.

So I say “Okay folks, $5,000 together, $7,500 apart. $2,500 is the cost to divorce” – that’s the phrase I use. “So that’s what it’s going to cost you guys every month to be divorced. So $2,500 times 12” – whatever that math is, $30,000. “Hey, you did some math! Okay guys, you’re an MBA. Let me ask you guys a question – do you have $30,000 lying around right now? Do you put $30,000 a year away in the bank?” And most people will say no. I said “Okay, where’s that coming from?” So we first establish that there’s going to be a challenge.

Then the second thing we do – and this is a great thing for your listeners to remember, this is kind of a negotiation technique – is you say “Here’s a great question.” So this is what I want everybody to hear: “Help me understand.” When you say “You do this, you don’t get it,” you know the person’s taking that as an attack and of course they’re gonna only entrench in their position.

“Okay, you want $5,000 a month in alimony. Okay, help me understand how I can pay that to you. If I can do it, I’m really willing to listen.” And now the person instead of you proving their point, they have to prove their own point. What I’ve noticed is a lot of people – what it does is it paints them into a corner to reality check themselves. Then all of a sudden they go “Well yeah, you only bring home $4,500 a month, I guess I’m not getting $5,000 in alimony.” And the other person goes “Right.” There’s like a moment – you’re always as a mediator looking for those moments where somebody has a little bit of empathy for the other person.

So that’s how we do it and I say “Hey listen, I’m all ears, I’m neutral, I don’t have a horse in this race, but help me understand how that’s possible.” And then a lot of people when they start talking it through and trying to explain it and trying to figure it out, they usually can’t.

Even if they say “I don’t care, that’s what I want,” then the third option, which is what I prefer not to get to, is you say “Okay, let’s do that. Let’s take a look at what it would be like if I pay you $5,000 a month. Here’s my budget. Take a look at my budget. Do you agree my budget is correct? Yeah, I spend $4,000 a month. Yeah, I bring home $5,000 a month. Yeah, so how do I pay my bills?” And then again you’re trying to get the other person to say “You know what, that doesn’t make sense.”

Because if you tell them, in their head it makes sense, but you do everything you can to just like we were talking about – that discovery, put everything out on the table and let them come to that conclusion. Because I believe in my heart of hearts that most people are rational actors. Most people are reasonable, it’s the circumstances that wind you up. Somebody cuts you off in traffic – I’m not a maniac, but if somebody cuts me off suddenly I am. Same thing in these situations.

So in those examples what you’re always trying to do is “Sure, I’m listening, I’m willing as the recipient of that request, I’m willing to give it a shot. Help me understand how that’s possible, let’s talk about it,” and then you stay quiet and you let the other person try to explain themselves. That’s how you do it. Make sense?

Jude: Yeah, no that’s terrific and I like that “help me understand” is the phrase. And if anybody’s listening, I think that is a great question to just use through this whole process. They could use that with their soon-to-be ex, they could use that with their attorneys, they can use that with anybody that if they just don’t understand, like “Lay it out for me, tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

Because like you said, what you just described – as guys naturally want to problem solve and we want to figure this out, and I’ve worked with enough guys and you probably have too, like we probably have come to this mediation with a plan A, B, C, and D in most of our minds of like what we can do, what we can’t do, what we’d like to do, all these different scenarios that we can try to work out. I tell you I’ve coached some guys that literally show up with the spreadsheets of those three, four, five different scenarios of how you’re gonna go through it, which I have respect for and I do appreciate that.

But that’s a great question – “So I’ve got these five options, so help me understand which one’s going to work for you” or whatever the situation is. I like that a lot.

So I’m curious though because there is a segment of the population, and unfortunately guys that tune into this show and come to the community deal with people that have some significant mental emotional issues, maybe personality disorders – that’s maybe 5 to 10% of the entire population out there. How do you work through something like that and how do you get to a 98% success rate if you’re working with folks that some might just have a different reality? Because personality disorder is essentially somebody has a different reality than yours, different reality of the world. I’m not a clinical psychologist or anything, that’s just kind of generally, and you’ve done enough of this to know they just don’t have the reality of what’s going on, they have a different reality of what’s going on.

How do you work through some of that stuff and what suggestions do you have for any of the guys that might be dealing with somebody like this that really really want to try to come to some settlement, some amicable way to get through this process? Because what I’ve found, and this is probably generally on both sides, is the guys that come to our community that might be dealing with somebody like this are genuinely dads that want to figure something out that just got into a marriage that’s just untenable anymore and they’re trying to find – and mediation would be great because they know they’re going to save money, it’s going to be easier on the kids, all the reasons that you described before – but it’s just somebody that they’re stuck and this person’s stuck in their reality that is not the reality.

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. So the good news is a lot of people – I think they forget really what happens, Jude, is they forget that there’s steps in the process. There’s gradations you can take. You don’t have to pull the pin out of the grenade and go right to court, and mediation is always a great first step. You’re going to mediate, you’re going to try to mediate.

As we were talking about before we jumped on here, a lot of states these days have mandatory mediation anyway, so what I remind people is you’re going to either see me now or you’re going to see somebody like me later. The chances are the person you’re going to see later is going to be appointed by the court or might not have the experience that say someone like me in private mediation has, so your always best bet is to try mediation first.

Now I will tell you that there are people who come to us and I want to be very honest with them, and we’ll have a first meeting, an initial meeting, and I’ll say “You know what folks, I don’t think mediation is the right thing for you because of,” for example what you said. However, there is an alternative to pulling the pin out of the grenade and it’s called collaborative divorce.

How that works is you’re all in the same room and in this situation it’s you and your attorney, your spouse and their attorney, and then a relevant professional. And again, you know, poking fun at ourselves as guys, you know especially me – I’m an only child, I’m always “I can do it myself, I don’t need any help,” and we’re always kind of just putting on the brave face.

Well in this case you have this room where there’s the protection of the attorney, it’s a neutral setting, and then you can bring in a mental health professional or a child psychologist or some other qualified what we might call fifth party who they’re not a mediator, but they’re there to provide that kind of support and to be able to explain to the individual who perhaps might not be on the same plane as the other person what’s going on, how it’s impacting them, getting them to understand how compromise works and what they need to do and what’s in the best interest of the kids.

So even if you can’t mediate, I’m a fan of then saying go to collaborative divorce, get those people in the room. Because you know, look, I could tell you I have some of my best friends are attorneys, and like you and I we were just talking about, my background is finance. I am not a mental health professional, you don’t want me as your mental health professional, I’m woefully unqualified, and most of my attorney friends will say the same thing. So they say “Look, let’s get somebody in the room neutral that both sides can pick so that they can bridge that gap,” and I find that that helps a lot. That’s a key thing.

So if your listeners are in a situation where they’re thinking “I don’t know if my spouse is able to have a good faith negotiation or to understand fully what’s happening,” try collaborative divorce. This way you each have attorneys, you have other professionals that can support you, and it avoids you from having to wind up in a courtroom. More – not as cost-effective as mediation of course, but far more cost effective than litigation. So that’s what I would say.

Jude: Yeah, so have you found that couples that may not be successful in mediation do have success in collaborative divorces?

Joe: You know, I don’t know for sure only because sometimes like I said we’re lucky, we’ve had – I can count on one hand the number of clients that have not been able to come to agreement with us, so I can’t speak definitively about what happened. But the clients that probably we are unable to help should not have been mediation clients in the first place – they were not being truthful upfront and hiding something, some assets or some other situation.

But I do think they can be if I as a professional had to make that regard, because what’s nice about mediation is you can take what you’ve done and a lot of times in my experience it’s usually a handful of issues, one or two issues that are the sticking point. So you don’t need to start again, take what you’ve done in mediation, bring it to a collaborative process, say “Look, we agree on these 95 things, we need help with these five,” and then at least you’re not starting from scratch. I think that’s how you would succeed.

Now if somebody goes into mediation and says “This is ridiculous, I don’t agree to any of this, I’m getting a lawyer and I’m going to burn this thing to the ground,” yeah then I don’t know what’s going to happen. But if you get the people who just have that one or two sticking point that they just can’t get past and for some reason we can’t get them past it, then that’s what I would say – you go to collaborative, you use that process to just finish the rest of it, and then you’re on your way.

Jude: Got it. Yeah, I asked because it seems to me, and this is just anecdotal and subjective, that the couples that have not been successful in mediation are less – have less of an opportunity or are less prepared to be successful in collaborative divorce because collaborative is truly collaborative. If you’re mediating and you’re doing mediation in the correct spirit of mediation, you are collaborating, and part of collaboration is having to come to consensus, you’re having to give and take, you’re having to resolve all kinds of things that is collaborative.

If they haven’t been able to get it done in mediation, I’ve found that typically they’re not able to get it done in a collaborative type situation. But maybe it’s just because collaborative divorce is not – has not become as prevalent as regular divorce is yet. Well hopefully that’s starting to change and there’s maybe more people thinking about doing it or having some success through it because I truly think that it’s like you said, it’s the next step up from mediation if you need to bring other people in, you need to have more – the way that I describe the differences, and correct me if I’m wrong, is if somebody has an unrealistic expectation around things, you have somebody that’s there to help educate them on the process maybe or the realities of stuff like you talked about bringing mental health professionals in or finance professionals in, real estate professionals, whatever, that will help them to say “Look, this is what the lay of the land is. These are your options. You might have one, two, three, four, five options, but actually realistically it’s going to be one or two. The other ones, you can argue it in court, but probably 99% – three of those five are going to get thrown out and you’re not going to have any choice.”

So it seems to be whereas mediation is not as – you’re not spending weeks, months, and going through that process, you’re spending hours and it’s more inclined to people that are going to actually just get something done.

Joe: Right, you know, and you brought up a great point before – it’s a mindset. There’s a quote and I think it’s Henry Ford – “If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” I love that quote because if you come into mediation going “This isn’t going to work,” well guess what, it’s not going to work.

But at the end of the day, if you say – and you know this from experience, I know this from experience as a child – is that when you enter the legal system, all bets are off and you’re just putting – you’re rolling those dice. You’re not even rolling them, a stranger is rolling them for you. Instead in mediation you control the outcome.

Now granted, could you have gotten more, could you have paid less if I litigated? Yeah, maybe you could. But what’s worth it? Is it worth the $50,000, $75,000, $100,000 you spent on a litigated divorce? Is it worth the years of your life that you could have been playing catch with your son or going to dance recital? You’re going to be in courtrooms. Sometimes you just have to let it go and you have to just say “Well that was terrible, that’s not what I wanted, but you know what, it was worth it for my emotional well-being.”

Because guess what, we’ve talked a lot about finances and all of those things, but the biggest price someone pays is an emotional one. Your money comes and goes. We all lose jobs, we get jobs, we make bad investments, we spend too much on a bar tab or whatever it is. But at the end of the day, the only thing you got left is your emotional peace of mind, and that’s priceless.

Jude: Yeah, for sure. So if you can give some advice to the dads listening as far as what to look for in a mediator, like what kinds of questions to ask a mediator? Because I find a lot of the guys will say “Hey yeah, we’re going to try mediation first, we’re going to find a private mediator first, not a court-appointed mediator,” which I agree with you, I think that there’s a distinct difference in their abilities to get that done and to get something done between a court-appointed mediator and a private mediator. You guys have to have success – well you don’t have to have success, but yeah you kind of do. Your success breeds more business, which you want to continue to feed your family, then you want to be successful.

Which you know, and you know you’ve got my mind going just a ton because like I said I’ve been through it six or seven times, have never had success. I think I feel like part of that might be just generally the mediator population that we have here because it is court ordered and how good or bad they actually are here in Colorado. But also I would contend that this probably is true in some other states or areas where they require that – they’re not – they might not have the level of skill that someone like you or mediators in other areas have, which is going to lead to failure.

When that failure happens – okay so I was going to ask you another question, I’m going to shift a little bit here – so when that failure happens, it – the challenge I have with doing the mediation without being prepared like you described is that it starts everything off poorly of course. So if you get into a bad mediation and somebody’s not realistic for whatever reason, it fails, it seems to set things back as opposed to starting off on the wrong foot.

So actually I can dovetail this into the question I was going to ask – so what can the dads look for in a mediator, what kind of questions can they ask the mediator before getting into the process and deciding on starting out with the mediation process?

Joe: Perfect, I’ll give you some great questions to ask. So the first thing I would ask is “Explain to me your mediation process.” We’ve been talking about this a lot and having a process is key. Imagine if you – I’m a big baseball fan – imagine if you just put nine guys out on a field and said “Play a game.” What was the first thing they would ask? Well, what are the rules? Where do I go? Where do I stand? Who does what? You want to know, you need a framework by which to operate with. So that’s actually what the Colorado Rockies do here – I just went to the game last night, that’s why they’ve only won 12 games this year.

Jude: Yeah, I’m sorry about that and I’m a big Cubs fan so sorry about the whole Chris Bryant thing, so you can blame me for that.

Joe: So you know, but I would ask “Hey, what’s your process look like? Do you even have one?” Because as we’ve talked about, if you don’t have a process, things can spiral pretty quickly. So that’s question number one.

Number two – what’s your case resolution rate? You got to be hitting at least 70%, that’s industry average, that’s a C. If you’re getting into 80, you’re getting into 90, that’s solid, that’s good. So what’s your case resolution rate?

What’s your training look like? That’s a third question. So what I would say to your listeners, and this is terrifying for a professional like myself, is if Jude, you decided one day “You know what, I talked to that Joe Dillon guy, he seemed pretty cool, I’m going to take this 40-hour mediation class at the Holiday Inn this weekend and I’m going to get myself a business card” – that is literally all you need to do to become a mediator in most states. Forty-hour course. Like wow, that’s just terrifying.

So what kind of training, continuing education do they continue to do to stay on top of trends? Because as you know, the laws change every year. So what’s their training, what does that look like for them? Do they just take the 40-hour course or do they continue to take additional training?

And then I’d also talk to them about their fee structure because here’s another thing that we do. So we’re pretty unique in the sense we offer a flat fee and people can have as many sessions as they like within this time frame. We call it this mediation roadmap. So in effect what we’re doing is we’re putting our professional reputation on the line and saying – this sounds like a game show almost in a weird way – I can get your divorce negotiated within this period of time for this price, and if it goes, then it’s on me if I screw up.

When you’re billing hourly, there’s no incentive for that professional to resolve your issues. I mean that’s the model, that’s okay, I get it, that used to be the model, but that’s broken. I don’t want to – I’m not an ATM, and so I want to know how long is it going to take, how much is it going to cost, what am I going to get? So we tell people that right up front and if somebody can’t tell you that, if they’re not confident, that says – look, and this is where we get to say we say between 10 and 14 weeks you could finish your whole divorce mediation. Now not the court process because you’re at the mercy of the courts and filing it and all, but you could get your whole substantive agreement negotiated within this time period. Like I can give you a 98% chance that’s going to happen.

If I said to you “Hey Jude, you play the lottery? I got a 98% shot of winning, would you play?” Of course you would. And I’m saying to you, I’m even putting it on me saying that if you need two sessions, four, six, eight, we’re making progress, you’re still paying the same price, that’s on me. I’m willing to do that.

So I think if that combination of your training, your process, your fee structure, your professional societies that you belong to, your engagement – all of those things kind of come into play. And you know I can tell you from experience, a lot of times people – one thing I would not concern myself with are online reviews because in a divorce, first of all, who’s going out publicly and saying “That was awesome! That’s the best divorce ever! I love that guy Joe Dillon, he’s great!” You know, they’re not doing that. And the ones that are are mad, they’re angry about something. We have like three reviews somewhere in Google I think.

But we do ask people to fill out an anonymous survey after they’re done with us and we pull quotes from it. So someone else should also be able to say “Look, I can’t give you referrals or references” – “Hey Jude, I got your phone number from my mediator, can I talk to you about your divorce?” You’d be like “What?” They should be able to at least say “Look, here’s a smattering of feedback we’ve gotten and here are the things that people mention.” And you’ll notice patterns. So I think that’s really what I would say – those questions and to avoid online reviews because really they’re just really not accurate these days when it comes to this topic. So I hope that helps.

Jude: Okay, what about people that are in states or areas where there is court order mediation? Would a question – would a question like what percentage of your business is court-appointed, what percentage of your business is attorney referred, and what percentage of your business is private – would that be a good question to ask too? Because I got to tell you Joe, like you know the phrase “you don’t know what you don’t know” – I feel like that. And talking to you now in just this 45 minutes that we’ve spent together, that you’ve raised a whole bunch of new questions but things that could help everybody in general if they knew this, but the guys that are listening to have some more success upfront with a mediator.

Because what you’ve described has not ever been an experience that I’ve had in the six or seven times. I hear that. I’ve literally had mediators after the shuttle back and forth, after one room in a half hour say “We’re probably not going to get anything done today. Great, thanks.” And then you paid your minimum and frankly I was just happy that you paid your minimum two hours and I wasn’t going to pay another six hours. And even if they only worked a half hour, I was happy that I cut my losses.

So but that’s the experience that I’ve had, and until – unless I’ve had an experience that was better than that, which is what you’ve been describing to me, I didn’t know – I don’t know anybody. I think a lot of us don’t know any better, and I think I really feel while mediation is a great idea, it’s just like having a bad plumber – if they could just make things worse if they show up and they’re crappy. So if you’re trying to have good intentions and getting into mediation and then you have a terrible experience, it just sets things back like I said.

So yeah, so I think another question in addition to what is your process – I think that’s a great question – what’s your case resolution rate – I would love, I’m going to start asking that all the time now because I don’t know that any of them keep that. I have not seen that. I would think that every mediator would want to have that as a benchmark like in all of their advertising – 90%, 98% – unless they’re not successful, unless they’re doing the shuttle back and forth and “I’m done in a half hour, it’s just not going to work out today” scenario.

Joe: Along those lines to make a comment about that is my wife Cheryl, she’s a divorce coach and she’s my partner in this, so she helps some of our clients as well. And you know, if your case resolution rate isn’t high, you’re in the wrong line of work because the bottom line is I’m a divorce mediator on my business card, but the truth of the matter is I’m a problem solver. And if I’m not willing to like get in the arena and say “Guys, we got to figure this out” and really care about it – you really need to care about this. It’s like you were saying to me at the beginning of the show – why do you keep doing this? It’s because I actually give a damn about it because I’ve seen the other side of the coin.

I can’t tell you what to do, but man, you just don’t want what happened to me. You just don’t want the alternative. Trust me on this. Just hang with me, it’s going to be hard, but we can do this. And I’ve come home after a day and she’s like “How are you doing?” I’m like “I just got to sit quietly downstairs and pet the dog.” You know, it takes a lot out of you, but you have to care, and I think that’s a lot too.

Another question I would have your folks ask is “Is this your full-time profession?” That’s another good question. Do you mediate full-time? Because I don’t know, you know, I don’t know if I mentioned this – so when I was living in Chicago and I was kind of teaching at Northwestern University, I was like an assistant to the people who were teaching the mediation classes, and a lot of the people who came in there were mental health professionals, marriage counselors, and they thought “Well, you know, I’m already seeing couples in trouble so I’ll become a divorce mediator as well.”

It’s like you just said – imagine if the plumber showed up at your house and gave you a business card and said “Hey, by the way, in addition to plumbing, I also repair carburetors and I also paint bedrooms and I also do needlepoint.” You’d be like “Are you really qualified as a plumber?” So you probably want to find out – does this person practice some kind of conflict resolution full-time? Because this is a skill. Mediation is a skill and it needs to be honed and sharpened and continued, and so that’s another good question.

Jude: Yeah, yeah, I think that’s a great question. Only challenge is that if they get all their business – like they’re not in the wrong business if they’re getting automatic business. If they’re getting automatic business from the court and then they’re mailing it in, that’s where you got to ask “Well, what percentage of your business, how much business?” And I’d be curious because as you know, because you deal with different parts of the country, so much of the family law court is a cottage industry where the attorneys know the mediators, know the mental health professionals, know the finance, and then they’re just all working together. They know the judges because they went to law school with them and then they practiced for a while and then they got on the bench, and then they’re not going to piss them off and they’re not going to really argue for their client because they don’t want to piss the judge off because they’re going to have to see them again. They’re not going to piss off opposing counsel either because they’re going to have to see them again and talk to them. So this is a whole cottage industry thing.

So which again, when I’m coaching guys – and I firmly believe that every person now – I didn’t when I started this, I was like “Yeah, coaching would be good for you,” but I think that every person going through divorce should have – I absolutely agree 100% all the time – a coach so that they can know and that they can understand this whole process and what goes on. And that question of what percentage of the business do you have to go out and you actually have to get yourself, I think in especially in the states where it’s court ordered, is a fantastic question. And full-time – do you do this full-time, do you feed your family doing this? Because you’re committed to it if you are. And if you do, what percentage of that is private that you work with couples outside of the court, what percentage of that is attorneys that you know that you’ve worked with, and what percentage is court-ordered? And then the last question is what is your resolution rate based on all that? Because then you can – I mean this is a higher equation thing – but you can see if 90% of their cases are court ordered and they have a 25% success rate, then you got it right there. It’s the Colorado Rockies and the Chicago Cubs for so many years – people kept showing up to the games even if they weren’t successful just because they kept showing up. That was the Cubs forever, that’s the Colorado Rockies now, because everybody shows up and they don’t care if they win or not. So it’s that same philosophy – they keep getting business because it’s just given to them, they have no incentive to really be successful.

Joe: Exactly, yeah, that’s – I think those are great questions that you ask, and that leads me into just re-emphasizing because I do with the guys all of the time is that you’re in charge of this process. Absolutely, that’s a great point. Get educated, ask the questions, don’t bury your head. If you weren’t the leader in your family and you weren’t leading, it might be one of the reasons why you’re in the position you’re at. It’s the time now for you to start doing that. Ask your mediator, don’t get – find another mediator and ask the questions. Find – if you don’t get the answers or you don’t like the answers, find another one. But make sure to start taking the reins in this process.

Joe: And if I can just – I’ll share this with you, you know, I’ll answer a question you didn’t ask but you kind of did. The percentage of clients we get from the courts or referral is zero. 100% of our business is client referral or direct, and we for that very reason – it’s exactly what you said – because we work hard, we’re selective. We interview our clients too because we want to make sure that they’re as committed to this process as we are because we’re putting it in day in and day out.

And along the lines of what you were saying, part of how we do that is if you go on our website – and you probably have that in your show notes here whatever it is – we have a resource center, and since 2007 – I can’t believe I’m saying that out loud – I have been blogging and I’ve been writing these guides, everything from divorce after 20 years to amicable divorce to how does alimony work and all these things. That’s how people find us because we feel very strongly that you need to get educated on this process.

Because I’ll just – you know, I know everybody’s listening so it’s not really a secret – but an educated client is a great client for us. They come in with realistic expectations, they come in with a sense of how things work. They don’t have to have all the answers, but they have enough information to know sort of what they don’t know, and they can ask the intelligent questions.

So our philosophy has always been to invest in people and educate them, and if they work with us, great, and if they don’t, that’s great because we get visitors from all over the world and we’re only practicing in six states. But let them get that knowledge so that like you said they can go away, they can feel empowered, they can feel educated, and then the fear also subsides.

It’s like I remember being a kid – I had to get my wisdom teeth out. I have no cavities in my teeth, I don’t know how that happened. I have no cavities, never really had a problem with a dentist, and the first real main interaction I had with a dentist was to get my wisdom teeth out. I was freaking out because I’m like “Oh my god,” and then like two hours later I’m eating SpaghettiOs. I’m like “Well, I freaked myself out over this.” If I had known, you know, same thing – get educated, reduce the fear, reduce that reactivity, work with a coach like yourself, and then get through the process confident. That’s really key.

Jude: Yeah, perfect. So we could probably talk for another hour but we’re coming up on an hour. So where is the website where the listeners can find that blog and that information?

Joe: Yeah sure, you just go to EquitableMediation.com and then you’ll just see right there there’s a resource center that has blogs, it has video courses, we have a free course on mediation, we have free ebooks, blog posts, all this kind of stuff. There’s even some courses that you can purchase. We have – I put together a whole negotiation course on how to negotiate a divorce, not fill out the court forms and all of that stuff, but how to actually get into the room and negotiate with your soon-to-be ex. What are all the things that I as a mediator do, whether clients know it or not, you also can learn to do that. It’s not hard, you just have to have certain tricks of the trade in your back pocket if you will.

But a lot of that stuff is out there, a lot of it’s free. Just feel free, go there, use the resources that are out there, get educated on it. And just tell your listeners absolutely like don’t be afraid – we have people who sometimes come to our first meeting and they’ve printed out our blog posts. I was like “That’s such a high compliment.” It’s like somebody took the time to print out something you wrote and keep it. I was like “Well in this day and age that’s so digital and scrolly and all that,” you’re like “Oh cool, thanks.”

Jude: Yeah, and then at the website can they reach you and get a hold of you through the website?

Joe: Yeah they can, so you’ll see there’s a button that says “Talk to Us” and we practice in Washington State, California, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey – those are the six states we practice in. So if you live in one of our six states, there’s a little button up top that says “Talk to Us.” You click that, you schedule a free call with my partner Cheryl. She’ll tell you about how the process works, things like that, see if you’re a good fit, if mediation’s a possibility. Then after that you can schedule an initial meeting with me and your spouse, so that’s the three of us.

So we have an opportunity for you to reach out, schedule a call with Cheryl, no obligation. We just want to say “Hey, does mediation work for you? Can we work with you? Are you a good fit? Are we a good fit?” Give you a little education, a little background, and again it’s really just about getting knowledge.

Because I’ll leave you with this – when I think back to all the clients I’ve had, I can probably count on two hands, maybe I’ll say one fraction of 1% of the clients who have come to us who have been previously divorced. Most of the people we work with – literally the 99.9% of the clients we work with – this is the first time they’re going through this. And like you said, I thought that was perfect – you don’t know what you don’t know. So know it, learn it, it’s out there, you can learn it. Get educated, it makes all the difference.

Jude: Yeah, awesome. Last question – when are you coming to Colorado and the other 44 states because we definitely need a better type of mediation like you provide?

Joe: I appreciate it. You know, give it some thought because we like to go into a state where we understand how it works, we’re comfortable mediating, we build a professional network before we even think of mediating somewhere. We want mortgage professionals and review attorneys and filing professionals and folks in our back pocket. But we’ll certainly keep Colorado in mind, and yeah, I’m really sorry you had that experience, man. I tell you Jude, that just breaks my heart, but unfortunately it’s a story that I hear a lot because we get quite a few clients who have come to us from other mediators and they’re like “What do you – what are we doing here?” And I’m like “Well, this is how it works.” Well I should say this is how it should work, and that lends us to that case resolution rate because if you have that process, you have it all out on the table, it’s really hard to argue with the facts.

Jude: Yeah, no, that’s awesome, and it’s a good thing because then it gives me the opportunity now to share a right way with everybody and to be able to point out the difference in the future going forward with the dads that I come in contact with that there is a better way to do this. This is how, this is who you can talk to, and these are the questions. Like I learned so much today, it was phenomenal. I truly truly appreciate it. You know, I’ve been in the family law system for 13 years and this is enlightening and eye opening for me today, and I hope it was for everybody else that listened.

Joe, I really appreciate what you’re doing, really appreciate the professionalism and the wisdom and the conscientiousness that you bring to doing what you do. It’s obvious when talking to you and hearing you speak, so having professionals like you in the system gives me hope and helps me to tell guys “Yeah, mediation is a good thing. Find somebody like Joe and Equitable and it can be a good thing.”

Joe: That’s great. Well thanks for being here, I sincerely appreciate it.

Jude: My pleasure, thank you.

Jude: To hear the rest of this episode and access the corresponding resources, visit TheDivorcedAdvocate.com and become a member of our community. It’s free to join and will provide you with the resources you deserve as a divorced or divorcing dad. Thank you for listening, God bless, and I’ll talk with you next week.

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In this insightful episode of “Mid Life Crisis – Bomb Drop and Beyond,” I join host Trina Laird to explore how divorce mediation can provide a smoother path through midlife divorce. When life takes an unexpected turn and couples face the complexities of separating after years together, the traditional adversarial approach often amplifies stress and conflict.

I discuss how divorce mediation offers a more peaceful and cost-effective alternative, helping couples navigate financial divisions, co-parenting arrangements, and emotional challenges with greater dignity and less animosity. This conversation provides valuable guidance for anyone considering divorce later in life or supporting someone through this difficult transition.

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This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors. Anything discussed in this podcast should not be construed as legal, financial, or emotional advice. It is for informational purposes only. If you are in need of such advice you MUST seek the guidance of a qualified professional where you live.

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MLC Bomb Drop and Beyond – Joe Dillon Interview

Introduction/Disclaimer

A midlife crisis is more than just a cultural stereotype. It’s a real psychological struggle that can surface between the ages of 40 and 60. While not officially classified as a mental illness, the emotional and relational fallout is very real, especially for the spouses and families left behind.

This podcast gives voice to those living through the aftermath, exposing the hidden pain and seeking accountability, healing and understanding.

Thank you for joining us today on MLC Bomb Drop and Beyond.

Guest Introduction

Trina: Hey, bomb squad. Thanks for joining us today. Today, we are speaking with Mr. Joe Dillon. Joe is a divorce mediator and negotiation expert. He’s a pioneer in divorce mediation who has been helping couples navigate the end of their marriages with dignity and financial wisdom for over 17 years.

As co-founder of Equitable Mediation Services, Joe combines his MBA in finance with specialized training from Harvard, MIT and Northwestern University to guide couples towards agreements that protect both their emotional well-being and their financial futures. As a child of divorce himself, he witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of attorney-driven litigation on families.

Joe brings personal experience that, combined with his professional expertise, enables him to help couples focus on creating agreements that work for everyone, especially the children. Joe pioneered virtual divorce mediation in 2011, nearly a decade before others adopted online practices during the pandemic.

His results speak for themselves. Equitable Mediation Services maintains a 98% case resolution rate, significantly higher than the industry average of 70%. As a sought-after expert, Joe has been featured in Business Insider, Newsweek, Forbes, Huffington Post, Yahoo, MSN, The Daily Mail and now on MLC Bomb Drop and Beyond.

His blog has attracted over 1 million visitors. Joe believes divorce does not have to be destructive. With the right guidance and expertise, couples can part ways amicably while protecting what matters most.

And here we are going to speak with Mr. Joe Dillon.

Interview Begins

Trina: Hello listeners. Today we have a very special guest. We have Joe Dillon. He is a Harvard-trained mediator and he’s going to take our reader questions. So good morning, Joe.

Joe: Hello there. Hi, Trina. How are you? Thanks for having me.

Trina: Sure. On this Friday the 13th.

Joe: Exactly. That’s why I’m staying home because I don’t want anything bad to happen. So I’m doing this from my home office.

Trina: Okay, so we’ve got a bunch of good questions here from our listeners who are dealing with all aspects of midlife crisis, which often leads to divorce. So first question: what are three things you see that someone in our position can do to help provide the best outcome?

Joe: Good question. It’s no surprise that divorce is an emotional issue. One of the things we tend to want to do is just react. We’re angry.

The first thing I would say is take some time to process your emotions before you make major decisions. I know it feels urgent. You’re thinking, “I have to resolve this. I have to be angry. I have to do it.” But rushing through really leads to a lot of regrets down the line. That day or two that you took to breathe could save you years of heartache. You might have a therapist or a group of good friends or a divorce coach. That’s something to do.

The second thing is think about the long term. Tying into that first point, it’s really easy to think about extracting the pound of flesh in the short run. The short-term wins feel good. You know, “gotcha.” But the gotchas don’t really help you five years from now when you’re trying to pay your bills.

You really want to focus on what you need to do to rebuild your life one, three, five, ten years down the road and not just what feels fair now, because you might have to give up something now to get something that’s down the road. That’s classic negotiation. You have to give to get.

The third thing, which is probably the hardest one of all, is you really need to stay respectful in your communication. I know a lot of people, when somebody’s coming at you, the first thing you want to do is bite their head off. You want to go back at them with “how dare you” treatment.

But no, this is like one of those “I’m going to take my ball and go home” situations. Just because you’re being a jerk doesn’t mean I have to be a jerk. Be committed to being cool, being calm, being respectful. It’s like that old adage: fire needs oxygen. Take the oxygen away and you’d be surprised when you do that. The other person who’s inflamed – those flames are going to get dimmer and dimmer until they go out.

Those would be my top three.

Trina: That makes a lot of sense. Let me ask you about going back to number three, because when you’ve got two people that come to mediation, you’re representing both of them. Is that correct?

Joe: It’s funny – I don’t represent either of you. I advocate for both of you. In other words, I want the best outcome for both people. You can’t get into this line of work unless you care about people. You can’t just phone this job in.

People ask me why I do this. I’ll share a little bit later about my backstory. My parents litigated their divorce. So I’m a classic case of the broken home and all that stuff. That’s kind of the deep-seated reason why I do it.

You really want both people to walk away from this thing in the best possible shape they can, knowing that it’s still going to be really difficult even if it goes well. That’s kind of how I position it.

Trina: So it’s still a win-win for both.

Joe: Exactly. Obviously, if somebody wins and the other person loses, guess what happens? In mediation, they just go get a lawyer and they say, “I’m not going to pay attention to anything we talked about. I’m going to take you to court.”

Why would you spend the time and money with me and then just wind up having to litigate anyway? It’s smarter to say, “Okay, I’ll let you pick the movie if I can choose where we go to dinner,” for example. Rather than having those friends who are like, “Well, this is what we’re doing. And then we’re going here.” Even if it’s your friend, you’re thinking, “You’re really bossy. Why are you being so bossy?” Try to compromise, give and get. That’s what I focus on.

Trina: That makes a lot of sense. It’s always amazing to me when you spend your life raising a family and you’ve been together 20, 30, 40 years, and then all of a sudden, you’re like enemies or something. It just doesn’t make sense to me whatsoever.

Joe: At some point in your lives, you stood in front of somebody. Even if it was at city hall, you had to have some witnesses who said, “Yeah, I love you. I love you. Till death do us part,” and all that. At some point, you professed your love for this individual, and what happened along the way that they became your mortal enemy? I don’t subscribe to that. I just don’t understand that.

If somebody did something intentional or malicious, yeah, that can harm your opinion of them. But I’m not a mental health professional, but my wife is a divorce coach. She works with me here at Equitable Mediation. She says, “Look, when somebody says something, it’s not about you, it’s about them. It’s the hurt that they’ve got.”

If you can remember that when somebody’s coming at you, you’re thinking, “Yeah, this is not about me. This is really about you. So I’m going to just stay quiet.” That’s kind of what I’m saying.

Trina: When she says that, that’s really important for our audience to know because we get a lot of that. It’s not about you. It’s about lying and committing perjury. Then the other spouse is going, “Wait, what?” When you realize it’s all projection, that sort of helps. Although…

Joe: It’s not easy, but you’re absolutely correct. I have to believe this, and I say this to my clients sometimes when they’re being obnoxious. They’re like, “I think he just insulted me.” It’s not that I’m trying to insult them. I’m trying to get them to understand that as a functioning society and as a member of that society, there’s a baseline level of behavior we all need to have.

I assume you were raised by a parent or a guardian or someone that hopefully instilled some baseline modicum of respect and morality in you. I’m trying to tap into that. When somebody’s going off the rails like that, that’s not about you. It’s about them. They just lost their way somehow. It’s a shame, but it’s better to get as far away from that person as you can.

You’re also going to be seeing each other at funerals and weddings and bar mitzvahs. It doesn’t make sense to me how they can become so combative.

Trina: That really creates bad blood.

Joe: Of course it creates bad blood, and that’s hard to get past.

Trina: It sure is.

Joe: I remind people, and part of being a mediator is you have a lot of tools in your tool belt to get people to continue to stay talking and stay engaged. One of the guilt trips I like to pull out is to say, “Look, you might not be husband and wife anymore, but you’re still mom and dad. And that doesn’t change.”

You can sit here and yell, but when you’re at the high school graduation, your son or daughter does not care about that. They want to look over from the stage when they get their diploma and go, “Look, mom, look dad, I did it,” and see the two of you sitting next to each other. That’s what they want. You need to do that.

By the way, you brought them into this world. So this is on you. You need to – you’re the adults. You need to behave that way. Sometimes we need to remind people of that because I’m sure you’ve done it. I know I’ve done it. You get mad at something ridiculous. Like, “Oh, I can’t believe they didn’t put pepperoni on my pizza. I’m going to write them a review.” You’re like, “Dude, calm down.” We all have to remember that even in the case of a divorce.

Trina: Absolutely. One thing we see is oftentimes a spouse will file a domestic violence restraining order against the other. And that can start out – if you have couples that have that, that started out, is there still hope for them in mediation?

Joe: With mediation, people need to be able to engage with each other. If there’s a restraining order, you usually can’t mediate. Now what you can do, and this is what I’d encourage listeners in this situation to do, is something called shuttle mediation.

There are some mediators that will do this where you have one spouse in one room and the other spouse in the other room. Then the mediator goes back and forth so that at least you’re still not litigating and you’re not getting lawyers in the mix and going crazy with all of that stuff.

As a matter of safety, what I’d always recommend is you do this in a public place. Sometimes courthouses will even give mediators conference rooms. Then you’ve got security and police and people who can keep the situation under control.

Now sometimes there are those kinds of restraining orders where people can’t interact with each other. But sometimes, one of the things that we’ve been doing – since 2011, we’ve been actually mediating online. This is about nine or ten years before most people have been doing that.

It actually didn’t come up from domestic violence. It actually came up from somebody who was, I believe it’s called agoraphobia, fear of leaving the house. So there was a person who was afraid to leave the house. So it was 2011, and this is not the technology we had in 2011. We had basically like trying to share your screen over a dial-up modem.

But we were able to help this divorced couple with the spouse not being able to leave the house. That can also apply. We do that with our clients all the time. We use Zoom and 100% of our mediation is now what we call virtual or online.

That can also be good for domestic violence situations. Couples can be in different spaces, different homes, different places, as long as the restraining order doesn’t prevent them from speaking. This way they’re not in the same space. They’re not within 100 feet of each other, but they still can interact. As a mediator, you can work with couples like that.

If you’ve got that kind of restraining order where you can still speak, find someone who does virtual mediation or online mediation. If it’s something where you can’t interact, ask if the mediator does what we call shuttle mediation.

That’s still a couple of ways to at least get the advantages and the benefits of mediation without having to lawyer up and turn it into a circus.

Trina: We have a lot of listeners too where they were all trumped-up charges or accusations. So they’re restraining orders that get dismissed.

Joe: People in these situations are losing their marbles. They’re just not themselves. I’ve heard some people describe it as an out-of-body experience. They’re like, “My wife, Cheryl, was divorced.” I asked her some questions about it. She said, “I really just didn’t know what was happening.” She was only married, I think, like two or three years. So thankfully they had no children. But she was like, “What is happening here?” She couldn’t even process that she got married at 30 and she’s getting divorced. So I can see that it could make people do crazy things.

Trina: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Okay. The next question, sort of – this is interesting how it segued into my next question: In your mind, do you as a mediator – in your mind, do you know which person is the more or less emotionally immature person and manipulative one? Can you tell?

Joe: As a mediator, I’m not thinking in terms of labeling somebody as the problem. The problem is these two people don’t want to be married anymore. That’s the problem I’m addressing. So the solution is to help them not be married. As simple as that sounds.

Now, we all bring our own baggage and we all bring our own nonsense into the process. There are some things that people do that are proverbial red flags. My least favorite is the person, the interrupter. We all have that person. You’re talking and this person just starts talking over you and you’re like, “Hi, I’m talking here. Can I just finish?”

Especially the person who – if I said, “Trina, what do you want to do tonight?” and you would say, “Well, Joe, I don’t know,” and I would start talking over you even before I let you answer the question I asked you. So that’s definitely one of them because that’s really somebody trying to control the conversation. They’re interrupting. They’re trying to control the mediator. They’re trying to control the other person.

That kind of leads into that kind of person starting to wind themselves up. You can see that person who’s interrupting and then you can watch them as they escalate. Then the shift happens. Then the blame starts kicking in where they start bringing up the grievances and the old stuff.

We have a saying in mediation: mediation is a forward-looking process. For your listeners, when you think of a mediator, your mediator is a nice person. I’m a nice guy, but I tell my clients off the bat, it is not my job to know about really pretty much anything that happened before that got you here unless it’s relevant. Like assets, liabilities, income, children.

But if in 1997 you were supposed to go to your wife’s parents for Christmas and instead your husband insisted you go to his, that’s irrelevant. That’s not – that’s maybe unfair or maybe caused an argument. But that’s not why we’re here. So when people start bringing up that kind of stuff, you’re just sort of piling on at that point.

Trina: Do you have a way to interrupt them then to say like, “let’s stay on track here”?

Joe: We actually do a flat fee. We’re really unusual in the sense we have a limited sessions for a flat fee. Part of the reason we do that is because we also want to put skin in the game. If you do hourly, think about it – as a mediator or a lawyer or somebody like that as an hourly practitioner, people are trying. They’re invested in helping people try to resolve things.

But if a person doesn’t resolve their issues in three or four sessions, I get paid for my next session and I’ll keep getting paid and I’ll keep getting paid. It’s no disrespect – we all have to make a living – but by putting it into “Here’s the roadmap. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to do a timeframe. Meet with me as many times as you need for one fixed fee.”

People are like, “Really?” I’m like, “Yeah, I want to take the pressure off you to think about hourly billing. Oh my God. I want you to be able to think and breathe. And also I want to show you that I’m committed to resolving this as well.” Because it doesn’t help you, the customer, the client, or me, the mediator, if six to nine months later, we’re all still talking about missing Christmas in 1997. I’m stressed out. I’m like, “I’m not helping.” And I feel terrible if I’m not helping.

We do it that way. To answer that question, yeah, we do it that way. That’s kind of also what helps. That’s part of getting people to move past that as we say, “mediation is a forward-looking process. Let’s move you forward.” We remind them, and I know this sounds funny – I have a little bit of a sense of humor. I’m originally from New York City East Coast. So I’ve got a little bit of that edge to me, even though I live in California now.

I’m like, “Hey, you guys, did I misunderstand you? Did you not come here because you want a divorce and you want to end your marriage and get away from each other?” And they’re like, “Yeah.” And I’m like, “Well, then let’s do that. Let’s do what we need to do to help you do what it is you told me you want.” They kind of laugh a little or they grumble a little and it’s like, “Well, okay, no problem. Then let’s move forward.” We just constantly – we don’t engage on the past. I call it the snow plow. We just keep pushing forward, pushing forward, pushing forward. Eventually we get to the finish line. That’s kind of how I handle that.

Trina: Totally makes sense. I know you work in several states. I think one might be New York.

Joe: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. That’s where I’m originally from. I went to Drexel in Philadelphia. I grew up in the shadow of Manhattan. I lived in central New Jersey in the Princeton area. Then I moved to Chicago. I love Chicago. So we practice in Illinois. Now we live in California. So we practice in California and my wife loves Seattle. So we practice in Washington. We’re in those six states. If you live in one of those six states, we can certainly work together.

Trina: Awesome. Maybe I can ask what the flat fee is.

Joe: It varies. We offer clients three different levels of service. We customize our flat fees for people. It’s not just one size fits all because people come to us at different points in their lives and in their relationships and in their process.

Some folks are really friendly, really simple. So we have a lower flat fee for that. Some folks are like, “We have some complexities. We want some help with this and that.” Then there are some folks who come to us who say, “Look, we need your help with this and that. We also want emotional support. So we want Cheryl as our divorce coach.” That’s kind of like our signature big top package.

It also really depends – another thing that I’m trying to do. My background actually is in finance and IT. I look at people’s whole situation and I say, “Okay, what is it going to take to resolve everything that you think you need to resolve plus everything that I know that you need to resolve, even though you don’t know it.”

I want them to walk out of our offices or our virtual offices and not require them to ever set foot back in our virtual office or a courtroom again. The only time I want to hear from people, I tell them, is if you want to send me a Christmas card or tell me your kid graduated high school or you’re getting remarried. I love those calls. I love those emails. I get them from time to time, which is really cool.

I don’t want “we have a problem and we need to see you again.” We customize everything. Every client’s unique that way. I know that this is exactly what you need. If you follow our process and you do what we ask you to do, you will get the result you seek. You probably saw this – we’re pretty proud of this – we have a 98% case resolution rate.

I can tell you over 17 years of mediating privately and 28 years in the profession that I could count on one hand the number of clients that we were unable to bring to an agreement. That’s because we know what they need and we explain to them what they need. We hope they listen to us and 98% of the time they do.

Trina: Because you’re not emotionally involved in it. You have the clear head, you’re running the numbers. That’s really cool too that your wife is a divorce coach and we’re going to talk about that.

Joe: I think that’s a really cool thing that I think a lot of folks are probably missing out on.

Trina: Certainly. Okay. Our next question – you sort of answered it. The other part of that question was if so, what attributes of a person educate you on which person that is?

Joe: They’re pretty obvious. These kinds of folks don’t necessarily hide themselves well. There’s a lot to be said – even when we do Zoom, you can still see body language, you can still see faces, you can still hear tone. A lot of that comes through.

I like all those crime shows, like those FBI profiler, CSI kind of stuff. I don’t know if it’s all true, but they always say, “Oh, if the person scratches their nose, they’re lying” or whatever. But there is some truth to it. You can see the body language, you can see the faces and you can see the veins in their throat as they’re getting ready to rage. You’re like, “Okay, I know what’s coming. So I’m ready.” I’m a professional. So I’m ready to take the blow and sidestep the punch and move the process forward. That’s what I do professionally.

Trina: Awesome. Next question is: have you ever seen that after a divorce, after couples divorce, that they reconcile? Have you had that happen?

Joe: Once. It’s pretty rare because by the time you get to this process – there’s a law firm out of the UK, I forget their name, but they did a study and they asked their clients, “How long have you been thinking about getting a divorce?” When they added it all up, apparently it averaged out to two years and one month. Not exactly two years – two years and one month.

When somebody’s been thinking about divorce for that long, usually the decision has been made and it’s not something that they make as a snap decision. You see those people who yell, “I want a divorce!” in the heat of an argument. That to me is just frustration. That’s all that is. It’s “I’m really angry that this person that I love, that I care about doesn’t understand me or we have this issue that we can’t resolve and it’s really frustrating me.” That’s not the person who wants a divorce.

The person who wants a divorce goes away quietly, thinks about it for a really long time, talks to their friends, talks to a therapist, talks to a lawyer, goes and reads a book, subscribes to a blog, listens to your podcast. Then two years later comes to the other spouse and says, “You know what? This isn’t working for me.” I see it all the time in my practice. Some people will say “I’ve been unhappy for seven years, 10 years, 17 years.” You’re like, “Oh my goodness, 17 years.” “Yeah. Well, we had a kid. I didn’t want to have the child raised without parents.” You’re like, “Okay.” Very rare because usually that one person’s driving it. Like I said, just once. I would be happy if it was more, but just once.

Trina: Well, your career is still young.

Joe: That’s right. There’s always next time.

Trina: Yeah. Along those lines, for the MLCers, a lot of times the other spouse feels like the rug was pulled out from under them. They are shocked that all of a sudden they get a Post-it saying, “I’m out of here,” or “I’m having an affair with the neighbor next door.” Do those kind of clients come across you as well?

Joe: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Because think about it. This person’s been thinking about it for two years in silence. And the other person’s going along, “la, la, la, everything’s okay.” Then finally the leaving spouse gets up the courage to say, “I’m done.” Usually the other person is kind of shocked about this.

In my experience, just little statistics – as a numbers guy, I love the numbers, as you would imagine – statistically about 70% of divorces are filed by women. Coach Cheryl will tell you that typically, and I will say this – I am a man. So I can say this. Now granted, I was raised by my mom and Italian grandmother. So I have a lot of those sensibilities as well. I got instilled with a lot of those lessons, which was great.

But guys are usually clueless about this kind of stuff. The women are the ones that are churning those emotions and thinking those things and staying up at night and fretting and worrying and wondering. The guys are just oblivious going along with “Hey, everything’s fine. She hasn’t said anything. It’s cool. She must be tired or it must be the kids or it must be work.” There’s always some other reason.

There’s not a lot of guys who we run across who go, “Yeah, I noticed she was unhappy and I engaged with her and I asked if we could go to counseling and, Joe, we’re here now because we really tried and it didn’t work.” That maybe happened once or twice in my career.

More often than not, it’s like we call that person the reluctant spouse because what they’re doing now – and it’s typically the guy – is “Well, we could fix this. We could work on this. There’s got to be something we can do.” The other person has been thinking about it for, if you believe this firm in the UK, more than two years. That’s a long time to undo that thinking. That’s usually the bomb drop. It’s like the other person thinks that some kind of bomb went off, where it’s more often than not, it’s just been low-level smoldering with a really long fuse. Now finally the fuse ran out and boom. There you are.

Trina: Wow. Okay. Our next question here: should we secure a lawyer to review mediation outcomes? It’s a two-parter. And then if the left-behind spouse earns more than the MLCer, what should we consider in negotiations as the left-behind spouse? So I guess we’ll do the first one first. Should we secure a lawyer to review mediation outcomes?

Joe: If you’re talking about your outcomes in mediation, I recommend that. We always encourage people – our philosophy is this. Some mediators will require you to retain an attorney through mediation. We say to you, we don’t require it, but we highly encourage it because unless you’re a legal professional, look, I do this all day. Some days I walk out of my office and go, “Well, that was confusing.”

If I am a trained professional – I have taught mediation classes at Northwestern in Chicago for other professional organizations, I’ve given lectures at conferences – and even I am sometimes perplexed at how this all works. If I don’t know it and I eat, sleep and breathe it, how does a person who’s going through divorce know it? That’s what lawyers are for.

The lawyers will come through. When you have a lawyer in a process like this, what we say is “Look, ask for a referral. You want a mediation-friendly lawyer. You don’t want a lawyer who’s going to go in and say, ‘Well, what are you going to mediation for? We can blow this whole thing up and we’ll take them to the cleaners.’” That’s not the point because you never know. When people say things like “I guarantee if I go to court” or “I know the judge will say I’m entitled to,” I’m like, “Good luck to you.” The law is really fuzzy. I’m not a lawyer, but the law is really fuzzy and people think there’s some guarantee and there’s not.

You’re better off controlling your own outcome in mediation and then going to a lawyer and saying, “Look, here’s what I gave. Here’s what I got. Am I within the realm of possibility?” A good lawyer is going to go, “Yeah, you know what? Because if you had a good mediator, I think that’s the real key. They’re going to say, ‘You know what? Yeah, you could have gotten a couple more bucks on child support, but you got more than half the bank account. That might have topped another $30,000.’” They’re like, “You know what? At the end of the day, this looks like it’s pretty good.” That’s all you can hope for.

Trina: Do they need to get their own attorney or?

Joe: Most of the time. An attorney can only represent one person. Now, if you have an attorney – we call them review attorneys or filing attorneys. They’ve got different names. Sometimes there’s a couple who will say, “Look” – I’ve had this. This is a real-world example. I had a gentleman. He was the CFO of a bank and his wife was a high school graduate who worked at the Apple store. They were both super nice and he could not have been nicer and more generous and more patient in explaining everything. I’m a finance guy. So I didn’t want her to feel like “Oh, gosh, these two guys know all these numbers.”

My fake client names are Bob and Sue. Just so you know, these are not real names for people. But we said, “Sue, listen, here’s three colleagues of mine. They’re all great attorneys. This was in Chicago. They are all great attorneys. They’re super friendly. I know them personally. Pick one, go talk to them, show them your agreement and ask them what they think.” She did that and she came back and we made a few tweaks here and there, but I felt better. The husband felt better. She felt better because nobody wanted to stick it to anybody.

In that case, the attorney really provided a lot of not only value, but comfort. In some cases, you’ll get a couple who’ll say, “Listen, if you want to get a lawyer, that’s cool. Let them review it, make sure it passes muster with the legal mumbo jumbo and let them do the filing on both of our behalfs.” We see that a lot too. People can do that.

One will get the lawyer and ask the questions, but not ask the questions like “Hey, what can I do to change this more?” Like “Is this okay? Like this is what we both want. Is this legally binding? Is this…” That’s where lawyers can really play a good role in the mediation process. If they want to flip over the whole apple cart and destroy everything, that’s not the right lawyer. That’s not even the right lawyer for a non-mediation client. Because that’s the pit bull lawyer. That’s the “you’re an ATM slot machine” lawyer. Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching. It’ll cost you $30,000 to get that other $100 a year in child support.

Trina: Actually I had a question there. And now I forgot what it was. I’ll go to another listener question and then I’ll go back to my question. Oh, you know what? My question was, how do you know as a mediator that one of the spouses is not hiding money?

Joe: As a finance person, you’re very much about process and rules and formulas. Having parents who have been through this before and being married to someone who’s been divorced, I have a heightened sensitivity to the emotional aspect of it. But I also take a very analytical approach to it. There’s a couple of things that we can do that vary in levels of intensity.

The first thing – I don’t have to tell you it’s secrets, but I want your listeners to know this because I want them to feel empowered. That’s why we do this. That’s why I do this because I want people to get educated. My friends don’t want to listen to me talk about this. So hopefully your listeners do.

The first thing we do is we say, “Look, go through a discovery process.” That’s just getting all the stuff out on the table. The bank accounts, the credit card statements, the tax returns and all that stuff. There’s a lot of websites out there that’ll tell you, “Oh, here’s your checklist of items to gather.” That’s all well and good. But to be truthful about it, every attorney, every mediator has their own process. The reality is those things don’t really do you as much good as you think they do. But setting that aside, the thing that really comes into play is budgets.

Here’s the thing with budgets. What I ask clients to do is I ask them to do a joint budget. Give me what your expenses look like for the past 12 months of your life. I have this proprietary budget workbook that we have a course that you can buy on our website. It’s part of that package. I think it’s got like 120 lines to it, all these line items. They do this joint budget. Then I go through it with them line by line. Having seen so many of these, I know that if somebody puts $100 down for a grocery bill for a family of four, I’m like, “Guys, come on. Are you starving your kids? Should I report you to family services?” I really know that groceries are probably about $800 a month. Nowadays are probably more.

I go line by line and then I add it all up in all these categories. I say, “Well, okay, here’s the bottom line. This is what you need to make ends meet.” Let’s say it’s $10,000 a month. For those of us who live in California, that’s probably low. But elsewhere, for your listeners it could be high, but let’s just use 10k. Now I say, “Okay, to make this example really easy, say only one spouse is working outside the home and the other one is working inside the home, not earning the paycheck.” They so deserve to earn as a person working home to raise the kids.

This person is making $150,000 a year. So after taxes, it’s about $110,000. I say, “Well, okay, in that example, this is real easy. I know they’re going to be short and they’re going to amass credit card debt.” But then if I have somebody who’s making $250,000 and let’s say they bring home $200k and their budget tells me they spend $120,000 a year, but they have no savings. They’re amassing credit card debt. They’re not putting money in their 401k and they didn’t have some massive medical emergency or their roof fell off their house and it was $50,000. That’s my flag. It’s like you’ve reported to me and I’ve looked at your budget and I’m pretty good at this. I’ve seen thousands of these things. You look at it and you go, “All right, wait a minute. You should easily be able to make ends meet here. But who voluntarily pays 29% on the credit card?” Nobody voluntarily. You do it if you’re trapped. If you had a big car repair, you had to pay for your kids’ braces or whatever it is. That to me is the question mark. That’s the “hmm, okay.”

The other thing I’ll have people do is run their free credit report. There’s a website out there, government website. I think it’s called annualcreditreport.com. Once a year, you’re allowed to get your credit report from all three agencies. It’s not your score. It shows all open lines of credit. I ask each spouse to pull their credit report and we have a file-sharing system box. We ask you to upload it and I’ll go through it. As part of our discovery process, I also ask clients to fill out a balance sheet where they list all their open credit cards. Now I can match up that credit report to what they reported, self-reported as to the debts that they have.

Trina: That’s usually where if you’re going to find something, you’re going to find a credit card that wasn’t reported that’s been active or a car loan or something or other. Like a mortgage or something. One of our partners just had that happen. She just discovered another property owned by her husband and their partner.

Joe: Exactly. That happens with vehicles. People buy vehicles for their other spouse. Usually they’re expensive vehicles, Cadillac Escalades, big Ford pickup trucks. That’s a trigger. Now, I don’t see it, but I’m still suspicious. Then what I’m also going to do is refer them to a forensic accountant. This person is like on the CSI shows – they are the financial CSI. These people have access to all kinds of tools where they can get access to all your accounts and tax returns and all that stuff. They’re going to figure it out.

At the end of the day, I will say this to your listeners. Even for the people who may be the ones who are in the hiding money camp, I can tell you that there are a lot of smart people in this process. Judges don’t become judges because they’re dummies. These are really smart people. Lawyers are really smart people. Forensic accountants, really smart people. Somebody somewhere is going to catch this. If you think you’re more clever than people who have gone to school for like a combined 700 years or whatever it is, you are sadly mistaken.

We have in mediation and in a lot of these kinds of agreements, we have something we call either the poison pill or the double-edged sword, and it goes like this. I write this into all of my agreements. It says, if one of the spouses has knowingly concealed an asset and it’s later revealed, 100% of that asset will go to the non-concealing spouse. If they’ve knowingly concealed a debt, 100% of that debt will be retained by the concealing spouse. That’s a real common clause to see.

Even if something crops up down the road, that’s still sitting in your divorce decree. That’s like a landmine that you can step on years down the road. That’s the other piece of it. You try to explain to people, “Look, you might think you’re clever. I know something’s going on here. I’m not going to call you out. I’m not going to blame you. I’m not going to accuse you. But I promise you, it’s better to get it out here in confidential mediation than when you’re standing in front of a judge because judges don’t like that. They really don’t like that.”

Then you’re going to be in a whole different world of hurt than you are if you just came clean now, screamed at each other, and then we put it on the balance sheet as “this is your liability” or “this became a dissipation of marital assets.” That’s really what we want to emphasize. Do the right thing now because it’s far less painful to do it now than it would be down the road.

Trina: Good deal. Okay. The other question, what about if the left-behind spouse makes more than the one that’s in midlife crisis? What should we consider in negotiations? But I guess that comes down to that balance sheet.

Joe: It comes down to assets, liabilities, income, because obviously if somebody leaves, here’s another thing that I think a lot of people fail to realize: just because you walk out doesn’t mean your responsibility for the mortgage goes away or the car payments or the cable bill. People think like, “What’s not my problem anymore?” Well, kind of it is if your name is on the mortgage. The person who’s left behind, especially if they’re the higher earner, is most likely going to be the one who’s carrying that.

That’s part of the negotiation strategy – to basically say, “Look, this is great. You can leave, but this is still your share of all what happened. The kids, the clothes, the food, the sports camps, all of that. I’m going to retain that as part of the process. As well as everything else that I had to do in order to instigate this process, to retain an attorney, to pay for a mediator.” These are all the kinds of things that do crop up in our conversations.

You say, “Look, you can go if you want, but if you want to go, you still have these responsibilities.” I think a lot of people think they can just leave. “Oh, if I left, it’s not my problem, ha, ha, it’s yours.” That’s not really how this works. If your name is on the bottom line, the bank is still going to call your house no matter where you live. That’s something – somebody who has been the left-behind spouse, it is important for them to say, “Look, keep track of all the things that I have now had to take on myself in order to keep this house running, to keep our kids happy and healthy, to keep our lives moving forward and make sure that that does come up in your negotiations.”

Trina: Must be hard too when one of the spouses is self-employed.

Joe: It really is because I’m self-employed. Like I was saying before, I barely understand my own finances. And I have a master’s in finance. You look at your books and you’re like, “This doesn’t make any sense.”

Trina: Yeah. Or like me, I’m a full-time realtor. So my income fluctuates a lot.

Joe: That can make it tough.

Trina: Okay. Next question, you sort of touched on this, but I’ll ask the question just so we get it out there. My soon-to-be ex will not produce certain bank statements and account balances for mediation as it highlights the money that he has taken from our savings and spent on the other woman, including an engagement ring. There you go. What would the mediator’s opinion be on this? On whether there’s even any point wasting my time? Should I just go straight to litigation or should I ignore this?

Joe: That’s not a mediation-friendly case. Mediation is what we call a good faith negotiation. It requires full disclosure from the parties of all documents. We have what we call a discovery checklist where we give to parties and we say, “Look, we don’t ask for anything that’s completely obnoxious and over the top. We’re not asking for your blood type, but if we ask for it, we need it. And there’s a reason. We’re trained professionals. This is what the process requires.”

You want to talk about red flags. Trina, this is the biggest red flag that I could ever possibly imagine. When I ask somebody, “Hey, can you upload a copy of last year’s tax return?” and they reply, “Why do you need that?” Okay. There – grab the rope. Let’s hoist it up the flag pole. Look at the flag flapping in the breeze. This is an example of that. It’s like, “Okay, because I need it.” It’s sort of like you’re almost parental in a way. When we were little kids, “why can’t I go outside?” “Because I said so.” Sometimes that has to be good enough.

As the authority, as the mediator, in a good faith negotiation, it requires full disclosure. If anything is asked for by either myself or the other party, I am the final arbiter. I am the one that says, “Yes, please provide that” or “No, you’re being ridiculous.” I rarely say you’re being ridiculous because in most cases, people are saying, “Well, give me copies of your pay stubs.” “Why do you need that?” “Because I need to know how much you make.” You’d be surprised at how many even of the mediation-friendly spouses don’t know what their spouse makes, how much they make. They keep separate checking accounts, separate bank accounts. In those cases, it might not even be something insidious. It’s just how they set their finances up. I’m like, “Okay, this is a problem.” If we’re going to talk about child support and alimony, you both need to know how much the other person makes because that’s the foundation of this negotiation.

In that case, unfortunately, that doesn’t really sound like a mediation-friendly case. That’s one where you’re going to need to get an attorney who’s going to be able to use the court system to force that individual to produce those items.

Trina: Okay. In this case, do you think she should try to – if she’s gotten an attorney, should she try to push that to get those? I mean, if they’re doing discovery, he’s supposed to provide the bank statements.

Joe: People should. That’s where the lawyers will come in and they can use… If she doesn’t, I mean, that would be a thing where the judge would say, “You produce it or else.”

Trina: Probably.

Joe: I’ve never been divorced or in a court like that, but that would be my understanding. The legal system exists for a reason. A lot of people do that just to be obtuse. They just do it to be a nudge about it and frustrate the other person. Sometimes, we also see that – remember, we talked about the whole two-year decision-making process, the reluctant spouse – that’s another way of dragging their feet. That’s another way of staying married and tethering myself to you by not providing X, Y, or Z. Sometimes it’s an emotional manipulation as well as a financial one. Those are the harder ones. Financial manipulation, you can go to court and get the judge to say, “Send in the damn tax returns and then it happens or you’re going to jail.” But the emotional one, the dragging the feet, those are the hard ones. Those are the ones where the legal system really isn’t equipped for that. But certainly that’s where the attorneys – we’re very supportive of attorneys in the process. If it’s a case where you can’t mediate, then you escalate to that next level.

Trina: Okay. These personality types – we see some of these questions sort of similar in a way. This one is: how do you handle power imbalances in situations where one spouse is clearly manipulating and taking advantage of the other?

Joe: That’s a perfect segue to what I was just talking about. Because there are two types of power imbalances. There are emotional ones and financial ones. When we think about the emotional ones, the way we offset that as a mediator is by asking questions and really listening to the disadvantaged spouse. Remember, we talked before about how that other person who’s trying to control the situation is always talking and cutting you off. One of my favorite things to say is when that person is going off and the other person typically will shut down. Going back to our friends Bob and Sue, let’s say we’ll flip it around and this time it’ll be Bob who’s the disadvantaged spouse. I’ll lean in to the camera and I’ll lean and say, “Don’t worry, Bob, I’m listening to you. Please continue.” Even if the other person is still coming at me.

Again, it’s that whole taking the oxygen out of the fire. I don’t want to – like little kids who are like “mom, mom, mom, mom,” they’re going to keep doing that till they get the result and they learn that they’re going to get the result. They keep doing it. But if the person who’s on fire realizes that this guy isn’t going to listen to me if I escalate, they’re probably going to calm down. They’re going to cool down. Then this other person feels heard and validated, acknowledged. This is coaching as well. It’s acknowledging and validating. They probably haven’t been listened to for a very long time in their relationship. There’s a sense of empowerment that comes along that says, “Well, hey, this mediator guy, this Joe Dillon guy, he values what I have to say. He’s listening to me. I am worth something. My opinion does matter.” That little puff up the chest, that’s what I want. I want you to put on the big boy pants and the big girl pants and say, “Look, yeah, my opinion does matter.” So I’m asking those questions, engaging them.

The other thing is – speaking of which – with Cheryl. When Cheryl coaches with our clients, when I work with our clients, it’s always one on two. I’m always – because I’m a neutral. I work for both parties at the same time. Cheryl is always one on one. The great thing about working with a coach like Cheryl is to say, “Okay, I have your back. I am your advocate, just you. Let’s talk about what’s bothering you. Let’s work through this conversation. When you get into mediation with Joe and your spouse, what are you going to say? How are you going to act and react? How are you going to manage your anger?” What Cheryl does is she kind of gets them to tap into that inner strength and wisdom, as she calls it. I’m using some of her words. I try to blend those in because she does have a lot of good stuff. She says, “Look, you really are worth it. You are – your opinion matters. You are half of this marriage, you are half of this agreement, you’re half of this negotiation.” Having a coach in your corner can also help you. It’s just like if you were an actor in a play, you wouldn’t go in without rehearsing your lines. You just wouldn’t show up on the stage and wing it. You’d have Cheryl, somebody like Cheryl to kind of help you do that. That’s the emotional piece.

Now, on the financial piece, it can be on purpose. It can be just a pattern that’s developed over time, where somebody is the household accountant. For example, in my house, Cheryl pays all of our bills. So if Trina, you asked me, “Hey, how much is your electric bill?” I’d be like, “I have no idea. Ask Cheryl.” But in this case, the way I do that is again, we go back to those budgets and that balance sheet process. We have this file-sharing system I mentioned, and we have them upload budgets and balance sheets where you can even exchange this information. Then I go through it line by line with both of them in session in real time. What that does is it really levels the playing field. Because now somebody says, and this is what I’m also listening for – I just said it – “I didn’t know you had two 401ks.” That’s also like a little tick mark in the back of my head to go, “Okay, circle back to that.” Because I don’t know what this person really knows about the finances, as a mediator, you’re actively listening for that. By putting all those things in front of everybody and I say, “Okay, any surprises here, any assets you weren’t aware of, any debt you weren’t aware of, do the budgets make sense?” We try to at least level that playing field and help people at least go in from a position of strength when they start to negotiate. Of course, there’s always interpersonal dynamics that are going to unfold that you’re constantly managing as a mediator. But those would be the ways that I’d see it on the emotional side and the financial side.

Trina: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Because yeah, the foundation is key there. This might be because we’re almost at time – this will be my last question for today. But we have other questions. So we might have to do another. Would you be okay with that?

Joe: Yeah, sure.

Trina: And especially with Mrs. Dillon, does she go by Mrs. Dillon?

Joe: Yeah, she’s Cheryl. Yeah, absolutely. Certainly get her on. People are probably sick of listening to me by now.

Trina: No, not at all. After today, we’ll have even more questions. But this will be my final one of the day. I would love to know if they can spot someone that’s in midlife crisis. I know we mentioned you knew when your dad had a midlife crisis visually from his changing hairstyle.

Joe: Exactly. I’ll share that with the listeners. My dad was the Irish Catholic epitome, beer drinking, in construction. Such a stereotype. He had the 50s greaser hair, used the VO5 and slicked it back. He wore jeans and t-shirts. He drove a pickup truck. It was just like, it sounds like – yeah.

Trina: He kind of looked like – absolutely, that’s exactly it’s a great analogy.

Joe: So one day he comes home with a perm. I’m like 11 or whatever. You’re like, “Huh, what is this?” Because you knew your dad had straight hair and I have straight hair and I’m like, “Wow, this is weird.” He didn’t buy a sports car or anything, but then he got the perm. He was a guy who was like more of a homebody kind of guy doing projects around the house, playing catch with me and that kind of stuff. Then he started going out a lot more. He would go out with friends and he’d go out to baseball games or to bars or whatever it was. He was coming home less.

Those kinds of telltale signs – physical appearance, that other kind of appearance. For us, once they’re in my space, they’ve already come to that conclusion, they’re divorcing. So I’m not really seeing those kinds of things. What we can see, though, is a little bit of the behavior. For example, vehicle purchases, going out entertainment, those kinds of things where people are getting into those spaces where they’re not necessarily happy with the way their life is going or went. They’re looking to kind of make some significant change. Joining a gym, those kinds of things. Those are the sort of subtle things. Oddly enough, where those things pop up are once again, in the budgets and the balance sheets. If you start seeing the entertainment line or the health club line or the clothing budget, as I explore each line item, you can start asking some questions and kind of getting a vibe as to who’s spending money on what. Because that really – when you think about it – when you think about us as individuals, we spend our money on what we value. For example, I’m a musician, I like to play musical instruments. So rather than go out to fancy dinners, I’d rather buy a new guitar. That’s where I would spend my money. As you start to explore those questions and you start to understand what people are buying, spending their money on motorcycles, they’re always a good example. I like that. A motorcycle is a good – unless you’re a biker, that’s usually a good sort of checkmark, like, “Okay, you bought a motorcycle. All right, let’s talk about that.”

Trina: And does that make your job of mediating them a little more difficult at all?

Joe: Well, it does in the sense that that’s sort of an inflated lifestyle. What you have to explain to people is that when you’re getting a divorce, two households are more expensive to run than one. In order to run those two households, that’s going to require both parties to cut back financially, unless you’re independently wealthy, which, if you are, God bless you, I’m not. These things that you were doing or going out or buying, this is probably going to need to change. If you want to go into debt when you’re divorced and do it on your own, knock yourself out, but that’s probably not something that this post-marital lifestyle under normal circumstances is going to sustain. We need people to acknowledge that. If they want to do that, like I said, I’m never going to tell you what to do. You are the master of your own domain, you are in charge of your own life. If you want to buy yourself three motorcycles and a boat after you’re divorced, as long as it’s on your credit card or your credit history, knock yourself out.

Trina: Exactly. Okay. Well, I think that might be our final question of the day.

Joe: There you go. Well, I hope I was able to answer the questions.

Trina: I think so. It sounds like a lot of good questions. Yeah. One thing on the MLC is like some of the spouses just aren’t there emotionally. I don’t know if – I’m hoping that as they go through mediation, if they want to work this through, they can come to terms. I’ve heard that people sometimes in MLC will compartmentalize.

Joe: Yeah. They compartmentalize enough to get through mediation. So I think that mediation is a great choice for people.

Trina: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when you think about it, you have an excellent chance at coming to an agreement. At least with us, I know that usually industry averages around 70% for mediation, but that’s still pretty high. It’s still pretty high odds. It’s a peaceful process, more peaceful. It’s more cost-effective. It’s faster. The beauty of it is that because mediation is not binding until a couple makes it binding, you can give it a shot. You don’t have to feel like, “Oh my gosh, I went through mediation. I’m stuck with this thing.” Like we talked about, we encourage you to have an attorney review it. Make sure that we didn’t miss anything, you didn’t miss anything, the other spouse didn’t miss anything. By having people go through that process, give it a shot. The worst thing that happens – we’ve had, like I said, we’ve had a handful of people who haven’t come to an agreement, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t come to some agreements. They might not have made it all the way through. Usually there’s one or two sticking points, but I’m like, “Guys, just take all the work you’ve done, take the 90 to 95% of the work that you absolutely agree on, give it to your lawyers, use it, and then just work with them to finish the last three or four things.” Even in that case, you still have a great shot of moving through the process efficiently, cost-effectively, and quite frankly, peacefully, because when you’re done with this, you don’t want to be the shut-in, you want to go out and have your life, you want to live your life, you want to have friends, you maybe want to date again or get remarried again, whatever it is. The sooner you get through the ugliness of this process, the sooner you can start doing those things.

Trina: That sounds pretty good. Maybe next time we’ll talk about what if they do want to get married again, they might want to do separate checking accounts. When they meet the mediator, it’ll be easier. We haven’t talked about prenups because I’m not a lawyer. But mediators do prenups, and I’m a big fan. I don’t see there’s… people…

Joe: People think of prenups as like, “Whoa, we’re going to get divorced.” No, I mean, just be smart. It could be very general. You save yourself the acrimony of going through this litigious divorce. If you’ve got premarital assets, like Cheryl and I, we both got married a little older. We each owned a house. That’s one of those situations where you’re like, “Well, this is your house, this is my house, and we should write this down and say, ‘Look, this, we got it. If anything happens in the next years, you’ll keep that, I’ll keep this. But then after that, we’re together.’” That’s what we did. Here we are. Thankfully, we just celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. We’re long past the need for that. But again, they underestimate documentation. They don’t want to do it. It’s onerous. It feels bad. It feels negative. I wholeheartedly disagree. Be smart. Just protect yourself. Be kind, be fair.

Trina: You don’t share toothbrushes. Just do a prenup.

Joe: Just say, “Hey, how are we going to do this? How are we going to divide things if, God forbid, in the future, this doesn’t work out?”

Trina: Makes sense. Some of our listeners are getting in the midst of getting separated right now or separated. They still have time to do a post-nup.

Joe: Absolutely. We have people who bring those to us and they help. They certainly help when you go through them. The only thing I would advise them to do is for each of them to have their own lawyer review it so that no one down the road in the future can say, “Well, I didn’t have a lawyer or I was unrepresented or I didn’t know what you were talking about.” I really strongly advise, even if you work with a mediator to do one, have each have your own attorney review it, put the legal mumbo jumbo in there, formalize it, sign it, do whatever all the things lawyers have to do with it so that down the road… I can’t tell you, I have a lot of people come to me with prenups that they never signed. They did one and then one person’s lawyer put it together, but they never signed it. It’s like, “Guys, you were – it’s like to use a sports analogy like football, you’re at the goal line, just step across. Just sign it.” They never signed it. The other person says, “Well, I never signed it.” You’re like, “Wow, okay, this could have been so much easier, but all right, well, lesson learned.”

Trina: Yeah. That’s a lesson you learn once, you’re not going to do it again.

Joe: Exactly.

Trina: Well, Joe, thank you so much. It was great meeting you today. I know there were a lot of questions and hopefully this really helped. I know it did and we will probably be talking to you and Cheryl in the future.

Joe: Cheryl, the divorce coach extraordinaire.

Trina: Absolutely. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and we will talk again soon.

Joe: All right, Trina. Thank you.

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