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This interview with the Divorce Mortgage Strategies Podcast focuses on mediation involving real property and complex finances. Joe Dillon discusses his pioneering work in virtual mediation (starting in 2011), strategies for handling emotional attachments to the family home, and the critical importance of bringing in certified divorce lending professionals early in the process. The conversation covers practical approaches to helping couples make informed decisions about keeping or selling the marital residence while considering the full financial implications.

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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.

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Divorce Mortgage Strategies: Joe Dillon on Real Property and Complex Finances

Host: Jody Bruns, Founder of Divorce Lending Association, Creator of CDLP and REMS Certifications
Guest: Joe Dillon, Equitable Mediation Services

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Jody: Welcome to the Divorce Mortgage Strategies Podcast, where legal, financial, and housing professionals converge to support better outcomes for divorcing clients. I’m your host, Jody Bruns, founder of the Divorce Lending Association and creator of the CDLP and REMS certifications.

Today we’re diving into a topic that every divorce professional needs to understand: mediation that works, especially when real property and complex finances are involved. My guest is Joe Dillon, professional divorce mediator and co-founder of equitablemediation.com, one of the leading online divorce mediation services serving clients nationwide.

Joe brings a rare and powerful perspective. He combines strategic thinking, financial acumen, and empathy-driven conflict resolution to help couples avoid the courtroom and reach clear, lasting agreements, especially when it comes to decisions related to the home, support, and mortgages.

If you’re a divorce attorney, financial neutral, real estate, or mortgage professional, this episode is going to help you understand why mediation needs to be a bigger part of the collaborative toolbox and how to avoid the all-too-common settlement pitfalls that lead to post-divorce litigation or financial instability. Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Jody: I always like starting off by letting our audience know about your specific background, your training in mediation, and where your professional background comes from because as we know, not everybody who’s a mediator is also an attorney. Tell us about your journey.

Joe: That’s a great question. I’m a non-attorney mediator. I have a master’s degree in finance and my background is finance and negotiation. In my professional career, I was actually a negotiator. I worked for publishing companies and other large companies, helping negotiate sales contracts and financial contracts. I’d be working with salespeople, customers, and legal departments, and I found myself as the liaison between all three of them. In a way, I was mediating.

If you know anything about salespeople, all they care about is getting the sale because that’s when they get their commission. If you know anything about legal departments, they don’t want to give away a single thing – “We will not change that contract.” The poor customer is sitting there saying, “I want to give you millions of dollars. Could you please take my money? You all just need to figure this out internally.”

I found myself in that role as a director in these companies, trying to balance everybody’s needs. Through a series of events – downsizing and things – I was having lunch with my mother-in-law and she said, “I think you should be a mediator. I have a friend who does this and your background would be good for it.”

Not all mother-in-laws are bad! I love my mother-in-law. I hope she’s listening. But I said, “This is interesting. What could I do with a finance and negotiation background?” Divorce mediation.

As a personal aside, my parents litigated their divorce. I’m the classic “burn it to the ground” story. My father was so mad at my mother that I never saw him again after the last time I saw him in the hallway of a courtroom. I sat in the back of the courthouse – all that stuff that everybody says “Oh, that never happens.” It happens. It happened to me.

I combined that personal experience with my professional experience to help people avoid what happened to me. That’s my journey and how I got to where I am today.

Jody: Our journey is very similar. I have a business degree and was in construction lending for years, handling all the draws on the construction side. Then my husband and I – my ex-husband now – moved to Colorado and I started working more in origination. Then we went through a not-so-nice divorce. I am you, but I’m the parent.

When I was back in Chicago working, it was actually a law firm who said, “We love your approach to working with divorcing clients and the education. You should write a certification program.” I think you and I probably did some of the same training if your Harvard experience was their program on negotiation.

I’ve really taught our members at the Divorce Lending Association that you are mediating. You are literally mediating and presenting strategies and solutions to the divorce team and your clients. We’ve incorporated a lot of that into our curriculum because I don’t want any of our members presenting options and strategies as a traditional loan officer so they’re actually more disruptive to the process.

I love that more professional mediators are not attorneys. I think divorcing homeowners specifically appreciate that because there’s so much more to mediating the house than legalities. As a trained mediator, you know how to balance those emotions and make sure everyone involved is moving forward instead of kicking it back and having to renegotiate.

Joe: As we would say, it’s interest-based negotiation versus positional-based. The house is an emotional aspect. We all think of a house as a piece of property, but it’s where your kid took their first steps or where you took photos of the first day of school or prom. All the memories of Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever you celebrate, unwrapping gifts or having family meals. Sure, it’s got equity and value on a balance sheet, but it is far more than that. When you get emotional equity, boy oh boy, it is.

Jody: You have to see which way the scale tilts – to the asset or the emotional – which is more valuable to the person who wants to keep the home. How do you personally handle that discussion with divorcing clients? What do you think is the most common hurdle when they’re anchoring, digging in their heels and saying, “Nope, you’re not keeping the house” or “I want my 50% right now”?

Joe: Most of the clients we deal with have kids, minor children. When they do, it’s not an easy conversation, but it’s easier. It goes back to interest-based negotiation. I say to them, “Look, do you have an interest in keeping your kids in the house?” Typically parents will say, “Yeah, we don’t want to disrupt them. They have friends in the neighborhood and they like their school districts.” I’m like, “Great. So let’s find a way to do that.”

You and I both know when it comes to the finances of a house, even the cost of ownership – this is exactly what happened to my mom. My dad was a very handy guy – a builder, construction, architect. He could fix things, build things. Whenever something went wrong in our house, dad would be out there putting up a new fence or pouring a new sidewalk or replacing the driveway or roof. These are not things that normal people do.

When my mom tried to buy my dad out of the house, well, guess what? Those are all now costs she’s going to need to incur to own that house. When we talk about child support guidelines or alimony payments or money in savings accounts and we look at people’s budgets, we say, “Look, your homeownership costs are going to go up and these guideline numbers we’re talking about are not nearly enough to cover keeping the kids in the house.”

So you told me you’re interested in keeping them in the house. Let’s find a way to do that. That might mean deferring your share of the equity. It might mean higher support payments. It might mean one of you stays in the house and the other stays with a friend and has their parenting time via nesting in the former marital residence. We try to bring up creative options to get people thinking outside that box of “I get half of what it’s worth and I want you to pay me now.”

Jody: I’ve been involved in a lot of mediations around this topic and sometimes I’ve unfortunately witnessed mediators who in my opinion are not prepared for that type of conversation. I once had a client who adamantly was not moving – she was keeping the house. The divorce was disruptive enough, not doing that to the boys.

I said, “Okay, I can qualify you to refinance this mortgage. You are going to be house poor.” She started telling me how her boys played competitive baseball. Mine played competitive baseball – it’s not cheap. Having this conversation with her, I said, “Kids are resilient. They will be happy where they see their parents happy. Would you rather keep them in the same house and then say, ‘I’m sorry, honey. I can’t afford for you to go on that baseball tournament next weekend to Omaha because I have to make the mortgage payment’?”

I don’t regularly see it handled in a professional manner that addresses the emotion and the financial aspect. How do you work with your clients to pull back the blinders and look at it from a pragmatic standpoint?

Joe: A phrase that I’ve coined that I really use over and over is “do the discovery before the deciding.” People come in and say, “We got it all figured out.” We’ll see how this goes. At the end of the day, you say to folks, “Listen, we’re going to start off with information gathering. We’re not talking about what we’re doing. We’re not deciding on anything. We’re not even digging into the issues. I just want you to go through our proprietary process.”

One of those pieces is a thorough budgeting exercise. A lot of people don’t budget – we just spend money. Tonight, when you’re bored, go online, log into your online banking account, your credit card, and count up how many auto debits hit your credit card every month. Netflix, Spotify, Apple, iTunes, whatever it is. They’ll come back with 20, 30, 40, and you’re like, “Yeah, because we stopped paying for things. We just get charged for things now. We forget how much things cost.”

By forcing them to fill out these really detailed 100-different-category budget workbooks and dig in deep – breaking them out into housing costs, transportation, personal, entertainment – it really gets them digging. Then we set it aside completely.

When we get in the thick of the conversation, we say, “Okay, this sounds like what you guys want to do is keep the house. We’ve talked about what some of the support numbers look like. Let’s go back to those budgets now and see if it’s realistic.”

Usually there’s a pretty significant disconnect. Usually the amount they’ve talked about for support and the money somebody’s going to have to pay and what their mortgage is going to go up – because if they’re going to take cash out of the house, your mortgage payment isn’t going to be the same as it currently is.

We say, “Okay, guys, knowing what we know now about the finances and how this might not be realistic, does that change your thought? Does that change whether you want to keep this house for the emotional reasons?” If it’s still no, we still want to keep it because we’re really emotionally tied to it, here’s what it’s going to take from both of you.

We separate that. A lot of people want to come right in with their numbers and say, “Look, we put this all together and this is what we’re going to do and we just want you to look at it.” It’s like, “No, no, no. We’ll get there eventually, but we want to put that aside.” Separate the discovery from the deciding.

Jody: When do you typically bring in a mortgage professional such as a certified divorce lending professional, and how much do you know about a CDLP?

Joe: I bring somebody in like that very early in the process. My process goes like this – I always start with people with kids because most of our clients have minor children. I always start with the parenting plan, and maybe I’ll reveal a little bit of my secret: in my experience, if there’s one topic people are going to agree on or have less disagreement about, it’s the parenting plan.

By starting with that in a mediated divorce, you get to say to people, “Hey look, you guys are doing great. Good job. We reached an agreement.” We’re professionals, but part of it is encouraging the parties to remain engaged in the mediation process.

The next thing I do is the budgeting process. Before we even get into child support, alimony, property division – which usually for me are way down, weeks or months away – I now look at the budget and say, “Well, okay, here’s your mortgage payment.” I ask them to break it out into principal and interest, homeowners, and taxes.

They’re like, “Why do I have to do that?” Because your taxes are going to go up, your homeowners are going to go up if you refi. But it’s your principal and interest that we’re really worried about. We need to understand exactly how much your mortgage payment is going to go up.

If they tell us early on, “One of us has an inkling to keep a house,” that’s when I say, “Listen, before you even go through the rest of this process, because we don’t want to come to an agreement, and then you’re done with me and you’re in the filing process and then you go to a mortgage professional and it’s like, ‘Oh, no, you don’t qualify.’” We do it right after the first session.

Jody: That’s awesome. Because you got to know that stuff.

Joe: You got to work with somebody who’s able to work with you. I’m self-employed. My wife and I work together in our own business. Every time we apply for a mortgage, you go through the whole laundry list of documents you need. We’re not like other people – we’re self-employed. We don’t pay ourselves a paycheck regularly, our expenses are wrapped up in our business.

A divorced person or divorcing person, even if they have a job, even if they have a salary, they are also a non-traditional person in my opinion. They need a professional who can say to them, “Look, we’re going to have to work together to advise you on how you will be able to qualify.” It’s not just going to Bank of America, giving them your pay stubs, and they go, “Awesome, you qualify for a million dollars.” That’s not divorced people.

Working with someone who is certified in this kind of lending and who is a lending professional, not just somebody who decided “I’m going to do this because I think I can make good money” – that’s critically important so the person isn’t disappointed and our whole negotiations aren’t wasted.

Jody: That is truly the value of working with a certified divorce lending professional. As you know, coming from the finance world and blending it into divorce, it’s a whole other world. As a CDLP, if we’re coming into mediation or collaborative, whatever the process, we are trained to see the red flags because what’s available as a legal option may not be available as a mortgage option.

If we are looking for income streams to make sure you can qualify on your own, let’s make sure the language is there, or how can we work with your finance team to make sure we are not impeding on your estate planning or financial planning because we all want to preserve our clients’ assets. Sometimes there has to be flexibility there.

Traditional loan officers don’t think about anything like that. Their tax filing status is going to change – they’re going to go from this nice, sweet, standard deduction to either single or head of household. And it does have an effect.

We have this amazing report called the Divorce Mortgage Planning Real Property Report where we dig into the details of the property – everything the mediator, the attorneys, whomever needs to know about the property. We see things differently. You guys might be looking at titling from an ownership perspective; we’re looking at it to see how that can affect how much equity we can even access in the house.

On our page, if we’re running equity buyout scenarios, we have a little dropdown for what your new tax filing status is going to be. Sometimes, believe it or not, going from a three and a quarter percent interest rate to five and a half, when you take into consideration the after-tax cost of funds, sometimes it’s a wash.

Joe: People are so tied to interest rates. Some people say, “I’m not getting rid of this three and a quarter percent interest rate. I’m not doing it.” When you look at your tax status change and the effect on your standard deduction, there’s a cost sometimes to keeping that three and a quarter percent interest rate. You’re either going to refinance and pay a little bit more in interest, or you’re going to pay Uncle Sam at the end of the year because you don’t get that big deduction. When you show them the financial aspect of it, it’s a game changer.

People don’t think that. They’re so quote-unquote “married to the rate” that they want to divorce the rate, not just their spouse.

Jody: That’s so funny you said that because I always tell people in session, “You marry a house, you date a rate.”

Joe: When my mom bought the house out from my dad in the mid-80s, she thought 11% was a good interest rate, and it was at the time. Eleven was down from like 18% or whatever it was.

There’s also the concept of utility. You’re paying this interest, but let’s say you were to pay that to rent – you’re not going to get any equity back out of that. I happen to live in California now, and the real estate is nuts out here, but it grows by leaps and bounds. Even if you took on a higher interest rate, you could probably say with some certainty that the value of your house would double in five years. That’s not a guarantee, but out here it’s kind of close.

If I pay more in interest, but the value of my asset is going to skyrocket, maybe if I can swing that monthly payment, I could do that.

Another one I wanted to mention – I ask people to prepare a balance sheet and get a value on your house. Get an appraisal, a real estate agent, combine them, average them. I try to explain to people that if you go on realtor.com it may be inflated, so go for a professional, pay the $300, and get the appraisal.

Then they get the balance off their mortgage statement and I’m like, “Heads up, that’s not exactly what the payoff amount of your mortgage is.” You need to know this because you’ve got prepays and taxes and escrow and all that. You really need somebody, and unfortunately it needs to be someone other than me, because I want to maintain my status as neutral nice guy.

I want to send them off to a professional and say, let the professional explain to them that your buyout isn’t going to be value minus equity. There are other fees and costs associated with this. I don’t claim to understand that because I’m not a mortgage professional like you are. I know enough to be able to refer. That’s the key thing. I have a master’s in finance, but guess what? I still pay a man to do my taxes because I’m not a CPA.

Jody: Even if one spouse wants to keep the house and somebody else says, “Well, I want to go buy a house,” there are things we can help with in the language of the agreements to make sure that going forward, you won’t get hit with this mortgage payment if you’re still on the mortgage. It does take a collaborative effort from all the professionals.

One of my comebacks to people when they say, “Well, I don’t want to pay this kind of interest rate. I’m going to rent,” I’m like, “What’s the interest rate on rent?” They ask what I mean. I go, “The interest rate on renting is 100%.” One hundred percent versus 7%.

It’s all about being informed. They will be educated in ways they never thought they would have to be educated in the past. Divorce changes everything – the way you socialize with your friends, the way you qualify for a mortgage. It’s not as simple as it was previously.

Tell us more about your practice and how you offer services, because I saw on your website you have an online mediation program.

Joe: This is a little background on us. When the pandemic hit and the world shut down, a lot of mediators scrambled to move their practice online. We’ve been mediating online since 2011, and we’ve come to find out that we actually may be the first or one of the first people to do that.

It started out as a happy accident. We got a call from a gentleman whose wife was agoraphobic and she wouldn’t leave the house. He wanted to mediate and said, “Is there anything you can do?” I thought, “Well, no problem.” It just so happened he lived 15 minutes from me when I was living in New Jersey.

He said, “Actually, my wife is also obsessive-compulsive and she’s afraid of germs, so she won’t let you in the house.” I said, “Okay, I’m not really sure what we can do.” I wandered into my partner Cheryl’s – my wife’s – office and said, “Here’s what happened. What do you think?”

She said, “You know, there’s this technology called WebEx, and you might want to offer it via telephone and screen sharing.” There were no cameras – we didn’t have the bandwidth in 2011 to push video like this. I reached back out and said, “You want to give this a shot?”

He said yes, and we scrambled and made up PowerPoint slides and Excel spreadsheets and shared our screen. It was awkward, it was clunky, but it worked. We thought about it and started offering it. Over the years, more and more people took us up on it until finally when the pandemic hit, it just became the way to do it.

At the time of the pandemic, we had been mediating online for nine years already. Now that’s how we mediate exclusively online. Here we are, 14 years later. You have to have a process and structure. There’s a lot you need to do to be an online mediator because there are corners you have to peek around and landmines you got to avoid.

We’ve been doing this such a long time now, it’s such a natural part of our process that I wouldn’t even know what to do if I was sitting in a room across from two people.

Jody: Do you mediate nationwide or just in your specific locations?

Joe: We mediate in six states. Washington, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. That follows the trajectory of where my wife and I have lived and moved across the country. They’re also mediation-friendly states, and we enjoy practicing there.

We have practiced in 13 states in the US. We have also done divorces in Canada, France, Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong. People find us and what we tell them is, “Look, we will help you negotiate the framework of your agreement, but then you’ll need a legal professional in France, for example, to be able to do this.” Mediation is not as well-known in some of these places, but people just wanted to have conversations as parents or conversations about their property.

We’ve been really blessed and fortunate that people have found us worldwide, but we know those six states very well. We know how divorce works in those six states. We have our professional affiliations and network of people.

I think that’s an important thing to bring up – no woman or no man is an island. As a practitioner, bring in people who know, like certified lending professionals, divorce lending professionals who know this part of the business, CPAs, or when necessary, if you see something funky going on, “Hey guys, you got to see a lawyer.”

We don’t require people to retain attorneys, but as a mediator, if I see something weird – somebody hasn’t filed taxes in five years and suddenly they don’t own a single bank account or credit card – you’re like, “Wait a minute. I was born at night, but not last night.”

Going back, it’s pretty unusual that we are exclusively online. We’ve been doing it for 14 years. People seem to enjoy it because we work with a lot of professionals like C-suite people and folks who travel a lot for their jobs. We can meet when one is getting divorced in California but currently on business in Dallas, and we can make the process still move forward for them.

Jody: If any of our listeners wanted to reach out to you and Cheryl, how would they find you?

Joe: The best place is our website, equitablemediation.com. I always got to be careful not to spell it as “meditation.” We get that a lot. On there, we have our learning center where you can go and research things.

I think a theme that you and I both share is an educated client is a good client. You don’t have to be an expert, people. You don’t have to do it yourself. Hire a professional, build your team, get your people on board, but it’s good to have a little bit of information up front as a client to know what they’re doing.

We have a whole learning center with courses and podcasts and blog articles and videos. You can basically go out and get educated. Then there’s information on us, and if you want to schedule a free call, you can certainly do that.

If you’re a divorcing couple and you’re not really sure if mediation is correct for you, schedule a free call with my partner Cheryl, or you can schedule a meeting with me if both parties want to be present. We really just want to give people information, let them decide if mediation’s right for them, and then we’re always happy to help any way we can.

Jody: Joe, I really appreciated this. It was a fun, engaging conversation and I look forward to having more of these conversations in the future.

Joe: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

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Contact Information:

• Website: equitablemediation.com
• States served: Washington, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania
• International mediation services available
• 100% virtual mediation platform (14+ years experience)
• Free consultation calls available
• Comprehensive learning center with educational resources
• Host: Jody Bruns, Divorce Lending Association (CDLP and REMS certifications)

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Joe sits down with the team at Been There, Got Out to discuss how mediation can transform high-conflict divorce cases. Joe talks about how his finance and negotiation background informs his approach to mediation as an effective alternative to courtroom battles, even in cases involving domestic violence or financial abuse.

Joe addresses common misconceptions about mediation, explaining how it requires patience and preparation rather than being a quick fix. He discusses treating divorce mediation like a business transaction, sharing insights on removing emotions to focus on data-driven decisions. Joe offers practical advice on preparing through budgeting and asset documentation while keeping children’s needs central. He wraps up by talking through how to determine if mediation is right for your situation, along with an encouraging reminder that a better life awaits beyond the turbulence of divorce.

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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.

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Strategic Mediation: Joe Dillon on High-Conflict Divorce Cases

Host: Lisa, Strategic Mediation Expert
Guest: Joe Dillon, Equitable Mediation Services

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Lisa: We’re going to be talking about mediation. I know we might have a very hesitant, doubtful audience, but in our experience exclusively dealing with high-conflict cases, we’ve found mediation to be extraordinarily effective. Before you even introduce yourself, Joe, what percentage would you say mediation is a better option than litigation?

Joe: If I had to answer that question, I’d probably say 90 to 95%. If people are willing to disclose and willing to engage in good faith negotiation, no matter how high-conflict you are or how angry you are, mediation can work. It’s when you get people who are dissipating assets, hiding money, or being abusive – emotionally, physically, or financially – that’s really when you need the protection of that courtroom, lawyer, and judge.

Unfortunately, we see about 2% of cases go to litigation. That tells me if you’re willing and able, 98% of folks out there could actually wind up mediating or engaging in collaborative divorce where they work with attorneys in real time rather than battling it out in court.

Lisa: Even those cases you mentioned are the only cases we deal with, and we still find that depending on the situation, many do really well outside of court. Even if you’re dealing with domestic violence, it’s not fair that you should be limited only to litigation because that costs more money and you have less power. We always say it’s worth a try. A lot depends on your perspective and attitude going in – if you already say it’s not going to work, then it probably won’t work. How about you officially introduce yourself?

Joe: Thanks for having me, Lisa. I’m Joe Dillon, a divorce mediator and founder of Equitable Mediation Services. We practice in six states here in the US. I have an unusual path – my background is an MBA in finance and negotiation, so I deal with people with complex financial situations, financial infidelity, and financial abuse.

My parents are actually a great example of what not to do because they litigated their divorce and were beyond high-conflict to the point that my dad was restrained in the courtroom because he was going to go after the judge over the child support amount. I sat in the back of the courtroom and watched this unfold.

Lesson to viewers: if you have kids, don’t bring them to court – really bad idea, scarred for life. But also, you can do this in a better way. No matter how angry or high-conflict you are, the whole idea is to get through this process so you can start emotional and financial healing and move on with your lives. If you have kids, be better co-parents.

Lisa: Let’s say you have a person dealing with a very difficult ex and you have them in mediation. Are there things you as a mediator do differently with cases like ours?

Joe: Certainly. When you have folks who are amicable, it’s easy for them to get along, communicate directly, and decide things together. In high-conflict cases, we do a lot more options creation because sometimes people get so mired down in details that conversations spiral off track.

Rather than deciding right there in real time, I’ll create a number of options with them. For example, with a house, I know there are seven different ways you can handle a house in divorce. Most people don’t think of that. I’ll say, “In your situation, does this make sense? Does this make sense?” We’ll limit it down to maybe two or three options.

Then I’ll say, “I want you to independently go away and think about these options and prioritize them.” What often happens is people don’t realize they might actually be more in agreement than they think – they’re just so angry at each other. We in our profession call it “violent agreement” – you’re screaming so much at each other you can’t hear that you both want to sell the house.

When we get them to do that independently and they come back, we lay their choices up on the screen and say, “Well, your number one choice is sell the house and your number one choice is sell the house. I guess we have agreement.” It sounds like a game show – “Survey says!” – and it is weird.

My background is in negotiation, and I’ve been studying negotiation for about 30 years. There’s a reason they call it “game theory” – it is, in a way, a strange, dysfunctional game. Not that divorce is a game by any stretch, but you’ve got to think about choices, options, winning, losing, giving, and getting.

We try to get people to avoid the conversation in the session, go away and think about what they want, put all the stuff they agree on in the corner – because usually these people agree on most things, they just don’t realize it – then spend our time on the one, two, or three issues that might really upset things.

Lisa: I love that phrase “being in violent agreement.” We work a lot with our clients on strategic communication and negotiation in writing before they even get before a professional. One of the things that’s the backbone of communication is something we call the universal agreement – we both want the same things. We try to align it with some value of the court. For example, neither of you wants to waste a ton of money. Most people won’t say, “No, I don’t care about money.” You anchor them to “we both want to save money, so let’s keep doing this instead of jumping into the courtroom.”

Joe: Absolutely. As a negotiator, one thing you do is always ask questions you already know the answer to – you don’t want to be surprised. By gaining momentum, I’ll ask someone, “Do you love your kids?” What are you going to say – “No, they’re terrible little children”? We have agreement that you both love your kids. Great! Look at us agreeing. You build up on the smallest things to create goodwill and momentum.

When we talk about money, you can say, “It’s Johnny or Alicia’s graduation day, senior year, and you’re standing there saying, ‘I’m so sorry we had all this money in a 529 for you and were going to pay for your whole college education, but we chose to litigate our divorce and spend $200,000, so now you’re going to have to get loans and apply for scholarships.’”

You try to put people in that future space to say this is what will happen from personal experience – it happened to me. Don’t think you’re going to be different. If you can get people out of the current space and thinking about downstream impact, that helps a lot.

Lisa: I remember from my own mediation experience years ago, the mediator served as this authority figure – almost like he was the one who would say what the judge would say. When my ex said something like “I don’t think I should pay child support unless the kids and I have a great relationship,” the mediator said, “That’s not going to fly at all in court, so let’s come up with a number.” Had I said that myself, he wouldn’t have listened, but I liked having someone there who had that authority but wasn’t forcing anyone to do anything specific. Can you talk about your role?

Joe: People ask what my role is, and I think of it as part guide, part referee, and part cheerleader. As a guide, I’m experienced in these issues in these particular locations. In a New Jersey divorce case, I’ll say, “This is how the guideline works. I can’t guarantee what a judge will say, but is there any good reason you have that will make the judge say, ‘Oh yeah, you’re right, you can ignore the guideline’? I’m not seeing it.”

As the referee, I get “We decided I’m not paying child support.” That’s great that you decided it, but you’re not the authority. Now as the referee, I have to enforce the rules – blow the whistle, throw the flag.

As the cheerleader, you’re trying to encourage people to keep engaged, keep talking, keep being involved because their communication has been dysregulated – either they’re ignoring each other or screaming at each other. That was my house – periods of intense screaming and then months of silence with my parents.

You’ve got to keep them positive, engaged, talking. By understanding the rules of engagement and how this might shake out, you can convince them why bother getting that answer when I’m giving it to you now as part of the process for less money. It’s a delicate, gentle reeling-in-the-fish kind of thing.

Lisa: Speaking of rules, I remember from when I used to teach high school – in the first week, instead of me dictating, we’d figure out class rules together. As you know, things can get very intense and sometimes the process gets deflected because somebody wants to blame about why we’re here and how this happened. How do you deal with someone who keeps shifting the spotlight from progress to the past?

Joe: I was never a high school teacher, but I apparently engage in the same process. Before we even mediate, we have a one-hour strategy session where we lay down the rules. We put up on the screen a series of rules that talk about the difference between mediation and therapy. As we say, mediation is therapeutic but it is not therapy. We want you to have a cathartic moment, come to agreement, and move forward.

One key tenet of mediation is it’s a forward-looking process. I have a favorite quote by Bird Bagot that I put up on the screen: “View life through the windshield, not the rearview mirror.” That’s always our totem.

We talk about rules of engagement in mediation – taking notes, confidentiality, being respectful. We talk about the role of attorneys because in high-conflict cases, there may be a need to involve attorneys outside the process. We don’t require you to have an attorney, but we highly encourage you to have one if you feel the need.

I had a therapist colleague who taught mediation with me at Northwestern University. She was an experienced therapist with 40 years in the business, and she would say to mediation clients, “This sounds like an old argument. How has that been serving you?” It’s a little mind shift – has this gotten your relationship on track? Has this improved your lives? Do you feel better every time you have this argument?

Of course they’re going to say no. Maybe this isn’t serving us – why don’t we try to move forward? The focus is constant moving forward. My job is to help you negotiate and craft an agreement that’s going to govern your co-parenting and financial relationship from day zero moving forward.

Lisa: People also have the idea that they go to one mediation and if everything’s not resolved, then it’s a failure.

Joe: Right! To give you an idea, a lot of the cases we work with are longer-term marriages, more complex financial situations – 20-year marriages. I’ll say, “You guys have been married 20 years, probably dating for some period prior, so you’ve managed to create these legal, financial, and emotional entanglements for 25 years. Do you really think it’s going to take two hours to unlearn that?”

We have a lot to unpack. For our clients, usually in high-conflict situations with our two-hour mediation sessions, you’re looking at probably five to eight sessions plus the one-hour strategy session. You’ve got to be willing to put in a full work day to engage in this.

If you’re waiting for a judge or court or your lawyers’ schedules to sync up, you’re looking at two to three years. If you’re meeting with me five, six, seven times every other week, you’re looking at two to three months. If I’m mired in dysfunction, pain, and suffering, I want to get out as soon as I can.

You have to be willing to put in the time and do the work. You’re paying lawyers and paralegals money to go get your tax returns and bank statements – I can give you a list and on a Saturday afternoon you can do it for free. Do the work, give it to me, do the discovery, do as I ask, and engage in sessions regularly.

Lisa: You said your sessions are two hours. Some of my favorite mediator friends also say sessions should be short, but sometimes our clients are stuck in these 9-hour mediation sessions, which was a complete waste of time. Why do you do two hours versus full day?

Joe: We had dabbled with full day, and sometimes that works for people who travel a lot, but it really only works if they’re amicable and prepared. Divorce by its very nature is a conflict – by definition, we don’t want to be married or one of us doesn’t want to be married.

Having a full-day session is exhausting for both the people and the practitioner. My clients are counting on me to be my very best. I take my job seriously because I want to be that strong presence, guide, authority figure, and emotional support because you’re going through a tough time. But I’m human – after three, four, five hours, this piles up on me as well. There’s a point of diminishing returns.

I like to go to the gym – that’s how I blow off steam. Every personal trainer or physiologist will tell you that you go to the gym for about an hour, and when you’ve broken your muscles down from lifting weights, the growth happens in the rest period when you sleep that night and relax tomorrow. The growth doesn’t happen in your sixth hour of bench presses – you’re just hurting yourself.

Two hours is enough to have good momentum, good progress – warm up, recap, substantive progress, cool down, what do we do next session. It keeps people in a good meter. We can take a break at the one-hour mark for coffee or a walk. We’ve tried shorter and longer – two hours seems to work best.

Lisa: I’m thinking about a situation with a client where they went to mediation, agreed on a few things, but didn’t flesh out the details of a full parenting plan. Our client’s attorney said, “You have to sign this mediation thing that’s skeletal,” and I’m thinking, when are we going to get the parenting plan? How do you deal with that catch-22 – if the client signs it, maybe they’re stuck with just that, but if she doesn’t, she has to go to court?

Joe: A good mediator – and I like to think of myself as one – is not going to let you get out of session until you have a fully fleshed agreement. I use a little levity to diffuse tension. I’ll say, “Listen, I’m a nervous person. I worry about you when you’re gone. Do this for me – could you just flesh this out with me? Just do it for me so I can sleep tonight.”

I truly am the kind of person where at 4 in the morning my wife will be like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “They didn’t finish the parenting plan.” She’s like, “It’s 4 in the morning, what are you talking about?” I’m worried.

I like to poke fun at myself and say, “What would make me happiest is if when we’re done with mediation, you never look at this document again because you’re co-parenting so well that you don’t need to turn to page 12 to see that it’s 5:15 and you’re supposed to be at McDonald’s dropping the kids off. That’s my dream – to basically make myself obsolete.”

But flesh it out – it’s there if you need it. You’ll save yourself time, money, and heartache. Life changes, new people get involved. Not to be callous, but my hope is that this too shall pass and you will find happiness, perhaps with someone else. You’re going to want to know if it’s Thanksgiving and you’re going to your new spouse’s house 400 miles away – do you have the kids on Thanksgiving? When does Thanksgiving start and end? Do you travel Thursday morning or Tuesday afternoon? These are important details.

Lisa: When you’re talking about having it in your filing cabinet, remember this audience – they all have it attached to their laptop, it’s on the desk next to them.

Joe: My hope is that one day you’ll be like, “What’s this?” My wife was divorced before, so one day we were moving and going through papers in the safe. I found her divorce decree from 20 years ago and was like, “Oh my god, here’s your divorce decree!” She’s like, “Oh, I was wondering where that thing was.” That’s my goal for you.

Lisa: You talked about things people can do by themselves ahead of time to prepare properly for mediation.

Joe: You can gather documents if that makes you feel better, but the challenge is if you’re in a high-conflict situation and someone finds you asking for pay stubs or tax returns, that may derail progress and harm things more than help.

What you can do, however – I’m a firm believer in budgets. You’re engaging in what will invariably be the single most important negotiation of your life because what you do now will impact you for the rest of your natural-born life. Wouldn’t you want to take time to get prepared and know what you’re going to ask for?

Think of a little kid who says, “I want to eat 20 cookies.” As a parent, you say no. What’s the first question? “Why?” Because I said so. Why are you asking for $5,000 a month in alimony? Because I prepared a budget. If you’re going to buy a house and I need to rent an apartment, here’s the cost for a three-bedroom in the same school district, here’s my car payment.

You’re removing emotions from the conflict and using data. In high-conflict situations, it’s going to be “You always spent my money” – no, here’s the data. When you’re having these conversations, this is why I need this much child support, this much alimony. Same with property division – “I decided I’m keeping the house.” What does that mean to your entire financial future? Don’t make these decisions in a vacuum.

Make a list of all your assets and liabilities because you want to remove emotion from the conflict and negotiate as a business transaction. In high-conflict divorce, emotions are the oxygen that feeds the fire. Remove the emotions, remove some of the oxygen, and the flames lower.

Really, we’re talking about negotiation – what will you get, what will I get, what will you give, what will I give. Go on apartments.com, search three-bedroom apartments in our town, knock yourself out. Come back next session and tell me what you found if you disagree with your spouse. The idea is data, information, not emotional decisions, but data-driven, analytical decisions.

Lisa: What you’re saying aligns with what we do – we tie it to best interest or custody factors. The reason you need to figure out that data is you’re thinking about your kids’ routine. If they’ve been going to the same school for years, you have to live in the same area because if you don’t, that’s going to disrupt their routine.

Joe: That’s the key – we’re in this together whether we want to be or not. We are married, still legally bound to each other, still parents. In high-conflict cases, a lot of that conflict comes from one person wanting the divorce and the other one doesn’t. The reluctant spouse digs in and makes it as difficult as possible – “Well, you want the divorce, you figure it out.”

As the guide and cheerleader, you’re trying to engage them. Isn’t it in your best interest to ask for what you want and get what you need? We need to know what that is, otherwise you’re going to have something dictated to you, especially if you wind up in court.

Judges are people who just decide things. I’ve had many friends go through divorces – it’s completely arbitrary. Sure, there are guidelines and rules, but the judge has a lot of discretion. In California, for example, the judge can decide we’re not going to put a duration on alimony if you’ve been married 10 years or more, and you’re going to come back when I say so. Do you really want that?

Engaging people and explaining the downside – you’re going to have a settlement dictated to you or waste a lot of money – definitely helps in high-conflict situations.

Lisa: What you described with the judge, I always think of The Wizard of Oz – you’re going in, you’re Dorothy, that’s the Wizard, you don’t get to decide once you’re in there. One of the options is to try to stay out as much as possible and realize it is a process.

Joe: You got yourself into this, so get yourself out of it. You have to have a role in it. You can’t just sit there, fold your arms, hold your breath, and pout. You were adult enough to get married and perhaps have children, so now you need to be adult enough to end your marriage and move forward with your life.

I remind people that my number one goal in mediation – and forgive me for being direct – is to piss both of you off slightly. If both of you are slightly angry with me when this is over, I’ve done my job. If one of you says, “That was the best divorce ever,” chances are the other one is like, “That guy really screwed me.”

My best hope is that both of you are slightly upset with me. Engage with me, help me do this, get through this process, put your emotions aside. I know it’s easier said than done, but working with folks like you, therapists, divorce coaches – the mediation or litigation process is not the time to do the emotional work. Deal with the emotions outside the process so you can come in calm and centered. Even if you improve that much, it increases your chances of avoiding litigation.

Lisa: Does a judge take into consideration what you agreed to in mediation when they make a decision?

Joe: If you’ve agreed to stuff in mediation, the whole idea is not to blow that up. We’re really narrowing it down – think of it like a funnel. In mediation, we want to get you from here to here so you’re focusing on one thing in court if you wind up there.

I don’t think a judge has any interest in blowing anything up if people have agreement. In states like New Jersey, they have an early settlement panel – if you can’t work it out in private mediation and try to engage with the court system, you’re going to court-ordered mediation. It’s three people – usually a lawyer, parenting coordinator, mental health professional, maybe a finance person – who volunteer and do this.

If you go in front of these folks and they make a recommendation, more often than not the judge is going to take that recommendation. Even if you’re unhappy, I’ve had friends try to get in front of the judge, and the judge says, “Why are you here? I’m going to agree with what the early settlement panel said. Is there anything else? Can we move on?”

The legal system doesn’t not care about you, but it’s a system filled with people doing the best they can. By recent accounts, a colleague in Washington said post-pandemic the court system is down 40% in employees – they just never came back. They were already short-staffed, now they’re down another 40%. Do you think these people want to listen to you complain about how someone left the toilet seat up? They’re overwhelmed and just want to go home and have dinner.

Your conflict, while it may seem like the world to you, the process is designed to just get the stamp on the paper and bring in the next case. These judges are being judged on how many cases they move through the system – that’s how they get promoted, raises, shown as successful. Their goal is to move you through.

Your best bet is to stay out of the system because they want you out, and if you go, they’re probably going to order you to at least try mediation anyway.

Lisa: I say see me now or see me later, your choice.

Joe: That’s it. You can see me now while you have a chance – you haven’t spent money and screamed and yelled at each other for months or years – or you’re going to get kicked back here anyway. That’s the beauty of mediation – in high-conflict situations, people can feel comfortable knowing give it a shot. If it doesn’t work out, you can always go to the next step – escalate to lawyers, collaborative, litigation.

I’ve got clients here and there where they didn’t get all the way, but look at all the things you did agree on – some really thorny, sticky issues. Don’t throw that away. You got a parenting plan, child support – you’re only arguing over the 401k. You couldn’t figure it out here? No problem. Limit it to this one issue. Don’t rip the Band-Aid off and suddenly try to dress the wound again.

I’ll write up mediator notes saying in mediation the parties discussed this, here’s how they got here, here’s what they agreed to, here’s the process we used. My hope is they’re not blowing the whole thing up. Smart couples, high-conflict couples smart enough to put emotions aside and say, “Let’s just get through this so I can get away from you and you can get away from me” – use your anger as motivation and move forward.

Lisa: Can you tell people how to find you? I know you’re in California but practice in different states and do a lot on Zoom.

Joe: Here’s a fun fact – I think we were accidentally, if not the first, one of the first practitioners to mediate online. We started in 2011 when we had WebEx and telephones – we didn’t really have cameras and high bandwidth. It started with a gentleman whose wife was agoraphobic, afraid to leave the house. He asked if there was anything we could do to help.

My wife Cheryl, who’s my partner and our divorce coach, suggested we try screen sharing. We made slides in PowerPoint, Excel spreadsheets, worked on the telephone, shared my screen, and mediated. It was Call of Duty – I’ll totally admit that – but over the last 14 years, we’ve honed our process. We do 100% online and practice in Washington, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

The best thing to do is go to equitablemediation.com – be careful not to type “meditation,” though we could use a little meditation here. We’re big believers in knowledge – we think knowledge is power and educated clients are good clients.

If you get to the homepage, at the bottom you’ll see “Learning Center.” Go there for tons of blog posts, podcasts, a free video course, other courses. We just want you to get educated, but always work with a professional. I’ve been doing this 28 years – we go to school, live, eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff. Get educated to a point, but definitely rely on professionals to take you the rest of the way.

If you’re in one of our states, you can click “talk to us” to schedule a free call with our divorce coach, my wife Cheryl, to see if mediation works for you. I’m a real straight shooter – if it’s not going to work, I’m also going to let you know that. I don’t want to waste your time or money. I want to help, but if I truly believe I can’t, I’m going to refer you to someone.

Lisa: Being blunt is what we do too – we call it the harsh New York reality check, and you’re a fellow New Yorker transplanted. Thank you so much for coming on and talking about this. This is very helpful.

Joe: I hope everyone enjoyed it. I know it’s a tough time, but this too shall pass. You just have to remember: I am strong, I will get through this, and I’ll come out better on the other side. I know it’s devastating when you’re in the middle of it, but hang in there, stay strong, stay focused. Work with folks like you to get through the process and build a better life on the other side.

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Contact Information:

• Website: equitablemediation.com
• States served: Washington, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania
• 100% virtual mediation services available
• Free consultation calls with divorce coach Cheryl
• Comprehensive learning center with courses and resources
• Specializes in high-conflict and complex financial cases

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Divorce doesn’t have to be a battlefield. In this episode, Joe sits down with Rhoda Sommer to explore the growing popularity of divorce mediation: why so many couples are turning to it, what it can save you emotionally and financially, and when it might backfire. From power imbalances to hidden agendas, we’ll unpack the pros and cons of sitting down at the table instead of standing before a judge. This conversation pulls back the curtain on what works—and what doesn’t—when love ends and uncoupling begin.

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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.

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In this interview with Intentional Divorce Insights, Joe Dillon reveals the key strategies behind Equitable Mediation Services’ exceptional 98% case resolution rate – significantly higher than the 70% industry average. Joe explains his “discovery before deciding” methodology and how financial transparency creates successful outcomes in mediation.

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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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Intentional Divorce Insights: Joe Dillon on Financial-Focused Mediation

Leah: Welcome to Intentional Divorce Insights. I’m Leah Hadley, certified divorce financial analyst, accredited financial counselor, and founder of Intentional Divorce Solutions. I’ll be your guide through the complexities of divorce, finance, and emotional wellness.

Welcome back to Intentional Divorce Insights. We have a really special guest today. I just met Joe before we started recording, but I’ve actually been following his work for a really long time. He puts out fantastic content online, so I’m really excited about our conversation and hope you’ll look up the resources that Joe and his team have available.

Joe is 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, he 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 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, and the Daily Mail. His blog has attracted over a million visitors. Joe believes divorce doesn’t have to be destructive – with the right guidance and expertise, couples can part ways amicably while protecting what matters most. Welcome, Joe.

Joe: Thanks for that intro, Leah. I’m not sure who you were talking about, but that guy sounds all right. Looking forward to talking.

Leah: I’m fascinated by the success rate you’re having. Can you talk about what you specifically do that helps couples successfully navigate this process? I know mediation gets a bad reputation online, and I’m a big proponent of mediation, so let’s talk about how you’re seeing people have this much success.

Joe: That’s a great question. As you know, we’re kindred spirits – we’re both financial professionals. I like to remind clients the numbers don’t lie. A lot of times in divorce, the issues are very emotional and people’s emotions are heightened. They go online, talk to their friends and family who start whispering in their ear, “Don’t settle for anything. You can do better.”

There’s all this misinformation about what someone’s entitled to. When you really boil it down to brass tacks and look at budgets and balance sheets – the total sum of assets and liabilities – that’s it. When we look at those numbers and put them in front of people, because a lot of people don’t do budgets, they don’t know what they’re spending. Therefore, they don’t know what their lifestyle costs or how much they need in support or could afford to pay.

Similarly, many people don’t know their house value, what’s in their 401k, or how much is on their credit cards. We have so many things that auto-debit our credit cards that we don’t know how balances build up over time.

We go through a process, and this is what I recommend to everybody: do the discovery before the deciding. People will come into a session saying, “We already talked and decided child support’s going to be this and alimony is going to be that.” I ask, “How’d you come up with those numbers?” They say, “I talked to ChatGPT.”

When you start going through a process and put the pay stubs, tax returns, and bills on the table and say, “This is really what it’s going to cost you. Here’s what you spend on your kids,” and start pushing back gently by showing them the data and numbers, it’s really hard for them to argue. Even if they’re not happy about it, you get to that place in mediation where they say, “Okay, I see.”

That’s how we get people into agreement – we prove to them that what they’re doing is going to work in the short and long term, is a good compromise, and it’s hard to refute when you’re looking at all the information. Our approach is analytical. We don’t ignore the emotional side, but the numbers don’t lie, and when you put it in front of people like that, it’s really hard to argue with.

Leah: I really want to highlight a point you made – discovery before decision. That is critical. So often people are putting the cart before the horse, and that’s where we get circular conversations because we have a little information, make decisions, then more information becomes available and we realize that wasn’t the right decision.

Joe: Exactly. The example I use is like if you and I were going to dinner in a city we’ve never been to and I said, “Where do you want to go?” You’d be like, “What’s around here? What are my choices? What’s close? How are we getting there? What’s on the menu?” That’s the discovery process – getting all that information so you can make informed decisions.

As new information comes to light, people want to start changing their minds, and that creates conflict because one party says, “We agreed on the support number. You can’t change your mind.” In mediation, they can, especially in light of new information. If you get it all out on the table up front, it avoids a lot of that.

Leah: You’ve said that mediation is about looking through the windshield, not the rearview mirror. What does that mean practically for couples caught up in the hurt and anger of divorce?

Joe: That’s a great quote by Bud Bagot – “View life through the windshield, not the rearview mirror.” I love what you do with “intentional divorce.” I hope no one enters divorce thinking, “I’m going to really screw this up.” Nobody does that, but they also don’t set the intention of having an amicable divorce, coming to agreement, remaining calm, or looking forward.

That’s part of what we level-set with people. The time for arguing is over. Whatever got you to my office, I call day zero. This is the first day. We need to move forward. My job as a mediator is to help you craft an agreement that’s going to govern your co-parenting relationship and financial relationship moving forward.

You’ve said you no longer wish to be married. So why would we spend time talking about all the past problems and transgressions? Those are things that are only going to keep you married. You’ve come to me for a divorce – a separation. Let’s help you get there, and we can only do that if we look forward.

A lot of folks want to bring up the past: “Well, you never did this before.” That might be true, but maybe now moving forward, you will. As a single parent, you’re going to have to. A professor I had at Northwestern had a great line when folks get into this spiral – she’d take her glasses off slowly, lean in, and say, “This sounds like an old argument.” Once you get people to recognize those patterns aren’t serving them, that’s where you unlock the magic of mediation.

Leah: I’ve seen this in my own divorce and co-parenting relationship. I was concerned that their dad wasn’t going to help with homework because I had been the primary parent while married. But I’ve been so impressed with how he’s stepped up and how our dynamic has changed over the years. We’ve both evolved as people, as parents, as co-parents, and really allowing each other to have that space.

Joe: People forget that the person I was yesterday, I’m not that person today. That evolves over time. The moment when you’re in the divorce process is the worst moment of your life – studies show death and divorce are some of the most stressful events. Just remembering that and looking through the windshield means having faith that it will get better over time.

Your relationship with your ex will get better, your kids will adjust, but you have to take an active role. You can’t just lean back and fold your arms. You need to actively engage as a parent and work on your relationship.

I even tell clients they should go to couples counseling. They think I’m crazy, but you’re still a detached family unit – still a mom and dad with kids. I’m not asking you to repair your marriage, just to communicate so your kids can see a role model. Kids are looking to you as adults, and they’re sponging what your relationship dynamic is.

Leah: I love that you have the financial background. What are some common mistakes you see couples make when they’re in reactive mode versus making deliberate financial decisions?

Joe: The biggest one when it comes to financial issues is they’re trying to take out their anger financially on their soon-to-be ex, and they don’t realize it’s really harming their kids.

For example, every state has a child support guideline. We’ll run the guidelines, show them the numbers, and the person paying gets angry and says, “How come you need so much money? What are you going to do with it?” They haven’t done budgets, probably haven’t been to a grocery store lately to see that eggs cost a fortune.

These monies are going to support that other household. Even alimony is going to afford that other parent a lifestyle commensurate with the person paying. I’m not saying both will be well off, but trying to use the financial process to exact revenge harms the kids too.

The recipient might have to live in a studio apartment while the other person’s in a three or four-bedroom house. They might not be able to take kids out for fast food or movies while the other parent can. It creates friction because kids say, “I don’t want to go to Dad’s/Mom’s because I don’t like their place.”

I tell people to dial back the emotions and make this a business transaction. Recognize that each of you have expenses, and it’s good that your lifestyles are roughly on par with each other.

Leah: There can be tremendous fear around financial decisions because people aren’t taking time to understand what this means from a cash flow perspective. If you don’t have that budget in place, how do you know if you can afford that level of support?

Joe: Exactly. Another issue here in America is health insurance. Typically the party receiving support is the lower earner and often works inside the home or has a job without health insurance. Now they have to get their own health insurance. Depending on age and conditions, you’re looking at hundreds if not thousands of dollars a month, and that wasn’t in their budget or purview.

You have to do the work and get this information because you’re predicating support conversations on your budget. If you’re missing this $1,000 a month piece, that’s a big nut you’re missing.

Leah: I’m always surprised around health insurance conversations where people are misinformed. You can literally call a health insurance broker and get information to become educated, but people often blindly enter those conversations without that information.

Joe: You made a great point I want to emphasize – get educated. That means talking to professionals like you, like me, like a broker, financial advisor, whoever. Ask, “What am I in for? What should I expect?”

Make no mistake, an educated client is a good client. If somebody walks into my office saying they read our guide to the five options of divorce and understand mediation is the way they want to go, that’s great. Sometimes I’ll tell people mediation isn’t appropriate because I want them to get the best result in their situation.

That’s all part of getting educated from a professional who knows it, who’s been there, who understands. Then you can make informed decisions – which divorce method to use, how to negotiate financial support, how to divide property. You don’t have to do it yourself, but it’s good to have base knowledge to ask intelligent questions.

Leah: I know you have a free course about divorce mediation on your site. Tell us about that and how people can access it.

Joe: If you go to our website, there’s a resource center broken out by topics – courses and kits, divorce issues, divorce support. If you click on courses and kits, you’ll see our course offerings. One is the free guide to divorce mediation – a multi-part video course covering what it is, how the process works.

I talk about the four big buckets – parenting, child support, alimony, property division – how mediation works in all those areas, whether you need a lawyer, the basics. We encourage people to watch that course, learn about mediation, and see if it’s right for them.

We want to respect clients’ time, and if mediation won’t work because it’s voluntary and both spouses need to be willing, then at least you learned about the four big bucket topics. On our website, you can also find a guide on how to choose a lawyer because we’re not anti-lawyer, we’re anti-conflict.

If you come into mediation and can’t mediate, we want you to find a mediation-friendly or collaborative divorce-friendly lawyer, not somebody who’s going to pull the pin out of the grenade and blow this thing up.

Leah: I do think mediation gets a bad reputation for various reasons, but I think the biggest reason is that people enter mediation unprepared. The more you can educate yourself and understand the process, the more successful you will be.

Joe: And have realistic expectations. One thing you know in any relationship – if you attack first, the person on the receiving end is immediately going to back up against the wall. They’re not going to want to help you.

Think about calling customer service and saying, “Your product is terrible.” This person didn’t make the product – they’re trying to help you. If you put the guns in the holsters, come in willing to compromise, keep emotions calm, and have those conversations, you’re going to get a better result because people want to help nice people.

When people come in saying, “You’re the mediator, you’re supposed to get me $10,000 a month in alimony,” that’s not my job. My job is to help have conversations, create options, explore options, but ultimately the decisions lie with the couple. That’s empowering because with mediation, you get to decide and create the agreement, not some third party who just walked into their courtroom.

Leah: I love that you mentioned going to court and not knowing what the outcome will be. People always say, “I’ll just go to court and get…” or “My attorney says if I go to court, I’ll get…” But the reality is I see some weird things coming out of court that nobody would have expected.

Joe: One of my favorite stories – I always keep everything confidential – was a child support negotiation where the gentleman was adamant he didn’t have to pay child support. Not that he didn’t want to, but that it was “all a lie, a scam, not real.” I showed him the guideline, calculator, and statutes.

I asked what he thought would happen in court. Without missing a beat, he smiled, leaned back, and said, “I’m a likable guy. The judge is going to love me. When the judge sees me, he’s going to say, ‘Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to pay child support.’” I said, “Well, good luck with that.”

As a mediator, I can’t tell you what to do, but you might want to reconsider that position and talk to an attorney because that’s not how this works, and judges won’t take kindly to that.

One client called us from the courthouse hallway crying because they didn’t know they were supposed to paper clip documents, not staple them, and the judge kicked them out of the courtroom. That’s the kind of stuff you never know when you walk through those doors.

A New Jersey Bar Association study showed only 2% of divorce cases make it to a judge. You think you’re going to get your day in court, but they’re going to push you back to court-ordered mediation, private mediation, or collaborative divorce. They only want to handle the big crazy cases.

In mediation, we want to empower you to make those decisions and control your own destiny because when the judge decides, chances are neither of you are happy.

Leah: Joe, I could literally talk to you all day. I appreciate the education and content you put online. There’s so much for people to learn without even talking to you. Tell people where they can find out more about you.

Joe: The best place is our website, equitablemediation.com. Be careful when you type it – those are two hard words to spell. When you get there, you’ll see “resources” in the corner – that’s the resource center where you’ll find all this great content.

You’ll see a button that says “talk to us” because we want you to feel comfortable. We’re people, we’re humans. My parents litigated their divorce, Cheryl has been divorced. We’ve been where you or your kids are.

That talk to us button lets you schedule a free call with Cheryl. She’ll explore mediation with you and see if it’s right for you. If it makes sense, you and your spouse can schedule a meeting with me. We’re always trying to figure out if mediation is a good fit and if we’re a good fit.

Go to the resource center and you’ll find our most popular content, including that free course. It’s all free – we’re not trying to collect all your information like Facebook. Just click, read, and enjoy.

We practice in six states: Washington, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. You’ll also find state-specific guides to divorce in each state – how things work, what they’re called, the process, and frequently asked questions.

Leah: Thank you, Joe, for your time and for being with us today. For our audience, thank you for being with us. I know you’re going through a difficult time right now. We’re here to provide education and inspiration. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions or there’s a topic you want to hear more about.

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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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