Scott Levin explains that when both spouses have lawyers, court procedures cost $12-$15K and take six to eight months. Mediation can reveal settlement positions in weeks instead, making it the smarter first step before litigation.
Chapters
Hey everyone, this is Scott Levin, Chief Peacekeeper, and I am going to do the mediator's mailbag today. So I'm going to take one question that was posed to the YouTube channel. I believe it could have been through LinkedIn. But you know, I'm gonna say the question, and then I'm gonna give you my thoughts. It's gonna be kind of quick and dirty. And you know that super lawyer thing there just happens to be there. It wasn't placed there a minute ago. All right. All right. Okay. So the question is, if my spouse already has an attorney, what should I do? So presumably, since they're asking the mediator mailbag, they were interested at some point in mediation. So if your spouse has an attorney and you get an attorney and you guys file in court, you are going to be subject to the formalities of the court process. It's a really, really important question and an important time. So if you go through the court process with 2 lawyers, you're not going to get to the settlement negotiations for a long time. You're going to have to do your formal disclosures, which will take months to do. I mean, it doesn't take months to do, but it will take months to do. And it, you know, it probably costs you like $12,000 or $15,000 depending on, you know, your situation. And nothing's happening, right? So like what I equate that to is, um, when you're on a plane to Hawaii and you're traveling, you're going through security, uh, you know, you're in a busy airport, you're, uh, You're in a crunched-up plane right next to the bathroom. You're in the middle aisle, right? Like all these things. And then you finally get to Hawaii, and then, you know, you turn around because you already did. That's what you came for, right? You came for the painful part? No, you wanted to get to Hawaii. You want to get— if you're going through a divorce, you want to get to the settlement. So you want to get to the— what do you want? What do I want? And let's see if we can figure this out. So it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me to wait 6 or 8 months in a holding pattern where you're getting billed, and usually you're probably not talking to each other because you're suing each other in court, where you could, in 2 or 3 weeks, you could find out what each other want in mediation. And then if it's, you know, if someone's unrealistic, or, you know, you want to burn it to the ground, and, you know, burn to the ground and then start that process. But that's my opinion. That's the Mediator Mailbag. I'm on, uh, 5 cups of coffee today. But anyway, Scott Levin. I look forward to the next one. Talk soon, guys.
