Divorce Without Court? A Better Way Forward | Solagree Founder Amanda Mason

Hey everyone, this is Scott Levin, Chief Peacekeeper. Today I'm joined by a very, very special guest, Amanda Mason. Hi Amanda, how are you?

Good, Scott, how are you?

Good, thank you. So Amanda and I have known each other for quite some time. She is the founder of SoulAgree, which is a really unique alternative to traditional divorce. I'll briefly introduce Amanda, and then I'll let her do it herself much better. But, you know, she is a— she's a family law attorney, someone that has litigated for, you know, much of her career. As everyone knows that's listening to me, I used to be a litigator. I transitioned my practice to mediation, but Amanda took it a step farther. She actually invented a process that is out in the marketplace. It's working, it's thriving. And we are here today to kind of introduce you you to, you know, her creation and why you should look into it and all that good stuff. So, Amanda, I guess tell me a little bit about— do yourself a justice and make a better introduction, but tell me about like how do you transition to, um, you know, the concept that you came up with?

Yeah, so it started with me being in the courtroom all day every day, it seemed, um, for a lot of years, and there was a degree to which I really enjoyed litigation. I'm a competitor by nature. I like to win, but like most competitors, I don't like to lose. And as my work continued, a couple of things happened. First, I went through my own custody trial while I was a practicing attorney, which really brought what's important to the front for me because I realized Even though I had a huge informational advantage and it was in, you know, quote unquote, my courtroom where I usually had the advantage, I felt awful and I was scared and I was sad and my children were going through a tough time because of it. So that definitely caused me to think long and hard about my role as a counselor at law, not just an attorney at law from there. Um, I love that. Epilogue, uh, my kids are grown, they're thriving, they're doing well. We survived. Uh, but, uh, so that really, uh, was a big, uh, pivot moment for me in my career. And then I just continued to watch people really being mistreated by the system. Uh, they were either being mistreated by their attorneys who were, you know, maybe not thinking about settlement as much as I would've hoped. They were taking cases to trial that I really felt, you know, if we could all kind of take our ego out of it, we could, you know, get these couples on their way faster. I watched judges who are burnt out and, you know, cranky because of burnt out, being burnt out, sometimes not be that nice to people. And overall, just kind of observe that the adversarial system, which is what going to court is, it's somebody against somebody. is so unhealthy. And so having, you know, basically spent sleepless nights pulling my hair out trying to say, how can I get through to people and make this better? I realized I just can't change the system as it exists. So I had to come up with something different. So that's the backstory.

And so tell us what— you have a really unique kind of feature, I guess, or setup with the arbitration.

Yeah.

Component. Can you walk, like, people through that?

That's the key, right? Yeah, absolutely. So that's the key. That's the glue. So at the end of the day, all of the alternative dispute resolution methods that exist that don't have an arbitration component are operating in an open system, which means that anyone can walk away at any time, abandon the process, and then you have to go to court. And it also relies on 100% success. And by success, that means they get to 100% agreement. I wanted to create a process that allowed room for people to get to something less than 100%, maximize the chance that they could get to 100%, but that if they couldn't, they didn't have to go to court. And so the way that we do that is all of our clients enter into the process agreeing to binding arbitration from the beginning. And this means that they have someone who our company, as an administrative body, has vetted for their family law experience, first of all, which a lot of judges come to the bench without And second of all, agreeing to be subject to a heightened standard of professional conduct, meaning be nice. Be nice to the people that are coming before you.

Fair.

Yeah. And that's the safety net. So at the end of the day, they come through a phased process, and if they can't get to 100% agreement, they have a nice soft landing pad. But if they do, that's great. The arbitrator is going to create that binding document for them in a really efficient way that includes all of the amazing Areas of agreement that they've gotten through and coming through the earlier phases.

And you're combining what, what I think is missing a lot in court is not only like just the kind of unhappiness, the length of time, like the feeling of stuckness, like you can't get unstuck. But, you know, someone has to do math at some point too. And, you know, I was a, you know, like a history, English, you know, Poli sci major, traditional divorce lawyer major.

Yeah. Yeah. Religious studies. Yeah.

So, like, judges especially have challenge— are challenged to do math. And this allows— and by working through your system, I find that you have, like, kind of a unique focus on, like, hey, let's get the numbers out. Let's get the right numbers to use. And I think that that's as important as the emotional side a lot of times.

Right. Well, they relate to each other. So once the couple has entered into the arbitration agreement, we've already dialed down the fight or flight response immediately. So now they're thinking more clearly and more rationally because they're not afraid of what if I settle on this piece, is that going to be used against me in court someday? We know that's not going to happen. So let's just relax and let's start getting educated. So on our parenting track, we have them work with parenting plan specialists who help them identify those core values. of how they want to continue to raise their children, even though they won't be in the same household. But yeah, the numbers on the numbers, the financial track, we have them working with certified divorce financial analysts upfront. And this really empowers people with so much information and understanding because the fear is the emotion and the fear of the numbers is the emotion that is the hindrance. Am I going to be okay as a human being? Am I going to survive this? And when we can start telling them early on, yeah, you are, and here's a plan for you, here's how you know you're going to survive this financially. Then again, they're able to relax and start making forward progress in the other areas, including the emotional impact.

And you're finding special— like, you're finding your professionals that are licensed in the state that your clients are, you know, essentially divorcing and where they're living, right?

Right. So the mediators and the arbitrators are licensed attorneys within the states that the clients are operating in. Yeah. The CDFAs are not necessarily licensed in a particular state because that's not how their profession works, but they have a broad range of financial information. And to your point, far more than most judges do, far more than most attorneys do to really help couples understand their personal finances.

Um, so is there, is there any limitation? Would you say like someone with, uh, you know, a small business can, can use your system? Someone that has, you know, adult, um, you know, children that are, you know, adult dependents with disabilities? Um, I don't— when I've read through, we've talked a bunch in the past. I don't think that there's like a too complex of a case to fit what you're offering.

Yeah, you're right. It's actually, if there is minimal complexity, then they may not need that much assistance. So if they've been married a short amount of time, they don't have any assets.

I love those cases. Call me with those cases and count them out.

You can have them, right? They don't need us. But no, actually, you're making an excellent point because we have all the tools in our toolkit that can assist with all ranges of complexity, all ranges of conflict within our system. So if we've got a complex business that needs to be valued, we can help with that. That can be accomplished in a nice, private, confidential way without the concern that someone's proprietary information is going to spill all over a courtroom one day.

Totally.

So, yeah, that's an excellent point. Any kind of expert that may be needed, we can deal with in our program. It doesn't just always have to be the couple that's amicable, for lack of a better word. They can hate each other all the way through our process. We're just going to make it faster.

My clients, I mean, my friends that are still litigating, they oftentimes will tease me when we go to lunch or they— I see them, they'll be like, oh, you get all the easy cases. Everyone loves each other. Everyone, no kids, no assets. I'm like, oh yeah, I wish I had those cases. They're as complex as anything else. It's just a different approach of, you know, we're focused, your system's focused on how do we resolve things.

Right.

And the first year of a litigated divorce, unfortunately, Has a lot to do with, you know, procedure and not substance.

That's right. Yeah. And just polarizing each other and just vast and vast amounts of, you know, document collection that's not really tailored to what the couple needs.

Accusations of mismanagement, even if you don't know your attorneys kind of saying those things, that's what they're saying. So are you mainly— is your day-to-day focused on SolaGri more so than your practice, or are you still in private practice?

Um, I have a few cases in private practice, but, um, most of them are either in, in the middle of process or in a wind-down phase. Uh, SolaGri is taking up every single moment of my day that I will possibly give to it.

What is— is there one case that you can think of? I know this is a hard question. I should have probably prompted you with it, but is there something that— is there like an example of a case that you were— that you look back on that, like, you don't think would have settled, you know, except for in court through a long drama, expensive battle? Is there, like, one example that you kind of can think of right now where you're like, wow, this system, this process, you know, resolved something that, that otherwise would have, you know, probably destroyed this family?

Yeah, I have several of those. And, you know, without divulging confidential information, of course, You get really polarized people who just say, I just want a cap to my legal fees and to the time that it takes. And we're here for it. And it's been really rewarding, especially compared to having come from a litigation background, to see those exact kind of scenarios that you're talking about where I know, and they may not even know, they may still walk out of this hating each other, but they have been saved from really awful circumstances and they'd Can—

is, is the process only for divorce, or can they do a post, you know, divorce modification?

Sure. Yeah, we're set up for post-divorce modification. And also, you know, some people have never been married, but they have children together. So we have a bit of a tailored program for custody and child support issues.

You mentioned that you're working with the co-parenting specialists. I mean, that's a real thing, everybody. You know, here, like, if you're listening, you know, I've been a family law attorney 24 years, but, uh, you know, when I work with, uh, Mary, who's my wife, and she's a co-parenting specialist, I mean, she really, like, goes a level or 2 or 10 deeper than, like, I'm looking to go. I'm looking to get answers to the issues that I need to, that I know I need to in order to write a settlement.

Yeah.

She's trying to prevent conflict in the future. By arranging plans now and bringing up topics that could bring up or could give rise to conflict. But you deal with them now in order to avoid them later. And I think it's a really— that's a really cool feature or part of the process.

Yeah. And I know Mary does such great work. It can't be overstated. And I find sometimes just getting them into the same virtual space together to talk about their parenting values and separating it out from all of the other noise. We're not talking about child support or anything else. We're talking about your parenting goals, dreams, wishes, keeping in mind the lifelong relationship that you want to have with these children. And it really can actually set the tone for everything else because once they get into a habit of developing trust as a new kind of partnership with each other, then they stop positioning themselves as much. And we can sometimes make really quick breakthroughs on the financial piece as well.

I totally agree. I think that, um, that people that are able to go through your process, um, as well as just a traditional mediation, are very likely more capable of communicating themselves out of conflict than needing to resort to, you know, well, I'll just file with the judge.

Right.

Everything when you're litigating, because you're, you're coming out of litigation, you're not necessarily Out of it that long before something comes up and you're like, well, what's the difference? I'll just— I'll go talk to my buddy, Mr. or Mrs. Judge.

Right. Well, and, you know, going back to the parenting, people don't realize how few things the court is actually set up to manage for them. So, you know, I've had clients want to talk about makeup and piercings, and if they're not getting their way in a negotiation, that's the backdrop. I'll— if I don't get what I want, I'll just go file in court and just Go to— go in front of the judge, and judges don't have time, first of all, much less be— time or interest in being concerned with those kinds of issues, nor should they be. I mean, that really should come down to what, what a mom and dad think about it.

And they're bringing their own values into their decision-making. Like, what's a better school for a child? That's a hard one, right? That's a really hard one when 2 parents, you know, who were never married or, or are divorced, and they don't live right next to each other. So there's a school choice issue. And you're asking someone that is maybe misaligned with your, you know, kind of, you know, what you're looking for. They're bringing that into your case and making that decision for you. It's just, it's just tough to, to, to hand over that control. I really encourage people to look into— how can people find you, Amanda? How can they find the process? How can they learn more?

Yes, please come to my website, www.solagree.com. That is S-O-L-A-G-R-E-E dot com. Um, and then just shoot us an inquiry and we'll get back to you pretty quickly.

Is that agree and soul, or where's the name come from?

I thank you for this question. So when we were first trying to come up with names for, for this this business, this is a model I've been working on for many years. But when we were formalizing it, we were trying to do things like better divorce and divorce solutions and be kind in divorce, those kinds of concepts. And frankly, a business attorney said, Amanda, you can't do that. You have to come up with something that's a word that's never been used before.

I love that.

So we ended up thinking about concepts about light and kindness and agreement. And my partners just said, Amanda, why don't you put your 2 kids' middle names together since they were such a big, you know, a big influence in creating this. So Solomon and Grace.

Oh my God, I love that. I love that so much. That's so great. Well, listen everybody, you got to look into it. I've looked into it. I am on board with what they're up to. If I'm on board, I get pitched all the time for stuff, and if I don't like what I'm seeing, or if I don't think it's quite there yet, I won't bring it to you. So, um, you know, uh, look into, uh, Soligri. It's really unique. It's different than, than all the other things that are being pushed out there. And Amanda is a different type of person that's leading the fight. So, um, really, really appreciate you being here, Amanda. Great to see you.

Great to see you. Thank you for having me, Scott. Thank you for all of your amazing work that you're doing with couples out there. I know It's absolutely invaluable. So yeah.

Well, we try one person at a time. You're doing a much broader, uh, work here. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much. We'll talk soon.