What Is A Fair Divorce Settlement - Attorney Mediator Gabrielle Hartley Discusses With Scott Levin

Hey everyone, this is Scott Levin, Chief Peacekeeper, and I'm here today with my good friend Gabrielle Hartley. How are you?

I'm good. How are you?

I'm doing great. Gabrielle is a published author, attorney mediator extraordinaire. She founded the Better Apart Method that we're going to talk about in a little bit today. But I want to talk to Gabrielle because she is really one of the most renowned mediators and peacekeepers across the country. She's truly renowned. And I would encourage you to check out her website, which we'll talk about in a second. But something that people often ask me during my mediations is, hey, Scott, is this fair? What do you think? And it's really a complicated topic about what's fair, what's not fair. when you're talking about a divorce settlement. So Gabrielle, when you hear that, you know, is this fair? I'm sure you can sink your teeth into a topic like this. What are your thoughts and how do you respond to someone in your own mediations when that comes up?

So that is such a great question because I have to tell you that before we even start mediating, I do a whole speech on the topic of fair. That is like a part of the intro. Like, I'm a mediator. This is my role. This is not my role. This is my expectations of you. Do you have questions? Here's a couple of topics we're going to talk about, and one of them is fairness. Because what, you know, you may— Scott, I'm sure you know from being a mediator for so long— is that we all have different perspectives on what's fair. And so I ask all of my clients to refrain from even talking about fairness because If I had a whole— I think I could do a whole movie of just different couples saying, like, you know, it's really fair if this happened, it's really fair if that happened, and it's like totally disparate of what they each think. Now, let me just back up for a minute. There's only one set of facts that we're looking at, right? But there's so many different ways to look at that set of facts. So there's really countless perspectives or countless truths, right? And I would say that we see that play out in the world, right, right now with masks, with the pandemic, with, you know, all kinds of different things.

Yep.

Um, people have all different perspectives and people think that they're being right and fair and true, and yet we're just having different points of view, right? And in a divorce, it's really the same thing. So I don't know if that's answering your question.

It is.

It is.

So, so when people really, uh, push on the fairness issue, do you ever respond substantively?

So what I do is I dial back. Um, one of my other lectures is about the distinctions of what we want, what we, you know, our whats, and then why we want it. So those could also be called your positions and your interests. And so I try to move people away from focusing on what they want and why that's fair to why they need the things that they're looking to receive. And trying to reach an understanding of why the other side is looking to reach a particular result. Because when we can remove all of our narrative about what's fair and what's right, and, you know, all the things we want, and we start peeling all of that back, then we can start having meaningful dialogue where we're Recognizing that we just have different interests. And for me, the reason that I love mediating so much is that I know that most of the time when you peel back what we say we want and we get to why we want it, people actually generally are able to all get what they need.

That's really interesting. I really like that idea of being able to move people from, hey, I want this, to Well, let's figure out why you want this.

What—

how does that help you?

And what's interesting is if you give the other person— the more that you give the other person what they need, the more likely you are to get what you want, because then they feel like satisfied.

Yep. You know, another thing I just thought about with, is this fair, where that comes up, is, uh, so in my mediations, I do weekly meetings. Um, I know some people in mediation do like a block of, you know, a 4-hour meeting, and then that's like the meeting. Everyone does it a little differently. I like to do, you know, 90-minute meetings once a week to keep the momentum going, but to give people time to think. Now, the downside to giving people time to think is that people reconsider what they might have already orally agreed on. Now, I always tell people, as I'm sure you do, hey, until something's signed, we don't have an agreement. But of course, during those meetings, we are making you know, mini agreements just, or like understandings, like, okay, well, you know, that sounds good. Let's see how, you know, but it's based on, you know, the rest of our discussion and how that goes. When there are sort of those sort of understandings put in place, oftentimes someone will come back, or not often, but at times people will come back in a subsequent meeting and go, hey, I want to reconsider that issue that we talked about. I'm not feeling great about that. And then the other person asks, well, is that fair that we have to go backwards now? I thought we were going forwards. How do you handle those sort of reconsideration, you know, discussions?

So those are really, really hard. And 2 things I talk about when we first open the mediation is, as I said, fairness. So I, I ask that people don't use that word. It's like a real trigger word because it's basically telling the other person— it's invalidating the other person's perspective. Perspective. By saying that's not fair, you're saying the other person is somehow doing something unsavory, and that's going to make people feel antagonized, number one. Number two, I try very hard to balance people's need and desire to feel like something substantive was arrived at at a meeting and not pinning down agreements too early, because once we start making agreements, There's an anchoring thing that happens, and we get really attached to certain outcomes. So the way I do my mediations is I have people come in. We do— I do 2-hour mediations. They come in, we do 2 hours, we talk a lot about process, we do a lot of information gathering, we generate a lot of questions. Then I send people out to lawyers, right? I love lawyers. I'm not afraid of them. I like people to go and find out what their rights are. And then when they go to the lawyers, they find out the full range of what a judge could find to be fair, to put it in your words, right? And then we come back and we have typically 2 or 3 more meetings, and then we come up with a memorandum of understanding that summarizes all of the different agreements that they arrived at. But to your point, it's very hard to dial back agreements, especially when We talk about something over and over, week after week, and then there's— you change your mind. Nothing worse than making agreements and then bringing it to your lawyer at the 11th hour and say, oh well, I didn't realize. Go to the lawyer to begin with.

I love that advice.

Spend that extra little bit of money up front. You will save thousands of dollars, days missed from work, and lots of headaches if you understand what your rights and obligations are from the get-go.

I love that advice. I really— I actually think I'm going to really start to insist on that because there is nothing worse than when your lawyer gets involved at the end. They've been alluded to throughout all the mediations, my counsel or my, you know, my, you know, my representative. But, you know, so they're being alluded to in the discussion, so you know they exist, but the person doesn't— you know, they kind of wait till you get a written agreement. Before they really get that person involved. And then that person's making all sorts of last-minute changes that can really impact the end result for both parties. And it can really frustrate the—

Yeah, it can create a whole mess. And so, I mean, if you're listening to this, I really encourage you to find out your rights and obligations, potentially what your range of outcomes are. It is so worth your money to do that. In the beginning, maybe meet with the mediator once. Don't make any agreements. Figure out what your questions are. Is it— and you probably want to have some sort of financial statement with you when you go to the— when you go to the lawyer so that you— not just your financial statement, but the other person's financial statement or disclosure or whatever they call it in your jurisdiction. And then you can find out what's the best case scenario, what's the worst case scenario.

Yeah.

And then you can create something. Then you're making a decision based on facts, not feelings.

Yep. Yeah, I love that. Now, Gabrielle, can you talk a little bit about your practice and your services and how people can reach you?

Sure. So you can find me at gabriellehartley.com or betterapart.com. And I offer both online mediation as well as in New York and in Boston representation, legal representation. And I also offer across the country strategic legal consulting. If you're working with a lawyer or with a mediator and you're uncomfortable and you're not sure what you should do, I work to support you. I work one-to-one with you, and oftentimes I will interface with your lawyer, especially if your lawyer is in a different jurisdiction where I am not licensed as an attorney. I am just consulting with you in that regard. And I also have a weekly blog. I believe, Scott, you were a guest blogger at one point called The Better Apart blog. And if you are interested in hearing all kinds of uplifting information, just go to gabriellehartley.com, sign up for the newsletter. You'll get an intro newsletter or 2. And then every week in your inbox, you'll get some sort of information or inspiration from financial experts, co-parenting experts, wellness experts, mediators, lawyers, you know, doctors, lawyers, and Native American chiefs. Right.

Well, you know, Gabrielle really is, uh, you, you really should go to the website, sign up. It's incredible information. She's really built a community, in my opinion. Uh, and, uh, thank you so much for joining me today, and hopefully we'll do this again soon.

Great to be here. Thank you.