Vanquishing the Trolls

I love reading blogs, and listening to their audio counterpart, podcasts.  I have somewhere around thirty blogs of which I keep track, in all areas of interest.  As you might expect, one of those areas is the law.  I have a love/hate relationship with one of them:  Above the Law.  I like ATL.  It has some great columnists whose writing I enjoy greatly.  I love a lot of the subject matter of the columns.  I find a lot of it helpful, both substantively and just to feel less alone in some of the trials and tribulations of the practice of law.  I know, you're wondering about the "hate" part.  What I hate are the comments.  Most of the comments have nothing to do with the subject matter of the column, and everything to do with the bigotry, pettiness and general nastiness of the commentator.  For a long period of time, it felt like ATL had no interest in controlling the trolls who commented on their website.  I stopped reading the comments, but I knew they were there. It was depressing, it colored how I felt about ATL, and I felt as a matter of principle that I shouldn't patronize the blogs on the website.  Yet, the blogs were so good....  I was torn.  Then, ATL announced they were eliminating the comments sections of their website.  Hallelujah!  Enjoyment without guilt.

Our clients here in the Trenches suffer a very similar dilemma.  They hire us and other professionals to help guide them through a very difficult time in their lives.  They hired us because they thought our advice was good and relevant to their situation.  In general, they still feel that way.  What we tell them helps them move forward through the Trenches.  In the background, however, operate their friends and family.  Some of them are supportive personally, and supportive of the work of the professionals helping them.  Others, in the guise of being supportive, are anything but.  They second guess the professionals in the case and attack them personally.  They offer their own advice about what the client should do, and offer that the professional disagrees for reasons unrelated to their professions, and in fact for reasons completely unprofessional.  The client knows they shouldn't listen to those less than well meaning folks, but sometimes it's hard not to do so.  The client thinks, probably correctly, that those opinions would not be welcomed by their helping professionals, so they don't tell them.  It just poisons the well, and they start to second guess them.  Those of us in the Trenches, unlike ATL, can't eliminate the commentary from the sidelines.  We do, however, want to help our clients know whether they're being helped or undermined.  If we aren't told the commentary, we can't help our clients distinguish between helpful and harmful.  Reality testing is a large part of what we do with clients, so we hope they tell us.   Then they can take our advice with firm conviction.  Here in the Trenches.

More Senseless Loss

Finally, a new iPad and a keyboard.  I never post at the office, and without an up to date iPad or computer, I was unable to post at home.  I practically hugged the UPS guy when he delivered the keyboard.  There have been so many posts in my head, all spinning around, and no place to put them. I had grand ideas for the first new iPad post,.....then I read Facebook this morning.

As you know, I am the "grandma" for Son's wrestling team.  I go to all the matches, home and away (but only the finals of tournaments - I served my time when Son wrestled).  I know the kids, some better than others, and more so as the years have gone on.  Last night, one of Son's wrestlers who graduated last year was murdered.  Yes, I said murdered.  The police don't know why and no cause or altercation was apparent.   It doesn't matter; he's still dead.  I can't believe it.  Neither can Son.

As I was walking Puppy Boy this morning, I was thinking about the young people I have known and for whom I have cared who have died in the last four years:  Office T, my friend's daughter, and now this young man.  In my humble opinion, none of those deaths make sense.  I am sure their parents would give anything to have another day, minute or hour with their child.  I am sure they have so many things they want to say, so many hugs and kisses they want to give, and I know they would pay any price to just see their child alive again.  I am sure they regret the angry words said, the time spent away from their child, and the moments where they were just too busy with life.  It breaks my heart.

It especially breaks my heart when I see so many parents here in the Trenches fighting over things concerning their children that really aren't that important.  It seems callous to say, because I know so many of these seemingly unimportant things feel so urgent and important, but I wonder if these parents knew that today was the last day they would spend with their child, would they choose to spend it disagreeing over these things?  Would they really like their child's last memory of them to be that their parents were bickering over something that in the scheme of things, really didn't matter?  Would they want to know that they wasted minutes and hours of time they could have spent with their child arguing with the other parent.  I think that should be the barometer - is something important enough to fight over that if today were the last day of your child's life, you wouldn't regret having done it?  Food for thought.  Here in the Trenches.

Mutual Consent Divorce - A Different Perspective

I admit that I have been frustrated with Maryland's requirement that, except in cases of adultery or extreme cruelty, couples have to be separated for a year before they can obtain a final divorce.  It is so unbearably difficult for many couples to separate before they've sold or refinanced the house or transferred retirement assets, and they can't transfer retirement assets until a divorce.  It takes some couples the better part of a year to decide on the terms for their separation agreement, which is necessary to refinance the house, and then knowing that it would be another year after that, causes some couples to make poor decisions about separating just to get the process moving.  Therefore, I was thrilled when the Maryland legislature passed our new mutual consent grounds for divorce.

In a nutshell, our new divorce grounds states that if a couple has no children under the age of 18, has a full and complete separation agreement to which they both agree, and both show up for the divorce hearing, they can get a divorce without any separation at all.  In the first month of the new law, I had three such divorces.  In two of them, the parties had been separated slightly less than one year.  In one of them, they were not separated.  I want to talk about that last case, because truly, I thought all three would end up the same.  They didn't.

The people in that third case are having a tough time.  After a very long marriage, they decided (OK, one side decided) that they were getting a divorce, they negotiated their separation agreement easily and quickly, and their divorce was a month later, while they were still in the same house.  They are now struggling emotionally.  You see, getting a divorce so quickly did not allow them time to grieve the loss of their relationship as it was and their marriage, to process what it meant to be separate and apart, to experience the reality of living separate and apart, of developing new and different support systems, and of learning to disengage from their old pattern of taking care of each other.

I know,the only difference between them and our regular divorce clients is that they began living separately after the divorce rather than before, but that distinction is not an inconsequential one.  Only if you've gone through a divorce can you understand that there is a cataclysmic difference between being separated and being divorced.  One is temporary and preparatory, and the other is final and permanent.  It may not look different in terms of day to day life, but it feels different.  Kind of like knowing a relative with a fatal disease is going to die, and their actually dying.  That feeling takes time to work its way through the psyche and to become normal.  With the end of a marriage, it takes time to set those new boundaries and the new relationship with someone with whom you've shared your life.  Its damned near impossible to do it well when you are not only mourning the end of the relationship as you knew it, but also the end of the legal status of marriage.  Both parts of this particular couple, perhaps because they have been together so long, are having a difficult time of it.  Who would have thought?  Not me.  Now, the legislature is talking about expanding the mutual consent divorce to people with minor children.  That adds another layer of logistics and grief.  Six months ago, I would have cheered the expansion of the divorce ground.  Now, I'm not so sure.  Here in the Trenches.

Divorce is a Journey

I miss blogging.  There are times when I struggle for what to say, but I love talking to you in this medium.  My home computer, where I do most of my writing, is no longer able to connect with Blogger, so my posts are very sporadic while I investigate EXHAUSTIVELY all my options. This is, of course, typical for me, as I tend to over-investigate every choice I have to make, whether it involves spending money or not.  OK, I worry it to death.  Now, if you needed to get something, I'd help you make that decision in a heartbeat....and that is our discussion for today.

You know that I am a big Brene Brown fan.  As a matter of fact, I'm taking her online course right now.  It's really difficult; this self-discovery stuff is hard.  As part of the course, I took Kristen Neff's assessment of self compassion.  I failed in the "self" part.  It seems I have oodles of compassion for others, but not much for myself.  I'm my own toughest critic - big surprise, right?  To do the work I do, I need to have a lot of compassion for others, but I think it's funny that I urge others to practice self-compassion.  I guess that those who don't do, teach.  I'm learning to be aware of when I'm coming down too hard on myself and cut myself a break; to be more understanding and forgiving of myself.  As a result, I'm enjoying life a lot more.

Mindfulness is becoming a huge part of what we do here in the Trenches.  So much of what we do is about helping our clients learn to let go and create a life after they leave us.  I've known that for years; it appears the rest of the world is figuring it out.  That would explain the popularity of Jeena Cho, and the rise in popularity of books like Splitopia: Dispatches from Today's Good Divorce and How to Part Well by Wendy Paris.  The fact is that what you get out of life depends on what you put into it and how you view it;  your divorce is no different.   Whether divorce is part of your life and your learn from it or something you never get past and over, is your choice.  I love reading Jeena's posts about mindfulness and law practice on Facebook and Twitter.  I just came across Wendy when I was catching up on another of my favorite authors, Gretchen Rubin, and found her interview with Wendy here.  It was intriguing and lead me, in turn, to Wendy's "The Principles of Parting."  I commend it to you, think you should print out multiple copies and tape them everywhere.  Life, even divorce, is a journey.  What kind of journey is up to you.  Here in the Trenches.

It Takes a Pack

A little under three weeks ago, we had to say goodbye to Puppy Girl.  It was the right time, by my reckoning, not too soon and not too late.  My wonderful veterinarian, Karen Pearson, DVM, who we have followed through a few veterinary practices, and who has treated Puppy Girl for ten years, came to our house.  Puppy Boy was there, along with the rest of her family, at the end.  We laughed, and told stories of her and her Boy and our prior dog.  Karen's part of our pack: she felt our loss like it were her own and gave us the support we needed.  I've always felt that way about her.

Now, however, Puppy Boy is without his Girl.  Like any other caregiver, he spent the greater part of the last few years tending to his charge.  He worried over her, made sure she had plenty of attention, and tormented her with puppy games to keep her engaged.  Now that she's gone, he seems lost.  Daughter's dog isn't much help- to Puppy Boy, he's a new addition and competition for affection.  What's a Puppy Boy to do?  Turn to his pack, of course. Mommy is his "go to" when he's feeling needy, with daughter running a close second.  Without us, he worried his paw and chewed it.  He looked lost and unhappy.  We've given him lots of love, and tons of attention. We've kept the rest of his schedule and life as much the same as we can, and he's slowly returning to his old self. 

Here in the Trenches, a lot of our clients are like Puppy Boy.  Their marriage and their spouse were the constants in their lives.  Without them, our clients are adrift.  We know they will get their bearings at some point, and move on to a different life.  The question is what to do in the meantime.  The temptation for most people is to throw out the baby with the bath water.  They want a clean break, they want no reminders of their marriage or their spouse, and they jettison everything from their old life all at once.  Big mistake.  Even though those things from the old life can be painful, pain is necessary in order to move forward.  It's a requirement in order to work through the stages of grief.  If you ignore it now, it will just come back and rear its head at an unexpected time in the future.  As strange as it sounds, a clean break is not so healthy.  We need reminders in order do the hard work.

What else do our clients need Here in the Trenches?  Like Puppy Boy, they need their pack.  As we saw with Puppy Boy, their pack isn't just anyone.  It's not someone in a like position, or else Daughter's dog would have done just fine.  Their pack is the people they count on to keep their lives on an even keel.  They are the folks who have been their constants through their life.  A lot of people don't want to be these folks, because they don't know what to say and do to make our clients feel better.  That's too bad, because our clients don't need someone to do something to make them feel better: just being there makes them feel better.  Really, what our clients need to know is that they're not alone and they're still loved.  By the way, Puppy Boy is doing much better, just like our clients.  Here in the Trenches.

How Will You See Your Divorce Five Years From Now?

"Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough."  

                                                                                                Abraham Lincoln


A post of mine from just over a year ago is getting a lot of traffic this weekend.  One comment in particular inspired this week's post.  The commenter wrote that in hindsight, this person wished that when she got the "best" family law attorney, she had gotten an attorney who was committed to helping the client work out their issues with their spouse and not simply going forward on the litigation path.  She regretted the treatment her former spouse received at the hands of her attorney.

I wish I could say that this person's comment were unusual here in the Trenches, but it's not.  Clients come through our doors every day expressing the gamut of emotions.  Angry and distrustful people are our stock in trade. Of course, many people who decide to divorce are angry, for a whole lot of reasons.  When we have an angry client, we have two choices: we can help stoke the fire or we can help to quench it.  If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I try to quench it.  Not everyone shares my view.  Let's talk about realities of the Trenches.

Some of us work in the Trenches because we want to help people.  We feel our clients' pain and we want to help them move forward.  We want to help them close the door on this chapter of their lives and move successfully into the next.  I would actually hazard a guess that most of us who work in the Trenches feel that way.  There are those who don't, those lawyers who really don't care and figure their job is to get the client what they say they want or even simply to get the case resolved.  I hope you run screaming from those offices; you deserve better.

The difficulty is that for lawyers of a certain age, being trained as a lawyer meant being trained to try a case, or at most negotiating a settlement like you would any business deal.  Some of those folks never learned to do anything else, and their definition of a lawyer is defined by their training.  It's not that they don't care; it's that the only tool they have is a hammer, so every problem is a nail.  I know, mediation has been around a long time, so why don't these lawyers get on board?  I wish I knew.  The most I can say is they never adapted to the reality that clients, especially family law clients, don't love going to court as much as they do.  For these lawyers, when a client comes into their office hopping mad, and wanting to rake their spouse over the coals in court, these lawyers are very happy, because that's what they know how to do.  They know how to fix that problem.  I'm going to go out on a very short limb here and tell you that if that's the lawyer in whose office you end up, you need to go somewhere else, at least for a second opinion.

After over twenty five years of practicing law, most of them here in the Trenches, there are a few things I've learned about people.  The first is that some of those hopping mad folks will remain hopping mad until the day they die.  They will never understand why they divorced; they will never forgive their spouse for not being the person they thought they were and needed them to be.  Still, encouraging their anger doesn't help.

The second thing I've learned is that anger, like guilt, fades.  As time passes and life goes on, clients tend to view their spouses with a different lens.  This lens tends to be more forgiving.  It is not a distorted lens, but rather one that, instead of being the rose color of love and unicorns or the fiery red of anger, is clear and focused.  Clients, particularly those with children, realize they have to co-parent together and will be entwined until they or their children die. Clients tend to remember some of the better times they had with each other; and with time, they remember that they once loved this person.  It's at those times they regret how they or their lawyer behaved at the time of their divorce.

Those of us who work in the Trenches know this.  We see it as our jobs to pull our clients out of their comfort zone.  We question the basis for their anger.  We probe at the hurt feelings.  We look for those times when the spouses worked together in the past.  We try to find shared values.  We encourage our clients to look into the future and tell us what they want it to look like.  We ask them if their proposed course of action will get them there.  We tailor the process they use for their divorce not only to their present but also to that future.

I understand that when your marriage is ending, the last thing you want to be is reasonable.  I know that when you're looking for an attorney, you want a good one, but you don't want to have to dig too deep.  I get it.  Remember, I've been there.  I know you don't want to spend the money for a consultation with more than one lawyer.  You just want one person, the first person you see, to solve your problem.  Remember though, that lawyer didn't cause the problem - you and your spouse did.  The lawyer can't solve it - only you and your spouse can.  Don't you want the lawyer who is best able to help you do that?  Find out about a lawyer's philosophy of representation.  Find out what they consider their role to be in your case.  Find out how they intend to help you connect with your inner best self and help you solve your problem.    You might need that hammer; then again you might need a monkey wrench.  Don't you want a lawyer with that tool in her tool chest?  Here in the Trenches.

Puppy Girl and Emotional Decisions

It's no secret that my beloved puppy girl is 16 years old.  She has arthritis in her legs, and that makes standing still interesting.  She has cataracts, and a wee bit of dementia.  She's lost a lot of weight, but the vet says she's in fine health, except for the above.  She sleeps a lot during the day.  Yet, she still eats like a younger dog.  She takes half a mile walk every day.  Sure, it's slow, but she does it.  She greets me when I come home at night.  She's not in any pain.  She also still torments her puppy boy and they play very limited and geriatric puppy games (I find your bone and stand over it so you can't get it.  I lie down in the middle of your bed until you stare at me long enough to make me move).  I know we're moving toward the "big decision," and we're probably talking weeks rather than months.  It's agonizing.  She's my puppy girl, my companion, my lovely friend. Being a reading nerd, I am reading a lot about when you know it's time.  The best advice I've seen is that you ask a third person whose advice you trust.  All that c__p about how you'll know it's time and keeping track of good days versus bad days, is just that.  When you are too close to the situation, the way you interpret data is skewed.  Your heart will override your head, or you will interpret the data to support the conclusion you want.  My third party and I have talked and she knows I don't want puppy girl to suffer.  I don't want her to have no good quality of life.  I don't want her to lose her dignity.  Based on all that,  my third party says "not yet," and I concur.

Does it really take much of a leap to connect all of this to the Trenches?  Clients tell me all the time that they never saw it coming.  They tell me that they can't believe that their spouse did X, because X is so unlike them.  Their spouse said the relationship changed, that they changed, but they don't see it.  Yet, all of the people they ask me to call tell me a very different story.  Usually, it's somewhere between what my client says and what their spouse says.  You see, they were too close to see things clearly and their emotions filled in parts of their story when the facts were lacking.  Usually when people do that, what they fill in supports the conclusion they want, and not what actually is.  The third parties without skin in the game are far more reliable as to reality of the situation.

Is there another third party whose advice clients in the Trenches should trust?  Oh yes, their lawyer.  Again, the lawyer has no emotional investment in their case.  Certainly, we care about our clients, but it's not our lives, it's theirs.  We don't interpret data through the eyes of emotion, of hurt feelings, of hopes and dreams unrealized.  We don't fill in "facts" that don't exist.  We hear our clients, and dig for what lies behind their words.  Is it fear of poverty?  Of being alone? Of being judged by others? Of losing their identity as a parent or spouse?  What is it they need or want?  What is their view for the future?  Whatever it is, once we learn what those things, we can help them define their goals and advise them of their best course of action.  We don't rewrite the history of their marriage - that's for a different professional to help.  We help them write the story of their futures accounting for their hopes and needs and fears.  Here in the Trenches.