[Introduction ]

THE PERILS AND THE PITFALLS OF THE SYSTEM AS WE KNOW IT

Is it possible? Can divorce really cause . . .

• Complete financial destruction?

• Hopelessness and despair?

• Loss of significant time with your children?

• Paralysis by fear?

• Crazy thinking that leads to crazy-making behavior?

• Damning affidavits filled with perceptions and labeled with fear?

• Years of legal battles?

• Vicious accusations and demands to appear in court?

• Destruction of any possibility to co-parent effectively?

• Fear, pain, and feelings of powerlessness in your children?

• An inability to focus or direct life in positive ways due to exhausting legal battles?

• Utter exhaustion and complete defeat, with nothing left but resentments and painful memories?

The answer is yes, all these outcomes are possible. And to prove the point, I will share a real-life story based on the events surrounding my own divorce.

By contrast, is this possible? Can divorce really involve . . .

• A strategic, step-by-step process that brings win-win resolution regarding both children and money?

• Empowered decision making that leads to consensus and an outcome you know is fair?

• Empowered children who, even in the face of your divorce, remain grounded and well balanced and feel unconditional love from both parents?

• Controlled costs that keep assets in your pockets?

• Feelings of empowerment rather than victimization, no matter who pulled the plug on the marriage?

• Movement through the emotional journey as it unfolds without those ups and downs that interfere with your ability to make educated decisions?

• Focus on the future and letting go of the past graciously?

• Confidence about your new beginnings because you have a well-thought-out plan for both finances and parenting?

Again, the answer is yes. And to prove these points, I will share with you The Fairway Process.

First, though, let’s put divorce and the system in which it has traditionally unfolded into context.

HEADACHES, HEARTACHE, AND THE LEGAL BEAGLES

The high number of divorces today has created a fertile feeding ground for the legal profession, and while the lawyers are certainly eating well, there are more losers than winners among the embattled participants.

Divorce has become lucrative for the legal community. Spurred on by ambitious legal beagles, spouses now routinely seek major pieces of the assets regardless of whose name they are in. Commonly referred to as “the matrimonial property,” this includes (but is certainly not limited to) stock options, retirement plans, and corporate earnings, even staking claim to potential future earnings. These days, couples contemplating divorce seek out valuation experts and forensic accountants almost as soon as they look for a lawyer. In turn, many divorce lawyers have escalated their fees to astronomical heights.

Family law lawyers have their own complaints about miserable, overstressed clients demanding two pounds of flesh from their ex-partners and willing to concede none. But many of these same lawyers misconstrue their duty of zealous representation and act as hired guns, doing their clients’ bidding using legal documents, relationship-destroying affidavits, and threatening letters as paper bullets.

Couples who go to court can expect to spend thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees and have no control over outcomes. A decree of divorce will generally not be granted until all questions regarding child care and custody, division of property and assets, and ongoing financial support are resolved. In the end, a judge will tell them what to do with the house, bank account, pension, and children.

Family law litigants frequently complain about overworked judges; time-consuming, costly paperwork; lack of privacy and control over proceedings (and outcome); and legal constraints on their ability to tell their whole stories. In family court, judges never really know exactly what’s going on in a case; they simply can’t. The family court’s job is to decide narrow legal issues based on limited permissible evidence.

Even when litigation is successful, in many cases the parties manage to settle only because they have waved big swords and doggedly prepared for a trial. By the time they settle, often on the courthouse steps, the process is extremely adversarial. They have spent a significant amount of money to prepare for trial, but they have polarized their positions and undercut their chances for a civil, ongoing relationship. For most couples, court is a blunt instrument unable to deal elegantly with resolving the intricate, personal, and emotional issues surrounding the dissolution of a relationship. It simply doesn’t belong here.

And let’s not forget the toll that traditional divorce takes on the children involved. For most children, their parents’ divorce is an emotionally painful transition that can cause lingering feelings of sadness, longing, worry, and regret. Children of divorce may suffer from emotional disorders, exhibit behavioral problems, become young offenders, do less well in school, and have more relationship problems. But this has nothing to do with divorce and everything to do with how divorce is handled. As well, adults whose parents divorced during their childhood tend to have more marital problems and divorce more often.

When you look at a graphic representation of the traditional divorce process, it’s easy to see its inherent flaws and to understand why it’s slow, expensive, and divisive.

Interestingly, when you really get down to it, divorce involves only two issues: money and kids. Where in the traditional system of divorce is there a strategic approach to resolving these issues while weighing both the short- and long-term implications of the decisions? Try as you might to find it, it just isn’t there.

THE PRESENT ALTERNATIVES

Some will argue that alternatives to hiring a lawyer in the traditional system of divorce exist in collaborative law and traditional mediation. True, these are alternatives. But on close inspection, they fail to put enough distance between themselves and the system against which they’re positioning themselves.

Nevertheless, mediation is a growing way of resolving divorce issues. It is not as adversarial, it often saves money, and it generally achieves similar outcomes. But for mediation to work, each spouse must be able to trust the other about financial matters. And in the midst of the emotional upheaval wrought by divorce, that is a very big but.

In mediation, a neutral mediator helps facilitate decisions. Typically, mediation helps to identify the issues and choose the best solution. Once this is done and an agreement is reached, a formal legal document is prepared by a lawyer.

Mediation offers significant advantages over litigation. Couples make the decisions, not a lawyer or a judge. Although the couple may elect to have attorneys or financial planners present, ultimately they decide when to meet and for how long. The mediator is usually a psychologist, lawyer, or other professional. Mediators work with both parties to resolve key issues, including but certainly not limited to visitation, child support, custody, spousal support, and property division.

Unlike adversarial methods of reaching divorce settlements, mediation assumes the parties will cooperate to reach an agreement rather than compete to get the most for themselves. The goal of mediation is for the couple to reach a settlement that allows the marriage to be dissolved. Unfortunately, the outcome can be extremely lopsided.

Many couples choose mediation over litigation when their primary concern is the well-being of the children, especially when they are considering joint or shared custody. Mediation works best when each party wants to keep the process as civil and peaceful as possible. Generally, it is also cheaper, and because it is based on the premise that each person has legitimate concerns, it allows the couple to maintain some control and dignity during what can be an extremely difficult time.

But traditional mediation is, in my opinion, fundamentally flawed. How can you bring together two people whose relationship is in crisis, sit them across from one another, and expect there to be an equal balance of power and communication skills? How can they trust that the information they’re getting is factual and not slanted in any way? How can you prevent subtle threats from opposing counsel as most mediation involves lawyers either at the forefront or in the background? (“Well, if your client can’t sweeten the pot a bit more, perhaps we’ll have to let the courts settle this after all.”) As long as intimidation tactics, however subtle, can find their way into a process, a fair outcome will remain out of reach.

Meanwhile, the mediator who facilitates the conversations and the eventual settlement may not know the full details of the case or understand the ins and outs of the financial matters.

Collaborative law is another form of alternative dispute resolution for divorcing couples who need strong legal representation but would like to avoid litigation. In a collaborative divorce, couples and their attorneys agree in advance not to litigate. If either party ignores the agreement and goes to court, both attorneys are required to resign from the case.

I like this approach. While it is flawed in other respects, it is a creative step forward by the legal community. Collaborative law’s originators had great insight: They understood, as I do, that most divorces do not need to see the inside of a courtroom.

The major drawback is this: Since the process still involves lawyers trained in position bargaining, you can spend a great deal of money on legal fees before you arrive at a settlement, and if you can’t reach a satisfactory settlement and need to go to court after all, you have to start back at the beginning with a new lawyer. A strategic approach with an accountable, step-by-step process is not apparent within this model. Egos can still play a significant and devastating role in creating chaos rather than a fair outcome.

The problem with these divorce alternatives is that the asset pie is usually up for grabs, with both parties claiming the biggest slice. The process of dividing up those assets often results in bitter acrimony, even when both parties start out with the best of intentions.

In the final analysis, traditional mediation has some of the same major flaws as collaborative law: Whoever comes across most forcefully, understands the numbers better, and has more “stick-to-it-iveness” may come out ahead. Still, my hat is off to those lawyers who are committed to these alternatives within their system. At some level, they “get it.”

CLEARLY, IT’S TIME FOR A BETTER WAY

The foremost reason for this book is to share with you some great news: There is, at last, a better way.

Several years ago, I endured a long journey through the dark and disheartening tunnel of traditional divorce. It was a financially and emotionally devastating journey that left me with little but an ardent desire to challenge the status quo and offer a true alternative to the way divorces are presently done.

Combining the hard-learned lessons of that journey with the financial acumen I’ve developed over the years as an MBA and president of a financial services company, I created a revolutionary new system for divorce and launched Fairway Divorce Solutions,® a company committed to using a practical, step-by-step process to dramatically reduce the time, costs, and emotional pain of traditional divorce and, most importantly, to spare the children.

I call this breakthrough process “The Fairway Process.™” To assist people in using the process, I created a company called Fairway Divorce Solutions, which works with clients to reach consensus and win-win resolutions with respect to both money and children. Even without Fairway Divorce Solutions, you can use the principles and tools presented in this book to transition peacefully and empowered through your divorce.

The Fairway Process promises to deliver mutually agreeable outcomes that empower both parties as well as their children to transition to new beginnings with assets, integrity, and self-esteem intact. The process focuses on three core areas:

• Your dignity and self-worth: The Fairway Process will help you to be the best you can be in one of the worst times of your life (a true challenge for just about anyone during divorce!) Throughout Clean Break, I will share Key Insights and Key Actions to help you transition smoothly through divorce.

• Your family: The Fairway Process was designed specifically to protect the emotional well-being of you and your children, and to preserve and reformulate a healthy parenting relationship so everyone can move forward feeling hopeful about the future. It will provide you with Key Insights and Key Actions to help you design your own parenting plan and road map to your future.

• Your wealth: The Fairway Process takes you and your spouse through a step-by-step process of finding resolution on the financial matters. It helps you identify the matrimonial assets and determine how they will be split. It also addresses such issues as child support and spousal support. Carefully designed to eliminate position bargaining and asset grabbing, it ensures that assets are valued properly regardless of who gets what. It brings you to a win-win outcome so that both parties can feel secure about the future while knowing they were treated fairly in the here and now. It provides Key Insights and Key Actions for you to keep your costs down and protect and preserve your assets as much as possible.

To illustrate just how well The Fairway Process works, Clean Break depicts a fictional but real to life couple’s realistic journey through divorce using The Fairway Process from beginning to end. Along the way, it will give you all the tools you need to bypass the traditional system and pursue a faster, less costly, less divisive divorce, and I will tell you how to pull together a team to help you through divorce and facilitate the process.

 

This much I know to be true: Everything happens for a reason.

From my humbling personal experiences, from the exciting process of devising and refining The Fairway Process, and from working with hundreds of divorcing couples who have chosen to use Fairway Divorce Solutions, I have gleaned significant Key Insights and Key Actions that I’ll share with you to ensure that what happened to me and so many others does not happen to you.

To be receptive to those reasons and to discover within ourselves the courage to embrace them are our tasks in this lifetime. How else will we learn from life’s lessons—lessons that, if we listen carefully, empower us to reach beyond ourselves and make a bigger difference?

Although they’ve cut deeply, I have embraced the lessons of my long and costly journey through divorce.

I have also embraced, with profound empathy, the experiences of clients and friends whose own caustic and convoluted divorces have borne striking similarities to my own.

I now set out to share those lessons with others who find themselves facing the daunting prospect of a marital breakup.

My sincere hope is that this book and my vision of an alternative divorce will help you avoid the financially depleting, emotionally devastating mistakes that I made. Perhaps you know people who have gone through divorce that too has cost them financial and emotional pain.

In our midst, there are leaders who create value through the power of their ideas and the authenticity of their character. There are change agents determined to challenge the status quo and effect positive changes on society. There are disrupters whose dreams and inventions expand our vision of what is possible. And there are entrepreneurs whose convention-defying ideas and refusal to be bound by the old and unworthy redefine businesses and change lives.

If I can evince even a small share of these honorable attributes, I can help to disarm the word “divorce” of its frightful power. For there will come a time when divorce loses its synonym with failure.

If I can endure the system’s inevitable resistance as I challenge the present paradigm, couples and families will no longer need to fear the process of divorce.

If I can help society as a whole redefine divorce, those who feed greedily off the vulnerability of others in the process will no longer be tolerated or sustained.

If I can unveil a better way—one that is less costly, less time-consuming, less stressful; one that protects assets, children, parents, self-esteem, and love; one that people not only embrace but come to demand—then there is hope for happiness and serenity where in the past the outlook has been daunting and bleak.

If I can envision and introduce a new way, I can make a difference.

This book will reveal how the events of my journey through divorce empowered me to change my approach to life, relationships, and business.

It will lay bare the flaws of a system that no longer works, flaws that kindled my passion and inspired my vision for a business that redefines the divorce process and allows people to make a clean, quick, and cost-effective break.

By challenging traditional ways of thinking, it will show how you can turn a difficult, heart-wrenching experience into something personally empowering.

Above all, by introducing The Fairway Process—the first real alternative to traditional divorce, and a prudent and practical way to reach resolution through a breakthrough negotiation process—it will give you a vision of hope.

May you now begin to lay the foundation for bright new beginnings and to see that divorce is only a chapter in your life; it does not define your life.

Note to the reader: All names used in the book are fictional, except for my own.