Doing Divorce Right By Chief PeaceKeeper™ Scott Levin
Scott Levin is a divorce attorney and divorce financial expert who has dedicated his career to helping couples and parents resolve disputes through mediation so they stay out of court and stay in control. Protecting children is at the heart of Scott's work as a mediation divorce specialist. Scott shares tips and advice for couples and parents wanting to learn how to divorce amicably without going to court. As a family law attorney in San Diego, California, Scott has more than two decades of experience and stories and tales to share and an incredible array of unique and interesting guests that join him to share their own ideas and experiences. We discuss the benefits of divorce mediation and the reasons why couples navigating divorce should choose peace and opt for the mediation process as opposed to hiring divorce lawyers and entering the litigation battlefield. Known by colleagues and clients as the Chief PeaceKeeper™, Scott is the founder and managing partner of San Diego Divorce Mediation & Family Law, a firm with hundreds of 5 star reviews from couples who have benefitted from Scott's legal and financial expertise and caring approach over his many years in the field. Learn strategies to tackling divorce and co-parenting disputes through a team approach with Scott Levin.
Doing Divorce Right By Chief PeaceKeeper™ Scott Levin
Navigating the Maze of Divorce with No Regret: Divorce Coach Expert Insights
In my discussion with divorce coach Lara Brunstrom, our discussion sheds light on amicable divorce strategies and mindset needed to navigate a separation process with clear objectives. This discussion focuses on a peaceful path forward to end your marriage with no regret or remorse.
With a compassionate approach and a wealth of expertise, Lara and I share the same guidance we provide clients to help them make informed decisions that prioritize what matters most to their futures. From understanding the legal landscape to managing emotional challenges and safeguarding financial stability, our insights will hopefully empower listeners and motivate them to choose an affordable future focused divorce mediation approach.
Discover how to divorce coach Lara Brunstrom helps clients navigate divorce with focus on growth and transformation with her thoughtful guidance.
Thanks for listening and I hope you'll continue to learn more about how you can peacefully divorce.
As a divorce mediation attorney in California, Scott Levin helps couples figure out the settlement terms and draft enforceable settlement agreements so they can divorce fairly without needing to go to court. Obtain closure peacefully through an amicable divorce. process that protects families and kids.
Visit San Diego Divorce Mediation for more information and to learn more about our mission to help divorcing couples make informed decisions and fair agreements through mediation or book a free virtual consultation.
Scott Levin, attorney, mediator, CDFA®
Chief PeaceKeeper
scottlevinmediation@gmail.com
858-255-1321
San Diego Divorce Mediation & Family Law
www.SanDiegoFamilyLawyer.net
Hey everyone, this is Scott Levin, Chief Peacekeeper, and I am here for a talk with my good friend and colleague, Laura Brunström. Hi, Laura, Hello. Well, thank you for being here. Laura is an exceptional divorce coach who? Well, Laura, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do before we hop on the topic?
Speaker 2:All right, I am a life coach who specializes in divorce, so I'm also a certified divorce coach. I love working with people in all phases of divorce, especially at the beginning, and that's where we're going to tap into today in our discussion on just kind of setting the tone for your divorce how to interview people, how to find your team, and I work with people all the way through, whether they're lawyer on lawyer or working with a mediator like you, or trying to decide. Right now I have an influx of people which is typical post-January deciding. You know, is this another year of being miserable? Are we going to make some changes? So the decision process if you actually want to get a divorce. So for me, the sooner people find me the better, because then I can help them through finding a mediator or deciding if they actually want to get divorced or what's the best path for them.
Speaker 1:And that's the approach in place. You think from the beginning lets you like that coach can help you plot the next steps. So that's like someone that's in going from the beginning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's where I think we have shared a lot of clients is clients come to you and they're a little bit confused or need a little bit of guidance and you refer them to me. And clients come to me and they're like I don't know that we really need to go like lawyer on lawyer. We're pretty amicable, we're looking, you know, for some options and that's where you come majorly into my practice, which is helping people find you. And that's where this topic really sparked from is how, like how do we interview a mediator? What do we look for? And that's a massive step in the right direction, as knowing and I do this when I have clients and they don't have a mediator all help them interview somebody. And really today I think we should just cover you know what, what your process looks like, and how do people interview you, like what, what questions? If you were looking for you, what would you ask? You know, what do you want to know?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I appreciate that. So how to enter or how to hire a meter, who do you should be looking for and how do you explore those options? To start, I do. I offer a free consultation for both parties together. So everyone does this differently. I'm an attorney mediator in California, so I only mediate divorces. I don't litigate divorces, although I've been a family law attorney since so far. So when people call me, usually it's one person initiating the call or the email and the first thing that I say is that I offer a free consultation if both of you can come together, which can be done by phone, zoom or in person, but you have to kind of. In my opinion, it's best to explore your divorce options together from the beginning. You jumped into the marriage together. You need to jump out together if mediation is gonna be an option. So if yeah, go on.
Speaker 2:I was just gonna interject there and say I find it from my angle, really important that people do approach you like even if it's one email like I know you did this what specifically one of the clients that I sent you where one person approached you and you got the other spouse in really fast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 2:And from the angle that I see, there's a huge trust thing there that goes on. So the faster you loop both people into talking to you, because then you're not somebody else's idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a commitment to neutrality. I mean, in Mediator, the number one thing that someone that's practicing this as a professional has to be committed to is neutrality, and bringing, from the very beginning, both parties into that exploration process is absolutely mandatory in my opinion. So, the Mediator, the longer that someone speaking to just one side without the other in that initial call or set up, the more you should kind of run for the hills. So that's the first thing, is that commitment to neutrality. And then, when you're interviewing someone, in my opinion I would want someone that is a family law attorney, someone that has litigation experience in their background, someone that is 100% committed to the mediation process, though so they're not a litigating attorney who quote unquote also mediates. They're fully committed to being an attorney, mediator, not someone that litigates divorces and mediates on the side.
Speaker 1:So you're a family law attorney, you have a background in litigation, you're a full-time peacekeeper and then finally, ideally, that person's a certified divorce financial analyst, which just means that they pass tests that prove that they know about the finances of divorce and they have to have commitment to taking certain continuing education classes to keep that designation, et cetera. So they have the financial side, they have the legal side, they're fully committed to the peacekeeping side. Now you're dealing with someone, you're in the right ballpark. Now how do you decide between two people that might have those same qualifications? It becomes a personality fit. So do you jive with the person? Can you see yourself talking about personal things with them present? I mean, this can get certainly touching on personal topics and you just wanna kind of have a general sense of that person being a good person and someone that you feel comfortable with.
Speaker 2:I completely agree with that. I know I had a client I was coaching the wife and she had told her husband she was using me as a coach and just to kind of give her support through the process, make sure she was showing up in the right way through it, and they were struggling. They both had attorneys and they were referred to a mediator from one of their attorneys and she's like I don't like the mediator and I was like okay, well, and she's like I just I don't know how to approach the conversation with my husband and I said let me help you with the conversation. And then, kind of midway, she said would you do a zoom with both of us and just have a conversation with both of us? Because he would, he really wants to meet you. And I really don't know how to have this without somebody who's going to act kind of neutral and just facilitate the conversation. Well, much to my surprise, one of his first sentences out of his mouth was I hate our mediator.
Speaker 2:That's interesting and I was like, oh so I didn't, I didn't let on anything, and I'm like, okay, well, other person, how do you feel about the mediator? And she said I can't stand the mediator. And that is one of the clients that I ended up sending to you and they, of course, adored you and were successful in their completion of their divorce. And we're very happy. And it just shows you that communication is huge. Vibe check.
Speaker 2:Like, if you trust your gut, if it doesn't feel like the right person for you and you don't know how to have that conversation with your spouse, reach out to me. I can help you have that conversation with your spouse. Ultimately, both of you want to like the process and where you're going and just groove with the person who's leading you. Like you got to trust your leader and you have to like them, like in a way that you know they're comfortable. They met you, they adored you, it was successful. Like, without that zoom call, that mediation could have gone south, it could have been back to like lawyer versus lawyer. And they were really amicable. They had written a mission statement with me on what they wanted their divorce to be, what they wanted to honor each other, what they wanted to come out with and what looking like, and they were successful. That's because they committed to the process, they committed to you, you did your job well and everybody got along, which isn't always the case.
Speaker 1:I mean. Yet we've all had teachers. You know, my 12 year old favorite teacher is his math teacher Last year he found math totally off-putting. I'm sure they were both. Both three chairs were trying to give the information they need to give, but one inspired one did. One made him feel comfortable, the other made for whatever reason didn't. It wasn't that that person is a bad person or wasn't trying. But now he's an inspired, he wants to get to that class, he's passionate about it. He comes home and thinks about it. These are all things that you need someone to. You need to engage in the divorce process actively, be responsible for it for yourself. Can't just pass it over to someone else and say, here, do this for me. I know we've talked about that a lot over the years. You need to be in control and to do that you have to have someone that makes you feel like you want to, that makes you want to be in control and want to take ownership over it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I find a lot of times where I come into play with people, especially in mediation, is the power dynamic that happens in relationships. There's sometimes somebody who's wielding a little more power financially, so the other person needs a little bit of support to stand up for themselves and show up in a way that they feel like they're being fair to themselves. Really, One thing I want to ask you that I would say is an important question for people to ask when they interview is what can you do in the process, Like can you take me to the finish line?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so how it works in my practice is that we, if the case is not open, we initiate a court case.
Speaker 1:We help our clients resolve the dispute by coming up with the terms, and then we draft the marital settlement agreement, which is the legal document that spells out their settlement terms, and then we prepare the court forms to finish the process and do all that filing.
Speaker 1:We walk our clients from the very beginning to the end of the process and, you know, handhold them through that so that they're not going to court, they're not filling out a lot of forums, are not talking to the judge, or missing work and paying $50 to park downtown or wherever it is. You know they're saving themselves on that process and having to worry about those things. What they have to do, though, is understand that they're unlikely to get 100% of what they want, so you have to come to voluntary agreements, you have to come to the meetings. You know prepared to discuss things, and to, you know, being empowered to make decisions you don't have to decide at all and, meeting one or two, you need to be willing to make decisions to move things along, and so that's again where Laura can be really helpful to people is to strategize, to understand what their options are and to come to help those people arrive at feeling like they can make those agreements at some point during the divorce process.
Speaker 2:but yeah, we could.
Speaker 1:I help people from beginning to end, but I need them to help themselves by be willing to listen to the other side. Consider the make decisions.
Speaker 2:I think also like another question I would ask if I were interviewing would be what is your process? And one of the things I think is really effective about your process that I enjoy from my side is you meet with people. I think it's five. You have kind of a five session packet.
Speaker 1:You meet like weekly or every other week for minutes. So what?
Speaker 2:happens when, when they have you as their mediator they go in they have the discussion and then, if they're working with me, the client will come over and they kind of marinate. There's a process where it's like it's not this 14 hour go until 2 am, like push it through the finish line. This is a very paced process and it allows people to make no regret decisions, marinate what the proposal is, come back to you with questions. All of that is where they meet with you and then whoever's working with me will come back and they'll say, okay, well, here's how it went. Here's kind of my gut, but I don't really know. And so then we come out with a list of questions and sometimes they email them to you, sometimes they bring them up in the next session. But that paced process that you work with really offers like space to breathe.
Speaker 1:I love it. I think I love hearing that, but that's what I meant, because that's why I developed that system. Everyone does it differently. I go to these conferences where the mediation conferences, where you're hearing about other people's practices, but I think it's important. These are very important decisions, and I come to those decisions but also give you room to let them breathe. And how do I feel about those things? That we talk Absolutely, and if you're not feeling great about it, then let's continue the conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah and come in with it's kind of a, it's like a whole body check, like when they have your meeting with you and come back to me and they're like I really just want to spend all this money on a house or I want to keep the family house, even though I'm gonna be house poor and not have any money for food.
Speaker 2:But I really like my house. That gives me time to work with them on processing that out and be like, okay, well, what is it about the house and what do you really need about that and what do you really want about that and are there other options and what are those options? And then live with those options for some amount of time before you go back in and decide that, yeah, I can pump up my 50% job to 75% because my kids are getting older, or I can go in 100% and I can't afford the house. Or, holy God, I just realized that we need a new roof and that's gonna cost money. And oh my gosh, no.
Speaker 2:And like there's just a lot of your heart kind of tells you you want something and then your brain's gonna fight with it. So part of what I do during that breathing period that they have away from you is working through that, and I think that's why people who settle and get their divorce finished with you come out with the least amount of regret possible, because they do have that pace and they do have that time to talk to somebody. And I don't necessarily think that it's always like your girlfriends are a bro fest like over beers or wine, where you're like getting everybody's opinions. These really need to be decisions that come from inside of yourself not from public opinion.
Speaker 2:So we don't want you spending like a week on public opinion. We want you spending that time deciding for yourself and then come back with questions with like how does this work, or let's play this out, or what does that look like from the other side?
Speaker 1:I love everything you said, laura, and Laura and I are gonna come out with some more videos. We have some other topics that we're gonna record on this week or next, so check out those. But for now you can contact us. We'll write the descriptions and the contact information in the bios, but we've made quite a good pair here to helping people at all points of the divorce process, try to get to the end in a way that let's sum it up with the least regret possible. That's something that Laura just said that I think really hit home with me. So I appreciate you and thank you for being here and we'll record another one in the coming days.
Speaker 2:Sounds good.
