From Divorce Lawyer to Marital Mediator

Hi, and welcome to the marital mediation video podcast.

My name is Amy Martell. I am a collaborative attorney and mediator in Marshfield, Massachusetts.

And I'm going to be your host for this series of video interviews with collaborative professionals, marital mediators and professionals in the field of family conflict transformation.

This week we have a very special guest. I'm going to be interviewing Laurie Israel, who I think can do the best job of introducing herself.

So welcome, Laurie.

How are you? Nice to see you.

Nice to see you.

I, I've been in my own practice for twenty years come January first. And I never thought I'd be a divorce attorney but somehow, I gravitated willingly into the field. And I find it really fascinating.

And then what happened after doing it for a while I started wondering. Why are these people getting divorced?

And in fact, people that see collaborative lawyers and mediators, often the skills that we use with our divorce clients, they often say to us if they had been able to work with us a year or two before, maybe they could have worked out their problems.

So, the field is very fascinating and the people are, are wonderful, and they're very brave, working through their end of marriage issues, when they're working with us.

Very good.
So how did you start thinking about marital mediation as a profession as part of your work?

What happened is that partly I started looking at the divorce as an end of marriage function. In other words, I look at things like a divorce lawyer, not like a psychologist. One of the major issues in divorce is contribution.

Not just in Massachusetts, but in other states. Contribution a legal term which means what people do for the marital venture, and it can be all sorts of things, including putting flowers in vases raising children, making money, putting oil in the car, that sort of thing.

And when people feel that there's mutual contribution, then usually their marriage is okay and it's going to survive.

Interesting.

When people start feeling like they're contributing too much and their spouse is contributing too little, then the marriage starts to fail.

So I started thinking about this and other divorce factors and thinking about whether using these concepts can help people when they're still married.

And in fact, a lot of times the feelings of lack of contribution is not really a reality.

It 's really people feel that way, but these feelings of lack of contribution by their spouse are not reality based.

So to me that's one of the really biggest key about staying married, and I learned about it by being divorce lawyer.

So what are the ways that through the process of marital. Do you work with people to uncover, sort of, the realities of contribution.

Well we talk about it. We talk about, the clients talk about their contributions, and somehow, when it's an organized talk that's organized by a mediator, sometimes misunderstandings can really be cleared up.
For instance, generally when I'm with a couple for about 20 minutes, even if these people have been together for twenty years, I can see faulty patterns of communication where they're really not understanding each other, and one of the things a mediator can do is break into those patterns and help people start to express themselves and be heard by the other person

Interesting, and you know if you're getting into something that I think is important, is what is the difference between marital mediation and say, you know, couple's therapy or or marital counseling.

I actually don't know too much about marital counseling because I don't do it.

Yeah.

It's done by psychologist, they tend to look at deep issues in a person's life, in a person's psychology, they diagnose, they can see what might need to be treated.
We'll look at family systems, we'll look at family of origin issues, and mediator in a certain way we're more shallow. We just try to look at something that's not working and help partners fix it. So we look at more discrete problems.
For instance, a lot of times the presenting problem will be a financial issue, and because divorce lawyers and divorce mediators are very well versed in financial issues, because that's what we do all day, we can really be helpful to clients that are dealing with financial issues sometimes Didn't want to interrupt what you were about to say.

You, when you're talking about this, what are some of the issues that you see coming up on a regular basis that you see marital mediation being helpful in terms of helping the parties become more conscious about, in terms of their patterns of communication, or their, their challenges?

And what are some of things that you see happening in couples that lead them to the possibility of going of down the road to divorce?

Well, there's a lot of stresses in marriage and you see them repeated lots of times in the divorces you see. One of them, especially now, is the stress of job loss.

Especially when the job loss is experienced in the male of the heterosexual marriage who is relied on and that took it upon himself to support the family, and all of a sudden, I see this a lot of times with people in their 50's, he can't get another job.

It's really really hurting the marriage because the basis of the marriage was that he was going to be supporting and he would have.

People expect that they'll be able to work throughout their lives until they want to, or need to retire and so it's a very, very destabilizing situation now with many couples.

So, now for a couple who comes into your office, or for a couple who goes into any divorce attorney's office thinking that divorce is the only option, what do you do as a marital mediator, or what, what could people who are going into a divorce attorney's office be thinking or, or on, what could they be on the lookout for, so that they might be able to use the process to stay married?

That was sort of a two part question.

The answer to that, usually by the time, the problem is usually by the time they come to a divorce lawyer's office or even a mediator's office their divorce is so set in their mind, that it's pretty near impossible to undo it.

I, I've seen a few instances where that wasn't true.

One of them happened in a collaborative law case. We had a very large number of meetings. And it was kind of clear that there was still love between the two people. And in fact they did reconcile. And the collaborative divorce process helped them tremendously.

But most of the times people come into the office it's really probably later than it can be to reverse things.

Occasionally, people, if you can just give them enough time and maybe not go into lawyer mode or mediator mode right away, sometimes they think twice about it. And they go back and give it another try.

Recently that happened with clients that contacted me many times to try to set up a mediation meeting for a divorce. And you know, I didn't proceed fast. They started looking at the things on my website. And the wife, who was the one that I think really thought it was time to get divorced, did read, read, go to a bookstore, read a book that she so it was really very very helpful and is back to try to work on their marriage. The other mistake people make is they think that because they're not responding well to marital therapy or marital counseling, that that means the marriage is over, and I think the biggest message to people is that, that's not true.
A lot of people don't respond well to marital counseling. Sometimes people won't go, especially guys. . Some people respond really well to a mediator who's a lawyer because they know we've seen the crash-ups of a marriage, and we know what's going to happen. Sometimes giving them information about what the divorce will look like really helps people to recommit.
So, the key is trying to get the word out in the communities of people. In fact, a lot of my marital mediation plans have been in therapy, marital counseling,

Or they're simultaneously, often simultaneously, in marital counseling. So what I tell people is that a marriage is really an important thing and put, try everything.

So how does your work as a marital mediator impact your work as a divorce attorney ?

Well sometimes I'll meet with people , if I meet with them as a mediator. Maybe not the first meeting but may be the second or third meeting I'll say, Boy, this is a really stupid divorce.

Yeah.

You know, when usually people don't pick up on it or don't accept my invitation to work on their marriage, but. And, the other thing is that as a divorce lawyer and mediator I just try to make things as fair and as good for people as I can. They've decided to divorce it's not my role to question their decision, they are very smart growing people with their own decisions. Everybody has a right to a failed first marriage.

Just one.

Yeah.

A lot of people, definitely take, take that option. The studies actually show that second marriages have a more, a larger failure rate, but I think sometimes people do learn from first marriages, and a lot of people tell me, If I knew what I knew at the time of my first marriage, what I know now, it wouldn't happen. That's a very common reaction from clients just think.

So any other thoughts that you want to share in this particular interview?

I think attorneys that deal with divorcing clients, owe it to the clients, if it's at all possible if there's no emergency or exigent circumstances relating to the children or possible abuse or violence, or you know, drug problems. That they, they owe it to their clients to proceed slowly always pull the client to the decisions even the littlest ones. What I've learned through these 20 years of being a divorce lawyer that if I'm going to write a letter to the other side, I'm going to always read it first to my client, because it may not, it may have a factual inaccuracy that I didn't realize, that very, it hurts them or it hurts their partner when they get the letter or it might not have the right tone. And so I really, really try to bring my clients in on all decisions, big and small in the divorce process, so that it goes they way it to go.

And the one last thing I'd like to say is, people are always hearing about the worst divorces, and once again, in the paper, and all the litigation. Actually, I think that litigation and these very bad, ugly divorces are really of very small part of the statistics on people getting divorces. And most people get divorced very cordially, calmly, in a somewhat friendly manner, because this is somebody they chose at one point to love and to spend their life with. and so the real news about divorce is that it can be very creative and caring, as a process, and it doesn't have to be ugly, and it usually isn't.

That sounds like you're offering to your clients a process that kind of is modeling what you might have hoped to have worked with sometimes as a marital mediator when you're going through the divorce. You're modeling a different kind of communication.

A lot mediators and collaborative lawyers, one of the things that's very important to us, and what we do is to model good behaviors, and useful behaviors to people as they're getting divorced.

It's just kind of unfortunate that these behaviors are modeled at the end of the marriage rather than sometime in the middle of it or before it gets really there. Which is how mediators can really, really help married couples.

So, maybe then as we close this interview.

If you can, maybe, think of one gem that you might want to offer to a couple who might be having some trouble at home. Not, not necessarily that they're thinking divorce.

But, but, but a gem in terms of a communication gem, something to think about as they are challenged by their communication patterns.

I think that if there is a communication pattern that's difficult.

Maybe if they each write down one interaction, they each write it down.

And then they, they use, they use it like an analysis.

Like, deconstructing a poem, or a, or a paragraph in a novel.

And they look at it and kind of deconstruct what that communication, what the words were said, what they meant, what the underlying words were meant, I think that would be very fruitful for people.

Interesting (xx).

Very good.

Wow.

Very, very nice talking with you and thank you very much for your great questions.

And thank you so much for taking this time, and I look forward to having future conversations with you.

Very good. Take care.

Okay.