What is Collaborative Divorce w/ Melissa Pavone

 Welcome to the podcast, Melissa. I'm excited to chat and learn more about what you do and how you help people especially going through divorce. will you share with us who you are, what you do, and what you love? Sure. Thanks so much for having me as a guest today. My name is Melissa Murphy Pavone. I'm a Certified financial planner and a certified Divorce Financial analyst. And my true passion is really helping and empowering the non CFO spouse through their divorce process. I like that. So the non CFO, okay. I guess my question is twofold. 'cause I just had my statistic pop up in my head that 85% of household day-to-day finances, Day-to-day, meaning the groceries, the fuel, the kids stuff is run by the women 85%. But when it comes to the long-term planning, they're not involved. So yes, non CFO, explain who that would be. So the CFO of the family is the person that deals with the tax return, the investing accounts, the savings accounts, maybe like the more long-term things, the larger purchases. And it's great when both spouses are involved in that process or aware of it, but. We've all heard of, like the blank tax returns, like people not knowing who their mortgage is with, and how much credit card debt they have, or they just have, they're only privy to kind of like the day-to-day expenses like you said, being able to run the household but not seeing the big picture. And that's really important. I'm a big proponent of no matter where you are in your relationship or in life, just to have that financial. Clarity and open financial communication because that's really key. Yeah. Yeah. That is very important. And yeah, even if you're not somebody that is expecting divorce, it's important to get on the page with the other spouse and just kind of collaboratively do this. what made you choose the path of helping people through collaborative divorce? So, I, got my CDFA back in 2015 and I always wanted to help people go through divorce. And the reason why is my mom, I was a child of divorce, she made a lot of decisions with her heart and not her head. And when you're in the throes of divorce, it's so emotionally draining that you're not able to think clearly. To how these decisions will affect me, my family, my retirement, 5, 10, 20 years. You're just trying to get through the day. And so I've kind of made up my mission to really be that voice of reason and help empower to, for people to make more educated decisions throughout that process and really be their financial ally because it's really scary. It's uncharted erritory. They, they don't know. There's not like a rule book like, okay, I get divorced. This is what I do, this is what I say, these are my options. The, the waters are very muddied. And to have that financial ally there I think is very important. And when I started to do some work, I learned about the mediation process and the collaborative process, and I really, really enjoyed it and I dug deeper and. I really loved doing the neutral work, and so I became trained as a mediator in New York and then furthermore got my collaborative training and collaborative divorce is not as well known as I hope it will be, and I hope after this podcast more people know about it. Yeah. And spread the word because it's a really great option that's out there. I try to describe it as like hybrid mediation. Most people know that's kind of like a common day term. two spouses, they hire one person, they're neutral. Sometimes they're attorneys, sometimes they're not, and they kind of help you go back and forth, but it's one person and they're not on anybody's side. And the thought process is it's cheaper and it is quicker, and you're not dealing with the court systems and judges and all that good stuff with collaborative divorce. It's a little. It's a little bit more elevated. There are four professionals, each spouse gets their own collaboratively trained attorney in their corner, and then there is a financial neutral, and then there is a mental health professional, and they act as sort of the facilitator or the parent coordinator. And the four individuals are all collaboratively trained and everybody, including the spouses, take an oath that we are not going to threaten to go to court, and we are going to be fair and respectful and really design the best divorce for this family. That sounds amazing. my first question is about how long . Do one of these take to go from beginning to end. And I know it probably varies but if everybody's working towards the best for all and we're not gonna go to court, but also, there's gotta be that time to think, that time to kind of make the decision instead of in this room in two hours we're going to do this. So share a little bit about that. Yeah, I, I really love the collaborative practice because it does give each person that time alone with their individual, collaboratively trained attorney to kind of process what is most important. I. I really enjoy the fact that there's one financial neutral. Right off the bat, you're saving time and money because you're having one professional, kind of do the financial affidavit, gather all the financial documents, and do that analysis so that everybody's on the same page. And so it's instead of paying each person to have their own kind of document discovery, it's more efficient for time and money and resources. And so that way. Once the financial neutral has all that information sharing, it makes it much easier to kind of see all, all of the balls at play. Where the assets are, where the liabilities are, the income coming in, the expenses going out, and it really depends. So like time-wise, I would say. Three to six months is a good average time for a collaborative case as long as everyone's on the same page and being truthful and sharing documents. A lot of times it's just coordination. But thanks to Covid and Zoom, we don't need to get six people in the same room per se anymore and we can get it on a Zoom call. That is definitely easier. Some cases it's the parenting plan that is kind of the sticking. Point. And having that mental health professional there trained to kind of talk through the options. And then sometimes it's one financial asset, is it the house or is it the family owned business or something? And that's where the financial neutral comes in and. It's great because of having that team approach. We all take our experiences from our past cases and, and we, we create the best for that family and everyone's working towards the common goal. Like, let's get these people to their new, their new normal, their new starting place as peaceful and as fast and as most efficiently as possible. Yeah, that makes sense. So as the financial neutral, I'm assuming you gather information from both sides, collectively and, collecting it all, presenting it to the both. As you are going into those discussions. And you're focused on, not the parenting, but you're focused on either the home or the business. Do you, as the financial planner provide options, like provide alternatives as the part of the discussion? Share with us, how your financial planning expertise kind of aids in this collaborative divorce. It really. It does come into play, and I think that's the beauty of it. Because we're outside of court, we always say, okay, if you were to go to a judge, this, based upon our state, this is what you would get or this is what your options would be. I. But that doesn't have to be the case. The beauty of it is that you can craft what's best for your family. And a lot of the, we take everything into consideration. where is everyone in their careers? Where are the children in their education? it doesn't have to say, okay, we're selling the house today, we're splitting it 50 50. We can say, okay, let's jointly own the house until so and so graduates from high school, and then let's sell the house and that will be better tax wise for us, and that will be better for the children to have stability and that will, be better. And we get to come to the table with kind of those creative outside the box alternatives. Instead of just saying, okay, you take this, I take this, we divide this 50 50. if somebody is going back to work or reentering the workforce, we take that into consideration and say, let's do like a modified alimony, We might be able to do maintenance, but you're while you're going to school. But let's scale that down. There's an incentive, for you to get back into the workplace and working, and then we can readjust those numbers. But especially when there's kids involved. Everybody wants the kids to, to be better off, so we want two healthy parents that get along and the kids are at the forefront of the conversation. And collaborative really allows us that flexibility to focus on what's best for the individual family. And every case is so different. Yeah, that is very interesting. okay. I guess one question I have so you're working on with a couple who is divorcing, kids are gone, married or whatever. Do you still have to have that mental health, that four person, that fourth person, I'm trying to remember what you called her, and if so, what is that? Yeah, there's. We're the family support specialist or the parenting specialist, but they also act as the facilitator to kind of like, okay, they're gonna take the notes and they're going to kind of monitor, make sure that we are not threatening this, we are following through with our meetings and stuff like that. We have had cases where, if there weren't a lot of assets, but there were kids, the family, the. The financial neutral was just brought in, not as a full caseload. And we can, the beauty of it also is like we can bring other specialists in, and it doesn't have to be like a full team of, like everyone has their, their individual attorneys and then as needed, they can have a, financial neutral or the facilitator. Most cases it's four. Some cases it can be three as long as there is a financial neutral there, whether it being the financial or the parenting specialist. But most of the time it's four. Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. That's really interesting too, that you can bring in other specialists, but the core team is typically always four. How common. Is it for collaborative divorce for this type of a team in the various states? I know you're out of New York. Would we be able to find it in other states? Each state has kind of their own collaborative groups that are trained and well-versed in their states. Divorce practices. And it's more common in some states than other states. New York, it's not as common as say California or Florida. And so there we are kind of having this marketing campaign, if you will, for all the professionals who wanna be amicable, who wanna stay outta it. Of court who want people to divorce differently, to spread the word. We're going on podcasts and we're writing articles and blog posts just to let people know that there are other options. People think, okay, we either have to get the biggest shark in town and hire an attorney and go litigate, or we have a mediator. And sometimes you need something in between the two. That's where collaborative falls in. All right. I believe my former state, like mediation was required like that. It's a required first step. So can somebody ask for a collaborative in place of that because it is that level higher. And how do they, how do they best find this option for them? Say they've listened to this episode, they were headed into this, or they're already into this, and they're like, oh my gosh, that would just be so much better if we could just, make this work. How do they go about finding this out in their specific state? Yeah, there is a web website, the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals, and that's a global community, and you can go on there and find different groups within your state or your jurisdiction, or if you just kind of Googled, your state name. And collaborative practice, and I'm sure that it will come up. It is very specific to your state due to the divorce laws and, and so mediation that you are talking about that is required. People think of mediation two different terms, like you said, like an all day mediation. You gotta go, from one room to the other room and kind of back and forth. And it's mandatory. There's also a mediation where instead of going to an attorney. Me that a two spouses hire one professional who is a mediator. And they will help facilitate the divorce and kind of, and they don't, depending if they're an attorney or not an attorney, will they draft the documents or, do that next step to, for the divorce. So there are different kind of variations of mediation as well. Okay. So depending upon when you hear a mediation, I think different people think different things based upon where they are in their state. So maybe to, it's kind of gonna go off track, but maybe to kind of help clarify how, what does somebody do? They're headed into divorce, maybe they're an amicable couple, how do they learn these things to, 'cause I'm thinking. Why are they not presented? And maybe they are. That's what I'm hoping to help people find is presented with all of their options. 'cause it's like typically you do here, it's like, well, I just gotta go hire the best and that's this person. Or you talk to, coworkers or family and they're like, oh my gosh, this was so and so and they got the best but yet. I, I believe I have always believed, the more I know, the better decision I can make. So how do they learn about these options in their state? Absolutely. Yeah. You have to educate yourself, and I am a very big proponent, even outside of collaborative divorce, to build your divorce team. Historically, the first phone call was, let's hire the shark in town, who's gonna get the best outcome? But what does best mean, like best is most expensive, longest, and you're gonna send that attorney's child to a very nice private school. It's not necessarily best for your family. I always say the first phone call should be a divorce coach because the coach is going to help you emotionally. Ride that wave. 'cause it's not a direct line from like, I wake up, okay, I want a divorce. And then, there's steps one, two, and three, and then you're divorced. It never goes like that. It's, it's a rollercoaster of emotions. Am I doing the right thing? Should I do it? Should we try it? Should we separate? I think we're making progress, so having that divorce coach. Will really help you emotionally and that person will then, depending upon your relationship and your marriage and your individual family, really can help connect you to the other players that you need. And that might be A-C-D-F-A and A-C-D-F-A will really help. To financially prepare you for divorce, no matter which way you go, whether you go mediation, collaborative, or full on litigation, you're gonna have to know your numbers, we're gonna have to find our statements. We're going to have to create a balance sheet, we're gonna have to go through a cash flow, and those things aren't as easy as they used to be. I can barely get into my own bank account sometimes, let alone break into my husband's bank accounts with two, two factor authentication and all the codes. And, I'm constantly resetting passwords 'cause I never remember how many characters and special, letters I need. But back in the day, you can just go to the mailbox, like the, the advice was go to the mailbox, find out who your mortgage is with, find out how much money is in the bank, who is, because if you are not the CFO of the family. And you're running the day to day, but you don't know where to look or what to look for. A lot of it's electronic, which makes it harder. To start that process earlier and people always think like, oh, a team, it's gonna cost so much more money, you have so many more people, but because everybody's hourly rate is different, we're not charge. We're not paying a lawyer's fee. To deal with our venting, like that's the divorce coach. We don't wanna pay a lawyer's consultation rate to do financial discovery because they don't know, quite frankly, what we're looking at statement wise or what we're missing or what information we need. You hire A-C-D-F-A and those two people, that Certified Divorce Coach and the certified Divorce Financial Analyst together can prepare you and then lead you. Hey, should we go mediation? Should we go collaborative? Or do we need that shark? And, it's really important to build your team and to feel that support around you. So important. It's been probably many years that I always talk about building your financial team. I think it's really key to. Think of every situation and bringing in a team because one person helping you is good, but to have multiple people in your, court and helping you cover all of the things is just so very important. This has been such a great discussion, Melissa. Before we end any last words and then how can people connect with you to learn more? If you would like more information about the collaborative process, I urge you to reach out to your individual states and the IACP to look into, professionals. But really I'm a big proponent of building your divorce team. My company is called Mindful Divorce Partners and I'm happy to. Connect you, no matter where you are, are across the country. I have contacts and colleagues around in different various groups that I've trained with, and so I offer complimentary consultations no matter where you are in the divorce process. Maybe you just have a few questions or not sure what to look for, what questions to ask when interviewing. I'm really open and love to connect and help people and support you because it's a very hard journey and we all need to be supported. Thank you for that. All of her con, connection information will be down in the show notes, go connect with her if you have questions or needs or anything. Melissa, thank you for being here. We appreciate this. Have a great day. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you.