You Did Everything Right. They Still Won't Settle.

0:00The topic of this episode is when fire is necessary, and that is talking about trials. And I wanna demystify trials for you if you're in that experience. So 95% of cases settle, 5%, don't. I'm sad if you're in that situation, but if you are in that situation, I really think this is an important episode because there's no game playing now. Not gonna be able to settle. You gotta put yourself forward in the best possible way and you need to understand how the system really works. So that's focus our lens on this very narrow aspect of divorce, which is the trial. Okay, now just to calm me down, I mean, you could've been doing everything right. You could be watching this podcast, you could read my book, thank you, by the way, and thank you for doing this work. This is hard work. You could be taking that 24-hour pause. You could be rising above, taking the smart road.

1:01You could be proactive and not reactive. You could be flexible in your positions. You could be making those deposits. You could be doing everything right is what I'm telling you. And the other side is inflexible. And they're not settling, they're not moving. And you're in a lot of trouble now because you've been in a divorce for years, potentially. You spent a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of energy. And now you got this trial looming, which is budget busting. So I feel for you, but you did nothing wrong necessarily. It looks like it'd be really difficult. You know, I tell people you can't negotiate with terrorists, they just want to blow us up, nothing we can do. And that's sometimes how it is. Okay, so I want to tell you a little bit about trials. I want to talk about three versions of trials for divorce. Divorce trials has a different flavor than other trials. This is not dealing with criminal cases, not corporate cases, this is just people. And when people are involved,

2:01a lot of it's about psychology, human psychology, human behavior. So let me give you the first flavor, which is the bluff. The bluff weaponizes the fact that the trial cost is a lot with the preparation for trial. Preparing for trial is a lot of work. It's a pain. It is like a second full time job. It is hard to do, to do right. And the bluff is pushing you. You see this because in divorce, the plaintiff usually has to go first. Okay, the plaintiff goes first. They have to put on their case. They have to be the ones to call the first witness. The defendant can be a little bit less prepared starting the trial. And as the defendant is taking a position that's in fantasy, that's outside the realm of what's gonna really happen, they could push you to trial. But what happens is you come prepared, you don't change your position, you call their bluff.

3:03And the next thing you know, after doing all that work, and you finally get to that first day of trial, they settle. Why do they settle? Because they're pushing you. They weaponized the trial process. And that's the bluff. Okay, the second flavor is we're gonna call the release foul. Sometimes in a very emotional divorce, maybe a long-term marriage. There's been a lot of bad blood. You know, you might feel really wrong in many different ways. And the settlement's not really doing it for you. They're being a little low in your opinion. And you feel forced to have your day in court. You want what you want, but they're not moving. And you feel the only way to get forward, to go forward is for the judge to hear you. Hear your concerns. Could you feel your story is gonna resonate? A side note, the judge heard a lot of different stories generally and probably not gonna happen. It might happen, but the trial is not necessary

4:04for the judge. And the release foul, the trial is for you. And you might need your day in court. You might need to take the stand. You might need to express how you've been feeling the wrong, the manipulation. Maybe the financial abuse. Maybe even the real emotional abuse. And you feel when you say all this, it's really gonna change everyone's minds, especially the judges. I call it the release foul because maybe after you've taken the stand, after they cross-examine you, you know, after your direct testimony cross-examine by the other side, after you are done, with only you as a witness, maybe then, if you have a wise judge, maybe there's some settlement discussions. And maybe the other side after hearing you, because they've been hearing you this whole time in the trial, both people there are a trial. Maybe there's some movement. And maybe you can move a little bit more too because you have that release. All right, the third flavor is, that's just called the full distance. This is the real deal. These are two people in polarized positions.

5:06They need their day in court. They're gonna go forward and they both go forward. The only difference here is after the trial. When I say after the trial, that means the testimonies concluded, all the witnesses are finished, all the documents are submitted. At that point, there's an opportunity even then to have a settlement discussion. And that could be with a wise judge. And they could say, you know, do you want to talk settlement? Now I heard everything. I made, I can render a decision, but maybe we can discuss things. And the reason you might wanna do that is a couple of reasons. First, the decision doesn't come back next day. This is not federal express. The decision could come back in months. It can come back in years. Yes, I said years. I've waited up to two years for a decision. All right, so let's put our lawyer hat on. And I want us to relate to this trial experience by thinking about the ER. I've been thinking about the ER because I've been watching that show on HBO, the pit, which I fully recommend by the way.

6:09And, you know, the way they triage new patients in the ER reminds me a lot of the court system. Because a lot of times you're waiting, as you see people, unless you have an emergency situation coming in on an ambulance, you're waiting, takes hours to finally see a doctor or a nurse, and then they triage you, try to do everything they can, and then if they can't figure it out, they send you this upstairs to surgery. And I think that's really how the court system's working. They triage you with these conferences and the surgery is to trials, right? And they're trying to do everything they can with all the services available, you know, with mediation, with settlement, with strong arming, anything that works to get you into reality mode. All right, so think about that. And I also want to speak directly to two different types of people who are going through trial. One, you can be the one being dragged. If you're being dragged to trial because the other side is taking fantasy positions, that's a tough place to be.

7:09And either you're going to have to leave a lot of money on the table or really change your positions or you got to get ready for war. And if you're the one who's pushing for trial, just make sure your positions are sound and they're not sound and you're just doing this to weaponize the process and get back at your partner because of bad blood. You know, the type of person who rather spend $100,000, you know, they can set a little case that's safe for $10,000, but they rather spend $100,000 with their attorneys so they don't have to pay the other side $10,000. I would say therapy. I would say a lot of therapy, a lot of work because that makes no sense at all. Pay the $10,000, give the $90,000 to donation of something positive, not to the attorneys. My core message is sometimes trial is necessary. And if it is, you need to be prepared for it. All right, here's our action step. And it really works on one word, but I want to take it from two different advantage points.

8:10The word is committed. First for you, are you committed? Really committed. Are you ready to take the time, the energy, the money, the emotion? Are you ready to do this work? This is hard work trials. You know, you gotta be on stage. A lot of the divorce is off stage, preparing, but in the trial, you're on stage. Are you ready to do this? For your attorney, are they committed? You know, one thing I've seen with attorneys is you know, trials hard work, go into court's hard work, patrols another layer of hard work. And it's a real craft. And unfortunately, if 95% of cases settle, you can imagine how little trial, time, divorce attorneys actually get. We're not criminal attorneys always going to court, you know, or personal injury attorneys, always going to court. If 95% of cases settle, it takes many years to build up that bank of experience.

9:13So if you have an attorney who's a little inexperienced, and I would say anything under 20 years is inexperienced, here's what I want you to think of. And it does, you know, some attorneys with five years experience can do this. I don't want you to think that, but at least if they have 20, they probably have been through the war many times over. But here's what I want you to think of. Are they committed for you? Are they willing to block out their schedule? You know, trials don't happen day to day. And that's a big fallacy. They don't happen day to day. And what I mean by that, the judge might schedule two days here, maybe two days in a few months, maybe three days next year. Only if it's serious, are they going to, you know, some serious emergency issue, are they going to schedule it really quickly? And sometimes ask the system where are you down? So as your attorney committed, do they have faith in your position? Do you feel that they really have faith and they believe in you? Or they just be an expert for hire,

10:14doing it because they're getting paid? And if they're inexperienced, do they have that fear? Because if they have that fear or just lack of commitment, then they may be influencing your settlement positions in a way that's against what you want. So think about all that while you're going through this process. As I said before, I appreciate you doing this hard work. You know, I'm sorry you're here at trial. This is the end of the road. You're going to get through it though. It's going to be hard. If you're prepared, you're going to get through it. And one thing I want to say is, when I was a young attorney, a judge said to me, you know, for every hour you're at trial, you got to spend three hours preparing. So I'm a little more conservative. I said for every hour on trial, I spend five hours preparing. That's how serious we're doing. You know, that's the kind of serious that we're talking about. You know, six, seven, eight versions of things

11:15to make sure everything is curated tight that it's framed in the best way possible. That's the type of work you're going to be doing. And it can be done. You just got to block it out and schedule it and have the budget for it. Okay, so next episode, we're going to finish this series on the court system on the attorneys with a scenario, Albright's going to run through everything. In one episode, make sure everything is buttoned up before we move on to our last series of the season, which is getting your life back. That's phase three. You know, phase one was get clarity, which is where this podcast and book lies. Phase two is get going. You know, finally hire that divorce attorney, move forward with your divorce. And phase three, get your life back. Now you're done. We're going to touch on that at the end, to leave you with some hope for a better future. I'm Corey Shapiro. This is getting divorced without losing your mind. That's step four with clarity together. This podcast offers general information only. It cannot replace legal advice.

12:16If you need tailored advice, contact an attorney license to practice in your area.