Your Spouse Hiding Documents? This is How It Backfires

Picture this. You are in a divorce action and come to point where you have to send out discovery

demands because you need some documents, you need some information. So you send out discovery

demands, your spouse sends discovery demands to you and you're supposed to respond to the

discovery demands within a certain time frame. And on that time frame, on that date, you produce

what you were required to produce. But your spouse doesn't. No documents come.

So your attorney reaches out and they say, where are the documents? They say, oh, you know,

I'm just a little backed up. Just give me a week. But after that week, nothing comes.

What do you do? And you're worried because you thought this was going to be more of a cooperative

divorce. And now you're realizing this is competitive and things are escalating. And you don't

know what to do. Welcome to the Get in Divorce without losing your mind podcast. I am Corey Shapiro.

And today we're going to talk about what happens when things go wrong and what to do about it.

And let me share a story that's going to bring this home during a divorce. I believe this is in

most cases here in New York, you're not allowed to take off your spouse from your health insurance.

Can't just cancel the health insurance. But I don't think there's any rules about having health

insurance during the marriage. So what I've seen happen is, let's say go to the doctor's office,

you're not in a divorce action. And doctor tells you, oh, your health insurance didn't go through.

There's an issue. I'm like, what? I always had health insurance. What's the issue?

And you call up your spouse and they say, oh, yeah, I just didn't renew the policy.

Didn't renew the policy. And you're wondering, what's going on here?

Well, what's going on here is their pre divorce plan, possibly. And you thought you were in a bad

space if you're marriage, you didn't realize that there was actually going to be a divorce.

And now you're behind. And you're wondering, you know, do I escalate? Do I get an attorney and

be aggressive like my spouses or is a part of you thinking, is this a trap? In a divorce,

there's really only three big things we're fighting for. There's one, if you have them, children,

you know, establishing a parenting plan, custody issues, two cash flow or support. That's the child

support. That's the alimony or maintenance or spousal support, whatever it's called in your state.

And then there's dividing property in New Yorkers called equitable distribution. But there's

also community property states just dividing property assets and also debt. And those are the big

issues, right? And you have to think about, well, where does this one issue health insurance lie?

Is it my top three priorities? Because if it's not, do I have the budget? Do I have the energy?

Do I have the money? Do other resources to fight everything? That's what I want you to think about.

So in this health insurance example, can you just pay for your own health insurance?

Because if you go to court and escalate and spend so much money on health insurance,

then how are you going to focus on your top three issues? That's what I want you to understand.

All right. Now, I know what you might be saying. I might be saying, hey, Corey, I don't know my top

three priorities. You know, I didn't even want to get divorced. I'm blindsided. I'm thrashing

around here. What do you want from me? If you're in that situation, then I appreciate that.

I appreciate that. And that's why we do a lot of the work here. But you're going to have to start

focusing, even though you're not going to feel ready, you're going to have to start focusing on

what's important to you. We're going to work on that. And that's why you're here.

Know what you also might be saying? Hey, you know, go to court. I don't know. I don't know what's

going to happen. You know, maybe I'll just give up. That's true. There's a lot of uncertainty going

to court. But I don't want you to think about it in a defeatist, you know, attitude. I want you

to think about talking to your attorney. What's important to you? What's realistic? What can you

achieve? Also, I might be hearing the judges bias. They're going to be against me. Therefore,

them, they're against men, they're against women. I don't have a chance. Listen, judges are human.

They're going to have biases. But if you act appropriately, maybe the judge will give you

a second chance. Maybe initially they have some bias feelings, but your job and your attorney's

job is to advocate and convince them and persuade. So all is not lost just because the judge may have

some initial biases. What I wanted to think about, maybe to bring this home is I was watching Roger

Federer give a commencement speech for Dartmouth on YouTube. And he said he won 80% of his matches.

He did about 1500 matches, 180% but he only won 54% of the points. I mean, he lost basically

every other point, but he won so much because he played the big moments. And that's what I want you

to think about. So my core message to you is there's a difference between giving up, giving up the

things that are important to your top three, you know, most important things you need in your

divorce. If it's cash flow, I really need this as one of my top threes. And I need a certain amount

and I talked to my financial advisor and these are the expenses you did some research.

Or are you letting go and letting go is things that are not your top three, not super important for

you because you could do it, you know, yourself. For example, maybe you can pay for your own health

insurance. And that's something not to fight over, not to waste a budget over. So let me give you

one tiny action step to bring this home. First, I want you to get into a space or receptive space.

I want you to do the breathing in for six seconds. Do it with me. Breathe out for six seconds.

And I want you to start visualizing five years from now. Doing five years because I think that's

even in the most contentious divorce, probably going to be over. Hopefully, it could be seven years

but to say five years. And I want you to think of one of your top priorities, something you're

willing to really fight for, something that's super important to you, something that you super

need. This may evolve this issue, but right now, what is that one thing you want? Think about that.

And then bring yourself back to the present and start thinking, how can I get there? How can I

get there? You know, I'm trying to get you to prioritize. I'm trying to get you to the

permission that you're not going to be able to win everything. You know, Roger Federer did not win

every point. It's sort of the idea of the 80 20 rule. 80% is noise. Not going to be able to get

what you want, but there's 20%. That's really important. And that's what we want to focus on.

All right. Next episode, we're going to do something different. We're going to do our first

scenario lab of the season. A scenario lab is we're going to go through it step by step.

It made me think of, you know, tennis lessons where you're practicing in the lesson,

but then you play and it's very different and you're all discombobulated. And that's why we're

going to do this. We're going to run through some of the ideas we talked about in this podcast

up to this point. And we're going to go through it in real time. I'm Corey Shapiro. Let's step forward

with clarity together. This podcast offers general information only. It cannot replace legal advice.

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