The Greek Chorus

In ancient Greek plays, there would often be a group of people in the background who commented (through song, dance, and spoken lines) upon the action going on between the main characters on stage. We call this the "Greek Chorus". Today when divorce lawyers talk about the "Greek Chorus", we are talk...

Pro Se Legal Services

On Tuesday I spoke at a Continuing Legal Education program on Pro Se Legal Services, also known as Unbundled Legal Services. I am hoping to inspire more attorneys to offer this type of service (all of the attorneys in our office do). I like to think of this as the a la carte approach to law. Typi...

Tips For A “Good” Divorce

While people generally do not refer to a divorce as a good thing, some divorces can go much better than others. A good article I saw recently is "Ten Golden Rules for a Good Divorce" by Dr. Constance Ahrons. I would tend to reduce these even further to three basic principles:...

Relationship Planning

Years ago when my spouse and I were planning to get married, we attended a workshop on pre-marriage planning. As part of the workshop we spent time discussing our values, personalities, and other things that go into making up who we each are. However, I think the most valuable thing we did was discu...

Attachment Theory

At a conference last week there was an interesting workshop on attachment theory, presented by Yuval Berger and Lisa Alexander from Vancouver, BC. While I have heard talks on attachment theory before, I thought they presented it in a particularly helpful way (as a lawyer I can get lost in psychologi...

Do You WANT A Nasty Divorce?

In a recent article entitled How to Have the Nastiest Divorce Possible, Andrea Vacca wrote about several ways to guarantee the a divorce will be long, expensive, and bitter. Of course her purpose is not actually to encourage nasty divorces; it is intended to point out some of the things people can d...

Stages of Readiness for Divorce

Typically at the beginning of a divorce, the two spouses are at very different stages of readiness for the divorce process. There is usually one spouse that we characterize as the "Leavor". This is the one who has been contemplating the divorce for some time and is now letting the other spouse know...

Spouse Baiting

Mark Alexander writes: During a divorce, your spouse or the other attorney may say or do outrageous things to goad you. Some people deliberately “push your buttons” to cause an uncharacteristic response, inviting you to sink to their level. To the extent they succeed in provoking an emotional...