Good Divorce Expert: How to Get Divorced Without Destroying Your Kids

If you're getting divorced, don't call a lawyer until you watch this…

Getting divorced without destroying your family is possible, and most people are never told about it.

In this episode of the Health Pioneers Podcast, Jim Rohr head of marketing at Healthpreneur, talks to Karen McNenny who explains why the divorce system is built for conflict and how families can take a completely different path.

Karen is a divorce consultant with 25 years of experience in corporate mediation and human behavior.

She is the host of The Good Divorce Show, founder of The Good Divorce Academy, and author of the book The Good Divorce: How to End Your Marriage Without Ending Your Family.

She guides couples from the day they decide to divorce through the final decree with less debt and less damage than the traditional process.

In this conversation, Karen shares why calling a lawyer should not be your first step.

She explains how to tell your kids, how to handle living arrangements, when to start dating, and how to keep your co-parenting relationship strong for years to come.

She also breaks down why most couples spend $20,000 to $30,000 per spouse on legal fees when her clients typically spend less than $5,000 total.

What we cover in this episode:

00:00 Why the divorce system is designed to hurt your family
02:13 Why lawyers are built for conflict not cooperation
05:25 How to protect your co-parenting relationship long term
06:30 How business consulting skills fix broken divorce processes
07:58 Why divorce is not covered under family medical leave
11:55 Warning signs your marriage is already over
16:00 The grief of divorce no one talks about
18:36 How to tell your kids about divorce the right way
22:36 Why you should not rush to tell the kids
25:35 When to start dating during a divorce
29:49 How to split assets without destroying each other
39:40 Why you should stop saying mom's house and dad's house
41:19 Best tips for kids transitioning between two homes
44:13 How to get divorced without expensive lawyers
49:37 Divorce is a tool of transformation not a weapon
50:23 What the Good Divorce Academy offers parents


Answered In This Episode:

Should I call a lawyer first when getting divorced?

How do you tell your kids about divorce?

What is a good divorce?


Find Karen McNinney:
Podcast: The Good Divorce Show
Book (2026): The Good Divorce, How to End Your Marriage Without Ending Your Family (Wiley Press)
Website: https://www.karenmcnenny.com/


Health Pioneers Podcast

If you’ve ever left a medical appointment feeling rushed, dismissed, or more confused than when you walked in, you’re not alone.

Health Pioneers is a podcast featuring clinicians and health practitioners who looked at the conventional system and decided to do things differently.

Each episode highlights a practitioner who stepped off the beaten path to build a better way of helping patients…one focused on root causes, deeper thinking, and care that actually makes sense.

These are thoughtful conversations about how great practitioners think, what they see that others miss, and why they chose a different path.

Health Pioneers is a Healthpreneur production hosted by Jim Rohr, our head of marketing at Healthpreneur.

 Healthpreneur is on a mission to help the best health experts serve the most people, and Jim has spent the past 20 years as a practitioner, author, and advocate for root-cause medicine.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Divorce is a tool of transformation, not a dumpster fire. The system is built for conflict, not cooperation. That's where our perspective needs to shift. Who's gonna help us know how to be divorced?

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Now what?

SPEAKER_01 0:14

I'm really setting out to protect that future for the children and not be living across enemy lines for the rest of your life. I don't want kids to have to negotiate their parents on their wedding day.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

This is the most important conversation we've had on the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

We have to educate the public that there's a different option.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Should we start with lawyers?

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Let's start with the lawyers.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

All right, welcome. Today I am with Karen McNinny, and she's the leading agitator in dismantling the divorce industrial complex as we know it. She's the host of The Good Divorce Show, founder of the Good Divorce Academy, and published the book, The Good Divorce: How to End Your Marriage Without Ending Your Family. Using her 25 years of consulting expertise, she guides couples from date of decision through date of dissolution, and she does it with less debt and less destruction than traditional divorce methods. Thanks so much for being here.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

It's my pleasure, Jim. Thanks for giving me a microphone to talk about this important subject.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

I am so pumped for this conversation because if there was ever an industry that needed to be turned inside out and uh just completely revamped, it is the divorce industry.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Yes, we have the divorce industrial complex as a culture have drunk the Kool-Aid and agreed that if you're getting divorced, it probably means uh a war and enemy lines. And it just not only does it not need to be that way, it should not be that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Yes, I agree completely. As a guy who is divorced and now remarried, I have gone through it firsthand, so I have a lot of strong opinions about all of this.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Yes, and I also am a survivor. Uh, 14 years ago, we moved into two homes and have always just thought of ourselves as a two-home family, not a broken family, not a failed family, just a two-home family.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Beautiful. So there is so much that is uh, let's just call it wrong in the industry. Where do you want to begin? Should we start with lawyers?

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Well, I uh let's start with the lawyers. And and I'm gonna give a shout out because the attorneys are doing precisely what they're trained to do, which is to protect their client and get as much for them as possible. And they're doing it inside a system that is built for conflict, not cooperation. So that I think is, you know, the starting gate is where we get it wrong. Because right out of the bat uh or right out of the shoot, we've identified that we've gonna turn you both into enemies, mom and dad, and and you're gonna fight, and it becomes a scarcity game. Rather than seeing this as a family event with a legal component, we have handed it over as a legal event with a little bit of a family component. And I think that's where our perspective needs to shift.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Yeah, I remember when we, you know, we wanted to end the marriage and we wanted it to be as peaceful as possible. So we're like, let's let's go to a mediator instead of like lawyering up. But even at the mediator, the very first session, she's like, okay, cool, hands us both like a sheet of paper uh with all of the places where we might have money, yes, or assets. And it was just like make a list of what you've got. And it just felt like we were being sized up, not for our own good, but for the attorneys. And they'd just be like, How much money is the attorney gonna get from this? Yeah. What are we what are we looking at?

SPEAKER_01 3:38

How big is that estate?

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

And how can we divide it? And and what piece of the pie are they gonna get? And unfortunately, again, the system is built so that they are in many ways financially incentivized for long-drawn-out, high conflict proceedings. There is no incentive for them to move through a process in a cooperative fashion. Not all attorneys, and again, it's it's not always the people, it's the process that is working against families.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Aaron Powell Yeah, we see it a lot in the medical world. Is you know, it's very similar, right? The big uh pharmaceutical industry. And it's not that the doctors themselves are bad, it's just that they they were trained within a system that does pretty well when people are managing a condition as opposed to reversing it. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

And I really believe that we should focus on the family before the finances. And that's just another thing that we we forget that a lawyer is gonna get you divorced, but who's gonna help us know how to be divorced? That's the long shadow of divorce that goes on forever. And just because a marriage is ending where there's children concerned, your relationship is not ending. You have a forever relationship. And within the good divorce movement, I'm really setting out to protect that future and protect that future for the children so that you can enjoy graduation and grandbabies and not be living across enemy lines for the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

That's such important work. I mean, I can't sing like these praises enough because it like You're right. There was no, you know, the concern for the kid was like, okay, what is custody gonna look like? What's happening with the holidays? Who gets the odd years, who gets the even years? And that was like the extent of and any of the sort of conversation with the attorneys.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Yes. And attorneys, again, God love them, they're not trained. They're not social workers, they're not, you know, co-parent experts. And what matters to the court are dates and dollars, exactly that. We gotta have who's paying for what and where's the kid gonna be when? But what happens when that child becomes a teenager? Now they have a driver's license. Who's paying for the car? What are the curse us? Um, do we have the same sort of expectations across homes? I decide that, you know, our child has um lost their privileges of their phone. But in the middle of that grounding, they transition to their other home. Does that carry over? Can we have that kind of consistency? So preserving the co-parenting relationship is what creates the consistency for the children. And that's what they need. They need a team that's still working for them through their childhood.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

I'm really curious about your business background and how that, like how the work that you've done within companies is translating so well to the work that you're doing with Famlords.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Really interesting question. And at first I didn't see the parallel, right? Always the last one to see it. Uh, for the better part of 25 years as a business consultant, I've worked as a mediator in the workplace, helped organizations navigate big significant changes. Really, I say I'm I'm the human behavior relationship expert at work. It's all the invisible stuff that impacts visible outcome. So as I started working with families, I realized it's a lot of similar roles. If we had a project manager to just help us get things done, that it removes a little bit of that emotional component. A communications director. If there's going to be a big significant change in an organization, we usually start at the executive level and then we let our leadership team know, and then the managers, and then we have our floaters, but it's it's a very uh deliberate and intentional communication plan. So I bring those sorts of things into the work I do with families as well. So they have a project manager, they have a communications director, they have risk management. Sometimes I'm a referee, and sometimes I'm holding the space as a therapist as they go through the rupture of uncoupling. Um, it is uh, I think, an experience that as a culture we really underestimate the impact and the grease that families in divorce are going through.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

And you were telling me uh last night that uh well, how do you say that the divorce is like basically ignored in HR departments?

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Yeah, so many people are familiar with FMLA and the Family Medical Leave Act, which exists to support employees when they're going through a significant change. So it might be the birth of a child, it might be the death of a spouse or a family member, it might be your own cancer treatment, uh, any big event, what it does is it's gonna protect your job while you go take care of that crisis. Divorce is not covered in the Family Medical Leave Act. And the research shows us that divorce is the second most stressful event that an adult will go through, second to death of spouse. And yet somehow divorce sort of got shoved off into this cave of isolation and shame. And, you know, maybe you you asked for this, uh, there's not support for it. But I I don't know about you, but when I was going through my divorce, kind of a worthless person for a while. There's days you're scraping yourself off the bathroom floor, lots of distraction, extra meetings, and sometimes the people you're working alongside don't even know about it, let alone your immediate manager. And so that is the intersection where I'm really reaching out to organizations. And if we if we can't change policy, let's change culture and create a space where employees feel supported and um that they have some resources and education.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Yeah, it really just underscores to me that the like as a as a society and a culture that's in a lot of ways sort of normalized divorce. Like everyone knows someone that's divorced or going through a divorce, uh, but it's like we haven't caught up with all of the other emotional, as you said, it's kind of like invisible tendrils that uh surround it, and people are just sort of left to figure it out on their own.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Yeah, we we teach people how to drive a car. We've got books on pregnancy and raising kids. You know, you can learn just about anything in this day and age, but we have not harnessed divorce as an event that we can teach people how to do it well. We just continue to identify it as a legal event. But what we're doing is not destroying the family, we're restructuring the family. It's more of a renovation, not a teardown. We don't want to tear that house down. We need to renovate. And and I would even suggest that, you know, part of the damage that gets done is when people just stay too long. And and then you're already running out of a house that's on fire versus recognizing this might be coming to an end. And and that's the work I I often did in corporations. When why do you still have this employee that is toxic to your culture? And they've been a problem child for years. You know, they say breaking up is hard to do, and we are terrible at breakups, and so we put them off, and the longer you delay, the more difficult it will be rather than seeing there's there's the off-ramp. Can we make an elegant exit? And I would even say, what if we left while there was still love? Or at least like, right? I don't expect all parents to come through divorce and to be friends. But can we be friendly? Can we create enough of an experience that we haven't destroyed what that future is gonna be? I don't want kids to have to negotiate their parents on their wedding day. Who gets to come to the rehearsal dinner? Don't set them by each other, are they bringing their new partner? Right? We can prevent that early intervention and prevention much earlier on in the process.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

What are some signs uh that you have seen with people that you've worked with that like, hey, maybe now it's better that we sort of end this now as opposed to later? Are there any sort of warning signs that you have sort of tuned into or become uh that you that you can see from the outside?

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Well, I think it kind of goes like this, Jim, that we divorce is so loaded, right? And and we spend a lot of time and effort avoiding it. We can change anything in our life. Change your hair, change your job, change wherever you move, change your major, but don't change the status of your marriage. And and we have that devoted mantra, as long as we both shall live. I'd like to put a twist on that, as long as we both shall love. And we often know our truth long before we speak it. We know when that love is eroding. And it might not even be love. To me, it's an alchemy. It's that that chemical interaction between two people that maybe at one point worked very well, and through a variety of life changes, um, aging process, wanting different things at different times, the chemistry changes. But I hear so many people say, well, it's not like they're beating me. It's not like there's infidelity happening. It's not as if, right, and there's this whole litany of unless these horrible things are happening, then I cannot justify dissolving my marriage. So what do we do? We stay, and these very difficult sabotaging behaviors start to show up. Addictions appear, infidelity, and that could be financial as well as intimate. Um, our our focus gets pulled away from the family or our spouse into something else until we've created a hot mess, so then we can say to the judge and jury of our friends and family and whoever is important to you to say, see how bad this is, rather than knowing we're headed down a path that is only a one-way road. So let's make the elegant exit now.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

And I think so much of what doesn't work in marriages comes down to compatibility. That's what I find. Um and again, that can change over time, as people do change over time.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

I had, I remember I was in uh I was in the in the middle of a meditation. It was like some like sound meditation thing that I was that I was participating in. And uh I remember I'm sort of like I heard this voice that was like, if you didn't care what people thought, what would you do? Now, things in the marriage weren't great, but they weren't terrible. There wasn't like infidelity, there wasn't like there wasn't that thing. The house wasn't on fire. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Um, but I hadn't ever consciously thought about getting divorced because I was just like, my dad, my parents got divorced, like I'm not, I don't want to, I don't want to do that. Right. But then I was like, you know, it was in this kind of subconscious state or whatever, this relaxing state. And it was like, this little voice was like, if you didn't care what people thought, what would you do? And before I could like consciously think, I saw the words fly out of my mouth, like I'd get divorced. Yeah. And I saw it like fly, and I was like, I wanted to like reach for it and pull it, pull it back in. And then I was just like, Boy, and this like weight just like fell off of me. And then I was like, it was like it was all happened so fast, right? But then there was like this immediate, like sort of body release, followed immediately by uh oh. Now what? Now what? Right? But what what's the reason I'm telling this story is like it's it's always so interesting to me that the like the question that got me there was what would you do if you didn't care what other people thought about you? Which just sort of shows like to that social pressure and the jury, the judge and jury of our peers, and like that whole the the stigma around it and just like all of that convoluted mets.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Yes. And and we all buy into it, yeah. And because of that, I think a lot of people going through divorce end up going through it in isolation. And that doesn't help anyone. You know, I sometimes joke if if my husband had died, someone would have showed up with a casserole. I never got one casserole for getting divorced. Yeah. And it is a death experience. There's so much unresolved grief and really underestimated grief. You know, I my marriage died, my identity as a wife and partner died, my family structure, as we would ever know it again, died. My my job as a full-time parent died. And sometimes part of our community dies. Who's taking the church? Who when can you go to the gym? These friends are mine, these friends are yours, right? Everything is about division. And, you know, part of why I started my podcast, The Good Divorce Show, was to bring couples on together who have found another way so that we can begin to hear and understand that. And even when I'm working with couples currently, I guide them to write a public service announcement to their community of peers or co-workers. Uh you know, as a writer, journalists will say, write your own headline and stay ahead of the press so that nobody else is hijacking that story and adding fuel to the fire. Because I have a lot of couples who are coming down the good divorce path with me, and then they have all these shadow figures in there, you better get a lawyer, you better, you're gonna get screwed over. Because we all still have that narrative. Like that's the only path. So we'll write a letter, you know, and do ghostwriting with them to their community that, you know, just lets them know we've made this decision. Of course, it's heartbreaking. You don't have to avoid us, you don't have to pick sides, and please don't ask us why. Just ask us how we're doing. And then we extend that communication to the circle of support around the kids. So that might be their coaches or teachers, um, the ballet, uh, dance studio, those that are important to the children so that the kids also aren't wondering who knows, who doesn't know, do I have to tell them? Nobody has to do anything. Sometimes it's just a knowing so that we're not walking around with a question mark over our head of who knows, who doesn't know. And usually the response after couples send that message out to their circle of support, they get all sorts of love. Then they we have to retrain the public about how to navigate and support people going through divorce.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

This is like so refreshing to you. It's really unbelievable. It's like, because there's just not like there's not a lot of this like modeled out there. You know, it's like you're you're this is like maybe the most important conversation we've had on this show. It's like it's it's just so valuable. I mean, thinking about when my parents got divorced, you know, there was no, there was no communication. I mean, well, I guess let's talk about you know, talking to the kids, right? Because like for for my parents, it was like my dad got a job in another city, and I was like, when's dad coming back? And I was like, well, you you know, you'll fly out once a month to see him. Like, and that's like that's like the extent pretty much of the communication happened, right? And then after that, it was like, you know, it's just what it was, what it was. Um heart breaks for you.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

I you know really, and we're talking about pioneering, right? All of us in this pioneering space. I I built the business I was looking for 15 years ago. And, you know, dad and I were in marriage couples therapy. That's where a lot of divorces kick off. Save the marriage. And we worked hard, and you should, you know, listeners, I want you to know that there is value in your own work and the work of the couple, and we should fight for our marriages. And anyone who says, Oh, they're just getting divorced, it's the easy way out. That person has never been through a divorce. There is nothing easy about it. Yep. And we came up against that wall, recognizing we're gonna dissolve our marriage. And I turned to our therapist, like, okay, well, can we keep working with you? And she said, She looked like I had three heads. She said, I don't understand. I said, Well, we don't know what we're doing. We don't know how to tell our kids. I mean, there's gotta be information. Like, we're gonna screw things up if we don't have any guidance. She said we could come back for one more session, which was just to sort of point us in the right direction. And and she shared a few important tenets, you know, remembering that you have a forever relationship, do no more harm, and your kids need to always, you know, be in the center of of those conversations. So we navigated our way, like, well, we're gonna sit down and talk to our kids. And, you know, he and I are both performing artists, which means you have a script, you have rehearsals, you practice before you get on the most important stage. And it it is the first thing I do with couples is we talk about the conversation. If I get them before they've already told the kids, because how we begin is often how we end. And this starting gate of announcing it to your community and to your children, one of the beautiful things is I right away galvanize parents together. So tell me about your kids. How is your son gonna react? What does your daughter need? They have an age difference. Is this two different conversations? Does it happen after school on a Thursday before they go to a soccer game? Probably not. And I see the wheels turning of, oh my gosh, there's a lot of things to take into consideration. So I might spend a month with a a family just preparing them for the announcement, making sure that they're ready, that they're solid, and that they sit down together with their child. And it's a we so that the children from the very beginning, they don't have to pick loyalties, they're not divided. The thing that is never changing is our love for you. And no one will ever love that child. Child as much as your co-parent, even outside of marriage. That is a unique story that the two of you share. And we should be doing a better job as a culture in showing people how to protect that so that it doesn't have the negative ricochet effect that we see when children are growing up in high conflict situations.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

So you're okay with uh like the couple decides this is the road they're gonna take. You're okay with being taking your time before you tell the kids. That it doesn't have to be like we've decided and now you should know because we don't want to be keeping secrets from you or like whatever the other kind of nonsense.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Yeah, and I and I see parents come to me with with a panic and uh they're like, we have to tell the kids tomorrow. Like, what why? Because we've decided. Okay, and why tomorrow? Well, because we've decided. I said, You're not ready. You are not ready. Well, we don't want to be deceitful. And my response is, well, deceit is very different than discretion. And discretion is a valuable tool for parents. There's lots of things we don't tell our kids, and lots of things that we should be discreet about. And furthermore, you've probably been pretending inside this marriage for some time. Weeks, months, maybe years. So you're gonna pretend a couple more weeks. You know, one family, they they wanted to delay, they had decided, but their son was getting ready to graduate. They're like, we're not gonna do it before graduation, we're not gonna hijack his big moment, which was wise. And and that was mom's instinct, like not before graduation, but dad's instinct was, we'll just tell him when we drop them off at college. Like, no, we're not doing either of those. Another family came to me and said, uh, yet we're ready. First meeting. Okay, tell us, tell us how to talk to our kids. I said, that's not the first thing, because they're gonna have questions. And one of the biggest questions kids are gonna come to is, where are we living? Is someone moving? What's happening with the house? At which point they responded, oh yeah, yeah, we're gonna sell this house and we're each gonna go buy a new house. Now, this was a several years ago when the market in their community was skyrocketing and everything was selling super fast. And I paused, I said, okay, you're gonna put your house on the market, you're gonna be rich and homeless by Monday, and then you're gonna go compete against each other in the same neighborhood and school district for a similar size house. So let's just tap the brakes a little bit. You don't have to know everything, but there's a few things that you need to know, and and you need to be ready for some hard questions, and we practice. I'm like the first time you sit down to talk with your kids, these words should not be coming out of your mouth for the first time then. And and how do we contain our emotions? Don't gaslight your kids, right? Everybody's having emotions, but you also don't want to turn your kid into your therapist. So, so many micro actions to think about that. It it's it is astonishing to me how little guidance there is, which is why I've established the Good Divorce Academy as a place where people can come and learn and have support and not feel like they're in it alone.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

This is amazing. It's like a it's a total like upheaval of the way it's normally done.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

I am here to disrupt.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

I might not save it, but we need to start the conversation. Yeah. So rushing to tell the kids uh a little early, I would sort of call that like a well-intentioned mistake.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

Um what are some other well-intentioned mistakes or some early guidelines, things that we don't think about.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Yeah. Um, let's talk about dating, early dating. All right. Uh uh my hope is that all of us, right? You've already made it across the the next threshold, uh remarried, that that people will go on and they will repartner and they'll have love in their life. So I refer to this as green light, red light. You remember the game? Sure, for sure. Right? Green light, you can move forward. Red light, nobody moves. Yeah. Now, I don't care when you all start dating. What I care is that you're in agreement. And you might have one person in the couple who's thinking, hey, we said the word divorce. I'm getting my profile out there, I'm out. Whereas the other person in that couple is thinking, when the decree arrives in the mail from the judge, then it's a green light. Now, if you never talk about that, there's going to be hurt feelings, and the behavior in and around new partners will hijack a good divorce faster than you can spit at it. It is in the and it's not even like, oh, I want that person back or I'm jealous. It's just a hurt. There's like a respect. So I work with the couples to think about and talk about when is your red light, green light? And sometimes it's when we move into two homes. Sometimes it's just after we tell the kids. Sometimes it is waiting until the divorce paperwork is done. And just knowing that allows people to kind of cool their jets a little bit. And then I do a lot of work about how to introduce those new couples or those new partners into couplehood so that blended families, again, like if you want this relationship to last, there's a good way and a bad way to introduce your child to this person. And, you know, fortunately, my husband uh dated a family marriage therapist, and she did everything right. And she was very adamant that she and I sit down and have coffee together before she ever met. Our kids, incredibly respectful. And it just softened my heart. And I realized this isn't a territorial war. This is one more person who's bringing love. And what could be wrong with more love, Jim?

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Yeah, sounds great. It's all good. I mean, we're living in now, like my our basically our best friends where we live are my ex-wife's sister and her husband. It's so we've got still family. Yeah, it's still family. It's still family.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

Yeah. And to not require our immediate family and friends to choose sides, right? It's it's not that you're a bad person and I'm a good person. It's just we're two lovely people who need to get unmarried. And of course, and I I want to be sure that those that are listening with us today, there are cases with domestic violence, with mental health issues, with addiction issues that create a frightening environment that are not good qualifiers for a good divorce experience. And you need the right protections in place to navigate that. But there are a lot more of us out there, just the normal neurotics who need to get unmarried and end that marriage, but we don't actually want to end our family. And how can we weave that together as time passes?

SPEAKER_00 29:01

That's a that's amazing. Especially starting off like with this kind of framework, right? As part of your academy, um, and having that kind of support all the way through. Like, you know, for for me and my divorce, like we went to a mediator, so like that was the we thought this is like the least hostile sort of approach that we knew about. Absolutely. And then it got a little more hostile, which wasn't awesome. And then it just sort of like that whole process got really contentious and it was like it was really annoying and terrible. Especially because we were like arguing over nothing. Like I was broke, like she was broke, like we had more dead than anything. But it was like that, and there was like I so looking back at it, it's like it feels like if we'd had a little bit more support. You know, if we'd had some of his language you're talking, yeah, um, it it could have, you know, it could have, it could have saved the the process. Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

527 micro actions before you talk about a dollar. Yeah. Stanley before finances. And and then we have families that, you know, maybe they're still living together under one roof, not on common, like we've decided to divorce, but we're still under one roof. So I work with a couple to create a cohabitation schedule. So you're not on top of each other in the kitchen in the morning, right? Or we are going to now actually nest for a while where the kids stay put and the parents are coming and going. Sometimes we have to cohabitate um a little bit undercover because we haven't told the kids yet, but we're not going to share a bedroom anymore. A lot of times couples come to me and they haven't been sharing a bedroom for a while. So every family is different. What I want to identify is just an intentional, thoughtful approach to all of these micro actions and moments before we divide up the silverware. Because that is going to come and go in a flash, the division of assets. But we have put all of our divorce energy and focus on the division of assets and not the restructuring of a family and protecting their future together.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

Beautiful. Tell me a little bit about your ideal client. I've heard you say that, you know, not everyone is a candidate for the kind of the good divorce. Uh you obviously talked about some of the what I would call the really extreme cases of you know domestic abuse and um some of that stuff. But within within uh outside of that, like for the the rest of us, like who's a great candidate for the good divorce and and who is it?

SPEAKER_01 31:28

So there needs to be two people who can sit in a room together and have a conversation. And that seems like a low bar, but that is the starting point. Sure. And even without all of the other distractions of uh abuse or addiction or mental health struggles, uh, there may be someone who is just so white hot angry. They want to see the person that they had a love story with suffer. You know, I think so much anger comes up maybe because we're angry at the institution. We're angry that the story didn't go the way we wanted it to, and it all gets projected onto this other person. And there was a love story. And just because there's a divorce, that doesn't negate every beautiful thing that came before it, which I have, you know, parents when I sit with them, we talk about that journey and try to remember that that's what you grew from. These children were born from love. You don't have to dismiss that. So that's the first thing that the two of you want to come to the table. It's it's unique also that I work with mom and dad together. It's almost unheard of, is what I'm finding in the divorce coaching arena. The training that I did uh was all you just support one person who's going through the divorce and has their attorney. Even collaborative law, each person has their own attorney. But what I know now, having been experimenting, honestly, with this methodology for almost five years now, is that the best outcome occurs when you have mom and dad on the same side of the table. And that doesn't an easy, a good divorce doesn't mean an easy divorce. It's hard, it's difficult. But if you're interested in protecting your future and just getting through, again, the project of disentangling your life, you can do it with greater intention. And within the academy, the online community, it's wonderful when we have mom and dad show up together. Uh, but sometimes it's just one participant, and that can be enough to change the tide. And I I I have a munch running through my head right now when I own when I only have one access to one parent and they're hot-headed and they keep doing this, and I'm so angry, and they never, and oh, and they just want me, and I'm like, well, you have two choices right now. You can either be right or you can make it right. Which is most important to you today? And if there's one person who has the capacity to yield, because it won't last forever, the hot-headedness, we were talking about this. Like your parents now, divorced parents, like they're friends. I know so many people, they come around. I'm like, can we just get there sooner? This is hit the gas pedal and get there a little bit sooner. Yeah. So if you're listening and you think, not in a million years would I ever get my spouse to come to the table, that's okay. Because if you come to the table, not only can we equip you with sort of your own armor and buoyancy, but you can also learn the tools to bring them along because behavior is contagious. So what are you spreading? You can be the one spreading the goodness.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

I love that. My wife has a saying, she she had to say, she had to say it a lot before I could like finally like for my nervous system and finally get it, which was um uh she'd say, listen, it's not you versus me, but it says us against the problem. And I was like, the first marriage was just there was just so much contention. I mean, I'll spare all the stories, but it was just like, you know, we were young and like stressed and all the things, and then it just felt like everything was a was like And then you throw a baby in there, yeah, totally. And so everything was just like a fight, and I was just used to that that kind of energy. And so when I met my wife now, um, you know, she's she's just like a saint, and she would just like kind of she laughs like when I get worked up about something, which is like the greatest thing ever. Uh, and she'd always be like, Listen, this is us against the problems. You would you and me against this problem.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

Like, she's like it's not you versus it's not a person, yeah, it's a process, yeah, something beyond us and coming together. Oh, that's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

So, like this is what I'm when we're talking about the all the collaboration and stuff. It's like, wow, imagine, imagine if we you know could have had that approach of like this is us against this, like, how do we disentangle? How do we you know dissolve this thing and uh and move forward? Because you're right, it's like and I think I underestimated that too in the divorce of like thinking that somehow, I don't know, the person like my expensive change or like something.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

Like they go through this metamorphic transformation, like no, same person, same buttons being hit, same irritations. Um one of the uh guidelines, and I I talk about this in the book, our our therapist, that one bonus session that we got, she said, Well, your goal now is to become indifferent towards each other. And I scratched my head and I thought, I don't think I understand what indifference means. I think she's saying, like, I don't care about the I will always care about this person, especially then, because emotions are so frocked. But what I've come to realize is all those buttons and irritations now are more like just someone in the grocery store, like, oh, they cut me off, whatever, right? Like, I don't have the big emotional reaction to it. Yeah, I'm not like invested in that way. So the indifference is the gift and the release. And I'll tell you what, yeah, I I have fallen more in love with the father of my children post-divorce. He's a beautiful father and a wonderful human. But the alchemy of the two of us together was creating such conflict that we did not want to raise our children in. And uh our daughter came on my podcast to reflect on her experience, and she looked back and she said, Yeah, it's not how you think it's gonna go, but it was the right thing for our family. I wouldn't change a thing.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

Yeah, we had uh we all had Christmas together, Christmas, Christmas meal, which was which was wild.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

The It shouldn't be wild. Yeah. Right? Right. Whenever I tell someone like, Oh, we had every Christmas morning, every when Santa was part of the story, they're like, Really? How? I'm like, you just decide that's what you're gonna do. And I would still one year be at my house and one year at his house, and then the grandparents would come, you know, a little bit later, and then we would help each other. This is a great little nugget to help the children shop for your ex, basically. You're right, yeah. Whether it's Father's Day or their birthday or Christmas, you know, those young kids, they don't have any way to make a craft or go shopping, but they want to be able to give a gift. So I would send Michael a message hey, I want those deer foam slippers from Costco, they're $19.99. Run out there with the kids and buy them and I'll disvenmo you the money. So I would pick my own gift, I would buy my own gift, but it would help, it's all about helping the success of the kids. See. Right? And when we want to hurt that other parent, it usually has a trickle-down effect. And frankly, you just have to love your kids more than you hate your co-parent. And most of us can do that.

SPEAKER_00 39:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's uh yeah, it's it's funny. I appreciate the reflection of me saying that it was wild. I was like, I'm like, why is this so wild? It's like, well, because like I grew up, you know, parents were divorced, and it was one of those things where like um usually we'd fly to see my dad, and sometimes he would be in town, but it was like he would never cross the threshold, you know, a moat, a drawbridge, and what that you get's home.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

Yeah, that means you're also going across the drawbridge and over the alligators, and and and children will talk about that. No, it it's it's their home. And you know, here's another good divorce technique that I uh encourage people to use is that we stop referring to the homes as mom's house and dad's house. That's possessive, and the kids are not in the story. So we name the homes. In our case, we lived in a neighborhood where the developers named all the streets after their children. So it's Robert and Janet and Lily and uh James, and so we always refer to the houses by name. Another family had the Sea View house and the Parkview house. Another family has the yellow house and the blue house. And it neutralizes that territory because you, as co-parents, are probably very territorial about your house, but the kids belong to both. It it's part of a larger ecosystem, and we need to allow their habitat to feel like one habitat, not this divided enemy lines, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Yeah, that's you lived it. Yeah, that's a that's a phenomenal tip. Because like we stumble over it all the time. It's like he'll go to uh my house, his mom's house, his grandparents' house is like part of the the triangle. Yeah, it's in the ecosystem. Yeah, and you know, he's got rooms at all of them. And it's like, you know, it's like whose house are you going to? We're like, are you going home? And it's like, well, which what's home? You know, it's like this poor little kid.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

Yeah, we're like, are you gonna be at Raymond or are you gonna be at Rose?

SPEAKER_00 41:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:09

Oh, everything's all written Rose. And we just we create a new language that again doesn't divide the the kids across their homes.

SPEAKER_00 41:20

One for example you got.

SPEAKER_01 41:21

Give me well, uh some don'ts. Don't send your kids to school with their carry-on items for transition.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

And I heard a story from an adult, child of divorce. She said, Oh, yeah, our parents, we put our little wheelie suitcase together and then take it to school and throw it in the locker and then take it back. And like, are you kidding me? Like the shame of it. So we always had big taupes. Like, you know, the things you put all your Christmas decor in and what needs to go in the taupe this weekend. And I recommend, again, every family is different, and the parents are the experts in their kids. But if if you're a week-on, week-off schedule, Sundays are great. Kids get home on a Friday, they're toped, they're tired, they're fatigued, they just want to sort of slip into the weekend. You're already in the rhythm with that parent, you just continue, you get your weekend. By Sunday afternoon, as we do, like, oh, got to get ready for the week. So we gather everything together. What homework projects? Uh, oh, we've got soccer this week. Oh, we need the ballet tights, adult, it all just goes in the tote. When they're young, you can pretty much divide and conquer toiletries and clothes. As they get older, they get a little more particular. The carry-on luggage increases. And we had what we called a boomerang folder. So papers from the school, um, so that we could celebrate their work, right? The spelling test comes home and it just dies at your house, and what a parent never gets to see it. Um, or a special piece of artwork that was developed. So anything that just needed to be seen by both parents. And we communicated with our teachers at the time of divorce and every year let them know our kids live in two homes. We're a two-home family. So can you always make sure both of us are on the email? We'll do our best, make sure that two things are sent, two schedules, one for each refrigerator. Even teachers who then know, oh, we're making a special Christmas gift for your parents. And then the kid is like, Well, which parent do I give it to? And do I break it in half? So when those teachers know, they're like, Oh, you can make two little wreaths out of macaroni salad so that you can give one to both parents, and that helps the child again not feel like they're the negotiator and the mediator. Full of them. Oh my god. All sorts of wonderful hacks and tips that when we just think about it through the kid's lens, we can do better.

SPEAKER_00 43:49

So much common sense that's so common. I mean, I just I learned like five things.

SPEAKER_01 43:54

And that's just about how to be a divorced family. Yeah. It's none, we really haven't talked about how to get into Divorced.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Right.

SPEAKER_01 44:01

That to me, that is the smallest piece of this whole conversation and puzzle. And that's why we need to take it back. We're doing divorce by default right now, and we need to do divorce by design. And you can design your new family.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

Beautiful. Let's talk about that divorce process briefly here. What are some things that that you guys do differently in your academy? Maybe especially as it relates to lawyers. So where do lawyers and that sort of paperwork fit into the arc of your program?

SPEAKER_01 44:31

Just a little sort of min specs, right? When I work with a couple as their divorce consultant, you know, as you said, from decision to decree, we work through that initial communication plan. Now it's the living arrangement. Do we are we in the same house? One parent's moving out. We're very particular about that, how the kids are involved, making a field trip to the new house, letting the other parent cross that threshold before anyone moves in, right? You just kind of set your own boundaries, but again, we don't want to build the moat before we even get started. And then we might work with a certified divorce financial analyst, a CDFA, to then start working on finances. Real estate is almost always a piece of the puzzle. There are now certified divorce lending professionals. If you're going to acquire a home in the divorce, you might have multiple homes, right? The assets are significant. So we invite those professionals in as needed. We might need a co-parent specialist. We might need a child therapist. Children might be responding differently. So we stabilize the family. We do progressive mediation, right? As a mediator, I don't want to lock you in a room for eight hours and say you have to make every giant decision on your about your entire life right now, today. No, I'm going to find out, oh, they really care about the Harley and they really care about the camper van. Okay, well, no, we already know that. So we don't have to go into mediation and fight over it just because it all feels like a land grab, right? It's such a scarcity mentality. And they're they're designing their life, they're designing their household, their schedule, how they want to separate their assets to sit in a brainstorm. I was just uh uh with clients last week. Like, well, if I take that part of your IRA, but that's tax-free, but maybe it would be better for you to keep your pension. Like they're actually looking out for each other, not how can I screw you? How I always say it's like a teeter-totter. And we want that teeter-totter to be balanced at the end. We don't want one way up here, one way down here. Well, an attorney's job is to do this. That again, God love them. It is what they're trained to do in a system built for it, which is why divorce doesn't belong there, generally speaking. So we get this balance. And my goal is that both parents walk away feeling that it's appropriate, right? Fair, equal. Those can get to be complicated, loaded words, but is it an appropriate division? Do you both have what you need? Do you both have a dwelling that feels balanced for the kids? We don't want someone in a mansion and someone else is living in the van down by the river, right? We and it's in the best interest of the kids for both of you to also look out for each other in this. Um, otherwise, one parent is going to become a burden to the children. And I tell my clients, I work for your kids. That's who I work for. And if I see you going sideways, I will evoke them in this meeting. And we begin and end most of our meetings about them. All right. And once all of those decisions have been made and the couple has come to their own design, then we call a lawyer. And in the states, we find a lawyer, I find, um, in the state of uh where they're getting their divorce done, usually a mediator or a collaboratively trained lawyer. And this is slippery. Every state has different rules and regulations around divorce. It's not even unified across the country. And that lawyer then takes the parenting plan that we've written, the memo of understanding around their assets. We hand it over, they write it up, they make sure all the T's are crossed, the I's are dotted, and submit it and manage the legal administrative component. And I I recruited a lawyer in California for a couple, and I was, because again, uh we're not just trying to do something different. We have to educate the public that there's a different option. And not ever not every attorney is excited about this. I'll tell you what, I'm sure to be making some enemies. I'm sure, you know, and and he was lovely. He had stopped litigating. He's like, I don't I don't want to be in court turning parents into enemies anymore. I don't want to do it. So he heard about the good divorce method, and he's like, this is very interesting. Yeah, I'll get on board. It it doesn't sound like I'm gonna make much money on this case. Which one I said, not if I have anything to do with it. And most couples that I'm in a consulting journey with will be with me six to nine months and less than five thousand dollars in legal fees. Maybe the average is twenty to thirty thousand per spouse and eighteen to twenty-four months. You know, then why do we take this thing, this marriage that isn't working very well, and decide to do a really, really hard thing only to make it all worse? It's a terrible business plan. Divorce is an is not a weapon to be used to make the family worse off in the end. It's a tool of transformation. When used thoughtfully, intentionally, we can actually improve the function of the family. That's what should be happening on the other side of divorce is an improvement, not a dumpster fire. You're making too much sense. Uh right? Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Like I said, I built the business I was looking for. So my capacity is only so great to work with a family holistically, comprehensively. So that's why I established the Good Divorce Academy. And I use the word academy because I want people to think about it like going to school. And with my clients, we the last day when we review all the documents and we're signing everything off and we're ready to send it to the judge, that's graduation day. You've come through divorce school. That part's done. Now you're gonna go into your new future. So within the Good Divorce Academy, we provide a curriculum, a co-parent curriculum that was built by a CDFA, a certified divorce financial analyst, and a licensed clinical professional that's gonna help you outline that conversation with kids. It's gonna help you think about your new budget, how to answer the hard questions. Uh, there's a parenting plan guide that's more than dollars and dates. And then each week there's classes available. So we'll have a real estate professional, we'll have a financial professional, a co-parenting specialist. There's a men's group. I have a big heart for dads. I really want them to bring them to the table in this story. I think they get set aside. Right. Um, and and dads want to be at the table. You know, I've I've been divorced 14 years. I've dated a lot of divorced dads. So I've learned a lot through their perspective. And a lot of them are like, I don't want to just be an ATM. I want to be a dad. Why do they not want me to have more time with our children? And that relationship is really important. So I invite the dads to step up and also become educated. And you might not know how to call their doctor and when the soccer game is and how they like their sandwiches made, but it's possible she doesn't know how to pay the bills every month and where the retirement counts are. And we give a lot more grace to a learning curve of learning the financials of a home where you might have been underskilled than to the parent who is underskilled in maybe the day-to-day operations. But you'll get there. Everyone will grow in their everyone's job description changes. Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_00 52:21

For sure.

SPEAKER_01 52:22

So giving grace to that. Um, so the Good Divorce Academy is a place where people can come and have support groups, chatting with other parents who are going through the same sort of uh story and and have resources to learn, even if even if you haven't said the word divorce out loud, because I think that's part of our problem too, is we don't talk about it. Because we think if we talk about divorce, it means we're gonna get a divorce. That's not the case. It's like waiting until you have stage four cancer to do anything about it. We should again early intervention and prevention. And people arrive at the doorstep of divorce and have no idea where to begin, what to do, what it's gonna entail, how to not damage their kids. That was us. And the only thing we're told, call a lawyer. And I'm saying, please don't call a lawyer. Find a coach, find a mediator, find a therapist, find a path, sit together in the wisdom that is innate in your parenthood together. The two of you, when you align on the side of your children, you will make the right decisions.

SPEAKER_00 53:43

Powerful.

SPEAKER_01 53:45

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 53:46

Seems like a great place to end it. Is there anything we've covered a lot of ground? Keep fighting the good fight. Thank you. Doing the good work. Is there anything that we haven't touched on that you would love um the audience to know about you, about your work, about where they're at, anything?

SPEAKER_01 54:00

Well, been there done that. And uh in the midst of my dark, dark days, and and they get really dark. I think we really underestimate um the the grief cycle. And a friend sent a card to me. And inside that card, she just wrote one quote everything will be okay in the end. And if it's not okay, it's not the end. And I held on to that tight for years, and it will take longer than you want, and longer than you think it should. But it's a three to five year journey to fully recovery, uh, to fully recover back into an autonomous identity, financial stability, and to have this new rhythm of a family that lives across two homes. So be patient, but keep your foot on the gas. You can get to the good stuff if you choose it.

SPEAKER_00 54:57

Love it. Uh, let's remind them over time where they can uh find you and all of your great work.

SPEAKER_01 55:02

You can listen to other uh empowering, inspiring divorce stories and other experts on my podcast, The Good Divorce Show. You can head over to the Good Divorce Academy uh for support and education. And in 2026, my book, The Good Divorce How to End Your Marriage Without Ending Your Family, will be released through Wiley Press. And if you just put in Good Divorce Coach, you're gonna find Karen McNetty.

SPEAKER_00 55:28

Beautiful. Thanks, Karen. I really appreciate you being here.

SPEAKER_01 55:30

Thanks, Tim.

SPEAKER_00 55:31

Thank you, everybody. We'll catch you next time.