Stephanie McCullough (00:06):

Welcome to Take Back Retirement, the show for women 50 and better, facing a financial future on their own. I’m Stephanie McCullough, and along with my fellow financial planner, Kevin Gaines, we’re going to tackle the myths and mysteries of “Retirement,” so you can make wise decisions toward a sustainable financial future. Through conversations and interviews, you’ll get the information and motivation you need, to move forward with confidence. And we’ll be sure to have some fun along the way. We’re so glad you’re here. Let’s dive in.

(00:39):

Coming to you semi-live from the beautiful Westlakes Office Park in suburban Philadelphia, this is Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines of Sofia Financial and American Financial Management Group. Say hello, Kevin.

Kevin Gaines (00:49):

Hello, Kevin.

Stephanie McCullough (00:50):

Today, we have an interview with Ellen Morfei, who is a very experienced mediator. She’s got years of professional experience in conflict resolution and she really has worked with many couples around good divorce, coming up with their own agreement. So she’s going to share with us her perspective on getting to a good divorce, how mediation works, as opposed to other ways of getting to an agreement, and what she’s learned along the way about relationships, about money, all the juicy stuff. So, let’s dive in.

(01:35):

Ellen Morfei, welcome to Take Back Retirement.

Ellen Morfei (01:38):

Thank you for having me.

Stephanie McCullough (01:39):

We’re thrilled to have you. Let’s start with the very basics. Can you explain what you do as a divorce mediator?

Ellen Morfei (01:46):

So, as a mediator, I support couples in having conversations about how they want their divorce to happen. Generally speaking, mediation is future-focused. So I talk to everybody about what their goals are, what their concerns are. Obviously, for the property settlement component, I make sure that people have given me a solid reporting of what all their financials are and I help them have a conversation about how to divide their assets and liabilities to match both what assets and liabilities they have, their earning capacity, where they are in life, what their goals are. A parallel track of conversation, if you have minor children, we’re talking about all of the things about how to support them emotionally, developmentally, as well as financially.

(02:45):

I interpret the code of ethics that I use, which is I rely on two, but mostly on the model standards of conduct for mediators, and that talks about the importance of informed decision-making. So as a mediator, I provide them with a lot of information to make sure that the decisions that they make for themselves are informed. So it’s very much a customized conversation,   try to make sure that they have a good solid understanding of what the law typically allows in our state, I work in Pennsylvania only, and then help them make decisions that fit them, their lives, their goals, their children, et cetera.

Kevin Gaines (03:28):

So if the couple decides to go through mediation, does that mean they don’t need lawyers? They don’t have to write the big hourly checks that everybody dreads?

Ellen Morfei (03:37):

It’s a great question. So that too is really a customized decision. So, a lot of people feel like you’re making a decision between a mediator or a lawyer. That’s not the decision at all. It’s how you want to be supported in your divorce process. So let’s say you’ve decided to work with a mediator, you may very well work with an attorney for the filing process and I strongly encourage all of my folks to use an attorney for the filing process. It’s a little challenging, particularly in my county. Most people that I work with have enough complexity in their finances that it does make sense to have an attorney make sure that their documentation is up to snuff so that their decisions are implemented in the way they want them to be and that they are legally binding.

(04:33):

But attorneys can be used in consultation while you’re in mediation. A lot of my clients, one or both of my clients may have an attorney in the background during the entire process. They may or may not consult them. They may have an attorney review the memorandum that we write together in mediation before they sign it, and that’s a great time to have things looked over. So a mediator is a neutral person. We don’t advocate for either party. We don’t even really advocate for a settlement. If you guys decide that’s not for you, that’s okay. An attorney advocates for you. An attorney has your back and is intended to look at things from your perspective and give you advice along those lines.

(05:18):

Occasionally, I, and I’m sure other mediators work this way, will flag something that is a little bit more complicated, that we think it would be good for you to get legal advice. Sometimes I will suggest you talk to an attorney or consult the attorney that you already have just because you’re not very comfortable with a particular aspect of your decision-making and mediation. So I love when clients have attorneys in the background, but you need to pick the right attorney to complement the way you want your divorce process to go.

Stephanie McCullough (05:55):

Can you talk a little bit more about that? What are some of the factors people should consider when they’re lawyer shopping?

Ellen Morfei (06:00):

Absolutely. So in my case, we are looking for a lawyer who’s going to complement mediation and I call those attorneys mediation-friendly attorneys and I have a-

Stephanie McCullough (06:11):

Implying that not all of them are.

Ellen Morfei (06:13):

No, not all of them are. Whether they’re mediation-friendly or not may very well depend on the guidance given by their client and I want to come back to that. So I have a short list of attorneys working in my area that I refer to as mediation-friendly attorneys and my clients, if they ask for it, I will share that list with them.

(06:32):

What do I mean by a mediation-friendly attorney? Well, first of all, I want them to be what I think of as a good attorney, an attorney who knows the law, who will give you guidance of the kind that you are requesting about whether your decisions or leanings are typical, unusual within what they see in settlements in court and that’s really what I want in a mediation-friendly attorney. They will respect the work that we are doing in mediation. You don’t want what we might call a barracuda when you are doing mediation. You don’t want somebody who’s going to push for absolute the largest outcome for your property settlement agreement or your parenting time, which means that the other person gets the minimum.

Stephanie McCullough (07:24):

Right. Fight tooth and nail for every penny kind of thing.

Ellen Morfei (07:27):

Exactly. It’s important that you set the tone for what you want. If you don’t set the tone for what you want, they may set the tone and it may not be what you want.

(07:38):

If you know that you want a balanced agreement, if you know have some goals for your finances, for your wellbeing, for your children’s wellbeing, share that with your attorney and make sure that it feels like they’re hearing you and can be responsive to you. So you said, “So some attorneys aren’t mediation-friendly.” Well, honestly, there are some attorneys who are really good at following the lead of their clients and may be much more aggressive for a client who requests it, but much more conciliatory and more consulting, well, consistent with what the client requests. So it’s very important that people realize whatever path they choose for divorce, that it’s the path they choose. They have an enormous amount of control and the professionals they hire, whether a mediator or an attorney or whatever, work for them.

Kevin Gaines (08:28):

So the important thing when shopping for a lawyer is to find one that’s going to listen to you and follow what you are looking for.

Ellen Morfei (08:39):

Absolutely.

Stephanie McCullough (08:41):

That’s what we tell people when they’re shopping for a financial planner, right? Step number one is figure out what you want from them, be really clear on the kind of relationship you want to have and the things that you’re hoping they can do for you and let that guide your search.

Ellen Morfei (08:58):

Absolutely. I really just now emphasize inputs. Are they hearing you and responding to you? I think the outputs that you get from your professional, whether it’s a financial advisor or an attorney or whatever, you want to make sure when they’re communicating back to you that you’re able to understand that they speak in a way that resonates with you, that computes, if you will, because your attorney and I think your mediator as well is a little bit of a teacher because you’ve probably never divorced before. Maybe you have divorced before, but it’s not like all divorces are the same flavor. You want to make sure that the information that they share back with you is delivered in a way that you can absorb it.

(09:39):

I am a divorced person myself. My children are both in their 20s. I was divorced almost 20 years ago. I have a lot of co-parenting experience. When I divorced, we did most of our negotiations on our own, then we used attorneys for legal information and advice and helping negotiate the last few bits. I worked with a lawyer who I liked a lot. But as anybody listening to this podcast knows already, I’m a bit of a fast talker, which is a good reminder to maybe slow down, but I’m a pretty fast processor too.

(10:17):

A person can give me a lot of information delivered pretty quickly and I can comprehend it, but the attorney I was working with talked so fast, I had to slow him down all the time and ask him to repeat and I thought to myself, “Hmm, if I find this challenging,” because again, I process a lot of information quickly, “this is probably not a good fit for a lot of people,” because you need to make sure that what you’re hearing from whatever professional you hire, your mediator, your attorney, your financial advisor, your doctor communicates with you in a way that you understand what they’re saying.

Stephanie McCullough (10:50):

So Ellen, as you know, most of our audience is women. So we believe that there’s certainly a lot of ground to discuss around women and money, and then women and money and divorce, right? Give us just some observations of what you’ve seen in your experience.

Ellen Morfei (11:11):

So, clients who come to me are self-selecting. So both parties, both of the couple have decided that they want to mediate or they want to mediate enough that they’re going to mediate. They each have goals. I talk to each of them about their goals. But I do a fairly intensive pre-mediation interview one on one with each client. I used to do it in person. Now, I do it online. I asked them a lot of questions about how they’re doing, how their family is doing, what their concerns are, but I also check in about do you feel that you can advocate for yourself in mediation? That’s really important. I also check in about what do I need to know to help support you in making good decisions? Okay. So I ask those questions partly because I need to know the information, but I also need to remind clients that they are their primary advocate.

(12:19):

My role is not to be an advocate. I can try and support you to make sure that you are sanguine about your decisions and how to check in and how to read when you are feeling maybe waffling about a decision. I’m pretty good about reading those things anyways, but it’s important that you’re able to advocate for yourself and you need to be able to understand the complexities of the decisions that you’re making. So I think most women understand the complexities around the co-parenting piece, though there’s certainly nuances and we have our own personal biases, so there are times when that needs a little refinement and enhancement. But the financials, it’s fairly complex information for most families. Their portfolio has a fair bit of financial complexity just in the sense that you need to understand the rules behind, say, a retirement account versus an investment account versus just your bank account. So you need to be able to get up to speed on those things if you’re not currently up to speed on them. You need to be able to be honest if you don’t understand things. Those are some of the challenges.

(13:30):

I always refer to, it’s usually one family member, as the family CFO, chief financial officer in the family. There’s a few families that share that equally or take turns. “I did it for this number of years, then that happened and they started doing it.” But generally, in a family, one person is the CFO, and sometimes that other person really doesn’t have a lot of financial literacy or they may have some financial literacy, but really have left the nuances or even really the broad strokes of the family finances behind for a long time. Sometimes the divorce is happening because of what’s called financial infidelity. So there may have been some big actions within the couple’s financial life that the other person has been really in the dark about, sometimes in less nefarious ways. Maybe somebody wasn’t very honest about hitting hard times in the family and that can be out of loving reasons, even if it’s not particularly healthy.

(14:34):

So, these are some of the factors that can create some tense dynamics between the folks when they’re mediating their divorce. It is a little bit more common that the chief financial officer is the husband in the family. That’s less common in younger couples, but still fairly common. And then the women need to be aware of their financials. Also, a lot of good mediation in divorce is future-focused, not just for being optimistic and not rehashing everything that went wrong in the marriage, but also so that you are making decisions today to help reach your future goals, that you are planning. For a lot of couples, whether it’s the man or the woman, maybe they really haven’t looked at their finances in those ways and this is an opportunity to really do some housekeeping and some planning.

(15:35):

So for a lot of women, they maybe make less money, so that’s a factor in how you both divide assets and factor in your planning. For a lot of women, they may have stayed out of the workforce for a while, sometimes a pretty long time doing primary parenting. These are all things that we need to make considerations for in how we split their assets and liabilities, as well as how each person is planning to build their new post-divorce life.

Kevin Gaines (16:05):

I think you said a lot of good stuff there and I know so because it’s generated so many questions in my head right now, but let me just go with this one first, what makes a good candidate for mediation? I thought it was particularly insightful when you said somebody who’s willing to self-advocate for themselves because I’m assuming if you want to make the miserable SOB pay, mediation may not be the best route.

Ellen Morfei (16:32):

Yeah. So I think probably the number one and two criteria when I wouldn’t dare try to rank them is one is that desire, maybe that’s true desire to have a more peaceful divorce. Maybe put the corollary is you were not out to harm the other person or you can set aside your periodic desire to harm the person sufficiently to divorce and your ability to advocate for yourself. So it’s a little bit tricky and mediation is the place where we really try to manage these tensions. So in a nutshell, a mediated divorce or a mediated divorce in custody does a good job of recognizing the individual interests of the two people divorcing while also recognizing shared interests. I think the traditional… Actually, I don’t even want to say traditional, but what we think of as an ugly divorce or War of the Roses, a fighting divorce, you’re really focused on your interest only. That is a divorce where you’re focused on your own interests.

(17:55):

A mediated divorce typically is grounded in a recognition of both person’s individual interests and particularly when they’re parents, their shared interests. I emphasize before when your children are minors, but I would say even when your children are adults, it’s good to have conversations about them, and even if we’re not having a lot of conversations about them, recognizing that they are a shared interest in this couple that’s breaking up and the way you break up and the conversations that you have about moving forward and just the conversations you have about even just how you split the money to make sure that both people are well financially, which is part of being well emotionally and spiritually and socially. It’s balancing individual interest with mutual interest and it’s just honoring the fact that the other person has interests and that they matter.

Kevin Gaines (18:52):

So since you brought it up, let me ask, do you use as your sales pitch, you put everybody in a big room thinking about divorce and make them watch War of the Roses for two hours and then after that, everybody’s convinced, “We got to go mediation”? For those of you who don’t know, Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito, fabulous movie, funny as hell, definitely shows the darker side when both parties want to make the other ones suffer.

Ellen Morfei (19:18):

Yeah. Kevin, thanks for fleshing out that movie synopsis. It’s definitely fully recognized by those of us in a certain age, but thanks for fleshing it out for the growing cohort of people who are too young to have remembered that movie themselves. I don’t think you have to have seen that movie or… I mean, divorce depicted in popular culture, we definitely see a lot of ugly divorces in popular culture. Thankfully, we’re seeing more healthy divorces in what I would call good divorce in popular culture. But I also think in our social circles, we probably have seen plenty of examples of different kinds of divorce. Unfortunately, I think the popular mindset is a litigated, fairly contentious divorce, which is unfortunate.

(20:05):

So I don’t feel like I need to do any pitching about what an ugly divorce can look like. Occasionally, I do help people flesh out some of the details around that, a little bit around what is often a common cost. But curiously, this may seem a little, I don’t know, pie in the sky. I really try not to pitch mediation that much. If you aren’t a fairly committed customer, very often, one of the divorcing people is really high on the idea of mediation and the other person isn’t always, I try not to pitch them on mediation too strongly. I want them to understand what mediation is, both the pros and the cons. When I meet with folks, I switched to doing a model instead of separate phone conversations. I just do one Zoom meeting and their comfort with me is really important.

(21:11):

So the mediator may be impartial and some people might use the term neutral, but I don’t. How you feel about your mediator shouldn’t be neutral. You should feel a sense of rapport and comfort with that person. So I’m really giving them an opportunity if they want to avail themselves with the opportunity to hear more about mediation in a very honest way, as well as to get a sense of who I am to give them a sense of whether they feel like they should trust me to shepherd them through this incredibly important and incredibly stressful turning point in their life. So I really changed the way I do my intake, if you will, for potentially getting clients.

(21:54):

I’ll just share this here, it’s not like this is a podcast about how one conducts business, but it gives a little bit of a flavor of who’s a good mediation client or potential mediation candidate. I ask folks to schedule a 30-minute Zoom introduction through my website. Some people have groused and given me pushback about that. Some people aren’t very technically-savvy. Well, you know what, the way I run my mediation, we use spreadsheets. We revise spreadsheets while we’re working. I run a mediation that incorporates technology and I don’t really know how to do that efficiently for such complex topics without using some technology. So if I lose some clients because they don’t feel comfortable with technology, I’m going to have to accept that.

(22:49):

But the other thing, I do this 30 minutes so they hear the same message. I see everybody’s face, but it’s also a little bit of an obstacle. If the two people who think they want to mediate or potentially want to mediate can’t work together to schedule a 30-minute session and manage to get those their lives ordered enough to have a 30-minute Zoom conversation with me, they’re going to have a tough time mediating together, setting aside the time to mediate. The truth is that mediation is in some ways, though you’re guided by a professional, it’s sort of a DIY process with a lot of support. You have to be willing to make all your decisions.

(23:30):

You have to do homework in between. Sometimes that homework is tackling what the details of your retirement account is, which you’d have to do for a lawyer anyways. It’s not like they have permission to call Vanguard and find out whether that’s a simple IRA or a blah, blah, blah. You got to make that phone call, but you also have homework to do, like do your budget, or homework to do, look at rentals in the school catchment for your second grader. You may not have that homework working with an attorney. You may not explicitly be in that homework or with an attorney, but the odds are you have to do that homework to make good decisions and to make the changes. That’s the other thing about mediation, and this does not relate to the question that you asked me 10 minutes ago, Kevin, but hang out with me here.

(24:22):

We do a lot of project management in mediation because I was going to say it feels overwhelming. It kind of is overwhelming. How do I disentangle the operations of our life? How do we disentangle all our shared bank accounts? How do we disentangle the PECO account? How do we disentangle the car insurance? When do we disentangle the car insurance or the health insurance? So those are all conversations we have. Who’s going to call the transportation department at the school district to find out whether they will drop off at two different homes after school for their kids in middle and elementary school? So we’ll think about it and we’ll assign it to somebody’s homework and we’ll talk about it when we come back. You asked the question how do we have a good candidate? I answered a few other questions.

Stephanie McCullough (25:15):

Ellen, one of the things that I feel like comes up all the time in the context of talking about divorce is this idea of fairness, “Oh, it wasn’t fair,” or the stereotypical, “Oh, she took me for all I had,” kind of baloney, which makes me angry, but I know you and I have talked before about this idea of fairness and how it ties in or the conception people bring to it. Can you talk to that a little bit?

Ellen Morfei (25:38):

You bet. Fairness sure is in the eyes of the beholder, isn’t it?

Stephanie McCullough (25:40):

Yeah.

Ellen Morfei (25:40):

It’s really part of the fiber of our being. I mean, little kids spend some time with little kids and boy, what are you going to hear quickly? “That’s not fair.” Right? So we have an early sense of fairness and it is inextricably intertangled with our sense of self-advocacy. So there is that. So fairness is subjective. However, I talked about informed decision-making being part of my mediator’s code of ethics, as well as something I take very seriously. I make sure that my clients have a good foundation in the law in Pennsylvania, I work in Pennsylvania, around divorce and custody. So in our first session, we review the statutes around the division of assets and liabilities. We review the statute around alimony. We talk about spousal support so people have an understanding of how that works in the state and a little bit about how it typically works in their county.

(26:51):

Some of the more nuanced aspects of how it works in their county is something they talk to an attorney about because that’s not just legal information, which I can share, but legal advice which needs to come from an attorney. Understanding what the state considers fair and the county courts consider fair helps couples bridge some of their disagreements about what they consider fair. So a lot of people come in and I’m going to say the strongly held ideas of what’s fair that sometimes doesn’t pan out mediation typically come from the person who earns more money. They come in, mediation is going to be, “We’re going to fly through mediation because I’ve thought through all of this and I am confident I’ve got proposals in mind about how we can do this really fairly. I’m being really fair.” Boy, they come in and a lot of them, their idea of fair is very far from what their courts and state statutes think of as equitable, which is the word we use in Pennsylvania. I mean, fair is common language.

(27:59):

We need to figure out whether they’re going to be able to continue working through mediation given that their preconceived idea of fair doesn’t line up with externally defined equitable or their soon-to-be ex-spouse’s idea of fair. We don’t have to follow exactly what the state and local courts typically follow, but I have to share with them by my own interpretation of ethics, I have to share with them what those things are and they do inform our conversations. I have certainly lost some clients because their idea of fair wasn’t something that their spouse agreed with and generally it wasn’t something that their courts would agree with either. So that’s sort of disabuse of their idea of fair didn’t happen in mediation, though I’m quite confident it happened somewhere else later in the divorce process.

(29:00):

So, we do our best. That’s not the only thing I lean on in terms of helping people see things in other ways. I have conversations with people both at the mediation table and sometimes in separate meetings to help them see different perspectives, the perspective of the other person, to ask questions about how things will work out. We have a phrase in mediation, we call it reality testing. So sometimes the question is, “So if we do the property settlement agreement this way, which means you get this and you’re soon-to-be ex-spouse gets that, so how is that going to work in terms of co-parenting or how is that going to work in terms of having any semblance of your current lifestyle, staying in the area where you currently live?” For most people, some combination of those pieces of information help them shift their understanding and perception of what is fair.

Kevin Gaines (29:59):

So you’ve touched on it by talking about education and getting knowledge, but thinking back to your most successful mediations, what did people do ahead of time when they first started thinking, “I got to get out of here”? What steps did they take to have a successful detangling?

Stephanie McCullough (30:24):

Good question.

Ellen Morfei (30:25):

Yes.

Kevin Gaines (30:26):

Every once in a while I got one.

Ellen Morfei (30:30):

So the steps that people have taken before they come into mediation vary wildly and some of them are influences that really are contradictory to mediation and sometimes they’re very helpful influences. We can detangle them, but the less detangling, the better. So having good information before you come into mediation. So what is good information? Any smattering of good information. So it could be that you have read about divorce law and custody law in your jurisdiction. It could be that you have or have obtained a reasonable understanding of what your current financial situation is. It could be that you have thought through what your ongoing financial needs and challenges are.

(31:24):

So really, any information, accurate information, any accurate information is helpful. People come in with a lot of inaccurate information. They talk to their friend. They talk to their cousin who’s a lawyer in another state, practicing outside of family law, any number of horror stories. They reflect on their own experience as a child of divorce, which is certainly accurate by their experience, but it doesn’t have to be the way their divorce and co-parenting happen, whether it’s the nitty-gritty aspects of the agreement or the sense of collaboration going forward. So quality information is always helpful, always helpful.

(32:13):

But in the end of my last answer and in your question, Kevin, we focused on knowledge, and knowledge isn’t the only thing that goes into a good mediated divorce. It’s certainly in the mix, but how your emotional evolution works during mediation and your divorce is very important. You have to have done a little bit of your emotional work before you come to mediation or it’s just not going to work. You’re too volatile or you’re in the phase where you want to harm the other person and/or those things just fill you so much that you can’t think clearly about these nuts and bolts things that we need to do. When it comes down to it, I mean, the mediated divorce is a transaction. It was transactional, but working with your emotions is really important. I like supporting the emotional transformation of people during divorce. I mean, I’m not a therapist. I’m not going to be a therapist. We’re not doing therapy in mediation, but I recognize that people are going to be a little, I was going to say hot. I mean, sometimes people are highly very tearful, fearful, anxious. It’s all commingled. There’s a lot of anger. There’s a lot of hurt. Those things are all going to be present. As a mediator, I think it’s my job to sit with those things and to do a combination of accept them, but also diffuse them, not diffuse them in sort of like a shaming it’s inappropriate sort of way, but it’s okay, but also come back to what is, again, the transaction.

(34:05):

Sometimes I mention that sometimes I have separate meetings with each person and sometimes that will just be to, I don’t want to say immediately diffuse those emotions. Sometimes you’re angry, “Okay. Give it to me. I mean, don’t yell at me but let it out,” so to come back together. But the knowledge, getting your emotions leveled out, those things all happen in the mediation process, which is a good opportunity for me to say I do not mediate in single sessions for divorce. We mediate in a multitude of sessions as was implied with my homework comment, I know, a multitude of sessions over time and how much time that really depends on a lot of things. Sometimes it’s how busy you are. Sometimes the emotional rollercoaster is part of the timing. We need to spread things out a little bit more.

(34:55):

Many, many, many times I have worked with a couple where one of them is really angry as recurring sense of anger, but then all of a sudden there’s a session and they arrive before the other person. I’m there. We are going to schedule a session. They come in before the other person and all of a sudden they’re lighter. There’s pep in their step. They just have some positive energy and I ask like, “Hey, you seem blah blah blah.” And they say it’s usually their living situation. “I found a house and I put in an offer. I’m going to put in an offer,” or “I looked at a few places and a few of them are really nice. I could go with either one.” Right?

(35:47):

It’s a real turning point because they are now future-focused in a different way. They are building their new life. They’re seeing the possibilities. So that’s a really important part of mediation, supporting and accepting the low vibration, heavy emotions and supporting that change over time. Part of that is the addition of knowledge, both generalized knowledge about how divorce works, as well as personalized knowledge about how their marriage is going to be disentangled and how their new life is going to be built, and that’s a big part of getting to a settlement too, is just allowing the time and the messiness for that to evolve.

Stephanie McCullough (36:32):

One of the things I’ve heard you talk about too, a little bit to what you just said is that idea of trying things on for your new life and the realization that maybe people come to that they have agency over what things are going to look like, even though you can’t make the pie bigger and it always costs more to run two households than one. So it’s not going to be the exact standard of living, but getting to that realization of, “Oh, I do have choice and opportunity.”

Ellen Morfei (37:00):

Absolutely. And that is both a responsibility and an opportunity within the mediation process, because you have to advocate for yourself. You have to think about your goals. You have to consciously build your financial future.  You have to consciously make decisions about how some of that budget is going to be spent and that’s all done within a supportive environment working with a mediator. It’s another reason I don’t like to do… I think it’s too much to do in one or two sessions. I like to give people time in between to feel sanguine about the preliminary decisions they made negotiating in the current mediation session, but also to really let it sit with them because it’s not just decisions about what will go on paper, it’s what your post-divorce life will look like. Those are really important things and they take time and they take process, emotional processing.

Stephanie McCullough (38:04):

Yeah.

Ellen Morfei (38:04):

Absolutely. It’s also one of the really gratifying things of mediation. As a mediator, we can’t have goals. Our job is to support the goals of other people to the extent that we can’t. We own the process.

(38:25):

But one of the reasons I became a mediator, again, I mentioned earlier that I’m a divorced person, is I really wanted to take some of the shame out of the divorce process, take some of the enormous expense out of the divorce process, mediation is a much more affordable process, and to just support people in making that transition in a positive and healthy way, and being able to have hard conversations, especially if you’re going to continue co-parenting for a long time, and just being able to think about your future and build your future in a conscious, mindful way, even if it’s dashing some of the things about what you thought your future would hold and doing so with a smaller budget, a smaller pie, as I also like to call it, but realizing, “I can do this. I can do this my way and I can think about it and I can learn from my mistakes and I can build something I want to build.” Very gratifying to be part of that.

Stephanie McCullough (39:21):

And kind of decoupling from what we’ve absorbed as the shoulds, right? “Oh, my life should look like this at this point.”

Ellen Morfei (39:30):

Absolutely, decoupling from the shoulds. Shoulds and shame are very closely linked, right?

Stephanie McCullough (39:38):

Yes.

Ellen Morfei (39:38):

So I’d like to have as little of that at my mediation table as possible.

Kevin Gaines (39:44):

Now, earlier you mentioned talking to the wrong friends and family that have been through this process is just setting you up for failure, but if you can find the right people that have been through this that can detach the emotions, would you think that’s a good source?

Ellen Morfei (40:05):

Yeah. I hate to think of anybody in your support network as wrong, but you have to be conscious about how you tap into your support network and what stories you’re told. Absolutely. I know when I divorced, I reached out to a friend I hadn’t talked to in a while and I had known her as part of a couple, but I knew they’d split up. I said, “I think that my marriage is ending. Would you be willing to sit down with me a little bit and talk me through it?” I mean, they were both really beautiful people and I thought that she would have a great outlook. She talked to me about the process and just she seemed in a good place and that was incredibly helpful. I’ve been the informal divorce coach for a lot of people even before I was a mediator. So picking and choosing who you talked to.

(40:57):

I think that there are a lot of models in most of our lives for a fairly healthy divorce and to ask those folks for coffee. Can you buy them coffee? Or go out for a walk or a hike and talk a little bit. There’s good role models all over the place. There are a few support groups, not a ton, but there are a few support groups that are available out in the world that are positive, but you do have to choose wisely. Co-parenting is not easy. I don’t know too many people who co-parent well who couldn’t tell you about the challenges. I couldn’t vent periodically. I know I could do those things. So you have to be careful about what you absorb, but you can’t expect it to all be rosy. It’s not. But there’s a lot of good role models out there and the best way to get one is to ask. You might need to ask more than one person and buy people coffee or lunch and find out who has good stories.

(42:09):

Making new friends is a very common part of this. Unfortunately, a lot of couples end up splitting the friends. You don’t get to both retain the friends, which is unfortunate. I’ve had conversations about that in mediation too and how to tell your friends, “You’re allowed to be friends with both of us,” but sometimes you make some new friends and sometimes it’s friends who have been on a similar path and are doing it in a way that you want to do it. So again, that’s another place that you can be conscious about the life that you craft for yourself. Go out and find some divorce mentors that are doing it the way you want.

Stephanie McCullough (42:47):

So Ellen, where can people reach out to you if they want to learn more?

Ellen Morfei (42:50):

So the best way to reach out to me is to visit my website. The business is Progressive Conflict Solutions and the website is progressiveconflictsolutions.com.

Stephanie McCullough (43:01):

Well, thank you so much for your generosity of time. We appreciate your being here today and sharing with our listeners.

Ellen Morfei (43:08):

My pleasure.

Kevin Gaines (43:10):

All right. So as usual, a lot to unpack there, but I got to confess, my mind wandered a little bit during this because as Ellen was talking about fairness and spouse one thinks her version is fair and spouse two thinks his version was fair, but they’re not the same fair, all I could think back is the old Jerry Reed song, She Got the Goldmine, I Got the Shaft, which is personally I think is a great song, but there he did this once on the Dolly Parton show back in the ’80s or ’90s and you can find this on YouTube. After he does his verses of the song, Dolly comes on and gives her take on how the proceedings played out. Needless to say, neither side was all that satisfied and they both think they got the raw end of the deal, so to speak.

Stephanie McCullough (44:08):

I love Ellen’s approach to this. Really, I feel like it’s a compassionate approach. It’s a very human approach, right? She’s talking about securing the two members who are soon not going to be a couple, both their financial and emotional well-being and she can’t make the pie bigger, right? So everyone’s going to be at a little bit reduced circumstances, but hopefully getting them to an agreement, their own agreement that they all feel good about, and getting them to a point where they feel empowered and in control to make the best of their lives going forward.

Kevin Gaines (44:44):

Yeah. Well, I mean, and speaking of empowerment, she made this point a few times, education and awareness is huge in this process. What was her point? The more you know, the more you’re familiar with the financials, for example, among other issues, you’re going to have more confidence as to if you’re getting a good deal, if you’re getting a fair deal. You’re not going to have this nagging doubt that, “Oh my gosh, somehow I’m getting hosed, but I don’t know enough to say that I am.” But it helps you get done, get things resolved and move on because I think that’s what she was really saying is this is just the next step to allowing you to move on and that’s what everybody wants to be able to do in this once you’ve reached this stage.

Stephanie McCullough (45:40):

Yep. So education in terms of knowing your numbers and your situation, but also the law and what’s expected in your state, right? We talked a lot about Pennsylvania because that’s where the three of us all live. Every state has a different perspective on these things and that’s what you need to know going forward, the state that you’re going to be in.

(46:00):

But the other point that she made towards the end, which I appreciate, is two parts, right? Trying things on, like little experiments, or even allowing yourself to imagine or think through, do some online research about “Ooh, where might I live? What might I do?” And then the second half of that, which is talk to someone, find a buddy, find someone. I liked her idea about the informal divorce coach, someone who maybe has gone through it and is just willing to listen, hopefully non-judgmentally, doesn’t have too strong a perspective on, “You must do it this way, the way I did it,” but just that caring ear, because a lot of it does take talking through, thinking through. A lot of us are verbal processors. We need to talk it to get to our own resolution about it.

(46:56):

We’ll have some details for you in the show notes, some links. We’ll have certainly links to Ellen’s information. Thanks so much for being with us. We’ll talk to you next time. It’s goodbye from me.

Kevin Gaines (47:07):

And it’s goodbye from her.

Stephanie McCullough (47:11):

Be sure to subscribe to the show and please share it with your friends, show notes and More information available at takebackretirement.com. Huge thanks for the original music by the one and only, Raymond Loewy through New Math in New York. See you next time.

Disclaimer (47:25):

Investment advice offered through Private Advisor Group, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Private Advisor Group, American Financial Management Group, and Sofia Financial are separate entities. The opinions voiced in this material, are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice, or recommendations for any individual security. To determine which investments may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor, prior to investing. This information is not intended to be substitute for individualized tax advice. Please consult your tax advisor regarding your specific situation.