Podcast: Divorce Without Destruction: Mediation Lessons with Joe Dillon

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ED FRANKLIN: Welcome back to Raising 10, the podcast where leadership, legacy, and family collide. Today’s guest knows firsthand that divorce doesn’t have to mean destruction. He’s an MBA-trained mediator, a nationally recognized expert, and the founder of Equitable Mediation Services. But more than credentials, Joe Dillon brings heart. Shaped by his own childhood experiencing a painful divorce, Joe has dedicated his life to helping families separate with dignity, respect, and peace. From Harvard to Northwestern, from classrooms to courtrooms, Joe has taught, judged, and led the way in transforming how couples navigate one of life’s toughest transitions. And today, he’s here to share his wisdom with us. So lean in, because this conversation isn’t just about divorce. It’s about resilience, relationships, and rewriting the story of family. Here’s my guest, Joe Dillon.

Good morning, podcast listeners. This is Ed Franklin with the Ed Franklin No Limits podcast. This is Raising 10, episode two. As you know, I just rebranded from Raising 8 to 10 because I had the two grandkids peppered in during my 39 years of parenting. And like every guest we have on, I have a great guest today. This gentleman’s name is Joe Dillon. And Joe is a professional mediator. I’d like to go through his education list, but I’d be here for three or four minutes. This guy is educated. And we’re going to talk about something you hope you never have to talk about, but since the divorce rate is still about 47% in America and maybe globally, it’s an important factor and there’s a lot of positive things about mediation and of course some negative things. So Joe, welcome to the show. You have a great background and the reason you do the work you do has a personal story about your childhood. Why don’t you tell us about that? Tell us a little bit about what you do and then I want to give my Reader’s Digest version of what the state of California requires you to do when you get divorced. But anyway, welcome to the show.

JOE DILLON: Thanks for having me. I appreciate that. You shouldn’t be embarrassed with that resume. As you mentioned, I am a divorce mediator and I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve actually been mediating for 28 years and in private practice coming up on 18 years doing divorce. It’s a really interesting story as you’ll probably share a little bit. My parents litigated their divorce. So I am the classic example of what not to do. I sat in the back of the courtroom. I watched my parents scream and yell. And the last time I saw my dad was in the hallway of the courtroom when I was 15. That was it. And so as that story goes, when I’m working with clients and trying to help them negotiate all the stuff to peacefully end their marriage and be great co-parents, I’m kind of giving them a warning shot and saying, “Look, everybody tells you that’s not going to happen.” And I just, it’s very easy to just look at my face and you are looking at a child of a litigated divorce whose parents basically destroyed their lives and thankfully didn’t destroy mine. But let me tell you, it was a long road to recovery for me. That was for sure. It took a long time to get past that anger and that resentment. And maybe in a weird way, it’s my penance by helping people avoid what happened to me by being a mediator.

ED: Well, and one of the things I’ve talked about many times on my podcast, and I try to reiterate this as much as I can, is if you’re going to raise kids and get into a relationship, your relationship is paramount. Your successful relationship is paramount to raising kids. And the kids are going to be affected no matter what you do. They’re going to get affected. And I did everything wrong in my first two divorces. I was the angry, arguing one. And my Reader’s Digest version of the state of California and probably many states for my listeners, if you haven’t been through it, is if you file a dissolution of marriage, you’re going to get divorced. It’s mandatory that you go to a mediator and the court has mediators that you go sit down and talk with. In my personal experience and a lot of people that I know, it’s a mess because you’re arguing with your soon-to-be ex-spouse usually and you’re trying to get as much visitation and you’re trying to get the house and you’re trying to get all these things and you don’t have much time to mediate. So the mediator is kind of a referee at some level in my experience. And then after you finish that, then they make a recommendation to the judge and the judge reads it and you really don’t have any more power because he or she is going to decide if this is what’s best in their mind for you and they don’t really even know you. What you do is so much more of a positive experience because you’re really sitting down and letting both parties tell their story and I’m assuming it’s not as heated in your environment. Because these people have sought you out. They’re paying you. It’s kind of a different thing. It’s kind of the difference between going to the DMV or paying AAA to do your DMV paperwork.

JOE: You bring up a couple good points I want to comment on. First is, one of the things that I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to the people who work in the legal system like judges and court-appointed mediators because these are not high-paid people. People think judges make a lot of money. Last time I checked, an average judge made about $85,000, which here in the state of California probably gets you a Winnebago and maybe a burrito down at Taco Bell. And so you’re not really rolling in the dough and you’re listening to people go back and forth all day long. As far as the court-appointed mediators go, and again, I say this with all the love of my heart because we all have to start somewhere. That’s usually the first place you go when you’re trying to get mediation clients or learn how to mediate. So you’re getting the intern. You’re getting the entry-level person, which is great. No problem. But divorces are so heated and they can be so filled with emotions that those individuals sometimes don’t have the skills to handle that. Now, I will tell you this also, Ed, is think of it this way. Let’s say you and I were going to go to lunch and you said, “Dude, I’ve had a really rough week. Can we just go somewhere? We’ll just pick up some sandwiches and we’ll just hang out and catch up.” And I’d be like, “Great.” And then I brought you to an emergency room at a hospital and you’d be like, “What the heck is happening?” Because the environment is so stressful. People are screaming and sirens are going off and you’re like, “Joe, we were just trying to have lunch, man.” That’s the same thing when you’re trying to mediate a peaceful process in a courtroom, in a courthouse. Your brain is saying, “I’m in a courthouse. Well, then this person must be the arbiter of my future, and I’ve got to argue my case, and this person’s going to rule in my favor.” In my world, it’s private mediation. It’s done in an office or like I use Zoom, so people can do it from home. They’re relaxed. They’ve got their dog on their lap. I’ve met a lot of dogs, and they’re relaxed and they’re calm, and we’re just trying to put them in a good space that they’re comfortable with so that they can have a good conversation. So you’ve got a different level of professional, but you’ve also got a different environment that you’re conducting it in. And you are correct. Many states do require court-ordered mediation first. So I always say to folks before you lawyer up, you’re going to see me now or you’re going to see me later. And quite frankly, you’re probably not going to see me later because you’re going to get told by the judge to go see one of our court-ordered mediators who are amazing people, but may or may not have the skills to resolve your issues.

ED: It’s absolutely a losing battle for that mediator in the system because I remember how much anxiety I had going in there and all these points I had to make. And something else that my listeners may not know and President Reagan actually signed this into law in California is California is a no-fault divorce state. So no matter what you do, whether, this is just for my listeners that don’t know, if your spouse cheats on you or they’ve done something that would require you in your mind to get divorced, the court doesn’t care. You’re going in there evenly. You have these children you’ve got to manage. You’ve got whatever. You’re managing property and things like that. And that’s frustrating because if you are the victim of somebody, maybe there was infidelity, you’re angry. You’re thinking, “Well, they did that. I should get this.” That’s not the case.

JOE: No. And that’s across the US now. Irreconcilable differences is now in all 50 states. The last holdout was New York in 2012. But you’re absolutely right. And unless there’s something extreme, and I’m talking like extreme domestic violence, like somebody liquidated all the bank accounts, you’re right. And you’re just like, “What the heck? I did my part. I tried to engage and like this person did me wrong yet I have to give them half of everything and I’m very angry about that.” And so like you said, Ed, managing the emotions is actually the hardest part of my job. Once you can get someone calm, most people are rational. Unless there’s something going on upstairs, most people at the end of the day know the difference between right and wrong. But when that lizard brain kicks in and they’re angry, it’s really hard to explain to them, this is, we got to talk about what’s fair, what’s equitable, what’s sharing this and that, and they don’t want to hear it. And so that’s my first job is to talk them off the ledge. Then once we do that, we can get into the negotiations.

ED: Now, do you mediate child visitation and things like that there?

JOE: Oh, yeah.

ED: So just for my listeners again, the idea of mediation is for you to work everything out. So you go set it on the judge’s desk and he can say, “Oh, cool. These guys are all good with the way the visitation’s going to work.” That’s the goal. Does that ever happen? I went into court several times before I went to court just to watch. And I never, I don’t think I ever saw equitable like two people coming in and going, “No, judge, we’re cool.”

JOE: Well, it happens. So one of the things that we’re most proud of is our case resolution rate is 98%. That’s amazing. Yeah. And that’s like, even in private mediation, it’s about 70%. And I think a lot of that has to do with us treating people like humans and going, “Yeah, it makes perfect sense that you’re angry.” Like, mediators are supposed to be neutral. And I absolutely am, but it doesn’t mean I’m not a person and I can’t recognize when somebody’s hurting or sad or crying or upset. And just be able to talk to them and go, “Yeah, that stinks. You’re right. It—” and I say that to people. I’m like, I get that I’m not here as a cruise director planning your dream vacation. I know you don’t want to be here. I know you’re angry. I know you’re disappointed. You didn’t get married with the intention of getting divorced. And that’s upsetting. Let’s talk about that and let’s rage through that a bit and then we can clear the deck and go, all right, now how do we move this thing forward? And to your point, like with our cases, we get people to that place first. And I think that’s unfortunately what the legal system is designed to do. It’s to choose a winner and a loser, a plaintiff and a defendant, right versus wrong. And in the setup of a divorce is a recipe for disaster. You’re pitting two parties against each other and now you’ve got this poor judge who has all of 15 minutes to hear both of your sides and then go, gavel, that’s it, get out of my courtroom. It’s not like on TV where there’s this impassioned plea and there’s tears and the judge is—oh, it’s like they’re like I got 462 cases to get through today, next. And God bless them for doing that work because I would never want that job.

ED: And another thing for my listeners, I don’t know if they still use Dissomaster in California. So Dissomaster is a program where they put both spouses or partners’ financial information in, and actually a question in California, even if you’re not married, was it, is it still the common law thing where it’s like seven years or something?

JOE: I don’t know about that, but I know if kids are involved, there is an expectation of child support. So that much I do know.

ED: Right. So they take your financial information, they put it into this computer and it spits out your child support either side, whether the wife’s paying or the husband’s paying or whatever. So they don’t have a lot of latitude with that. In fact, I don’t think they have any latitude with that. They’re supposed to stick to that. And for good reason. You don’t want a judge making a judgment based on the color tie I’m wearing or my ex-wife looks like his ex-wife, something like that. They want, so they put in this financial piece in there that makes it easier for the judge to make a decision. Now, when you’re doing mediation, do you have to follow those rules?

JOE: Yeah. So it’s funny you brought up Ronald Reagan. Up until 1984, it was at the judge’s discretion to decide what the child support was. And I’ll tell you a story about that in a minute. But since then all 50 states have been required to have some sort of mechanized way to output child support. Naturally the federal government left it up to the states and we now have 50 different ways to calculate child support. America, of course, good job everybody. So what wound up happening is California like many other states has a guideline. We use something known as the income shares model and it’s gotten much better over the years. A lot of different factors in, and in mediation we use it as a starting point and what’s been helpful is we can deviate from it with reason. Now normally the way the guidelines are, and in my opinion, I do practice in multiple states, so I practice in 13 different states. Of all the guidelines we work with I would say California’s is far and away the best we’ve got. They really do try to go by county, go by income, by health insurance, who’s got tax deductions. Like they’re trying, time sharing. They’re trying to figure out as many factors as they can put in there to try to make this thing make sense. So I do applaud the state for doing that. And so along those lines, usually it serves as a floor. It’s usually like, look, unless you got a really good reason, this is kind of what the state is expecting. And so what we do is we have clients do budgets and we say, “Okay, well, let’s see how much you think you’re really going to spend on the kids,” and then we go back and we match it to the child support guideline and usually it comes in pretty darn close. That’s why I’m like, “Wow, this is creepy. This is really pretty good.” But to your point, Ed, you can deviate if you’ve got a reason. And so there can be reasons where one parent might be paying more of, say, private school or summer camp or something, or maybe somebody is in an industry that’s probably getting downsized and they know that they’re going to be losing their job soon and so we’re going to anticipate that. But for the most part, the expectation is the guideline is the guideline so that the kids don’t become the economic victims of divorce, because then you got parents arguing about it’s not enough, it’s too much and the kids aren’t in the courtroom or whatever, in the mediation space with them. So the guidelines really do actually work pretty well these days here in California.

ED: So something that’s changed a lot since my last divorce because I’ve been with my current wife 26 years is that women were still not making the kind of money men were making in a lot of cases. So my wives both stayed home with the kids. They would do some side jobs and things like that. So when it came down to the income, I was mostly on the hook for the child support and mine was extremely high even though I had a lot of visitation. But I’m not here to really talk about that. But nowadays, I know several women that make much more income than a man, and they may end up with the kids primarily. And I was at one point where I had one of my daughters come live with me and I still had to pay her mom child support because of Dissomaster, because of the thing, and it wasn’t a lot but it was still frustrating because it’s like now I have her full-time and I still have to pay her but it was much less than what I was paying before.

JOE: Yeah. And that’s something that we see in negotiation and mediation where we can, the phrase, the fancy word of the day alert is a rebuttable presumption, meaning unless you give me a good reason that it shouldn’t be this, it’s going to be this. And that’s one of them where we can say look, the income disparity, whatever, but party A has this child 100% of the time, party B is not incurring any ordinary or extraordinary expenses, therefore for the purposes of this divorce, there will be no child support paid between them. And that’s what mediation is good for because you can really sit down and you can say, “Look, let’s just be honest. Maybe they do go by you once a month.” All right, if that’s the case, then how’s 50 bucks a month? Just use your common sense. Like you said, sometimes the guidelines, the way they’re set up. Now, one of the things that again what I like about California is taxation becomes an issue. So like who claims the kids, filing status, those kinds of things, and so we have a lot of room that we can kind of play with in terms of how we push the buttons and pull the levers to get, not that we’re manipulating the guideline, but we’re working it to meet the couple’s needs based on our mediation process and like getting to know them and know what they’re trying to achieve. And you’re right in the sense that we have seen a lot more women now, higher earners earning more than men. We have women who pay child support. We have women who pay alimony. And that’s been a message I’ve had to kind of share. We, up until recently, people were like, “Well, only women get alimony or only women get child support.” I’m like, “No, no, no, no. It’s based on need. It’s gender neutral.” And guys are like, “Really?” And I’m like, “Yeah, because the child support’s not for you. It’s for your kids. So go buy groceries for them or go buy sneakers for them. Don’t say, ‘I don’t need child support.’ Because you don’t get to say that. Your kids need it.” And that’s a weird message to have to share with people but it’s true.

ED: So if they hire you, can they hire you in lieu of going to a court-appointed mediator?

JOE: Oh, 100%. In fact we only do private mediation for that very reason. We don’t take court-appointed cases because of what you and I were talking about at the outset. Those folks have already entered the legal system. They’ve already laced up their gloves. They’re doing the thing in the middle of the ring just waiting for the bell. And I’m not, I’m at a point in my career where I don’t want to be the judge, the arbiter. I don’t want to be the referee. I want people who come in and are mediating because they want to put their kids first. They want to not burn the whole house down. And they want to preserve their money. They don’t want to spend it on legal fees and be able to sit down as two adults because quite frankly like I’m always about respectful communication and even if I get into an argument with a friend, even if it’s like a knock-down drag-out, I’m still watching my tongue because I still value this relationship, this friendship or in this case a co-parenting. This individual is still going to be in my life and by the way is going to be an influence on our children, my kids, our kids. So I don’t want that other individual thinking I’m a raving lunatic because they’re going to make my life difficult because they’re not going to want me to see the kids as much or they’re not going to be as flexible when I say, “Hey, could you cover on Friday because Joe asked me, can we go to the baseball game?” You want to have that. You want to be respectful because man, when you’re disrespectful, and I’m sure you can appreciate this, you’re really the only one who’s hurt by that because if you’re the one lashing out, something’s going on inside of you that you’re angry about and you’re trying to, and the other person’s like, “Okay, talk to you later.” They’re not thinking about you on the couch while they’re watching Netflix and having a beer. They’re just going on with their day and you’re at home seething and raging. And so you got to let that stuff go because it’s only killing you. It’s not killing them.

ED: One of the judges in my first divorce says to me, to us in court, the problem here is you two are both emotionally involved. And I’m thinking, no, I hate her. But he was right. It wasn’t love, it was hate at that point. And that just tore me up inside for many years. Of course, I get along fine with my exes now. They can come to the house if there’s a party or it’s no big deal. I don’t have any, once I relieved, I took that weight off my shoulders. I was much better off. But what you were just saying about that lashing out, that’s sales 101, right? That’s you get that email that you are like I can’t believe they just sent that and you start banging on the keys. My thing is you take four hours and don’t reply to that email until you get your head together. So I’ve had, we’ve had a hard time after COVID, we’re still trying to get our feet under us and I felt like there were some people that didn’t help me as much as I thought I helped them. And I get that feeling sometimes, that anxiety, and then I but I let it go and I’m like, there’s no value to me going after those people. So relating that to being a parent or being an ex-spouse or whatever, same thing. You got to bite your tongue sometimes and just let it go. First of all, after you’ve had eight kids like I have and raised two grandkids in addition, you find out that most is not as big a deal as you think. Imagine, if this person wants to, it’s just like, I don’t care, like I’m not coming over this weekend because my mom, I’m having to spend a night with my, I don’t care. Go ahead, spend a night with your friend. Doesn’t matter to me. It’s not going to change the trajectory of anything. This doesn’t matter. And I try to tell my kids this if they ask for advice, is I got news for you. My mom used to say, and I’ve said this a hundred times, say no as little as possible. And when you do say no, have a really good reason. Is there a safety issue? Is there something going on? Maybe you don’t know the parents, whatever it is. But it’s kind of the same way in those, hey, can they stay an extra week? I don’t care. Go ahead. Gives me time to do some stuff.

JOE: Yeah. You’re talking about communication and anger and feelings and things like that. So in mediation, in negotiation really, that’s what I am. I’m a professional negotiator. And I’ve thought after my mediation career, and I mean this in all sincerity, I might be a little old for the FBI, but I would love to be a hostage negotiator. And I’m not saying that in a flip way because these are individuals, they’ve got a story, they feel misunderstood, they feel not heard, and there’s a reason behind it. And I want to get to that reason. And that’s part of what in mediation with doing divorce is you’re trying to really get to the reason behind the reason. And often when people are lashing out, there’s something buried 1, 2, 3, 10 levels deep and it’s my job to keep digging until I hit that treasure. And one of the things that you hear a lot and what’s very rewarding in mediation is if you keep at it as a professional negotiator, if you keep at it, you get to that aha moment. And that’s what we all look for. That’s our dopamine hit where somebody’s ranting and raving about alimony and then somebody just blurts out, “When my dad left when I was five, we couldn’t celebrate Christmas. My mom was destitute and she had to work on Christmas Day.” And you’re like, “Oh, wow. Okay, we got it.” Air out of the balloon. We can get back to the conversation. But it’s something that comes way out of left field. And that’s part of when, if you can be the calm one in the communication process, even if somebody’s coming in hot, you can just keep asking those questions and just keep asking those questions calmly like the negotiators, the hostage people do. They don’t go, “You got to let those people go or I’m busting in there.” They’re like, “Hey, tell me what you need. What’s your name?” They’re keeping it calm. And that’s what we’re trying to do. And if you ever find yourself, you or any of the listeners find yourself in that situation, don’t escalate. I know it’s hard. Don’t escalate. Just ask a lot of questions. Keep the other person talking because eventually the truth is going to come out and that’s when you then engage. Wow, I never knew you felt like that. Or geez, I never knew that happened. That stinks.

ED: That’s a good parenting tip period to communicate with your kids. And one of my kind of flagship talks that I give when I’m doing public speaking is about trauma that you haven’t dealt with when you’re a leader and you have this trauma that you haven’t dealt with or whatever, and you’re not dealing with it and you’re trying to manage people, it manifests in bad behavior sometimes or erratic behavior or anger or sadness or whatever. So I encourage people to go back into your life and look for that trauma and deal with it. You don’t forget it. It’s like maybe you lost a parent or a dog or whatever, something that you’re still holding on to. You need to deal with those things and do some self-care before you can…

JOE: It’s the oxygen mask. Put the oxygen mask on before you can help your kids. Exactly.

ED: So in my limited time knowing you, and it’s funny because you decided on this time slot because we may go on longer than I’m thinking because I think I could talk to you for an hour.

JOE: You and I can hang out all day.

ED: Yeah. You have a very good temperament and I don’t know if it’s, thanks, whether you got it when you were raised or your education background, whatever it is, but I can see you in a position like that that would calm me down like if I was starting to get wound up and not patronizing, not being a patronizing person.

JOE: I appreciate that. Yeah.

ED: So we hope that none of our listeners have to go through this but this is a good idea for them that there’s an option out there. So you said something to me funny before the podcast about people that really got along well in the negotiation process, like spouses or whatever that maybe had kids or didn’t have kids and they kind of had it all worked out before they came and saw you and then when they’re done negotiating they go out to dinner. Does that happen often?

JOE: It happens not a lot but it happens often enough that it makes you scratch your head. And as far as life goes, I am a live and let live. I’m like, you want to shave your head and wear a diaper, knock yourself out. Like I’m not doing that, but you want to do that, go for it. I am just one of those people where I just want everybody to be happy and do your thing. And sometimes there’s things that are behind those relationships that we get to see in our space that the outside world might not see. And in many of those cases where the dinner is happening, perhaps this was a heterosexual couple and then one of the members of the marriage decided that they wanted to switch teams as the kids might say and then be in relationships of the same gender. And in those spaces there’s really like, well as the other spouse you might be mad at yourself like how did I not see this? But then on the other hand, you’re like, well, there’s nothing I could do about this because I’m male or female. I have the wrong parts here. So we see that a fair amount with that dynamic. But we’ve also seen folks where I think they’ve just had a hard enough time over the years that they’ve kind of come to this place of peace where they’ve said, we’ve tried the therapy, we’ve tried, we’ve raised good kids, we’ve tried separation, we’ve tried X, Y, and Z. You know what, I realize you’re still a great person. I’m a great person and we’re just going to go our separate ways, but we always want to be in each other’s lives. And that’s really nice to see. Because that to me, Ed, is mature level 10. It’s sort of like, what’s that song? There ain’t no good guy, there ain’t no bad guy. It’s just you and me and we just disagree. I forget who sings that. But that’s it. It’s like you just look at each other and go, you know what? No, I’m not doing this. We’re good people. We raised good kids or we had a good time for some of those years together and now it’s just time for us to go our separate ways and that takes a lot of work to do and a lot of maturity and so those are the folks that we see in those kinds of spaces.

ED: So one of the reasons I think my wife and I get along really good, and it’s not, this is not what this podcast is about, but for the listeners, you can take this for advice if you want. When we have a situation, when you have eight kids, stuff’s going to happen. It happens. And now we don’t have those kids. But we’re finding ourselves in this logistics tornado right now with how we get everybody where they’re supposed to go. And it’s only two kids now. It seemed easier when there was eight. But what my wife and I do is we go, “Okay, this is what needs to be done.” And we just do it together. Like I do what I can do, she does what she can do, and it always works out. And that’s, I feel good about that. That’s kind of how our whole marriage was. It was just like this is what has to be done, and we just need to do it together. Like we had five girls in four sports at one time. Well, you can do the math. That’s hard to get around on weekends. And all that stuff. So it could be a situation like that where people just decided at this point they’re going to move on and try some other thing. I don’t know. I’m a Catholic. We’re supposed to be married forever. Well, that didn’t work for me.

JOE: Yeah. Me too. Exactly. And I have some kids that have had relationship issues too. And it could have been derived from my immaturity when I was younger. I could have put that on them or whatever. But for the most part, they’re all doing great. But yeah, I don’t understand why the divorce rates are still so high. It’s probably preparation, they haven’t drawn out the expectations and then or those change over the years and they never revisit them. So I always tell salespeople there’s three rules in life. There’s expectations, communication, and discipline. So you got to draw out your expectations. This is what I expect from you, wife and husband, and then we have to communicate those because sometimes we have expectations we don’t tell the other person and they’re like not meeting our expectations and I’m like, well, they don’t know. That’s why they’re not meeting them.

JOE: Exactly.

ED: Then you got to have the discipline to do it. I told you I would mow the lawn on Saturday at 9:00, if that’s how petty it is. Mow the lawn on Saturday at 9:00. Don’t wait. Be a person of your word.

JOE: And that’s part of it, like when you were saying about being married and the divorce rate. One thing I wanted to comment is that it’s an interesting phenomenon. While the divorce rate is still high, what you’re noticing is the divorce rate is lower among couples in say their 30s and 40s and maybe early 50s. The divorce rate has really spiked in people, say, mid-50s through 60s and so like more baby boomer generation. And my take on that is that I’m a Gen Xer, born in ’68. So close to the boomer edge there. And so when you talk about people in that age bracket, they were raised in that nuclear family, that post-World War II, mom stayed home, dad went to work. So mom was the caretaker. And as society has evolved, and maybe for the better or not, the need for women to re-enter the workforce for dual incomes, for these kinds of marriages, I think folks who are in their 60s have been married for 30 years, say, for example, are looking back and saying, you know what? Those ideals that were instilled upon me when I was getting married in 1970 or whatever, they no longer really apply. I want to live my life. I want to do things. And what we’ve seen too, and this is an interesting dynamic among gray divorce. That’s the term that we use for older couples who are divorcing. What I’ve seen, Ed, is that because the wives were the primary caretakers, they worked inside the home because I know all the stuff I put my mom through. I’m an only child and I’m sure I put her through heck. She didn’t get paid nearly enough to deal with my nonsense. So she didn’t stay at home. She worked inside the home. And now these ladies, these women who are now in their 60s and 70s have said, I didn’t live the life of adventure. My husband worked and traveled for business and had his dinners and his two-martini lunches and all that stuff. And now he wants to sit on the couch because he’s tired. And that makes sense. He’s worked his whole life and now he just wants to read his book or play his golf and just hang out. Me, I’ve been sitting on that couch for 40 years. I want to get out there. I want to travel. I want to meet people. And so you’ve got this split. And that’s why a lot of these divorces are actually really amicable because they’re like, “Well, no problem. You want to go off and travel the world? Go for it. I’m going to be here reading my book and watching Golf Channel on TV.” And that’s what we’re seeing. That divorce rate is actually 75% in the gray divorce. Oh, wow. So three-quarters of those marriages are now ending in divorce. And our oldest client was 82.

ED: Now I’m thinking if you got to 82, I’m figuring, I mean, I hope this is right. Land the plane, man.

JOE: But this guy, he was a photographer. He wanted to go on safaris in Africa. I think his wife was like 76. And that was too dangerous. I’m not flying. I’m not doing it. And he’s like, “Well, I want to do it.” And he did. And so people want to live their lives and in that world, in that space, that’s where the divorce rate is highest. That’s kind of dragging up the average if you will. And so we’re seeing a lot of that happen and those divorces are usually very amicable because at that point they’ve both got the retirement stuff, they both got Social Security, they’re both just really just kind of coasting at this point, and they’re able to just kind of go their separate ways.

ED: Two things about that. My second marriage, I traveled a lot and it was, I would come home on Friday after being gone all week, and she’d say, “Hey, let’s go out to dinner.” I’m like, “Are you kidding? I can’t eat.” And it’s funny. I tell people this. They think I’m lying. After you eat Ruth’s Chris three times in a week, and then you go to Donovan’s, and blah blah blah blah. I want a hot dog. I don’t want to eat that rich food anymore. And she was jealous because I was out eating that food, but it wasn’t fun. It wasn’t bad traveling. I mean, I’d do it again if I had an opportunity, but I get that piece. But the other thing, you’re my wife’s age. So if you go and I see this on social media sometimes, they’ll give pictures of people your age when they were in a sitcom and they were like 40. Well, dude. I was at the gym at 5:00 this morning. I’m 63, out-working kids that are there and I have this podcast. I’m doing, I got this. I might write a book. I have all this stuff going on. 63-year-olds didn’t do that when we were baby boomers. So I have a super high level of energy that I’d match with anybody. It doesn’t matter. So, and my wife does too. So we’re cool. Where we want to, we both want to do the same things. That’s good.

JOE: Yeah, that’s important, that relationship compatibility. And that’s where we see longer life expectancy too. So if you were in that position 100 years ago and you were 65 and unhappy in your marriage, you’re probably going to be passing away within the next 5 to 7 years mathematically, maybe even shorter than that. Right now, age, if you’re going to the gym and being healthy, 80s, 90s, hundreds, that’s not a pipe dream anymore if you’re healthy.

ED: And there’s 10 other guys at the gym my age. I mean, I’m not the only one in there. So now you’re 65 and you’re like, if I got 30 more years on this planet, then I want to make sure that they count. I don’t want to be in an unhappy space. Well, it’s funny. Years ago, they would give you a window of your earning capability. I’m not even at my earning capability yet. I mean, I still have ways. Besides my lack of education, my work ethic and my ideas and what I’ve retained in my brain, all works and it’s functional. I haven’t made as much money as I’m ever going to make yet. I’m still heading towards that.

JOE: Look at some of these sportscasters that are in their 80s and you couldn’t even tell. It’s crazy. So I don’t want to get off track, but that’s really interesting. I didn’t know that that divorce rate was so high for older people. But you remember when our parents, they got old quick and they didn’t do, there wasn’t as much to do. There wasn’t, you couldn’t just go skiing or surfing or whatever when you were that age because you were too old.

Yeah. My dad, he was in construction, so he was a brick layer and he’s carrying bags of concrete. And then as he got in his career, he got to be more of the foreman. And then, like we were talking about before, then he didn’t go to school for it, but then he became an architect because he had so much experience building things that he could actually draw them as well. And he was a high school graduate. And these days he couldn’t do that. There’s no way. But yet somehow he still built hospitals and municipal complexes and they didn’t fall down. So, okay. But that’s that kind of manual labor which takes a toll on someone physically does also make sense. Lots of us in these kind of information jobs now, we’re getting soft in a different way. We’re sitting on our butts all day, but I’m not lugging 50-pound bags of concrete up and down four flights of stairs trying to put down a concrete floor. So I definitely have the ability to be active later in life as long as I keep myself in shape. And now I have the opposite problem where I have to make sure I look away from the screen every 20 minutes and get my butt out of the chair and not just drink 400 cups of coffee sitting here. But yeah, there’s that opportunity. And I think that’s part of life. Like you said before, I like what you said where when you were talking about you and your wife and about getting the girls to sports. I think a lot of times, Ed, people want validation. They want acknowledgement. Think about when we were little kids. What were you waiting for? Good job. Good job, Ed. Good job, Joe. Or the report card or the trophy from baseball. You always got accolades. And then as you got older, you didn’t get that anymore. And it kind of stinks. You don’t want a parade, but you’d like somebody to say thank you. And you and I, we were talking about this. All those rules that you learned in kindergarten, they also apply to a marriage. Please, thank you. You’re welcome. Could you please help me? It’s really not that hard when you think about it. But it’s really hard when you’re trying to get five girls to four different sports and you’re all just running around, but as an adult, it’s really just saying, “We’re going to just keep doing what we’re doing with one caveat.” And this would be my tip to the listeners on keeping your relationship together. Make sure that you acknowledge and validate what your spouse is doing. Even if, like in my house, for example, my wife Cheryl, her role is that she takes out the trash on Thursdays. That’s her quote-unquote job. So when she takes the trash out, it’s been for 22 years expected for her to take the trash out. She wheels the pails out and when she comes in, I say, “Hey babe, thanks for doing that.” And she’s like, “Oh, of course.” She goes, “It’s my job.” And I’m like, “No, I appreciate it.” She goes, “Thanks.” And that’s, it’s just a silly thing, but it’s an acknowledgement. And that, Ed, is what I think really keeps people together. And that’s what people forget to do. And that’s what leads them to my office is because they either take the other person for granted or they don’t recognize the role they’re contributing because they say, “Well, you stay at home all day with the kids.” And that other person’s like, “Oh, yeah. You try staying home for 30 days and see how well you fare.” So just simple stuff, man. Basic manners will get you 90% of the way there in my opinion.

ED: My first divorce, my mom says, “You know what? Just give her the kids all the time. She’ll have them back to you in two weeks.” Exactly. Do that. But looking back, I could do it now. I could get rid of kids like, vote them off the island. Yeah. But you’re right. And this is just I kind of think about social media, the picture it’s painting for our kids, and it’s not a realistic picture. It’s the same in professions. You see all these people that have all these billions of dollars. Half of them don’t have two cents to rub together. But what we’re seeing is that all these things are available to you, which I guess they are, but statistically it’s probably not going to, it’s like watching sports. If my son starts batting practice at two years old, he’ll be a professional baseball player by the time he’s 20. The odds are still one in a gazillion that this kid’s going to…

JOE: Oh, yeah. And we have clients like that. Yeah. We have those expectations for our spouse too that they’re going to have, I was watching this guy on social media the other day and he says, “You know when a girl wakes up on social media and she has makeup on, she set the camera up.” It’s not some camera came into her house and saying, “Oh my God, look how beautiful she is when she wakes up.” She’s a train wreck when she wakes up. Just like all of us.

ED: I have to lean on the wall and kind of drag myself against the wall sometimes. Get the shade open. Oh God, dog is crying. Needs to go outside. You’re like, “Okay, this is how my day’s starting.”

JOE: And I think that’s a good point, is like that’s what relationships are and acknowledging the reality, like you said, setting a good example that relationships are, getting a washcloth for your spouse when they’re sick and they’ve got a fever and you’re, they’re throwing up in the toilet and saying, “Do you need anything? Can I get you some tea?” Like that’s what’s happening too. It’s not all glamour shots and vacations and social media posts.

ED: Well, I tell you, I love your message. I really like you a lot. I think that we could do another podcast and even go a different direction because I feel like you have a lot of calming information for people just period. Like you could just be one of those guys, a go-to person in your negotiation dreams and things like that. I think that’s awesome. I think we gave the audience enough information about, first, the first rule is don’t get divorced. But we know that’s, avoid it if you can. Work on your marriage. Joe can find something else to do if nobody else gets divorced again.

JOE: I could be a hostage negotiator. Exactly. The dream will be, there’ll be hostages out there. Exactly. I think I’ll go take one now just to help.

ED: So one thing you keep saying and then we’ll wrap this thing up. You keep saying “us.” Do you have somebody else that is a mediator within your company?

JOE: So my wife is actually a divorce coach and so what we’ve been talking about…

ED: I didn’t know if you were talking about her.

JOE: Yeah. No, I’m the only mediator. She’s the coach and that’s, we work together and that’s exactly what our philosophy is. You got to handle the emotional stuff as well as the financial stuff and the tactical stuff and all the paperwork. People think divorce is just this single issue like parenting plan or what are we going to, we’re going to sell our house. It’s a whole amalgamation of stuff. And a big chunk of it, as we’ve been talking about, is that emotions. Get that under control before you ever step into my office or a lawyer’s office. Go to therapy. Go to couples counseling. Even if you’re not staying married, work on yourself to get yourself in a space and then you can enter the process. It’ll go a lot better. Trust me.

ED: So that’s a good question. And this is the danger of you and I talking because as soon as you say something, it brings up. How often do people reconcile after their mediation?

JOE: Very rare. We’ve only had two in our history because, oh wow. Like one of the things that you realize is that most people when they decide to divorce, it’s not a snap thing. Studies have shown it takes them a little over two years from the time there’s this inkling in their brain that goes, I think I might want a divorce to actually stepping into my office or a lawyer’s office. So they’ve been giving it some thought and if they haven’t, we actually don’t work with them. We actually say, you know what, thank you for reaching out, but we’re not interested. If we get a voicemail from someone at 2 in the morning saying, I want a divorce. We don’t call them back because they had a fight. They, whatever happened. Like maybe they do, but they really need to take it down and think about it and really process that. So yeah, reconciliation is pretty rare, but we do get people where if they come in, we do at least try to ask them, “Have you done everything you can to save the marriage? Have you done the work? Have you tried this?” And thankfully, most people have said, “Yeah, we decided in counseling.” Or, “Yeah, we’ve been going to counseling for a while.” Or, “I’ve been talking to my therapist and I broke it to my spouse.” So the good news is at least the folks we’re seeing, they are taking it serious and they are taking the time to really acknowledge and contemplate that decision before pulling that trigger.

ED: Yeah. I mean, so as far as my belief, you should get married and stay married. That’s just, that’s my religious background. That’s whatever. Now, not a good example since this is my third marriage, but I wish I would have taken more time up front and prepped a little bit more. And before I had kids, I wish I would have known a little bit more because you learn a lot when you have kids. And there’s no manual. There’s no manual for marriage either. Nope. I recommended that my kids get married when they were a little bit older. They didn’t do what I said, but that’s fine. It’s their life. They have to do what they have to do. And but by the same token, I don’t like seeing people unhappy in relationships. It could be verbally abusive, could be physically abusive. I don’t like that. And that is horrible for children. And I think that my kids, once I met my current wife and we were rolling along, I think that they became much happier in their lives because they were in a very structured, stable environment. Now I told you I was married for 5 and 7. So I was married 12, those 12 years I was the poster boy for what not to do, talking about their mom and things like that. I didn’t do it too much but I did it one time too much. So I really did not do a good job with that. And then I know it’s hard too, dude, because you just want to lash out.

JOE: Of course.

ED: But you got to grow up and not be stupid and keep it to yourself. So my wife and I, the first night we went out, we talked about our divorces. And what happened in our marriages and stuff like that and it was humorous because we were pretty much over it, but it was also daunting because we had to deal with it for a couple years, her and I, and she had to deal with him and I had to deal with her and kind of things. But like I said, looking back, I could have done a hundred things differently. And that’s why I’m hoping that people listening to this, if they unfortunately find themselves in this situation, they know they have an alternative.

JOE: Yeah. Exactly. You can always try mediation because if mediation with us doesn’t work then you can get a lawyer. You can enter the court system. You can do that. But we always say, look, you’ve seen our website, you know what our case resolution rate is. If I said to you, here’s a lottery ticket. There’s a 98% chance you’re going to win, but it’s going to cost you $1,000 to play. I would take that bet. I’d buy that ticket because if I didn’t win this time, I’d know I’d win next time. At 98%, the odds are definitely in my favor. And not that getting a divorce is like winning the lottery, but it’s still the same concept of your odds are really stacked in your favor that you’re going to get through this peacefully, cost-effectively, and not destroy your life. Why not take that bet? And people are still, they still want to go fight. And those are the folks, Ed, who you’re never going to convince them because they haven’t done the work to say, “Yeah, I don’t want to ruin my life, my kids’ life, my ex-spouse’s life. I’m just going to burn it to the ground.” Okay, go for it. I’m, sorry, that’s kind of common sense and business 101, but we know, I used to say common sense isn’t common.

ED: No. Well, Joe, I think that we’ll wrap this up and we’ll talk another time. Stay on the line. I’m going to do an outro, but I will put Joe’s information in the description and it’s equitablemediation.com basically. Or you can put Joe Dillon Mediator in and you’ll find him because I did that this morning. So great guest, great information, great temperament. I just like your style.

JOE: Thanks, Ed. I appreciate it, man. Thank you.

ED: So listeners, thank you for listening. Keep sharing my podcast. Keep liking it. Keep looking at the clips. If you go to my YouTube channel, please follow me. It’s edfranklin.nolimits. Raising 10 podcast is in my playlist. And you can always get ahold of me if you have a guest or you want to be a guest. It’s edfranklin.nolimits@gmail.com. And thank you for listening. Share, share, share. And keep watching. There’s a lot more to come.