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Don’t Let Your Divorce Become a Disaster

A Conversation with Joe Dillon of Equitable Mediation

Mac: Welcome to the Lawyers and Mediators International Show and podcast, where we discuss law and conflict resolution topics to educate both professionals and everyday people. Catch regular episodes on YouTube and anywhere you get your podcast. Just remember, nothing in these episodes constitutes legal advice, so be sure to talk to a lawyer as cases are fact dependent.

Hey everyone, welcome back to Lawyers and Mediators International, where we talk about the law and conflict resolutions to educate the public, professionals, and everyday people. Welcome back, and in this episode I have guest Joe Dylan. He’s a mediator who’s going to be talking to us today about conflict, especially when it comes to divorces—divorces with kids, without kids. So Joe, how are you doing today?

Joe: Doing well, thanks Mac. Thanks for having me.

Mac: Well, thank you so much for coming on. I’ll be sharing your website while we talk, as we always like to do. As we start off these things, we want to get to know you, so why don’t you just spend a couple minutes to share yourself to the public, to the audience. But don’t share too much because I know you have quite an interesting backstory I’d like to get into a little bit, because that backstory really gives you the passion as to why you do this work? But yeah, tell us who you are in just the basic details.

Joe: Certainly. So I’m a mediator. I’ve been mediating for 28 years, been in private practice in divorce for 17. I have an MBA in finance, so that’s interesting when it comes to divorce. Because other than parenting plans, you’ve got child support, alimony, property division—they’re really financial matters when you think about it. I use that background to really help parties understand what’s fair and equitable, and I know we’re going to spend some time today talking about that as a concept, because fair and equitable—those are loaded words? They all mean different things to different people. But I try to bring that analytical bent along with some personal experience, which we’ll explore in a bit, to the table, because I know of what I speak.

That’s me in a nutshell. As I go through my career and I do this, a lot of satisfaction comes from it because you can really help people avoid court, avoid drama, and as you’ll learn a little bit about my story, I have experienced that firsthand.

Mac: Yes, well, similar to you, I do a lot of mediation work and I touch a lot of divorce cases, and so we both know they can become very hectic, emotionally stressful. I liken people doing their own divorce to going to the dentist and doing your own dental work—not a wise idea? It can be very painful. So you want expert help, and sometimes those experts are lawyers, but sometimes—and especially in Texas where I’m based—we’re required to go see mediators before we go see a judge. So often times those experts are mediators like yourself who can help.

So let’s talk about your backstory. You are, as you’ve described in your own biography online and you’ve discussed it elsewhere because I’ve seen you everywhere on different podcasts, and you’re going around quite a bit to share your story. But tell us about your childhood and what happened and what you experienced, because you went through—your parents went through a divorce and it impacted how you came to see relationships. I’ll let you tell the story, but go ahead.

Joe: Absolutely. So I grew up a classic suburban kid in New Jersey—I’m originally from New Jersey—and my parents litigated their divorce. Now this was back in the ’80s, really mediation was kind of a glimmer in the eye of some places? It really hadn’t become mainstream. And they really just fought and fought and fought, and it really dragged on through my high school years? So it was really, when you’re a kid and you’re supposed to be out and playing sports and working your after-school job and with your friends, a lot of it was just waiting for some letter from a lawyer in the mailbox or some drama or sitting in the waiting room of an attorney’s office because my mom had an appointment or sitting in the back of a courtroom. So that’s not an ideal way for a kid to spend their time?

And there were some really powerful messages. One of them I will never forget—and in fact I will remember to this day—his name was Judge Friend, I kid you not. And my mom was sitting there in our living room one day, she’s just crying, she’s upset, she’s like, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I hope we get a good judge.” And I was a teenager, so I knew enough to ask like, “What does that mean?” ? And as you know, in your line of work, because you and I are child support evangelists, if you will—so that’s what I appreciate about you—she said, “Yeah, I’ve heard that he likes kids and that if we get him as our judge, we’ll get good child support.”

Now, as professionals, if you and I sit here, we’re like, “What? You have to hope you get a judge who likes kids so that you can have money?” So thankfully a lot of that’s evolved, with the child support acts and guidelines that have come out.

So that was one thing, and then the other part of the puzzle was they were so busy fighting that I was an only child? So I just had myself, I was to my own devices, and they were so mad with each other—and specifically my dad with my mom—that after I saw him in court, this was I was probably 15, 16 somewhere in there. The last time I saw him in court was in the waiting room of the courthouse, like out in the lobby, and then they were just arguing over who was going to pay for college for me to go to college, and that was the big argument. Screaming and yelling, my dad was literally restrained because he was going to go after the judge because the judge kept making him pay more and more because he was getting angrier and angrier. And so finally, that was it. And that was the last I saw or heard from my father.

Then in 2019, I got a letter that said he died. And so from age 15 until at the time I guess I was about 50—that was it. I never saw him, heard from him, knew where he was, and it was really all because of that litigated divorce.

So when I get into session, people have most likely read that about me, and it’s not just platitudes, it’s not just words when I say, “Listen, you two, I know exactly what’s going to happen to you and your kids if you don’t figure it out here.” And so that’s the story I bring, and it’s not a story—it’s my life? And that’s the bent I bring into the room, and I believe people resonate with that and appreciate that, because we all say, “No, that’s never going to happen to me, never going to happen to me.” Well, it happened to me. It does happen, and I don’t want that for you?

Mac: Exactly. No, well said. I mean, thank you. I’m sorry all that happened to you. In a way, from where you sit, you can kind of tell the future? When people come to you, you’ve already lived this, and human nature being what it is, you can kind of tell, I’m sure, when people are in front of you where they’re going, and it’s not a good road.

Joe: Exactly.

Mac: Yeah, so when it comes to children, I think about the destructive part of divorce being the worst aspect because kids naturally want their mom and dad. They want their parents in their lives. And children are not just innocent, but I like how one person put it—they see you as their superhero, and a superhero cannot be a bad person? But in every superhero story, there’s a villain, and a lot of times one parent will cast the other as the villain in the story. And so naturally, when the child goes to the mirror, they’re going to look at themselves and feel that division, like, “Well, if one parent is saying the other one’s evil, basically what does that say about me?” Because I’m an identity of both.

So I guess that’s the encouragement out there for many parents who are listening—you have to both be the superheroes for your children so that they identify with that. So how has what you went through impacted now what you do?

Joe: Well, along with the personal experience, another thing that happened—and again, my recollection, it’s been a while, it’s a bit fuzzy—but I seem to remember that my dad would get paid on Friday. This is back in the ’80s when people got paid weekly, and he’d get paid on Friday, and the checks for child support and alimony would probably show up on like Monday or Tuesday? Because he was living close, I have no idea. And then one day the alimony checks just stopped because he decided that he wasn’t going to pay anymore.

And my mom, at the time, she had been working part-time. She really raised me probably for the first 11 years of my life, and then saw the writing on the wall and thought, “Maybe I better get a job and try to support myself.” And so she was working part-time, which then became full-time, and she had spent so much on attorneys and the process and was so burnt out by it that she just couldn’t go through it anymore? She just couldn’t go fight to get the alimony turned back on, if you will.

So the destruction of the process just wore her down so much that she couldn’t even fight for what perhaps she was legally entitled to? That was in her agreement. And then I think the child support may have also stopped? This was pre-enforcement days and things like that.

And so now here we are, me and my mom. She had tried—she kept the house? And so that’s another thing that’s a lesson that’s learned. She basically exchanged any s she had to my dad’s pension and retirement in exchange for buying him out of the house as part of the settlement. And that left her with zero in retirement. So she had no retirement, she had this house now that she had to take care of. My dad was in construction, so whenever anything went wrong, he fixed it? Now it’s me and my mom, and I’m not very handy, I will tell you that? I’m not very good with that kind of stuff.

And so here is a woman who should be getting money, can’t get up the strength or the financial resources to get what she is entitled to and deserves. She’s now got this home that she’s trying to manage, this teenage kid, and she’s just like, “Okay, what are you going to do with this kid?” ? And I watched how that really wore down on her, and so she had to pick up multiple jobs. I didn’t see her. She’d come home at 9:30 at night, leaving a teenage boy alone until 9:00 at night. Thankfully I was a good kid. I didn’t burn down the house or do anything, but I didn’t have parents. I didn’t have siblings, I didn’t have parents, and it was a really lonely existence.

And as much as I so appreciate what my mom did in trying to support me and keep the house and do all those things, I really wish my parents had talked, put my interests first, and said, “Okay, what do we collectively have to do so that you, mom, can work a job—because you have to work—but you don’t have to work three jobs, and I can spend some time with each of my parents?” Because my dad was really involved in my life up until then. He was the baseball coach and the scout leader and all of that stuff, and then poof, just disappeared. So that was particularly shocking.

And so when you see conflict in a divorce and you see the collateral damage, it’s not just to the people involved, the spouses—it’s to the kids, and it’s not just to their lives today, it’s to their lives 10, 20, 50 years from now? Down the road. And that’s what you and I, I’m sure, we both see.

Mac: Yeah, yeah. And so therefore, that’s the work you do at Equitable Mediation—that’s the website. And so I read somewhere that I think you had said that life is best viewed through the windshield and not through the rearview mirror. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, why is it so important to do things to help people resolve their cases in a way that’s going to put them in a good path forward?

Joe: Exactly. That’s my favorite quote. We know from our practice that mediation is a forward-looking process. And our job, whether people like this or not, our job is to help them craft an agreement that’s going to govern their relationship, their parenting, their financial relationship from what I call day zero—the first day you walk in my office—forward.

Now, did you always go to your husband’s or wife’s family on Thanksgiving and that was unfair? Sure, okay. Did so-and-so never do the laundry or pick up the groceries or leave their shoes in the hall? Sure? We all do, by the way. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is where do you want to go? If you’re going to continue to pick up old grievances—and quite frankly, I tell my clients this up front, it’s not to be cruel, it’s not to be flippant, it’s not to sound like I don’t care. People who know me, they’re like, “Joe, you care way too much, you get way too involved.” But it’s because it’s destructive if we spend all our time trying to go through all these past grievances. We’re never going to be able to do the thing that you said you both wanted, which was to end your marriage and move your lives forward separately. And let me help you do that?

And so that’s the whole looking through the windshield. We want to see where we go, because another personal aside is that the divorce really destroyed my mom. She never dated, she never had any friends, she became that kind of shut-in lady where if the ball went in the yard, you didn’t want to go get it. Like, it was like that stereotype. And it broke my heart because she really—she was a young woman at the time, she was 45, and I say that as I’m older than 45 now, so I still feel young? And so she had her whole life ahead of her, and this just destroyed her because she kept looking back, looking back.

And when even after she was divorced, I remember one night sitting at Christmas, and it was I think about 20 years later, and she’s like, “I wish my husband was here.” And I was like, “Mom, you’ve been divorced for 20 years. Like, we need to understand this. You never went to therapy, never got any help.” And so I really, I’m very, very, very adamant about helping people look forward for the myriad of reasons that I just shared.

Mac: Yeah, no, I can see that’s genuine, definitely. And so how do you deal with people who might, for lack of a better word, be stuck in the past, where they have so much hurt and wounds that they’re just, I guess in a way, clouded where they cannot move forward? And I’ve had them come to my office where we’re mediating these kind of difficult and very strenuous cases. How do you deal with that?

Joe: Well, one thing you’ll see from our website—my partner, who’s also my wife, you can figure that out by our last name—she is a divorce coach. So she’s a certified professional coach, and we take the tact that divorce has three parts. It has tactical—you got to gather up all the stuff? Fill out all the forms, write up all the agreements. Financial—all the money, figure out the dollars and cents and what goes where. And the biggest one—emotional. And it’s the emotional one that gets people in trouble?

People will say that they’re arguing over child support or alimony. But what they’re really mad about is, “We always went to your family on Thanksgiving!” That’s really what they’re mad about. And so Cheryl partners with us, and clients will work with me always one-on-one? As a neutral, I’m always working with both parties. I don’t caucus one-on-one. Cheryl, on the other hand, works with clients one-on-one, and so that’s the opportunity for them to help clear some of that emotional baggage, clear those grievances. She helps them kind of get out of their old story—that’s what she calls it. “This is your old story, and it’s not serving you well? Because look where it got you. So let’s write a new story.”

And that’s her goal—is to get people to say, “Yeah, I do have self-worth,” or “Yeah, I am going to spend holidays with my family,” or “Yeah, I could get a job.” And as soon as they turn that corner and they recognize that humanity of themselves? That self-worth? Because of all the messages they’ve probably been getting over the course of their relationship, that’s when they seem to turn the corner and say, “I’m going to make a change, I’m going to move forward, I’m going to rewrite my future,” because we all have the ability to do that?

You read those stories about people getting a college degree at 85? Why are they doing that? Because they have the ability to change their future and move forward? And so Cheryl plays a very integral part of that. And I will make no bones about it, because as the mediator, when I see a client like that, and then when I see them in the next session, even though it’s purely confidential and I have no idea if they spoke to Cheryl, I’m like, “They had a coaching session.” You could tell.

Mac: Exactly, so you’re like, “Yeah.” So let me ask you about the word “Equitable Mediation.” I have to keep looking at it because I keep wanting to say “equitable divorce,” because that’s the natural thing that we always say, equitable divorce. But why did you name it Equitable Mediation? And before you answer, that word in the jurisdictions that I’ve worked in tends to—it’s a legal term, and so we sometimes talk about courts of law and courts of equity. And in family courts, they’re courts of equity because judges do have discretion to try to bring balance and justice in certain circumstances.

And in Texas law, for example, it’s not 50/50 when it comes to division of property. It’s fair and equitable division of the marital estate, and so sometimes what might be fair and equitable in a certain circumstance might not be 50/50, but it’s just and, okay? So why did you pick that word, Equitable Mediation?

Joe: Yeah, what a great segue. Perfect introduction to it. Equitable, to me, means fair but not necessarily equal. And when I think about equitable, it can mean different things to different people. So, for example, it’s pretty funny—so I’m an only child, just as a personal note. So as long as I get everything, it’s fair! That’s how I am. Hey, what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine. But all kidding aside, equitable can mean a lot of things to a lot of people.

And I’ve had cases, as I’m sure you have as well, where even sometimes when you look at the settlement, you look at the agreement, and you raise an eyebrow, you’re like, “Are they sure about this?” But sometimes people have a particular affinity for an asset like a pension or a house or something. And so a judge, for example, let’s take a house—they might say, “Well, the house is worth this much money, and the 401k is worth this much money.” And maybe the house is worth less than the 401k, but one person is willing to exchange that house for that retirement plan.

And so as the neutral third party, it’s not my job to tell them they can’t do that or try to persuade them, but I do wonder. And then I think to myself, “Well, that’s the house where their child took their first steps. They played catch in the backyard, and those memories are priceless.” So now this person says, “Yeah, sure, okay, I exchanged X for Y, and it’s worth less, but to me, this is worth more.”

And that’s the sense I want to convey. I want you to both walk away with what you think is fair, what you think is equitable, what matters to you, even if it doesn’t add up to 50/50 at the bottom line. And along that line, I went through probably a hundred different names, and I was really—when I first started out, I was trying to come up with something that didn’t—my wife is like, “Just use your last name.” “Dillon Mediation.” I’m like, “Yeah, that’s not creative.” Yeah, heck with that! And then I, after writing—sometimes when you write words, they start to lose their meaning—and I got to it, and it just hit me, and that was it. And the rest is history, as we would say.

Mac: Exactly. Pretty cool. And so back to the house thing, the example you just gave where one person might have a certain affinity to a home because that’s where they lived and that’s where their kids were—I hear this a lot, I see this a lot, where sometimes in a divorce, one spouse wants to keep the home and the other wants it sold. They may have, to them, justified reasons as to why. Sometimes it’s because they want it sold because maybe there’s something connected to justice in their mind, or there was pain there, and it’s not a financial reason, it’s more of an emotional reason? And on the flip side, the person who wants to keep it is doing it for a similar thing.

So when you, in your practice, help people to think outside the box and to craft solutions that is not just going to be the “sell it and split the money half and half”—how do you do it? Because you have a 98% settlement rate in your office, so people who go to you for mediation walk away with an agreement, more or less. That’s the goal, of course. So why are you so much higher than the national average in settlement rates? How do you do things outside the box for the example I just gave, for example?

Joe: Certainly. So first, I’ll give a plug and a shout-out to Harvard University. So back in the ’90s, I took a program at Harvard, the Harvard Program on Negotiation, and as a practitioner, I’m sure you’re familiar with the book “Getting to Yes” ? So these are the guys. And they taught it, and it changed my life. It changed how I look at the world, and this is even—that’s how I got into mediation. So that was like 30 years ago? So I’ve been mediating 28.

And what it really taught me is that conflict isn’t about what you see on the surface. They had a phrase for it—they called it “conversational jiu-jitsu,” like martial arts. And they always said to look for the position behind the position. Dodge the blow, parry, use the other person’s momentum. And so I always remember that, and in my mediations, I’m always doing that. I’m always asking questions, moving people in a direction, kind of herding them around and kind of trying to get behind the answer.

And a lot of times when people are in mediation, and even probably prior to that? In my experience, at least, there comes a point in a marriage where people are so far apart from each other, they don’t even yell at each other anymore. It just doesn’t matter. So now they’re quiet, and they feel like it doesn’t matter, the reasons don’t matter, that nobody cares. And so, of course, I care. I want to hear it. I want to hear why you’re so mad, why don’t you want that person to keep that? Let’s get that out on the table.

And sometimes those breakthroughs take a while. Sometimes they might take a session or two, they may take hours. But we’ll keep chipping at it because I know that there is something behind that. That person is hurt by something, that they weren’t recognized for the role that they played doing X, Y, or Z? And when we get to that, that’s the aha moment. That’s where, as professional mediators, we stay quiet? We let the tears flow, we let the emotions bubble up, and then we can make the breakthrough. And that’s what we do.

And part of why I believe our case resolution rate is so high is that we don’t limit the number of sessions people can have with us. We are committed to the process. Now, that’s probably not the greatest idea sometimes? Because you’re like, “Let me get this straight, Joe. You’re willing to stay here?” I was like, “Yeah, I’ll be there till midnight? I’m not leaving until this is done.”

And so people kind of like, “I don’t know what’s wrong with this guy,” but I believe, Mac, that tells them that I’m in this with you. I’m as committed to resolution as you are. I want this for you. I don’t want you in the courtroom like me and my parents. And I think they get that, and they’re like, “Wow, he really does care? He’s really in here with us.”

And so when we can have that moment and that freedom and that we don’t have the pressure of, “Well, you’re on the docket, the judge will see you from 10:15 to 10:30, and you have to decide now,” that’s where the agreements happen. And that’s how we do it. We really let the conversations breathe, really try to dig behind the reasons, and when you get that reason—and man, I’m telling you, it’s, “You didn’t let me buy that new car 20 years ago.” “What?” And the other person is like, “I had no idea.” They’re like, “I love that car. I really wanted it.” And it was like, “Wow, okay, here we are.

Mac: So, well, I do wish that the law would catch up with mediation, because sometimes the law and the rules we have to live by—they’ll tell the parties to go to mediation, and down here in my jurisdiction, we might say “go to a half-day mediation or a full day.” And what we mean by that is it’s either four hours from like 8 to 12 or 1 to 5, or a full day would be like 8 to 5, okay? And they’ll pay for lunch in the middle. And so that’s a structured approach, fine. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that human beings are just going to be able to magically agree to everything? Sometimes it’s going to take multiple sessions, multiple days. And I wish more lawyers that I work with would know that when they bring their clients to me, like, “Hey guys, just because it didn’t work out in four hours doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep on going.”

Joe: Exactly, exactly. And the example I give? So I like to exercise—that’s how I keep myself prepared and ready for my clients. And so I go to the gym, and sometimes you go to the gym and you see these guys in there for two, three hours? They’re like, “The more I lift, the bigger I’m going to get.” And what you realize is that—I’ve done my fair share of studying like physiology and exercise science—and there’s a point with the human body where you’re not making progress anymore. And if you’re an amateur, that’s about 30 minutes. And if you’re experienced, like me, that’s about an hour. And if you’re a professional, that’s about an hour and a half.

And so when you take the example of mediation, you’re taking amateurs and expecting them to come to resolution. And where the magic happens is much like with the gym—you go work out for 30 minutes, you take a day off, next day you work out for 35 minutes, day off? And that’s where the growth comes. And that’s exactly what happens in mediation. And I know it, you know it—the magic happens when that person goes home at night, has their cup of tea before bed, is reading their book, those thoughts are swirling in their head, and they’re like, “Yeah, guess I was being a little harsh today.” That’s what we, as practitioners, need people to do.

Mac: Yeah, people who sleep on it sometimes make a more educated decision after the fact.

Joe: Of course.

Mac: So in the last couple minutes we have, let’s talk about technology a little bit. I understand that you started doing these virtually back in 2011. Now, I pride myself on being somebody who was really into tech, and I was going around helping train people, mediators, to get on Zoom and to do all this, but you were doing this like 10 years before. So where did the vision come from, and why?

Joe: It’s interesting. True story. So we get a phone call—we were practicing in New Jersey, we practice in multiple states as you probably know—and this is a New Jersey client, and this husband calls. He calls my wife, who happened to pick up the call, and she comes in my office, and she’s like, “Joe, I have this gentleman. He just called, and he really wants to work with us, but his wife has, I think it’s called agoraphobia, where you have a fear of leaving the house, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. And so she wants to mediate, but she won’t leave the house, so she won’t come to the office.” We were practicing in person at the time, and I said, “Oh boy, okay, what are we going to do here?”

And back in 2011, we really didn’t have super high-quality video. We had screen sharing like with WebEx and join.me and those kinds of things? And so Cheryl and I are sitting there, and she goes, “What if we did it with telephone and screen sharing?” I’m like, “Let’s try it with telephone and screen sharing. Do you think that would work?” And so we put our heads together, and so she calls the gentleman back, and he’s like, “You could do that?” I’m like, “Well, you’re going to be the first, so I hope it goes well.”

So we made up some little PowerPoint slides—they were hilarious. We made up an Excel spreadsheet to kind of put up a budget and a balance sheet, and we just screen-shared. We didn’t even—I don’t even think we had a video camera at the time, and so we were on the phone. So I’ve got a phone in one hand, I’ve got a mouse in another, and by gosh, it worked. And they were so happy and excited about it.

And so we said, “Well, gee, that’s interesting.” And so we started offering it to clients to see what would happen. And at first, people were like, “Yeah, I want to see you, I want to see you.” And then after about two years later, we said, “Okay, what if we’re going to say to folks, this is the primary way?” And because we found that doing it remotely, it helped people actually communicate better because they didn’t have to be in the same room and didn’t feel the stare of the ex, soon-to-be-ex, or the presence of that person? They were able to speak more freely, and they felt safer.

And as we started explaining that and how it’s more efficient and you can take it from wherever you are—because a lot of our clients, with my background in finance, we tend to get a lot of like business owners, executives, people who travel a lot, who have irregular hours? So we tend to get those folks, and that’s what really launched it back then.

And then after a while, I think finally in 2018, we made the jump to say we’re just doing only online. And so when the pandemic came and everybody else was scrambling, I was like, “Well, this is what we do This is just normal to us.” And so we have our process and our forms and our worksheets and all of our online, all virtual. And that’s why we mediate in six different states, and that’s how we can do it, because currently I’m located in California now, and if I had to go see a client in New York City, I’m not getting on a plane back and forth for a day. That would be hard.

Mac: Well, that’s amazing. Yeah, I’m glad to see a fellow tech geek like me.

Joe: Absolutely. Yeah, I love that about you. I was like, “Hey, you got an online mediation school here.”

Mac: Yes, awesome. So I’m sharing your site again. So what’s the best way people can get a hold of you? Just your website?

Joe: EquitableMediation.com. Yeah, talk to us. You see that button there—we have a free 15-minute call, which usually turns into a half-hour call because we’re cut of the same cloth. And so you can schedule an exploratory call with Cheryl. She’ll tell you a bit about our services, about us, see if mediation is a good fit for you. You could also schedule coaching with her. And then if it seems like it’s a good idea, then you can schedule a meeting with me and you and your spouse, and then we’ll just have kind of an exploratory initial meeting there as well. And we just really want to help people, just like you. We want to help.