In this insightful episode of “Mid Life Crisis – Bomb Drop and Beyond,” I join host Trina Laird to explore how divorce mediation can provide a smoother path through midlife divorce. When life takes an unexpected turn and couples face the complexities of separating after years together, the traditional adversarial approach often amplifies stress and conflict.

I discuss how divorce mediation offers a more peaceful and cost-effective alternative, helping couples navigate financial divisions, co-parenting arrangements, and emotional challenges with greater dignity and less animosity. This conversation provides valuable guidance for anyone considering divorce later in life or supporting someone through this difficult transition.

Disclaimer

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors. Anything discussed in this podcast should not be construed as legal, financial, or emotional advice. It is for informational purposes only. If you are in need of such advice you MUST seek the guidance of a qualified professional where you live.

Podcast Transcription

MLC Bomb Drop and Beyond – Joe Dillon Interview

Introduction/Disclaimer

A midlife crisis is more than just a cultural stereotype. It’s a real psychological struggle that can surface between the ages of 40 and 60. While not officially classified as a mental illness, the emotional and relational fallout is very real, especially for the spouses and families left behind.

This podcast gives voice to those living through the aftermath, exposing the hidden pain and seeking accountability, healing and understanding.

Thank you for joining us today on MLC Bomb Drop and Beyond.

Guest Introduction

Trina: Hey, bomb squad. Thanks for joining us today. Today, we are speaking with Mr. Joe Dillon. Joe is a divorce mediator and negotiation expert. He’s a pioneer in divorce mediation who has been helping couples navigate the end of their marriages with dignity and financial wisdom for over 17 years.

As co-founder of Equitable Mediation Services, Joe combines his MBA in finance with specialized training from Harvard, MIT and Northwestern University to guide couples towards agreements that protect both their emotional well-being and their financial futures. As a child of divorce himself, he witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of attorney-driven litigation on families.

Joe brings personal experience that, combined with his professional expertise, enables him to help couples focus on creating agreements that work for everyone, especially the children. Joe pioneered virtual divorce mediation in 2011, nearly a decade before others adopted online practices during the pandemic.

His results speak for themselves. Equitable Mediation Services maintains a 98% case resolution rate, significantly higher than the industry average of 70%. As a sought-after expert, Joe has been featured in Business Insider, Newsweek, Forbes, Huffington Post, Yahoo, MSN, The Daily Mail and now on MLC Bomb Drop and Beyond.

His blog has attracted over 1 million visitors. Joe believes divorce does not have to be destructive. With the right guidance and expertise, couples can part ways amicably while protecting what matters most.

And here we are going to speak with Mr. Joe Dillon.

Interview Begins

Trina: Hello listeners. Today we have a very special guest. We have Joe Dillon. He is a Harvard-trained mediator and he’s going to take our reader questions. So good morning, Joe.

Joe: Hello there. Hi, Trina. How are you? Thanks for having me.

Trina: Sure. On this Friday the 13th.

Joe: Exactly. That’s why I’m staying home because I don’t want anything bad to happen. So I’m doing this from my home office.

Trina: Okay, so we’ve got a bunch of good questions here from our listeners who are dealing with all aspects of midlife crisis, which often leads to divorce. So first question: what are three things you see that someone in our position can do to help provide the best outcome?

Joe: Good question. It’s no surprise that divorce is an emotional issue. One of the things we tend to want to do is just react. We’re angry.

The first thing I would say is take some time to process your emotions before you make major decisions. I know it feels urgent. You’re thinking, “I have to resolve this. I have to be angry. I have to do it.” But rushing through really leads to a lot of regrets down the line. That day or two that you took to breathe could save you years of heartache. You might have a therapist or a group of good friends or a divorce coach. That’s something to do.

The second thing is think about the long term. Tying into that first point, it’s really easy to think about extracting the pound of flesh in the short run. The short-term wins feel good. You know, “gotcha.” But the gotchas don’t really help you five years from now when you’re trying to pay your bills.

You really want to focus on what you need to do to rebuild your life one, three, five, ten years down the road and not just what feels fair now, because you might have to give up something now to get something that’s down the road. That’s classic negotiation. You have to give to get.

The third thing, which is probably the hardest one of all, is you really need to stay respectful in your communication. I know a lot of people, when somebody’s coming at you, the first thing you want to do is bite their head off. You want to go back at them with “how dare you” treatment.

But no, this is like one of those “I’m going to take my ball and go home” situations. Just because you’re being a jerk doesn’t mean I have to be a jerk. Be committed to being cool, being calm, being respectful. It’s like that old adage: fire needs oxygen. Take the oxygen away and you’d be surprised when you do that. The other person who’s inflamed – those flames are going to get dimmer and dimmer until they go out.

Those would be my top three.

Trina: That makes a lot of sense. Let me ask you about going back to number three, because when you’ve got two people that come to mediation, you’re representing both of them. Is that correct?

Joe: It’s funny – I don’t represent either of you. I advocate for both of you. In other words, I want the best outcome for both people. You can’t get into this line of work unless you care about people. You can’t just phone this job in.

People ask me why I do this. I’ll share a little bit later about my backstory. My parents litigated their divorce. So I’m a classic case of the broken home and all that stuff. That’s kind of the deep-seated reason why I do it.

You really want both people to walk away from this thing in the best possible shape they can, knowing that it’s still going to be really difficult even if it goes well. That’s kind of how I position it.

Trina: So it’s still a win-win for both.

Joe: Exactly. Obviously, if somebody wins and the other person loses, guess what happens? In mediation, they just go get a lawyer and they say, “I’m not going to pay attention to anything we talked about. I’m going to take you to court.”

Why would you spend the time and money with me and then just wind up having to litigate anyway? It’s smarter to say, “Okay, I’ll let you pick the movie if I can choose where we go to dinner,” for example. Rather than having those friends who are like, “Well, this is what we’re doing. And then we’re going here.” Even if it’s your friend, you’re thinking, “You’re really bossy. Why are you being so bossy?” Try to compromise, give and get. That’s what I focus on.

Trina: That makes a lot of sense. It’s always amazing to me when you spend your life raising a family and you’ve been together 20, 30, 40 years, and then all of a sudden, you’re like enemies or something. It just doesn’t make sense to me whatsoever.

Joe: At some point in your lives, you stood in front of somebody. Even if it was at city hall, you had to have some witnesses who said, “Yeah, I love you. I love you. Till death do us part,” and all that. At some point, you professed your love for this individual, and what happened along the way that they became your mortal enemy? I don’t subscribe to that. I just don’t understand that.

If somebody did something intentional or malicious, yeah, that can harm your opinion of them. But I’m not a mental health professional, but my wife is a divorce coach. She works with me here at Equitable Mediation. She says, “Look, when somebody says something, it’s not about you, it’s about them. It’s the hurt that they’ve got.”

If you can remember that when somebody’s coming at you, you’re thinking, “Yeah, this is not about me. This is really about you. So I’m going to just stay quiet.” That’s kind of what I’m saying.

Trina: When she says that, that’s really important for our audience to know because we get a lot of that. It’s not about you. It’s about lying and committing perjury. Then the other spouse is going, “Wait, what?” When you realize it’s all projection, that sort of helps. Although…

Joe: It’s not easy, but you’re absolutely correct. I have to believe this, and I say this to my clients sometimes when they’re being obnoxious. They’re like, “I think he just insulted me.” It’s not that I’m trying to insult them. I’m trying to get them to understand that as a functioning society and as a member of that society, there’s a baseline level of behavior we all need to have.

I assume you were raised by a parent or a guardian or someone that hopefully instilled some baseline modicum of respect and morality in you. I’m trying to tap into that. When somebody’s going off the rails like that, that’s not about you. It’s about them. They just lost their way somehow. It’s a shame, but it’s better to get as far away from that person as you can.

You’re also going to be seeing each other at funerals and weddings and bar mitzvahs. It doesn’t make sense to me how they can become so combative.

Trina: That really creates bad blood.

Joe: Of course it creates bad blood, and that’s hard to get past.

Trina: It sure is.

Joe: I remind people, and part of being a mediator is you have a lot of tools in your tool belt to get people to continue to stay talking and stay engaged. One of the guilt trips I like to pull out is to say, “Look, you might not be husband and wife anymore, but you’re still mom and dad. And that doesn’t change.”

You can sit here and yell, but when you’re at the high school graduation, your son or daughter does not care about that. They want to look over from the stage when they get their diploma and go, “Look, mom, look dad, I did it,” and see the two of you sitting next to each other. That’s what they want. You need to do that.

By the way, you brought them into this world. So this is on you. You need to – you’re the adults. You need to behave that way. Sometimes we need to remind people of that because I’m sure you’ve done it. I know I’ve done it. You get mad at something ridiculous. Like, “Oh, I can’t believe they didn’t put pepperoni on my pizza. I’m going to write them a review.” You’re like, “Dude, calm down.” We all have to remember that even in the case of a divorce.

Trina: Absolutely. One thing we see is oftentimes a spouse will file a domestic violence restraining order against the other. And that can start out – if you have couples that have that, that started out, is there still hope for them in mediation?

Joe: With mediation, people need to be able to engage with each other. If there’s a restraining order, you usually can’t mediate. Now what you can do, and this is what I’d encourage listeners in this situation to do, is something called shuttle mediation.

There are some mediators that will do this where you have one spouse in one room and the other spouse in the other room. Then the mediator goes back and forth so that at least you’re still not litigating and you’re not getting lawyers in the mix and going crazy with all of that stuff.

As a matter of safety, what I’d always recommend is you do this in a public place. Sometimes courthouses will even give mediators conference rooms. Then you’ve got security and police and people who can keep the situation under control.

Now sometimes there are those kinds of restraining orders where people can’t interact with each other. But sometimes, one of the things that we’ve been doing – since 2011, we’ve been actually mediating online. This is about nine or ten years before most people have been doing that.

It actually didn’t come up from domestic violence. It actually came up from somebody who was, I believe it’s called agoraphobia, fear of leaving the house. So there was a person who was afraid to leave the house. So it was 2011, and this is not the technology we had in 2011. We had basically like trying to share your screen over a dial-up modem.

But we were able to help this divorced couple with the spouse not being able to leave the house. That can also apply. We do that with our clients all the time. We use Zoom and 100% of our mediation is now what we call virtual or online.

That can also be good for domestic violence situations. Couples can be in different spaces, different homes, different places, as long as the restraining order doesn’t prevent them from speaking. This way they’re not in the same space. They’re not within 100 feet of each other, but they still can interact. As a mediator, you can work with couples like that.

If you’ve got that kind of restraining order where you can still speak, find someone who does virtual mediation or online mediation. If it’s something where you can’t interact, ask if the mediator does what we call shuttle mediation.

That’s still a couple of ways to at least get the advantages and the benefits of mediation without having to lawyer up and turn it into a circus.

Trina: We have a lot of listeners too where they were all trumped-up charges or accusations. So they’re restraining orders that get dismissed.

Joe: People in these situations are losing their marbles. They’re just not themselves. I’ve heard some people describe it as an out-of-body experience. They’re like, “My wife, Cheryl, was divorced.” I asked her some questions about it. She said, “I really just didn’t know what was happening.” She was only married, I think, like two or three years. So thankfully they had no children. But she was like, “What is happening here?” She couldn’t even process that she got married at 30 and she’s getting divorced. So I can see that it could make people do crazy things.

Trina: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Okay. The next question, sort of – this is interesting how it segued into my next question: In your mind, do you as a mediator – in your mind, do you know which person is the more or less emotionally immature person and manipulative one? Can you tell?

Joe: As a mediator, I’m not thinking in terms of labeling somebody as the problem. The problem is these two people don’t want to be married anymore. That’s the problem I’m addressing. So the solution is to help them not be married. As simple as that sounds.

Now, we all bring our own baggage and we all bring our own nonsense into the process. There are some things that people do that are proverbial red flags. My least favorite is the person, the interrupter. We all have that person. You’re talking and this person just starts talking over you and you’re like, “Hi, I’m talking here. Can I just finish?”

Especially the person who – if I said, “Trina, what do you want to do tonight?” and you would say, “Well, Joe, I don’t know,” and I would start talking over you even before I let you answer the question I asked you. So that’s definitely one of them because that’s really somebody trying to control the conversation. They’re interrupting. They’re trying to control the mediator. They’re trying to control the other person.

That kind of leads into that kind of person starting to wind themselves up. You can see that person who’s interrupting and then you can watch them as they escalate. Then the shift happens. Then the blame starts kicking in where they start bringing up the grievances and the old stuff.

We have a saying in mediation: mediation is a forward-looking process. For your listeners, when you think of a mediator, your mediator is a nice person. I’m a nice guy, but I tell my clients off the bat, it is not my job to know about really pretty much anything that happened before that got you here unless it’s relevant. Like assets, liabilities, income, children.

But if in 1997 you were supposed to go to your wife’s parents for Christmas and instead your husband insisted you go to his, that’s irrelevant. That’s not – that’s maybe unfair or maybe caused an argument. But that’s not why we’re here. So when people start bringing up that kind of stuff, you’re just sort of piling on at that point.

Trina: Do you have a way to interrupt them then to say like, “let’s stay on track here”?

Joe: We actually do a flat fee. We’re really unusual in the sense we have a limited sessions for a flat fee. Part of the reason we do that is because we also want to put skin in the game. If you do hourly, think about it – as a mediator or a lawyer or somebody like that as an hourly practitioner, people are trying. They’re invested in helping people try to resolve things.

But if a person doesn’t resolve their issues in three or four sessions, I get paid for my next session and I’ll keep getting paid and I’ll keep getting paid. It’s no disrespect – we all have to make a living – but by putting it into “Here’s the roadmap. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to do a timeframe. Meet with me as many times as you need for one fixed fee.”

People are like, “Really?” I’m like, “Yeah, I want to take the pressure off you to think about hourly billing. Oh my God. I want you to be able to think and breathe. And also I want to show you that I’m committed to resolving this as well.” Because it doesn’t help you, the customer, the client, or me, the mediator, if six to nine months later, we’re all still talking about missing Christmas in 1997. I’m stressed out. I’m like, “I’m not helping.” And I feel terrible if I’m not helping.

We do it that way. To answer that question, yeah, we do it that way. That’s kind of also what helps. That’s part of getting people to move past that as we say, “mediation is a forward-looking process. Let’s move you forward.” We remind them, and I know this sounds funny – I have a little bit of a sense of humor. I’m originally from New York City East Coast. So I’ve got a little bit of that edge to me, even though I live in California now.

I’m like, “Hey, you guys, did I misunderstand you? Did you not come here because you want a divorce and you want to end your marriage and get away from each other?” And they’re like, “Yeah.” And I’m like, “Well, then let’s do that. Let’s do what we need to do to help you do what it is you told me you want.” They kind of laugh a little or they grumble a little and it’s like, “Well, okay, no problem. Then let’s move forward.” We just constantly – we don’t engage on the past. I call it the snow plow. We just keep pushing forward, pushing forward, pushing forward. Eventually we get to the finish line. That’s kind of how I handle that.

Trina: Totally makes sense. I know you work in several states. I think one might be New York.

Joe: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. That’s where I’m originally from. I went to Drexel in Philadelphia. I grew up in the shadow of Manhattan. I lived in central New Jersey in the Princeton area. Then I moved to Chicago. I love Chicago. So we practice in Illinois. Now we live in California. So we practice in California and my wife loves Seattle. So we practice in Washington. We’re in those six states. If you live in one of those six states, we can certainly work together.

Trina: Awesome. Maybe I can ask what the flat fee is.

Joe: It varies. We offer clients three different levels of service. We customize our flat fees for people. It’s not just one size fits all because people come to us at different points in their lives and in their relationships and in their process.

Some folks are really friendly, really simple. So we have a lower flat fee for that. Some folks are like, “We have some complexities. We want some help with this and that.” Then there are some folks who come to us who say, “Look, we need your help with this and that. We also want emotional support. So we want Cheryl as our divorce coach.” That’s kind of like our signature big top package.

It also really depends – another thing that I’m trying to do. My background actually is in finance and IT. I look at people’s whole situation and I say, “Okay, what is it going to take to resolve everything that you think you need to resolve plus everything that I know that you need to resolve, even though you don’t know it.”

I want them to walk out of our offices or our virtual offices and not require them to ever set foot back in our virtual office or a courtroom again. The only time I want to hear from people, I tell them, is if you want to send me a Christmas card or tell me your kid graduated high school or you’re getting remarried. I love those calls. I love those emails. I get them from time to time, which is really cool.

I don’t want “we have a problem and we need to see you again.” We customize everything. Every client’s unique that way. I know that this is exactly what you need. If you follow our process and you do what we ask you to do, you will get the result you seek. You probably saw this – we’re pretty proud of this – we have a 98% case resolution rate.

I can tell you over 17 years of mediating privately and 28 years in the profession that I could count on one hand the number of clients that we were unable to bring to an agreement. That’s because we know what they need and we explain to them what they need. We hope they listen to us and 98% of the time they do.

Trina: Because you’re not emotionally involved in it. You have the clear head, you’re running the numbers. That’s really cool too that your wife is a divorce coach and we’re going to talk about that.

Joe: I think that’s a really cool thing that I think a lot of folks are probably missing out on.

Trina: Certainly. Okay. Our next question – you sort of answered it. The other part of that question was if so, what attributes of a person educate you on which person that is?

Joe: They’re pretty obvious. These kinds of folks don’t necessarily hide themselves well. There’s a lot to be said – even when we do Zoom, you can still see body language, you can still see faces, you can still hear tone. A lot of that comes through.

I like all those crime shows, like those FBI profiler, CSI kind of stuff. I don’t know if it’s all true, but they always say, “Oh, if the person scratches their nose, they’re lying” or whatever. But there is some truth to it. You can see the body language, you can see the faces and you can see the veins in their throat as they’re getting ready to rage. You’re like, “Okay, I know what’s coming. So I’m ready.” I’m a professional. So I’m ready to take the blow and sidestep the punch and move the process forward. That’s what I do professionally.

Trina: Awesome. Next question is: have you ever seen that after a divorce, after couples divorce, that they reconcile? Have you had that happen?

Joe: Once. It’s pretty rare because by the time you get to this process – there’s a law firm out of the UK, I forget their name, but they did a study and they asked their clients, “How long have you been thinking about getting a divorce?” When they added it all up, apparently it averaged out to two years and one month. Not exactly two years – two years and one month.

When somebody’s been thinking about divorce for that long, usually the decision has been made and it’s not something that they make as a snap decision. You see those people who yell, “I want a divorce!” in the heat of an argument. That to me is just frustration. That’s all that is. It’s “I’m really angry that this person that I love, that I care about doesn’t understand me or we have this issue that we can’t resolve and it’s really frustrating me.” That’s not the person who wants a divorce.

The person who wants a divorce goes away quietly, thinks about it for a really long time, talks to their friends, talks to a therapist, talks to a lawyer, goes and reads a book, subscribes to a blog, listens to your podcast. Then two years later comes to the other spouse and says, “You know what? This isn’t working for me.” I see it all the time in my practice. Some people will say “I’ve been unhappy for seven years, 10 years, 17 years.” You’re like, “Oh my goodness, 17 years.” “Yeah. Well, we had a kid. I didn’t want to have the child raised without parents.” You’re like, “Okay.” Very rare because usually that one person’s driving it. Like I said, just once. I would be happy if it was more, but just once.

Trina: Well, your career is still young.

Joe: That’s right. There’s always next time.

Trina: Yeah. Along those lines, for the MLCers, a lot of times the other spouse feels like the rug was pulled out from under them. They are shocked that all of a sudden they get a Post-it saying, “I’m out of here,” or “I’m having an affair with the neighbor next door.” Do those kind of clients come across you as well?

Joe: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Because think about it. This person’s been thinking about it for two years in silence. And the other person’s going along, “la, la, la, everything’s okay.” Then finally the leaving spouse gets up the courage to say, “I’m done.” Usually the other person is kind of shocked about this.

In my experience, just little statistics – as a numbers guy, I love the numbers, as you would imagine – statistically about 70% of divorces are filed by women. Coach Cheryl will tell you that typically, and I will say this – I am a man. So I can say this. Now granted, I was raised by my mom and Italian grandmother. So I have a lot of those sensibilities as well. I got instilled with a lot of those lessons, which was great.

But guys are usually clueless about this kind of stuff. The women are the ones that are churning those emotions and thinking those things and staying up at night and fretting and worrying and wondering. The guys are just oblivious going along with “Hey, everything’s fine. She hasn’t said anything. It’s cool. She must be tired or it must be the kids or it must be work.” There’s always some other reason.

There’s not a lot of guys who we run across who go, “Yeah, I noticed she was unhappy and I engaged with her and I asked if we could go to counseling and, Joe, we’re here now because we really tried and it didn’t work.” That maybe happened once or twice in my career.

More often than not, it’s like we call that person the reluctant spouse because what they’re doing now – and it’s typically the guy – is “Well, we could fix this. We could work on this. There’s got to be something we can do.” The other person has been thinking about it for, if you believe this firm in the UK, more than two years. That’s a long time to undo that thinking. That’s usually the bomb drop. It’s like the other person thinks that some kind of bomb went off, where it’s more often than not, it’s just been low-level smoldering with a really long fuse. Now finally the fuse ran out and boom. There you are.

Trina: Wow. Okay. Our next question here: should we secure a lawyer to review mediation outcomes? It’s a two-parter. And then if the left-behind spouse earns more than the MLCer, what should we consider in negotiations as the left-behind spouse? So I guess we’ll do the first one first. Should we secure a lawyer to review mediation outcomes?

Joe: If you’re talking about your outcomes in mediation, I recommend that. We always encourage people – our philosophy is this. Some mediators will require you to retain an attorney through mediation. We say to you, we don’t require it, but we highly encourage it because unless you’re a legal professional, look, I do this all day. Some days I walk out of my office and go, “Well, that was confusing.”

If I am a trained professional – I have taught mediation classes at Northwestern in Chicago for other professional organizations, I’ve given lectures at conferences – and even I am sometimes perplexed at how this all works. If I don’t know it and I eat, sleep and breathe it, how does a person who’s going through divorce know it? That’s what lawyers are for.

The lawyers will come through. When you have a lawyer in a process like this, what we say is “Look, ask for a referral. You want a mediation-friendly lawyer. You don’t want a lawyer who’s going to go in and say, ‘Well, what are you going to mediation for? We can blow this whole thing up and we’ll take them to the cleaners.'” That’s not the point because you never know. When people say things like “I guarantee if I go to court” or “I know the judge will say I’m entitled to,” I’m like, “Good luck to you.” The law is really fuzzy. I’m not a lawyer, but the law is really fuzzy and people think there’s some guarantee and there’s not.

You’re better off controlling your own outcome in mediation and then going to a lawyer and saying, “Look, here’s what I gave. Here’s what I got. Am I within the realm of possibility?” A good lawyer is going to go, “Yeah, you know what? Because if you had a good mediator, I think that’s the real key. They’re going to say, ‘You know what? Yeah, you could have gotten a couple more bucks on child support, but you got more than half the bank account. That might have topped another $30,000.'” They’re like, “You know what? At the end of the day, this looks like it’s pretty good.” That’s all you can hope for.

Trina: Do they need to get their own attorney or?

Joe: Most of the time. An attorney can only represent one person. Now, if you have an attorney – we call them review attorneys or filing attorneys. They’ve got different names. Sometimes there’s a couple who will say, “Look” – I’ve had this. This is a real-world example. I had a gentleman. He was the CFO of a bank and his wife was a high school graduate who worked at the Apple store. They were both super nice and he could not have been nicer and more generous and more patient in explaining everything. I’m a finance guy. So I didn’t want her to feel like “Oh, gosh, these two guys know all these numbers.”

My fake client names are Bob and Sue. Just so you know, these are not real names for people. But we said, “Sue, listen, here’s three colleagues of mine. They’re all great attorneys. This was in Chicago. They are all great attorneys. They’re super friendly. I know them personally. Pick one, go talk to them, show them your agreement and ask them what they think.” She did that and she came back and we made a few tweaks here and there, but I felt better. The husband felt better. She felt better because nobody wanted to stick it to anybody.

In that case, the attorney really provided a lot of not only value, but comfort. In some cases, you’ll get a couple who’ll say, “Listen, if you want to get a lawyer, that’s cool. Let them review it, make sure it passes muster with the legal mumbo jumbo and let them do the filing on both of our behalfs.” We see that a lot too. People can do that.

One will get the lawyer and ask the questions, but not ask the questions like “Hey, what can I do to change this more?” Like “Is this okay? Like this is what we both want. Is this legally binding? Is this…” That’s where lawyers can really play a good role in the mediation process. If they want to flip over the whole apple cart and destroy everything, that’s not the right lawyer. That’s not even the right lawyer for a non-mediation client. Because that’s the pit bull lawyer. That’s the “you’re an ATM slot machine” lawyer. Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching. It’ll cost you $30,000 to get that other $100 a year in child support.

Trina: Actually I had a question there. And now I forgot what it was. I’ll go to another listener question and then I’ll go back to my question. Oh, you know what? My question was, how do you know as a mediator that one of the spouses is not hiding money?

Joe: As a finance person, you’re very much about process and rules and formulas. Having parents who have been through this before and being married to someone who’s been divorced, I have a heightened sensitivity to the emotional aspect of it. But I also take a very analytical approach to it. There’s a couple of things that we can do that vary in levels of intensity.

The first thing – I don’t have to tell you it’s secrets, but I want your listeners to know this because I want them to feel empowered. That’s why we do this. That’s why I do this because I want people to get educated. My friends don’t want to listen to me talk about this. So hopefully your listeners do.

The first thing we do is we say, “Look, go through a discovery process.” That’s just getting all the stuff out on the table. The bank accounts, the credit card statements, the tax returns and all that stuff. There’s a lot of websites out there that’ll tell you, “Oh, here’s your checklist of items to gather.” That’s all well and good. But to be truthful about it, every attorney, every mediator has their own process. The reality is those things don’t really do you as much good as you think they do. But setting that aside, the thing that really comes into play is budgets.

Here’s the thing with budgets. What I ask clients to do is I ask them to do a joint budget. Give me what your expenses look like for the past 12 months of your life. I have this proprietary budget workbook that we have a course that you can buy on our website. It’s part of that package. I think it’s got like 120 lines to it, all these line items. They do this joint budget. Then I go through it with them line by line. Having seen so many of these, I know that if somebody puts $100 down for a grocery bill for a family of four, I’m like, “Guys, come on. Are you starving your kids? Should I report you to family services?” I really know that groceries are probably about $800 a month. Nowadays are probably more.

I go line by line and then I add it all up in all these categories. I say, “Well, okay, here’s the bottom line. This is what you need to make ends meet.” Let’s say it’s $10,000 a month. For those of us who live in California, that’s probably low. But elsewhere, for your listeners it could be high, but let’s just use 10k. Now I say, “Okay, to make this example really easy, say only one spouse is working outside the home and the other one is working inside the home, not earning the paycheck.” They so deserve to earn as a person working home to raise the kids.

This person is making $150,000 a year. So after taxes, it’s about $110,000. I say, “Well, okay, in that example, this is real easy. I know they’re going to be short and they’re going to amass credit card debt.” But then if I have somebody who’s making $250,000 and let’s say they bring home $200k and their budget tells me they spend $120,000 a year, but they have no savings. They’re amassing credit card debt. They’re not putting money in their 401k and they didn’t have some massive medical emergency or their roof fell off their house and it was $50,000. That’s my flag. It’s like you’ve reported to me and I’ve looked at your budget and I’m pretty good at this. I’ve seen thousands of these things. You look at it and you go, “All right, wait a minute. You should easily be able to make ends meet here. But who voluntarily pays 29% on the credit card?” Nobody voluntarily. You do it if you’re trapped. If you had a big car repair, you had to pay for your kids’ braces or whatever it is. That to me is the question mark. That’s the “hmm, okay.”

The other thing I’ll have people do is run their free credit report. There’s a website out there, government website. I think it’s called annualcreditreport.com. Once a year, you’re allowed to get your credit report from all three agencies. It’s not your score. It shows all open lines of credit. I ask each spouse to pull their credit report and we have a file-sharing system box. We ask you to upload it and I’ll go through it. As part of our discovery process, I also ask clients to fill out a balance sheet where they list all their open credit cards. Now I can match up that credit report to what they reported, self-reported as to the debts that they have.

Trina: That’s usually where if you’re going to find something, you’re going to find a credit card that wasn’t reported that’s been active or a car loan or something or other. Like a mortgage or something. One of our partners just had that happen. She just discovered another property owned by her husband and their partner.

Joe: Exactly. That happens with vehicles. People buy vehicles for their other spouse. Usually they’re expensive vehicles, Cadillac Escalades, big Ford pickup trucks. That’s a trigger. Now, I don’t see it, but I’m still suspicious. Then what I’m also going to do is refer them to a forensic accountant. This person is like on the CSI shows – they are the financial CSI. These people have access to all kinds of tools where they can get access to all your accounts and tax returns and all that stuff. They’re going to figure it out.

At the end of the day, I will say this to your listeners. Even for the people who may be the ones who are in the hiding money camp, I can tell you that there are a lot of smart people in this process. Judges don’t become judges because they’re dummies. These are really smart people. Lawyers are really smart people. Forensic accountants, really smart people. Somebody somewhere is going to catch this. If you think you’re more clever than people who have gone to school for like a combined 700 years or whatever it is, you are sadly mistaken.

We have in mediation and in a lot of these kinds of agreements, we have something we call either the poison pill or the double-edged sword, and it goes like this. I write this into all of my agreements. It says, if one of the spouses has knowingly concealed an asset and it’s later revealed, 100% of that asset will go to the non-concealing spouse. If they’ve knowingly concealed a debt, 100% of that debt will be retained by the concealing spouse. That’s a real common clause to see.

Even if something crops up down the road, that’s still sitting in your divorce decree. That’s like a landmine that you can step on years down the road. That’s the other piece of it. You try to explain to people, “Look, you might think you’re clever. I know something’s going on here. I’m not going to call you out. I’m not going to blame you. I’m not going to accuse you. But I promise you, it’s better to get it out here in confidential mediation than when you’re standing in front of a judge because judges don’t like that. They really don’t like that.”

Then you’re going to be in a whole different world of hurt than you are if you just came clean now, screamed at each other, and then we put it on the balance sheet as “this is your liability” or “this became a dissipation of marital assets.” That’s really what we want to emphasize. Do the right thing now because it’s far less painful to do it now than it would be down the road.

Trina: Good deal. Okay. The other question, what about if the left-behind spouse makes more than the one that’s in midlife crisis? What should we consider in negotiations? But I guess that comes down to that balance sheet.

Joe: It comes down to assets, liabilities, income, because obviously if somebody leaves, here’s another thing that I think a lot of people fail to realize: just because you walk out doesn’t mean your responsibility for the mortgage goes away or the car payments or the cable bill. People think like, “What’s not my problem anymore?” Well, kind of it is if your name is on the mortgage. The person who’s left behind, especially if they’re the higher earner, is most likely going to be the one who’s carrying that.

That’s part of the negotiation strategy – to basically say, “Look, this is great. You can leave, but this is still your share of all what happened. The kids, the clothes, the food, the sports camps, all of that. I’m going to retain that as part of the process. As well as everything else that I had to do in order to instigate this process, to retain an attorney, to pay for a mediator.” These are all the kinds of things that do crop up in our conversations.

You say, “Look, you can go if you want, but if you want to go, you still have these responsibilities.” I think a lot of people think they can just leave. “Oh, if I left, it’s not my problem, ha, ha, it’s yours.” That’s not really how this works. If your name is on the bottom line, the bank is still going to call your house no matter where you live. That’s something – somebody who has been the left-behind spouse, it is important for them to say, “Look, keep track of all the things that I have now had to take on myself in order to keep this house running, to keep our kids happy and healthy, to keep our lives moving forward and make sure that that does come up in your negotiations.”

Trina: Must be hard too when one of the spouses is self-employed.

Joe: It really is because I’m self-employed. Like I was saying before, I barely understand my own finances. And I have a master’s in finance. You look at your books and you’re like, “This doesn’t make any sense.”

Trina: Yeah. Or like me, I’m a full-time realtor. So my income fluctuates a lot.

Joe: That can make it tough.

Trina: Okay. Next question, you sort of touched on this, but I’ll ask the question just so we get it out there. My soon-to-be ex will not produce certain bank statements and account balances for mediation as it highlights the money that he has taken from our savings and spent on the other woman, including an engagement ring. There you go. What would the mediator’s opinion be on this? On whether there’s even any point wasting my time? Should I just go straight to litigation or should I ignore this?

Joe: That’s not a mediation-friendly case. Mediation is what we call a good faith negotiation. It requires full disclosure from the parties of all documents. We have what we call a discovery checklist where we give to parties and we say, “Look, we don’t ask for anything that’s completely obnoxious and over the top. We’re not asking for your blood type, but if we ask for it, we need it. And there’s a reason. We’re trained professionals. This is what the process requires.”

You want to talk about red flags. Trina, this is the biggest red flag that I could ever possibly imagine. When I ask somebody, “Hey, can you upload a copy of last year’s tax return?” and they reply, “Why do you need that?” Okay. There – grab the rope. Let’s hoist it up the flag pole. Look at the flag flapping in the breeze. This is an example of that. It’s like, “Okay, because I need it.” It’s sort of like you’re almost parental in a way. When we were little kids, “why can’t I go outside?” “Because I said so.” Sometimes that has to be good enough.

As the authority, as the mediator, in a good faith negotiation, it requires full disclosure. If anything is asked for by either myself or the other party, I am the final arbiter. I am the one that says, “Yes, please provide that” or “No, you’re being ridiculous.” I rarely say you’re being ridiculous because in most cases, people are saying, “Well, give me copies of your pay stubs.” “Why do you need that?” “Because I need to know how much you make.” You’d be surprised at how many even of the mediation-friendly spouses don’t know what their spouse makes, how much they make. They keep separate checking accounts, separate bank accounts. In those cases, it might not even be something insidious. It’s just how they set their finances up. I’m like, “Okay, this is a problem.” If we’re going to talk about child support and alimony, you both need to know how much the other person makes because that’s the foundation of this negotiation.

In that case, unfortunately, that doesn’t really sound like a mediation-friendly case. That’s one where you’re going to need to get an attorney who’s going to be able to use the court system to force that individual to produce those items.

Trina: Okay. In this case, do you think she should try to – if she’s gotten an attorney, should she try to push that to get those? I mean, if they’re doing discovery, he’s supposed to provide the bank statements.

Joe: People should. That’s where the lawyers will come in and they can use… If she doesn’t, I mean, that would be a thing where the judge would say, “You produce it or else.”

Trina: Probably.

Joe: I’ve never been divorced or in a court like that, but that would be my understanding. The legal system exists for a reason. A lot of people do that just to be obtuse. They just do it to be a nudge about it and frustrate the other person. Sometimes, we also see that – remember, we talked about the whole two-year decision-making process, the reluctant spouse – that’s another way of dragging their feet. That’s another way of staying married and tethering myself to you by not providing X, Y, or Z. Sometimes it’s an emotional manipulation as well as a financial one. Those are the harder ones. Financial manipulation, you can go to court and get the judge to say, “Send in the damn tax returns and then it happens or you’re going to jail.” But the emotional one, the dragging the feet, those are the hard ones. Those are the ones where the legal system really isn’t equipped for that. But certainly that’s where the attorneys – we’re very supportive of attorneys in the process. If it’s a case where you can’t mediate, then you escalate to that next level.

Trina: Okay. These personality types – we see some of these questions sort of similar in a way. This one is: how do you handle power imbalances in situations where one spouse is clearly manipulating and taking advantage of the other?

Joe: That’s a perfect segue to what I was just talking about. Because there are two types of power imbalances. There are emotional ones and financial ones. When we think about the emotional ones, the way we offset that as a mediator is by asking questions and really listening to the disadvantaged spouse. Remember, we talked before about how that other person who’s trying to control the situation is always talking and cutting you off. One of my favorite things to say is when that person is going off and the other person typically will shut down. Going back to our friends Bob and Sue, let’s say we’ll flip it around and this time it’ll be Bob who’s the disadvantaged spouse. I’ll lean in to the camera and I’ll lean and say, “Don’t worry, Bob, I’m listening to you. Please continue.” Even if the other person is still coming at me.

Again, it’s that whole taking the oxygen out of the fire. I don’t want to – like little kids who are like “mom, mom, mom, mom,” they’re going to keep doing that till they get the result and they learn that they’re going to get the result. They keep doing it. But if the person who’s on fire realizes that this guy isn’t going to listen to me if I escalate, they’re probably going to calm down. They’re going to cool down. Then this other person feels heard and validated, acknowledged. This is coaching as well. It’s acknowledging and validating. They probably haven’t been listened to for a very long time in their relationship. There’s a sense of empowerment that comes along that says, “Well, hey, this mediator guy, this Joe Dillon guy, he values what I have to say. He’s listening to me. I am worth something. My opinion does matter.” That little puff up the chest, that’s what I want. I want you to put on the big boy pants and the big girl pants and say, “Look, yeah, my opinion does matter.” So I’m asking those questions, engaging them.

The other thing is – speaking of which – with Cheryl. When Cheryl coaches with our clients, when I work with our clients, it’s always one on two. I’m always – because I’m a neutral. I work for both parties at the same time. Cheryl is always one on one. The great thing about working with a coach like Cheryl is to say, “Okay, I have your back. I am your advocate, just you. Let’s talk about what’s bothering you. Let’s work through this conversation. When you get into mediation with Joe and your spouse, what are you going to say? How are you going to act and react? How are you going to manage your anger?” What Cheryl does is she kind of gets them to tap into that inner strength and wisdom, as she calls it. I’m using some of her words. I try to blend those in because she does have a lot of good stuff. She says, “Look, you really are worth it. You are – your opinion matters. You are half of this marriage, you are half of this agreement, you’re half of this negotiation.” Having a coach in your corner can also help you. It’s just like if you were an actor in a play, you wouldn’t go in without rehearsing your lines. You just wouldn’t show up on the stage and wing it. You’d have Cheryl, somebody like Cheryl to kind of help you do that. That’s the emotional piece.

Now, on the financial piece, it can be on purpose. It can be just a pattern that’s developed over time, where somebody is the household accountant. For example, in my house, Cheryl pays all of our bills. So if Trina, you asked me, “Hey, how much is your electric bill?” I’d be like, “I have no idea. Ask Cheryl.” But in this case, the way I do that is again, we go back to those budgets and that balance sheet process. We have this file-sharing system I mentioned, and we have them upload budgets and balance sheets where you can even exchange this information. Then I go through it line by line with both of them in session in real time. What that does is it really levels the playing field. Because now somebody says, and this is what I’m also listening for – I just said it – “I didn’t know you had two 401ks.” That’s also like a little tick mark in the back of my head to go, “Okay, circle back to that.” Because I don’t know what this person really knows about the finances, as a mediator, you’re actively listening for that. By putting all those things in front of everybody and I say, “Okay, any surprises here, any assets you weren’t aware of, any debt you weren’t aware of, do the budgets make sense?” We try to at least level that playing field and help people at least go in from a position of strength when they start to negotiate. Of course, there’s always interpersonal dynamics that are going to unfold that you’re constantly managing as a mediator. But those would be the ways that I’d see it on the emotional side and the financial side.

Trina: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Because yeah, the foundation is key there. This might be because we’re almost at time – this will be my last question for today. But we have other questions. So we might have to do another. Would you be okay with that?

Joe: Yeah, sure.

Trina: And especially with Mrs. Dillon, does she go by Mrs. Dillon?

Joe: Yeah, she’s Cheryl. Yeah, absolutely. Certainly get her on. People are probably sick of listening to me by now.

Trina: No, not at all. After today, we’ll have even more questions. But this will be my final one of the day. I would love to know if they can spot someone that’s in midlife crisis. I know we mentioned you knew when your dad had a midlife crisis visually from his changing hairstyle.

Joe: Exactly. I’ll share that with the listeners. My dad was the Irish Catholic epitome, beer drinking, in construction. Such a stereotype. He had the 50s greaser hair, used the VO5 and slicked it back. He wore jeans and t-shirts. He drove a pickup truck. It was just like, it sounds like – yeah.

Trina: He kind of looked like – absolutely, that’s exactly it’s a great analogy.

Joe: So one day he comes home with a perm. I’m like 11 or whatever. You’re like, “Huh, what is this?” Because you knew your dad had straight hair and I have straight hair and I’m like, “Wow, this is weird.” He didn’t buy a sports car or anything, but then he got the perm. He was a guy who was like more of a homebody kind of guy doing projects around the house, playing catch with me and that kind of stuff. Then he started going out a lot more. He would go out with friends and he’d go out to baseball games or to bars or whatever it was. He was coming home less.

Those kinds of telltale signs – physical appearance, that other kind of appearance. For us, once they’re in my space, they’ve already come to that conclusion, they’re divorcing. So I’m not really seeing those kinds of things. What we can see, though, is a little bit of the behavior. For example, vehicle purchases, going out entertainment, those kinds of things where people are getting into those spaces where they’re not necessarily happy with the way their life is going or went. They’re looking to kind of make some significant change. Joining a gym, those kinds of things. Those are the sort of subtle things. Oddly enough, where those things pop up are once again, in the budgets and the balance sheets. If you start seeing the entertainment line or the health club line or the clothing budget, as I explore each line item, you can start asking some questions and kind of getting a vibe as to who’s spending money on what. Because that really – when you think about it – when you think about us as individuals, we spend our money on what we value. For example, I’m a musician, I like to play musical instruments. So rather than go out to fancy dinners, I’d rather buy a new guitar. That’s where I would spend my money. As you start to explore those questions and you start to understand what people are buying, spending their money on motorcycles, they’re always a good example. I like that. A motorcycle is a good – unless you’re a biker, that’s usually a good sort of checkmark, like, “Okay, you bought a motorcycle. All right, let’s talk about that.”

Trina: And does that make your job of mediating them a little more difficult at all?

Joe: Well, it does in the sense that that’s sort of an inflated lifestyle. What you have to explain to people is that when you’re getting a divorce, two households are more expensive to run than one. In order to run those two households, that’s going to require both parties to cut back financially, unless you’re independently wealthy, which, if you are, God bless you, I’m not. These things that you were doing or going out or buying, this is probably going to need to change. If you want to go into debt when you’re divorced and do it on your own, knock yourself out, but that’s probably not something that this post-marital lifestyle under normal circumstances is going to sustain. We need people to acknowledge that. If they want to do that, like I said, I’m never going to tell you what to do. You are the master of your own domain, you are in charge of your own life. If you want to buy yourself three motorcycles and a boat after you’re divorced, as long as it’s on your credit card or your credit history, knock yourself out.

Trina: Exactly. Okay. Well, I think that might be our final question of the day.

Joe: There you go. Well, I hope I was able to answer the questions.

Trina: I think so. It sounds like a lot of good questions. Yeah. One thing on the MLC is like some of the spouses just aren’t there emotionally. I don’t know if – I’m hoping that as they go through mediation, if they want to work this through, they can come to terms. I’ve heard that people sometimes in MLC will compartmentalize.

Joe: Yeah. They compartmentalize enough to get through mediation. So I think that mediation is a great choice for people.

Trina: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when you think about it, you have an excellent chance at coming to an agreement. At least with us, I know that usually industry averages around 70% for mediation, but that’s still pretty high. It’s still pretty high odds. It’s a peaceful process, more peaceful. It’s more cost-effective. It’s faster. The beauty of it is that because mediation is not binding until a couple makes it binding, you can give it a shot. You don’t have to feel like, “Oh my gosh, I went through mediation. I’m stuck with this thing.” Like we talked about, we encourage you to have an attorney review it. Make sure that we didn’t miss anything, you didn’t miss anything, the other spouse didn’t miss anything. By having people go through that process, give it a shot. The worst thing that happens – we’ve had, like I said, we’ve had a handful of people who haven’t come to an agreement, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t come to some agreements. They might not have made it all the way through. Usually there’s one or two sticking points, but I’m like, “Guys, just take all the work you’ve done, take the 90 to 95% of the work that you absolutely agree on, give it to your lawyers, use it, and then just work with them to finish the last three or four things.” Even in that case, you still have a great shot of moving through the process efficiently, cost-effectively, and quite frankly, peacefully, because when you’re done with this, you don’t want to be the shut-in, you want to go out and have your life, you want to live your life, you want to have friends, you maybe want to date again or get remarried again, whatever it is. The sooner you get through the ugliness of this process, the sooner you can start doing those things.

Trina: That sounds pretty good. Maybe next time we’ll talk about what if they do want to get married again, they might want to do separate checking accounts. When they meet the mediator, it’ll be easier. We haven’t talked about prenups because I’m not a lawyer. But mediators do prenups, and I’m a big fan. I don’t see there’s… people…

Joe: People think of prenups as like, “Whoa, we’re going to get divorced.” No, I mean, just be smart. It could be very general. You save yourself the acrimony of going through this litigious divorce. If you’ve got premarital assets, like Cheryl and I, we both got married a little older. We each owned a house. That’s one of those situations where you’re like, “Well, this is your house, this is my house, and we should write this down and say, ‘Look, this, we got it. If anything happens in the next years, you’ll keep that, I’ll keep this. But then after that, we’re together.'” That’s what we did. Here we are. Thankfully, we just celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. We’re long past the need for that. But again, they underestimate documentation. They don’t want to do it. It’s onerous. It feels bad. It feels negative. I wholeheartedly disagree. Be smart. Just protect yourself. Be kind, be fair.

Trina: You don’t share toothbrushes. Just do a prenup.

Joe: Just say, “Hey, how are we going to do this? How are we going to divide things if, God forbid, in the future, this doesn’t work out?”

Trina: Makes sense. Some of our listeners are getting in the midst of getting separated right now or separated. They still have time to do a post-nup.

Joe: Absolutely. We have people who bring those to us and they help. They certainly help when you go through them. The only thing I would advise them to do is for each of them to have their own lawyer review it so that no one down the road in the future can say, “Well, I didn’t have a lawyer or I was unrepresented or I didn’t know what you were talking about.” I really strongly advise, even if you work with a mediator to do one, have each have your own attorney review it, put the legal mumbo jumbo in there, formalize it, sign it, do whatever all the things lawyers have to do with it so that down the road… I can’t tell you, I have a lot of people come to me with prenups that they never signed. They did one and then one person’s lawyer put it together, but they never signed it. It’s like, “Guys, you were – it’s like to use a sports analogy like football, you’re at the goal line, just step across. Just sign it.” They never signed it. The other person says, “Well, I never signed it.” You’re like, “Wow, okay, this could have been so much easier, but all right, well, lesson learned.”

Trina: Yeah. That’s a lesson you learn once, you’re not going to do it again.

Joe: Exactly.

Trina: Well, Joe, thank you so much. It was great meeting you today. I know there were a lot of questions and hopefully this really helped. I know it did and we will probably be talking to you and Cheryl in the future.

Joe: Cheryl, the divorce coach extraordinaire.

Trina: Absolutely. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and we will talk again soon.

Joe: All right, Trina. Thank you.

About the Authors – Divorce Mediators You Can Trust

Equitable Mediation Services is a trusted and nationally recognized provider of divorce mediation, serving couples exclusively in California, New Jersey, Washington, New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. Founded in 2008, this husband-and-wife team has successfully guided more than 1,000 couples through the complex divorce process, helping them reach amicable, fair, and thorough agreements that balance each of their interests and prioritizes their children’s well-being. All without involving attorneys if they so choose.

At the heart of Equitable Mediation are Joe Dillon, MBA, and Cheryl Dillon, CPC—two compassionate, experienced professionals committed to helping couples resolve divorce’s financial, emotional, and practical issues peacefully and with dignity.

Photo of mediator Joe Dillon at the center of the Equitable Mediation team, all smiling and poised around a conference table ready to assist. Looking for expert, compassionate divorce support? Call Equitable Mediation at (877) 732-6682 to connect with our dedicated team today.

Joe Dillon, MBA – Divorce Mediator & Negotiation Expert

As a seasoned Divorce Mediator with an MBA in Finance, Joe Dillon specializes in helping clients navigate complex parental and financial issues, including:

  • Physical and legal custody
  • Spousal support (alimony) and child support
  • Equitable distribution and community property division
  • Business ownership
  • Retirement accounts, stock options, and RSUs

Joe’s unique blend of financial acumen, mediation expertise, and personal insight enables him to skillfully guide couples through complex divorce negotiations, reaching fair agreements that safeguard the family’s emotional and financial well-being.

He brings clarity and structure to even the most challenging negotiations, ensuring both parties feel heard, supported, and in control of their outcome. This approach has earned him a reputation as one of the most trusted names in alternative dispute resolution.

Photo of Cheryl Dillon standing with the Equitable Mediation team in a bright conference room, all smiling and ready to guide clients through an amicable divorce process. For compassionate, expert support from Cheryl Dillon and our team, call Equitable Mediation at (877) 732-6682 today.

Cheryl Dillon, CPC – Certified Divorce Coach & Life Transitions Expert

Cheryl Dillon is a Certified Professional Coach (CPC) and the Divorce Coach at Equitable Mediation. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and completed formal training at The Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC) – an internationally recognized leader in the field of coaching education.

Her unique blend of emotional intelligence, coaching expertise, and personal insight enables her to guide individuals through divorce’s emotional complexities compassionately.

Cheryl’s approach fosters improved communication, reduced conflict, and better decision-making, equipping clients to manage divorce’s challenges effectively. Because emotions have a profound impact on shaping the divorce process, its outcomes, and future well-being of all involved.

What We Offer: Flat-Fee, Full-Service Divorce Mediation

Equitable Mediation provides:

  • Full-service divorce mediation with real financial expertise
  • Convenient, online sessions via Zoom
  • Unlimited sessions for one customized flat fee (no hourly billing surprises)
  • Child custody and parenting plan negotiation
  • Spousal support and asset division mediation
  • Divorce coaching and emotional support
  • Free and paid educational courses on the divorce process

Whether clients are facing financial complexities, looking to safeguard their children’s futures, or trying to protect everything they’ve worked hard to build, Equitable Mediation has the expertise to guide them towards the outcomes that matter most to them and their families.

Why Couples Choose Equitable Mediation

  • 98% case resolution rate
  • Trusted by over 1,000 families since 2008
  • Subject-matter experts in the states in which they practice
  • Known for confidential, respectful, and cost-effective processes
  • Recommendations by therapists, financial planners, and former clients

Equitable Mediation Services operates in:

  • California: San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles
  • New Jersey: Bridgewater, Morristown, Short Hills
  • Washington: Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland
  • New York: NYC, Long Island
  • Illinois: Chicago, North Shore
  • Pennsylvania: Philadelphia, Bucks County, Montgomery County, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County

Schedule a Free Info Call to learn if you’re a good candidate for divorce mediation with Joe and Cheryl.

Related Resources

  • Divorce mediator, negotiation expert, and founder of Equitable Mediation Services Joe Dillon. Joe is a sought after podcast guest who shares his wealth of knowledge on topics such as divorce, child support, alimony, property division, and parenting plans.

    Podcast: The Art of Peaceful Divorce

    Divorce mediator Joe Dillon shares peaceful divorce strategies on The Divorced Dadvocate Podcast. Learn mediation tips for respectful separation.

  • Divorce mediator, negotiation expert, and founder of Equitable Mediation Services Joe Dillon. Joe is a sought after podcast guest who shares his wealth of knowledge on topics such as divorce, child support, alimony, property division, and parenting plans.

    Podcast: Don’t Let Your Divorce Become a Disaster

    Joe Dillon shares his personal story and forward-focused mediation philosophy on Lawyers & Mediators International with host Mac-Arthur Pierre-Louis.

  • Divorce mediator, negotiation expert, and founder of Equitable Mediation Services Joe Dillon. Joe is a sought after podcast guest who shares his wealth of knowledge on topics such as divorce, child support, alimony, property division, and parenting plans.

    Podcast: Going Solo – Life After Relationship Loss

    Joe Dillon explains how divorce mediation creates a smoother transition to single life on Going Solo with host Cece Shatz, covering time and costs.