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The Divorced Advocate Podcast – Episode with Joe Dillon

Jude: Hello and welcome to The Divorced Dadvocate divorce support for dads where we help dads create a healthy and less traumatic divorce. My name is Jude Sandoval and I’m your host. I created this podcast and The Divorced Advocate community as a result of my own high conflict divorce and because you as a dad deserve all the resources necessary to thrive through this challenging time. I encourage you to check out our website at TheDivorcedAdvocate.com where there are resources that correspond to this episode as well as free access to our membership community where you will find live meetings, free workshops and courses, private discussion groups and more. And now on to this week’s episode.

Hello and welcome to the show. Thank you so much for listening today. We’ve got an important topic that I realized that I have neglected to do any kind of episode or really education or sharing on in the five years that we’ve been recording this podcast. My guest today reached out to me and it clicked in my head and it was a natural fit to get together and chat with him.

Before I introduce him, I want to remind you to go to TheDivorcedDadvocate.com and check out all the resources that we have there so that you can get the help that you deserve and need. We’ve got everything from free to paid resources wherever you’re at in your divorce whether you’re just contemplating or post divorce. We’ve got something that can help you out there so check it out at TheDivorcedDadvocate.com.

My guest today is a trailblazer in divorce mediation. He’s been helping couples end their marriages with dignity and financial clarity for over 17 years. As co-founder of Equitable Mediation Services, he brings an MBA in finance and advanced training from Harvard, MIT, and Northwestern to guide couples toward fair lasting agreements that protect both emotional well-being and financial stability. He launched virtual divorce mediation in 2011, nearly a decade before it became the norm during the pandemic. The results speak for themselves – Equitable Mediation Services has a 98% case resolution rate, which is remarkable and is far above the industry average of 70%. Please help me in welcoming Joe Dillon.

Joe: Thanks for having me Jude, very excited to be here.

Jude: Joe, thanks for reaching out. Like I mentioned, I have been remiss in not really diving into this. I think we’ve talked about positives of mediation and finding attorneys and everything else, but we haven’t really dove into mediation and the positives and the negatives and how you get a 98% case resolution. I think I was telling you right before we started recording I’ve been in mediation six or seven times and I’m over six or seven, so I’m really curious to know how you got to that too.

But before we jump into some of that, just share a little bit about for 17 years now why you keep showing up to arguing couples every single day and helping them to figure out what they’ve got going on.

Joe: Yeah, that’s a great question. So a little bit about me – my parents litigated their divorce. You know, a therapist would probably have a field day with me because they’re like “Well dude, this is totally why you do this, right?” But you know they litigated this back in the ’80s and this was before really mediation was a thing.

So I started thinking about it – they fought for years, they spent so much money, and then literally the last time I saw my father I was 15 years old. I was sitting in the back of a courtroom, in the hallway my parents were still yelling at each other in the hallway. My dad walked out of the courtroom and that was literally the last time I saw him or spoke to him again. Then about five years ago I got a letter saying he had died, and so that was it.

When you look at that, when you think about that as dads, you know dads are important role models and they’re important players in kids’ lives. To not have a dad in my life – my mom of course did a great job, did the best she could – but there’s roles that dads play that are really critically important. I just wish that they could have put the lawyers aside, talked to each other as people directly because I was sitting right there by the way, and said “You know what do we have to do that’s in the best interest of this kid here?” Because I’m an only child.

So every time when I get, as you said, I get into the room and I get into the space, I think to myself I want to help couples avoid what happened to me. I want them – I say “Look, you are not going to be husband and wife anymore, but you’re always going to be mom and dad and that is a role that will not change.” So I think that’s what keeps me showing up every single day knowing that there are families out there who are still at the birthday parties together, still sitting at each other’s graduations, can be at the wedding together. I didn’t have any of that, so you know I feel like I really missed out and so that’s really the deep answer. I hope that’s not too deep for the audience.

Jude: Yeah, no, well I think that adds some credibility as well to that. It’s obviously sad that that’s what has happened, but I think that many of the dads that are listening can relate to some of that. One of the things I have noticed in doing this work for so long now is that some of this stuff is generational. So my parents were divorced, my parents’ parents were divorced as well, and it seems to be a thing that gets carried on unless there is a mindset like you just mentioned which is “Hey, we need to reframe this.” We might not be together but we’re going to be parents and we need to be looking at this from a different perspective.

Which, if somebody is healthy and is in a healthy mindset, doesn’t have mental emotional challenges going on or something else, then mediation probably is something that’s positive. So share with us then why mediation is positive and maybe some misconceptions around mediation and going to mediation.

Joe: Yeah, so I think the thing that for me with mediation is that think about when you have a lawyer – two sides have a lawyer and the lawyers are communicating and it’s this sort of faceless interaction. You’re not seeing that you’re hurting the other person. Supposedly this was a person that you at some point in your life pledged your undying love to, so even at a bare minimum you’d want to treat this person like a human.

Because of the adversarial nature of the legal system, the lawyer is hired to win for their client and they don’t care who they hurt on the other side as long as I win and I get the best settlement. That’s happening from both sides. Mediation removes that and puts the two people face to face, and I think that’s really what the key is – it’s sort of like, I’ll say this to you, we both have websites and if you had say a commenting section that was unmoderated on your website, it’s real easy for somebody who doesn’t have to register to come in and make some snarky comment and then just send and walk away. But if I had to look at you and give you my name, my address, my phone number, a photo of myself, it would be a lot harder for me to do that.

Mediation’s the same way. If I’m sitting across from you, it’s a lot harder to yell, to be mean, to call names, and quite frankly to try to pull one over on the other person. If you’re staring at somebody and the other person looks at you and goes “Come on, really? Really?” you can’t in good faith – like you said you have to have the mental acuity of course – but you can’t in good faith say “Oh yeah, absolutely that’s true.” You’re like “Yeah, you’re right, I’m kind of joking, you know?”

So it takes a lot of the air out of the balloon, a lot of the emotions, and by doing that negotiation directly you can clear up a lot of misconceptions, get people to treat each other like humans, and I really think that takes the temperature down and it’s really to me the key to the whole process.

Jude: So do you require couples to sit in the same room while they are mediating? Now you do it virtually, and I guess along that same concept do they have to be face to face with each other? Because I’ve been in mediation both ways.

Joe: Yeah, so I’m always of the mind – what you’re referring to, there’s two kinds of mediation. The kind of mediation I do, everybody’s in the room quote unquote. Now if you’re on one Zoom and the other person’s on a different Zoom, sure no problem, we’re each in our own separate video feeds, but I’m always working one-on-two.

There are some mediators who work in a fashion that’s known as shuttle mediation like the mediator shuttles back and forth between the rooms. I find that kind of breeds mistrust because the one party sitting there now just waiting – what are you thinking? What’s that mediator saying that my husband or my wife? If you’re all in the room, like think about when you were a little kid, how rumors got started and that game of telephone or whatever it is. If you’re all together you can clear up that rumor real quick, but if somebody goes into a different room, says something, they come back – even as a practitioner, let’s just be quite honest, this is a hard enough job without me having to remember what one person said, told me, what I can’t tell the other person. I’m not going to be able to do that.

So you get everybody in the same room, it makes the conversation go a lot better, clarifies any issues, and it really does like I said reduce that conflict.

Jude: Okay, so is that – do you feel like that is one of the reasons why you might have a much higher success rate? Because I think probably the majority of times, and this was by request of my ex, we were in separate rooms and even when we did virtual mediation we were in separate rooms so she would never ever have to look at me, never have to be directly communicating with me. Is that – do you feel like that is one of the reasons that you have such a high success rate?

Joe: I think so. I think having people one-on-one, even if they’re say for example taking the Zoom call from a separate room – you know there’s obviously power dynamics in relationships, so some people are comfortable sitting next to each other, some people aren’t, and they want to be able to speak up. So if that means you’re in the bedroom and you’re in the guest room or whatever it is on Zoom, fine.

But I do think that leads to that because it does really like I said take the temperature down, clarifies a lot of issues, and also let’s be honest – this is not the most fun someone has ever had, getting a divorce. Do you really want this process to drag on for years and years? No, you want to move through the process in a structured and organized fashion. You don’t want to sound like “Oh this is a business transaction and we’re going to move you through,” but you don’t want it to drag like my parents – it was like three years. It’s like what are you doing? Who is benefiting from this? Lawyers. That’s who’s benefiting from this. Are you getting on with your life? No. Am I getting on with my life as your child? No.

So again that also expedites the conversation, it gets people to move through the process faster, come to a conclusion, and I say this guy to guy here – I’m half Irish, half Italian, so I’m very stoic. You know, don’t worry about it, suppress your feelings – that’s how I was raised. A lot of guys don’t realize that there’s going to be this emotional avalanche at the end that they need to let happen and they need to welcome it, and the sooner they get there the sooner they can have the breakdown, rebuild, and move forward. That’s really what my goal is to try to help them do that as well.

Jude: Well so you bring up a good point – there are a lot of emotions that come up in this process. Finances is probably one of the biggest ones that people get obviously wrapped around the axle on. How do you manage that when you’re in the process, when those emotions start to get whether they get heated or whether they get sad or fearful? I think probably if you really want to do a psychoanalysis of it, which we’re not going to do today, but it comes down to fear on both sides – fear I’m not going to have enough, fear I’m not going to be able to provide, whatever it is. But how do you manage that?

Joe: Yeah, so as you know I have an MBA in finance and so I bring this financial perspective to it because you’re absolutely right. Think about the topics in a divorce – parenting, child support, alimony, property division. Three of the four are financial, and by the way in most of the states we practice in the parenting plan is an input into the calculation of child support, so I’ll say three and a half.

Going back to what we were talking about before about looking someone in the eye and being able to say to them something serious and have them take you seriously, what I like to do is I have this process that I’ve developed. So I first start people out by preparing these budgets – these are budget workbooks of my own design. We do a joint budget and that shows me what your marital lifestyle looks like. What that does is it says “Look guys, are you living at your means, below your means, or beyond your means?” Because guess what? Soon as you separate households, life’s going to get more expensive, and if you were going into credit card debt while you’re living together, there’s no extra money hiding around for extra alimony or child support. So we level that playing field first.

Then we get the apart budgets and we say “Look, here’s your lives comparatively post divorce. Is it fair that this person’s sleeping on his friend’s couch in the basement while this person is still staying in the house? Look at the numbers – this person’s spending I don’t know $7,000 a month, this one’s trying to spend $1,500. Is that really fair? Is that good for your kids? Do your kids want to visit dad in the friend’s basement?”

So you have that first conversation to level set to say “Look, this is what we’ve got financially. There’s no lies here, here it all is.” So that’s the first thing that we do.

From there, the second thing that happens is we do a balance sheet and we put all the assets and liabilities out on the table because what I found is a lot of people like to talk about stuff piecemeal and what they do is they pick one thing like the house or the car or the 401k or whatever and they just go after it. I’m like “Guys, this is like a big – you got to look at the whole picture.”

When we get it all out on the table it’s like “Well here’s all the statements” – because I asked him to give me copies of the statements – “here’s a spreadsheet with all your assets and liabilities. There is no money hiding in a bank account, here’s all the credit reports, here’s all the research we did on all your open accounts.” What you see is I’m trying to do is I’m removing the emotions before we even make decisions. So I like to say do the discovery before the deciding.

As guys, I am Mr. Guilty of this – I am a solutions-oriented guy, I want to fix the problem right away, I go right into solutions mode. What you need to do is you need to go into research, step back, lay it all out, then you can have the conversation so that’s how we approach it – take those emotions out so the conversations can be more productive.

Jude: Well so those are two things already that I can tell that at least in my experience has not happened – being face to face because that does humanize it and does make it different, and then what you’re talking about with that preparation upfront and having full financial picture, knowing everything that’s going on. I think you said pulling credit reports too so that you can see what credit – that’s something that I’ve never heard of and I think that’s a brilliant idea because then that puts to rest any mistrust or anything or any ability to lie about anything period if you’ve got that and you’re able to trade that and look at that and know “Hey, this is what it is, there’s no money here, this is what we’re dealing with.”

So it sounds like you do a lot more upfront preparation with the couples before scheduling and having them show up so that there’s more going on, which I think is brilliant honestly.

So how do you get – one of the things that I run into the most is when one party just doesn’t have a realistic expectation when they’re coming into mediation. And it happens all the time, you know, and it doesn’t really matter who it is, whether it’s the man or the woman. But one party seems to just not have a realistic expectation often times. How do you move past that then when somebody shows up – even if you have all of the documentation and the credit reports and your spreadsheet developed in your MBA program and everything else – and then somebody had showed up thinking, because most of us don’t check the statutes like you mentioned, the child support is going to be tied to the number of nights that you have in a parenting plan. So one person has not done the work, doesn’t know the statutes, doesn’t understand, maybe had this misconception that their life is going to be the same post divorce if not better post divorce, they’re going to maintain the exactly the same lifestyle with two households now, which makes no sense but again we’re not thinking logically often times through this process. How do you mitigate that when there’s one person that just is completely unrealistic?

Joe: Yeah, great question and that does happen frequently. So the way I handle it, there’s two parts to that. The first we’ve already talked about are those budgets. So what we do is when we do the joint budget, let’s just use some silly round numbers – let’s say a couple living together spends $5,000 a month on their living expenses, their house and their car and their groceries and whatever. Then when we take their apart budgets and we review them and we add them together, one person is spending $4,000 and the other one’s spending $3,500.

So I say “Okay folks, $5,000 together, $7,500 apart. $2,500 is the cost to divorce” – that’s the phrase I use. “So that’s what it’s going to cost you guys every month to be divorced. So $2,500 times 12” – whatever that math is, $30,000. “Hey, you did some math! Okay guys, you’re an MBA. Let me ask you guys a question – do you have $30,000 lying around right now? Do you put $30,000 a year away in the bank?” And most people will say no. I said “Okay, where’s that coming from?” So we first establish that there’s going to be a challenge.

Then the second thing we do – and this is a great thing for your listeners to remember, this is kind of a negotiation technique – is you say “Here’s a great question.” So this is what I want everybody to hear: “Help me understand.” When you say “You do this, you don’t get it,” you know the person’s taking that as an attack and of course they’re gonna only entrench in their position.

“Okay, you want $5,000 a month in alimony. Okay, help me understand how I can pay that to you. If I can do it, I’m really willing to listen.” And now the person instead of you proving their point, they have to prove their own point. What I’ve noticed is a lot of people – what it does is it paints them into a corner to reality check themselves. Then all of a sudden they go “Well yeah, you only bring home $4,500 a month, I guess I’m not getting $5,000 in alimony.” And the other person goes “Right.” There’s like a moment – you’re always as a mediator looking for those moments where somebody has a little bit of empathy for the other person.

So that’s how we do it and I say “Hey listen, I’m all ears, I’m neutral, I don’t have a horse in this race, but help me understand how that’s possible.” And then a lot of people when they start talking it through and trying to explain it and trying to figure it out, they usually can’t.

Even if they say “I don’t care, that’s what I want,” then the third option, which is what I prefer not to get to, is you say “Okay, let’s do that. Let’s take a look at what it would be like if I pay you $5,000 a month. Here’s my budget. Take a look at my budget. Do you agree my budget is correct? Yeah, I spend $4,000 a month. Yeah, I bring home $5,000 a month. Yeah, so how do I pay my bills?” And then again you’re trying to get the other person to say “You know what, that doesn’t make sense.”

Because if you tell them, in their head it makes sense, but you do everything you can to just like we were talking about – that discovery, put everything out on the table and let them come to that conclusion. Because I believe in my heart of hearts that most people are rational actors. Most people are reasonable, it’s the circumstances that wind you up. Somebody cuts you off in traffic – I’m not a maniac, but if somebody cuts me off suddenly I am. Same thing in these situations.

So in those examples what you’re always trying to do is “Sure, I’m listening, I’m willing as the recipient of that request, I’m willing to give it a shot. Help me understand how that’s possible, let’s talk about it,” and then you stay quiet and you let the other person try to explain themselves. That’s how you do it. Make sense?

Jude: Yeah, no that’s terrific and I like that “help me understand” is the phrase. And if anybody’s listening, I think that is a great question to just use through this whole process. They could use that with their soon-to-be ex, they could use that with their attorneys, they can use that with anybody that if they just don’t understand, like “Lay it out for me, tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

Because like you said, what you just described – as guys naturally want to problem solve and we want to figure this out, and I’ve worked with enough guys and you probably have too, like we probably have come to this mediation with a plan A, B, C, and D in most of our minds of like what we can do, what we can’t do, what we’d like to do, all these different scenarios that we can try to work out. I tell you I’ve coached some guys that literally show up with the spreadsheets of those three, four, five different scenarios of how you’re gonna go through it, which I have respect for and I do appreciate that.

But that’s a great question – “So I’ve got these five options, so help me understand which one’s going to work for you” or whatever the situation is. I like that a lot.

So I’m curious though because there is a segment of the population, and unfortunately guys that tune into this show and come to the community deal with people that have some significant mental emotional issues, maybe personality disorders – that’s maybe 5 to 10% of the entire population out there. How do you work through something like that and how do you get to a 98% success rate if you’re working with folks that some might just have a different reality? Because personality disorder is essentially somebody has a different reality than yours, different reality of the world. I’m not a clinical psychologist or anything, that’s just kind of generally, and you’ve done enough of this to know they just don’t have the reality of what’s going on, they have a different reality of what’s going on.

How do you work through some of that stuff and what suggestions do you have for any of the guys that might be dealing with somebody like this that really really want to try to come to some settlement, some amicable way to get through this process? Because what I’ve found, and this is probably generally on both sides, is the guys that come to our community that might be dealing with somebody like this are genuinely dads that want to figure something out that just got into a marriage that’s just untenable anymore and they’re trying to find – and mediation would be great because they know they’re going to save money, it’s going to be easier on the kids, all the reasons that you described before – but it’s just somebody that they’re stuck and this person’s stuck in their reality that is not the reality.

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. So the good news is a lot of people – I think they forget really what happens, Jude, is they forget that there’s steps in the process. There’s gradations you can take. You don’t have to pull the pin out of the grenade and go right to court, and mediation is always a great first step. You’re going to mediate, you’re going to try to mediate.

As we were talking about before we jumped on here, a lot of states these days have mandatory mediation anyway, so what I remind people is you’re going to either see me now or you’re going to see somebody like me later. The chances are the person you’re going to see later is going to be appointed by the court or might not have the experience that say someone like me in private mediation has, so your always best bet is to try mediation first.

Now I will tell you that there are people who come to us and I want to be very honest with them, and we’ll have a first meeting, an initial meeting, and I’ll say “You know what folks, I don’t think mediation is the right thing for you because of,” for example what you said. However, there is an alternative to pulling the pin out of the grenade and it’s called collaborative divorce.

How that works is you’re all in the same room and in this situation it’s you and your attorney, your spouse and their attorney, and then a relevant professional. And again, you know, poking fun at ourselves as guys, you know especially me – I’m an only child, I’m always “I can do it myself, I don’t need any help,” and we’re always kind of just putting on the brave face.

Well in this case you have this room where there’s the protection of the attorney, it’s a neutral setting, and then you can bring in a mental health professional or a child psychologist or some other qualified what we might call fifth party who they’re not a mediator, but they’re there to provide that kind of support and to be able to explain to the individual who perhaps might not be on the same plane as the other person what’s going on, how it’s impacting them, getting them to understand how compromise works and what they need to do and what’s in the best interest of the kids.

So even if you can’t mediate, I’m a fan of then saying go to collaborative divorce, get those people in the room. Because you know, look, I could tell you I have some of my best friends are attorneys, and like you and I we were just talking about, my background is finance. I am not a mental health professional, you don’t want me as your mental health professional, I’m woefully unqualified, and most of my attorney friends will say the same thing. So they say “Look, let’s get somebody in the room neutral that both sides can pick so that they can bridge that gap,” and I find that that helps a lot. That’s a key thing.

So if your listeners are in a situation where they’re thinking “I don’t know if my spouse is able to have a good faith negotiation or to understand fully what’s happening,” try collaborative divorce. This way you each have attorneys, you have other professionals that can support you, and it avoids you from having to wind up in a courtroom. More – not as cost-effective as mediation of course, but far more cost effective than litigation. So that’s what I would say.

Jude: Yeah, so have you found that couples that may not be successful in mediation do have success in collaborative divorces?

Joe: You know, I don’t know for sure only because sometimes like I said we’re lucky, we’ve had – I can count on one hand the number of clients that have not been able to come to agreement with us, so I can’t speak definitively about what happened. But the clients that probably we are unable to help should not have been mediation clients in the first place – they were not being truthful upfront and hiding something, some assets or some other situation.

But I do think they can be if I as a professional had to make that regard, because what’s nice about mediation is you can take what you’ve done and a lot of times in my experience it’s usually a handful of issues, one or two issues that are the sticking point. So you don’t need to start again, take what you’ve done in mediation, bring it to a collaborative process, say “Look, we agree on these 95 things, we need help with these five,” and then at least you’re not starting from scratch. I think that’s how you would succeed.

Now if somebody goes into mediation and says “This is ridiculous, I don’t agree to any of this, I’m getting a lawyer and I’m going to burn this thing to the ground,” yeah then I don’t know what’s going to happen. But if you get the people who just have that one or two sticking point that they just can’t get past and for some reason we can’t get them past it, then that’s what I would say – you go to collaborative, you use that process to just finish the rest of it, and then you’re on your way.

Jude: Got it. Yeah, I asked because it seems to me, and this is just anecdotal and subjective, that the couples that have not been successful in mediation are less – have less of an opportunity or are less prepared to be successful in collaborative divorce because collaborative is truly collaborative. If you’re mediating and you’re doing mediation in the correct spirit of mediation, you are collaborating, and part of collaboration is having to come to consensus, you’re having to give and take, you’re having to resolve all kinds of things that is collaborative.

If they haven’t been able to get it done in mediation, I’ve found that typically they’re not able to get it done in a collaborative type situation. But maybe it’s just because collaborative divorce is not – has not become as prevalent as regular divorce is yet. Well hopefully that’s starting to change and there’s maybe more people thinking about doing it or having some success through it because I truly think that it’s like you said, it’s the next step up from mediation if you need to bring other people in, you need to have more – the way that I describe the differences, and correct me if I’m wrong, is if somebody has an unrealistic expectation around things, you have somebody that’s there to help educate them on the process maybe or the realities of stuff like you talked about bringing mental health professionals in or finance professionals in, real estate professionals, whatever, that will help them to say “Look, this is what the lay of the land is. These are your options. You might have one, two, three, four, five options, but actually realistically it’s going to be one or two. The other ones, you can argue it in court, but probably 99% – three of those five are going to get thrown out and you’re not going to have any choice.”

So it seems to be whereas mediation is not as – you’re not spending weeks, months, and going through that process, you’re spending hours and it’s more inclined to people that are going to actually just get something done.

Joe: Right, you know, and you brought up a great point before – it’s a mindset. There’s a quote and I think it’s Henry Ford – “If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” I love that quote because if you come into mediation going “This isn’t going to work,” well guess what, it’s not going to work.

But at the end of the day, if you say – and you know this from experience, I know this from experience as a child – is that when you enter the legal system, all bets are off and you’re just putting – you’re rolling those dice. You’re not even rolling them, a stranger is rolling them for you. Instead in mediation you control the outcome.

Now granted, could you have gotten more, could you have paid less if I litigated? Yeah, maybe you could. But what’s worth it? Is it worth the $50,000, $75,000, $100,000 you spent on a litigated divorce? Is it worth the years of your life that you could have been playing catch with your son or going to dance recital? You’re going to be in courtrooms. Sometimes you just have to let it go and you have to just say “Well that was terrible, that’s not what I wanted, but you know what, it was worth it for my emotional well-being.”

Because guess what, we’ve talked a lot about finances and all of those things, but the biggest price someone pays is an emotional one. Your money comes and goes. We all lose jobs, we get jobs, we make bad investments, we spend too much on a bar tab or whatever it is. But at the end of the day, the only thing you got left is your emotional peace of mind, and that’s priceless.

Jude: Yeah, for sure. So if you can give some advice to the dads listening as far as what to look for in a mediator, like what kinds of questions to ask a mediator? Because I find a lot of the guys will say “Hey yeah, we’re going to try mediation first, we’re going to find a private mediator first, not a court-appointed mediator,” which I agree with you, I think that there’s a distinct difference in their abilities to get that done and to get something done between a court-appointed mediator and a private mediator. You guys have to have success – well you don’t have to have success, but yeah you kind of do. Your success breeds more business, which you want to continue to feed your family, then you want to be successful.

Which you know, and you know you’ve got my mind going just a ton because like I said I’ve been through it six or seven times, have never had success. I think I feel like part of that might be just generally the mediator population that we have here because it is court ordered and how good or bad they actually are here in Colorado. But also I would contend that this probably is true in some other states or areas where they require that – they’re not – they might not have the level of skill that someone like you or mediators in other areas have, which is going to lead to failure.

When that failure happens – okay so I was going to ask you another question, I’m going to shift a little bit here – so when that failure happens, it – the challenge I have with doing the mediation without being prepared like you described is that it starts everything off poorly of course. So if you get into a bad mediation and somebody’s not realistic for whatever reason, it fails, it seems to set things back as opposed to starting off on the wrong foot.

So actually I can dovetail this into the question I was going to ask – so what can the dads look for in a mediator, what kind of questions can they ask the mediator before getting into the process and deciding on starting out with the mediation process?

Joe: Perfect, I’ll give you some great questions to ask. So the first thing I would ask is “Explain to me your mediation process.” We’ve been talking about this a lot and having a process is key. Imagine if you – I’m a big baseball fan – imagine if you just put nine guys out on a field and said “Play a game.” What was the first thing they would ask? Well, what are the rules? Where do I go? Where do I stand? Who does what? You want to know, you need a framework by which to operate with. So that’s actually what the Colorado Rockies do here – I just went to the game last night, that’s why they’ve only won 12 games this year.

Jude: Yeah, I’m sorry about that and I’m a big Cubs fan so sorry about the whole Chris Bryant thing, so you can blame me for that.

Joe: So you know, but I would ask “Hey, what’s your process look like? Do you even have one?” Because as we’ve talked about, if you don’t have a process, things can spiral pretty quickly. So that’s question number one.

Number two – what’s your case resolution rate? You got to be hitting at least 70%, that’s industry average, that’s a C. If you’re getting into 80, you’re getting into 90, that’s solid, that’s good. So what’s your case resolution rate?

What’s your training look like? That’s a third question. So what I would say to your listeners, and this is terrifying for a professional like myself, is if Jude, you decided one day “You know what, I talked to that Joe Dillon guy, he seemed pretty cool, I’m going to take this 40-hour mediation class at the Holiday Inn this weekend and I’m going to get myself a business card” – that is literally all you need to do to become a mediator in most states. Forty-hour course. Like wow, that’s just terrifying.

So what kind of training, continuing education do they continue to do to stay on top of trends? Because as you know, the laws change every year. So what’s their training, what does that look like for them? Do they just take the 40-hour course or do they continue to take additional training?

And then I’d also talk to them about their fee structure because here’s another thing that we do. So we’re pretty unique in the sense we offer a flat fee and people can have as many sessions as they like within this time frame. We call it this mediation roadmap. So in effect what we’re doing is we’re putting our professional reputation on the line and saying – this sounds like a game show almost in a weird way – I can get your divorce negotiated within this period of time for this price, and if it goes, then it’s on me if I screw up.

When you’re billing hourly, there’s no incentive for that professional to resolve your issues. I mean that’s the model, that’s okay, I get it, that used to be the model, but that’s broken. I don’t want to – I’m not an ATM, and so I want to know how long is it going to take, how much is it going to cost, what am I going to get? So we tell people that right up front and if somebody can’t tell you that, if they’re not confident, that says – look, and this is where we get to say we say between 10 and 14 weeks you could finish your whole divorce mediation. Now not the court process because you’re at the mercy of the courts and filing it and all, but you could get your whole substantive agreement negotiated within this time period. Like I can give you a 98% chance that’s going to happen.

If I said to you “Hey Jude, you play the lottery? I got a 98% shot of winning, would you play?” Of course you would. And I’m saying to you, I’m even putting it on me saying that if you need two sessions, four, six, eight, we’re making progress, you’re still paying the same price, that’s on me. I’m willing to do that.

So I think if that combination of your training, your process, your fee structure, your professional societies that you belong to, your engagement – all of those things kind of come into play. And you know I can tell you from experience, a lot of times people – one thing I would not concern myself with are online reviews because in a divorce, first of all, who’s going out publicly and saying “That was awesome! That’s the best divorce ever! I love that guy Joe Dillon, he’s great!” You know, they’re not doing that. And the ones that are are mad, they’re angry about something. We have like three reviews somewhere in Google I think.

But we do ask people to fill out an anonymous survey after they’re done with us and we pull quotes from it. So someone else should also be able to say “Look, I can’t give you referrals or references” – “Hey Jude, I got your phone number from my mediator, can I talk to you about your divorce?” You’d be like “What?” They should be able to at least say “Look, here’s a smattering of feedback we’ve gotten and here are the things that people mention.” And you’ll notice patterns. So I think that’s really what I would say – those questions and to avoid online reviews because really they’re just really not accurate these days when it comes to this topic. So I hope that helps.

Jude: Okay, what about people that are in states or areas where there is court order mediation? Would a question – would a question like what percentage of your business is court-appointed, what percentage of your business is attorney referred, and what percentage of your business is private – would that be a good question to ask too? Because I got to tell you Joe, like you know the phrase “you don’t know what you don’t know” – I feel like that. And talking to you now in just this 45 minutes that we’ve spent together, that you’ve raised a whole bunch of new questions but things that could help everybody in general if they knew this, but the guys that are listening to have some more success upfront with a mediator.

Because what you’ve described has not ever been an experience that I’ve had in the six or seven times. I hear that. I’ve literally had mediators after the shuttle back and forth, after one room in a half hour say “We’re probably not going to get anything done today. Great, thanks.” And then you paid your minimum and frankly I was just happy that you paid your minimum two hours and I wasn’t going to pay another six hours. And even if they only worked a half hour, I was happy that I cut my losses.

So but that’s the experience that I’ve had, and until – unless I’ve had an experience that was better than that, which is what you’ve been describing to me, I didn’t know – I don’t know anybody. I think a lot of us don’t know any better, and I think I really feel while mediation is a great idea, it’s just like having a bad plumber – if they could just make things worse if they show up and they’re crappy. So if you’re trying to have good intentions and getting into mediation and then you have a terrible experience, it just sets things back like I said.

So yeah, so I think another question in addition to what is your process – I think that’s a great question – what’s your case resolution rate – I would love, I’m going to start asking that all the time now because I don’t know that any of them keep that. I have not seen that. I would think that every mediator would want to have that as a benchmark like in all of their advertising – 90%, 98% – unless they’re not successful, unless they’re doing the shuttle back and forth and “I’m done in a half hour, it’s just not going to work out today” scenario.

Joe: Along those lines to make a comment about that is my wife Cheryl, she’s a divorce coach and she’s my partner in this, so she helps some of our clients as well. And you know, if your case resolution rate isn’t high, you’re in the wrong line of work because the bottom line is I’m a divorce mediator on my business card, but the truth of the matter is I’m a problem solver. And if I’m not willing to like get in the arena and say “Guys, we got to figure this out” and really care about it – you really need to care about this. It’s like you were saying to me at the beginning of the show – why do you keep doing this? It’s because I actually give a damn about it because I’ve seen the other side of the coin.

I can’t tell you what to do, but man, you just don’t want what happened to me. You just don’t want the alternative. Trust me on this. Just hang with me, it’s going to be hard, but we can do this. And I’ve come home after a day and she’s like “How are you doing?” I’m like “I just got to sit quietly downstairs and pet the dog.” You know, it takes a lot out of you, but you have to care, and I think that’s a lot too.

Another question I would have your folks ask is “Is this your full-time profession?” That’s another good question. Do you mediate full-time? Because I don’t know, you know, I don’t know if I mentioned this – so when I was living in Chicago and I was kind of teaching at Northwestern University, I was like an assistant to the people who were teaching the mediation classes, and a lot of the people who came in there were mental health professionals, marriage counselors, and they thought “Well, you know, I’m already seeing couples in trouble so I’ll become a divorce mediator as well.”

It’s like you just said – imagine if the plumber showed up at your house and gave you a business card and said “Hey, by the way, in addition to plumbing, I also repair carburetors and I also paint bedrooms and I also do needlepoint.” You’d be like “Are you really qualified as a plumber?” So you probably want to find out – does this person practice some kind of conflict resolution full-time? Because this is a skill. Mediation is a skill and it needs to be honed and sharpened and continued, and so that’s another good question.

Jude: Yeah, yeah, I think that’s a great question. Only challenge is that if they get all their business – like they’re not in the wrong business if they’re getting automatic business. If they’re getting automatic business from the court and then they’re mailing it in, that’s where you got to ask “Well, what percentage of your business, how much business?” And I’d be curious because as you know, because you deal with different parts of the country, so much of the family law court is a cottage industry where the attorneys know the mediators, know the mental health professionals, know the finance, and then they’re just all working together. They know the judges because they went to law school with them and then they practiced for a while and then they got on the bench, and then they’re not going to piss them off and they’re not going to really argue for their client because they don’t want to piss the judge off because they’re going to have to see them again. They’re not going to piss off opposing counsel either because they’re going to have to see them again and talk to them. So this is a whole cottage industry thing.

So which again, when I’m coaching guys – and I firmly believe that every person now – I didn’t when I started this, I was like “Yeah, coaching would be good for you,” but I think that every person going through divorce should have – I absolutely agree 100% all the time – a coach so that they can know and that they can understand this whole process and what goes on. And that question of what percentage of the business do you have to go out and you actually have to get yourself, I think in especially in the states where it’s court ordered, is a fantastic question. And full-time – do you do this full-time, do you feed your family doing this? Because you’re committed to it if you are. And if you do, what percentage of that is private that you work with couples outside of the court, what percentage of that is attorneys that you know that you’ve worked with, and what percentage is court-ordered? And then the last question is what is your resolution rate based on all that? Because then you can – I mean this is a higher equation thing – but you can see if 90% of their cases are court ordered and they have a 25% success rate, then you got it right there. It’s the Colorado Rockies and the Chicago Cubs for so many years – people kept showing up to the games even if they weren’t successful just because they kept showing up. That was the Cubs forever, that’s the Colorado Rockies now, because everybody shows up and they don’t care if they win or not. So it’s that same philosophy – they keep getting business because it’s just given to them, they have no incentive to really be successful.

Joe: Exactly, yeah, that’s – I think those are great questions that you ask, and that leads me into just re-emphasizing because I do with the guys all of the time is that you’re in charge of this process. Absolutely, that’s a great point. Get educated, ask the questions, don’t bury your head. If you weren’t the leader in your family and you weren’t leading, it might be one of the reasons why you’re in the position you’re at. It’s the time now for you to start doing that. Ask your mediator, don’t get – find another mediator and ask the questions. Find – if you don’t get the answers or you don’t like the answers, find another one. But make sure to start taking the reins in this process.

Joe: And if I can just – I’ll share this with you, you know, I’ll answer a question you didn’t ask but you kind of did. The percentage of clients we get from the courts or referral is zero. 100% of our business is client referral or direct, and we for that very reason – it’s exactly what you said – because we work hard, we’re selective. We interview our clients too because we want to make sure that they’re as committed to this process as we are because we’re putting it in day in and day out.

And along the lines of what you were saying, part of how we do that is if you go on our website – and you probably have that in your show notes here whatever it is – we have a resource center, and since 2007 – I can’t believe I’m saying that out loud – I have been blogging and I’ve been writing these guides, everything from divorce after 20 years to amicable divorce to how does alimony work and all these things. That’s how people find us because we feel very strongly that you need to get educated on this process.

Because I’ll just – you know, I know everybody’s listening so it’s not really a secret – but an educated client is a great client for us. They come in with realistic expectations, they come in with a sense of how things work. They don’t have to have all the answers, but they have enough information to know sort of what they don’t know, and they can ask the intelligent questions.

So our philosophy has always been to invest in people and educate them, and if they work with us, great, and if they don’t, that’s great because we get visitors from all over the world and we’re only practicing in six states. But let them get that knowledge so that like you said they can go away, they can feel empowered, they can feel educated, and then the fear also subsides.

It’s like I remember being a kid – I had to get my wisdom teeth out. I have no cavities in my teeth, I don’t know how that happened. I have no cavities, never really had a problem with a dentist, and the first real main interaction I had with a dentist was to get my wisdom teeth out. I was freaking out because I’m like “Oh my god,” and then like two hours later I’m eating SpaghettiOs. I’m like “Well, I freaked myself out over this.” If I had known, you know, same thing – get educated, reduce the fear, reduce that reactivity, work with a coach like yourself, and then get through the process confident. That’s really key.

Jude: Yeah, perfect. So we could probably talk for another hour but we’re coming up on an hour. So where is the website where the listeners can find that blog and that information?

Joe: Yeah sure, you just go to EquitableMediation.com and then you’ll just see right there there’s a resource center that has blogs, it has video courses, we have a free course on mediation, we have free ebooks, blog posts, all this kind of stuff. There’s even some courses that you can purchase. We have – I put together a whole negotiation course on how to negotiate a divorce, not fill out the court forms and all of that stuff, but how to actually get into the room and negotiate with your soon-to-be ex. What are all the things that I as a mediator do, whether clients know it or not, you also can learn to do that. It’s not hard, you just have to have certain tricks of the trade in your back pocket if you will.

But a lot of that stuff is out there, a lot of it’s free. Just feel free, go there, use the resources that are out there, get educated on it. And just tell your listeners absolutely like don’t be afraid – we have people who sometimes come to our first meeting and they’ve printed out our blog posts. I was like “That’s such a high compliment.” It’s like somebody took the time to print out something you wrote and keep it. I was like “Well in this day and age that’s so digital and scrolly and all that,” you’re like “Oh cool, thanks.”

Jude: Yeah, and then at the website can they reach you and get a hold of you through the website?

Joe: Yeah they can, so you’ll see there’s a button that says “Talk to Us” and we practice in Washington State, California, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey – those are the six states we practice in. So if you live in one of our six states, there’s a little button up top that says “Talk to Us.” You click that, you schedule a free call with my partner Cheryl. She’ll tell you about how the process works, things like that, see if you’re a good fit, if mediation’s a possibility. Then after that you can schedule an initial meeting with me and your spouse, so that’s the three of us.

So we have an opportunity for you to reach out, schedule a call with Cheryl, no obligation. We just want to say “Hey, does mediation work for you? Can we work with you? Are you a good fit? Are we a good fit?” Give you a little education, a little background, and again it’s really just about getting knowledge.

Because I’ll leave you with this – when I think back to all the clients I’ve had, I can probably count on two hands, maybe I’ll say one fraction of 1% of the clients who have come to us who have been previously divorced. Most of the people we work with – literally the 99.9% of the clients we work with – this is the first time they’re going through this. And like you said, I thought that was perfect – you don’t know what you don’t know. So know it, learn it, it’s out there, you can learn it. Get educated, it makes all the difference.

Jude: Yeah, awesome. Last question – when are you coming to Colorado and the other 44 states because we definitely need a better type of mediation like you provide?

Joe: I appreciate it. You know, give it some thought because we like to go into a state where we understand how it works, we’re comfortable mediating, we build a professional network before we even think of mediating somewhere. We want mortgage professionals and review attorneys and filing professionals and folks in our back pocket. But we’ll certainly keep Colorado in mind, and yeah, I’m really sorry you had that experience, man. I tell you Jude, that just breaks my heart, but unfortunately it’s a story that I hear a lot because we get quite a few clients who have come to us from other mediators and they’re like “What do you – what are we doing here?” And I’m like “Well, this is how it works.” Well I should say this is how it should work, and that lends us to that case resolution rate because if you have that process, you have it all out on the table, it’s really hard to argue with the facts.

Jude: Yeah, no, that’s awesome, and it’s a good thing because then it gives me the opportunity now to share a right way with everybody and to be able to point out the difference in the future going forward with the dads that I come in contact with that there is a better way to do this. This is how, this is who you can talk to, and these are the questions. Like I learned so much today, it was phenomenal. I truly truly appreciate it. You know, I’ve been in the family law system for 13 years and this is enlightening and eye opening for me today, and I hope it was for everybody else that listened.

Joe, I really appreciate what you’re doing, really appreciate the professionalism and the wisdom and the conscientiousness that you bring to doing what you do. It’s obvious when talking to you and hearing you speak, so having professionals like you in the system gives me hope and helps me to tell guys “Yeah, mediation is a good thing. Find somebody like Joe and Equitable and it can be a good thing.”

Joe: That’s great. Well thanks for being here, I sincerely appreciate it.

Jude: My pleasure, thank you.

Jude: To hear the rest of this episode and access the corresponding resources, visit TheDivorcedAdvocate.com and become a member of our community. It’s free to join and will provide you with the resources you deserve as a divorced or divorcing dad. Thank you for listening, God bless, and I’ll talk with you next week.