Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Attorney James Sexton on How to Get Divorced Without Going Broke

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Divorce attorney James Sexton is back for part two of his conversation with Nicole; in part one, he talked about advice for couples getting married. Today, he’s giving advice for people getting divorced. Nicole and James dig into the financial habits that sabotage marriages, the creative ways people hide money before filing, and the red flags that signal a spouse might be planning an exit. Plus, James gives simple advice on what might be the most complicated part of this process: how to tell your spouse you want a divorce. James also breaks down how alimony actually works, the best argument for keeping the house, and the negotiating tactics he uses to fight for a bigger settlement. Then things get spicy: the digital footprint mistakes blowing up divorces in real time, the unofficial "a-hole tax" judges impose on bad behavior in court, and the wild story of a $20 million divorce that almost collapsed over a toaster oven. Check out Part 1 of Nicole's conversation with James Sexton Start investing investing at SoFi.com/MNN  Check out Nicole's financial literacy course ⁠The Money School⁠  Find a Financial Advisor or Financial Coach from Nicole's company ⁠Private Wealth Collective⁠  Watch video clips from the pod on ⁠Money Rehab's Instagram⁠ and ⁠Nicole Lapin's Instagram⁠  Follow James’ work and check out his latest book Here's what Nicole covers with James: 00:00 Are You Ready for Some Money Rehab? 02:31 The Financial Habit That Complicates Every Divorce 05:01 How People Hide Money Before a Divorce 09:21 Red Flags Your Partner Might Be Planning a Divorce 11:35 What To Do If You're Thinking About Divorce 12:11 How Much Does a Divorce Actually Cost? 17:13 Mediation vs. Litigation: Which Should You Choose? 19:37 The Best Way To Ask For a Divorce 21:18 How Alimony Really Works 25:00 When the Woman Is the Breadwinner 28:29 Is Alimony About Money or Power? 29:58 The Best Argument for Keeping the House 32:11 Bunnie XO, Jelly Roll, and Who's Entitled to What 34:56 Lightning Round 38:03 The $20 Million Toaster Oven Story 39:14 The Most Expensive Emotion in Divorce 39:20 What To Never (and Always) Put in Writing 40:00 How Social Media Can Blow Up Your Divorce 42:54 The "A-hole Tax" Explained 45:31 James Sexton's Tip You Can Take Straight to the Bank

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James Sexton, America's divorce attorney, is back. A few weeks ago, you heard the first part of our conversation where he gave advice for engaged couples. That episode is linked in the show notes. Do not miss it. And if you have a friend who's getting married, send them the episode. It might feel weird to send them an episode with a divorce attorney. But honestly, he has a really unique PO fee. on staying together that I think everyone should hear.

Now, today you're going to hear his advice for people thinking about getting divorced. Everyone says the same thing. I want to be fair. The problem is their spouse is in another lawyer's office saying, I want to be fair, and they have totally different definitions of what's fair. What you need to know about alimony. You're not going to be successful in, like, preventing alimony in a case where alimony is clearly applicable.

The question is, is how long and how much? And if I front load it, can I have a shorter duration? And how to get divorced without going broke. thousand dollars an hour. I believe that there's no domestic violence happening, no course of control, and there's a really any chance that it would be successful. I encourage people to go to mediation. I'm Nicole Lapton, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money right now. Okay, pop quiz. Are you the kind of investor who likes to pick their stocks in ETFs, or are you all about that robo-advisor life? Well, there's not only one right way to

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Like, it's my favorite thing to do on weekends. I make meal prep and I love to, like, make interesting meals. And I really love to cook. It relaxes me. It's very soothing. If you don't like to cook, great, right? Because if I like to cook and you like to cook, then we're both going to be like, well, who gets to cook tonight? But if you don't like to cook and I love to cook and you like my cooking, we are going to have a great time.

You should still know how to make something for yourself, right? Because like if I'm away for a week, what are you going to do? Just order DoorDash every day. Like you should know how to do a little bit. Well, it's the same thing with money. Like some people really enjoy personal finance. Like you clearly enjoy it. Right.

In a relationship. And that's fine. I believe everybody has to do exactly the same stuff. I think if one person is like, hey, I really enjoy personal finance. I enjoy making our budget. I enjoy watching where we're spending. I enjoy making adjustments to our portfolio. But we should be checking in with each other about, hey, I know you might not find this super interesting.

But here's like a little snapshot of where everything is. And here's where we're making money. And here's where we're losing money. And here's some things I think we should tweak. Because at least you're a passenger in this thing. Like we have to be participating together in this. And understand if God forbid something happens, happened to you. And I don't even know where the money is or where our investments are.

That's incredibly dangerous. Well, that's what happens. Listen, life is challenging, right? Most people, both people are working in the relationship. There's kids. One person is usually more of a primary caregiver to the children. It's most often a woman. Okay. So the truth is, is women are working and they're managing children within the home. They're doing the lion's share of the labor. Men are working as well. So everybody's got their hands very full. It's understandable to say, yeah, look, I got the kid stuff, you got the money stuff. Like, let's just, like, let's stay in our lane and get everything done at the end of the day. But it's dangerous.

It's dangerous for you to not know your kid's routine and their pediatrician and what's going on with their school and where there are issues. It's dangerous to not know where the money is and to have some general sense of things. But I have to deal with people's willful blindness all the time when it comes to custody, when it comes to finances, those are very dangerous financial habits. because what you don't know can hurt you. And it can be used nefariously to hide money. Worse. Oh, I have people who come into my office all the time that their spouse has no idea that they are planning to divorce them.

And we're doing what I would call divorce planning, which is we're starting to like deplete marital assets and use them to pay certain expenses and we're trying to like accumulate debt that we can then make marital debt. Like we're there if you if you have the information, listen. Wait, explain that more. So how what's the most common way? people hide money before. Family.

Divorce. Family members. I mean, there's lots of ways. Like, gradually, you can take small amounts of cash out that you could then say, like, oh, I was using that for various cash expenses we have. But meanwhile, you're just accumulating a pile of cash someplace. You can transfer certain things to family members if you do it, you know, if you do it in a calculated way.

I mean, it's harder and harder. Like 25 years ago when I started doing this, it was before, you know, it was before the Patriot Act. And it was before there was such careful reporting of movement of money. and it was really before everything was so digital as it is now. Now it's very hard to move money around and not trace it, although a hard wallet in crypto has presented unique challenges in divorce law. But even then, most people who use crypto often do it through a third party thing like Coinbase or one of those things, which essentially turns it similar to fiat currency in terms of its traceability.

And you're helping people do that? Well, I'm helping people divorce plan sometimes. Yeah, yeah, I'm helping people in advance. Look, if you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck. Like part of the job is to help people, if they come to you early enough, figure out how to gain tactical advantage in a divorce. So you can legally hide money before you're getting in. Well, you can legally make financial decisions that will ultimately be advantageous to you in the event of a divorce if you know a divorce is coming. You could do that now.

Like you could start making financial decisions. The problem is in a divorce, the squirrel who saved their nuts gets penalized in a way that the squirrel who ate their nuts doesn't. like the saver gets banged up in the divorce because you're one person in the eyes of the law. In the absence of a pre-up, title doesn't control anymore. You're one person. So if you spend all your money and the other person saves all their money, the good news is you're the money in your 401k, half of it's his. You know, you buy your spouse a Birkenbag. You bought yourself one half of a Birkenbag.

You buy your spouse a Rolex. You bought yourself one half of a Rolex. So you're one person in the eyes of the law. So people are making choices about their divorce during their marriage. whether they realize it or not. But if you know you're going to potentially be getting divorced, you can make tactical decisions about that. And a forensic attorney isn't it? Well, you're not doing anything.

I'm not talking about doing anything fraudulent. I'm talking about making financial choices that looking back, they were tactically good for you in the divorce and they were tactically bad for your spouse of the divorce. You're playing the rules of the system as they're designed. Like, it's not anything fraudulent. I mean, are there things people can do fraudulently? Of course. There's tons of things people can do fraudulently. You know, and they do them all the time.

Thankfully, good forensic accounting can usually reveal those things. It's very hard to move money around and not leave a trace. But it also depends on, like, one of the problems, too, is that if you're married to someone who conducts themselves in very shady financial ways, you can't turn around later and go, man, I can't believe how hard it is to prove the income in this divorce. It's like, buddy, you've had, you've had. been married to someone who has a cash business who declares $70,000 in income while you guys are living a million dollar a year lifestyle. And now you're turning around saying, man, you've been enjoying the

fact that none of your income has been taxable for this entire time. Yeah. Like, how do you prove that the vault in your house? I once had a client who they had a jacuzzi in their backyard and they had filled tennis ball cans with rolled up $100 bills in the lining of the jacuzzi. And so they had literally over the years like filled this lining of the jacuzzi with these tennis ball cans filled with rolled up $100 bills. And I actually had to have an expert come in and testify to how many $100 bills that would be that you could fit in the tennis cans and then how many tennis cans you could fit around it. But it's hard to prove the movement of cash otherwise. If cash stays cash, it's hard to prove where cash went. If there was $100 on that table and now it's gone, how do you prove it was ever the thing?

there. So what are some red flags that people should be aware of with money moves that they're significant others making that could signal their planning for divorce? Yeah, I mean, the problem is this. And again, it's a difference between ultra high net worth and non-altra high net worth. So in this space that a lot of my clients currently occupy, there are a lot of wealth preservation and tax avoidance strategies that people employ using trust. and estates and tax attorneys for very legitimate and legal reasons that make a divorce extremely messy because, as you know, very wealthy people don't own a lot. So that way they don't pay taxes on it. So they have an interest in a trust that owns an LLC that owns the real estate that they

rent from that trust in an intentionally defective grant or trust. So that's a thing people do for real legitimate tax planning and wealth preservation reasons. But if you're getting divorced, it's super messy because neither of you own it. So now the question is, is who gets more benefit from it, one or the other? How do we deal with something that's no longer in the marital estate? So that's a level of complexity that really requires a very deep and personal dive into someone's finances. For the general population, for like most normal people, making, you know, W-2 wage earners or people who make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year apiece or even a couple of million, you know, large transfers of funds into trusts, purchasing big

annuities instead of having large sums of money, leveraging real estate, like taking out huge encumbrances against a marital residence, like a home equity line of credit or taking a big mortgage against one residence to purchase another one, but then titling that residence in the name of other family members or third parties or a trust or an LLC. Like, anytime someone makes a financial move that's different than the normal status quo, it's worth going, oh, why are we doing that? Like, help me understand why we're doing that. And then the question is, is, is there plausible deniability? Is there some plausible alternate theory as to why this thing was done that's very innocuous when, in fact, it was very nefarious? Well, somebody is thinking about getting divorced.

What are some practical things they should do in advance? They should identify where assets are. They should try to get copies of all of their important financial paperwork. They should make sure that they have access to some funds, if possible, without the permission of the other party, whether it's a credit card in their sole name or whether it's family or whether it's an account in their name so that they have access to hiring counsel, even if they need to get counsel to then make an application for further counsel fees. I mean, I think they're all just basic financial decisions that anyone should make in any situation that could potentially create an emergency.

What's a divorce budget that somebody you should keep in mind? Like for a lawyer, forensic accounting. That could be tricky, you know. The two most reasonable questions anybody can ask me at a consultation is how long is this going to take and how much is it going to cost? And I always tell them those are the two questions no honest lawyer can answer. Because divorce is like a table with four legs. There's you and your lawyer and your spouse and their lawyer. if one leg is off, it doesn't matter how nice and straight the other three legs are.

The table's going to fall down. And then the next question people say is they go, well, give me a range. You know, like what's the range? Like an easy divorce expense versus a really difficult divorce expense. And I always say to people, it's kind of like calling your friend who's a doctor and saying, I have a headache. What is it? And they'll say, well, it could be anything. I have to run tests and I have to know more information.

They say, well, best case, worst case. All right, best case, it's the barometric pressure and you'll be fine in 10 minutes. worst case, it's an aneurysm, you'll be dead in 10 minutes. Like, did I help you by saying that gigantic of a range? Like, simple divorce, five grand, 10 grand. If everybody's in agreement, we're writing up a stipulation of settlement. Everyone signs off on it and we file a non-contested divorce. High-end, expensive divorce, two million in council fees, three million.

Like, it depends on how complex the marital estate is. Two W-2 wage earners. If they have custody issues and visitation issues and they litigate the issues of custody, it could be hundreds of thousands of dollars easily, easily. Like, I've had cases involving billionaires that was like $20,000 in council fees total. And I've had cases with W-2 wage earners who make, you know, less than $100,000 a piece each. And it's cost a million dollars in council fees. Thank God they had family members that were willing to, like, leverage all of their savings for their custody case.

But, you know, it really is not, you know, there is no issue in a divorce that two people sitting at the kitchen table with a yellow pad and a pen can't resolve. But the problem is that that's not like no one comes 25 years of practicing matrimonial law. No one has ever come into my office for a consul sat in front of me and said, I would like this to be very protracted and awful. I would like it to scar me and my children. I would like to put your children through college instead of my own. I would like this to be just the most miserable experience of my life. Everyone says the same thing. I want to be fair.

The problem is their spouse is in another lawyer's office saying, I want to be fair. and they have totally different definitions of what's fair. And that's where the challenge is, but I tell every single client in the initial consultation, as does every reputable attorney, Laura, John Titler, Bob Cohen, all the good ones. We all

tell them the same thing behind closed doors. Listen, negotiating table, courtroom, I'm a monster. I'll go after everybody. Behind closed doors, I'd rather you pay her than pay me. I'd rather you pay him than pay me. I'd rather you put your kids through college than mine. Like, there's going to be a wedding

you know like you got a five year old there's going to be a wedding you can't even imagine it right now because your kid's five but there's going to be a wedding and what you do in this process is going to dictate if that's the wedding

where you guys can't pass each other by the shrimp boat or you'll throw shit at each other or if it's the wedding where the wedding I just had where you all stand around for pictures together and you have a drink and you have a dance and you go you know what

we didn't get the marriage right but man we did a good job with these kids like and you say celebrate as a family. Like, to me, that should be the goal. That should be the goal. Like, from day one, that should be the goal. Like, if the marriage is ending, sometimes happily ever after is happily ever after

separately. And that's okay. Like, relationships can just be chapters in a long book. You know, it doesn't have to be that, oh, well, this one ended. So it was a failure. I don't consider my marriage a failure. It wasn't a failure to produce two wonderful children who are now wonderful adults. and it made me a better man.

I hope it made her a better woman. Like, I think we got real value out of that thing. Just because something ends doesn't mean it was, but by the way, every marriage ends. Your marriage will end. I hope your marriage ends in death. What a weird thing to say, right? But it does.

It's going to end in death or divorce. I hope it ends in death. But it will end. Everything ends. It's ending right now. It's ending all the time. Not only does that not make it beautiful. That's part of what makes it so beautiful.

is that it's there. Like you don't need anything. You don't need permission to take it seriously. You don't need permission to right now. Like if you got a phone call, God forbid, that something happened to your husband, you would suddenly drop everything else in your life. The volume would be turned down

on everything else in your life other than that. You don't need that phone call for that to happen. You can just do that. You can just stop and do that and just say this is important to me. me. You don't need any flare to be sent up for that to be a real thing. And that's the message I'm trying to drive home to people is that we can use divorce and the reality of it as an invitation to take love very seriously. And do you recommend people go through some of the

back and forth with a mediator versus on billable hours times? Like what are your billable hours now? I'm a thousand dollars an hour. Yeah. I think that, yeah, I always, if I believe, that there's no domestic violence happening, no course of control, and there's a really any chance that it would be successful, I encourage people to go to mediation. Because mediation is, you know, it's everything that's set in mediation is not admissible in a court of law. At best, you'll resolve your difficulties in mediation. And then before you sign anything, it'll be reviewed by counsel. At worst, you're going to at least get a sense of what the other side's perspective is on the issues. And you'll start having some understanding of where you guys

might have some points of disagreement. And then you can come to counsel and we can, like, people have this mistaken belief that it's either we go to the mediator, we sing kumbaya and we sign everything and it's easy or it's knocked down, drag out, war, the roses, kill each other. Like, those are the two extremes. And thank God, most of the time, it's, it's not this extreme. Unfortunately, it's rarely this extreme. It's usually a negotiation between two people and their lawyers who occasionally are going to need a judge to come in and break a tie where reasonable minds disagree. where two lawyers are advocating for some, because there's things that are black and white in the law.

And then there's some gray areas. So everybody's going to argue the gray area in favor of their client. That's our job. So sometimes the judge, the person in the black robe who gets to make the decision, they'll listen to your arguments and they'll go, yeah, more like that and less like that. And then you go, okay. And then you go out and you settle your case. And that's how most divorces go.

Like I've had a case. I had a case right last month with John Tyler. He is, in my opinion, the greatest divorce lawyer in the United States, definitely in the state of New York. He's also one of my main courtroom adversaries. And we had a huge case with billions of dollars on the line. And we settled it in like three phone calls and two emails. And probably like 10 grand worth of accounts fees, 20 grand worth of accounts fees.

Because we both knew like, all right, here's what you're going to do. Here's what I'm going to do. Like here's what it's going to be. And we've had some brawls. Like it's not that either of us doesn't like to fight. We're both courtroom lawyers. We have good teams. We're like, you know, like Ali and Frazier.

But the truth is, like, we're also not going to waste anybody's time. We're not going to waste each other's time. We're not going to waste our client's money. So we're going to make good choices by saying, okay, look, let's just get there. This is where the judge is going to go. This is, let's just get there now.

And that's what you do. Well, yes. My marriage will end in death as crazy as that sounds. If somebody's isn't, what's the best way to ask for a divorce? Gosh. Esther Perel would give you a better answer than me. I think I'm a fan of being clear with people. I think being clear and compassionate.

So I would say I would be, I think people have a tendency when they're giving someone bad news to hedge a bit because they think they're softening it. But I think when you're breaking up with someone, there's no way to say it that they're going to feel good about it. So you have to just sort of reject that possibility from minute one and then just be very clear. Because if you say, you know,

I've been thinking that maybe we should, okay, you're already screwing this up. Like maybe implies that, but maybe not. Like I think it turns into, I've given this some careful thought and I think this relationship needs to end. Like, that's clear.

It feels harsh. But what you're losing in terms of the softness, you're gaining a lot in terms of clarity. So I think clarity is really important. I would say compassionate clarity should be the mantra, which is you're not, like, take your share of the blame. Don't put it on this person, you know, but also don't try to be so compassionate that you're no longer clear about what it is.

I've been thinking maybe we should have some time. No, like if you've decided this relationship is over, I've come to a place where this relationship no longer makes sense for me. And I feel like we need to end it. Let's talk about alimony. Sure. How does I gave up my career for you or for this family show up in an hour? Yeah. So in every state, spousal support, alimony maintenance is three words for the same thing. Every state uses a different term. New York, we call it spousal maintenance or spousal support.

California calls it alimony. New Jersey calls it alimony. But it's the same thing. It's a payment made by a moneyed spouse to a non-moneyed spouse when there's a disparity in incomes. There are in New York 14 factors in the domestic relations law that govern spousal support or alimony. One of them is what you just described, which we call that diminished lifetime earning capacity. So diminished lifetime earning capacity is when a person has made decisions by virtue of the marriage that their long-term earning capacity has now been impaired. So it's not just a short-term thing.

It's a longer-term thing. The analogy or metaphor I give to people is if you're running a marathon and in mile 20, you stop for 10 minutes, you could still finish the marathon, but you're not going to catch up to the people you were running with before. So you'll finish, but you're not going to catch up with those people because there's a diminished capacity, right? Those people have gone further. So the law believes in this concept called detrimental reliance. And in contracts, that becomes a very important thing, which is I relied on a promise you made to my detriment, right? So if I say to you, you can borrow my car tomorrow, okay, I've made you a promise. If you now cancel the car you had, And then I turn around and I say, oh, I'm sorry, you can't use my car now.

Okay, you've now detrimentally relied on my promise. So now I've created damages to you. So that's essentially what alimony is designed. One of the factors that alimonia is designed to address is detrimental reliance, meaning in reliance on you being the primary wage earner and us staying together, I made certain choices financially about my career, my profession, what I was going to be doing. And I've diminished my lifetime earning capacity. If, for example, as many people do, when you have children in your 30s or 40s, there's going to be a chunk of time, even if it's just when the kids are before school age, where you might not be working as much, right?

You're going to be out of the workforce for a period of time. That's going to diminish your lifetime earning capacity because the people that didn't step out of the race for that nine months or year or three years or five years, they're getting a head start. So the people you went to business school with, they're going to have a little bit of a head start. So that's what you're arguing when you're arguing spousal maintenance. And sometimes there's a lot of other factors like future inheritances that people might be getting, what their ability to earn is. Because the idea of what we call non-durational alimony or what used to be called lifetime alimony, it really fell out of vogue quite some time ago. Now it's the idea is really what's called rehabilitative, which is essentially to get a person back to where they would have been or as close as possible. So the idea, for example, is if a person was an attorney and then they, you know, marry someone who's very, you know, wealthy and they say, okay, I'm going to step off of partner track and I'm going to be home with kids that we had or adopt during the marriage.

Okay, that's, you're going to step back a bit and you're going to be behind other people. So you still have a law license. You still can get a job. But now, you know, maybe you need a few extra years because the kids are school age or you don't have, you know, or you've lost some opportunities when it came to the kind of placement you would have. that's what alimony is designed to do, is to sort of diminish the negative impacts of detrimental reliance that you made in reliance on the promise of the marriage. Because what is marriage other than a promise? It's a promise that we're going to walk the path together.

Just walking each other home. That's it. Are these conversations different when the woman is the breadwinner? I mean, in my experience, women tend to marry laterally or up more often than men. So a lot of the very high performing women that I represent are married to men or equally or higher performing. So like you don't often, it's pretty common to have like the Goldman Sachs bro or the Black Rock bro marrying a yoga teacher. It's not as common to have like the Goldman Sachs gal or the, you know, Google exec gal marry a broke musician. That seems so cliche.

But it's true. Yeah, it's true. Women, I think, you know, again, I don't know the gender dynamic of it perfectly. You could all speculate probably. But I think that, you know, women find a man who's a successful person attractive. I don't think that that's a secret. And I think men very often like feeling a little more powerful, you know, in terms of the finance that they bring to a relationship or the success they bring to a relationship. I don't think that these are like, I'm saying anything too controversial to say that out loud.

So you don't deal with palimony. Well, Palamoni doesn't really exist in most states now. But I mean, what I will say is I've represented a couple of outlier, very successful women who are married to men who are not as successful. So I've had some women who were in finance married to a partner at a law firm and maybe he gets laid off or maybe he has issues. Like I had one case where the guy had an opiate addiction that affected his employability. And then she ended up having to pay alimony to him, even though they had both been quite successful. And then his kind of derailing was a function of, of, of, his substance use issues, which again, you know, if you believe in the, you know, like,

like, disease model of addiction, like you wouldn't get mad at someone and be like, damn it, Mike, you have lupus. Like, you would say like, you know, damn it, Mike, you're an alcoholic. Like, it's an illness. So I get it. And that's the argument that was made. But I will say, and again, this might not be a popular take. Women don't like paying alimony. Like, they like it even less than men do from what I've seen. Like every time I tell a woman, yeah, you're going to pay alimony. She's like, what? Like, you could be the most Bella Abzug feminist. When you get told you're going to be paying alimony, you get a lot of like someone who is previously very woke and like not in gender as a construct. And, you know, suddenly they're like,

he has a strong back. He can get a job. Are you kidding me? Like, I'm going to pay him alimony. Like, it's a very, when I do like, I actually just, I do a lot of lesbian divorces now because, you know, marriage equality, you know, has been the law of the land for quite some time. And it turns out that gay and lesbian individuals aren't that much better than us heterosexuals at marriage. They find it equally challenging. I don't really know, you know, we were fighting for marriage equality for so long, and I always found myself wondering that if you really did hate, you know, gay and lesbian individuals, like, you should have been fighting for them to have to get married, you know, because why should,

why should we have all the misery to ourselves? But one of the things that I've found is I actually just had a conversation with a lesbian client, like hearing a woman say, like, if that bitch thinks she's going to get half my business, and I'm listening to her say that, and I'm like, wow, that is not on my 2026 bingo card. Like, I did not imagine hearing a woman say that about another woman. But, you know, listen, it becomes a very mercenary thing. It's not gendered. Like, it's about the haves and the have-nots.

It's about what we owe each other, you know? So is it more money, more power in these alimony conversations? I mean, certainly. I mean, the person who has the money has something to lose. though, too. And so what would you tell the other side? I mean, I think what you want to always do is find the formula and the accommodation that's going to make sense. You're not going to be successful in like preventing alimony in a case where alimony is clearly applicable. The question is, is how long and how much? And if I front load it, can I have a shorter duration? And, you know,

the time value of money applies or in lieu of alimony, I'll give you this asset. And that applies certain negative contingency discounts. I mean, a lot of what I do isn't sexy. Like, people think divorce lawyers are, you know, constantly, like, just dealing with, you know, crazy custody cases and, like, cross-examining people. And there's a big part of my job that is that. But a lot of what I do is, like, you know, kind of wonky, dorky stuff.

Like, it's a lot about, like, you know, applying negative contingency discounts and figuring out if an asset's in an intentionally defective grant or trust, like, what impact does that have on the marital estate? Like, it's kind of dorky stuff. But because I'm a trial lawyer, and as a trial lawyer, you have to have to have like a performer's streak and you have to be able to like it's, I call it full contact storytelling. Like you're trying to tell a story while someone's actively trying to stop you from telling that story and tell a competing story. So it's like the hardest kind of storytelling imaginable.

You do it very well. Well, it's, you know, I just overtalk everybody. That's all. What's the best argument if somebody wants to keep the house? There's a lot of ways to keep the house. I mean, stability for children is a big successful argument for that, which is if children are at, certain ages, you can use those ages as like guideposts of, well, I should be able to stay in the house for X period of time and try to make the argument that this person doesn't need their equity out of the house right away and that they should let it ride and that you couldn't find comparable accommodations for the children in the same geographic area for a similar price or a lower price. So there's a lot of factors you can argue. The buyout on the residents, as I was coming in, I was like

sitting in a coffee shop nearby and killing some time before I came in to talk to you. because I'd finished in court this morning and I just had a little bit of extra time and I didn't want to go all the way uptown and I was on my phone returning emails and one of them was this person just had like a massively false appraisal of the marital residence like this house is worth like 800 grand

and they got an appraisal for $1.5 million and so I wrote back and say great she can buy us out at that price no problem and of course instantly now he's like well you know that might not be the right place I'm like no a second ago when we were buying you out that was the right price like So there are some internal mechanisms that force people to be a little bit reasonable.

So be careful with the appraisal. Well, yeah, you want to do it in a thoughtful way because you don't want to walk into dueling experts. Like you get an irrationally high appraisal, I get an irrationally low appraisal and then we have a false average between the two. It's better to come up with like a neutral trusted. This is one of the things that like good divorce lawyers, we have networks of trustworthy accountants, trustworthy appraisers, like jewelry appraisers, art appraisers, bag appraisers, wineclothes. collection appraisers, all the car appraisers, all the things that people have, we have like the people that you know are neutral. Because the danger of the court system is, you know, there was a time in the 1980s and 1970s

where the cigarette companies were getting sued and they found doctors who would testify that cigarettes are good for you. Because if you pay an expert enough money, you can get them to say almost anything. So you don't want to get into dueling experts. What you want to do is you want to come up with neutral, fair people that are qualified. and know what they're doing and give you accurate values and good experienced lawyers. We all know who the good ones are and who the hack jobs are. Right.

One of the sexiest divorces out there is Bunny X-O and Jelly Roll. Yeah. Yeah, I have. But they seem to be quite kind to each other in their public discussions. So just for clarity, so Jelly Roll is a musician. Bunny is a podcaster. Bunny has talked about how she worked as an escort to support him. if we, that's a very, very specific case.

But for entrepreneurs, athletes, if one person is supporting the other in the beginning of their relationship, if they're in the beginning of their relationship for the beginning of their career, what are they entitled to? Well, it's one of the factors of court considers when they're talking about things like alimony. It's also one of the factors in what's called equitable distribution, which is the division of assets and the division of property. In some jurisdictions after a certain period of time, like California, you have things

like community property where after a certain period of time, all property is marital property and there's no distinction between separate property and marital property like premarital property and marital property. In New York, we are still a state that has separate property and marital property. So if you keep your separate property separate, the appreciation on it will remain separate property potentially in a divorce. So in a case like that, you know, courts look at that. Like courts in divorces are what's called equitable courts. Like there's courts of equity and then there's courts of like strict application of law. So like a judge in criminal court can't give you a life sentence for a parking ticket.

That would be an abuse of their discretion. There are sentencing guidelines. They can give you this little or this much and that's it. The legislature has spoken. Courts of divorce are courts of equity. So it's about fairness. So courts look at factors. And that's why I say like my job is full contact storytelling. I can tell that story in a way that makes one side look very sympathetic. and I can tell it in a way it makes the other side look more sympathetic. Like that's the thing. Facts all come with points of view. So the job of a good trial divorce lawyer is to tell the story in a way that makes my client

look most sympathetic and the other side look least sympathetic. So I could represent either of those people in a way that would be more likely to shine in a positive direction for them. Now, again, good divorce lawyers don't try to fit their client with halos and the other side with horns. That's rarely an effective strategy. The better thing to do is to show that they're both human and they're both flawed, but, you know, the best salesman isn't, doesn't seem like they're trying to sell you anything. The best advertising doesn't seem like an ad.

Like the best advocacy doesn't feel like advocacy. I'm just shining a light on the truth. But in reality, it's advocacy. Your version of the truth. Well, my client's version of the truth. The version of the truth that's most favorable to the outcome my client would like to achieve. Are you ready for a lightning round? Sure.

What's your favorite legalese term? Oh, boy, my favorite legalese term. Here to forehead herein. Prior discussions here to forehead herein. There's so much good old English. Yeah. I also like vituperative and obstreperous. What do those mean?

Vituprative is like unduly hostile and obstreperous is being like obstructionist, like you're standing in the way unnecessarily in creating. So your client's vituperative, you know, conduct. your clients of streporous conduct. I feel like we have to bring those into regular. Yeah, they're fun. I write a lot of like nasty lawyer letters. So you do a lot of like, you know.

Here24. Here 24 had here in. All proceedings here to four had here in. Without prejudice, all claims and defenses. The most surprising secret that you uncovered in divorce proceedings. Gosh. I've seen a lot of stuff. There's a chapter in my book called Everyone's Fucking the Nanny.

that's about a bunch of people that were having affairs with nannies. And so that's happened a lot. I don't know what it is about nannies. I have a theory of it. I talk about it in the book. So nanny stuff is always very salacious. That's always shocking.

People sleeping with each other's other family members. That always catches me off guard. I just feel like there's so many people in the world you could potentially sleep with. Why would you sleep with your sister-in-law? It's already like adding insult to injury, you know, and making future Thanksgiving is even more awkward, you know? What's the most expensive mistake in a divorce?

Getting married. No, the most expensive mistake in a divorce. Hiring the wrong lawyer. Hiring the wrong lawyer. People make the following mistake. They hire. It's better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it. It's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.

So people hire like a friendly, I never, try cases. I'm very settlement-minded lawyer because they think that's going to protect them from having an ugly divorce. And that's like someone saying, I've got a gun, but it doesn't have any bullets. Okay, then you don't have a gun. What are you going to throw it at me? Like, it's better to have a trial lawyer and not need it than to need a trial lawyer and not have it. So hiring a friendly, warm hug of a lawyer instead of someone that ideally has the full toolkit. Like some people will describe me as a compassionate advocate and a very calming force. And some people will say, I'm the sociopath you want on your side and an unchained pit bull. I'm both of those things,

depending on what the situation dictates. What does a divorce lawyer know about love that a therapist might not say out loud? How the most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves. I think people try to tell their therapists the truth, but they're usually telling them lies that they've told themselves. I think one of the things you get to see as a lawyer is people have to tell you the truth because you have one job and it's to protect them. What's something you've seen a ruin of divorce negotiation in five minutes? Personalizing things and vilifying someone, whether it's the lawyer or whether it's the other party, taking it very personally and losing the plot on what's actually important. Like I had a $20 million divorce negotiation fall apart because of a toaster oven.

What? Yeah. Yeah. We had everything done. We were down to personal property. We were like, let's not do this. We've got all these other deal points done. And they said, no, let's just knock it out.

Let's get it finished while we're here. And we got down to a brevel toaster oven. And it blew up into, well, I bought that for you. Well, you never use it. And it turned into a whole thing. And I actually took out my phone and went on Amazon. And I said, I can order four of these. And they'll be delivered tomorrow prime.

And it's going to cost less than 20 minutes of my time. Like, what are we doing right now, gang? Like, this is, let's everybody just take a breath, you know, and thankfully it snapped everybody. I did actually order the Toast Robbins, too. One for each of the lawyers. Yeah, one for myself, one for opposing counsel, and one for each of the parties. What's the most expensive emotion and divorce?

Impulsiveness. What's one thing people should never put in writing? The number of people they slept with before they were married. What's one thing they should always put in writing? Their favorite things about the person they're married to. like their top five favorite things. Like when you go to your hotel tonight or wherever it is you're going to go if you're not with your husband, write 10 things that you love about him, 10 things that he does that make you feel loved.

Like it will take five minutes and it would be it will actually make you feel more love. And when he sees it, it'll make him feel more love and it doesn't cost anything. You are so romantic. A little bit. I imagine that people's digital footprints now in divorce can turn things in both ways, right? How have you seen that play out? I mean, it's super fun because now it's like just all out there. Like we get everybody's text messages, things get intercepted all the time.

I joke that we all, divorce lawyers owe Steve Jobs a tremendous debt of gratitude because having the integration in Apple devices where I message comes up on. like your iPad that your kid is playing on and suddenly in real time your text message conversation with your with your paramour like your the kid's like mommy what happened to my iPad and then all of a sudden they're like dad's up in the bathroom texting with this mistress and the messages are going you know on the thing and you're looking at it like it's caused more chaos I mean people's talk about how they're not drinking and then it's like oh well what about these pictures from you on Instagram what about this person's story TikTok I had a case recently or was TikTok like we we blew somebody's whole life up with their TikTok so.

guy was like giving away money to like women mostly in Brazil like on TikTok. He was giving lions and universes. Like you can gift certain amounts of money. TikTok makes lots of money on this. Byte dance is brilliant. They charge you like $1,000 and then you can give $700 to a person, like each of these toys or whatever, like the unicorns and universes and lions and tigers and bears. And this guy had burned like $300,000 in marital assets that way. How often is this stuff showing up in divorce proceedings? Like VMs, Venmo transactions. Constantly.

Almost every case now. Yeah, all the time. Because if somebody's crying poor, that they're out spending. Yeah, Venmo, Zell, PayPal, all of them, cryptocurrency. Like, we have to be on the edge of all of these technologies and understand them really, really well to do our job well. So if somebody's going through a divorce, how should they think about what they post on social media? I tell everybody you should treat social media the way that my mother used to tell them. me you should treat things you write put in writing don't put anything in writing you wouldn't

want put up on Times Square or like Wall Street Journal yeah just don't just don't like be able to speak assume that people are recording every conversation you're participating in assume that every document every text message everything you send will be shown to everyone like I think that's good advice in general by the way like I think that don't behave outside the presence of your partner in a manner you would behave if they were there you know like you should behave away from your partner the way you would behave if your partner was there. Like, I think that that's what integrity is about. Integrity is how you behave when no one's looking. Very true. But don't go back and delete things. No, definitely to do that. That's Spolation of Evidence. It's still there. We're going to find it.

We're going to make you look really bad for having tried to delete it. Okay. Yeah. You can even pick up additional charges because Spolation of Evidence once there's been what's called a preservation notice sent, which is one of the first things we send in every divorce proceeding, now you're destroying evidence. So in most jurisdictions, that's a felony. Is there any damages that can be claimed if the other person is just an asshole? Well, not officially, but most divorce lawyers refer behind closed doors to what we call the asshole tax, which is if the judge perceives your clients an asshole, they're going to make them pay the asshole tax. So judges have discretion on certain issues, like a range of potential outcomes.

And if they decide they don't like your client, they're going to hammer your client where they can hammer them. They're going to make them pay the asshole tax. And I've had a number of cases where I got the other side to have to pay the asshole tax. And I've had some cases where my client has to pay the asshole tax. What's the biggest asshole tax paid? And why? A couple of million bucks. For doing what?

Just for being rude and abrupt on the stand, arguing with opposing counsel during cross-examination, just coming off like a dick. Like, it's just vibes. Like it's just like, yeah, this person is just like kind of a dick, you know? Like sometimes people when they're nervous, you know, they don't come off like the way they are. And so they could be a really nice person and like they did a hundred things right. But what I do is one thing wrong. Like no one ever says, like, think about all the people Jeffrey Dahmer didn't eat. Like they're very caught up in like the ones that he did.

But like most people he met, he didn't eat. Like in fairness, like the majority, overwhelming majority of people he met, he did not eat. Now, that's not an effective defense as a lawyer, right? You can't go in and be like, Your Honor. Sure, he ate five people, but, like, he met thousands of people. That's not even 1% of the people that he met that he ate. Come on, it's not that many. Like, that's not a good argument.

But if you've told a story 50 times and you've done everything right in a divorce proceeding, but you lose it on the witness stand at the critical moment, judge is just going to be like, yeah, you're an asshole. And then they're going to be able to hit you. I'm actually quite glad that the asshole tax exists. Me too. Me too. Yeah, I weaponize it all the time and I try to mitigate against it for my clients as best I can. But sometimes, you know, if you can't teach a dog how to drive, it doesn't mean you're a bad teacher.

Like, you just said about an impossible task. Like, there's times where I'm trying to make someone likable and they're just not likable. They're just not a likable person. Literally being a kind person pays. It pays to be a kind person. It pays to be charismatic. It pays to be humble. Look, we've all watched trials on TV. You watch Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. You know, we watched what it's like when someone's charming and affable on the witness stand and when someone's kind of an asshole on the witness stand. And it blows up in your face when you're an asshole on the witness stand. And again, it doesn't matter. Like the facts aren't necessarily. People don't buy the steak.

They buy the sizzle. So appearance is important. James, as you know, since you've listened to our episodes, thank you so much. We end all of them by asking our guests for a final tip that listeners can take straight to the bank. We didn't talk much. We could talk forever. I love the way you are. so poetic and your storytelling.

You didn't come from money, but what is a financial tip that you've learned along the way to grow your wealth? You know, I was thinking about this before I came in. And my joking answer based on past relationships would be is if you're ever dating anyone and they decide they want to take up equestrian as a hobby, encourage them to take up cocaine instead because they'd be cheaper. That's my joking answer, but a truthful and based on life experience. I actually think the best advice I wish I'd learned earlier in life that I think is really useful is don't buy things you don't need with money you don't have to impress people you don't like.

I think that right now we do a lot of that. We buy things we don't need with money we don't actually have, mostly to impress people we don't actually like. And I think that consumption will never fill the void inside of us. I think love fills the void inside of us. And so use your money as the tool that it's supposed to be, which is to make you feel safe and the people you love feel safe. And don't try to shove money at problems or consumption of products at problems that aren't going to be solved that way. By money. By money.