The Iced Coffee Hour - A Serious Talk With My Fiancé | Getting A Prenup

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

Graham and Macy recently got engaged! But a more serious issue looms... one that suites this podcast perfectly, finances. The soon to be wed couple not only discuss their plans to get a prenup, but we also have professional Judge Vonda B on to help us explain the legal side of these sticky contracts and settlements. Check out Judge Vonda B here: https://www.youtube.com/c/SupportCour... Check out Macy here: https://www.youtube.com/c/MacySavannah Support our patreon! https://www.patreon.com/icedcoffeehour Add us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan https://www.instagram.com/alex_nava_p... FOLLOW JUDGE VONDA B: https://www.youtube.com/c/SupportCour... Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ... For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] GET YOUR FREE STOCK WORTH UP TO $1000 ON PUBLIC & SEE MY STOCK TRADES - USE CODE GRAHAM: http://www.public.com/graham  MY NEW COFFEE IS NOW FOR SALE: http://www.bankrollcoffee.com/ The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Rode NT1, Rodecaster Pro The YouTube Creator Academy:   Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF  For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail] *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to the iced coffee hour, and today we got two really special guests. The first one is Judge Vonda B. You may have seen her on TV. She's a judge who specializes in divorce cases and child support payments of all thing. And second, we have my lovely girlfriend, Macy. Welcome to the iced coffee hour. We got two polar opposites here. We have the relationship. Then we have what happens when relationships go wrong.

And we got Jack. Yep. So we got the whole spectrum guys. We got marriage. We got dating. We got single. So we're going to talk about how expensive having a girlfriend. is. Graham, do you want to start? Yeah, I don't really think we, yeah. Yeah, so first thing for keeping

your pet girlfriend is that you got to make sure she has food. We do love food. Otherwise, we get cranky. Lots of naps are important. You know, all those things, pretty much anything you need to take care of a girlfriend you can find at Petco. Petco. Yeah. You shopped there? No, Macy does. She buys her own food there. That's what, you know, it was funny. When we first came out with her first video, everyone was like, Graham, girlfriends are so expensive. And that was the time in my life, It was all about frugality and people were like do you know how much this is going to cost and when you really look at the cost it's not It's not bad. I mean for you though, right? Because you know I will took let's say I'm not that expensive dates What was an ideal date when you were first getting started in this just with macy's overall in general? Well, it was bad

Let's hear it man. I'm sure macy has some experiences here too bad. I don't know because when Graham and I first started dating all of his friends was like, oh, he actually like takes you out and stuff. So I've heard it's pretty bad, but I never experienced it because I guess Graham must have really liked me. Yeah. One of my first dates I'll never forget was in high school. And I remember I went to the cheesecake factory because they had these nachas. I'd get them with my buddy Nick and they were $8 nachos that were huge, like the cheesecake

factory port. I mean we just split it. And but I used to bring my own soda like that, you know, I'd have a soda, you know, and back then. but I'd bring my own and just ask for a cup of ice so I didn't have to pay the $3. And you did that on a date? Yes.

And what did your date think about it? I think we didn't really have a second date. I think we kind of had like a pseudo-shund. That's what you thought about it. Through a friend group. And so it's like the second date was more of like a forced group hangout. I think it's fine. I didn't see any issue with it.

It didn't save a lot of money. Yeah. Okay. As a girl, what would you think of a guy did that? Yeah, I just, I feel like it's not a good look because I, I don't know. I feel like then you're kind of jipping the servers a little bit because like the server is making money on everything that you're ordering.

So I just kind of look at that and that would be my thought. But I just think you probably found someone who matched your energy a little bit or it might have just been cheaper not to have a soda perhaps than maybe just have a water that might have been the smarter way to go. But you would I split notches all the time. That sounded like a performative thing. It's like you bring this soda to show, look how thrifty. Yeah.

I also, oh, the CheeseKay factory also had like $5 parking. And so I parked. at the convenience store next door and walked over. Save the parking. Did you have the girl in your car when you parked there? Yeah, I did. Okay. I mean, that's understandable, honestly.

Let me tell you guys about my first date with my wife, Kelsey. And maybe I've told this before, but I'm not sure. We went to the movies, and I don't buy any snacks at the movies because they're too expensive. So then we go in, and midway through the movie, I hear rustling in her purse. She pulls out bags, bagged popcorn. You call the police? And then she pulled out juice boxes. And that's when you know she's the one.

That's when I knew she was the one. Although she did admit to me that, you know, her mom, like, gave her the stuff. But she was raised that way. So it's like, you know. Yeah. Say we're the same person. Yeah. Juice boxes.

Why didn't you? Like a capric son or like one of the. Yeah. Like a capri son or something. Yeah. She also had a water bottle. Yep. Yep.

Yep. She had. How big was her purse, man? Yeah. It was crazy. She also had tattooed chef in there. Yeah. Holy cow.

Mustard, ketchup, everything you need. You made a full on subway sandwich. That's what it felt like to me, man. I used to do that. The movie theater where Jack and I grew up, used to have these $2 Tuesdays things, and it was right by... Winco.

Winco, thank you. We used to go into Winco before, and that was when, like, those green military kind of style jackets were popular with a lot of pockets. So I'd go in there and you'd get the bags of candy from there, and I'd, like, put it all throughout the pockets. And so I'd walk in,

I'm sure it was obvious because my like jack it was stuffed but yeah that's this one you do jack what do i do yeah pink pong it's oh so you're saying if i if i go on a date yeah well usually i'll do usually they'll pay from me no no no i don't think i've ever been paid for on a first date really it's tough yeah i feel i feel like obligated to pay on a first date and i'm fine with it so i know a lot of people that i am dating at this time would either be like in college or something and i have like i work full time You're dating a lot of people at this time? No, I'm not, but let's say I do go on a date with someone.

They're probably in college, you know, or just getting started with their career. I've been working full time for a couple of years. So it's fine. I'll treat them. I'm cool with that. And also, there is a little bit of awkwardness which, like, the bill gets, you know, put down on the table. And you're like, okay, who's going to pay? So I just reach for it and I usually just hand the server of my card.

You know what? It reminds me I actually got paid. I not really got paid to go on a date. This is, I had just got my driver's license. And I took this girl to a movie. and her parents bought the tickets. So the tickets were free. We showed up at the movie.

And then she handed me like a $20 bill. It was like a $50 bill or something like this and said, hey, could you go and grab me some food at the concession stand? And so I did. I got it for it. I came back and I had the change. She says, oh, you know, you could keep the change. You could hold on to the change or something like that.

Best day ever. Yeah. And so I remember telling all my friends, like I got like $20 basically. That was my profit for going on. The date. Really excited for it. Yeah. She didn't even care about the change.

Nowadays, you keep it. Nowadays, that change would just be like the guess that it took you to get to the movie. Yeah, with inflation, that thing would, yeah,

and 50 bucks wouldn't have covered it. That's crazy. What a lovely story. Yeah. So I was proud about that. You know what, Jack, maybe you shouldn't be looking for girls

who are in college. Maybe find the girls who did something similar where they didn't, college wasn't for them and they, you know, started their own business or something. because I feel like you would have a lot more in common with somebody like that.

That's what I've said, Alex. The thing is, I'm a studious person. Like, I did well in school. I didn't mind college. I liked high school. I got good grades. So it's not like I'm different from those people. I just had an opportunity presented to me in like any person.

A lot of people in my situation, they would have taken it. Yeah, but don't you think work changes you after a year? Like, you're substantially different going school for a year than working for you. Yeah. Especially if you're working for yourself. Yeah. It's dramatic. So then the person you're dating should also have a similar experience of,

working full time and like experience in the real world because going from college to that is like that's a good point honestly i haven't really like gone on a date with a girl who's in that situation and i haven't been very satisfied with many of the dates i've been on so jack i've been telling you this thing so you need to date i swear have i not alice yeah i think i think graham brought up something very like probably almost the same thing you said that you set your tinder age between like two certain ages and i said that's probably too young unless you're dating one of those people who's worked full time and they work and they can all go to school. It's too young because they probably lack life experience unless they've, they've had work experience. I think you could be 18 or 19

with a solid year of work experience, creating your own business or whatever, and be completely different than the person who's 22 or even 23 who's partied through college and like hasn't had a single job in their life. The two are different. So that's what I said for you. I think you just need some work experience. Yeah. So I'm looking now for girls with work experience. your resumes over here. Yeah. So we'll see what happened. Yeah. I don't know. I do got to say that like Graham and I, I feel like our relationship improved

a lot once I started doing YouTube and I started to understand it a little bit more when I had like a traditional job. Because I was I was like younger in the workforce, right? When we started dating, it was almost 21 and I'd been working full time and yada, yada, yada. But when I started working for myself, it's like totally different than working a traditional job. And neither of you have really worked traditional jobs and I've had both experiences, you're probably going to need someone who works for themselves a little bit, because somebody who works with a traditional job will just go, well, the work day's done. Why can't you leave it alone?

Or like, I have no problem separating work from life because they're not passionate about it, like somebody who owns the business. So I feel like you need somebody who owns their own business. Yeah. Conversely, when I was with Kelsey and we had a wedding business or I had a wedding business, I would take her to work with me. And she'd help me, it was like, she'd help me carry like all the heavy stuff. she wouldn't complain i'd buy her a dinner you know not pay her oh i mean you know but so you know

maybe somebody who's ambitious and willing to help yeah Alex how did you have her carry the heavy stuff yeah she wanted to yeah if you she's tiny she has no weight to pick up but that's what i loved about her that the fact that she was like you know we would go to to do a wedding and she'd be like no i want to carry that and i'm just like i'm like i'm like i'm like i i I don't want you to hurt yourself. And she's like, no, I want to carry that. You know, she's trying to, like, show that she was involved in this. And, yeah, so a part of me, I think that's, so I didn't make her.

She wanted to. But I feel like that's part of what made our relationship work, even though she wasn't, you know, an entrepreneur in that sense. So let's talk about money and relationships. Yeah, Jack. Because, like I said, you guys are dating. You have a wife, Alex. Let's talk about pre-ups. And what's your guys' opinion on that?

How expensive can divorces be? Okay. Let me jump in here because I feel like I have to jump in first. Otherwise, everyone's like, oh, she just agreed with Graham. I think for my situation with Graham, a pre-up is totally there. I think if somebody's coming into a marriage with asses they had before, they probably are going to want them after. And I can totally understand a pre-up.

In that case, if you're like both straight out of college and you have nothing to your name, I feel like sometimes that can be a little insulting, but like with Graham's in my situation was different. I had had my Roth that would, you know, at this point has grown. I have a decent amount of stocks. You have your real estate properties. It's nice to feel like those things are kind of protected, if that makes sense. And just kind of to go into it with a plan. But in other situations, like you can definitely see where somebody's like, that's insulting. I have a friend who both like right out of college going to get married and then they both had nothing to their name. I mean, like maybe $10,000 between the two of them. And he was like, I was like, I was like,

I want a pre-up, and I was like, yeah, that's insulting. Especially because all your money that you have at that point will go to just getting a pre-nup. I don't think so. I think it's good to have a plan regardless, even if you're both starting at with zero, because otherwise the default is you leave it up to the state. And we all know how the state generally tends to allocate resource. I mean, it's just I don't trust it in the hands of a random courtroom, depending on the state's jurisdictions, or whatever.

I think it's better to have a plan ahead of time, whatever that money. Even if you're both starting out with zero, you could still, because the whole aspect of a pre-num, is agreed upon between both parties. So you could always ask for something, and it's up to the two to agree on that together. Yeah, but when you have, like, especially in this friend's case, when you have almost nothing,

spending half of that money on getting a pre-up, just doesn't seem worth it to me. When you already have the joint banking account, when it's already going to be probably 50-50, when it's both of your money that's going into all these assets, everything's going to be joint. But that's a lot cheaper to spend, even if it's to say $10,000 now,

then potentially spending $100,000, getting divorced and fighting over who gets what. Because that would be cheaper still than the alternative. Even if you leave it up to the state and you say, all right, everything's 50, 50, I guarantee there's going to be something where one party feels entitled or wants another bit that maybe the other person doesn't agree to.

That's more expensive. I can see that. I mean, I will be the first to admit, like my parents aren't divorced. I don't have very much experience with divorce. So in my mind, I just go, okay, the state would, you know, 50-50, but when all the assets are 50-50 and when you're earning about the same and you don't really have very many assets, it should be 50-50 because everything

would be joint. I mean, then that's that $10,000 when you go to buy that first home, that's also your money that's being put into that first home. So maybe I just don't know too much with, divorces and whatever, but I definitely like in cases like ours, I don't get where people are like, you know, I feel like you don't trust me if you're asking for one. It just makes it easier when there's stuff we're both bringing in. Yeah. How did the girl in that relationship feel towards the pre-up? Was she, like, discouraged by it?

Oh, she said, no. I'm not doing that because everything at this point is 50-50. Because he was wanting to have the first home just go to him that they were looking at purchasing. And she's like, well, dude, over, I'm making more than you. Most of this down payment is my money. Why would you get the house? Well, then that doesn't make sense.

Yeah. Well, I think the house should be split in terms of who. Into the percentage of which person contributes. So if one person is coming up with half the down payment, then obviously they should be equally untitled. Yeah, agreed. I also think it's like completely up to the individual couple. Everybody's going to have a completely different circumstance going into it.

And there's definitely like a scale of it. But like our circumstance might be different than somebody who has a similar age gap to how we do. It could be that the younger ones making more money. So I just feel like it's something that each couple needs to come to on their own terms. I don't think they're bad person. No, I don't think they're bad. I just see it as an insurance policy, basically. Like, if you have a car and you're driving it around and you have a choice just to leave it up to the state to decide if you're in an accident how that's allocated, or you could come up with your own insurance policy and say, at least I know that these are the terms, if I were to get into an accident, I think it's a good idea regardless. What do you think, Jack?

For me personally, I think it's up to each individual relationship if they want or if they don't want. I know I would prefer a pre-nup. Let's say I marry a high earner that's like making way more than me. I would still definitely 100% want a pre-up. And I just think because for me personally I'm able to detach like my emotions from certain things. But I know some other people are different. Like they can see that as a personal attack. If you request a pre-up, they could think, oh my gosh, they don't, you know, they don't trust me with their finance.

Like I understand other people are different. But for me, I'm pretty good at being able to detach emotion from my decision-making. And I think that I would just definitely want one. with Macy on our second date. I brought it up because I was the third. Okay, yeah, second may be a little too soon. It was our third date and I could tell I really like Macy and I could like tell it was going somewhere.

And so I'm like, I just want to let you know as soon as possible that this is on my mind and like this is something that's important to me. That way you never think or have to wonder like, oh wow, like we're two years into this and now he's asking for it. What is it? It's like it's early enough where like if it's going to be an issue, it's better to probably flush it out early on. And if it's not an issue, then great.

But at least it's early enough where it's like not a surprise, if that makes sense. I think if you approached a similar thing and just third date. That's crazy. I mean, I've been on third dates with girls and then not fourths. If I brought up like, you know, pre-nups. That could mean a lot. Yeah. Like that is such a unique thing to bring up on a third day.

Honestly, I would bring that up like a year into a relationship. No, no, no, no, no. Yeah. So the thing with Graham and I and why it was the third date is at first date was supposed to be like an hour or two. And it lasted seven hours. The only reason why it ended was because literally nothing was open. Oh, that's true. Everything was closing.

Yeah, everything was closing. It was like midnight, 1 a.m. That's that creepy hour. It's like, you know the strange people start walking around the streets? You guys? Us. Yeah. We didn't want to be among our fellow strange people.

Yeah, I know. But yeah, our first one was seven hours. It was meant to be an hour or two. Our second one, we were just going to go grab lunch. I don't think it was just lunch. I think we'd plan lunch. And I was just going to show you like to the harbor and stuff. Well, we did.

Maybe you didn't you cancel work? I did. That was it. Oh, it was supposed to be lunch and then you had work at five and you called in sick or something like that. I'd work from like one to five because I was still working that retail job on the weekends because I was like I have nothing better to do besides going and go make money. But yeah, I canceled on it. And then our second date was 12 hours. And again, it stopped because we literally had nothing to do.

Everything was closed again. So by that point it was like we'd spent the time of like going on like what? We waited. We wait until 12-01 so we could call it like a two-day date. That's cute. Yeah. Yeah, we were literally sitting in the car. Like in the driveway.

Yeah, be like, all right, 12-0-1. Yeah, I was looking to my parents at that point. And they were like, my mom was like looking at the window and she's like, what the heck they do me? Mom, seven more minutes. Your mom was watching you guys. Well, because you didn't see us sitting in the front seats. And she's like, well, I just, I want to turn off the lights. Did you guys kiss when you left?

I don't know. Ew. Jack. Sorry, sorry, didn't mean the president. TMI. Yeah. Yeah, but that third date, I was glad you brought it up then because I think at this point, because I haven't had very much experience with divorce.

I mean, as you're saying that it's expensive, this, I genuinely have no frame of reference. I was glad that you brought it up early because I had time to like research it and really get, you know, my bearings on like what exactly it is, what's the purpose of it. And like at a point where I wasn't so emotionally involved like I am now, that I could kind of detach a little bit and figure out what it was without feeling immediately insulted. Yeah, yeah. And it's thorough. I mean, a pre-up, you think of every situation possible from like, you know, if the partners that stay at home. Are they handles in pre-ups? The pets? We didn't, we put Ramsey in? We didn't. We didn't. But I think it's just, you know,

if it, God forbid, if anything were to happen, I mean, we kind of would know. Like, I couldn't. Yeah, I would get both. No. No, for the record. That is not the case. I don't agree. I don't agree. I don't agree. I would just be like, you have to be pretty heartless to like take an animal from somebody. I mean, I just can't imagine. Yeah, but that goes both ways. Like, just saying like, let's say she wants both. I know she doesn't, but or sorry, yes, she does. My bet. I love my baby. Yeah. Then it goes the same way. Like, you wanting to take one or two animals, it's like, wow, then you're the heartless one. The thing is, the thing is the animals decide. I think it's pretty clear. Bailey is a, is a mama's girl. And Ramsey's a daddy. He's a daddy. He's boy. I don't know. I don't know.

Whatever it is. He gives me a lot more love than he gives you. Wow. Gives me a lot of... Oh, Bailey spends a lot of mornings with me. Let's talk this through, guys. Let's talk this through. It's kind of joking.

Okay. There's nothing to talk to the pot. All right, Alex, as a married man, do you have a pre-up with your wife? I do not have a pre-up with my wife. I'll have you guys know. We thought about it. We talked about it. But we are considering doing a post-nup.

So, everything okay? Yeah. What do you want to talk about, Alex? What's wrong? No, no, no, everything's okay.

Tell us. No, no, no. We, it's just us here. Or, yeah. Only us. You pre-dum stuff, I definitely think it's up to the,

to the individual. In terms of like separating assets and stuff, Cussie and I got together with relatively similar amounts of assets. And she helped me build the business and she supports me in the business. So because of that, I, I didn't really care about getting a pre-up done before I got married. But talking about what Graham was saying, I definitely don't want to leave something up to the state to the side.

So we want to do a post-nup just to kind of put every situation out there and how we would want it to be split. But we are a little bit different in terms of you guys because we kind of keep separate finances, but we kind of look at stuff like, for example, if we buy a house, if we're both making the decision to take our personal assets and put it into a joint asset, we kind of think it's kind of split a little bit more evenly. Even if I were to have more income or Kelsey were to have more income, at that time we're making the decision though when we do that. But that's where we're at.

I think that's good. Yeah. Yeah. One condition, I think, for the pre-knap the whole time I've been doing it. Because I remember I asked you, I think it was on that third date. I'm like, are these done like after engagement? Are these typically done like before engage? Or like how does that whole thing work?

And you're like typically it's after someone gets engaged. My whole condition. And somebody, for whatever reason, this is like, this really fires people up, was that I wanted it done before getting engaged. Because I just thought that was kind of a little morbid to be like, so what are we going to do if you die, huh? Like, where am I? You know, whatever.

And like, you know, what's going to happen if we divorce? Also, like, I feel like, and not that I'm, unstable about a relationship at all. It's like an extra little thing that I can be like, okay, we got through the pre-knap process together. We're going to be fine, you know? It's also weird to get engaged to someone and then have that as like a condition of the engagement.

It's like, here's a promise, but before we do that, here's this. First is like you get everything else done and then it's just, I don't know. I feel like it's probably better to get it out of the way. It's untraditional to do that, but I agree with that. It is. It's kind of weird, but I'm like, I would rather, like, at this point, now it's just like, okay, then we get engaged, then we plan a wedding, and, like, you just get to plan the wedding.

You don't have to deal with the lawyers. You don't have to deal with whatever. You just are planning a wedding, having fun. But then it's also the fear of, like, if that doesn't happen, what's going to happen to the wedding? And like, oh, if I don't agree to this, we have, everyone's counting on us now. And, you know, then you have the situations of like, oh, crap, are you agreeing to this because you just want to get married and not cancel on everybody?

or is like a real thing. So I think it's probably better to get it done sooner. What's the total cost of a pre-up? How much does it cost? Could be anywhere from like a grand to probably $20,000, $30,000. It depends on the situation. So they could vary. I bet you could get most for probably $1 to $3,000.

How much did your pre-nup cost? $10,000. No, all in, it was like, it was under $15,000 total. You guys couldn't have just like Pinky Promise or something? Pinky Promise. I would just do like over text message. It would have been cheaper. Yeah, see, that's what was my thing earlier, too, with my friend that they only had about $10,000.

I'm like, that's literally probably going to be like, I know ours is a little bit more complex because they obviously don't have anything. You have a lot of things. But it's like that's all your money. And then you're starting off. It doesn't have to be. It could be. They could probably find someone for $1,500 to $2,000.

If not cheaper, probably. I just don't think that a pre-up is necessarily like something that shows that you can't trust the other person in a relationship. it's not for me it's not an emotional thing it's just a smart logical thing to do and I just see it as a just another step in the journey I think I think some people see it that way some people see it as a you don't trust me for me it's like a contract just like we would have a contract for what we do a marriage is very much a financial agreement as well and it makes it you would have a contract but other people would see that is well because then you tie in emotions with with a contract it's not just like a business decision it's also an emotional connection that you have with somebody and throwing in a contract on an emotion connection is difficult. It is.

Yeah, because Graham says a lot. Graham says a lot. He's like, well, marriage is a contract. I'm like, no, it's not. It's a commitment you make to each other. So it's interesting because people have definitely very different looks. And I do know, like, the majority of females do look at marriages and like wedding, and then you're making these commitments in front of everybody and see a marriage more that

way. But then I know more of these finance guys like you are like a marriage is a contract. And then when we explain to each other, because we've had this conversation, Like okay, what is a marriage to you? And that's something you know, I guess if you I don't know yeah someone like Graham, it's very analytical you got to figure out before the Yeah, like Macy says it's commitment to me it's like I'm not gonna be any more committed I'm just I'm committed it's either it's your I'm a hundred percent drama zero and so it's like Well you know for me marriage it's it's if anything it's not trusting like the marriage because like a marriage license because if it's like oh

You get these extra perks if we're married or because we're married like I just think it's just like you just do it because you do. And that's what a relationship is. And that's like, I don't know. That's why I think. So that's where we kind of had a conversation similar to you and Macy. So Kelsey and I, for those that you, of you that don't know, we got married late last year before the end of the year. But we haven't had our like wedding.

And so people, when I tell people I'm going to have a wedding, they're like, wait, aren't you married? I'm like, well, yeah, technically. And so what we kind of talked about or at least, I can't speak from my wife. she's not here, so let me speak for myself. The marriage part of it that we had late last year, that's the contractual part that basically tells the government body that we're married and whoop-de-do, now I get tax benefits and all this other cool stuff. The part that means more to me is having a wedding and then we didn't do vows last,

when we, I call it eloped, I guess you could say. So when we get married this year, when we have the wedding, that's when we'll do our vows. And like Macy said, that's kind of where we're making a commitment in front of like family and friends and stuff. But I get it, Graham. It's not that like I'm any more committed than I am now. But I'm just putting that commitment in words out loud in front of family and friends. That's really all it is. I think sometimes it's about also like vocalizing your feelings too, that you're actually sitting down.

you're like, I'm vocalizing my feelings. I'm going to make these vows for people that do custom vows. I'm going to make these vows and really, really think about it in a way that you probably wouldn't on the day to day. I think a wedding is about making this commitments and marriage is about keeping those commitments and growing with a person. I get that there's a whole contractual side to it, but the way I have always looked at is like a wedding is where you're together.

It doesn't matter if you're eloping. It doesn't matter if you're with family and friends. I mean, ideally, I'd love to be with family and friends, but you come, you sit down, you figure out like what. am I going to promise this person for the rest of your life? And yeah, you're kind of already doing it on the day to day, but it's a different thing to actually vocalize and speak that to the other person. It's like being in a relationship with somebody, for example,

if they never said, I love you, I would be like, do they love me? You know? And it's about like you're sitting down, you're vocalizing it in a very, very, I don't know, intimate way with the other person. So now after seeing anecdotal love and money stuff, we're going to actually get someone who has evidence and statistics and she, She's a judge and she's been talking about expensive divorces, some crazy stories, and all of the other nuts things about divorces. Let's bring her on.

Welcome. We're so excited to have you on. We've been talking now for about two months, I think, going back and forth on Instagram. Yes. I think it deserves some clarification how we kind of met. But I was looking for videos. I've been watching the People's Court a lot lately in reacting to those videos because I love the stories. And when I was searching for new People Court videos, your videos came up from some.

support court and I was like what is this and so I started watching these videos they're amazing thank you I absolutely love them and so we reacted to a few of the videos and just I think it was you jack was like we should just DM or get around or maybe I DM'd you I can't I think you mentioned it in in a reaction video you're like oh yeah I should reach out to you vonda and you can come on the ice coffee hour or something like that was it and you reached out to me yeah and then sure enough you happen to be here in Vegas so we have a lot to talk about both in terms of legal issues child support issues. Maybe we could talk about

everything else that's involved in either marriage, divorce. We want to hear all the juicy stories that you have and how you got to have your Judge Vonda B. show. Okay.

How did that come to be? So I am a practicing family law attorney. I've been doing that for the past eight years in Dallas County. Well, one day, it was,

I believe it was on a Saturday like New Year's Eve or something about three years ago. I was watching TV in this show called the couples court came on where it was a husband and wife acting as a judge and I was like what is this I've never heard of couples court then after couples court went off you had um paternity court they came on and I said wait a minute now we're talking couples court paternity court you have people's court

nobody is talking about child support that is the most controversial area of law why isn't anybody talking about that. So within my office, a couple of guys, they do all of my editing and marketing, everything like that. So I went to him and I said, hey, what do you think about filming a show where I act as the judge and I reenact cases that I've seen or handled personally? And they were like, Wanda, that's an amazing idea. That is a good idea. So we started filming and now what you see today, three years later, is support court with Judge Vonda B. I never, envision it to be that big because I literally started it to educate people about child support laws in Texas. So to see it grow from one follower to over 153,000 now on YouTube, I think it's pretty cool.

That is, now, how much are you making from YouTube now? Because I have a feeling pretty soon, if not already, you're going to make more money from YouTube than you will practicing law. And actually, we have. Congratulations. Thank you. Gosh. Thank you. I posted on Facebook today on one of the lady lawyers channels. They were asking, hey, when are you ladies going on vacation? When is your staff going on vacation? I said, I actually closed down December 1st and I'm not going back until after spring break. And they were like, wow, boss.

Wow. But yeah, it's good. The ad revenue is a... The Volkswagen Atlas is a 7-C powerhouse that actually makes sense for real life. It's got. Cargo space for all your gear, the dogs, and even half of your rec league soccer team. And under the hood, a 2-liter turbocharged TSI engine that hauls up to 5,000 pounds. The seven-seat Atlas. You deserve more space. Visit bw.ca to learn more. S-U-B-W, German-engineered for all. You should do a sponsor in the middle of one of the...

How funny would that be. That would be fun. I would just put it in. Thank you to Gramerly for sponsoring this in the middle of the support court. Let's do it. Yeah, listen, you should be, well, we could talk a little later on the ways to monetize your channel. Okay. So how did you get into law to begin with?

And why child support? I always wanted to be an attorney. Every since I was, I believe, two years old, I always wanted to be an attorney. My dad retired from the Sheriff's Department in Dallas County. He worked there over 30 years. My mom retired from Dallas County as a supervisor in the felony courts. So it was one of those things that I just kind of fell into. And then I married the bailiff that's on the show.

Well, the newer episodes, the older episodes that you see with the bailiff, that's my dad. Oh, wow. So the newer episodes, that's my husband, Christopher Shaw, who is actually a police officer. That's so cool. Police Chief at U.N.T. Dallas is located in Dallas and also at the U.N.T. College of Law in downtown Dallas. Cool. So yeah, it's something I just always wanted to do. And in child support in particular, I had a personal experience with child support with my son's father.

And it was one of those situations. My situation was not as bad as I've seen others. Yeah. You know, but I was like, why not do this? So it kind of found me. You know, I had the patience for it. You definitely have to have patience. The personality, of course, because you have to have a lot of compassion.

passion. When people are coming and talking to you about child support issues and the mom is not paying child support or the dad is not paying child support, there are a lot of hurt feelings that lie underneath that. So once I can kind of counsel through that, then we can move forward with the progression of the case. What was your first case you ever took? I'm sure everyone remembers the first case. Oh, yeah. What was that? The first case I had, it was dad trying to get custody of the child. mom, I believe, was an exotic dancer. And she was posting all over Instagram, you know, about her client. She was posting her body.

And there was marijuana that were in the pictures. So dad is like, yeah, I don't think this is safe for the child. Interesting enough, I go to court. And in this particular county in Dallas, it's located in Tarrant County. So Tarrant County is like the Fort Worth, the Arlington area. they are zero tolerance on drug usage of any kind, including marijuana. The judge looked at me right in my face and said, Ms. Bailey, it's only marijuana.

And I said, a judge is only still illegal. Wow. He just blew it all. And so my client is confused because normally people get their kids removed for drug usage. In that particular county, they will put you on supervised visits for marijuana usage. Wow. Okay. It never happened, but, and I, I don't like to play that whole gender role thing, but you do see some differences in court. I think had the roles been reversed, dad would have been on supervised visits, but I think because it was mom, and this is what she did for a living,

well, was she enjoyed, if I remember correctly, those were her words. Yeah. She actually enjoyed doing it. You know, the judge didn't take her kid away from her and put her. with dad, which I thought was pretty sad. Yeah. Do you ever have a client where you disagree with their request or you, how difficult is it to represent a client who you're just, let's say you're against or you just, how often does that come up or did it come up? All the time.

Yeah. I do not always agree with my clients. About 80 to 90% of my clients are men. So when they first come in, you know, they're like, I don't want to deal with my child's mom, you're tough, you're female, you know how, you all know how to handle each other, right? So it's a matter of educating first, right? Because remember I said a lot of them come from a hurt place, whether it was infidelity, even if it wasn't infidelity, just the mere fact of being placed on child support kind of

rubs people the wrong way. So once I kind of get through that, I can work through their case a lot easier, but I have had some very, very difficult clients, some that wanted me to help them commit fraud. What's fraud? I mean, how would you describe it? You know, where you, let's say hypothetically in a divorce case, right? In Texas, a, Texas is a community property state. So everything is 50-50. Anything accumulated during the marriage, well, since the date of marriage is considered community property. Well, anything before that is separate property.

Right. So trying to get me to actively pursue property that you know existed before the marriage. Wow. Like that is total fraud, especially when it's documented. Right. That is separate property. And I just refuse to do that kind of stuff. But you definitely get asked.

I'm pretty sure a lot of attorneys, you know, are placed in situations where your clients want you to do something that you're absolutely opposed to. Yeah. Do you ever just choose to not represent a client because you disagree with what they're asking for? Absolutely. Especially when it comes to things that are just morally that I don't necessarily agree with. Like anything dealing with discrimination, I'm not going to represent that person, any form of discrimination, whether it's, you know, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, because believe it or not,

you get a lot of those situations in that initial consultation. You get a feel, it's like an interview. I'm interviewing my potential client. They're interviewing me. And I just know right off the back, if it's anything dealing with discrimination, I'm nine times down to 10 and I'm not going to touch it. Right. How much do you get paid per case?

And do you get paid based on how much money you could get for your clients? Like if I came to you and say, hey, I want, you know, 20 grand a month. Do you get paid at like a commission? Like a real estate agent would get paid like a commission on the deal. I wish you worked like that. Like every month you get in like a small sliver of it. Well, we do in a sense, you can get paid by the month, right? Because you have an initial retainer that your clients have to pay you when they come in.

So for me, the initial retainer, if you want to retain me for a contested matter, depending on the contested nature, it starts at about $10,000 or $15,000. And that's just the initial. And then you have to replenish that every time it gets to a certain amount. So some people do pay on a monthly basis. Some pay biweekly. It just depends on the contested nature of the case. And a lot of times the contested nature comes from the client itself.

It's really not the other person. It's them wanting to contact you all throughout the day. It's 3 a.m. You get this random thought. And it's like, hey, I want to message my lawyer at 3 a.m. Yeah. You know, I mean, I may not respond until the next day, but depending on what it is, you want me to do the next day.

day, it would require time spent on the case. Yeah, I have to say, Jack, I don't know if I told you this, but, oh, yeah, no, you know about this, about a year ago. So I've never had a lawyer ever for anything. And I was negotiating a contract, and it was, I didn't know how to navigate it because it had to do with, it was for a startup investment. And so I hired a lawyer to review it all. And he was so helpful.

And he explained everything to me. And then at that point, I was like, well, you know what? And then he drafted up our contract between Jack and I. And it was like, well, that's really easy. And then all of a sudden, I've had him review every single thing. And, yeah, that line kind of gets blurred between now. It's like, because we talk to all. And it's like, no, he's kind of like a buddy.

And I can send him texts. And like, what do you think of this? And just all hours. Exactly like you said, no, he's getting billed for this. Or I'm getting built for it. But, yeah, I could definitely see that, especially with something as sensitive, is like child support. Oh, yeah, definitely.

Definitely. And it's at our discretion what we choose to bill for. Your attorney may not bill you for everything. I think I think it's a thing. It's basically turning to a monthly thing now because he's just. Yeah. You know, and you do have that discretion. So there are some things maybe, you know, you can cut the price in half where it would normally be this. You charge this. If it were a communication where it was five text messages, you'll bill for it, but maybe Maybe you'd bill for two or three. Sure.

Something like that, especially if it's a client where there's going to be some longevity and they're going to be a recurring client. Yeah. You'll cut little brace every now and then. Got it. So what does your job entail? Like, is it all child support cases or do you also take on other sorts of cases as well? Oh, yeah.

I do custody cases, divorce cases, which child supportive children are involved. That's already an element within that case and adoptions as well. You can do name changes. So I've had people get their name changed as an adult. I've had children, their parents have their name change for a variety of reasons, all those type of things. And property related issues too, which can get really, really messy. And they can get messier than child support cases. What was the worst situation you've seen or the most difficult?

It was a situation where I was coming to court. and husband, I represent a wife, husband brought new girlfriend to court, which I never advise anybody to do. If you're going through a divorce and infidelity is an element that they're trying to prove a divorce, it's never going to be a good idea to bring the person that you were cheating on them with to court. Oh, my God. See, I was thinking a new girlfriend.

I'm like, they separated. You got a good girlfriend. She's like supporting him. That was the person. Oh, yikes. Okay. It was the most embarrassing thing ever because when that person comes into court, you can call them as a witness, even if they're not on your witness list. Really? So it's like, hey, I want to call her as a witness.

Well, she's not on your witness list. She doesn't have to be. She showed up to court today. I have questions for her, right? Is she obligated to do that? Let's just say she just showed up in the courtroom and she's like, now I got to leave right now. well I can still call her as a witness and ask the judge to make sure that she sticks around

because she came to court and I actually saw that happen I was on the other end of that where that happened to me people when they come to court they like to have significant others and friends just to be there for moral support however the problem with that is

you can get them called as a witness so that happened to me and I said to the attorney they're not related to this case at all. Well, they may be. I want to call them as a witness. I was like, that is so messed up. So every since then, when I saw that, I was like, well, if it's a witness that could be, you know, a character witness, have a lot of information that I may or may not need. I want to call them in. And that's what happened on the case. It was bad. Wow. Yeah. So what was the outcome of that case? They ended up fighting after court, like physically

Oh my gosh. They ended up physically fighting. And just so you know, family courts fight more than in criminal courts. Are you serious? Yes. So the two ladies were fighting. Yeah. They were fighting. And the husband had to intervene.

No. And break it up, right? And they went to jail because you have bailiffs there. No. Yeah, they went to jail. It was bad. They waited out until they got outside of the courtroom. But yeah, it was right there in the hallway. It was like the wildest thing. I'd ever experienced. Now, I've seen fights in the courthouse that literally did not involve me. I was at one end of the child support courts, and I'm looking to the other end of the

hallway, and you just see people fighting, right? And that's normally what it is. Oh, my gosh. It's hurt feeling someone is bringing someone new to court, right? And when I saw that, I was like, yeah, I can't do this. That was just too much for me. And I said to the attorney, I was like, you know, you need to have a conversation with your client. Yeah.

Not only was it rude. It was extremely hurtful. They're going through a divorce and I think they had been married almost 20 years. That's a long marriage. We're not talking about people that, you know, just eloped and been married a year or two. We're talking about a 20-year marriage. There are a lot of hurt feelings there. Gosh.

Oh, I can't imagine that. Oh, well. I experienced it And I never have to see that again Wow So on like these TV shows How real is something like the people's court I've always been curious like if some things

Because some of these characters I mean they're characters How do they find this guy How do they screen for these people Because we've done our own Like we did the Graham Steffen show right People call in and screening for interesting calls Was so difficult and we just didn't get enough

And so I'd imagine like the people's court, they get these insane scenarios. Like how much of that is scripted or played up? I mean, a lot of it is scripted, but with certain shows, they have where the judge is an arbitrator. So in which I'm probably sure is seeing you all's contracts, there's an arbitration clause. So arbitration means that you all will go to an independent person. Whatever that outcome is, I don't want to say ruling because they're not a judge or say. But whatever the outcome is, that's final.

binding, kind of like a mediation type situation. Yeah. So that's what they're doing a lot of times on these courtroom shows. So some of those rulings and outcomes, they're actually legit, but you really can't tell which part is scripted versus which part is unscripted. Because I've had friends that have appeared on courtroom shows and they're like, yeah, Vanda, that was scripted. But it was portions of it that were real.

Like they had a real life issue. the reason they were going to court. You know, and it's small claims. So we're talking about nothing that's over like $5 and $2,000. You know, you broke my vacuum cleaner or you didn't pay the other half of your rent, which equated to about $2,500, something like that. Yeah, I like this. But so the downside is you can't do that for child support, unfortunately, right?

So you couldn't get a real case and just showcase it or can you? Well, and that's the thing. I don't know if you can actually do that per se, but I think if at any point I were to become an arbitrator and I were not running for judge, which we'll talk about that here in a second, because I am currently running for judge. If I were to become an arbitrator or something like that and have a show, that is something that I would be able to do.

I just don't know necessarily the logistics of it because there is an actual child support court, but that's not necessarily arbitration. So when you go to child support court, they have the attorney general there that helps mediate the case between the two people so they don't have to go to court.

But if they don't agree, then they don't have to go to court. But arbitration is something totally different. So, I mean, it's something I'm looking into long term. Do these people get paid to be on the show? I'd imagine if one person wins, it's like, well, we're just going to pay it. Well, no.

So a lot of them are just volunteers. Really? Some of them were my family members. No way. Like when the show first started, we needed talent. So they were like, yeah, I'll do it. I'll do it. And the more popular the show has become, people are like, hey, I want to go on support

court. And I'm like, okay. So yeah, it's, yeah, we haven't gotten to that point yet. We're still kind of in, even though it's 153,000 subscribers, that's still in the growing phase. So once we get it to where we want, where we have a legit company that we're going through for our talent

and everything like that, it'll be a little different. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like logistically, that would have been extremely challenging to start up because you needed an entire, I mean, you have to have an audience,

you have to have so many people there, and you also have to have a courtroom. Do you have to rent out the courtroom? I do. And then what about like the cameras and everything? Is it already a pre-prepared courtroom for filming stuff in? there or is that just like an actual courtroom where you bring your cameras in?

Great question. So a friend of mine, he is a personal injury attorney. So he does the trucking accidents and car wrecks and stuff like that. So they do a lot of jury trials. They'll bring in people to do a mock trial. So they'll present their case to these 12 people to see what the potential outcome would be. So he built out part of, he has a law office in that building. So they built out that courtroom specifically to bring. in the mock trial jurors and such. So the courtroom is already built out. That's the courtroom that you all see.

The filming crew, that's my crew, it's their own media group. They actually come in, set up all the cameras and everything like that. And the talent are the people that, the audience members, they're actually the talent. I wanted to make it be as realistic as possible

to a child support court in Texas. All the litigants, When you have court on that day, everyone sits in the gallery together until their cases call. So you literally hear all the cases before yours. Seems intimidating. Yeah. I mean, it could be because you're sitting there. You're listening to the judge.

Give rulings. Your situation may be similar to the one that's before you. So it's like, man, oh, man, I'm doing that. The judge did this to that person, right? So everyone sits in the gallery because I know I was getting feedback. they're like everyone is sitting in the courtroom together i'm like that's how it is in a texas shall support court room yeah my one ex i've been to court once and it was for a tenant who was growing weed in the garage and then stopped paying his rent oh wow and it was so scary because i

remember and uh yeah no i had someone uh helping me so i was representing myself well no no i did this guy was helping me out but i had to go like up on the stage by myself i was so scared and you hear i remember hearing all the cases he's like graham stephen versus and then the name of the other person. I was terrified. Oh, yeah. And you walk up there and I'm like, everyone else looking at me. Yeah. But thankfully, I didn't do almost any of the talking.

The tenant did all the talking pretty much. And just dug himself in a hole because he didn't come with any information at all. That happens all the time. Yeah. Very common. So I've been to court once as well. I like jaywalking through a stop sign according to the cop. So like I went up to the stop sign.

Allegedly. Yeah, okay. It was like 11 p.m. at night and it was a four-way stop in a residential area. And I think I did a California stop. So I kind of rolled through it a little bit. Got pulled over and decided to take it to court, you know, so I could. Oh, gosh. You could make a full of yourself. No, no, no, no.

I would plead guilty. I'll get the traffic school. Yeah, you can get traffic school so you don't get the points on your record. Also can, like, lower the price of your thing. So, like, I went in with like a $250 ticket and went down like $220. So I saved like $30. And I also didn't get the points on my record. But I remember, I filmed this because I was so frustrated for like going through

stop sign because let's be honest not a lot of people come to a complete stop at stop signs where you feel the car like you know stop yeah drake calls it a roly exactly really not a stop exactly yeah exactly so i figured no one does that and there was a stop sign leaving the courthouse and i looked for the cop that came and pulled me over and i found him in the parking lot and i watched him drive out of the courthouse and he did not stop yeah i filmed it did and i went back to that courtroom and i went up to the person standing at the door. I'm like, I just caught the cop committing the exact same crime that I committed and why I'm here today. What can we do? How can we make this right? And he's all, yeah, you're going to have to go to like the police department and then like file all these reports

and everything. It's like, and what do I get out of that? Like, what do I get out of that? No, but I filmed it. It's like it's posted some random YouTube channel I have. Someone has to find it. Yeah. They have to, we have to make it go over. What would the title be of that? It's like cop pulls me over for running a stop sign, then runs a stop sign. Are you serious? Something like that. Yeah. It's like a 20-second clip. Yeah, we need to change that title, making something shorter. Yeah. Cop breaking the law, something like that.

Yeah. Oh, my God. Cop making a rollie. It was frustrating, yeah. Let's talk about different case scenarios, okay? Okay. So let's say if someone were to be making as much money as, let's say, Graham over here, what would that support court, like, verdict be like if you were to marry someone and then split?

Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck. salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habiniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Yeah, I was curious about this, because let's say in a scenario where, like, someone

makes, let's just say, you know, $20 million a year. Okay. Okay. The other person makes $200,000 a year. Okay. You're living as though you make $200,000 a year, even though the one person's making $10. How is child support dictated in a scenario like that? It depends on the needs and the lifestyle of those particular children.

Because child support in Texas, it is very simple. It's a calculation. It talks about your gross, your net. You know, you get the net from taking out the tax. taxes and everything like that. After you get the net, how many children do you have? And of course, giving you credit for any health insurance that you provide, right? Sure.

That is straight like that. Well, you have nuances where in the Texas Family Code, there are certain factors that you can ask for to get what's called above the guidelines child support. So let's say hypothetically, the children have a special diet. They can't eat anything gluten, right? So there's a chef that comes in, cooks these children's meals three to four times a day. They go to daycare in an exclusive neighborhood, an exclusive area. They have tutors that are world-renowned.

They're in golf programs with private sessions, all those type of things. Those are some of the things that you can then go into the course. and say, hey, I need child support a little bit more than what the guideline would be. But you have to meet that requirement before you go to court. What happens is in that same scenario, people feel like, oh, they make this amount of money. So I'm entitled to this amount of child support. It doesn't happen like that. I don't know if you all are familiar with Chris Brown has a child support case out of Houston, Texas.

I didn't know that. Chris Brown, the rapper. Chris Brown, the rapper. I didn't know that either. He has two kids now, I had no clue. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he has a child.

His case is out of Houston, Texas. And the mother of that child receives child support based on the cap. So in Texas, there is a cap. It's up to, well, at that time, it was a lot lower. But now it's $9,200 of your net resources. That's the amount of money that you can get. No matter how much money Chris Brown is worth, she's only entitled to that $9,200. $200 cap.

Well, like I said back then, it was like, I think it was $8,550 at the time that that case took place. So child support, she received like $2,0,2,300, something like that. It's not a lot of money. Well, people online were having reactions to it, right? They were like, Chris Brown is worth all of this money. Why isn't she entitled to more? Oh, my God, I'm going to Texas because it's so cheap.

And it's like, no, that's not how Texas law works. She didn't have any facts, according to the court documents, right? She didn't have any facts that described a lifestyle of the child that required anything extra. So she should get the bare minimum, the baseline. Well, when I say bare minimum, $2,300 is not bare minimum for the average person. But considering his income, it was the bare minimum. So absent anything showing that this child is, let's say, special needs or has anything going on that will require that extra care in terms of funding, you're going to get what the guidelines is. I thought it was to create a stable environment for the child so that when they go from one house to another, there's not a big discrepancy.

Wouldn't in that case there be a huge discrepancy between Chris Brown's lifestyle and getting paid $2,300 a month? That is a great question. You said Chris Brown's lifestyle. His lifestyle is not the determining factor. It's the lifestyle of the child. So in Texas, the hallmark is what's in the best interest of the child. It never has anything or it shouldn't have anything to do with the parents individually because then we would step in muddy waters, right?

Then you'll be talking about, oh, well, you're worth this. That means your child is entitled to this. And that's a scary way to look at things Because even if you're not someone who's Chris Brown, let's say you're a CEO who lives in Texas, you make $500,000, then if you base that off of, you know, lifestyle of that person that makes $500,000,

they would exceed what necessarily the child should receive based on what the law says. So it's on the needs of the child. It always starts there. Now is that every state or is that just Texas? Every state of a maximum? Every state has their own. I don't necessarily know if every state has their own maximum,

but every state does have a certain cap in guideline that they use in order to determine what someone is going to pay for child support. Child support in Texas closely resembles that of California. California is also a community property state like Texas. Now the amounts are different. So for one child in Texas, Texas is 20% of your net resources. In California, I believe, is 40. 40%. 40%? That's a lot. It is a lot. Which is why a lot of people come to Texas and have kids. But 40% up to a cap? Or is it

just 40% of net resource? 40% up to a cap. 40% up to their cap. Got it. Okay. I have a question. So what if they're making millions and millions of dollars? But it just so happened. that they set like a 15-year plan to grow their business, and they spend everything on business growth, and then they're only making like $100,000 a year. Like, can they go after those funds and say, no, you're using them to grow your business, or how does that work? That is a great question.

So in a situation like that, you'll need a little bit more of research, right? So I've seen cases where attorneys have hired what's called a forensic, forensic accountant, someone to actually come in and do the tracing and come and testify to where the money is actually going and what someone is actually making. Because you can separate the business from your personal. So even though your business may be making millions, you may truly only be making $100,000, which is typically what people want to be placed on child support for, right? So it requires a little bit in a situation like that.

It requires a little bit more research to actually find that. What I found people that have situations like that where their business is making a lot of money and they're trying to say they only make $100,000, they never separate the business from the personal. What do I mean by that? They don't have a, what do you call it, like a checking system that's writing them a check every two weeks or every so often.

They're literally transferring money from their business. account to their personal account. And when you do that, me as an attorney, I can look at that and do an average on a monthly basis, like how much you're transferring to yourself and say, hey, you're saying 100,000, but according to these transfers, and it links back to your personal account, it's coming up to $300,000. So in a situation like that, you don't ever want to do that because that's just not good for business, right?

Right. But then on top of that, you want to make sure that, you want to make sure that you, you're separating the two so you don't muddy the waters. Got it. Yeah. They call that commingling. So basically you're saying that in order to prove 100,000, they need to actually pull 100,000 from the business to the personal.

Everything else stays in the business. Correct. And the best way to do that is to not pay yourself personally like that. Get a checking system to where you're getting a, what do you call it, a W-2, getting a W-2, making sure it's on your tax return. all your documents look good. And the forensic accounting, that's the best person to do that tracing for you. If you have a regular CPA or someone like that who can do it, that would be great too.

But it's going to require someone else independent of yourself to come in and say that. Yeah. There was a very wealthy real estate developer in Los Angeles. He was married, I think, for only like two years. And his ex wanted, I think it was $75,000 a month. month from him to maintain her lifestyle and i was like what that made that made no sense to me but she was fighting it and and and this guy uh uh was basically he was a very prominent figure and he was trying to suppress all the news about this because she the the the more he said no the more she's like well

i'm gonna i'm gonna blow this up in this thing and now you're gonna see it on this publication it's gonna be everyone yeah right right and i don't know the outcome of that but uh yeah i have to look that one up the one I looked up recently, I cannot think his name. It just went viral on social media. People were upset about him paying so much money. I can't remember how much he has to give her for life. And everybody was upset about it. And I said, well, did any of you bother to read the article?

He agreed to it. And we were on Facebook. And they were like, wow in the world with he agreed to that. And I said, you have to think. media is only giving you so much of what actually happens in these people's lives, right? So if he knows he's worth this amount, because I looked it up, I think he was worth like $4.3 million, billion dollars. It must have been billion.

It was $4.3 billion. I cannot remember his name right now. But he agreed to pay so much money. I said, think about it. He's worth all of this. There are probably assets that he was able to maintain in order. to give her that money, right? So whatever it is that he has probably working behind the seasons or on the side,

it's the drop in the bucket to just give her what she's asking for. So it just really depends on the circuit. Wait, so in that case, she was paying her a lot of money? Yeah, it was a lot. And it was for the rest of her life, if I believe I read that correctly. The media is only giving you a very small glimpse of a 20-year marriage or a 30-year marriage. So it just really depends.

And a lot of these situations that you see with spousal maintenance, they've already been kind of groomed to be set up to have that lifestyle. So at a certain point, if you, I guess if you think about it from a legal standpoint and not necessarily a moral standpoint, because we typically like to look at everything from a moral standpoint, right? But if you look at it from a legal standpoint, if this person has been in this relationship with you, 20 years, they've raised the children, you have been, able to grow your business, focus on your business, do all of those things.

Is it legally right for them to just walk away with nothing? Right. You know what I mean? So from a legal standpoint, I can see it a little better. If it were a moral standpoint, I probably would have a little bit more of a different time. Like I do see a difference if one person is staying home, they're taking, they've taken time off from their work, they're out of the workforce, they're taking care of the children, they're supporting the family.

I think that, I mean, obviously, deserves to be compensated. But in like this other real estate guy's case, like she was, I think in her late 20s, she was like she's from Europe, perfectly capable, no kids, and 75,000 a month. This seems to me, you know. Well, how does she get to the United States from Europe? Was it one of those things that was like a mail order thing? And see, and that's another thing, you know, when I like to watch the ID channel a lot. Yeah.

So you see things come up like that a lot, you know, where people get online. They do like the mail order bride thing. And it's like, hey, I give you this amount of money if you come over here and marry me. So you never necessarily know. Who does that? Oh, it happens. Who pays the money? What's the website?

The person that's offering. You know, they have all these websites. So if the person lives in the United States, is that person that's paying? Or is it the person that lives elsewhere is paying? The person that lives in the United States is paying to have someone. fly out to them and then marry them. Yes. And it happens in a lot of European countries.

I mean, I've seen it happen a lot, right? Got it. If you watch the investigation discovery, I love that channel, by the way. ID, it happens quite frequently. I mean, at the end of it, somebody ends up dead. I mean, that's the whole purpose behind the channel, investigation, investigation discovery. Either the person that came over ends up dead or the person that brought them over ends up dead. I don't want anyone.

But yeah, it happens a lot more than what people know. And they are literally paying, you know, for them to come over here because a lot of the time they want the citizenship, right? So it's an even exchange. I want the citizenship. The only way I can get it is if I marry someone who's in the States. And you have to think the living conditions in a lot of places outside the U.S., they would do anything to come to the United States and have the opportunities here. So a lot of people And a lot of

I don't want to say it's most Probably mostly men But you know They're just you know They want to bring someone over And they want the affection and the love And hopefully love Maybe not

But it's very I mean it's transactional Yeah Sure yeah Yeah so I am newlywed And I'm listening to these Thank you And I'm listening to these giant words

Like Spousal support And I'm over here Like my heart's like like what? So I'm trying to figure this out, Vanda. What advice, you know, I understand if somebody deserves spousal support after, you know, like Graham said,

taking time off of their work to support the children, you know, be a homemaker. But what, you know, they're like preempts in place to protect certain assets. But what can somebody like me do who is, trying to set up for a successful future, what can I do to protect myself from overstated claims maybe of something like this? And I don't make a bunch of money, but let's just say I do. How can I protect myself and find something that's fair or just from a system being abused?

That is a great question. The first thing I would encourage people to do is to not start something you can't necessarily finish. The lavish gifts and the big allowances and not necessarily saying that everybody does that, right? But you can't really start off like that. Because if you start off like that and that's the expectation and you keep doing it, you've now set a trend. And when you go to court, hopefully you never go to court, right? But if you were to go to court, that's going to be the testimony.

He or she started doing this six years ago and they never stopped doing it, right? So you've kind of told the judge like, this is a status quo. So it needs to be maintained. So don't put yourself in a position where you're starting something that you may not necessarily want to finish at a later time. That's the biggest thing that I see happening in these types of cases involving spousal maintenance. So we talked about child support. Child support is within the name of itself. Support of the child, financial support of the child.

Spousal maintenance is essentially the same thing. It's financial support for the spouse for a certain amount of time. It can be something as temporary as six months. It can be something as long as a lifetime just depends on the circumstances. A lot of spousal maintenance cases, too, just like child support cases that involve where a person may have to pay child support indefinitely for the child's life. Like if it's a child that requires a lot of medical assistance as an adult, you know, something like that. So it's the same thing with the spouse. If a spouse is terminal and they require

a 24-hour nursing staff or something like that or they're in hospice and the spouse has always taken care of those bills and met those medical needs. Then in situations like that, the court can order that spouse to continue making those payments. So essentially spousal maintenance is similar to child support. The main difference is that you're paying it to your spouse or soon to be ex-spouse. versus giving it to the other parent for the support of the child. Something that I would recommend people doing, you mentioned pre-nump. A pre-nup protects assets that existed before the marriage.

So you do a pre-nump before the marriage actually takes place. You can also do a post-nump. And pre-numps is short for pre-numptial agreement. Post-numptial agreement means after the divorce. So anything that has been accumulated or may be accumulated during the marriage, you can write it out in your post-numptial agreement that it maintains a characteristic of separate property. I've seen that happen too. Like people got married, they had a house, wife wanted to keep it.

They did a post-nump and it was clear that the house was going to go to wife at the time that a divorce would occur. Now, my understanding, though, a pre-nup also dictates the terms of the marriage itself. So you could dictate in a pre-up, this is to, you know, this income is supposed to be separate property. this is going to be divided like this. Alamone, it could be this. It does. As long as a pre-num does not violate public policy or is illegal or anything like that, it's going to be upheld in court. A pre-numptial agreement cannot address the issue of child support at all.

It can't address, you know, what will happen with custody or anything with children. But anything absent a violation of public policy or, like I said, illegal, then it's going to be upheld because it's essentially a mutual agreement. between both parties. So what if there's like a relationship between two people and one person makes a lot of money, let's just say like 500 grand a year, the other person makes, you know, like 60, 70, 80,000 a year. And then the person that's making 60, 70, 80,000 dollars isn't aware that the other person is making $500,000. And they live at a low standard of, like, or not a low standard of living, but like an average income.

And then they get married and then they get divorced. But the person making all this money never disclosed to the other person that he's making this amount of money and continues to. live at that level. Jack, come on. It's an obvious question. What? It is a great question, though, because

why is it an obvious question? How does the other person that you're marrying not know how much money you make? Oh, you would be surprised. That's why they would be a surprise, Graham. You would be surprised. He actually asked a very legitimate question. Thank you very much. You are welcome.

Let's do it with me. I have. How do they not know? Really? Oh, you will be surprised. You'll be surprised, Graham. But they get married and they have no idea how much the other person makes. That happens a lot.

And you end up not, I mean, it's the same thing. Like when people are divorcing, it's like all the skeletons come out during a divorce. You find out about children that you didn't know existed. That were either created before your relationship started or created during your relationship. I mean, I've seen that happen. Same thing with assets, you know, hiding assets, putting things in other people's name. Although you are the one who is the custodian of it, it's in someone else's name, it's offshore. That kind of stuff happens.

So it is very, very possible that a spouse could be marrying someone and not necessarily know all of the money that is attached to them or the dead. Because a lot of people, you know, they live off charge cards. I've seen that happen too in divorces. Living off charge cars, living this very lavish lifestyle, and then next thing you know, you get these notices in the mail that are like three and four months. Like, hey, the bank is getting ready to seize your house. Wow. And you're like, wait a minute, I thought that my spouse was taking care of all of that.

And turns out they have a mountain of debt. There is no income. So it can happen both ways. There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life. life, like the SUV that handles everything from drop-off to off-road, and the car that hauls groceries and hockey teams, or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family.

Whatever you want, wherever you're going, start your search at ototrater.ca, Canada's car marketplace. I kept telling Jack, I'm like, there's no way you're getting married without the other person knowing how much it make. But... That's assuming everybody is honest. I mean... Because everybody's not.

I guess so what happens at Jackson's area? Right, in this case. In terms of a divorce like with spouses, mainly? Yeah, like you live at some lower standard of living that when you could, you know, achieve with the joint income and you just never disclose how much money you're making.

Well, it really depends. So in a lot of divorce cases, especially ones that don't involve children, it is encouraged that you go to mediation. Well, in order to settle in mediation, you have to disclose everything. And in a lot of divorce cases, everything that's not disclosed ends up getting revealed some type of way,

especially if the attorneys do what's called discovery. Discovery is just the fancy word to say, hey, give me all this information. So you, well, Texas law has changed, so you have to give this information up front now. It used to be where you sent it to the other person, they had 30 days to give it to you. Now, from the time that a case is filed and the other person responds or files an answer to the case, they have to produce all of these documents up front to now kind of circumvent the scenario that you're talking about because then you would have that lower income spouse

pretty much walking away with nothing and the spouse that has more money walking away with everything. So in my opinion, the way that Texas law kind of does it now, they're called the initial disclosures where you have to give this stuff up front, I think it kind of helps with making sure that doesn't happen as often. I don't want to say it doesn't happen anymore, but it doesn't happen as often as it used to. The best solution to that, Jack, I just came up with this.

I could just pay you less. Why are you saying this is directed towards me? I'm just saying so my question was purely hypothetical. It didn't have to do with anyone. But just in case, I think we should probably, you know, take it down a little. You don't pay me anything. I don't pay you anything. No, you don't.

Well, okay, we could we could keep it that way. Sure. Graham, can I get a pay cut too while we're at? Yes, Alex. You can need less too. That is hilarious. Communication is key in any relationship, and I see that falling by the wayside. In a lot of cases, they end up in divorce.

They just don't communicate with each other. You have to communicate. You have to be open and honest about finances. I cannot stress that enough. Being open and honest about finances, good, bad, and ugly, you have to disclose all of it. whether you want to or not. Yeah. So something that we've talked about is we potentially want to adopt or have a child.

And the one thing that Kelsey and I, as of now, and obviously it might change, is we want it to be 50, 50 in regards to parenting, right? Okay. And it may not go that way depending on our schedule or, you know, whatever life may bring our way. And we'll discuss it at the time. But I mean, assuming that we go 50, 50 on taking care of the child here, Is there anything that like we can do?

Because you said you can't include children on a pre-up. So that doesn't mean that we can sign some sort of document that says if we split, you know, we're just going even like there's no money exchange. Like I can't do that. Is that that illegal? Well, I wouldn't necessarily say it's illegal. It just violates public policy in terms of putting it into an actual agreement. if you all are going to adopt, though, you can do, what is that called? I saw it happen in another state.

It didn't necessarily happen in Texas. They had an actual agreement between the two of them that outlined what the parenting roles were going to be, not upon the time of a divorce at the time that they were married. People should do that when they have a kid to begin with. Well, I mean, you should. A parenting agreement. So it's kind of like, but in Texas, you usually see a parenting agreement after someone is placed on child support. This situation was different.

They adopted a child and outlined before any divorce or child support or anything like that what the parental roles were going to be for each parent. And I believe this case, I want to say Arkansas, but I could be wrong, but it was a same-sex couple. It was two females. and they outlined what each person's roles would be when it comes to parenting with the child. Eventually, they did go through a divorce and it got really messy because then it ended up not having anything to do with the parenting roles. It was the parent they carried the child trying to say that the other parent was not the parent. So they were able to, the courts were able to use that parenting agreement between them to show that,

okay, this is the parent because if you didn't think it was the parent, because if you didn't think it was the parent, you wouldn't have agreed to that. Right, right. But yeah, putting something, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be in writing, right? If you're talking about adopting a child with your spouse. But I think it is important for parents to outline what the parental roles are. You should not just let one parent take 100% role on everything. That's, you know, feeding the child, clothing the child, taking the child to school, picking them up from school, scheduling their doctor's appointments, dental appointments. One parent shouldn't do that solely

because that's when you start getting into trouble. And you mentioned you want a co-parent or do a 50-50 split. Everything you do during your marriage has to be 50-50. And that number, I really don't like the term 50-50 because nothing really is

50-50 in general, right? Someone at some point is always going to do more than the other one. But as long as in terms of parenting, you guys are sharing responsibilities. As long as you do that, you should be fine. But you're not getting a divorce. You're not getting a divorce. So you don't have to worry about that. Well, thanks. And so the other thing that you were mentioning, too, about not establishing a trend, right, when it comes to certain

gifts and stuff to avoid maybe abuse of the, what is it, spousal maintenance? Yeah, spousy maintenance. So you're saying this year, what I could do to avoid that is maybe not give any Christmas gifts. No, that's not what I'm saying. I knew that's where you're going on. You can give Christmas gifts. Just keep it under $10. You know, you just have to, there's a difference between, you know, showering your spouse with gifts every now and then,

anniversary birthdays versus, you know, some of the things I've seen where they have an allowance of $10,000 a month. Oh, geez. Right? That's their allowance. And that doesn't include the cost of health insurance, car note, car insurance, it doesn't include any of these things. Because I've seen that happen.

And when you maintain that lifestyle like that for some of these 10, 15 year marriages, how can you then get to court and say, Judge, I can't afford to keep maintaining this? Well, what have you been doing for the past 10 or 15 years? So that's where you kind of get into trouble with that. Interesting. So what you're saying is just, you know, as long as you're being. fair as long as you know you're not trying to max out credit cards live above your beans it should hopefully the court should find a good solution for you guys to have a fair

split should that happen oh yeah and ultimately you won't when it doesn't involve kids you want it to be equitable you use their word gram earlier you definitely wanted to be equitable you want the other person to be able to live you want the other person to be able to provide for their children if children are involved. If no children are involved, you want them to be able to maintain some of the same things that they were doing. So it wouldn't necessarily be equitable if they aren't able to do that anymore. Or for the flip side,

that other person, it wouldn't necessarily be equitable to them if you've maintained doing something for so long that they've become accustomed to. That's a part of their lifestyle to then sweep, you know, snatch the rug from under the, their feet. I don't think that's equitable either. So yeah, just be fair. What about this? What are some red flags that you've seen in relationships to watch out for? A lot. First off, if the person has another child, if the person has another child, if they are talking bad about their child's

parent, that's always going to be a red flag. Always. And it never fails. I have cases where, you know, they were dating. They thought they liked each other. And that stuff was going on. And then next thing you know, they're in child support court because they have a kid. And it's like, okay, history told you, right? That you were going to be in this position because they used to say these type of things about the other parent to you. So that's a huge red flag to pay attention to another red flag to pay attention to is a parent that does not take care of their kids at all. You definitely have to pay attention to that. Don't take care of their kids at all or do it when it's convenient for them or they're not providing any financial support whatsoever or not really in the child's life.

Those are some things, you know, that will definitely, if you're not careful, will end you up in child support court. I mean, there are plenty of others, but those are the ones that poppy media. into my mind when you're thinking about child support. Wow. I agree. I think the ability to split amicably with someone is, it tells you a lot about their character. For example, let's say I'm on a date with this girl and she starts negative talking her ex.

Immediate red flag. It is many reasons. For many reasons. Yeah. Yeah. It is a red flag because just think about it. There is something good you can find in everybody. Right.

At some point, right? And to just speak negatively about them. Now, the relationship may have ended bad, but you dated them. So at some point, there was something good to say about them. So you either just talk about, you know, the situation and how it ended, maybe what you could have done differently because it's two people, right? You play a role in it, but to just bash and trash talk to other person. Yeah, that's always going to be a rich. Reminds me of one date I went on.

This must have been like eight years ago, a while ago. But I went on this date, and I forget how we even. met, but went on the date, the entire date was her talking about her ex. Yeah. The entire date. And then it was revealed towards the end of the date. I've never in my life walked out and just like... Wait, this is the one you walked out on?

Tell me about this. Yeah. Did I say on the podcast? Did I? Maybe. Did you say you were going to the bathroom? Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. You know what came back? No. Oh my gosh. But she had also revealed something about like she was also dating someone else, but it wasn't official and she didn't know if he'd liked her or not. And I'm like, why am I here? Oh, yeah. That's another reflake.

So, yeah, so I excused myself to the bathroom because here's the thing. It's like I and here's, and she ordered something expensive too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I always, if I'm going out to eat, I'd like it where they're not ordering like the most expensive thing on the eye because I'll order kind of cheap and, you know, I'm not like looking at what you, but, but, you know, if she's getting something that's like $50 and mine's 15, you know, maybe there's something, something there. But yeah, I got something cheap and she's like orders like all the expensive stuff.

And so I'm like, I'm not going to pay for that. And I'm not going to ask to split it because I got my thing. She got hers. I left. Right. I left. And that's another way. Never done that.

And didn't she text you afterwards? Yeah, she texted me afterwards. At first, yeah, she kept texting me. I didn't respond. And then I think she texted again like, it was like a week later asking like another question about meeting after I don't know. It was some weird stuff. She still wanted to meet out with you after you live.

It was such a long, it was such a long time. I don't remember exactly the text, but it was along those lines. Oh, yeah, you definitely dodged a bully. She's crazy. Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember her first text afterwards, like, she was like, what happened, what happened? And then, like, five days later, something, she was like, would you be pissed if your best friend pretended that their grandma was dying, but it turned out they didn't? I was like, what? She texted you that?

Something it was something. Oh, get out of there, man. Get away. It was like out of nowhere. Lying dead grandma's ignored. I'm not dealing with that. Not dealing with that. She sounds like the ID channel material.

Gosh, yeah. What questions do you have for us? We always like to flip it on the guest, whatever you want to ask us, you could ask us. Okay, what made you all get into this podcast? I think it's so awesome. I follow you on Instagram. Oh, cool.

Thank you. Yeah. You're welcome. So what started the ice coffee hour? What started the ice coffee hour was Jack's idea, and Jack wanted to start a podcast. And I figured, well, you know, if it's just an hour, a week and we could just, you know, goof off and film a video and monetize a conversation.

We may as well do it. And I really enjoyed it. And there was a period, you know, a few months in where it just, it was so slow. And Jack was like, now, we got to keep it going. And we posted every week and we did not want to miss an episode. So we just kept it every single week. We have not missed an episode. Good.

Have we missed any yet? No. No. We've never not posted. No. We've posted late, maybe twice. Yeah. And I figured a long-form content type of more like candid video would be a better way for Graham

to connect with. with his audience and really like appeal to his base. I love you. And the iced coffee hour I've noticed for those that do like watch all like every single piece of content, whether that be like Graham Stefan show ice coffee hour, Graham Stefan, even this to family. The ice coffee is a lot of people's favorites because you really like we get into like the nitty gritty here.

And I feel like a lot more personality comes out on the iced coffee hour. I like it's more candid. And every episode is different, which is what I like. We rarely have the same person on twice. When we do, it's always about a different topic. Right. But I remember... Just to keep the engagement going.

Yeah. Yeah. But I remember telling Jack in the very beginning, one of the biggest benefits of the podcast for me was getting to meet new people. And it's strange, by the way. If you meet someone, it's hard just to say, hey, do you want grab dinner? Yeah. Do you want to grab lunch, get a coffee?

Because it's boring. But anytime you say, hey, I want to come on the podcast, everyone says yes. Oh, yeah. No one would say, yeah, let's do a dinner. No, no one does that. The podcast, everyone said yes. Yeah. And it's great.

I was happy that you reached out to me. And I was like, wait a minute. Here's a blue check next to his name. Who is this? And so I had to look it up. And I was like, okay, this is pretty cool. Because a lot of people since the show have reached out to me on YouTube. And I love meeting new people.

It is like my thing. I love meeting new people. Because I don't really think you necessarily meet a stranger per se. You just haven't crossed paths yet. Yeah. Right? So, yeah. I'm excited.

I was definitely going to say, yeah, when you said podcast and when I saw you were in Vegas, I was like, we're going to Vegas for our anniversary. This is perfect. But see, had I said, let's grab dinner or something or let's grab a, I wouldn't, I mean, let's grab lunch or coffee. It would have been harder for you to even ask that in the first place. You want to go to dinner? Hey, are you coming to Vegas?

I want to go to dinner. Yeah. Yeah. Then there's always like, what's the motive behind it? Yeah. Why dinner? At least at the podcast, like come on the pod because we could talk. Right.

But, yeah. So it definitely helps. But you'll find that YouTube is probably some of the best networking ever because everyone is on YouTube. And everyone now in my life has come from YouTube. Pretty much everybody that I can think. Besides family, it's like everyone I talked to is YouTube. Yeah, everybody that has reached out to me have come through the YouTube channel, through Instagram, some sort of social media medium. Yeah.

Now, I'm going to tell you what you need. You should absolutely start posting these videos on Facebook if you're not doing that already. Oh, yeah. I don't do it as often. You got to get consistent with. with it you got to post every episode that you're doing uh edit it down posted on facebook okay uh then do instagram reels same thing just post that to reels and then tic talk okay that one video that i watched with the with the lady what was it she didn't want to work and her husband was making more

money and she was like oh that was tough the guy who was a mechanic yeah yeah and you said well you could go work and she's like i don't want to work yeah that would go viral that video if you took that down the best 60 seconds of that video. And you posted that on TikTok. That's a million views. I sure will. I sure will. Like I said,

I'm running for judge. So what does that mean exactly? We haven't heard this. So I've been practicing law for the past eight years. Now I'm running for family court judge. It's the 250 fifth family district court that's in Dallas County. So pretty much this court needs restoration, like literally. From, you name it.

from a judge banning people like attorneys out of the courtroom, which is a big no-no, because the courtroom belongs to the people, right? Doing things like that, showing bias on the bench, clear bias. You know, different things like that, I just was tired of seeing it. And in my community, I'm born and raised in Dallas. There's a specific area in Dallas called Oak Cliff. I don't know if you all are familiar with football or anything, but the South Oak Cliff High School is a high school located in Oakland.

Cliff. They just won the state championship. And it's been what 60, 61 years or something like that. So it was a big deal, right? So I'm one of those people. I'm prominent in my community. I'm well known. I'm always giving back. And I thought to myself, how can I say that I'm a true leader of this community? If I sit back and watch something like this continue to happen. So it was like, Wanda, you're just going to have to walk away from your nice salary, your nice comforts of what you're used to, you're going to have to sacrifice yourself and make a difference. So instead of being someone that complained, which that's not me at all, I don't just sit up and complain about anything. I'm going to put myself out there. So that's exactly what I did. So now I'm running for Judge. When I win, I would actually take the bench on January

1st of 2023, which means I can no longer sit as Judge Von DeBie. But exciting new things coming for the show. But does that mean you get replaced if that happens? In terms of my show? Yeah. Well, yes and no. So I want to give you too much. It's going to be fun. All right. The next part of the, what do you call it, the growth of support court would judge Fonda B. It's going to be exciting. All right. But the thing is, my only thing is it needs to be you. Oh, well, it's still going to be. Yeah. If you're the person between the two people, if it's not you, the show is, you can't do the show. No. I don't know. I don't know. It's hard. Well, like you can't replace a judge Judy. Like when she goes, she goes. It's like she's made the show. I feel like you've made the show.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Depending on who the person it is you get and where you actually spin it, it can be very successful. Okay. And that's where we're headed with that. Okay. So that's why I say, I can't tell you too much because it's going to be awesome. Trust me. I will still have some role with the show. Okay. Because as a judge, I can still consult, right? Like how we're. sitting here on the podcast. So I can still do the reactions and the educational segment after the fact. Okay. But who will actually be in that role will be a little bit more exciting.

All right. All right. See, I liked your approach because I felt you were really fair and nice. Oh, yeah. And like you weren't demeaning to the people, but you were, you said the same things that I was thinking. Yeah. So that's what I liked about it.

Yeah. And it's going to be like that, the direction that the show will go once I win. Okay. I think you'll like it. Cool. And you're going to say, wonder, this is awesome.

Why didn't I think of that when we were talking on the podcast? I think you're going to like it. You just have to stay tuned. All right. But until then, you will get all of me. All right.

We expect it. All right. Sounds good. Anything else you wanted to bring up or ask us? I don't have any other questions. Just thank you for the other Thank you so.

Thank you so. It's really nice meeting you. Yeah. Do you like coffee? Do both of you like coffee? Not as much as I used to. When I was in law school, when I was studying for the bar, I kind of got away from coffee to keep myself from being so jittery.

Got it. And so now I drink coffee maybe once or twice a year. Once or twice a year? What about your husband? He doesn't drink coffee at all. At all. No. He doesn't like it.

What? Wow. Okay. Well, then. Let's get your day started off, right? Yeah. I was going to, bankroll coffee was going to provide. you with some complimentary coffee if you would like it.

So the offer's there or you could gift it to somebody else. Please gift it. I would love for a coffee drinker to drink it. I could give it to you and you could decide who's worthy of it. That's a good idea. My mom and my sister both love coffee. Well, thank you so much for coming on. It's really nice meeting you.

Thank you guys for watching. Pop a sub. Pop a like. Yes, yes. Subscribe. You want to tell them to subscribe because 50% of people don't subscribe. Definitely. like, subscribe, and share the video, okay?

And tell them to get their free stock down below in the description. It's worth all the way of $2,000 when they use the code Grammat, sign of Republic. Say that. What did he just say? No, to say it. Say it. Well, thank you so much. Just freestyle it.

Drop in the comment? Yeah, that's it. That's it. That's it. Okay, close enough. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thanks.

Oh, that was so fun.