Category Archives: General Divorce

Child Custody, General Divorce

Some tips for testifying in your child custody case

Testifying at your child custody trial can be a tremendously stressful thing. I know, because I’ve been on both sides of that. I have examined countless witnesses on the stand, and I’ve been a witness, too. Here are a few tips to maximize your effectiveness on the stand and make it as comfortable and productive an experience as possible:

  1. Take some water with you. One of the body’s responses to extreme stress is that the mouth can become dry. It can get to a level where it makes it difficult to speak, so if water is available to you at your table, take some to the witness stand with you. I’m of the opinion that it’s better to have it with you than to have to stop and ask for it. If you’re going to be testifying for a long period, you’re probably going to need some water at some point. Trust me on this one.
    2. Prepare with your attorney. Many people do not adequately prepare with their attorney for their direct examination testimony, and that’s a big mistake. It is also true that simply memorizing the answer to every single question ahead of time is a mistake as well, because that always seems forced and disingenuous. I like to give my client’s a list of the topics that I will ask about, and highlight some important facts and details that I want to make sure gets communicated to the judge. It is also important to stay as relaxed as possible, because tension tends to affect memory in a negative way. I have found that the best way to prepare for direct examination is to practice. I sit down with my clients, or at least go through a test run on the phone, prior to trial so that they can become more comfortable with being questioned and so that I can identify any potential trouble spots in their testimony. As with most things, the more you practice, the better you will perform.
    3.  Also prepare for cross-examination. Many attorneys don’t spend enough time in this area with their clients, and if you’re facing an attorney who is skilled at cross-examination, that can be a costly mistake. Of course you can’t know ahead of time what questions you’re going to face on cross, but you can try to anticipate at least some of the “dirt” that the other attorney might use to try to trip you up. Two keys on cross-examination: 1) do not let the opposing attorney anger you and cause you to lose your temper and 2) answer ONLY the question that is asked and then stop talking. The first key is obvious: it’s a bad look if you lose your composure on the stand and say or do something out of character. If you do, it will probably negatively impact the judge’s view of you, and that is critical. You only have a short amount of time to make an impression, and you don’t want your judge to think that you’re an anger freak or unstable. The second key is very hard to do, but it is critical. The example I use with my clients is the question “Do you know what time it is?” If you are asked this question, the answer I want you to give is “yes.” And that’s it. If the attorney wants to know what time it is, he or she can ask “What time is it?” It’s a different question, so make the attorney ask it. The point is not to volunteer information. If you start rambling, you will give the opposing attorney more to attack you with, not so much with the time question, but with other questions about topics much more important to your case. Your answers should be as short as possible – yes or no if the question is one that will tolerate a yes or no answer. If your answers are short and to the point, it is likely that the opposing attorney is going to ask fewer questions, and that’s a good thing. If you ramble and give him or her ammunition to use against you, though, you could have to endure a longer cross, and that’s never fun. And remember that the opposing attorney IS going to “score some points” so to speak. By its nature, cross-examination is mostly unpleasant and can feel as if you’re being attacked. And in a sense, you are. The key is to remain calm, answer the questions and remember that YOUR attorney will get an opportunity to “clean up” any “bad” testimony after the opposing attorney has finished with his or her cross.
    4.  Don’t lean toward the microphone when you are speaking. Many people don’t realize that you don’t have to be that close to the microphone for it to pick up what you say. Most courtroom microphones are wired into some sort of digital recording device anyway, and it will pick up without your having to lean toward it. Ignore the microphone unless the judge says something to you about it, and he or she probably won’t. It’s best to assume a relaxed posture on the witness stand with your back against the chair. Speak clearly and with enough volume to be heard, but you don’t have to force it. I call the best posture “relaxed confidence.”
General Divorce

Four behaviors that predict divorce

4 behaviors are the most reliable predictors of divorce:

Ever been in the middle of a heated argument when suddenly the other person pulls out their phone and starts texting?

If the answer is yes, and if you find it happening constantly, we hope that person isn’t your significant other.

This behavior, known as stonewalling, is one of four reactions that John Gottman, a psychologist at the University of Washington and the founder of the Gottman Institute, has identified as a telltale sign that all is not well with a married couple.

In fact, when Gottman and University of California-Berkeley psychologist Robert Levenson lumped stonewalling together with three other behaviors — contempt, criticism, and defensiveness — and measured how often they occurred within the span of a 15-minute conversation, they found they could predict which marriages would end in divorce with striking precision.

When the psychologists added questions about things like relationship satisfaction and how many times the research subjects had thoughts about separating to the mix, they could predict which marriages would end in divorce 93% of the time.

The figure, which comes from a 14-year study of 79 couples living across the US Midwest (21 of whom divorced during the study period), was so striking it spurned the researchers to label the four behaviors “the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”

While that initial study, published in 2002, was small and focused on a specific population, a decade of research into marriage and divorce has lent further support to the idea that divorce is associated with specific negative behaviors.

One recent study of 373 newlywed couples, for example, found that couples who yelled at each other, showed contempt for each other, or shut off conversation about an issue within the first year of marriage were more likely to divorce as far as 16 years down the road.

So what do these four “apocalyptic” behaviors actually look like in a relationship?
1. Contempt

Contempt, a virulent mix of anger and disgust, is far more toxic than simple frustration or negativity. It involves seeing your partner as beneath you, rather than as an equal.

This behavior alone, says Gottman, is “the kiss of death” for a relationship.

Take an everyday argument about buying groceries, for example. When you come home and realize your significant other has picked up habanero peppers rather than bell peppers for tonight’s stir-fry dinner, do you listen while he explains that perhaps you didn’t ever tell him what type of pepper you wanted? Do you think this over, and, when you realize that maybe he’s right, do you apologize? Or do you adopt an attitude and think to yourself, What kind of an idiot doesn’t know that bell peppers are for stir-fry and habaneros are for salsa?

The reason contempt is so powerful is because it means you’ve closed yourself off to your partner’s needs and emotions.

If you constantly feel smarter than, better than, or more sensitive than your significant other, you’re not only less likely see his or her opinions as valid, but, more important, you’re far less willing to try to put yourself in his or her shoes to try to see a situation from his or her perspective.
2. Criticism

Like contempt, criticism involves turning a behavior (something your partner did) into a statement about his or her character (the type of person he or she is).

Say your partner has a nasty habit of leaving his or her used cereal bowl — calcified, uneaten cereal-and-milk remnants and all — around the house.

Do you wait until he or she gets home to mention that the behavior bothers you, and gently suggest that he or she put the emptied bowl in the sink or dishwasher instead? Or do you think to yourself, “Why am I dating the type of person who abandons half-eaten cereal bowls around the house?”

Over time, these personal detractions can add up, feeding darker feelings of resentment and contempt.
3. Defensiveness

If you find yourself regularly playing the victim in tough situations with your partner, you might be guilty of being defensive.

Take being late to a cousin’s wedding, for example. Are you the first to say, “It wasn’t my fault!” when you finally arrive? Or do you think it over before you accuse the other person, realizing you probably shouldn’t have taken a 2-hour shower when you only had an hour to get ready?

Taking responsibility for your role in a tough situation can be uncomfortable, but it’s often what keeps a bad situation from escalating, says Gottman.

He’s found that for couples who divorce within the first several years of their marriage — one of the times when divorce rates are highest — “entering negativity is like stepping into a quicksand bog. It’s easy to enter but hard to exit.”
4. Stonewalling

You know when an argument is about to start. You can feel your heart rate increase and your voice get just a tiny bit louder. But the moment things start to get heated, do you pull out your phone, walk away, or simply ignore your partner?

Blocking off conversation can be just as toxic for a relationship as contempt because it keeps you from addressing an underlying issue.

We know: Getting into arguments with your partner is the opposite of a good time. But these temporarily uncomfortable situations are oftentimes the place where you can start to come to big realizations about your own behavior and solve potentially damaging problems.
Don’t panic

It’s important to keep in mind that occasionally displaying any one of these behaviors — or all of them, even — is completely normal.

It’s when these negative behaviors happen so frequently that they replace more positive interactions with your partner that can be cause for concern.

Simply recognizing that you’re doing something that could be hurting your relationship is the first step to actively combating it. If you can figure out how to avoid the behavior or replace it with a more positive one, you’ll probably make the relationship even stronger.

From January 30, 2015 www.businessinsider.com

General Divorce

Settle vs. sue

When you have decided that divorce is inevitable and you lawyer up, you have a choice to make. And it’s an important one. You have two paths you can travel. One involves negotiating prior to filing a lawsuit, with the hope that your marital issues can be resolved in a document called a Separation Agreement. The other is sending your lawyer to the courthouse to file a lawsuit and begin the litigation process. Two things should drive this decision: how much money do you have and how much emotional energy are you willing to spend? There are certainly those cases where settlement just isn’t an option, usually because the two sides have too much bitterness and anger or the two sides are just too far apart in their perceived outcomes. If your case is one of those, you might not be able to escape court. Most cases, however, can be settled without court action. In fact, most cases settle anyway, whether a lawsuit is filed or not. So if you’re one of those folks who is either limited in money or emotional energy, you would be wise to consider hiring an attorney who has an eye on the ultimate goal of the CLIENT, which is a fair settlement, and not an eye on how much money he or she can extract from you by keeping the hate going in a long, drawn-out court proceeding. It is easy to find such an attorney. They are everywhere. They will join in the spouse-bashing and agree with everything you say. They will not tell you about the potential limitations of your case, the negative effects of handling a case that way on your kids or advise you not to go to court. Instead, they will talk tough about ‘destroying’ the other spouse and his or her attorney. And in the end, you will likely get about the same outcome that you could have gotten for far less money had you hired an attorney who focused on YOUR best interest instead of theirs.