Estate Planning & Appealing Your Divorce: When Final Doesn’t Mean Finished
You’re done with your divorce. That means you’re done with lawyers, right? Not necessarily! In today’s episode, Seth and Pete talk about a few cases in which you may need to talk to a lawyer again – if you want to appeal your divorce, and for post-divorce estate planning.
It’s a rare thing for judges to make mistakes when it comes to divorce cases, but it does happen. That’s when you’d want to appeal your divorce. Seth and Pete talk about other situations that may require going this route, and who you’d talk to for it. We also talk about the difference between appealing your case and a ‘motion to modify.’
While appealing divorces isn’t as common, everyone going through a divorce should immediately do post-divorce estate planning. You’ve just gone through a divorce. All of your financial paperwork is already in your lawyer’s hands. It’s the perfect time to talk to an estate planning attorney. Plus, you want to make sure your ex is no longer included in your will or listed as beneficiary, right?
They’re very important topics in today’s episode. Plus, we have three listener questions. The first is a follow-up to our recent conversation about vocation evaluations, particularly for those also dealing with mental health issues. The second asks about client confidentiality. The third is how to approach your lawyer if you feel their paralegals are making mistakes in your case. Great questions! Tune in!
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright:
Welcome to How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships from True Story FM. Today is what happens when you try to put too much bread in your toaster.
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show everyone. I'm Seth Nelson. As always, I'm here with my good friend, Pete Wright. Today we're talking about two critical areas in your divorce that remind you that your final judgment doesn't mean you've reached the end, post divorce estate planning and the divorce appeal.
Pete Wright:
Oh, Seth, you know what? These topics have been teased out over the course of this season, and our producer, Andy, was kind enough to flag these for us, and it turns out I need a little education myself. And so I brought it up to you the other day and I said, what are you going to call this, Seth? How are we going to talk about this? It seems like two unrelated topics. And you said, no problem. We're going to call it, oh shit, I need another lawyer?
Seth Nelson:
Exactly. I like that we laugh about it because we like to laugh on this show, and it's just sad. You get to the end of your divorce process. And whether it took three months because it was uncontested and you hammered it out, or whether it took three years or longer, but you get your final judgment. You're supposed to be divorced and you are. You are divorced, but there's all these things within the final judgment that you're supposed to do. You have to close bank accounts, you have to change the title of cars, you have to transfer money. You might have to get a qualified domestic relations order entered, a QDRO where we had Matthew Lundy on that talked about QDROs. You might still be having parenting issues.
We've talked a lot about what happens after divorce and you're still arguing. But it's either an emotional time where someone's like, thank God it's over. They're so happy, or that they're very sad that their marriage ended. And then after we finish everything up, I write them a closing letter saying it's been a pleasure and an honor to serve as your counsel during this difficult time, but there's a couple things I got to talk to you about and you're not going to like it. And one of them is, the other side has 30 days to appeal the final judgment.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, this feels like something, this is the thing that kind of hit me sideways, because it just really feels like something that I don't know that we've talked about. What does it mean to appeal the final judgment in a divorce? Doesn't the final judgment end with you being divorced?
Seth Nelson:
This is one of those terms, the legal term final is what the common term colloquial is, right, when we deal with our legal nomenclature. So when you get a final judgment, that means the case is over. The trial judge is done doing what they need to do unless they reserve jurisdiction, reserve power to do something else. So for example, you can get a final judgment that says the wife is entitled to attorney's fees and I'm going to reserve on attorney's fees, and you can come back and argue over how much the husband's supposed to pay of the wife's attorney's fees. So the final judgment itself could not be final. But let's assume everything is done. Attorney's fees have been paid, everything is done, but you went to a trial. If you or your lawyer think that the trial judge made a mistake, then you're allowed to go appeal your case.
Pete Wright:
Okay, so we're talking about process, misinterpretation of law, that kind of a thing?
Seth Nelson:
It could be did not let evidence in for the judge to consider. He totally didn't let a witness testify. There was that smoking gun document that he said, nope, it's not admitting evidence. I'm not going to consider that and making my ruling. The reverse is true. He let something into evidence that he considered that he should not have considered. Or he ran the trial perfectly. He made no mistakes in running the trial. But when he wrote his decision, his final judgment, and he says, this kid is two years old and it's going to be a 50/50 time sharing schedule, and it's going to be two days with mom and two days with dad, and then the weekend with mom, and the next week it's going to be two days with dad, two days with mom, and that weekend with dad, a two, two, three schedule.
But when the kid hits kindergarten, I'm going to change it to a week on, week off, because I don't want the kid changing overnight during school In Florida, that's called prospective based decision making. You're saying, hey, in the future, I'm going to change this plan. That's not allowed in Florida law because you have to act in Florida law what's in the best interest of the child, and there's no way for the judge to know what's in the best interest of the child in the future.
Pete Wright:
So you can come back, even though the judge wrote that down, you can go back and appeal it because that's illegal in Florida.
Seth Nelson:
That is against Florida case law. And you go to the appellate court, that is the second district court of appeals for the area that I practice in mostly. We have six districts.
Pete Wright:
Is the appellate court, they take appeals from all cases or is it just family law?
Seth Nelson:
All cases.
Pete Wright:
Okay, so now we're dealing with a different set of judges.
Seth Nelson:
A whole different set of judges, a whole different court. A whole different legal proceeding.
Pete Wright:
The question of the appeal then, if I understand this right, isn't going to be about re-litigating your divorce. It's going to be litigating the process. Right?
Seth Nelson:
Exactly. At the appellate level, there will be no witnesses, there will be no new evidence presented. Let's say I'm the guy appealing. I file my initial brief and I say, judge, here's the record from the lower court, from the trial court, and here are the issues. The five issues I think the court got wrong or the three issues where the judge made a mistake. And it's all written down in a, it's called a brief, which is like 20 pages, right, 30 pages. It's anything but brief. But it's called a brief. And I write down and I cite to the case law and why the judge got it wrong, and then I cite to the record. Then the other side, after I submit my brief gets to do a reply brief. They get to say, okay, this is what Mr. Nelson argued. Now we're going to argue this. And then I get a chance to do one more little shot at a smaller, even like five pages. No, right, because then you got to narrow it down.
Pete Wright:
Sure.
Seth Nelson:
The judges do not have to invite the lawyers in to argue the case. They can decide it on the briefs on paper.
Pete Wright:
Wow.
Seth Nelson:
Now, if you request oral argument, it's called, you can go wherever the court happens to be sitting in Tampa, St. Pete, wherever they are. You'll get assigned a panel of three judges and you'll go make your legal arguments. And then, that three panel judge, that judge, that panel of three judges, excuse me, will write an opinion.
Pete Wright:
And that opinion stands.
Seth Nelson:
If you don't like it, you can try to go to the Florida Supreme Court.
Pete Wright:
I imagine your family court judge loves this kind of stuff. They just love it when their final rulings are taken to appeal.
Seth Nelson:
They don't mind being appealed.
Pete Wright:
Oh, okay.
Seth Nelson:
They mind if the appellate court overturns them.
Pete Wright:
Oh, of course. Yeah, I would mind that too.
Seth Nelson:
They're the ones grading the paper.
Pete Wright:
Right, right.
Seth Nelson:
But if they get appealed and they said, you did it right, check. We're good there.
Pete Wright:
We're going to wash our hands of this. Okay.
Seth Nelson:
Right.
Pete Wright:
How often does this actually happen? I mean, do you take a lot of your cases to appeal?
Seth Nelson:
I wouldn't say a lot. First off, I was very honored and fortunate that when I graduated law school, I was a law clerk for an appellate judge. And the judge that I got to be a law clerk for was Judge Godbold, and he was on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, and that's at the federal level. So any case coming from a trial judge in Florida, Georgia or Alabama went to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. And if you didn't like what the 11th Circuit had to say, your only stop after that is the United States Supreme Court. And the US Supreme Court hears about 80 cases a year. They don't have to hear a case.
Pete Wright:
Your divorce case is not going to make it to the Supreme Court is what we're saying.
Seth Nelson:
The only divorce case that made it all the way up to the Supreme Court, quasi divorce case, was gay marriage.
Pete Wright:
Oh, that's a good point.
Seth Nelson:
In one of the arguments against gay marriage in the Supreme Court was that this is a state issue, not a federal issue. But to your point. But what I just described is horrible. It is time consuming. It is expensive. And let's say the judge made a mistake. What is your remedy? What is your outcome? What are you asking for? Usually you're asking the appellate court to what's called reverse the decision. Say, nope, you're not allowed to do it, and remand it, send it back down to the trial judge to fix it.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Is it the same team? Are you going to get the same judge?
Seth Nelson:
If that judge has not been rotated off the family law bench, the answer is yes.
Pete Wright:
And then they really love it.
Seth Nelson:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
They love it a lot. Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Exactly. And then sometimes the appeal isn't written, the opinion isn't written clearly, and you try to fix it at the appellate level, they don't fix it. Now you're back down on a remand in front of the trial judge, and the trial judge goes, I don't understand what my bosses are telling me to do. And then you argue about that. And then the judge makes a decision, which now changes how you re-litigate your case. And then you don't like the outcome and then you appeal again to say, well, wait a minute, you've remanded this once and you told the judge to do X, but the trial judge did Y.
Pete Wright:
Wow.
Seth Nelson:
Nightmare.
Pete Wright:
Seems like a real nightmare. But again, I don't know that you answered my question. How often does this happen?
Seth Nelson:
I've been practicing for over 15 years doing nothing but family law. I've had about four or five that went up on appeal to an oral argument.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Not very often.
Seth Nelson:
No. I've had other cases, because most cases don't go to a trial.
Pete Wright:
Sure, right.
Seth Nelson:
So they're limited. But when you're going, if I'm going, it's because it's egregious and you really got to try to fix it now. And I've had cases that were egregious and my client just said, and I said, we will win on this. The appellate lawyer said, we are going to win on this. The judge messed up. And they're just tapped out. They're like, I'll just live with it. I got screwed by the system. I don't want to pay any more fees. I don't want to argue anymore. And that's why we've talked on this show.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. That was my first thought was like, oh, I found a bunch of money, and rather than light it on fire, I think I'll give it to my lawyers.
Seth Nelson:
Exactly. And we've talked about this. I can tell you very clearly what the judge should do, but they get it wrong. I can't say what they're going to do.
Pete Wright:
Can you tell me the difference between, and I think I know what the difference is, but just so it's clear, the term motion to modify, right? That's a different thing.
Seth Nelson:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
But isn't that what a lot of these cases are looking for anyway?
Seth Nelson:
So a motion to modify or supplemental petition to modify the final judgment is, look, we have a final judgment. No one's arguing, judge, that you made a mistake. It's three years later. But in Florida, we've had what's called a substantial change in circumstances that was unanticipated and material at the time that, judge, you made the decision that we need to change what's happening here. Because this isn't a contract case. This isn't Pete where you hired me to paint your house and you told me that you want it painted blue and I painted it pink. And you sued me and you got all your money back and I broke a window when I did it, so I had to pay for that and you missed work so I had to pay for that. And I paid, and the case is over. Alimony can be modified, parenting issues can be modified. If there's this substantial change, which is a term of art.
Pete Wright:
Substantial change, it includes like, oh, somebody died or in the family, extenuating circumstances.
Seth Nelson:
It could be a a parent at the time of the final judgment was 35 years old and now they're 45, and unfortunately, they're diagnosed with a illness and they can't care for the children anymore.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Okay.
Seth Nelson:
Something like that.
Pete Wright:
Substantial change. Okay, so that's the divorce appeal. In terms of guidance, do you have any guidance for people who are frustrated with how things are going? I mean, we just talked about a very difficult process that only happens to five cases in 15 years of your practice. What do you tell people to do who are frustrated with the law?
Seth Nelson:
They really have to make the decision on whether they want to continue to fight the fight and how bad is this ruling? And if it's a financial one, then we're just doing math. How much is it going to cost to hire me to go do this and come back down and do this versus just pay it?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, okay.
Seth Nelson:
Because you're going to be out that money. The other issue, if it's a kid issue, it could be a big deal. And that's the main ones that we've gone up on. The other ones that we go up on appeal on, if it's just a really huge egregious miscalculation or financially, the judge forgot to carry the one, but that one was on $20 million, not on $100. Something like that. Or there's just a misstatement of law. They applied the law wrong or they got the law wrong, but it has huge financial impact. Because if it's 20 grand, I'm going to tell you eat it. And that's a lot of money, but it's not a lot of money compared to what you have to pay what it costs.
Pete Wright:
You mentioned appeals lawyers. Or is it a different team? If I say, Seth, I want to appeal this divorce. You're handing it off.
Seth Nelson:
I am referring that case out to an appellate lawyer.
Pete Wright:
Fascinating. Okay. All right, so that's another consideration, right?
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. I can do appellate law. I was a law clerk and I can write a brief and I can go to an oral argument. One of the reasons I don't do appellate law is because you really need to be able to shut your door, do legal research and writing. The only way I'm getting that kind of block of time on my calendar is to come in on the weekend.
Pete Wright:
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, about 10% of children live with a parent with an alcohol use disorder. It's just bad news.
Seth Nelson:
It's bad news every single week, Pete. I mean, I know we talk about this every week. It doesn't get to me like a scab or a scar, like it's raw every single time. And that's why I'm just a big believer in Soberlink, which is an independent third party verification real time on whether you're drinking or not. Because in litigation, as we've talked about, it is very expensive when one parent accuses the other of suffering from alcoholism and they don't say it that nicely and to have to go litigate, he said, she said, get another witness, this is what was happening. I smelled alcohol in the breath. It was their eyes were bloodshot, they were getting in the car. But there's no DUIs, there's no traffic stops. There's all this back and forth. Instead, we can cut through all that and get real time information to say you're drinking or not.
Pete Wright:
That's right. That's what Soberlink is. It's a small device, looks like a breathalyzer, but it's more than that. It has facial recognition camera built into it. There are two models. One of them is a cellular model. It just ties directly to your cell phone plan and wherever you are, whenever you need it in the United States, you can upload your real time verified data whether or not you're drinking to the people who need to know. The other model does connect to your cell phone, and so you can use that anywhere in the world. And it gives data when you need it the most, when you're about to drive with your kids, when you're doing handoff, when you're doing carpools, anytime you're getting in the car, you blow into Soberlink and you make sure that the people who need to know can be confident that you are with your kids and you're sober.
It's one of those things that addresses the human cost of alcohol challenges, right? Let's say you've been living with an alcohol challenge. Using Soberlink can actually help you collect data and put your life on the right track so that you have a long relationship with your kids and your former spouse. We love Soberlink. We love Soberlink for sponsoring this show. To sign up, you can get started right now. All you have to do is visit soberlink.com/toaster and they'll give you 50 bucks off your device. Again, soberlink.com/toaster. Our great thanks to Soberlink for sponsoring this show. Let's transition to the other thing that isn't finished when you've hit final, and that is post divorce estate planning.
Seth Nelson:
Okay, so do you have a will, Pete?
Pete Wright:
Well, yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Okay. And you have a durable power of attorney, so if something happens to you, got someone to make your financial decisions?
Pete Wright:
I do and health.
Seth Nelson:
And then you got a healthcare surrogate, you got someone to make that?
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm.
Seth Nelson:
I'm betting, and you don't have to disclose this, it's probably your wife making all those decisions.
Pete Wright:
It is. But to be fair, I ask her to make all my decisions for me now and everything's, I'm alive and healthy. I'm just tired.
Seth Nelson:
That's what makes it easier. Where do you want to eat? Wherever you decide.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, wherever you decide. You're my restaurant power of attorney.
Seth Nelson:
Exactly. We all need one of those, right? You get divorced. She's still your power of attorney. She's still your healthcare surrogate. She's still the person who gets to decide to pull the plug.
Pete Wright:
This was the thing that hit me when we had this conversation over text, the oh shit moment. Oh my God, I forgot to update my power of attorney and now it's my former spouse who did. I assumed wrongfully, obviously, that when the divorce was final, those things were severed. I don't know. There's a magical divorce reset button that got pressed and suddenly my former spouse is no longer.
Seth Nelson:
Wrong.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
Wrong. Check your local jurisdiction, but here's the deal, Pete, I can make you, if you agreed, my power of attorney. I could make you my healthcare surrogate. We're not married.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
It's just that's common that you have your spouse do that. So the whole point of this is when you get divorced, you need to update your estate plan. You need to decide who's going to make your power of attorney decisions regarding your finances? Who's going to be your healthcare surrogate making that information for you or making those decisions for you? If you have a living will, who's going to be executing on that living will, telling people what you want them to do and not to do? Who is your heir that will do this and who's the spare? Who's your backup? It's the perfect time to redo your estate plan and it's the perfect time to change the beneficiaries on your life insurance.
Pete Wright:
Because you've just done all of the math, right?
Seth Nelson:
It's all there. You say to your divorce attorney, do you have an estate planning attorney to redo my will or give an estate plan package? Yes. I can give them all the documents. I can show them how it's all currently titled. I have it all right here in my file. We did it with mandatory disclosures that we hated. Let's use that to your benefit now and redo it.
Pete Wright:
So are there any time considerations in Florida or is it just in perpetuity? If you don't manually go in and make these changes and file these changes, it stands?
Seth Nelson:
If you don't go in and change your will, it stands.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
Now, I think there could be some statutes that say, well, if you were divorced, this and that, you got to check your local jurisdiction, but this is easily solvable. Don't put your family in litigation when you die or when you're really sick to say, well, they were divorced, they had this and that, so I think we should get an estate planning attorney on the show to talk about all the problems they've seen and to fix this up.
Pete Wright:
Well, and that was my next question, but I'll hold it for that conversation because I want to know how ugly it could get. What are the real risks and potential losses if you don't do this? I think that's a great conversation to be had. Is it too early when you're talking about the divorce, talking about estate planning during the divorce process, or should you wait until immediately after the divorce is final?
Seth Nelson:
I mention it at the beginning.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
We talked about what do you want to have happen when you're divorced? You got to think about that. Because if I start mentioning it at the end when they think they're done and now I say, you got to go talk to another lawyer? Like ugh, now I put it in my closing letter. I am convinced, and in my closing letter we're detailed, hey, we take all the legalese out of the final judgment, the marital settlement agreement. We have like a checklist. Do this, do this, do this, check this. Right? I am convinced no one reads that letter.
Pete Wright:
Because it's the final closing letter. You think you're done.
Seth Nelson:
Right. Do you read every document when you're closing on the house? You just sign.
Pete Wright:
You do a lot of signing.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Okay.
Seth Nelson:
You're exhausted.
Pete Wright:
This is super useful and I think it's going to be an important conversation to continue to have, especially now that we've broken the seal on estate planning and the potential risks in there. So more to learn, but grateful for that. And now Seth, we do have questions. In fact, not only do we have questions, we have three questions. The first one that I've got here came in and it's specifically about the conversation we had just a couple of weeks ago as a follow up on our vocational evaluation. Here we go. This is Taylor who writes, Hey Seth, I followed Pete here. Creepy. I followed Pete here from Taking Control the ADHD podcast because he was talking about the vocational evaluation episode you guys did in a recent live stream of that show, and I'm so glad he did. I did. I talked about that show on our live stream.
Seth Nelson:
That's awesome. You got a great ADHD show.
Pete Wright:
Thank you. And just so you know, I think about you when we're not doing a show. This was a great episode and was super helpful. I have a follow up question that I don't think you talked about. If you did, I'm sorry. ADHD. One of my limiting factors is my health situation. I'm skilled in technology and could earn more than I am in the current market, and an expert evaluator would pull that out quickly. But my mental health situation is complicated and has been consistently limiting factor for me in my career. Do you have any suggestions I might be able to raise about what would help make sure my own mental health needs are considered in this evaluation? I just want to try to make sure that the process is fair. Thank you so much. This was the first episode I listened to, but I'm absolutely going back into the archives. Thank you Taylor. Good to have you.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, great to have you. This is a brilliant question.
Pete Wright:
Oh, outstanding.
Seth Nelson:
Taylor, you've hit an excellent, excellent point that we did not talk about. The vocational evaluation is an expert saying this person has this skillsets and therefore there's this job. They can have some, what I would classify as limited discussions, about whether you're physically or mentally able to do the job. Take, for example, a construction worker. That person's going to have to be able to lift more than 50 pounds over their head. If you are unable to do that, that would not be a job that you're physically able to do. What they cannot do is determine what, if any, mental health issues do you have?
So what we have to do then is get an expert on mental health to say, here are your mental health issues, and have those documented. Not just have the issues documented, but so how do they manifest themselves in your daily living tasks, abilities and workplace? For example, if you have a mental health disability, if you're on the spectrum and you don't have the ability because your mind works differently to wait for your social cues to ask your question in a business meeting with 20 people around a conference room, and you don't fit into the social norms, that's going to be a problem on getting and keeping employment.
Pete Wright:
So that's a thing that in this case, you would want to push your attorney to ensure is addressed as part of the process?
Seth Nelson:
100%.
Pete Wright:
Okay. You can say that.
Seth Nelson:
You're going to say to your attorney, I suffer from some mental health issues. Here's my challenges. This is how I think it impacts my ability to work and therefore I want to make sure that the vocational evaluation knows about it. What documentation do we need to show to them that these are real in how they manifest themselves? In trial, I'm going to put on the mental health experts to say X, Y, and Z, and then I'll go to the VOC eval. Did you consider this? How did that impact it? When you looked for this job, did you talk to the hiring manager on whether these types of behaviors from an employee or a prospective employee would be acceptable? Would you hire them? Those types of questions really need to be drilled down on, and what, if any, reasonable accommodation might the employer make for you so they can still hire you?
Because if you've got the skills, which you said you do, is it a type of job that you can work remote? Is it a type of job that you have to have a project done by a certain deadline but they don't care whether you work on it the weekend or in the middle of the night or on a Tuesday? There's lots of things to consider. Brilliant question. Answer it directly. Talk to your lawyer. Make sure that your mental health is being addressed. Talk about how it's going to be addressed with the VOC eval. Talk about how you're going to get a mental health expert to prove that you have these real issues that impact you.
Pete Wright:
Outstanding. All right. Next question. This one comes from Royce Boxer. What are the limits of client confidentiality? Does that vary by jurisdiction? Is there something I need to do to prove my belief that my attorney or someone in her office leaked information about me and my divorce? Thanks.
Seth Nelson:
Well, I'm sorry that happened to you and you believe that happened to you. So attorney-client privilege is sacrosanct. They are not supposed to be talking about your case to anyone. It is jurisdiction by jurisdiction. So yes, check your local jurisdiction, but it is a fact-based analysis. What was divulged, when, how and to whom and why? There are limits to the attorney-client privilege. By way of example, this happened in our firm. If I find out as a lawyer that my client fraudulently altered a document that was presented to the court and the case is over, I am ethically required to bring that attention to the court. My client tells me later, yeah, I did it. I altered that document. I have to bring that to the court's attention. That is an exception to the rule, because we're lawyers. There's always exceptions to the rule, right? I cannot use the attorney-client privilege to hide illegal activity.
Client keeps giving me money. Seth, just keep it in your trust account. Why? We don't have a pending case. I want to keep you on retainer. And they keep putting the money in, putting the money in, putting the money in. They come in every day and they give me $5,000 cash. I'm just being used here to funnel illegal money. There's limits to what the attorney-client privilege. So if you believe this happened, I would immediately be asking for all my documents, all correspondence. I would go talk to another attorney. I would figure out what if anything happened that hurt you financially or otherwise because that would be potentially a civil lawsuit. The other thing is, if they breach their duty to you under their local state jurisdictional bar rules, there's bar rules about maintaining attorney-client privilege. So it's very fact specific.
Pete Wright:
Okay. All right. Next one comes from anonymous. I appreciate anonymous' candor here. The paralegal working with me is an idiot. I love my attorney, but the team is making me nuts. The paralegal is making mistakes and one that might cost me. They've rushed me through some tax bullshit that forced me to file an extension. I'm uncomfortable bringing this up to my lawyer because I don't want to offend them and I don't know if they have other people on their team to spare. Advice on how you might like to be approached on this kind of thing. I assume directly to you, Seth.
Seth Nelson:
Directly. Do not worry about offending your lawyer if you believe one of their team members is not up to what you believe your standards are. Get on a phone call, send an email, talk to that lawyer. They might not know.
Pete Wright:
It's a busy firm.
Seth Nelson:
Or they know, but they didn't realize it was to that extent. Or they know, but you filed an extension so they think it's okay. But you need, if you are not happy with someone on the team, you need to go talk to your lawyer. I am a big believer in that people's true character comes out when you have to have difficult conversations. And if you are not satisfied with how that lawyer is handling that conversation, then I would say you need to find another lawyer. Because you didn't just hire that lawyer, you hired that team. So basically you're telling me you got a great pitcher, but the catcher's horrible.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
That's not going to do you any good.
Pete Wright:
Sure, sure. Well, and generally, I mean, I think to your point, it's like if you're frustrated with service in a restaurant, you ask to talk to the manager, right? That's just what you do. You escalate. And it's okay to have a little of that spirit of entitlement when you are paying so much money for a service at a time in your life that is probably hard. I think it just feels like, okay, to have that direct conversation and that your attorney should understand.
Seth Nelson:
And another thing to look at is look at your invoice. And you see the work that the paralegal's doing. You're being billed for it, but it's improper, it's wrong or whatever. I would have the conversation. I don't feel I need to pay for that. And I will be very candid. I just got an email from a client that said, hey, this work was done. I don't think I should have to pay for it. And I immediately said, I agree with you 100%. I was reviewing your invoice. I didn't really think about it that way. You brought it to my attention. No problem. Done. I mean, it took me all of two seconds to respond. I mean, I looked at the invoice just to see. I was like, oh, yes, that took all of three minutes because it was right there. We get to it quickly. But I think having those difficult conversations is absolutely what you should do. And you can start with, I really like you as my lawyer. I think you're great. I'm just concerned about some of the team members and how it's impacting my case and my life.
Pete Wright:
Okay, direct conversations. Don't be scared. You're fine. You're going to be fine. All right, well, thank you, Seth, for great answers. Thank you everybody who wrote in with great, great questions. We sure appreciate that. Don't forget, you can head over to howtosplitatoaster.com. That'll take you to NLGFamilylaw.com, but it will take you to the podcast page where you can submit your own question. There's a button, it says, submit your divorce questions here, and you can do that just like many, many people have done before. We love your questions. We love putting Seth on the spot. We appreciate you for doing that. Thanks everybody for listening to the show. We appreciate your time and your attention. On behalf of Seth Nelson, America's favorite divorce attorney, I'm Pete Wright and we'll catch you next week right here on How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Speaker 3:
Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce and Family Law with offices in Tampa, Florida. While we may be discussing family law topics, How to Split a Toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of NLG Divorce and Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
