Candace Dellacona: Welcome to the Sandwich Generation Survival Guide.
I am your host, Candace Dellacona, and I am thrilled to announce our guest for this
episode, Karen Covey, a divorce coach.
I know so many of our listeners are anxious to hear all about you, Karen,
who you are, what a divorce coach is.
So many of our listeners and family members have gone through this process.
So, why don't we start at the top and tell us who you are.
Karen Covy: I am a divorce coach and a recovering lawyer, right?
I'm all things divorce except divorced myself.
I'm a lawyer, mediator, arbitrator, collaborative
professional and a divorce coach.
And I sort of morphed my practice from being just a lawyer to
being a coach, oh, I don't know, half a dozen years or so ago.
Candace Dellacona: And how did you or why did you make this transition?
What precipitated the change from a traditional matrimonial or divorce
attorney to where you are today, which is kind of a hybrid role?
Karen Covy: It's a very hybrid role.
And it was interesting.
When I practiced law in my own firm, I never wanted to be an empire, I
just wanted to have my own firm.
So it was me and a secretary one day in the office.
It was hot, so I had my office door open, it was only the two of us in
there, and so she heard the conversation with the client that I was having.
The client leaves, now this particular secretary had worked for all of
the big firms in town, right, for all the big matrimonial law firms.
And the client leaves and she said, "You do know that
nobody else does that, right?"
And I said, "What do you mean?
Does what?
I just, I told them their options, I explained how things
work, I gave them choices."
And she said, "That.
The other lawyers,"
and I said, "well, if they don't explain everything to them, what do they do?"
And she said, "they hand them a contract and say, here, sign here.
I'll take care of everything.
Don't worry about it."
Candace Dellacona: Right.
Karen Covy: And I know that that's not the way divorce works.
And I saw so many people in court making decisions that weren't going to be in
their long term best interest simply because they didn't know they were going
to have to make that decision that day.
They didn't understand what was coming.
They didn't understand how the system worked.
They didn't know what their choices were going to be, so they weren't
prepared, and they made bad choices.
And I said, that, to me, makes no sense.
And so, I kept looking for that better way to do divorce.
And I realized that as one person, I am not going to be able to change
the whole system all across the United States, but I can change it
for the clients that I work with.
And so, that's what I started to do.
Candace Dellacona: I love that.
And in sort of taking on a role as truly a counselor, right?
I mean, we're called counselors at law, and you'd think that would be innate,
that an attorney particularly advising people on something that is incredibly
personal and painful in most circumstances and the stakes are quite high relating to
finances and child custody and, certainly assets like your home that you'd hope
that someone would explain the process and the ramifications and what's coming next.
So if you could , in the best way that you can impart this information to our
listeners, what does a divorce coach do?
So walk me through the process of what a divorce coach is and how one
would engage a divorce coach and the order in which they get counselor,
lawyer, divorce coach, mediator, give us sort of a summary of that process.
Karen Covy: Well, I can't speak to all divorce coaches because, as in any other
profession, not all divorce coaches are the same or do exactly the same things.
Candace Dellacona: Sure.
Karen Covy: I start with people, the minute they start to wonder,
should I stay or should I go?
Candace Dellacona: Ah.
Karen Covy: And that's a place where people get stuck for a very long time.
Because notwithstanding that, there are a lot of people in the world
that think divorce is too easy, I've been doing this for a very long time.
There is nothing easy about divorce.
And I have never had a client who was in a perfect, happy marriage and woke up one
day and said, I think I'll get a divorce.
I mean, it doesn't happen that way, right?
People go, yes, no, yes, no.
They're worried about their kids.
They're worried about their money.
They're worried about their future.
They're worried, about the promise.
They think about the vow that they made all those years ago and
they take it really seriously.
So they get stuck in that decision making stage sometimes for
years, sometimes for decades.
Candace Dellacona: Sometimes forever.
Right?
Karen Covy: Yeah.
And sometimes they never leave.
Candace Dellacona: Yeah.
I love that.
I never actually thought about a divorce coach coming into the equation before
you get to the brass tacks of the law.
Karen Covy: Yeah.
Because a lot of what I do has nothing to do with the law.
And the truth is that most divorce lawyers don't want me to say is that a lot of
divorce has nothing to do with the law.
Candace Dellacona: So what do you mean by that, Karen?
So when you talk about it, what are the issues that you would coach someone
through after they do come to you and the should I stay or should I go,
and the decision is I'm going to go?
What's the next step for you as the coach?
What your personal approach is?
Karen Covy: My personal approach to the next step is, what do you want?
Where do you want to be at the end of this?
Because as Stephen Covey, who is unfortunately no relation to me as he
would say, you start with the end in mind.
Because if you understand what your goal is, You have a much better chance
of actually achieving it and being there at the end of your divorce.
Because the one thing I know for sure, in every state in the union,
no fault divorce is a thing.
Right?
Candace Dellacona: Uh huh.
Yep.
Karen Covy: So if somebody wants a divorce, fundamentally at the end of
the day, you're going to be divorced.
So that's not the right question to ask.
It's where do I want to be?
At that point in my life, where do I want to be when I'm divorced?
How much money do I have?
What kind of relationship do I have with my kids?
Where am I living?
What is my lifestyle?
What is my identity?
What do I care about?
So at the very beginning, what I as a coach help you do is figure that
out, figure out what matters to you so that once you're divorced, You
end up with the things you care about and not the Tupperware or your Aunt
Jane's crystal that you really, stays in a box and you never look at again.
Candace Dellacona: That totally makes sense.
Thinking about it from that perspective and knowing what your
end game is helps you advocate for yourself, even just with your lawyer.
And it sounds to me as though you're getting to the heart of
the matter with the client so that they realize and are able to
articulate what's important to them.
Karen Covy: Exactly.
And in a perfect world, not all lawyers are open to working with coaches as part
of the team, but just like it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a
team to get a divorce, at least if you want to do it in the most effective way.
And if I'm working together with a lawyer.
For the benefit of a client, I can help translate, because I speak
lawyer and I speak human, right?
And so many times lawyers have the curse of knowledge.
They say things in a way that is perfectly understandable to another
lawyer, but the client and, People don't want to feel stupid, right?
So they're going to smile and nod to the lawyer and pretend like they understand.
They don't have a clue what the lawyer just said.
Or they're so emotional and they're so distraught that
it's not really sinking in.
So I can come in on the back end and say to the client , don't
you remember your lawyer said this, or this is what this means.
Here's what your choices are.
And then I can go to the lawyer and also be the intermediary too, so that
everybody is in the same boat with oars rowing in the same direction,
rather than against each other.
It makes things so much more effective.
I make the lawyer easier to work with for the client, and the client easier to work
with for the lawyer, so it's a win-win.
Candace Dellacona: While you were speaking, I was thinking
about the process of a divorce.
And what normally happens, a spouse will go and sit with an attorney.
It's a very solitary event for a lot of reasons, right?
The client is talking about, a really tender thing, which is the end of
a marriage, and many people see it as a failure, maybe, or they feel
sad about it, embarrassed about it.
There are topics, maybe, that they didn't even tell their best
friend or their sister about, and those topics have to be shared.
With the divorce attorney in order for the divorce attorney to
effectively represent you, let's say.
So having someone like you there who knows the law and the person is able to share
those details with, to have the second set of ears seems like what an amazing
service and so shocking that this isn't a thing and hasn't been a thing for very
long, and that, it took you to articulate this role by seeing a need for it.
Karen Covy: Yeah.
What lawyers used to be back in the day, the family lawyer, where they
would sit and they got to know people and they had relationships and they
were counselors of a sort, right?
Well today, lawyers are so busy and there's so many other pressures on them
that they often forget the counseling part or there's no room for that in
their practice, which is really sad too.
And so I help bridge that gap and help the lawyer be more effective.
And also, feel better about what they're doing because sometimes no one
wants to toot their own horn, right?
You don't want to look like you're the bragger or whatever.
But lawyers, I've been in cases, involved in cases where
the lawyer did amazing things.
And the client doesn't understand the magnitude of what just happened.
And they think that's normal, right?
Well, of course, everybody does that.
And when I'm in the background, I can look at them and say, no, no, no, no, no.
This, your lawyer, you should be like kissing the ground that they walk on
right now, because they just did a really difficult thing and they didn't
want to tell you how hard it was.
But it was really hard, and they did a great job.
Candace Dellacona: Yeah.
I think, that will lead to the satisfaction of the client, of the person
going through that process, really feeling like, the person fought for them, and with
all of the facts and circumstances that the best possible outcome was achieved.
And largely in a situation where it feels pretty terrible start to finish, even if
you're the one who initiated the divorce.
Karen Covy: Yeah.
It's, look, it's a tough process no matter who you are
or how you're going through it.
So, anything that you can do to make it a little bit more efficient, a
little bit less painful is always gonna be a really good thing.
And the one thing, even though I am a lawyer, I'm not a lawyer in all 50 states.
Candace Dellacona: Right.
Karen Covy: And I'm not going to, when I'm, engaged in the role of a coach.
I'm not going to give my clients legal advice because that's not my job.
My job is to facilitate the relationship with the lawyer
and the client not undermine it.
So I'm not gonna armchair quarterback anybody.
But I will help the client understand what's going on and I will help the lawyer
say hey What you just did might have been good, but the client doesn't want that.
They want something else.
They want this, or they don't feel heard, or whatever that is.
Now, if the lawyer isn't open to that kind of relationship, having a coach
as part of the team, and some lawyers, I have to tell you, are not, then I
work behind the scenes and tell the client, ask your lawyer this, ask your
lawyer that, ask your lawyer this.
But it's so much more effective if we can all work together.
Candace Dellacona: As someone who is also a practicing attorney, albeit not in,
in the family law space or matrimonial space I will tell you that, what I hear
most from my friends, from our listeners, from my peers who are going through it,
we're all in the sandwich generation where marriages continue and marriages end.
One of the common themes.
That I hear is the expense.
What a divorce costs.
And, I think for our listeners, one of the things that should be considered
is hiring someone like you, in many circumstances, is probably a better
economic decision because your wishes can be articulated effectively and
immediately to your own lawyer.
Can you talk about what the cost is for someone thinking of hiring you?
Not exactly what your rate is necessarily, but maybe we'll talk
about, what the added cost may be and why it would be beneficial to someone
to consider hiring someone like you.
Karen Covy: If I said, Oh, there's no cost or you're always going to
save money, that wouldn't be true.
Candace Dellacona: Yeah.
Karen Covy: But I can say, cause I can't quantify any specific amount of money.
But most of my clients do save money and a lot of money because what
happens is they understand how to use their lawyer more effectively.
Everybody knows that conceptually, but when you're an emotional wreck and your
spouse just did something stupid and you want to call your lawyer and go on and
on and on about it, but it's not a legal problem, you're going to pay hundreds of
dollars an hour for that privilege, right?
And it's not going to be effective.
There's nothing your lawyer can often do about it.
So I help people.
Use their lawyer for what lawyers are good at and be organized.
If you hand your lawyer a stack of papers that are all disorganized and you're not
sure if they're really what the lawyer needs or what they're not, but you don't
want to leave anything out, that lawyer, you're going to pay them to go through
every single piece of paper, organize it, analyze it, do all the things.
But if you've done that legwork on your end, Then what you pay the lawyer is
considerably less, and the lawyer then has more time to do the actual legal work.
Candace Dellacona: And that's exactly where I was going, Karen.
That, often I think clients, particularly going through a painful divorce and are
dealing with an estranged spouse who may be acting out in a certain way, the
urge is to call the lawyer, the person who's fighting for you, to inform them
and make sure that they have all the information, but you are able to parse
through whether or not that information is material and it makes any difference
to the standing that your client has and positively impacts their case or not.
Karen Covy: Exactly.
And so I help my clients get organized and regulate their emotions and regulate
their responses so that they use their lawyer more effectively, they save a
lot of money in legal fees as a result of that, and everything is again,
more effective and more efficient.
You're not leaking resources from every direction because you're
using the resources that you have inefficiently or ineffectively.
So for anyone who is thinking of, a divorce and wants to save money,
even though a divorce coach is an investment in the long run, it saves
people money, it saves people time.
And it also saves people because today, even people who have a
lot of resources are considering using lawyers in a different way.
They're using them on like an.
A la carte basis, shall we say.
They use it as unbundled service is what we call it in the legal profession.
But they say, look, I don't want full on representation.
Interestingly, it's usually not, it's about money, but it's also
about, they don't want the lawyer to stir the pot and make a fight.
And they're afraid that's what the lawyer is going to do.
So they'll say, look, I want your advice.
I want your counsel.
I want you to write my documents, but I want to negotiate this with
my spouse myself, or I want to go to mediation with my spouse myself.
That's great.
But if you don't walk into those conversations, whether it's a kitchen
table negotiation, whether it's an informal mediation, whether it's an
arbitration, if you don't walk in prepared and understanding what you're
going to face and what you want to get out of there and having a strategy
for achieving your goal, you're not as likely to be successful in doing that.
And then you've just wasted more time and money and resources.
So I, as a coach.
A big part of what I do is help people prepare for whatever course
of action they've decided to take.
Candace Dellacona: I mean, I think, you could make the argument and,
you're being quite humble, Karen, in talking about how you can't be sure
that you're saving people money.
But as someone who's been in practice for 22 years, litigators
are taught to litigate.
And so, the point that you made before of, someone who is a little more
sophisticated and hires a lawyer a la carte to guide behind the scenes
because they're concerned that having a lawyer will cause a situation that's
not adversarial to become one, I think that's really important to consider
that there are circumstances where having a lawyer to quote unquote
litigate a divorce is unnecessary.
So, you, you said at the top of the episode that the other role that
you play in addition to divorce coach, perhaps not in the same case
is to play the role as a mediator.
Can you explain to our listeners what a mediator is and how that
differs from hiring a lawyer as a matrimonial attorney to represent
you, and also how it distinguishes from your role as a divorce coach?
Karen Covy: Right.
So the first thing people have to know is there are these different
roles and that no one person can or should cross boundaries, right?
You don't want your lawyer being the coach and the mediator.
That doesn't work because a mediator is a neutral third party whose
purpose is to facilitate an agreement between you and your spouse.
So a mediator, even though he or she may be a lawyer, is not
supposed to give you legal advice.
They can say, the law in your state says blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
What they can't do is say, and this is how it applies to you.
And if we do that, then you've got this argument and this strategy.
That's a mediator can't do that.
They can tell you the law, but they can't give you legal advice.
And so the mediator is, their role is very different from that of a coach because
typically when I'm coaching in the context of a divorce, I'm coaching one side.
Not both people.
A mediator is going to mediate with a couple.
And the point is to help them brainstorm ideas, to help them speak
to each other in a way that they each feel like they're being heard.
A mediator is going to help you make agreements.
Sometimes very creative agreements out of the box agreements, agreements
you would never get in court.
So that it works for you.
You come to an arrangement in a settlement that works for you, that
works for your kids, that works for your family, that works for everybody.
And then once you've got that agreement.
You take it to your lawyer and you say, here, write it up.
But what most people don't understand is that there's still a role for the lawyer.
If you don't understand what your rights and responsibilities are, and you walk
into a mediation, not knowing that, you are going to make mistakes, you're
going to do things that You didn't know you should or shouldn't do, right?
You can give away the farm without realizing you had a farm to give away.
And so then what happens is people, they think they can do it all
themselves without the lawyer, without the coach, without anything.
And they make agreements and they take it to the lawyer and say, write it up.
And the lawyer says, are you out of your mind?
Why did you do this?
And they go, do what?
And then the whole thing falls apart.
Now they're in a worse position because now they're reneging on an agreement that
they made and it makes what could have been an amicable divorce into a big fight.
So having that team put together and having the right people in place and
everybody, like I said, going in the same direction gives you as a client the best
chance of achieving the outcome you want.
Candace Dellacona: So let me ask you this, let's say someone didn't know about
the concept of having a divorce coach.
They've already entered into mediation and they're doing their best, or
they've hired a lawyer and they've started the formal divorce proceedings.
Is it too late to ever bring someone like you in Karen to help?
Karen Covy: That's a great question, and the answer is no.
It's never too late.
Well, I shouldn't say that.
If you're already divorced.
It's probably too late.
Candace Dellacona: Fair enough.
Karen Covy: But, all the way up until then, you can use a coach to
help you say, okay, we're stuck.
Because you and I both know that in the court system,
everything starts with a bang.
And then you hit sort of this no man's land of discovery where the
case just goes on and on, things are happening behind the scenes.
And then, if the court system is backed up, which is pretty much
every court system in the country at this point, nothing is going on
and clients get frustrated and they say, can you help me get this done?
Can you give me some ideas for how we can move this?
Or I've also coached people on how to appear in trial.
You know, like witness preparation for trial, which every lawyer is
going to say, Oh no, no, no, no.
I do that.
But the problem is the lawyers don't have as much time and often what they don't
understand is the client is super nervous.
The client has never done this before, right?
Candace Dellacona: Yeah.
Karen Covy: The client wants to be uber prepared and the lawyer isn't
going to spend 10 hours with them preparing them for how to be a witness
in a case when the lawyer knows that the range of possibilities are pretty
limited, it's going to go okay, they're going to be fine, but the
client is scared out of their mind.
I can help to prepare the client because there's an emotional
component to testifying.
If you can walk into that court knowing that you're prepared, you will feel
more confident you're going to testify better than if you walk in and you
completely fall apart and you're a mess because you're nervous and you don't
know what to say and you start stuttering and stammering and crying and being
upset and all the things you're just not going to be as effective, right?
And so part of what I'll do is witness preparation.
Candace Dellacona: I think for our listeners it's really important to
note that as lawyers, particularly for those of us who have been practicing
a long time, it can be easy to forget that we have gone through this process
thousands of times in our career.
I'm talking about death and dying and disability.
People haven't gone through these conversations before
in their life, hopefully.
The same is true with matrimonial attorneys in that, to your point,
they've prepped hundreds of witnesses.
They know that there are things that are not going to be covered.
Nonetheless, the client still has anxiety surrounding those subjects.
And while I do think that many lawyers would put that time
in, clients can't afford that.
So in New York, let's say the average billable rate is $1,000 an hour to sit
with your lawyer for the 10 hours that would make you comfortable is $10,000.
So from a cost benefit analysis, and also quite frankly, having a coach, a
person who, is sensitive to those needs as opposed to the legal answers and
what the legal ramifications are of answering questions a certain way or
whatever the case is, the comfort level has to be exponential to your clients.
Karen Covy: A hundred percent.
But, to go back, to bring this back to our previous topic of conversation, if a
lawyer and a coach are working together, we can tag team the preparation and make
the client so much more comfortable, drop their anxiety level, and help them be
better prepared more cost effectively.
There are some things that no matter how much I, as a coach, am going to prepare
the witness or prepare a client, I'm also going to say to them, make sure I have to
know what's your lawyer's theory of the case, what direction are they going, what
do they want to, what kind of testimony do they want to highlight, what do they,
what would they rather play down, right?
And if all of us are working together as a team for that end, it's a beautiful thing.
Candace Dellacona: Absolutely.
And so, you've provided us with so much valuable information,
especially for people thinking about starting this process.
And maybe this is going to be a hard question, but I'm going to ask it anyway.
So Karen, if someone is at the point where they're ready to actually make a
move and commence, the dissolution of their marriage, is there advice that
you would give about hiring the divorce coach and going the mediation route?
Or the opposite.
And maybe, your answer might be biased because you're a mediator
as well, but I would love to hear your perspective on that.
Karen Covy: I'm going to answer like a lawyer.
Candace Dellacona: Okay.
It depends.
Karen Covy: It depends.
But the truth is it does depend on the circumstance, and that's one of the things
as a coach that I can help people parse out, is in your particular circumstances,
does mediation make sense or is it going to be a total waste of time?
Because it could be, but in the beginning, the first piece of advice I
would give to anyone is to get prepared.
Do not just dive into a divorce, not understanding what the ramifications
are going to be, not having a plan for your kids, your personal life.
Where are you going to live?
Are you going to live with that person you're divorcing in the same house?
I mean, there are times when that makes sense.
There are times when it really doesn't.
And either way, it's uncomfortable as all get out.
So you have to have some sort of a plan and be prepared and educate yourself
about how this is going to go before you jump in and before you just walk
into a lawyer's office and say, yeah, I want a divorce, write up the paperwork.
That's pretty much the worst way to go about it because that's when
you get caught off guard and that's when things can, you can turn them
into a war right out of the gate and that then you're playing catch up.
Then you're trying to, tame down the flames and keep this from
being an all out nuclear attack.
And that's a hard place to retreat from.
It is much easier to have an amicable divorce if you start that way.
You can always ramp up.
It's hard to pull back.
Candace Dellacona: I think that's really good advice, Karen.
At the end of the day, it's painful.
So why suffer the suffering?
The best way to go is having a little bit of education from the outset and knowledge
is power, and that's partly why we do this podcast for our Sandwich Generation
members, to have some orientation as to all of the different folks that can really
help them in the Sandwich Generation, and divorce happens to be one of those topics.
So I've loved this conversation, Karen.
I'm sure that we're going to Plenty of questions and people
who want to get in touch with you.
So for our listeners, you can reach Karen directly and we'll put this
in the show notes at karencovy.com.
She is an incredible resource.
I think you'll agree with me and I just wanted to say thank you so
much for your time today, Karen.
Karen Covy: Candace, thank you.
It has been my pleasure.
I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.
Candace Dellacona: Likewise.