Divorce Crash Course

If you want more help understanding the divorce process, avoiding expensive mistakes, and knowing what to expect before you make major decisions, check out the Divorce Crash Course.

Guided Divorce Meditations

For the moments when you’re about to send the email, respond to your ex, or completely lose your shit, our guided meditations are designed to help you calm your nervous system before you make the situation more expensive.Your divorce lawyer may be expensive — but sometimes the thing making your divorce even more expensive is… you.

In this episode of How Not to Suck at Divorce, Andrea and Morgan break down the habits that can make a divorce case harder, longer, and more expensive, even when you think you’re being helpful. From trying to run your own legal strategy to rewriting documents with AI, over-emailing your attorney, negotiating with your ex without being prepared, and withholding important information, this episode is basically a loving intervention from your divorce lawyer.

Morgan explains why clients sometimes accidentally create more legal work by trying to save money. One major example? Redlining legal documents or using AI to rewrite agreements without understanding whether those changes would actually work in court. That often means your attorney has to undo the work, start over, and spend even more billable time fixing it.

Andrea and Morgan also talk about the emotional reason people do this in the first place: divorce is terrifying. When your children, finances, home, and future are involved, it can feel impossible to hand over control to another person. But that fear can push you into micromanaging your lawyer, chasing answers that don’t exist yet, or relying too heavily on AI for legal strategy.

You’ll also learn a smarter way to communicate with your attorney, including when to pick up the phone instead of sending a novel-length email, how to comment on a legal document without trying to rewrite it yourself, and the exact kind of question to ask when you’re waiting on opposing counsel and starting to panic.

The episode also tackles one of the biggest traps in high-conflict divorce: negotiating directly with your ex when there is a history of control, pressure, or manipulation. Morgan explains when direct negotiation can actually save money — and when it can backfire badly if you go into the conversation without knowing your legal boundaries.

And finally: do not hide things from your lawyer.

Whether it’s a fight, missing money, an agreement you made directly with your ex, or something you’re embarrassed to admit, your attorney cannot protect you from information they do not have. Morgan explains why withholding key facts can seriously damage your case — and in some situations can even lead an attorney to withdraw from representing you.

What You’ll Learn

• Why trying to be your own divorce lawyer can cost you more money
• When AI can help during divorce — and when it absolutely should not
• Why you should not use ChatGPT or Claude as your legal strategist
• How to communicate with your divorce attorney without racking up unnecessary fees
• When to call your lawyer instead of sending a long email
• How to review legal documents without rewriting them yourself
• What to do when opposing counsel is not responding
• How to negotiate with your ex without getting pressured into a bad deal
• Why you need to tell your divorce lawyer the whole truth
• How fear and anxiety can quietly make your divorce more expensive

A Better Way to Follow Up With Your Divorce Lawyer

If you’re waiting for a response from opposing counsel, Andrea and Morgan suggest asking something like:

“It’s been X amount of time since we heard from opposing counsel. What is a realistic timeframe for a response, and if we don’t hear back by then, what would our next step be?”

That gives you information, a timeline, and a plan — without sending your lawyer four emails in one week asking whether they’ve heard anything yet.

Divorce, AI, and Your Legal Strategy

AI can be incredibly useful for organizing information, brainstorming questions, calming yourself down, or helping you prepare for a conversation.

But AI does not know your judge.

It does not know your local court.

It does not understand the history of your case the way your attorney does.

And it may confidently give you an answer that sounds brilliant and is completely wrong for your situation.

Use the robot. Just don’t let the robot run your divorce.

Resources

Divorce Crash Course

If you want more help understanding the divorce process, avoiding expensive mistakes, and knowing what to expect before you make major decisions, check out the Divorce Crash Course.

Guided Divorce Meditations

For the moments when you’re about to send the email, respond to your ex, or completely lose your shit, our guided meditations are designed to help you calm your nervous system before you make the situation more expensive.

Our Family Wizard

Our Family Wizard is the most respected coparenting app and we seriously want you to consider it. and We are the only podcast that can save you 20% off your first year.

Private Community

Join our free private community for support from people who actually understand what this process feels like.

Mentioned in this episode:

Our Family Wizard

How Not to Suck at Divorce is proud to be the only podcast that can offer you 20% off your first year of the essentials package. Visit Our Family Wizard to ask your attorney is OFW is right for your family.

Our Family Wizard

Today we are going to save you money and help your divorce process run more smoothly by sharing some things that divorce lawyers want you to stop doing.

Okay, so it's I don't even know what day of the week it is. It's a Thursday. Yeah, it's a Thursday. It's a wacky Thursday. I am sitting in my Missoni robe, which if you follow me on my personal socials, you will have seen that I scored a Missoni robe from Marshalls. Which if you know me or you know anything about me, you know that I'm obsessed with Marshalls and TJ Maxx. So I will be living in this Missoni robe.

Until someone rips it off of me in a mortuary because this robe has become my entire personality.

you still look cute. You've got your hair half up and your Missoni robe. I love that you love the branding because to me, I mean, you look adorable, but you kind of look like

I don't know, I'm kind of thinking of my mother in the nineteen eighties. Like that's what your robe looks like.

Yes. And you know why? It's because it's not the traditional Masony zigzag. It's the stripe. And I think because of the color blocking, it does look a little bit like that. But then you look at the inside and you see that it says Missoni. And I'm not usually a label whore, but something about finding this at a Marshall's made me stop dead in my tracks. And I just it's mine. And that's that's what I have right now.

Before we get into this conversation, I just have to give a shout out to a pair of houseplants. We have a listener, She named two of her houseplants, Chad and Brenda.

No.

There's nothing better. There's nothing better.

I mean, but also for the listeners out there that are like, who the hell is Chad and Brenda? Chad and Brenda are the most dysfunctional podcast couple you've ever heard of. They are our podcast couple on this show and they're fake, but we always talk about Chad and Brenda. So hey, listener, that is awesome. Houseplants, whatever you want to name Chad and Brenda, let us know because the houseplants are hysterical. I'd like to see which one looks like Chad and which one looks like Brenda.

I want someone to name like two of their dogs that don't get along, Chad and Brenda. That's what I want next. You start with houseplants. I want to, I want dogs. And then the next thing I want is like maybe some identical twins. Then we know that we have made it.

Or what about like neighbors where you're like, I'm pretty sure their marriage is falling apart. And then you just change their names to Chad and Brenda.

There go. There you go. Chad and Brenda, the neighbors, Chad and Brenda, the Yorkshire Terriers, Chad and Brenda the identical twins. Look, it started with house plants. Who knows where it's going? Love you guys. And we that that that really that really made us laugh. And there's some things that we are all doing that does not make

Lawyer Morgan laugh. It makes her want to rip out her hair. And not because it's just annoying to her, but because these are some things that a lot of us do that are making your case harder and longer. And ew, I just realized the way that that sounded. Not in a good way. it's making your case more difficult and more expensive. Now I can't stop laughing about harder and longer.

Morgan,

I don't know what to say.

I don't know either. Harder and longer. baby, give it to me. Tell me what we're doing.

Going to tell you something that I've been dealing with lately that's just driving me insane. So I've been dealing lately with a few clients who effectively are trying to be helpful. They're trying to, I know what they're trying to do. They're trying to keep their costs down. They are trying to limit the attorney time, but really they're costing themselves more. And what I mean by this is they're trying to be their own lawyer.

They are doing things that just make us as divorce lawyers want to lay in front of traffic and get run over 10 times.

some clients are basically trying to run the show. they want to run the strategy. They're telling their lawyer, this is how we should do it. And maybe that's right.

Like I have a client who loves to tell us how to do the strategy, but we're saying to this client, hey, we're not even close to this type of strategy. That's like months down the road. Right now we're in a different phase of your case. We appreciate what you're saying and we appreciate knowing this, but you're 25 steps ahead. And so these consistent emails that we're getting from you about what should be done, you're going to take the lead on it. Stop it. We're not there yet.

So that's one thing that that I'm seeing a lot of. And the second thing I'm seeing a lot of is clients again trying to be helpful. And I do think there's a lot of AI in the background, which just makes me cringe because, like we've talked about, and if you haven't listened to our AI episodes, you need to because there's a time and place to use AI. It's definitely not to run your case. You have a lawyer for a reason. So short of that, what they're doing is they're using AI.

to revise orders, like redline the order or an agreement, or try to negotiate their whole agreement in their own words. And where that becomes problematic is, you know, you're not a lawyer. You're not a lawyer for a reason, or maybe you're a lawyer, but maybe it's not in divorce. And so when you redline or you try to negotiate the order or the document, there's a lot of things that you don't know whether it would even work in court.

So then we get a document back and we're like, none of this would work. Now we got to start over from scratch and it's probably gonna call it's gonna it's gonna be two phone calls with you, three revisions on our end, and it's just a mess.

I think these both stem from.

fear So Morgan, you're the attorney, right? Like you you see everything that's going on and you're the expert and you're not them. And I think that it's really scary for us to put our complete trust of our life, everything that we have, our children, our money, our

wooden spoon collection, everything in the trust of somebody else. Because what if you are what if there's something that you are missing? You're only human. AI is wild. We all know this, but it is so comforting to have this robot that can generate this strategy.

AI speaks with such authority that it's intoxicating for us. And we do want to help. We do

Yeah.

want to make our case less expensive. And I don't think that we realize that we're making it more expensive. So, with that, what can somebody do differently?

what you're saying makes a lot of sense. And lawyers, good lawyers, we want to calm that fear, and we know that it's coming from a place of fear. we just need to do it the right way. So let's take the first example, which is the person is trying to run the strategy, basically be their own lawyer. Those kind of conversations, rather than hammering emails and trying to take

The lead on drafting something that's going to go to a court or maybe a mediator, you're going to do two things. One is strategy conversations in my mind are best done on the phone. They're not through long, long emails. We all know that everybody hates getting the email that looks like a book that you didn't ask for. Those are better to do on the phone. One, you're going to save money. Two, your lawyer's going to understand your tone better because I think there's a lot lost in translation on email.

you're gonna end the call and say, is there anything I can do to keep my costs down or help? At that point, if the lawyer says, sure, why don't you write me a timeline? Why don't you send me an email? They're asking you to do that because it would be helpful for them. They're not asking you to do something just to do it. So I think you're asking in that first situation. The second situation where the person's redlining orders or agreements or judgments and they're not a lawyer.

Which is costing them so much more money. The way that I would do it is the best way. If there's, let's just say, an order that they get and their lawyer sends it to them and says, What do you think about this? Rather than taking the lead in redlining it, which, if you don't know about redlining, it's basically typing into the document, which causes a lot of mess at times. People can over-redline a document, which takes a lot of attorney time to fix it. Rather than doing that, it might be better use of your time and your money.

Put comments on each section. So you know, on on Word, when you're in the document, you can actually put a comment. So if you don't like a paragraph or you're like, I have a question here, because a lot of times I think clients are redlining and revising because they either don't understand it or they're scared about something. It's better to put a comment in the side, send it back to your lawyer and say, Can we get on the phone call and walk through this? That is a way better use of your money.

than taking the time to redline it, which we have to basically undo.

And I'm I'm thinking it's an AI issue where they're getting more bold with AI, and they think, okay, I've got this AI robot telling me like I'm ready to go. I could do this, I could be my own lawyer.

That's where I caution you because that you should not be redlining. Yes. What is it?

You know what it is? You just said it.

I think you just gave me the idea because I've I've seen other people do this. I think what can happen is they copy and paste it into chat or Claude,

Yep.

chat's boring older sister, and they say, I please make sh please change it to reflect right. And then chat spits it out and then they pop that in, which at

Again, I get why we do this because going the other way is so freaking painful. And I think we all get so used to, I mean, we all use AI for different things. The problem is we stop using our brain and we are relying so heavily on a robot to do this sticky icky stuff. Because what you're talking about, Morgan,

means that somebody has to go through a document and not get emotionally triggered.

you know, and then make these comments. And that's hard because again, these are their lives.

Right. And but and the other thing, just keep in mind, AI wants to please you. So if you're telling AI, I'm really pissed off because you know, Johnny doesn't come home with all of his clothes from Chad's house and then and this order just doesn't work for me. Of course it's going to revise it in the way that fits your needs. The other thing, and this is the biggest thing, you said we forgot use about using our brains. In my mind, it's not even that. It it's more than that. We forgot that there's a judge in a black robe that has their own thoughts.

And determinations and you know, they vary with what they want to do. And a good lawyer will be able to say, Hey, I know this judge, I've been before this judge, this judge doesn't like it when you bring things about Johnny's lunchbox not being there. So don't even put it in there. That's what AI can't do, and that's what you're hiring a lawyer for. If if everyone could walk into court and just get their case done, I mean, I would assume most people would do that. It'd be way cheaper. You can't. Most people who have tried to do it fail miserably.

And friends, you're gonna continue to use AI. I know you will. Please, please, please prompt your robot friend with this. I do not want you to make things up. I do not want you to just please me. anything you tell me has to be based in sources and facts. And that will help you not.

Totally go down this unrealistic rabbit hole. Just the other day, I was helping a friend who was applying for positions on LinkedIn and she was utilizing chat to kind of help her do things. And I saw that she if she's applying for a position that she is nowhere near qualified for. And she's saying, Okay, chat, help me blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Chat's like, sure thing, Brenda. This

This one's right up your alley. Neuroscience. We can do this. Neuroscience, bitch, you're in PR. Like what are we doing here? So there's a there's a lot of truth to what Morgan just said, as much as it stings, and as much as we want our robot friends to help us do stuff, because we also want an immediate answer, Morgan. That's the other part of it. Attorneys are busy.

Attorneys are not at our disposal. We don't have we don't have you, Morgan, in an app on our phone.

You're

right. And I think that that's that creates a lot of issues. And that brings me into my next issue that attorneys, at least myself, I'm cringing at lately, which is the client who is admittedly stressed out, which all of our clients are going through this. So I understand that. but they can't wait. They have no patience, right? So instead of just waiting for the attorney to get back to them, let's just say the attorney is reaching out to opposing counsel to get some kind of question answered.

Instead of waiting, they send about three to four emails in one week checking in on this. And you're like, listen, any good lawyer has not forgotten about you. I'm just not contacting you because I don't have an answer currently. I have no response. And I don't want to have to charge you. And so basically what they're doing is they're creating so much more cost for their case for an answer that the lawyer doesn't have yet.

So most know this, most good lawyers, like one follow-up if you haven't heard for a from a while, you know, is totally acceptable. But a few during the week, we haven't forgotten about you. We just don't have something to tell you.

So what does somebody do instead? Because I think that it's natural to want a call back, right? Like I mean, like we want we want everyone to call us back. So is this a a a place where we just have to talk ourselves down the ledge or do we talk to our robot friend?

I think that there's a happy medium. If you want a call back from opposing counsel and you're just not getting it after a while, and what maybe a follow up to your lawyer, if it feels like, okay, we're being messed with, I don't understand how we're not getting a response back, ask your lawyer, what can we do to get a response back? This seems like a long time.

And ask them, do you think this is a long time? Do you think this is appropriate? If not, if we're not getting something back, what do we do to get a response? Let them set your expectations.

So I want to help people one one step further because I feel like the what you just said makes total sense to me because

Yeah.

I host this show with you. But to somebody who doesn't know as much as we do about this process, I want to give them a definitive script of what exactly do they type in an email to get a response that gives them some information and costs them as little as possible. So

My thought is It's been X amount of time since we have heard from opposing counsel. What is a realistic timeframe of when we should hear back from them and what is our next step? Does that sound right or what am I leaving out?

I would add if we don't hear back from them in a certain amount of time, what would we do next? So that you have a plan and strategy because it's your case and ultimately you get to decide what to do next. So at least you can start thinking about: okay, here are my options if we don't hear back, and I can decide whether to do it or not.

I like it. Okay, what else is driving you nuts?

Like everything is driving me nuts lately. No, I'm just kidding.

would say the next thing that I'm seeing a lot of is I'm seeing exes control the process. So our clients are feeding into their exes and their control. And that is definitely a big no-no. So you have a lawyer for a reason. Your lawyer is telling you the law, your lawyer is telling you how we should negotiate, where you should kind of end up. And then you leave your lawyer and you say, Yeah, that sounds great. And then the next thing you know.

Knock, knock, Brenda's at the door, and Chad opens the door or Brenda calls Chad. Chad answers the phone. And the next thing the lawyer knows is Chad's calling us to tell us that there's a totally different deal and he's okay with it. And we're like, hmm, that doesn't sound quite right. Did you meet with Brenda? yeah, I did. And so then we talk him through all these things that he allegedly agreed to, which might be okay, but most of the time it's totally inappropriate.

And it's the control coming through. And we talk him through why it won't work or what will work. And so then it just puts people in this circular issue with their ex of trying to negotiate, trying to leave the lawyers out, bringing the lawyers back in. It's just a mess.

What do we do instead? Because I think that people are caught we're telling them on every other episode, stop being so contentious, right? Don't don't fight. That's making your case more expensive. So they see this as not fighting. They see this as they're like, Well, Andrea, I've listened to you and I've listened to the times when you have gotten on this microphone and have said, you guys have to make a deal.

You have to you've got to negotiate. You have to make a deal. It, you know, it takes two. Stop arguing. Blah, blah, blah. Well, that's exactly what I did. And now you're telling me that that was wrong.

I hear it. I hear that. I think there's a caveat there. I am all for people negotiating together and coming to the right result without lawyers. I am totally for that. Saves you money if you can do it. What I'm not for is negotiating under pressure or duress or control. And if you are in one of those relationships where you've got the alpha female or male, and then

you're easily controlled. That's when deals are made that are inappropriate. So what I would say to that is if you think you can strike a deal with your soon-to-be ex, do not go into any conversation without being completely prepared with your lawyer.

So at times what I do with clients, if I know they're going to try to talk, they're going to try to save dollars, which again, any good lawyer would be like, yes, that works as long as you're prepared. I have a meeting with a client, I go through the different issues in the case, I tell them the risks and the upside and where they should land. Like where in the middle can you land? So that when they go to that conversation, they're prepared, they understand what they're doing.

So that's when you don't want to pick up the phone. You don't want to pick up the one-off calls or open the door when you're unprepared. Because when you do that, and that's what I'm seeing a lot of, you agree to things that maybe you would never agree to otherwise.

When somebody does come to an agreement and it has been, you know, blessed by a rabbi and we're good to go, do we then follow it up? I mean, I'm assuming this has to be in writing. So do you suggest that if Chad and Brenda have a conversation and they come to some sort of agreement, what's the next step for Chad? Does Chad then tell you what he and Brenda agreed on?

And then you send an email confirming everything with opposing counsel, or what does that process look like?

yeah, I think it looks different for each couple, but it it usually either plays out this way. It either plays out that the client comes to us and says, Hey, I met with Brenda, we're totally agreed. Here's the deal. Can you confirm it? And then we would go to the other side, the other counsel, and say, Hey, my understanding is they're settled. This is these are the terms. Please confirm. That's one way to do it. The other way to do it is that Chad and Brenda sit down and they basically bullet point out.

what they're agreeing to, and they both send it to their lawyers consecutively. Either way works, whatever is most comfortable for the couple at that point.

But again, you're saying that the biggest no no here is to go into that conversation blind and not know from your attorney where your line needs to be. So if you're going to do this and you're going to, meet at a park bench at nine o'clock at night by a dark alley and negotiate with your ex, talk to your attorney first and say, okay, what should my goal be?

Where is my hard boundary? And what are the things that you feel comfortable with me negotiating on?

Absolutely.

Absolutely. All right. Let me hit one other thing.

not telling your lawyer the whole story or withholding things from your lawyer. And and sometimes it's not malicious. Sometimes it's because they're like, I don't want to even email because I don't want to get charged again. So I'm just not going to tell them. Or sometimes it's, I just don't want.

Opposing side to see this. That's the really big problem. The first problem is usually that they just don't share it because they don't want to get charged. Totally understandable. But the issue is that at some point those facts may come out and hurt us. And if we don't know totally what's going on, or that you had a big fight, or that there's money missing out of your account, or that you went to them and said, hey,

I'll take X amount of dollars per month. Just don't, let's not go through lawyers. And now you've just shot yourself in the foot because you're taking way less than you should be getting. Those are big things that you have to share with your lawyers. Otherwise, we can't do our job well for you. Now, on the flip side, I'll just hit on that one where I said they're withholding it because they don't want the other side to know. Most of the time, I've had that happen a few times in my career. Sometimes it's bigger than others. When that happens, I generally always fire the client.

Because you can't have a client that's withholding information purposefully because they don't want to share it with the other side. That's just not how it works. And it's it's not it's not fair to the process and it's totally frowned upon by the court. So a good lawyer, if you're completely withholding information that's important and we find out, most good lawyers will withdraw from as your lawyer.

Now, before that statement from Morgan makes you totally nervous, I want to validate the thought behind it. We all want to withhold shit. That's human nature. We don't want them to know everything. I if I was getting a divorce right now, I wouldn't even want my soon-to-be ex knowing that I bought a Missoni Robert Marshall's. Because that's my business, not yours. What Morgan is saying is.

You can be up front with your attorney and say, I know I need to tell you this. I just I have such concerns about the other side knowing. And a good attorney will say, I hear ya. Let's talk through that. let me help you with those concerns. But if you are hiding information from the person you have put your trust in to help you, you are going to get fucked. This is just like we see in TV shows.

And in the movies. You don't lie to your defense attorney. You don't lie to your divorce attorney.

Could not agree more.

And just to hit on it one more time, AI is great. We can't, we we would never come on the these microphones and tell you, stop using AI. It's horrible. That's not realistic. We're all gonna use AI, but the way that we use it needs to be modified. Your robot friend can help you organize. Your robot friend can make you feel better.

In the middle of the night, if you're really upset and you need some additional coping strategies, your robot friend can make you your playlist for what you're gonna listen to on the way to court. Your robot friend should not be your strategist. you have to have boundaries, just like how we tell you that the mom in the PTO meetings who shows up half in the bag and brings a flask of margaritas.

is great for a good time. She should also not be your legal strategist.

And

I want to leave you with this you hired your lawyer for a reason. Let them do their job. If you let them do their job, if you've hired a good lawyer, a good law firm, they're going to do it to their best of their ability. And they're going to actually do the job.

when you're withholding pieces of information, when you're negotiating it behind their back, when you are trying to be your own lawyer, they can't excel at their job. And any good lawyer wants to do well for you. They just need to be able to do it.

And that's why we're bringing you this information. We know how easy it is to go rogue and want to take matters into your own hands. Cause I said it at the top of this conversation. Your attorney is great, and your attorney's not living this. You're the only one living it. So naturally, you're gonna have moments where you're like, I don't know, this doesn't feel right. I want to make sure I'm going the extra mile. Sometimes when you go the extra mile, you are hurting yourself more than you are helping. But the one thing that you're doing.

That is helping is you're listening to this show. So even the fact that you hit play on this episode, good for you because that tells yourself I do care and I do have some, I have accountability enough to know that there might be things that I'm doing that need to be modified. Keep getting information, but get information from reliable sources. We are one of the very few.

Reliable sources in the divorce world. This is very different than just scrolling on TikTok and listening to any old opinion out there.

Listen, divorce is a marathon. It's not a sprint, but the good news is here that you are doing it. Some days it's day by day, other days it's hour by hour. And that's okay. If you want more community, join our private community. It's free. There's so many fabulous people in the community and they send us great emails about Chad and Brenda plants. You will like them. Join it.

If you need more help, our DCC online and our meditation information online is where to go. Remember, you are swimming and I know it's hard, you will be in such a better place a few years from now. I guarantee it. And this is what I see daily with my clients. So if you're struggling, all we want you to know.

Is you have got this.

And we, my friends, have got you.