10 Things...

The breakdown of my legal practice is as follows:

50% Real Estate
20% Family Law
10 % Mediator
10% Guardianships & Conservatorships
5% Estate Planning
5% Misc (litigation, juvi law, criminal law, business law).

When I serve as a mediator (a mutual third party) I work with two other family law attorneys and their clients to resolve their divorce and child custody issues. A professional problem solver if you will.

Here are ten things I have learned throughout the course of being a mediator:

1. 99.9% of all divorces can be traced back to infidelity or financial issues or both.

2. If you risked your family's future and your financial future on a fling- I will have little to no respect for you. And I'm not afraid to tell you that. And if I'm your mediator, you just paid me lots of money to tell you that you're dumb. Really dumb.

3. Many people enter marriage with the intent of it not lasting a lifetime.

4. Some people live with heartache for decades.

5. Some people live with anger for decades. And they lose all rationale from it.

6. The legal system- its not fair. And one should never, under any circumstances, let a judge decide the future of their children. And most judges would agree with the later part of this statement.

7. At the end of the divorce process many people think "well, if I knew it was going to be like this I would have just stayed married to them."

8. There are some attorneys out there that I wouldn't trust my sister's ten year old cat who I don't really like (The cat- not the sister) with.

9. Some people will pay hundreds of dollars an hour to ramble on about something that is in no way important. To anything.

10. When I entered the profession I though it'd be 90% attorney 10% counselor. I'm 90% counselor and 10% attorney.