Doing Divorce Right By Chief PeaceKeeper™ Scott Levin
Scott Levin is a divorce attorney and divorce financial expert who has dedicated his career to helping couples and parents resolve disputes through mediation so they stay out of court and stay in control. Protecting children is at the heart of Scott's work as a mediation divorce specialist. Scott shares tips and advice for couples and parents wanting to learn how to divorce amicably without going to court. As a family law attorney in San Diego, California, Scott has more than two decades of experience and stories and tales to share and an incredible array of unique and interesting guests that join him to share their own ideas and experiences. We discuss the benefits of divorce mediation and the reasons why couples navigating divorce should choose peace and opt for the mediation process as opposed to hiring divorce lawyers and entering the litigation battlefield. Known by colleagues and clients as the Chief PeaceKeeper™, Scott is the founder and managing partner of San Diego Divorce Mediation & Family Law, a firm with hundreds of 5 star reviews from couples who have benefitted from Scott's legal and financial expertise and caring approach over his many years in the field. Learn strategies to tackling divorce and co-parenting disputes through a team approach with Scott Levin.
Doing Divorce Right By Chief PeaceKeeper™ Scott Levin
Divorce Lawyer vs Mediator For Divorce: Differences Between Mediation vs Litigation Explained
What if you could navigate your divorce with reduced stress and greater control? In this episode, Scott Levin, Chief Peacekeeper and family law attorney, collaborates with Tanya Aure, a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst, to examine the divorce mediation vs attorney differences and how mediation vs litigation differ for divorce proceedings.
Tanya and I clarify the mediation process, highlighting how it allows you to retain decision-making authority rather than leaving it in the hands of your attorney. We share our personal experiences and delve into practical considerations when thinking about a California mediator vs lawyer for divorce, from asset division to determining the future of your home and vehicles.
Discover why mediation is a faster, more cost-effective, and empowering option for you and your spouse. Gain valuable insights into how mediation encourages direct communication and mutual agreement, and learn why we are strong advocates for this amicable divorce process approach over traditional litigation.
Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from two experienced professionals about how you can take charge of your divorce journey.
Thanks for listening and I hope you'll continue to learn more about how you can peacefully divorce.
As a divorce mediation attorney in California, Scott Levin helps couples figure out the settlement terms and draft enforceable settlement agreements so they can divorce fairly without needing to go to court. Obtain closure peacefully through an amicable divorce. process that protects families and kids.
Visit San Diego Divorce Mediation for more information and to learn more about our mission to help divorcing couples make informed decisions and fair agreements through mediation or book a free virtual consultation.
Scott Levin, attorney, mediator, CDFA®
Chief PeaceKeeper
scottlevinmediation@gmail.com
858-255-1321
San Diego Divorce Mediation & Family Law
www.SanDiegoFamilyLawyer.net
Hey everybody, this is Scott Levin, Chief Peacekeeper. I'm a family law attorney and mediator based in California. I'm here with Tanya Arre. Hi Tanya, how are you?
Speaker 2:Hi, scott, thanks for having me again. I'm great.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Tanya is a fantastic certified divorce financial analyst. I worked with her for gosh Tanya before the pandemic right.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, before the pandemic. Can you believe it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we had less wrinkles back then.
Speaker 2:We did.
Speaker 1:Or I did.
Speaker 2:I definitely did, and I had less gray hair then, but that's okay.
Speaker 1:That was okay. You know gray hairs are good. So Tanya had an interesting idea for a quick video. Basically, I guess, tanya, why don't you introduce it and we'll go from there.
Speaker 2:So, scott, I wanted to come back on to ask you a question that I get all the time as a CDFA. People come to me about their finances, right. Then they start asking legal questions which I simply cannot answer.
Speaker 1:But the biggest question I get is what is the difference between going through mediation and going through litigation? What does that look like? Do I involve my spouse? Do I not involve my spouse? Exactly what the difference? Is the difference to navigate the process? Well, lots of differences. I'll kind of try to hit them quickly. And then, of course, tanya and I have both written about this. We'll put links to where you can find some more information.
Speaker 1:But generally as a mediator, I don't litigate cases, so the timeline that my clients are on is highly expedited. Versus a litigated case. You know, the average litigated divorce, whether you're fighting or not, once you bring in lawyers, it makes it more formal, so it's like almost two years in the contested process versus. You know, the average case that I'm working on is about two months, so it's a much faster process to get to a settlement and get everything signed process to get to a settlement and get everything signed. It's much less expensive, obviously. The end result, though, is a judgment that's enforceable by the state of California. So the end result is the same is an agreement on the same scope of terms. It's just a quicker, more collaborative approach, and when you're when you hire an attorney for divorce, one thing that you'll find and sometimes that's required to have an attorney and go to court you won't really be in control of the case. You hire an attorney. They have their playbook for how they handle divorce cases, and none of their clients are going to get them off that playbook, so you're not going to be able to you know push it faster. You're not going to be able to divert from their the way that they do discovery or exchange of financial docs, you're going to kind of be that person's going to kind of become everything to you and you won't really have a say in a lot of like what's happening In mediation.
Speaker 1:It's completely different, right, the mediator is there helping you guys talk things out, but it's really you and your spouse that are coming to the agreements. So you're making your own decisions, you're getting informed and you're getting knowledge about your options. But it's really you guys are talking things out directly. So you're staying in control, you're more understanding of what's happening because the you're talking directly about the issues. You're not talking about court cases from 1981 that your attorney is referring to, or you know code sections. It's about hey, what do you want to do with the house? Let's talk that out. Uh, you both own cards. What do you want to do with those vehicles? What about your 401k? So you're're really kind of being presented the issues and then you're being given the opportunity to talk those things out and arrive at decisions. So the control that people experience is way, way different in a mediated settlement versus litigation.
Speaker 2:Well, as a CDFA, I always push toward mediation, right, because my job is to watch the money throughout the case, and litigated divorces are so much more expensive. I'm not talking $5,000 expensive, I'm talking about thousands and thousands and thousands more. So I feel like if couples can come to an agreement on their own with a mediator such as yourself, then we're saving a lot of time and money, in which case I have more to help them budget with after the fact, right. But I also feel, every time I see a litigated case, I'm buried in paperwork. I'm buried in statements for years and years to come that actually aren't necessarily relevant anymore, whereas I feel like in mediation, we can really focus on what we need today. What we need, yeah, maybe at the date of marriage, depending on the length of time, but I feel like litigation is just this drawn out process that God knows when it ends, right.
Speaker 1:It's very formal. You know, when you have an attorney of record, they're responsible for the case in so many ways and they're obligated to do things that really bring a lot of formality to the situation. Sometimes that's good, but a lot of times people kind of get buried in it.
Speaker 2:And I feel like the nice thing about mediation is you can present the options, what's supposed to happen supposedly by a California law, but they get to decide that's not exactly where we want to land and that's how it works on the financial part. I present them with what's supposed to happen according to the community property division, but then I say but this is all up to you. You take this to your mediator, ideally, and decide if that's how you want this financial split to be. My job is to show a couple, when I work as a neutral, just what it is.
Speaker 1:That's so incredible. So you're getting the benefit of the knowledge of someone like Tanya, but then you're making your own decisions and kind of negotiating. That in a way that you know has a lot of time, you know, saves you a lot of stress, saves you a lot of money. You know the other thing on the child side, obviously, parenting. I mean you guys know, you know people know their kids better than a court ever will, right, or two lawyers. And when it comes to parenting plans in court, you know you have a very.
Speaker 1:You go into the. You know you're hearing with the, with the, essentially the mediator for child custody, and you get like 45 minutes or an hour and they're like checking the box on all these things and you really almost everybody feels unfulfilled coming out of that meeting. They didn't have enough time, they couldn't explain themselves, they didn't get across that their kids are, you know, would be better off doing it this way or that way. And those are all the sort of things you do get to discuss in mediation. You get more time, you get to make a plan that's more customized to your kids and to each other and people usually end up with much more enforceable agreements because of that, because they made the agreements together, there's a lot less going to court later in mediation to fight about custody. Because because both people had a say in how the how the plan was created.
Speaker 2:Nice. My other question for you is really my last question for today is do you also file the paperwork, In other words, the complaint, the petition, the response, all of those? Would you mind commenting on that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm helping people arrive at the agreements that's kind of what a mediator does and then I'm doing all the court filings. So we initiate the case, we do all the court preparation, court filing, I draft their marital settlement agreements myself and you know so I file all of that. So basically our clients aren't going to court. They aren't having to worry about. You know how to get things filed or how to fill out forms. It's really our office is kind of taking that over for them. The hard part is they have to come to agreements and then we will execute on those things for them to make it official with the judge.
Speaker 2:Perfect. Thank you so much for clarifying that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks for being here. Tanya as well.
Speaker 2:All right, have a good day.
Speaker 1:All right, take care.
Speaker 2:Take care.
