Ex-It Strategy
Podcast 39
Hosts/Participants
Elizabeth Stephenson, Sarah Hink, Jen Bordeaux
Elizabeth: Hi everyone. Elizabeth with New Direction Family Law.
Sarah: Sarah Hink. We are here today to talk about…we’ve just recorded an episode about affairs and how that might make you feel. And so now we’re gonna talk about having your day in court and giving you a really good picture of what that looks like in the path and maybe why you should not take that path.
Elizabeth: I know, and I think we thought of this because I have never been in court as much as I have been in court in the last six months, I don’t think.
Sarah: Yeah. It reminds me whenever I waited tables of when you like had your section, you all got slammed at the same time, and you’re like, Why aren’t you going to go sit in those other people’s sections? Why are you coming to mind now at once?
Elizabeth: People just can’t get along right now for some reason.
Sarah: No, I think the world is just in, in the divorce world and just in everyday world, people’s emotions are just heightened.
Elizabeth: I think so.
Sarah: And it’s like they don’t just, they just don’t give a f&#!.
Elizabeth: I honestly, I agree.
Sarah: They don’t.
Elizabeth: They just wanna win or not win or whatever.
Sarah: But anyway, but unfortunately attorneys are like that too sometimes.
Elizabeth: True. It’s like when somebody comes to me and they tell me who’s on the other side, I can tell you a lot of times how it’s gonna go.
Sarah: Yeah, you’re gonna need some extra wine and I hope you have some money. Save up to pay me to battle this person.
Elizabeth: So let’s talk about let’s say, let’s take an easy one, like you’re just going to court. Can’t settle it. You got a temporary custody and support hearing and those are limited to, let’s say two hours cuz you have two issues. So in, in a client’s mind, two hours, that’s nothing. This should be so easy. But my rule of thumb is even if it’s an hour or a two hour hearing, it’s gonna take me four to six hours to prepare for that.
Sarah: Yeah. Generally it’s like a three times as long as a hearing. That’s usually right, give or take, depending on the facts. And it’s unfortunate because, if you’re going to court for a custody case, we tell you generally without any big factors out there, you’re looking at 50-50.
Elizabeth: Correct.
Sarah: Why can’t we settle this? And like I was in court last week and they agreed on 50-50. Do you know what? They didn’t agree on a schedule.
Elizabeth: Oh.
Sarah: So I had to go to court and I was in court for three hours, even though it’s two hours, you spent much more time in court than you think you will. Right over the schedule. They agreed ’em 50, 51, just one in week on, week off. The other one wanted the two five schedule. So you know, if you really, if it’s worth it, two, then let’s go…
Elizabeth: Then let’s go. I had one that was supposed to be temporary, two hours and you start, you supposed think you’re supposed to start a certain time. He didn’t start until two hours later, so then you roll into the next day, and so six hours later and same thing, they agreed on. Almost there at 50 50, we’re talking about two days.
Sarah: Yeah.
Elizabeth: And that’s what we spent $15,000 on basically.
Sarah: Yeah. And you have to understand that’s what it’s gonna cost. And I know after you have these hearings, a lot of people are like shit, I don’t wanna do that again.
Elizabeth: I think sometimes it’s good for people just to get a taste of it. And it’s so funny because you can watch, you can have the most articulate client, that’s smart, that it’s just credible looks, looks really honest. They’re, they’re just putting it out there. Then, I don’t know if you’ve ever folks ever been in a courtroom where y’all have, you’re, It looks like it really, that’s the only thing that really looks like TV to me is there’s a stand, there’s a judge, there’s a big courtroom open, and sometimes clients just freeze.
Sarah: They do, and it’s like pulling teeth out of them.
Elizabeth: And so all the judge has to go on is you are what you say and what your partner says, and it all comes down to credibility and who they believe. So if you’re up there stumbling and not able to get out what you need to get out, a lot of times that’s not good for you.
Sarah: It’s not.
Elizabeth: And you, we can prepare our clients as best we can, and we always do at New Direction Family Law, we bring you in or Zoom for a hearing prep meeting and walk you through what the process is.
Sarah: Yeah. And those trial preps, sometimes my clients would be like, Why are you being so mean to me? And I’m like, Listen, I’m asking you questions that the other attorney should ask you, right? Like, I’m treating you at this moment as if you’re the other party. So yeah. I’m gonna ask you hard questions, right? You have to be prepared to answer them. And I’m gonna tell you like, Oh, this isn’t good. You shouldn’t say that. Phrase it this way.
Elizabeth: Right and then you can do that, and then they either will or won’t remember. Or rule of thumb as people lie all the time. So when you hear your ex up there saying something you know isn’t true don’t go ballistic. You just literally gotta put your head down and take it.
Sarah: Yeah. Don’t sit next to me and scream. Objection! Ah!
Elizabeth: Don’t start writing frantically on your piece of paper.
Sarah: Oh God. Just, I’m okay with that. At least you’re not like yelling at my ear because people don’t understand if you’re talking to me, I can’t listen to the other attorney ask questions to the person that’s testifying. So I’m like, Write it down. Write it down.
Elizabeth: Right. So it’s… and there’s a lot going on in that time. Like you say, if you’re like…if you’re doing a directive of someone, you gotta listen for objections. You know what they say and didn’t they go off the road and that sort of thing. And then it never goes as you…best as you plan.
Sarah: Yeah.
Elizabeth: It can go out the rails pretty quickly.
Sarah: Yeah, and you’re right, some people just freeze up in court and you don’t get that opportunity to have your day in court. If you’re just sitting there and you’re not telling the judge your story. Cause that’s the opportunity to really…
Elizabeth: That’s right
Sarah: Expand on everything and let the judge hear the ins and outs and don’t just answer yes and no.
Elizabeth: Exactly. And then, the judge can ask you questions too. And then a lot of folks go they ask me questions. Is that bad? No. Then sometimes it’s a good thing cause it means they’re listening. But then there’s also a lot of times you’re the fourth case on their docket that. They’re tired too, just like any other person. And they gotta make a decision in an hour on where your kids are going to live.
Sarah: Shoot, they get in a bad mood after five minutes, you can be the first case up there.And, I understand people thinking certain things are relevant, but they’re, they might not be. So that’s our job as attorneys, tell our clients, I know this part really frustrates you, or you’re mad about this or what your ex did, but that’s not gonna be very relevant, so I’m not gonna spend a lot of time but then they still, during the hearing wanna bring it up, wanna ask about it?And I’m like, It’s not relevant. And you don’t wanna waste all your time on something that’s not gonna change the outcome.
Elizabeth: And like I always say the client is the boss, except when it comes to how the trial is run. Like you get to make the determination about the witnesses and what’s relevant and the questions that you ask. And sometimes I will ask a question just so I will ask it, and they have an opportunity. to answer it, but it’s not gonna win or lose their case. But if there’s something that they feel like they wanna say, a lot of times I’ll let ’em do that.
Sarah: And same for cross examination, Oh, why didn’t you ask him about this or that? I’m like, cause it wouldn’t have been useful. And what I don’t think people understand is that we are timed in court. We only…
Elizabeth: Literally to the second.
Sarah: Yeah, they time us. And for these temporary hearings, the first dates you get when you ask for certain claims are limited to two hours, maybe even just one hour. It’s amazing how fast it goes and people don’t understand until you’re in court, just how quick that time goes.
Jenn: And that hour is for both sides, not just…
Elizabeth: Right. You get 30 minutes.
Sarah: Whatever it’s on the calendar for, everyone gets half. If you have two parties.
Elizabeth: And it just depends on the judge. Sometimes that includes your opening and close. So if 15 minutes with your own client, and you gotta ask them about what their day in a life is like, where the kids go to school, who did this, who did this, who did that? I You can’t get all that in.
Sarah: No. And if you talk too much, I’m gonna give you mean look still, you shut up we gotta move on. And, that’s a strategy that the attorney has to be aware of. Last week, the other attorney ran out of time. I still had seven minutes left after it and everything, so I won that.
Elizabeth: Yeah, that’s what happened to me too. That other party didn’t watch.
Sarah: I dunno. Like that’s a small little battle I like to win there.
Elizabeth: Yeah. I’ll take him when I can get it this time.
Sarah: Management is very important for sure.
Elizabeth: Because you can come into me and think you’ve got a slam dunk case. And I will tell you, nobody knows if you do or not. Only the judge knows. And so if you wanna roll that dice, then well, I’ll do that for you. But you can make a whole lot more headway I think if you try to settle. Let’s find a way to meet in the middle especially if it’s temporary. It’s temporary.
Sarah: Yeah.
Elizabeth: Let’s just get a stop gap measure in here. So if we go to a permanent hearing, I can make that a week long if I want to. I can get everybody in there to talk about anything I want ’em to talk about.
Sarah: Yeah. Then you can have your time on the stand to trash your ex.
Elizabeth: That’s right.
Sarah: As much as you want. Bringing on the witnesses, all the bank statements. I mean in Support it’s hard because that’s something that’s probably the most difficult to settle. Unless it’s a nasty custody case, how much support are you gonna get because there’s no equation like there is for child support. So that’s a tough one for the temporary hearing when you have a post separation support hearing. If you just have one person, the supporting spouse that just refuses to pay anything, then you’re gonna have to go to court, right?
Elizabeth: Oh right. There are times when you have to.
Sarah: I agree with that. Yeah. When you’re gonna have to go to court. But that’s not the time that you’re gonna be up there talking about his affair because those hearings are very limited in time. They’re one hour, so half an hour for each party. And you’re basically going over your monthly budget, what you spend on, what’s your income is, and you go through theirs and figure out if there’s any extra money left over. So I…those are honestly hard to prepare for because you have to cover everything you have to.
Elizabeth: And it’s hard for especially dependent spouses to understand, if you’re doing child support, let’s say, and because of the affair, they had another child. Okay, that takes $2,000 off of his income right there.
Sarah: Yeah.
Elizabeth: Which reduces what you get.
Sarah: And so that’s s&*$@. I’m sorry.
Elizabeth: That’s s&*$@. It is the worst thing to have to tell somebody…
Sarah: Yeah.
Elizabeth: That’s because he has this other child, your children, and you get less now. And that would be hard for me to wrap my head around. But that’s how it works, yeah.
Sarah: You don’t write the law Elizabeth.
Elizabeth: We don’t get mad at us. Go call your legislation. Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah.
Elizabeth: But it’s just a lot of it, there’s a lot of things that people why can’t you ask this? Why can’t I say what somebody told me? I need to be able…and they don’t understand the rules, like of hearsay and that sort of thing. And so it’s frustrating for them. So I think a lot of times your… our time is better spent either in mediation where we can work out those things or they could tell the mediator or whatever they wanna tell ’em. Whatever anybody else said, and meet in the middle somewhere. You gotta put all this stuff aside to see if you can come to an agreement and that’s really hard.
Sarah: Yeah. And I love mediation. It gives the person an opportunity to be heard. You’re, you’re being heard by your attorney in your room and you’re being heard by the neutral third party, the mediator. And, we can spend time on that and we,
Elizabeth: We spend as much time as you want to on that.
Sarah: Yeah. And the mediator will be another, knowledgeable attorney in family law in the area and they’re neutral. So they’ll take your reasoning behind asking for something to the other room and be like, she has a point. They’re not gonna tell the other party that she has point to the extreme that the judge is definitely gonna order this but you should consider where this person’s coming from in your next offer to them.
Elizabeth: Cause they can say, in my experience, it’s like we tell our clients in our experience, sometimes it’s easier to hear it from somebody else. This is generally what happens, especially with custody. It’s gonna be 50-50 more than likely.
Sarah: Sometimes they don’t listen to us, but they’ll listen to the mediator.
Elizabeth: I don’t know. That’s just human nature I think. You don’t wanna listen to your parents, but you’ll listen to your mom’s best friend.
Sarah: Yeah. This is true. They’re, yeah. The cool aunt over there. Yeah. But it’s definitely the opportunity to get some things resolved and if you can’t resolve everything, that’s fine, but take the opportunity to resolve what you can.
Elizabeth: I agree. If you can narrow the issues, that’s even better.
Jen: Jen here just from an outsider’s perspective, whenever I see the legal teams army up and they’re preparing and doing trial prep with clients and everything. And then we see so often continuances happen and understandably the client is very frustrated.
You guys are frustrated cuz you guys have done all this prep. But I see it happen so many times and especially with Covid. Somebody pops up with Covid, holy hell and I know continuances on the board for that too, which sometimes is completely out of our control
Elizabeth: And I’ll get Wake County credit. Lately they’ve added some courtroom so that, for temporary hearings are rarely continued anymore, which is good. But it is, It’s like I had one, two weeks ago continued and I’m not being heard until the middle of December. So now we’re in limbo for another four months.
Sarah: It certainly happens and people think we, Okay, you prepped the last time. You shouldn’t have to prep the next time. I’m like, listen, I’m sorry, but I do not remember all that .
Elizabeth: I do know how many texts and emails have gone back and forth between then and now.
Sarah: Yeah. We have updated evidence and we have to refresh our mind. You want us, if you want your attorney to be beneficial to you, then they’re gonna have to prepare for court.
Elizabeth: Yeah. I mean, I just. Maybe since I was taught, but I think we all over [00:13:00] prepare. I’ve always, I was always taught if, know the facts…know the facts… know the facts, and that takes time to do that. If we’ve subpoenaed documents from banks, I’m happy for my paralegal to go through ’em, but I need to go through them and put my eyes on them and see who’s spending what, where, and what they’re doing.
Sarah: Yeah, it’s, I need to know.
Elizabeth: That’s right.
Sarah: It must be in my brain. And I’ve had clients coming from other attorneys and they, we have a hearing, they’re like, Oh my gosh, you’re so much more prepared than my last attorney.
You know things better about my family. This was so much better. And then they get the bill after the trial and they’re like, damn. And I’m like you said I was better prepared than your other attorney like this. It takes time. And if I’m working and preparing for your case, I’m not working on anybody else’s. And that’s a balance that they just have to see what’s important to them.
Elizabeth: And I think we’re gonna do a podcast about this, but it, I think we’re always, I think we’re always upfront about how much it’s gonna be. We can’t tell you exactly what it’s gonna be, but we can give you a ballpark cuz we’ve been doing this a really long time.
Sarah: Right. And we know how long prep is generally for the hearing. So if I know you have a six hour hearing, then I might have two days of prep. Quite honestly, if we’re gonna have all those exhibits and making sure everything goes smoothly and then we get everything that we need to get in. So you just multiply my hourly rate by those hours and we have an estimate.
Elizabeth: And then you got paralegals and everything else. It’s like going, Oh, I’d like, I like to buy a Porsche, but I only wanna pay for a Ford, you know? I mean, you, You can’t do discovery, you can’t do depositions unless you have the budget to do that.
Sarah: And then there’s the other side where I might not think that we need to go through with depositions and multiple rounds of discovery, but that the other attorney thinks that way.
Elizabeth: Then your client always wants you to…Why didn’t we?
Sarah: And I have to respond 12 times and you have to get your deposition taken and I have to be there. That’s out of our control. I can’t stop them.
Elizabeth: And that’s hard. And again, it’s hard if you don’t know that. You don’t know that. That’s the way it works. You have the right to do it.
Sarah: And sometimes it’s the spouse that makes more money, they litigate the other spouse till they’re broke.
Elizabeth: Then they can out litigate them. That’s really sad to me…
Sarah: Yeah. But it does happen.
Elizabeth: But it does happen.
Jen: And for folks that, you guys just mentioned discovery a couple of times, so for us layman folks that do not speak that legal jargon, can you just quickly explain what discovery is and why that can affect legal?
Elizabeth: Yeah. I think the one people probably know most is when you see like a law program. We’re all sitting in a conference room. Our attorneys on the other side asking one of the parties questions with their attorney sitting next to them. That’s a deposition.
Jen: Okay.
Elizabeth: It’s under oath. There’s a court reporter there, but you’re not in the court. If that makes sense.
Jen: Yeah. And but what about discovery though?
Elizabeth: That is, that’s one type of discovery.
Jen: Okay.
Sarah: And then there’s written questions that you can ask. So instead of, you have to respond as if you’re under oath cuz you signed with notary. So it could be written questions and interrogatories.
Tell me, every doctor you’ve gone to in the last five years, any medications prescribed to you and what they’re prescribed for those kind of written questions. Or there’s admissions where you say isn’t it true blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and when we see those a lot for where there is sexual…
Elizabeth: Isn’t it true that you had sex with so and so on October 31st?
Sarah: Right and you have to admit or deny that. And then there’s the request for production of documents. And that’s when you have someone, that requests, maybe five years of your bank account statements and you have to produce ’em or…
Elizabeth: Or have you ever taken of you and your children, all of your tax messages. And that’s, you talk about time consuming and expensive. That is crazy expensive.
Sarah: Yeah. You’re gonna pay a lot of money to your attorney to answer those. And so if you get sent it…
Elizabeth: And then you’re gonna a lot of money if we send it out for us to review it when it comes back in.
Sarah: And then if your attorney tells you to just produce it…
Elizabeth: Please just produce it.
Sarah: Like people, you, you cause yourself more problems by not producing it. Then we have to go to court and explain to the judge why you didn’t produce it. And then, so you’re paying more money for that. And then the judge says you need to produce it…
Elizabeth: And then have to pay their attorney’s fees while you’re here.
Sarah: Yeah. You’re paying all this money. And it’s just a, it might feel like a circus and sometimes it is, but that’s why either we keep going to court or we attempt mediation and you can attempt mediation as many times as you want to.
Elizabeth: My philosophy nowadays is give me all your disclosures and let’s get you into mediation as quickly as possible even if nothing is filed or even if something is filed, because yeah, look at the time and money we could save and heartache for your family if we could get this settled.
Sarah: Yeah and like we said, and over, a lot of things are outta our control. I had this one case where we went to mediation twice, both times blew up, but my opinion was the other attorney and then all of a sudden after that second mediation that other attorney left, she had personal family issues. So like nothing having to do with the case…opposing a party got a new attorney and we settled within a month.
Elizabeth: Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. Sometimes it just depends on who’s on the other side. I would say, I would always say to someone, someone offers you mediation, at least attempt it.
Sarah: Yes.
Elizabeth: Is what I would say.
Sarah: A lot of times you’re required to do it if you’re in court anyways, so but attempt it in a good faith.
Elizabeth: Faith, Yeah, absolutely. And know that you’re gonna have, everybody’s gonna have to give up because even if you go to court, you’re never gonna get your best day in court.
Sarah: No.
Elizabeth: So why not try mediation cuz you’re not gonna get your best day in mediation either but y’all can find somewhere in the middle.
Sarah: Yeah. Figure that out. And in…the good thing is… you can focus on, to me, I really want the house to him, he might not wanna pay any alimony, so let’s figure out a way to make that work so everyone you know, get your goals met. And then the judge can’t do that, they’re gonna deal with proper properties, separate, alimony and you don’t get to have everything on the table to play with.
Elizabeth: Correct. Cause a lot of times, and I’ve had these in the last two cases.. party…my party wanted to keep the house, but they couldn’t refinance cuz they had to take so much out to pay the other party. So it was like, just like what you said, let me keep the house and you keep X amount of your retirement or whatever that I would be entitled to, that would equal your half of the mortgage. So she got to keep the house and he got what was important to him…was to keep his retirement.
Sarah: And be creative…
Elizabeth: And the court could never have done that.
Sarah: Yeah. Or you can go to court, pay all the attorneys, get up on the stand, tell the judge what an asshole he is.
Jen: And court’s not closed for these hearings, right? It’s open to the public.
Sarah: No, unless there’s an order closing the court.
Elizabeth: Yeah. Though people mill in and out of there all the time.
Jen: Random people knowing your business.
Sarah: Yeah. And it’s just, people can say the nastiest stuff about each other and it’s still not be relevant. And at the end of the day, we know what’s gonna happen most likely.
Elizabeth: We’ve already told you, we’ve already forecasted what’s gonna happen.
Sarah: And like it just sours the whole deal.
Elizabeth: Especially if you got kids, you can’t compare enough of that. And I, it’s just, they can have, they can say what they need to say, but my philosophy, and I think yours is too, anybody at the firm is I don’t, I don’t build my case around bashing the other party and making them look bad. My job is to put you in the best light and build you up and show how fabulous you are.
Sarah: That’s what the judges want too.
Elizabeth: And so when the other party gets there and starts bashing you, you’ve got more credibility of this to start off with. You could go call your friend, go out, drink whatever you wanna do, but don’t do it in court. You know, there are other places to do that.
Sarah: I let the other side do it. The other attorney will be fine. Just keep it negative. But I think judges…my experience looking at them throughout the trial and outcomes of my custody trials is taking the higher road.
Elizabeth: I agree
Sarah: And focusing on the positive is a much better outcome for you.
Elizabeth: And what if we have a client…have you ever had a client that said, No, I don’t wanna do that. So you got to, you fired a client because…
Sarah: If we’re in court then, it’s outta your hands.
Elizabeth: But that’s our advice. A lot of people go, No, that’s not how I wanna do it. I wanna score. And it’s like, There’s times where that, but 99% of the time there’s not,
Sarah: Yeah, no. By the time we get in, I feel you, I just, I’m yelling at them a little bit. We were talking about that before, sometimes you gonna yell at your client like, No, and if you don’t like my advice and you don’t like my strategy, then go get another attorney. And they don’t, I’m like so follow what I say. Yeah, here we are. We’re going to court .
Elizabeth: So there you go. Yeah.
Jen: I don’t want people to misconstrue that in that we don’t fight very hard for clients. But we do it in a, in that particular light, as opposed to…
Sarah: No I am fighting for them by doing the, you know what the court’s going to reward.
Elizabeth: Reward, I go after somebody on cross for sure. I don’t have a problem with that.
Sarah: That’s so much fun. Sometimes get a little carried away. There’s been times when the judges told me to slow down, let ’em answer…
Jen: Take it down.
Sarah: Yeah. But you’re in court so that it’s going, it’s moving. End of the day, clients turn around and they say, You’re prepared. You fought for me. That’s all that matters.
Elizabeth: And even if, I think a lot of times, even if we don’t prevail, they’re still happy that we were prepared and did what we could do. Day one, we prepared ’em that you might not. I went on all be…
Sarah: Yeah be honest. I tell them all the time I was like, I get to sit here and lie to you and say this, that and the other, but that’s not gonna be beneficial.
Jen: You guys mentioned mediation for settling option too, but do you have, and I’m just asking this in generalities, do you have clients also that settle with negotiations back and forth between you and another attorney coming to a separation agreement or something without actually having to go through the more formal process of mediation?
Elizabeth: Yeah yeah. Had mediation schedule on Thursday. We don’t need it anymore. Yeah. I think it’s a, I think it’s like old school. I tell people necessarily not do that because I’m gonna send you a letter three weeks later, gonna send me back a letter. .
Sarah: Yeah. It can be really time consuming to try and do that. The back and forth. Cause you have to have another attorney on their side that’s also diligently
Elizabeth: That actually responds. Yeah, exactly.
Sarah: Yeah. So it really just depends on the case by case. If you can do that…
Elizabeth: Sometimes you can’t…
Sarah: Throw together an outline if things are pretty simple. Okay, 50-50 custody, we want this schedule. This is what the child support worksheet says. So this will be that.
Elizabeth: Yeah it’s like do one and then so everybody has an idea of how far apart or how close we are. And then you can make that determination, I think.
Sarah: Exactly. Yeah. Knowing what the issues are. If there’s no support, then it’s gonna be easier, most likely.
Elizabeth: Absolutely. Oh yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. .
Sarah: But there’s also cases where we spin wheels for a year without getting into mediation.
Elizabeth: True.
Sarah: And I keep telling them, let’s go to mediation. Or sometimes I tell them, let’s just file in court cuz they’re not responding to anything. But you don’t want to, It’s like, I don’t wanna go to court, I don’t wanna go to court, but you gotta do something.
Elizabeth: Gotta do something. I can’t make anybody do anything.
Sarah: No. They…people think I can make them do things.
Elizabeth: Only a judge can make somebody do something. I cannot.
Sarah:That’s, can’t you send a subpoena for their bank records when they’re not handing it over when we ask nicely for them? No, I can’t, we’re not in court. I don’t have any less subpoena power. Otherwise I’d be subpoenaed like ex-boyfriend’s text messages, just having a field day. It’s not allowed.
Jen: Yeah. There we are.
Elizabeth: Is it better? Who? This depends on the case, but more than likely if, give it a shot and it will be better, I promise.
Sarah: That’s right. That’s right. And listen to your attorney’s advice on that.
Elizabeth: I agree with that. Yes, absolutely. Listen to your attorney always.
Jen: And even if you do file in court, that still means you have the option to still settle outside of court. But sometimes I’ve heard you guys say you need a lot of fire under somebody’s ass to get ’em to start moving, and then maybe that gets…
Elizabeth: Yeah. A lot of times you got to the file just to get somebody’s attention and get as you say, subpoena power and get the documents that you need. And then you’re more than likely settle.
Sarah: But in the end I say, and then, I will say most of the time, head in the sand, people are the men by big majority.
Elizabeth: True.
Sarah: Just ignore. Ignore everything. Like maybe if I just ignore all these emails and letters from the attorney, you’ll just go away.
Elizabeth: This may sound biased but I think a lot of times cuz they hold the purse strings, I don’t care.
Sarah: They don’t care
Elizabeth: But the dependent spouse does care. Cause they’re not getting any money. You’re getting very little. So it’s different. Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah. And women, we take initiative like to move on. Let’s get this done.
Elizabeth: Chop . Chop.
Sarah: All right. And chop. We’re gonna move on from this topic.
Elizabeth: That’s right. Yes. So I as always, ain’t that some bullsh$t.
