Ululani Akiona:

Hi there. Welcome to another episode of Akiona law, family law and divorce podcast. Here in this podcast, we talk about old things that intersect in the areas of family law and divorce. And today my special guest is family law, collaborative divorce law attorney Roy Martin. And he’s joining us from Bellingham Washington. Hi Roy. Thanks for being on the show today.

Roy Martin:

Hi Ululani. Thanks for having me

Ululani Akiona:

Very excited to have you on the show. We were talking beforehand how Roy is a very active member on our list, serve it’s domestic relations attorneys of Washington, and every time someone posts a question and he has an answer, he has the most insightful, thoughtful words of wisdom to, to share. And I always just feel like I learned so much from you whenever you share in the Lister. So, so thank you for that. First of all, that’s very generous for you too for do that, cause I know it takes time. So thank you.

Roy Martin:

Thank you for your generous and kind comment.

Ululani Akiona:

So let’s go ahead and get started, cuz you’ve got a really interesting background and I, you know, the most people like, you know, collaborative law, most people really don’t know about it, but if you could just briefly, okay, so let’s start off with this. You started off doing family law, you started off doing family law, divorce litigation, correct. And then you transition over to collaborative law. So I guess the first question I would wanna know is like what brought you into the area of being of doing family law and divorce?

Roy Martin:

Yeah, I, I went through a really horrible divorce during law school and it was, it was through

Ululani Akiona:

Law school

Roy Martin:

When I was in law school. Yeah.

Ululani Akiona:

Oh, that’s crazy.

Roy Martin:

Yeah, so it was first year. And first semester finals I got, oh my gosh. On the first day of finals deliberately by, you know, my, my wife’s attorney. And wait,

Ululani Akiona:

Wait, wait. So you over there sitting in class to take a final and you get served with divorce papers? No,

Roy Martin:

No. He came to my apartment that morning

Ululani Akiona:

Oh, oh.

Roy Martin:

So anyhow, you know, I knew that it was done deliberately cuz this guy, you know, was that type of attorney. Yeah. And I had an attorney who was totally different, who held my hand through the process who guided me, who was kind and I saw both sides. I saw how, how you could make somebody’s life so much worse as an attorney, but you could also make somebody’s life so much better. And, and something came into focus for me because I was really on a different path. I was you know, I had a background in software, computer software and engineering, and I was thinking that I’d go into patent law. You know, cause I had always, you know, worked with machines, not with people. And, and I, I didn’t think of myself as particularly good with people. I still don’t. But what happened was I I, I mean I saw why certain fields are called professions that never made sense to me.

Roy Martin:

My father was a teacher, but you know, my mom would say, you know, your father’s a professional and it never made sense to me. Like, so what, like, you know, how’s that different from any other job then I understood in that moment, like why doctors and lawyers and teachers and clergy are different because we have, you know, we have an, an opportunity, a possibility of impacting people’s lives in really profound ways that matter. Not that other work doesn’t matter. You know, like when I was briefly in the military, they used to say the most important job was the one that’s not getting done and that’s true. But you know, like when I, you know, when I was a software engineer and I wrote good code, I mean, that made a difference, but not in the profound life changing way that it does when one is an attorney or that it can, when one is an attorney, if one you know, tries to have that sort of impact.

Ululani Akiona:

Okay. And just how did you do on your final by the way?

Roy Martin:

well, I wound I wound up doing pretty well in law school. I think I did. What did I do that year? I think, I think first semester I got three a in a, B

Ululani Akiona:

. Wow. I, I can imagine getting server divorce papers and then trying to focus on your final. Yeah.

Roy Martin:

Yeah. I was, you know, I think being from a Jewish family kind of, you know, gave me a natural advantage. I’m sorry, gotta mute my phone. You know, cuz you know, particularly first semester, you know, when everybody’s saying, you know, like, why are, why are you hiding the ball? You know, like, you know, what, what are the answers to the questions? Those of us who grew up debating over the dinner table knew that there were no answers that it was all, you know, we kind of got what the game was because it was already implicit in the culture we came from.

Ululani Akiona:

So take us, so, okay, so you, you went through this, like I still can’t find them. The fact that you get served with divorce papers in your first year of law school and right before final. So that kind of shaped you into, Hey, I wanna go into this field of family law.

Roy Martin:

Well, it, it was more like, I want to make a profound difference in people’s lives and this is a way I can do it.

Ululani Akiona:

Oh, okay. And so then you started off doing divorce litigation, correct. What, and how long, how long did you do divorce litigation for?

Roy Martin:

I did only divorce litigation for about four years. And then I was, I really got fed up with it. I got to the point where it, there was one case in particular. I mean, I mean for one thing, I mean I discovered that it wasn’t, that I carried a lot of stress that it wasn’t effortless for me to go to court the way it is for some people, because I really, I really wanted to impact the outcome maybe too much. And I carried, you know, it’s like, you only have so much power when you go to court, you have to kind of let go and just do the best you can knowing that you could have always done better, but still it was, you know, the best you can, you can run. And I just felt like I was holding people’s lives in my hands and I felt a responsibility that was overwhelming. And that combined with the fact that I didn’t, that I came to see over time that I wasn’t seeing the whole picture, that I would get really wound up in these cases. And then a lot of times it became apparent later that I had only seen part of the picture and it became particularly pronounced in one case where I, you know, won custody. I put it in quotes because you know, what does it really mean? But I won custody from my client right.

Ululani Akiona:

Really quickly at. Can, are you able to turn up your microphone volume just a little bit?

Roy Martin:

I can maybe move my microphone closer.

Ululani Akiona:

Oh, that’s so much better. Yeah. I’m really interested in hearing the story. I wanna make sure I hear you and the listeners hear you too.

Roy Martin:

Yeah. So I was saying that I was so I, I had one custody for, for this guy you know, O over the over the objections of the wife and he and his girlfriend then went off to another city with the kids and the following summer, they, the kids came back to visit and and then the, the person who had been the custody evaluator contacted everyone and said she had met with the kids, which I guess she had been scheduled to do. And that she had that something had changed in a really big way. These kids were claiming that they were being abused

Ululani Akiona:

By whom, by the dad,

Roy Martin:

By the dad and the girlfriend.

Ululani Akiona:

Oh. And the dad was your client.

Roy Martin:

Yeah. And and I read what the kids had. Well, what she said about what the kids had said. And one of the things they said was nobody was listening to them. And I realized that I was one of those nobodys who wasn’t listening to them. And I saw that I was, you know, like, I don’t know if they were put up to it. I don’t know what the truth is, but I realized that I was part of a system where there was, was no clarity where, you know, where it was easy to harm children without realizing you were doing it. Okay. And I, and I, you know, I just got to a point where it’s like, I can’t do this anymore. And I was getting myself retrained actually to be a to be a, a what do you call to go, to go into immigration law to be an immigration

Ululani Akiona:

Attorney, really immigration law

Roy Martin:

yeah. Cause I felt, I felt like, you know, there, I could make a positive impact. I could really help people. Cuz I didn’t know if I was helping or hurting. I mean, I knew that some of the time I was helping, but I didn’t know if I was hurting just as much as I was helping. And just then a fellow walked into my office, another divorce attorney who had for whatever reason, taken an interest in me, taken a liking to me. And he just, and I hardly knew him at the time we became really good friends. He asked me, how are you doing? And I told him, I’m, you know, I’m going, I’m leaving divorce law. And I told him why. And he said, and he told me, well, you know, some of us are getting retrained to do this thing called collaborative law.

Roy Martin:

Have you heard about it? Well, no, I haven’t tell me. So he told me and he said, would you like to join us? And we were like the first attorneys in Arizona that I was, that’s where I was practicing at the time to get trained. I, I was, I jumped at it. I was like, yes, that’s exactly what I wanted to do. When I got into family law, you know, I wanted to have that sort of impact. So I’m interested. So we went off and got trained together and we came back and then, and then tried to do collaborative law, but made a mess of it because we didn’t know what we were doing.

Ululani Akiona:

What, what were, are we in the like 2010? 2002,

Roy Martin:

2001.

Ululani Akiona:

Oh wow. Yeah. I didn’t know. Collaborative law went back that far.

Roy Martin:

Yeah. It actually goes back to the, to the, to the nineties. A fellow named Stu Webb in Minnesota created it. He was a very experienced litigator, very well respected. And he just, he got to a point where he just said, we’re not doing this the right way. And he, he reached out to some of his colleagues and proposed that they do things a little differently. Mm-Hmm and a few of them got on board and they started pursuing cases in a different way. And then eventually it spread. And then and then a group of attorneys, particularly female attorneys in California, not just attorneys actually attor, you know, allied professionals, we call them, you know, so mental health professionals, financial professionals and attorneys, this very dynamic group of women got hold of it and completely transformed. It made it even better by bringing in other professions to, to integrate.

Roy Martin:

So now we have these integrated teams that work together because, because when you’re doing divorce, you’re holding so much more than legal issues. You know, it’s so easy for attorneys to look at a case and say, you know, like easy case, you know, that the property is simple, that the maintenance is simple. The custody is simple. And you know, we lose sight of the fact that no divorce is simple, that for people going through it, it’s incredibly complex and scary and challenging. And and so, you know, having mental health professionals as part of a team makes a lot of sense and having somebody to hold the financial pieces separately can make a lot of sense.

Ululani Akiona:

So it sounds like you and this other attorney were almost at the forefront of the collaborative movement in Arizona.

Roy Martin:

So yeah, 15 of us got trained and I think after we got trained, 12 of us actually started doing collaborative law and then over time other people joined and some people left.

Ululani Akiona:

Okay. And so what did you find? So what did you find the difference between collaborative law and divorce litigation?

Roy Martin:

Well the reason I’m hesitating is because, like I said, we didn’t, you know, we didn’t do it well at first and we had no teachers, so we had to figure it out ourselves. So in the beginning it wasn’t all that different. We were trying to make it different. Our intentions were good, but we didn’t, we didn’t know what we were doing, but as I learned and, and slowly and over time as we, we all really learned together I mean, it was different in profound ways. I mean, I think that the central one is that the focus, well, first of all, by having an agreement that we’re not gonna go to court, it has the effect of defanging the attorneys. So the clients have agreed to defang their attorneys and the attorneys have agreed to defang themselves. What that means is

Ululani Akiona:

I love that term defang yeah. Yeah.

Roy Martin:

You know, because before that, if it, you know, if my client called me up and said, you know, like, you know, my wife, she’s not letting me ha see the children this weekend, you know, I would assume the worst and I’d call up the other attorney or I’d write a letter and I’d, and I’d, you know, I’d make accusations. And then collaborative. I saw very quickly can’t do that. I mean, I, I wish I had seen it quicker because like I said, we were doing valid litigation at first, but it became obvious really quickly that when you don’t have a lever of going to court, then you just get into a, you know, you, you, you get nowhere unless you work together. So I learned to get real curious to, to call up the other attorney and say, okay, this is what I’m hearing from my client. I don’t know. What’s true. You know, would you be willing to reach out to your client, you know, to engage them as my partner, right. Would you, you know, and to build trust that that, that collaborative is premised on very trusting relationships between the, the various professionals, you know, can you find out what happened? You know, I really want to know her perspective and, you know, and, and, you know, we get to the bottom of it and we get a real solution much, much faster.

Ululani Akiona:

Right.

Roy Martin:

So, I mean, I think that’s the heart of it is that by not being able to go to court, we have to work together. In addition, you know, there’s an agreement to fully disclose,

Ululani Akiona:

No, let’s, let’s, let’s do this. Why don’t, why don’t you tell us what is collaborative divorce?

Roy Martin:

Sure. And, and one more thing before I do that, which is that the core of it is really that we’re focusing on, on intangible goals rather than so, so, you know, it’s really easy as an attorney to measure the things that can be measured, right. To, to focus on the things that can be measured, because that, that’s how we measure our progress. So even when you’re talking about children is tendency to measure how many days of parenting time at, you know, as opposed to measuring the quality of parenting. So collaborative is very different because we don’t measure the, I mean, we, we still measure the tangibles because those things have value. You know, we, you know, we have to help people get a portion of the retirement. And I mean, all of those things matter, but not to the exclusion of things like Goodwill, the, the reality that these people are gonna be parenting their children together for the rest of their lives, hopefully

Ululani Akiona:

Goodwill.

Roy Martin:

Yeah. And so, and a lot of people want to divorce in a, in a way that’s, you know, commensurate with their values. They, you know, they feel like, you know, we’ve loved each other through the marriage, at least as well as we knew how, and we want to keep doing that, we don’t wanna become enemies. You know, maybe they’re, you know, they have attachments to each other’s friends and family and they don’t wanna lose those. I mean, you know, children are typically at the core of it though. Everyone wants to do right by their children. And so, you know, people can still have differences, but we look at what’s under those differences. Like if one person saying I need to have 50% parenting time, the question becomes, why, why is that so important to you? As opposed to, you know, the, what, which I was really good at as a litigator, you know, I’ll try to get you what you tell me you want.

Roy Martin:

Now I ask, you know, why what’s underneath that. And if you find, find that somebody’s afraid of losing connection with the kids, or they’re afraid that, you know, the wife and the kids will move away, you know, well, let’s talk about that. Let’s get to what it’s really about. You know, the same thing on the other side, if a, if another, if the, if a parent says it’s really important to me that I’d be the primary parent. Well, what’s that about often there’s fear, you know, fear that my spouse won’t be able to parent the children as well as I do or will hurt them in some way. So, you know, so how do we, you know, how do we deal with that? How do we address it? Not just, not just to emotionally assuage the concern, but to really get to the heart of it. So in a collaborative case, we don’t just have attorneys. We have a coach, who’s, who’s a, a therapist, but they’re not there to do therapy with the parties. They’re there to help with the communication dynamic, help. Each of them look at what’s, what’s truly important. What will seem important 10 years from now looking back on it, versus what might seem important in the heat of the moment and help us understand the Dyna, the communication dynamic. So people don’t continue to replicate it through the divorce as they typically do.

Ululani Akiona:

You know what you said, something really interesting right there. You just said, we with a therapist, we look at what’s gonna be important 10 years from now. What’s important right now in the heat of the moment. Mm-Hmm cause it’s, you know, in, in divorce, in divorce or custody battles, the litigation, a lot of people just focused on like right now, right now, not kind of thinking, well, 10 years ahead, is this really gonna matter?

Roy Martin:

Right, exactly. So, so helping people back up and look at the big picture and, and we start, right. You know, we start with that at the very beginning, we start, you know, by asking them about, you know, what are, what are your reasons for wanting to do this collaboratively? And that’s part of the first meeting. And we, we, you know, we get that down so that every time we go into a negotiation where we’re trying to deal with the, the, the details, the nitty gritty, we remind them of what they told us, because usually it’ll be like, you know, we really want to do this right by the kids. We want to, you know, you know, each, each parent will say something like it. You know, at the end of the day, I want us to be able to parent together. One, one woman said it very beautifully.

Roy Martin:

I recently wrote about this was, was actually not my client, but the other party, the wife, they had a 16 year old daughter. And she said you know, one day our daughter is gonna get pregnant. You know, hopefully not anytime soon, but one day that’ll happen. And when that happens, I want you standing next to me in the hospital room hospital, you know, maternity ward to greet our grand first grandchild together. Oh yeah. And it’s, it was that kind of moment. It’s like, we all kind of got teary, like, like it was like a real privilege to be a part of this family, a family’s, you know, journey at that moment. It was like, wow. To be able to witness that moment, it just made me so grateful that I get to do this kind of work.

Ululani Akiona:

Yeah. That’s, that’s beautiful. I’m just taking that in right now. my goodness. So walk us through like, you know, a collaborative. So I guess basically what is collaborative law? What is a collaborative divorce process?

Roy Martin:

Yeah. So there are two key elements. One is the agreement not to go to court mm-hmm and the other is the agreement to fully disclose. We’re not gonna hide anything. Everything that’s relevant to the wellbeing of the children, to the financial issues, you know, you know, money. So everyone’s income, all the assets everything’s gonna be out in the open.

Ululani Akiona:

Let me touch upon. So the two key things are an agreement not to go to court, an agreement to fully disclose everything. So what happens if someone decides to go to court

Roy Martin:

That terminates the collaborative case, they have to start over again, all the professionals are out. All of our work product is out. So, so we’re, you know, we’re deliberately making it difficult and painful to do that. And we, and we’re very careful about selecting cases. In other words, I’m not gonna do collaborative if somebody’s got one foot in one foot out, okay. It takes commitment to this process because it just, because we’re doing it collaboratively, doesn’t make it easy. It’s still a divorce. Right. And so, you know, it’s like, I always tell people that first meeting, we read the, the participation agreement out loud together. It’s kind of like taking vows. And I I’ll say to people, you know, look, this is a hard process. It’s not easy. When it gets hard, it’s your commitment to this process is what’s gonna keep, keep us going.

Roy Martin:

So I, you know, like I’m not setting off on this journey unless I have your word that you’re committed to it, and you’re gonna do the things you need to do. You’re not gonna tell me halfway through the case that I don’t wanna talk to the coach anymore, or I’m not taking the kids to see the child specialist or, you know, like, like you need to do the things that are, you know, that are, you’re part of this. I’m, you know, cuz I can’t be more committed to your case than you than you are that won’t work.

Ululani Akiona:

Wow. That’s powerful right there. Can’t be more committed to this case than you are. Right. And so if the case were to go to court, you can no longer represent that person. Correct at all. Okay.

Roy Martin:

And that rarely happens. I mean, I, you know, if it does happen, I see it as usually we, we failed to notice something that was important at the beginning because they were signs, there were warning signs.

Ululani Akiona:

Okay.

Roy Martin:

I mean it can, it can sneak up on you where you don’t have really have any clue. So there there’s probably, I mean, you know, I would say that probably three to 5% of cases fail, something like that of small percentage, but it happens. And this is with a, you know, with a, with a seasoned team, with brand new collaborative attorneys. Like we were, when I first got trained, I mean the, you know, a lot of our cases failed back then probably half . But I mean, we’ve gotten it down to, you know, to a science now it’ll still happen occasionally, but rarely I’d like it. I’d like to get it so rare that it’s like, you know, in the event of a water landing, you, you know, you know, cuz like, you know, you don’t even listen to that when you’re on the airplane, you, you know, you know, there’s not gonna be a water landing. Right. So, you know, it’s like, I’d like to get it to that point where it’s just like, like that, but we’re not there. And I don’t think we will be in my lifetime, but we do keep upping our game in terms of the product we deliver because we learn together and it’s, and it’s a big box. There’s always more to learn.

Ululani Akiona:

What happens if someone fails to disclose everything?

Roy Martin:

Well, if, if, if assuming somebody finds out about it, right. If they do it and nobody ever finds out, it’s just like litigation. Right. It it’s, you know, but I mean hopefully people who get into collaborative I, I, I suppose, you know, I mean, one of the things I’m always on the lookout for actually is what are people’s motives in getting into collaborative because if they’re doing it to try to hide, you know, to, to try to pull the wool over someone’s eyes to try to, you know, if ensure a certain outcome or prevent a certain outcome or or to exhaust the other party. I mean, all of those things are huge indicators that this is not appropriate and, and we’re not gonna do the case collaboratively, but if somebody manages to be such a good, such, an effective sociopath that they okay, you know, that they hide, you know, they can, they, that the mask doesn’t slip and I don’t see it and nobody on the team sees it, which I think is unlikely, quite frankly, cuz we get deep into people’s lives.

Roy Martin:

But if that were to happen and you know, maybe it’s happened in some of my cases then of course we wouldn’t know now if I find out which, which doesn’t happen often, but it has happened from time to time, you know then so, so actually I’ll give you an example from real life. A client tells me, he’s been saying through, throughout the case, you know, like I, I know she’s having an affair. I know she, you know, he’s saying all these things about his wife. Like I like he knows them. And I, and you know, as a professional team, cuz you know, sometimes the, the professional team talks without the parties present, you know, we’re talking about how certain he is about certain things and how puzzling it is. And at a certain point he’s saying this to me privately and I said, well, listen, you don’t know you’re, you know, you’re making assumptions, but you don’t know. And he is like, oh I know. And somehow he said it in a way that pierced something for me. And I said, okay, how do you know? And he said he said, well, you know, he, he was in law enforcement, he had access to information. Most of us don’t oh, he had his wife’s he had access to her texts and her emails and he was reading all her stuff. And I said, well not

Ululani Akiona:

Inappropriate.

Roy Martin:

Yeah. And I said, well, okay, now that you’ve told me this, I’m glad you told me, but we’ve got a problem because you know, I can’t rat you out unless you give me permission to okay. But at the same time, if, if you don’t give me permission to then the collaborative case will terminate, I will terminate it. Oh, I, I will withdraw number one. Because I can’t represent you, but number two I can, I can terminate the case if I, you know, if just handing it off to another collaborative attorney means that you now get to perpetuate your fraud. So we’ve got a fraudulent collaborative case that shouldn’t be proceeding collaboratively. I can just terminate it. Wow. And so that’s what I would do. So I said, what do you want to do? And he, you know, and I, and I said, you know, I know it’s a risk because he, you know, I said, you know, if she, if she gets upset enough and she goes to your supervisor, you may lose your job and you know, your career and everything.

Roy Martin:

So the lot’s on the line here. And at the same time, she’d be killing the goose. That’s laying the golden eggs since your family is reliant on your income. So I don’t know what the result will be. It’s your choice. Why don’t you think about it? Talk to people you trust, you know, give me a call back. And so he called me back the next day. He said, I thought about it and okay, I’m gonna come clean. Okay. And so I called up the other attorney and I said, Hey, are you sitting down? No. Should I be yes, sit down. . And I told him, and he is like, oh my God.

Ululani Akiona:

I know

Roy Martin:

, he’s like, I never had that happen before.

Ululani Akiona:

Wow.

Roy Martin:

But we, you know, we had a meeting and, and he, he told her and you know, he, he crawled across broken shards of glass to say he was sorry. And she was. I mean, she, you know, she knew going in what he was gonna say because the other attorney prepared her. That’s part of what we do in a collaborative case is we get people prepared. But, you know, she expressed her outrage, but she wasn’t entirely surprised. She kind of knew at some level. And and, and she basically told ’em, you know, had better, never happen again. And it, it actually, it wound up being kind of healing for them. Wow. We wound up, we completed the collaborative case and I think they got off on a better foot. I don’t think they rebuilt the trust a hundred percent by any means, but it’s it at least got something out in the open that had been hidden. And I don’t think there were any more secrets after that.

Ululani Akiona:

Wow. That’s big. I’m glad everybody was able to come together and work through that in the collaborative process.

Roy Martin:

Yeah, me too.

Ululani Akiona:

I, I feel like in the divorce litigation that would’ve just been this huge minefield.

Roy Martin:

Oh yeah.

Ululani Akiona:

That would’ve just like it, would’ve taken a lot to try and reign in to try and tell someone, wait, wait, wait, don’t go to court about this. Let’s still try and let’s try and work things out.

Roy Martin:

Yeah. You’d be, you’d be surprised by how many people, you know, who come to me, they read my website and they’ll say, you know, I was a child of divorce. I remember what it was like as a child and how horrible it was. And I don’t wanna do that to my kids. So I found view.

Ululani Akiona:

Oh, okay.

Roy Martin:

You know, I mean, that’s one experience I haven’t had, I’ve had my own divorce, but my parents didn’t divorce. Yeah. So, you know, I’m, you know, I, I really appreciate those perspectives. It’s another important piece. We, we don’t just rely on what the parents say about the children.

Ululani Akiona:

Okay.

Roy Martin:

We have another mental health professional who again, is not there to do therapy with the children, but rather to get to know them, to get a sense of what their needs are and to bring that back to the team, because as adults, number one, we forget what it was like to be a kid and parents don’t, you know, like they typically don’t hear from their, their, the children aren’t able to articulate what their needs are. If a parent were to ask, which is not always a good idea, anyway, children of a certain age are most likely to tell the parent exactly what they think that parent wants to hear. And so, you know, to have somebody who’s, who’s there to help the children have a voice in the process. And not like a Gar, not like a gal, you know, not like not, not coming down from on high with, you know, here’s what I see, and this is what should happen.

Roy Martin:

But rather here’s what I see here. Here are my concerns. What do you guys wanna do with it? And, you know, bring it back to us as a team, including including the parties themselves, of course, but you know, all of us to help us look at okay. You know, so we’ve got a problem and it can show up in, in really interesting ways. Like if, for instance, a child has discomfort around one of the parents, you know, to bring that to us in a way that might allow us to look at, okay, what do we do about that? How can we make it better?

Ululani Akiona:

Yeah. And you’re talking about the child coach,

Roy Martin:

The, the child specialist is called

Ululani Akiona:

The child specialist. So why don’t, why don’t you you said there’s several professionals involved in the collaborative law process and who are those professionals that are involved?

Roy Martin:

Okay. So you have,

Ululani Akiona:

And what are the roles they play?

Roy Martin:

So a collaboratively trained attorney for each party and you know, and the better trained the better. And I say that because, like I said, when I first started, you know, I just had a weekends training and you don’t learn enough. So hopefully if somebody is new to it, they either have a natural aptitude more than I did, or they, or they , or they’re coachable, if they’re coachable, that’s helpful. And then we have a coach and, and we have a coach in every case. I won’t do a collaborative case with that. Coach coach is really important. In fact, the coach is the glue that holds the case together. And, and yeah, it’s,

Ululani Akiona:

And that’s where the, the husband and wife, right. As spouse, that’s

Roy Martin:

The husband and wife. Right. So that’s a therapist who helps them have conversations with each other. And then and then we have a, if they’re a children, I always want to have a child specialist. Okay. I didn’t always feel that way, but I came to see the wisdom of it. I came to see that, you know, no matter how well the children seem to be doing, we don’t always know. It’s always good to have somebody there at least to validate our thoughts, if nothing else, as kind of an insurance policy, to make sure we’re on the right path, that we’re not overlooking something important. So the child specialist is there to meet the parents. And if the children are of an appropriate age to meet the children as well, to give the parents feedback as to the normal developmental needs of their children, which may be all they can do if the children are really young. Yeah. But if the children are a little older and they can get to know them a little bit, also the unique individual needs of those children and help them to see, you know, what the children are experiencing as the family goes through this process.

Ululani Akiona:

Okay.

Roy Martin:

And I, and I like to have them present, even if all we’re talking about is, is money. I, I didn’t realize that until recently, but I found out that, you know, having the child specialist present when we’re talking about, you know, spousal maintenance or division of property can be powerful, cuz it reminds people of what’s really important to them and it helps with that conversation. Okay. We can also

Ululani Akiona:

Go ahead.

Roy Martin:

Yeah. We can have a financial neutral as well. So it’s optional. Yeah. The financial neutral is, is, would, you know, would gather all the information as opposed to having two attorneys, both gathering it. We have one, one neutral person who then writes a report with supporting documents and sends it out to the professional team. First for us to review the attorneys may ask questions, may say, you know, what about this? What about that? The report might get revised. Maybe additional documents are gathered, but when we’re all satisfied that we’ve got a complete picture, you know, that person will then disclose it to the parties and say, you know, here, you know, do you see any, anything we’ve missed? And and then we have and, and, and the financial neutral can do a couple of other things. They can help, you know, because the, because their expertise is in money, they can help us look at how do we take this, the finite resources, this of this family and, and, you know, what are the different ways of putting it to work so that it works for everyone to achieve their high end goals?

Roy Martin:

The goals that they started off with, which, you know, can include things like I want to retire by the time I’m 50, right. Mm-Hmm or I want, I want to have a house or, you know, I want to, you know, move to wherever. And then I wanna go back to school. They can also help with someone who’s, you know, financially disadvantaged. Like if they, if they’re not sophisticated with money, to help them begin to learn the ropes, to kind of coach them through and possibly, you know, that can include looking at options for retraining, oh, you know, creating a career doing it within, within, you know, figuring, helping us figure out the, the maintenance, like how much maintenance and you know, and for how long is necessary to accomplish these goals. So they usually have a lot of expertise and creativity that the rest of us may not have. Yeah.

Ululani Akiona:

I love that financial mutual because it can help parties figure out long term, like you were saying, like, what do I need 20, 30 years from now to be okay. Whereas I feel like at just the divorce litigation level, when we’re trying to talk about asset and division, all we can figure out is right now, we can’t figure out what this means 20 years from now.

Roy Martin:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s been, actually, it can be very powerful. There was one guy who used to put up a chart on the, on the wall during our meetings, he’d come to the, typically the second meeting, cuz the first meeting is where we create the collaborative container. So he’d come to the next meeting with all these projections. Yeah. And he would, if we stay, you know, if, you know, he’d like take a hypothetical, like I put together this hypothetical and you know, you guys can accept it or reject it or whatever it’s up to you. But if we did this hypothetical, here’s what I project your finances would look like for the rest of your lives. Yeah. And let’s say there’s, there’s a, there’s a proposal for, you know, know X dollars in spousal maintenance, which initially the payor goes, oh my God, I can’t pay that. And the pay says, you know, well, whatever the pay says, but you know, and then, you know, and then you look at those projections and you see how, how things are gonna play out over time. Yeah. The person, I would find that the person who had, who was being asked to pay would go, oh, that doesn’t actually look so bad. And I, and I can see why it’s important because without that, you know, my spouse would be, you know, in, in trouble.

Ululani Akiona:

Right.

Roy Martin:

So things can come into focus. I, I think it, it’s so helpful to have people who are sitting in neutral chairs where they’re, you know, they’re not representing anyone. So it’s clear, they’re just bringing information. They’re not, they don’t have an ax to grind. They’re not pushing for one outcome over another. It, it makes it much easier for people to take in information,

Ululani Akiona:

Especially when it comes to financials. Yeah. Having that financial neutral there is just so helpful. And eliminating, I ask you, let me ask you this. So if we’re talking about spousal maintenance and child support, can

Roy Martin:

I just, just children too, having a neutral in that, in that role with children, it helps a lot with parenting landscape. But go ahead.

Ululani Akiona:

No, I love that. No, that’s so important too. Thank you for saying that. So you, you had talked about when you were talking about monies, when you’re talking about spousal maintenance and child support, you like to have the financial neutral in there. So would you have, if you’re doing a conversation, right. A group meeting about child support and spouse maintenance, would you have the financial neutral, the child specialist and the coach there, both three of those people, you,

Roy Martin:

I mean you could, and, and I, I mean, my preference would be, I mean, you’re always trying to balance the resources of the family because having everybody present costs more, I always want to have the coach present at any full team meetings. Okay. And then if we’re talking about finances, I certainly wanna have the financial neutral if we, if we have one and if we’re talking about the children, I definitely wanna have the, the child specialist present. The question becomes, do we have the financial specialist present? Well, typically we wouldn’t have necessarily have the financial specialist if all we’re talking about is the parenting plan. Yeah. Cause that’s not enough value added, but on the other, but I found that there is value added or there can be when you have the child specialist present for the financial discussions.

Ululani Akiona:

Okay. Okay. So talk about, you referenced that first meeting, you called it the collaborative container. Yeah. So we, yeah. So what is that?

Roy Martin:

Yeah, we have a, so after both parties have selected collaborative attorneys and they’ve retained us you know, we’ll set up a first meeting for which the coach may or may not be present. Some coaches like to be present for that first meeting. Others don’t feel it’s necessary. At that first meeting, will we have a typical agenda? You know, we’ll start by of course saying hello. And then we’ll actually read through the collaborative participation agreement together. Now we’ve already sent this off to the parties and they’ve read it and they’ve let us know if they have any questions and we’ve talked about it, but by reading it together, out loud, it has the effect of number one, making sure everybody understands that, you know, this is real, we’re serious about this, these agreements, you know, don’t, don’t enter this. I always tell people, you know, litigation is awful in my opinion, but the only thing worse than litigation is litigation following a failed collaborative case. We don’t want that. Oh

Ululani Akiona:

Yeah.

Roy Martin:

You know, you don’t wanna spend, you know, 10 or 20 or $40,000 on a collaborative case and then have it, you know, go out the window and have to start over again in the litigation. Yeah. So so you know, this is really important and we read through it together. We actually take turns reading paragraphs and make sure everybody understands all of it. And then you know, and then we ask people, you know, are you like, you know, I’ll typically when, when we used to do this in one room, I would look them in the eye and I’d say, I need to know that you’re fully committed that you’re, you know, like it’s like climbing a mountain. If I were gonna climb a mountain with you, I’d want to know you’re on the other end of the rope. And that if I fall off this way, you’re gonna jump off that way, you know? And I can trust you. That’s the same thing, you know, or, you know, can I trust you cuz I don’t want to have a failed collaborative case here. You know, can your more important than can I trust you? Can your spouse trust you?

Ululani Akiona:

Wow.

Roy Martin:

And you know, can your children trust you? Wow. And, and so, you know, people will typically say yes and they, and they will typically mean it. And we remind them of that if, if they start to wow. And I explain to them that part of that means working with the whole team. Like not like, like, you know, the people who think they can rewrite, you know, we, we do this a certain way because we’ve learned how to do this over years together, working together, you know, when people try to short circuit the process, it’s kind of like, you know, if you’re on a, on a commercial jet liner and you decide, oh, I, I know how to fly this plane. I’m just gonna go storm the cockpit and kill the pilot and fly it myself. It’s a good way to fly right into the side of a mountain. So, you know, like don’t do that, like be coachable and, and, you know, and, you know, keep, you know, letting us know, give us feedback as to how you’re doing and how things are going by all means. But then, you know, allow us to help you

Ululani Akiona:

Be coachable and allow the professionals to help you.

Roy Martin:

Yeah.

Ululani Akiona:

Yeah. That’s important. I like that.

Roy Martin:

Yeah. Yeah. And if, and if something really isn’t working for some reason, you know, we’ll address it. If for some reason, you know, one, one of you can’t work with a, you know, with, with one of the professionals. Well, we can substitute somebody else in if ne if need be, but don’t assume we don’t need that professional.

Ululani Akiona:

Right.

Roy Martin:

Yeah.

Ululani Akiona:

So the first meeting is, would typically, would typically take anywhere from one to two hours?

Roy Martin:

No, no. Well, the Ty, the first meeting is always scheduled for three hours, the first half hours, just for the professionals, two hours with the parties and then a half an hour at the end debrief for the professionals. Okay. So that, so altogether it’s three hours and, and you know, I try as best I can to keep things like clockwork. Right. Cuz after two hours people start to get exhausted. Yeah. The next thing we do in that meeting, which I think is really important is we talk about what are called high level goals. So I always coach clients in advance. What I mean, when I say that

Ululani Akiona:

You, I meant the first part,

Roy Martin:

We always, we ask them about their high end goals or high level

Ululani Akiona:

Work or high angles. Got it.

Roy Martin:

Because we’re sort of starting out up here in the cloud, like what what’s really important to you. And then ultimately we have to get down into the weeds. Right. So you know what high end goals means? I always tell people is, you know, like what are your visions for the future? What do you, you know, what, why do you wanna do this case collaboratively? What do you see getting out of it? What do you want 10 years from now for your family to look like what, you know, what’s in it for you to do a case this way, as opposed to going to war and you know, here’s where people will talk about things like, you know, that, you know, I mean, I’ve been talking about this stuff forever. You know, you’re gonna be going to the same weddings and graduations, but when that, you know, raising the same grandchildren, but when that woman said, I want you next to me in the maternity ward, when our first grandchild comes into the world, you know, she had done her homework because her attorney had coached her on, you know, I want you to think about this.

Roy Martin:

I want you to spend some time with it. And, and that came into her heart and she shared it and it was like really profound. So sometimes there are these moments. I mean, you know, typically people will talk about the children first and foremost. They can also talk about, you know, I, I, you know, I, I don’t wanna spend a lot of money. I want this to be efficient that, you know, I they’ll talk about, I want to be in control. I don’t want the court court to decide things for us that we should be deciding for ourselves. The but they’ll, they’ll more often talk about things like the children. They’ll talk about things like wanting to stay friends, wanting to honor the, you know, I was doing a case just the other day where one of the parties said, you know, I I’ve always loved you and respected you and admired you. And I don’t wanna stop loving and respecting and admiring you. It’s like, wow. Another beautiful moment. Wow. Yeah.

Ululani Akiona:

Wow. That’s really sweet.

Roy Martin:

Yeah. Really sweet. Yeah. People don’t always come into it like that. I mean, that was, that was a little unusual. Usually by the time people get to divorce, they’re, you know, it’s like you have to help them get back to that place if you can . But those high end goals, we write them down. We, we, well, first of all, we, we reflect them back. Like didn’t, you know, so somebody will say X, Y, and Z. And what we’ll try to do is have the other attorney, at least in my cases, I’ll have, you know, so if, if, if I’m representing the husband and the wife said that I’ll, I’ll reflect back what she said. I want to make sure I’m understanding what you said. Tell me if I get this right. And I’ll reflect it back. And if she says, yes, you did great.

Roy Martin:

If she says, no, you didn’t okay. Tell me what I got wrong and we’ll keep doing it until I get it right. And then the other attorney will do that for my client. Once we have it all down after the meeting, they’ll be what we call progress notes. One of the attorneys will write progress notes, send it to the other members of the professional team to make sure that everyone who was at the meeting heard the same thing, or we got it all down on paper will make any corrections, we’ll get on the same page. And then once we think we got it right, we’ll send it to the parties and say, did we get it right? Cuz they’re not, they’re not your progress notes until you both tell us they are . So you can add to them, you can change them. You can subtract from them.

Roy Martin:

We don’t wanna put words in your mouths. But once they say, yes, you got it. Right. Then we have among other things, we have these really valuable high end goals that we can keep bringing back to them. They can change them. It’s their right to change them through the end of the case and for the rest of their lives. But like when we’re going into a meeting where we’re gonna discuss something challenging, particularly, but really anything at all, it’s helpful to remind them of their high end goals. Okay. We’re gonna have that conversation about maintenance today. I know it’s really scary. I know you’re each scared about not having enough, being able to retire one day. You know, you know, it, it can feel oppressive. It can feel, you know, really, you know, dangerous. So before we do that, let’s review our high end goals.

Roy Martin:

Let’s talk about what you guys told us were important to you. You, you really want to both be there for your children. You wanna, you want to be in the maternity ward together when your first grandchild arrives. Okay. Now, now, you know, I’ll also remind people that in order to get there, you have to win. You can’t just surrender, you know what you need because a win-win requires that you both win. So that, that doesn’t mean you then let the other person win at your expense and you get run over. We don’t do that either. It’s like, it’s like we have to find a true win-win. The only real win is a win-win cuz otherwise there’ll be resentment and it won’t work. It won’t work for the family. So we need to find solutions that are gonna work for both of you. And if there’s pain, which there probably will be, cuz most people aren’t rich.

Roy Martin:

I mean, occasionally you do a case where there’s enough money where it doesn’t really matter. You know what we’re debating is, you know, like if we’re talking about money, it might be like, you know, who are the kids gonna inherit a little bit more from one day, but but in a typical case, you know, we’re talking about hard stuff and if there’s pain, you know, how do we share the pain in a way that feels right to both, you know, to both of you so that you can both say that felt fair. That felt, it felt just

Ululani Akiona:

So how long does the, how long does a cloud bear process normally take six months a year?

Roy Martin:

It varies tremendously. It depends on how, how close people are to settlement when they show up and then how difficult they are or, or easier they are to coach through the process. Mm-Hmm I would, I’ve had cases that have settled rarely. I think it’s happened to me like twice that a case is settled in, in like the first meeting at, you know, after the initial meeting just to create the container. So, you know, so a two meeting total case usually it’s three or four meetings, but a lot of stuff can happen between meetings cuz a lot of the work is done with the allied professionals or with the attorneys in the background. Right. So I also had a case once where the parties decided to put everything on hold because their daughter was 16 and they wanted to wait until she graduated from high school before they finished the case.

Ululani Akiona:

Okay.

Roy Martin:

So we then backburnered it all and it probably would’ve stayed backburnered even longer except one of the attorneys was, you know, had gotten married and was moving outta state. So I called him up and said, you either have one, you know, you know, either you have to switch attorneys, client of this attorney or else we need to get going. So they decided to jump back in. Cause that by that point the daughter had gone off to college. It’s like, okay, it’s time let’s let’s do this.

Ululani Akiona:

Wow. That’s something okay. So it sounds like I’m, I’m just trying to think back when, to when I was when I did my collaborative case, but there were no kids and actually what ended up happening was that the parties ended up reconciling. So it really, we, we really didn’t get that much long into the process. But are you, are you thinking, I’m thinking it almost sounds like anywhere from, I think if you don’t have kids maybe three or four meetings, you could get things resolved.

Roy Martin:

Oh I would, yeah. I would think, I mean I three or four meetings typically is enough with kids mm-hmm so I would say two or three meetings without probably, but you know, it depends, every case is so different. I’ve had cases that needed a lot more meetings. It’s it’s really, you know, there’s no one size fits all. It’s very unique to a family and you know, like, you know, like a reconciliation, how rarely does that happen by the time people come to us, but it does happen and collaborative can open the door to that because it remind it helps people remember that they love each other, they care about each other and they might say, well, let’s take another shot at this. Yeah. So it’s not, it’s not actually that uncommon, like sometimes halfway through a collaborative case, we’ll hear, you know, put everything on pause. We’re gonna try to reconcile. And then they’ll either eventually come back to us and say, okay, refund the trust balance we’re done. We’re reconciling or they’ll say, okay, it didn’t work. Let’s keep going.

Ululani Akiona:

Okay. So again, in terms of the collaborative process, just people, when people sign the agreement, they agree not to go to court. They agree to disclose everything. And I think that’s a really big difference aside from divorce litigation. And then you have the team of professionals involved, which is the collaborative attorneys, the financial neutral, the child specialists and the, like the coach, the coach. Okay. What do you like best about doing collaborative law?

Roy Martin:

I love the comradery. I love the, you know, the sense, you know, like when I first got into law here and there I’d meet a colleague where it felt like, you know, we were kind of like, we were kind of on the same team and we could do cases together effectively, but so many people, it felt like they were shooting at me. It felt like, you know, it’s like if you were a surgeon, but they, and there were other surgeons, but they were trying to kill you while you were doing your surgery.

Roy Martin:

What I like about collaborative is that we’re really working together as a team and that the more we develop trust, the more we learn to trust each other. Like it, like in other words, I can’t, I can’t screw you in this case because it like, it might like somehow my client will benefit from it because we’re gonna have another case and another case after that. And, and not only, I mean, number one, that would totally, you know, work against the, the collaborative spirit. It would be completely hypocritical, but, but we just don’t think in those terms, we think in, you know, we learn to become partners and if something isn’t working and we, and we’re coming up against each other, we have to work through it, which might mean, you know, let me take you to lunch. Let’s talk about what happened, you know, let’s, you know, I, I need to understand your perspective.

Roy Martin:

I want you to understand mine. If we, you know, if we need help, we might bring in somebody to help us maybe ask one of the coaches to come help facilitate that discussion. It doesn’t happen very often anymore, but it can happen. I mean, I, you know, every now and again, I mean well, I shouldn’t say that. I mean, you know, inevitably between human beings, things come up, I think we get skilled at working through them. But every once in a while we get hooked in a way where it’s, where we can’t our skills, aren’t enough to get us, to get us through whatever came up, cuz you know, one of the reasons we do a debrief after each meeting is to have those discussions, you know, not to let things faster. So right after a meeting, even if everything seems to have gone really well, you know, I might say, ah, it was, it’s so nice working with you guys. This has been great. Now tell me, you know, did I step on anyone’s toes?

Ululani Akiona:

Wow. Right. The debrief.

Roy Martin:

And if I did, please, you know, please give it to me straight, cuz I want to understand mm-hmm and if somebody says you did I’ll I’ll, I’ll ask them to be very specific. Cause it’s like, you know, if you just said, you know, you, you weren’t listening to me. I, I don’t really know what to do with that. You know, but if you can tell me when I wasn’t listening to you, what happened? What, what, who said what? So I can think back on it and go, okay, now, now I see. So you have a particular need and I, you know, I missed it.

Ululani Akiona:

Right.

Roy Martin:

But as I, but as I get to know you better now, I’ll know that if that comes up again, you know, to, to know that, you know, this, this particular professional handles this kind of thing in this way and you know, we’ll try to tailor our approaches. So they harmonize.

Ululani Akiona:

And so you’re talking about the debrief with the professionals after the initial meeting. Now, are you only taking cases with every

Roy Martin:

Meeting?

Ululani Akiona:

Go

Roy Martin:

Ahead. After every meeting, not just the initial meeting

Ululani Akiona:

And you’re so are, do you, so you’re in Whatcom County, right? Mm-Hmm but do you take collaborative cases throughout like king county? And

Roy Martin:

I can, I can take them anywhere in the state. I mean, the people that I know best the, the attorneys and other professionals with whom I have the closest relationships are the ones who are part of the Whatcom collaborative group. Some of them are actually from king county or Snohomish County. I mean, they, that, they’re not all necessarily here in Bellingham, but but I, I, you know, I’ve done cases with other attorneys in other parts of the state and you know, some of them are just, you know, such a pleasure to work with. I mean, I, I think everyone is when you get to know ’em, but you know, just, you know, certain ones, you know, certain people have worked so hard to hone their skills that I’ve, you know, that I sort of I’m eager to work with them. And I, you know, like we’ll, we’ll meet at a statewide meeting once a year. So kind of like draw has a statewide meeting, CPW collaborative professionals of Washington as a statewide meeting. And I try never to miss it since, since COVID came, I’ve missed it but before COVID, I’d gone every year straight for 10 years or whatever. Wow. And I meet these people from all over the state and you know, will connect and I’ll be like, oh man, I hope one day we get to have a case together. That would be so awesome.

Ululani Akiona:

And how long have you been doing collaborative law?

Roy Martin:

Well, I’ve been an attorney since 1996 now and I got trained in collaborative in 2001. So what is that? 21 years?

Ululani Akiona:

Well, that’s, that’s a long time. You gotta look very young for your many years of practice. Thank you.

Roy Martin:

I don’t know how old you are, but you look young

Ululani Akiona:

well, I’ve got more gray hair than you. So that’s what I’m going off of. So I know people are gonna, I know people are gonna wanna know this question. They’re want, they’re gonna wanna know what’s the cost. Can you give us a ballpark figure of how much a collaborative divorce costs?

Roy Martin:

It it’s hard. I, I never sell it to people as a low cost alternative to litigation. What I sell, what I tell them is, look, I think you can get better banged for your buck if assuming it’s, we’re choosing the case wisely, not if not, if it’s a case that isn’t appropriate to collaborative, in which case it would be better to litigate. It, it can be important to litigate, but if we, if we’re taking a situation where, you know, and I would say at least half of the cases that, that go to li you know, that go through the litigation process probably could be collaborative. And so, you know, it just depends on how much support a family needs through the process. I would say the low end is probably something like, you know, both parties. So I’ll talk about it as combined as a family, you know, like in other words, let’s say each party spends, you know, 3000 on their attorneys and another, you know, thousand on allied professionals. We’ve just done a $7,000 collaborative case. That’s that’s gonna probably be roughly the low end.

Ululani Akiona:

Oh, that is low.

Roy Martin:

Yeah. The high end is, you know, is probab well, so a typical case is probably more like, I don’t know, 10, 12, $15,000 each for attorneys and, you know, several thousand for each professional, other professional. So you know, something in the, I don’t know, actually that’s probably, there are some, I don’t know. It’s, it’s hard to categorize. I’d probably say, let’s say 12 to 30,000 is the middle range.

Ululani Akiona:

Middle range. Yeah. Per person.

Roy Martin:

Well, no total family.

Ululani Akiona:

Well you mean total?

Roy Martin:

Oh no, I’m sorry. Per, per person. You’re right. Cuz I said, no, not actually. I, well, it’s a continuum, so really really, it’s hard to speak of. So yeah, I mean, if you think 7,000 is the low end and then I’m so if, depending on what you call the middle, I’m saying like, you know, let’s define 12 is 30 as the, to 30 as the middle or most people, you know, the hump of the bell curve is gonna be,

Ululani Akiona:

You know, and that’s in all different litigation. You can, you know, each person can spend at that temporary orders hearing anywhere from 10 to $15,000, depending on how, you know, you’re talking about parenting plan, child supports file maintenance

Roy Martin:

Litigation is not cheap. Right.

Ululani Akiona:

You

Roy Martin:

Know, and, and what I’ll tell people is that assuming your case settles, it won’t be as expensive as the most horrible litigation cases. In other words, well, a typical litigation case will settle somewhere in that range. But if you have a really bad one, you might be spending a hundred thousand dollars or more collaborative. You know, it would be very rare, at least in my community to get to anything close to that before the case, either settles or fails.

Ululani Akiona:

Right. And I just think you get, you know, it’s just so much more rewarding through that collaborative process because you’re having a direct say. And not only that you just have that team helping you with the, you, like you’re saying the child specialist, the parent, the coach and the financial neutral.

Roy Martin:

Yeah. I mean, I think the big thing that helps people relax is to know that nothing is gonna be done without your consent. Nothing’s gonna get forced down your throat at the end of the day nothing’s gonna happen unless you agree to it.

Ululani Akiona:

Yeah. Nothing,

Roy Martin:

Unless you agree to it.

Ululani Akiona:

Wow. That’s, that’s a huge piece right there. yeah. Nothing can happen unless you agree to it unlike court. Right.

Roy Martin:

And, and even if a case settles in court, cause you know, most of my cases settled when I was litigating as, as do. I’m sure that’s true for most everyone. I mean, nobody, nobody tries all their cases. I mean, if you try one case a year that that can be a lot. But, but the thing is that when you’re litigating, they set, they settle in what, what I call the shadow of the court. In other words, either some mediator who doesn’t let you actually talk to each other, but keeps you in separate rooms, you know, use a sphere and intimidation to tell you, this is what’s gonna happen if you go to court. So you better agree to it or your own attorney tells you that. Right. So you get either no matter where it comes from, you feel like you got pushed into something.

Roy Martin:

And, and what’s ironic is that both people will come outta that feeling like they got hosed, you know? And it’s like, you know, you’d think if one felt like, you know, they got hosed and the other person must feel like, oh, I won, but that’s rare. Usually both people feel like they lost it, you know, and, and doing litigation. I mean, one of the things that it taught me is that the only true win is a win-win cuz when you win, you know, those, those occasions you have as a litigation attorney where you come at a court going Woohoo rock, you know, and it feels good for about 20 minutes because you know, like you quote unquote one for your client, it starts to ring hollow really quickly. As you see the resentment, as you see the damage that was done, as you see how long term it doesn’t work so that, you know, to get to a true win, both parties have to feel like they have ownership over whatever was agreed upon.

Ululani Akiona:

Right. Right. I wish I wish a collaborative process was utilized more here in our state, but you know, slowly but surely I feel I was,

Roy Martin:

You know, when I first got into it in 2001, I mean nobody knew what a collaborative attorney was and my own law partner, I came back from this training and, and I told her what I had done. I was so, you know, psyched and she’s looks at me and she’s like this really good person, really fine litigator, but you know, like a woman with a beautiful heart. And she just looks at me and she laughs and she says, you know, you wanna be a lawyer or, or don’t you, you know, she said, if you wanna be a social worker, you know, you can go back to school that . And I was like, you really don’t get it. You know? And she didn’t, you know, she would make fun of it. And I started doing it, struggling with it at first, but I stuck with it.

Roy Martin:

Thank God I stuck with it because a lot of people dropped out saying, you know, this doesn’t work, but it wasn’t that it doesn’t work it’s that we didn’t know how to work it. Wow. We didn’t, you know, we, we, you know, so those of us who hung in there and, and eventually learned how to do it and got good at it you know, got to have, and, and now it’s much easier cause there are many, many mentors, but back then, you know, was I gonna call Stu Webb in Minnesota? I actually did once or twice. And he was very nice and spoke to me, but , but I mean, I didn’t have anybody local to guide me through the process or to be my partner in a case. You know, we would, you know, we would have these ridiculous discussions where it’d be like, you know, you need to look in the mirror. No, you need to look in the mirror. so you know, so anyhow, to get to this place where practice is so gratifying and where I feel like I’m really helping people and and where I get that kind of feedback from folks which feels so good. It, you know, it took a lot of work. It took a lot of effort, but it’s I mean it was so worth it and I’m, I’m just really grateful for having, you know, been invited to train with that initial group of people.

Ululani Akiona:

Yeah. That sounds, that sounds just so exciting.

Roy Martin:

So what I was gonna say though, is that the, that, that, I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought. What happens when, you know, that’s shows you I’ve been practicing a long time? I’m old. what I wanted to say is that it’s gotten I mean the quality of what we do in collaborative law has gotten better and better over the years and it’s gotten much, much, it’s much more out there now. I mean, it used to be when, when, when I first started, there were, there were attorneys who were like, you know, that shouldn’t be ethical. You shouldn’t be able to do that. And they tried to get state bars to shut us down.

Ululani Akiona:

Really?

Roy Martin:

Yeah, absolutely. In fact, it even happened in Colorado for a number of years. Wow. you know, you know, over time it became a respected part of, of the domestic relations community and, and, and I think more and more so over time, there are, you know, probably a few old timers who still go, I don’t, I don’t get it. I don’t believe in it or whatever, but I mean, I think the younger attorneys, I mean, you know, actually it was funny because early on I was I had gone to the university of Arizona law school and that’s why I was in Tucson, practicing raising my kids. And and I was invited to debate about collaborative law in front of a family law class. And so the professor invited me and this guy, David Lieber, David Lieberthal, who was one of the real big time litigators in Arizona at the time.

Roy Martin:

Okay. He was like, you know, one of these guys who, you know, charged more than everyone else and, you know, AML and all that. And you know, tremendous expertise as a law student, I used to, when I heard he was doing a cross examine, I used to go watch him because he was so good at it. So I really respected this guy. So the idea of debating him was scary to me, but I talked to this, you know, the guy I mentioned who invited me into this, he became a mentor and I went to him. I said, Peter, you know, what do I do? I’m being asked to debate, you know, David Lieberthal, that’s kind of scary. And, and he kind of coached me a little bit. He said, well, you know, he said, just, you know, like, let’s talk about, you know, the strengths and weaknesses of collaborative and just be honest about it.

Roy Martin:

And so when I went in there, you know, the first thing David Lieberthal said was, you know, this should be unethical. He shouldn’t be allowed to do what he’s doing because you know, when I go into a case, I tell my clients, I’m there with them till the end, no matter what, unless they fire me. Whereas, you know, whereas, you know, he’s saying I’m only gonna be there with you if, if this works out, if not, I’m gonna abandon you. Wow. And I, and I, you know, and I listened to him and I, and when it was my turn to talk, I said, well, you know, Mr Lieberthal is right. You know in, in a sense, I mean, he’s right, that I’m not necessarily there to the end of the case fails. That is, you know, the risk of collaborative, but you know, you can’t just weigh the risk of collaborative a vacuum.

Roy Martin:

You know, you have to weigh that against the risk of litigation. So the risk of collaborative, or, you know, if we don’t get to the end, the case fails, they have to start over again in litigation. And that’s horrible with new attorneys, new professionals, but you know, the, the risks of litigation, what are they, you know, I mean, I’ve seen people destroy their children, emotionally fighting over the children’s wellbeing, ironically enough, I’ve seen people bankrupt themselves fighting over money, you know, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s really typical for there to be such profound harm that children, you know, are talking about it 20 years later in therapy. And the parents don’t even know sometimes, I mean, there’s so much harm that comes out of litigation, plus the cost and the, you know, the, the, you know, and, and the effect on other relationships on communities, because, you know, a fam a divorcing family is not just a family.

Roy Martin:

There are all these people around them. And I, I laid out probably better than that I’m doing now because I, you know, I was prepared for it. So, you know, I laid out all these costs and I said, okay. So if you put them on a scale, you got the, you know, the risks of litigation on this side and the risks of, of, of collaborative over here, you know, which one seems heavier to you and the law students. Totally got it. And, and when that happened, when the law students clearly got it, I knew that in ti, you know, over time, collaborative was gonna become a thing that it was that it was gonna grow and it was gonna become respectable and that it was gonna be, you know, not just respectable, but it will, you know, people would see the wisdom of it and sure enough, that’s what’s happened. I mean, wow. You know, when I meet young attorneys you know, for whatever reason I’m going into family law you know, if we talk about collaborative, they’re generally open and interested.

Ululani Akiona:

Well, that’s a good point. I remember when I, I think when I became collabo, collaboratively, trained back, maybe in the early 2000 tens, 11, 12, that it just seemed, so it didn’t seem where it was, where it is now, where it is just so much more respected and just natural.

Roy Martin:

Yeah. Can I ask you Lonnie? Do you, so you litigate, you don’t do collaborative cases.

Ululani Akiona:

No, I mostly litigate because unfortunately in St. Hoish county, no one has really approached me for collaborative law except for one time. So I’m a little bit bummed about that.

Roy Martin:

well, can I, is it okay if I coach you a little bit?

Ululani Akiona:

Yeah. Okay. So, no, I mean, like, no, one’s approached me to do a collaborative law case except for,

Roy Martin:

Well, so for years, nobody approached me to do a collaborative law case. It doesn’t work that way.

Ululani Akiona:

Oh, here’s, here’s,

Roy Martin:

Here’s how it works. People come to me and they’ll say, I, I, I, you know, I need a divorce. Can you help me? Yeah. And I’ll say, okay, let’s talk about it. well, tell me a little bit about your case. And if it seems appropriate, I’ll say, you know, well, there are these different options, you know, like, so when I used to do both, cuz for years, I did both litigation and collaborative. I mean, now I’ll just, you know, it’s on my website and everything, and I’ll say, I don’t litigate. So let’s talk about your case so we can see if I’m the right fit or if I might be the right fit. Otherwise I don’t want to even consult with you cuz I don’t wanna take your money and for you to be disappointed. But back when I did both, I would say, you know, let’s, let’s look at the options and I’d lay out.

Roy Martin:

You know, here’s what collaborative is here. Here are the benefits of collaborative. Here are the challenges of collaborative. Here are the benefits of litigation. Here are the challenges of litigation. What, what makes sense to you now? Very often they would, they would say, oh, I get it. This makes sense. But how do I get my spouse on board? And, and sometimes that would be a problem. One of the things I began doing at that point was I would, if before a consultation, if somebody just reached out to me and said, I want to consult with you, I’d say, okay, that’s one option. Or I can do a meeting with both of you where I’m not gonna give anyone legal advice. It’s just an informational meeting about the D the different ways to divorce. And if we do that, I can do it with both of you together.

Roy Martin:

And then after that, I can consult with one of you or the other, but not both. And I would have them sign an agreement saying they understood what I was saying and that, wow. You know, , cuz I didn’t want, you know, anybody to claim later that I consulted with both of them. And then I became one party’s attorney. So I mean, I still have that agreement if anybody wants it, I’m happy to share it. Cause that is one, one way to get your name out there is to, you know, be the, the person who gives, you know, people information. I, I, you know, I would charge them. I would charge, I would do a two hour long meeting cuz that’s how long it took to fully lay out the ins and outs of all the different approaches, everything from sitting down across the kitchen table, you know, media, the different types and styles of mediation collaborative and, and all its complexity and litigation.

Roy Martin:

I’d explain all four of them. So I wanted them to come out with a really thorough understanding of each of the approaches and when they make sense, cuz all of them make sense for certain kinds of cases. I would want somebody to know, you know, if they went home and they were being, you know, they, they were facing domestic violence that they didn’t call me back and say, you know, let’s do a collaborative case. They would say, you know, this is the kind of case for which litigation is appropriate. So let me, let me get somebody who can help me. But and that was effective for a long time. I, I think when I stopped doing litigation, I found that those kinds of meetings became less necessary. I would just, I put it all out on my website and then I when people call me now I just tell ’em what I do and what I don’t do when we talk about it. And you know, and sometimes I’ll say, you know, you might consider, you know, I don’t want you to be disappointed, leaving a meeting with me, but you might consider meeting with two kinds of attorneys, you know, do a consultation with somebody like me, collaborative attorney and do a consultation with somebody who litigates cuz you’ll get different perspectives. And then you can decide, you know, which, which sounds like the right one for your situation.

Ululani Akiona:

Wow. That’s, that’s so appropriate. cause such different perspectives from a litigation standpoint and the collaborative standpoint. So what, what else do you do just collaborative law or do you mediations too?

Roy Martin:

I, you know, I, I used to do a lot of mediation and a lot of collaborative and I, and I also do what, you know, unbundled services where people come to me and somebody would come to me and say, I’ve already got it figured out, can you help me, you know, write it up. So we’d start with a consultation, make sure they really have a solid agreement if they do. So I still do that. I still do the unbundled. I do some mediation, but not much because I find that mediation doesn’t even start to hold a candle to what I can deliver as a collaborative attorney. When I do mediation, I do, I do a kind of collaborative mediation. So I will send them off to collaborative attorneys. Both of them, people I trust, you know, to, to give them good, solid, legal advice without creating a fight and who can support them through the mediation process.

Roy Martin:

I also represent people in mediation when somebody else is mediating. So I’m one of the, the attorneys either in the background or present at the mediation sessions. Oh, okay. That can be powerful. I think that, you know, if I were ranking in terms of how much support people need to, to keep, to stay outta court, you know, there, the people who can do it on their own, come up with agreements on their own and maybe just need some legal advice and help preparing documents. They’re kind of amazing. I Marvel at those people. Those are the people who need the least support people who can, you know, who can do a mediation session with a kind of mediator who lets them be in, in the same room and tries to facilitate healthy discussions or has more of a therapeutic approach where they’re trying to help them really understand each other and, and you know, empathize with each other well,

Ululani Akiona:

Right.

Roy Martin:

You know, that’s a little bit more support and some people can do that. Some people kind of need their attorneys there to help them with that. And if they’re collaborative attorneys, we can help with that kind of process. Okay. As opposed to the litigation style, me mediation, which is really more akin to court where you’re, you’re negotiating in the shadow of the court. So what I’m talking about now is staying outside the shadow of the court, helping people come to true win-win agreements that are, you know, where, you know, they know what the, a court might do. They, you know, in other words, as an attorney, I still let people know, you know, here’s my opinion as to what the range is on what a court could potentially do, which it’s a broad range, but, but you know, they might choose to do something different because they, you know, cuz they’re not, they’re not really focusing on that.

Roy Martin:

They’re focusing on the needs of their own family. Okay. So then you know, the folks who need to have attorneys present with them, that’s an additional layer of support and containment. Okay. If we have a, a mediator who’s also a collaboratively trained attorney who does, is really good at both mediating. And then we have two collaboratively trained attorneys around them. We’ve got a lot of support in place. If you want to have the full meal deal, you know, then it’s great to have two collaboratively trained attorneys, a coach, a child specialist, a financial neutral, you know, now, now we’ve got a lot of support around this family

Ululani Akiona:

And, and Roy, how can people get ahold of you? They need to contact you for, for services.

Roy Martin:

Oh, okay. Well is my phone number, which is (360) 746-0400. My web, my website is creative divorce.com. And if they want to email me, they can email me Roy Martin, creative divorce.com.

Ululani Akiona:

Okay. CreativeDivorce.com. I love that. That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, Roy. And thank you for sharing your thoughts. And your wisdom about collaborative law. Learned so much from you today. Do you have any final, last words about why people should choose to use a collaborative process or what they can, what they can stand to gain from it?

Roy Martin:

First, let me just say thanks so much for doing this Ululani  I know, I know you spend a lot of time creating these, these these podcasts and you know, hopefully people get a lot of value from them. So it’s a real kindness that you do this. I hope so too. I appreciate it. You know, I mean, col I would say that, you know, if you know, to me litigation is now like the hospital emergency room. I, I I’m, I’m grateful that there are, that I have colleagues who are willing to litigate, cuz I don’t want to do it. And there are cases that need to be litigated. Wow. Those are the cases where there’s, you know, where, where one party’s hiding assets, hiding income, running up debts, committing acts of domestic violence, harming the children, those sorts of things. Those cases need to be litigated.

Roy Martin:

If you, you know, if, if you’re in a situation where there’s a possibility you may be able to work together, then I would say, get, come to come to people like me to the collaborative community sooner rather than later, don’t wait, because what happens is, you know, the fear can build and fear feeds on itself and the containment starts to break down. So by, so if both spouses talk to a collaborative attorney early in the process that in and of itself will create more containment. You may be able to sit down then and negotiate a settlement that you couldn’t do before, because you’ve both gotten legal advice from somebody who understands conflict resolution. Or if you need more help, you have a, you have, you now know what the options are. So you can bring in that additional support. That can be a full collaborative case. It can be, you know, it can be a form of mediation. It can be, you know, it can be lots of different things, but you know, by talking to the people who, who do this work, the peacemaking work, the so, you know, the collaborative professionals, whether they be collaborative attorneys or collaborative you know, therapists, right. You know, we can, we can help you to figure out how to dissolve your marriage in a healthy way. So so come come sooner rather than later

Ululani Akiona:

Come sooner rather than later for for conflict resolution help.

Roy Martin:

Yeah.

Ululani Akiona:

Wow. Wow. Well, thank you so much again, Roy. And again, if you need to get a hold of Roy, you can contact him at creativedivorce.com . And thank you again all out there for listening to another episode of the Quiana law podcast, wherein we talk about old things that intersect in the eras of family law, divorce, I’m Ululani Akiona until then of stay safe and healthy. Thanks.

The information in this podcast is general advice only and should not in any respect, be relied on as specific legal advice.