Throughout my career as a curious divorce attorney and mediator, I have sought out trainings, certifications, and professional development opportunities to deepen my knowledge and enhance my family law skills.
A few years ago, I began my journey as an Insight Mediator, applying the insight theory to help divorcing couples reach workable and satisfying settlements. Recently, I’ve been participating in the Curious Mediator II training, which seeks to integrate the Conscious Contract® concept into divorce mediation and settlement agreement negotiations.
It’s a natural pairing because a Conscious Contract®, whether in a business relationship or a parenting agreement, takes people through the steps of how they make decisions, guided by values and intended outcomes.
I know it might sound confusing, but we rarely think about what drives our decision-making—and we should!
What motivates decision-making for a businessperson?
A parent?
A romantic partner?
A friend?
When I facilitate a mediation with a divorcing couple or a co-parenting couple post-divorce, I guide them through reflection on their motivations, their decisions, and their intended outcomes. I encourage them to get curious.
I do this every day as a businessperson. I reflect when I am negotiating a contract. I reflect before I guide my team members in their responsibilities. I even reflect as a mother when I am in conversation with my daughters.
Take Time to Reflect
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When it comes to divorce, everyone involved will be better for taking the time to reflect on how and why they make decisions. The Curious Mediator training is training me to talk with my Mediation clients about those values that they identify as crucial to guide the decisions they make regarding divorce, parenting and more.
But first, people must be able to articulate their values.
We throw that term around a lot—values. But what does it mean?
Values should refer to the beliefs and priorities that guide your actions. I guide Mediation clients (and really, all my divorce clients) toward identifying specific values, writing them down, discussing them in detail so the other person can understand what you mean, and then, how to use these values to guide decision making.
Within the training, I am looking at how the environment is important in making people feel comfortable and safe talking about what matters most to them.
Everything Is a Contract Between Parties
I look at co-parenting as a contract between former spouses detailing how they will approach situations. The contract is something that both parties articulate and agree to so that when they are during co-parenting, they can refer to it and hold each other, and themselves, accountable to thoughtful, grounded behaviors.
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What happens if there’s a dispute? A specific provision guides you through it.
In Curious Mediator training, the emphasis is on getting curious. When I meet with a couple in Mediation, I bring my curiosity—no judgment and no predetermined outcomes. I am there to guide the two of them through their own conversations and hopes for the future and by being curious, I can help them articulate how they want to get there.
Recently, I facilitated a mediation during which the parents created a joint parenting narrative agreeing on what to say to their children about their divorce, what is important to them, and why they made certain decisions. In drafting the Parenting Time Agreement, we included a conflict resolution paragraph that incorporated the values they expressed in their joint parenting narrative.
The hope is that, when they get to a difficult moment in their co-parenting, they will refer to this provision to guide them in resolving their disagreement, helping with what to say and why they, as parents, made certain decisions.
Let Your Values Lead
Mid-conflict, they can look to their values, what matters to them, what they agreed to, and it guides them in moving forward on the same page and with having a coordinated message for their children.
Insight Mediation training changes how I work with people. The Conscious Contract® training affects how I draft documents, not only Judgments of Divorce, Settlement and Parenting Agreements, but also Prenuptial Agreements. Many people come to me to draft prenups and review prenups created by other attorneys, and I am honored to guide them in creating language driven by their values.
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If I understand what’s important to a client, what they have discussed as a couple, whether pre-marriage or post, their legal documents will reflect them. And that matters.
One couple said, “The lawyer who did our first draft wrote it all in legalese. It doesn’t reflect what we believe or what we want for each other or our marriage.”
This is typical. Most attorneys use a template focused on protecting one person in the relationship over the other, not creating a path based on the realistic expectations the couple has for their future.
When I spoke with the couple, they talked about their values and what they want to make sure happens during their marriage. So when I revised the prenuptial agreement, I used plain English—their names, us or me instead of the client—and they felt better about the resulting agreement.
Expanding What Transitions Legal Offers
The Curious Mediator training is not just for divorcing couples. It applies to any conflict, really. I am equipped now, with this training, to mediate a conflict between neighbors or help families resolve disputes.
By gaining these skills, I am broadening the scope of what Transitions Legal can do for you—for anyone.
Our clients now go beyond divorce. Recently, an older couple asked me to mediate a dispute between their grown sons, who owned a business together but were no longer speaking. The business had gone bad, and the wives were at odds. The parents were devastated that their sons were not talking and suggested Mediation.
This is meaningful work!
In another case, some daughters were in conflict with their father, who was remarrying and making changes to his estate plan. They had existing issues with their dad, and they wanted to maintain the family identity, so they hired me and a mental health professional to co-mediate for them.
Most stressful situations demand better communication and empathy. If I can bring that to people, I will consider my life’s work a success.
The biggest growth area in divorce these days is in what we call “Gray Divorce” involving older adults.
Many times that’s because it’s second or third marriage, people have already divorced once, and they’re not afraid to do it again. Plus, many people who divorce and remarry never quite understand and resolve the reasons their first marriage didn’t work out, bringing their own relationship challenges into their next union.
May is Older Americans Month and according to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2025, 18 percent of the nearly 342 million people in the United States are older than 65. And according to a 2023 article in AARP Magazine, boomers (people born between 1946 and 1964), aka older adults, are divorcing more than any other generation of people.
Between 1990 and 2021, the rate of divorce among older adults — Americans age 65 and older — tripled. This used to be a rare thing, seeing your grandparents break up. They’d come this far, they reasoned, might as well stick it out.
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No more! These days, one in four divorces occurs in people of this age group.
There are many reasons, of course. One is that in that population, people may have already divorced and remarried and second (and third) marriages have less of a chance of lasting than first marriages.
But even among the older population, there are couples who have been together for decades who are deciding to end their long-term marriages–Gray Divorce!
Why? Because women feel more empowered, both emotionally and financially, when in the past they didn’t have much agency.
If you’re older and divorcing, make sure you know what your resources are. (I’d say the same for any population divorcing, frankly, but the longer you live, and the longer you’re together, the more complicated it becomes to divide up your assets.)
Recently, I had a couple come to me for a prenuptial agreement. They were older (in their 60s and 70s) and the husband wanted to make sure if something happens to him, his wife would be covered financially. She didn’t bring much to the late-in-life marriage, so he was looking out for her.
And I learned, after doing a bit of research, that generally, so long as you are married for at least 9 months, the surviving spouse is eligible to receive the social security survivor benefits based on her new spouse’s record.
Social Security Is Not an Asset
Something we need to talk about with our Gray Divorces and prenuptial clients is that social security is another resource to consider, and the government has its own rules!
Social security is not an asset. Everybody’s social security is their own, but so many women of this generation didn’t work, and if they divorced at midlife or later, it wasn’t necessarily an ideal time to create a career.
These spouses have several options and it is wise to meet with a financial advisor or a social security benefits expert to understand their best option to maximize social security benefits in their particular situation.
For instance, if they were married for more than a decade during their first marriage, they can draw off their divorced spouse’s social security; but if they remarry, that benefit is usually forfeited (there are exceptions). It’s another resource lawyers need to be thinking about when working with couples in the gray generation.
Watch Your Mental Health
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Another thing to be aware of with Gray Divorce is the chance for depression or a hit to emotional well-being with the split, especially among women. Studies show that when older women develop a disability or chronic illness, some husbands are ready to hoof it, while that doesn’t happen in equal numbers when it’s the husband who falls ill.
Since seniors face depression at increasing rates and society often looks the other way, we want to watch the mental health of our older populations when their lives fall apart like this.
And it’s worse when couple-friends choose a side, abandoning one of the spouses post-divorce.
Recently, I met a man on a plane whose marriage ended after 35 years. “My wife just told me one day that she didn’t want to be married to me anymore,” he said. “It wasn’t a great marriage, but I would’ve stayed for the kids and grandkids.”
Although the divorce happened several years ago, he was still crushed by it enough to share with me, a stranger. For any person, the sting of being left can linger, but after decades of marriage, it can be even harder to shed the feelings of hurt, abandonment and loneliness.
So while Gray Divorce may be the biggest growth area we family law attorneys are seeing, we must remain mindful of all the complicating factors that accompany this population of divorcing couples. This is why Gray Divorce is especially suited for Collaborative Divorce, where a financial advisor and a mental health professional are part of the team.
April is Financial Literacy Month, which is a great reminder to know your numbers before you divorce. Know your assets, know your debts, know your expenses, know your accounts, and have access to everything.
That sentence alone may make your head spin. If it does, know that you’re not alone!
Many people seeking to divorce feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information that is needed to move forward with their divorce—and they feel helpless when they haven’t been the spouse in charge of paying bills or managing money.
It is quite common in a marriage that one spouse is better at managing money. Most divorcing couples find tension and sometimes, disputes, when it comes to the couple’s “marital estate.” That includes the assets, debts and other acquisitions that occurred during the marriage.
If you’re splitting up, chances are good that you don’t agree on how to move forward. One spouse (or both) may want the house; one partner may not want to share retirement savings; if one partner has a much more significant income, they may be reluctant to pay support to the other.
Dividing assets and debts is one potential hurdle that may be painful during your divorce. Painful, but necessary.
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“Equitable distribution” of the marital estate means a fair, not always equal, division of shared assets and debts. But first, both parties need access to, and a clear picture of, what’s on the table.
If you feel like you’re out of the loop on your financial picture, start by requesting your credit report from one of the three major reporting agencies. (Karma.com offers free credit reports!) In that report, you’ll find all accounts and cards in your name alone as well as joint accounts.
Once you receive the report, review each account to ensure accuracy, amounts, and payment history. Dispute inaccurate information immediately.
When acting as a mediator or as an attorney, I ask that each spouse provide a copy of their credit report to me and to the other. It provides confirmation of the debts that exist and must be dealt in deciding how to distribute the marital estate.
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If you’re a high net worth couple, your financial picture may be even more complicated than you expect.
Don’t worry, though! We will get to the bottom of everything. Transitions Legal’s financial assessment in divorce includes not just hard numbers but also in-depth conversations with you about your values around money.
In some marriages, one spouse is a free-spender while another is more frugal. We bring values from our families of origin, past experiences and upbringing into the financial picture of a marriage. That’s why money can be a breaking point for many couples!
Your values surrounding money will help guide the divorce settlement, too. In Collaborative Divorce and Mediation, we have deep, meaningful conversations about what matters most to you as a couple and as a family. This guides the divorce so you can both leave the marriage feeling as good as possible about what comes next.
These are not easy conversations and one of the unique aspects of Transitions Legal’s work with you is preparing you for these conversations with resources and tools unique to our firm such as the Our Family in Two Homes workbook.
Still, to get a clear picture of where you’re headed post-divorce, we need a clear picture of where you are now. We can start with a bank balance or account statement.
Some documents or accounts you might want to look for include the following:
Investment portfolios
Retirement accounts and pensions
The deed to your home(s) and mortgage statement
Bank accounts
Business accounts if one or both of you own a business
Tax returns from previous years
Monthly expenses for your household
Credit card statements
Credit reports
Pay stubs
Monthly cash flow
In Collaborative Divorce, a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst (CDFA) is part of the team as a strategist who will help with all of this as well as provide insight for your post-divorce financial future. The CDFA on the Collaborative Divorce team will lead you and your spouse in exploring the division of assets, identify tax issues, and help address how to best manage the children’s financial needs for education, extracurricular expenses, medical treatment and more, based on income flow.
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It is also not unusual to include a CDFA in Mediation depending on the complexity of the marital estate and where clients will benefit from additional education about their finances.
The higher your net worth the longer this part of your divorce may take. You might be surprised, but the more debt you have also plays a role in the complexity of dividing assets. It’s important not to rush financial fact-finding or planning! It takes time to create a complete picture of your marital estate.
Many people worry about how they’ll make it financially post-divorce. It may take some months before we can create a clear picture of what your asset distribution will be once the divorce is final.
One thing you can do to be proactive is to create a budget. Look at your expenses and see what you’re likely to carry over into your post-divorce life. This exploration will prepare you for the financial discussions surrounding not only the division of your marital estate, but also about spousal support and child support!
If the expenses of your married life are too high to continue after the divorce, we’ll have conversations about how to trim so you feel confident in your new life.
It’s our job to guide you through the often-complicated financial waters of your divorce and help you emerge on the other side with knowledge, confidence and a clear path.
When people get divorced, one of the biggest emotions they experience is a lack of control—either because their partner initiates the breakup, or because the legal part of uncoupling is in the hands of professionals and going at their pace based on the court-specific timeline.
Years ago, when I started practicing Collaborative Divorce in addition to what was then a mostly litigative practice, I did so because I saw so many benefits to my clients. Taking control of their divorce and deciding its timeline was one big part of that.
Now that Transitions Legal has become fully a Center for Collaborative Divorce and Mediation and eliminated litigation as an offering, every single divorce case that we take on is in the hands of the people divorcing.
That’s pretty amazing, when I think about it.
Alisa Peskin-Shepherd, family law attorney
My job as a family law attorney is to shepherd people through a pretty tough time in their lives. Even when you’re the one initiating a divorce, there is still a period of mourning, a letting go of what you had hoped would be forever, a transition from one way of life to another unexpected and uncharted one.
Most people feel anxiety and overwhelm when things are beyond their control. That’s natural. Whether it’s keeping the house clean or getting all your work done or waiting for a reply from someone else on something that matters to you, whenever important tasks are in someone else’s hands, we can’t help but feel uncomfortable.
Now, I am delighted to be able to give my clients the control they need and want.
Of course, because of the nature of divorce itself, each individual spouse doesn’t have total control. Divorce involves two people and their shared assets and family members. There are a lot of moving parts, so it is never completely in one person’s control.
The brilliant part of Collaborative Divorce and Mediation is the way it gives divorcing spouses some measure of control over how the divorce process goes, what they end up with after the divorce is final, and when and how all of this takes place.
Both processes put the divorcing spouses in the driver’s seat. Yes, there are details to negotiate and compromises to make. But these are still the clients’ choices to make. Just like how fast it goes and the values that guide the process — all under their control.
Not the courts.
Not court-based professionals who have no vested interest in the outcome of the case.
Not a judge sitting in their courtroom who doesn’t know either of you or your kids.
The control is yours. And that’s the way I’d like to keep it.
Ever since I discovered alternative approaches to divorce like Collaborative Divorce and Insight Mediation, I’ve been promoting them to clients and colleagues alike.
But there’s a hesitation when I mention the idea of doing something different than duke it out in court.
I understand that new and different aren’t easy to accept—especially when a person is at a traumatic and pivotal time in their life, like at the moment of a marriage ending.
I understand that a colleague who’s practiced a tried-and-true approach to divorce—in court, lengthy battles over conference-room tables, each spouse trying to win over the other—might be hesitant to adopt a new way of practicing that might not entice clients.
I understand it all.
And yet, what I don’t understand is why people divorcing or facing other family conflict more easily trust the court system rather than a private, out-of-court legal process?
Let’s take a look, for a moment, of what it’s like to divorce in the court system.
A person files papers to end the marriage. The other spouse is served the papers. They each choose a lawyer who charges multiple hundreds of dollars an hour to represent them in a process that takes dozens to hundreds of hours.
Each spouse has a vision of what they want, defenses are up for survival naturally, and they fight for what they want until they are worn down, convinced or otherwise, perhaps faced with the ‘threat’ of a multiple day trial, finally resign themselves to not getting even close to what they want because, hey, each lawyer has something to say, and the judge will have something to say, plus the Friend of the Court referee, and maybe others, too.
The traditional legal process includes delays, hurdles and, most importantly, people who don’t know the couple or their family or their history or their hearts making the ultimate decision of how their lives are going to unfold starting tomorrow.
Americans pay tens of thousands of dollars to end a marriage according to other people’s timelines and guided by other people’s values. They pay money they’d stashed away for retirement or for their children’s college educations to not get what they want and have to wait for it.
I’m not sure why we automatically trust the legal system for families, as it is set up today, when it’s ill-suited to listen and mirror what we want and need. Our judges and Friend of the Court referees are well trained and are in their positions because they want to help families, but even they will tell our clients that it is better when the spouses can reach their own decisions for themselves and their family.
Perhaps now you can see why I am so enamored of the Collaborative Divorce and Insight Mediation processes!
Collaborative Divorce by definition is a team-based approach, outside of court, that is guided by the values and needs of the couple and their family. Everyone works together on the couple’s timeline to finalize the details of their divorce.
Everyone listens to the divorcing spouses, and they hear each other. The goal is to create a divorce settlement that allows them to move forward in the best way possible for themselves and their children. Adult children (i.e., any child over 18) and grandchildren, too, come into the mix, something never considered by the decision makers in the court system.
Likewise, Insight Mediation is all about listening and hearing and making decisions guided by personal and family values. Outside of court. On the couple’s timeline.
So I ask again, why do so many so easily trust the legal system but not an alternative legal process to divorce?
It makes no sense to me, and in fact seems to go against every instinct and fiber of human logic.
By gaining these skills, I am broadening the scope of what Transitions Legal can do for you—for anyone.
These are not easy conversations and one of the unique aspects of Transitions Legal’s work with you is preparing you for these conversations with resources and tools unique to our firm such as the 
