The Three Wisemen of Divorce: Money, Psych & Law

Who's to Blame? Examining the No-fault Divorce in Modern Society

• Shawn Weber, CLS-F, Mark C. Hill, CFP®, CDFA® and Peter Roussos, M.A., MFT, CST • Season 6 • Episode 3

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Our exploration of fault versus no-fault divorce reveals surprising historical twists and powerful stakes for modern families. Did you know Ronald Reagan—yes, that Ronald Reagan—signed America's first no-fault divorce law? Before that watershed moment, couples resorted to hiring private detectives and staging hotel room encounters just to escape unhappy marriages.

Today, conservative voices like JD Vance advocate returning to fault-based divorce, arguing no-fault made ending marriages too easy. But what's really behind this push? As we unpack the complex history of divorce law reform, we explore whether making divorce harder actually creates healthier marriages or simply traps people in unhappy ones.

The conversation takes fascinating turns through domestic violence statutes, covenant marriages, and the concerning trend of weaponizing abuse allegations for financial advantage. We consider thought-provoking questions: Does fault-based divorce protect families or amplify conflict? How does assigning blame affect children caught in the middle? And ultimately, shouldn't we focus on creating healthy marriages rather than simply preventing their dissolution?

Our candid discussion reveals how divorce laws reflect deeper cultural values about gender, family, and personal freedom. Whether you're navigating your own relationship challenges or simply interested in how policy shapes our most intimate decisions, this episode offers valuable perspective on what genuinely helps families thrive rather than merely stay together.

Share your thoughts with us on this controversial topic! We're genuinely interested in hearing different perspectives as we continue exploring the complex intersection of money, psychology, and law in divorce.

The Three Wisemen of Divorce are divorce experts Mark C. Hill, CFP®, CDFA®, Financial Divorce Consultant; Peter Roussos, MA, MFT, CST, psychotherapist; and Shawn Weber, CLS-F*, Family Law Mediator and Divorce Attorney.

Speaker 1:

So like, if I go up to you on the street, mark, and I punch you in the face, there's a legal remedy for that right.

Speaker 2:

I battered you, unless it was my fault in the first place, because I upset you and my behavior was so outrageous that a punch in the face was the only thing that rectified it.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Three Wise Men of Divorce Money, psych and Law podcast. The Three Wise Men of Divorce Money, psych and Law podcast Sit down with the California divorce experts financial divorce consultant Mark Hill, psychologist Scott Weiner and attorney Sean Weber for a frank and casual conversation about divorce, separation, co-parenting and the difficult decisions real people like you face during these tough times. We know that if you are looking at divorce or separation, it can be scary and overwhelming. With combined experience of over 70 years in divorce and conflict management, we are here for you and look forward to helping by sharing our unique ideas, thoughts and perspectives on divorce, separation and co-parenting, divorce, separation and co-parenting. Okay, gentlemen, it's, uh, an interesting political time and, and whenever you have an interesting political time, there are interesting political questions that are raised, and some of them are policy that impact what we do in our divorce work, and what we have scheduled to talk about today is no fault divorce versus fault based divorce and the impact on families and society, and one of the reasons it's kind of in vogue to talk about right now is there's actually some people that are agitating for various levels of abolishing the concept of no-fault divorce, and I thought it would be useful to kind of we all did that it would be useful to talk about. You know, what impact does that really have? What are states actually doing with fault divorce versus no-fault divorce? What is it even, so that our listeners can kind of have an idea and be able to make their own informed choices?

Speaker 1:

Now we realize that this topic can be sensitive. I didn't realize when I started kind of researching this topic and thinking about it for this podcast how polarizing it could be as far as the gender concerns are. You know it implicates concepts of patriarchy and you have women's groups that have very strong feelings about this and men's groups on other sides that have other strong feelings. And I realize here we are sitting here as three men, the three wise men of divorce. We don't have a wise woman here, and so we're going to try our best to be as very neutral on this topic, without necessarily you might get to see what our bias is, but if there is ever an implication that we've said something that sounds like it might be discriminatory in any way, it's not our intention.

Speaker 2:

Do you guys agree with that? Yeah, absolutely. Now there's a historical perspective here, because we used to have fault divorce, didn't we, sean?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so the way it used to be back in the old days is you had to show a ground for divorce, and the grounds for divorce could be things like adultery or abuse, abandonment, sometimes cruelty, and every state had their own list of grounds for divorce that you could go for. If you weren't able to show one of those grounds, then you couldn't get divorced. So this concept of irreconcilable differences was not a thing. It was just you had to show one of these grounds, and so people will be kind of stuck in a marriage that they didn't want to be in, and you would actually sometimes have people you know I heard of stories of in new york of people all right, I'll be the person at fault, we'll hire it, we'll hire a prostitute, I'll go into the hotel room with the prostitute, you take pictures and then we'll show that to the court, and then we'll be able to get divorced you know stuff like that.

Speaker 2:

People would make up a pretense for fault and you see all the old black and white movies with the private detective with the flash outside the hotel window. That's.

Speaker 1:

That's the yeah, that kind of image that jumps out to me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and then? And then what had happened? Since World War Two, divorce has been increasing significantly in this country, and there's various reasons for that. A big part of that is the women's movement, that women have become more independent and not necessarily interested in continuing the patriarchal order of things that we've all been a part of for the last generations of time. And so there has been a push where women were feeling like, geez, I am trapped in a marriage that is awful, and because I can't point to some particular ground for divorce, I'm stuck, I can't get a divorce. And so there was a movement in the 60s towards eliminating the need to show fault to get divorced. And, interestingly, the first state to actually have a pure no-fault system was California.

Speaker 1:

And that's where the phrase irreconcilable differences comes from, meaning I don't have to show that somebody committed adultery or that somebody was abusive or cruel or whatever. I just have to show that we have irreconcilable differences. And Ronald Reagan, the conservative lion himself, was the governor at the time and signed that into law. Now there is some argument I read papers on this before that if you had the right kind of judges right meaning subjectively the judges that would come up with this outcome. If they look at the word irreconcilable and try to define that, what does that actually mean? Like, what is an irreconcilable difference? And the way the courts have treated it since, you know, the 60s when this came into being, since Reagan was governor has been to just make it very easy to get a divorce. All you have to do is say, well, I want a divorce, and then you get a divorce. I have irreconcilable differences and you don't have to really prove that they're actually irreconcilable.

Speaker 2:

And only one side has to say that.

Speaker 1:

And only one side has to say it and the judge is fine with it. And I've had cases in my career where attorneys some attorney has attempted to oppose the ground for divorce of a reconcilable difference and say, well, actually our differences are quite reconcilable and we should just go to court and I'd like to have the court order that we go to therapy and counseling and stuff, and then I think it would save our marriage. And you know, if you had judges that kind, judges that kind of interpreted in a more strict sense of what irreconcilable means, it might actually be harder to get divorced in California than it was before. Because what does irreconcilable really mean? But that's kind of academic. What has happened is because of the way it's interpreted and, I think, the way it was intended to be. Sean, can I? It's hard, it's easy to get divorced now Go ahead.

Speaker 3:

I want to ask a question about what I think of as the two most significant developments, if you will, in terms of the legal process of divorce. Was the adoption of no-fault legislation as well as community property, the notion of community property, and I'm curious if those developed, if you will, on a similar timeline, did one lean to the other or anything like that.

Speaker 1:

No, community property is actually an old concept and California had community property for a long time. But how community property got created has become much more liberal now than it was when the concept was first discussed. But but basically the idea in california, in any community property state, is anything that I create during the marriage by the sweat of my brow is community property and to share equally, and the way it has been applied has been a way to really to protect, uh, women, the idea being that you know, you, the traditional situation where you have a man earning all the money and the woman who's working in the home and if there's a divorce and she doesn't, or even a death, she doesn't own half of the community property. That that's a great injustice to her.

Speaker 3:

Was that in place before the adoption? Of no fault it was.

Speaker 1:

It was. But what no fault did to kind of take it a step further was okay, we don't have to. You know, there's nothing bad that's going to happen to you because you're a bad boy or girl as far as your community property rights are concerned. So I mean, the fear was that, you know, a woman would want to leave the marriage and the husband said well, you're abandoning me, You're leaving the marriage, you're a bad person, so therefore you should not get community property, and that's not the law. The law now is that we don't look at fault, we don't think about whose fault it is that we got divorced, and so therefore, community property is going to be split equally, no matter what.

Speaker 2:

How does equitable division states play into this?

Speaker 1:

So some of them still have fault. And what's interesting is you have some states that have there's no state anymore that does not have a no fault option, and then you have some states where you have both. You could do a no fault option, you could say it's a reconcilable differences and that doesn't really impact the marital distribution of the marital estate. Or you can show fault and then that would show you know that would have an impact, there would be an inequitable distribution of the marital assets, and so in those states you typically have fault as something that's possible and and, and there's 33 of the 50 states have both options, um, and there are 17 states that have no fault as the only option, california being one of them.

Speaker 1:

Um, it's interesting, um, and I've actually known people in different states that you know, they, they, they, no fault was originally pled as the ground for divorce, but then one of the attorneys decides to threaten the other one by saying well, I'm going to introduce a motion about fault because you were abusive and that means she's going to get more of the money. But you know, whether you call it community property or just marital estate or you know these other terms, the concept is similar and that is that we have money that we accumulated during the marriage, this marital property, and there needs to be some kind of an equitable distribution.

Speaker 1:

Some states have spousal support, some don't, but, but you know, the states that don't have spouse support will have some kind of a way to provide for a spouse who is a lower earner in the form of an unequal distribution of the marital estate. But yeah, every state's different. I mean, that's one thing you have to remember. In the United States, each state has the right to set their own rules. Now, interestingly, we have some states in the 90s there's three of them Louisiana, arizona and Arkansas that adopted this thing called a covenant marriage, and the idea there was that we want to give people the opportunity to have a marriage that's harder to break. We're going to call it a covenant marriage. You check a box and maybe you have to take some extra classes or some extra counseling before you enter into this marriage, and then it's going to be harder. You have to show a higher showing than just irreconcilable differences in order to be able to break that marriage. There's strict exceptions to allow for divorce and there would be strict counseling requirements to allow for divorce.

Speaker 2:

Do you know, sean, whether, if the couple agreed that there were irreconcilable differences, they didn't have to jump through those hoops? Or is it just one party that would have to claim that?

Speaker 1:

Well, it depends on what box they checked on their marriage license.

Speaker 2:

But even if they checked it, but, now they yeah if they checked the box.

Speaker 1:

From what I understand and I'm not going to hold myself out as a complete expert on this, but from what I understand they check the covenant marriage box and they have a covenant marriage quote, unquote, gotcha. Then they irreconcilable differences. Is not one of the grounds that you have to show some kind?

Speaker 2:

of, so you can't change your mind later and say, never mind, correct, got it.

Speaker 1:

Okay. Change your mind later and say, never mind. Correct, got it okay and the idea being this enables you to have some choice in what kind of marriage you're entering into. That it's gonna be. You know I want to have a marriage that's harder to break. You know that's the concept. You know you can, and you can argue whether that's smart or not. So what's interesting?

Speaker 1:

is recently in the last couple of years there's been some push in conservative quarters JD Vance, ben Carson, some of those folks have come out calling for reform of no-fault divorce laws, saying it's too easy to get divorced.

Speaker 3:

And I think, if I'm remembering correctly, the idea has been floated, I think, by JD Vance, in terms of a federal action, correct, on a federal level, I wonder.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that I'm not entirely sure about and I don't know that the federal government would even have the right, would even have the standing to Constitutionally. That's definitely a federalist concept of the states being able to regulate marriage. And they would say you know, but hang on, we've got decisions, federal decisions in the courts, that regulate marriage, like the Obergefell decision, so why not have some kind of federal regulation? There is an interstate need to have federal regulation. Now you can imagine, the National Organization for Women is vehemently opposed to doing anything that would reduce no-fault divorce and there's various arguments. So I just kind of wanted, as we're talking here, I kind of wanted to get perspective of each of you and I'll provide the legal perspective. But you know, when you're looking at no fault versus fault based divorce, you know what would be the perspective of a therapist on this question.

Speaker 1:

What would be the perspective for the financial implications? You know what does this I mean. Number one is there anything to the argument? Do you think that no-fault divorce has actually increased the rate of divorce?

Speaker 3:

I don't think so.

Speaker 3:

Well, actually I want to say it this way it may, but I don't think that's the issue.

Speaker 3:

I don't think that making divorce more difficult leads to healthier marriages, and that, to me, is really the question, and what I wish you know the system, if you will, was thinking about is so what are the things that can be done to help couples do the kind of work and to incentivize couples doing the kind of work that is going to allow them to have healthier relationships, that's going to allow them to more fully really understand why they're struggling with what they're struggling with and what could be done about it, and that ultimately requires that both partners be motivated to do the work.

Speaker 3:

And I say this to people all the time when they're contacting me for couples therapy. I tell them that I believe there are really healthy and appropriate reasons for couples to end a marriage and to end their marriage in a healthy and collaborative way. But I also believe that most divorces happen way before the partners have done the kind of work necessary to understand why they're struggling and what the potential for positive change is between them, and I think that divorce that happens in advance of that work, prematurely. I think that's tragic for a whole host of reasons, especially when children are involved.

Speaker 1:

Now I've said that I have seen that I've had people come in and they tell me what their reasons are for getting divorced. It's not relevant as far as the court's concerned, but it's an interesting conversation and it's happened a lot where I'm like you know, the issues that you're describing sound like they're imminently fixable, and wouldn't you want to meet with a therapist or a counselor or something Right? And so I think, when that doesn't happen.

Speaker 3:

I think that's really unfortunate and sad for a whole host of reasons, for all the stakeholders. But I don't believe that making divorce harder, having it be fault-based, incentivizes people to do the work I mean that is, you know, my anecdotal gut feel, based on 30 plus years of doing this work.

Speaker 2:

The thought that jumps into my head is, you know, perhaps a requirement to do a little more work before people decide to tie the knot Before getting married in the first place?

Speaker 2:

Yes, Thinking about, you know, doing this counseling before and understanding what is involved, especially for younger people who have perhaps not been in. We see a lot of divorces from folks who are in their 30s and 40s who, perhaps you know, married in their 20s and have become different persons over the 10 or 20 year period and you wonder if they could have benefited for some sort of therapy or counseling prior to entering into the marriage or counseling prior to entering into the marriage.

Speaker 3:

You know I absolutely agree, mark, and you know one of the things that I think is often said we were talking about it as we were prepping for this that it is sad that it's much harder to get a driver's license than it is a marriage license, which is not to say that getting a marriage license should be hard, but let me say it this way Marriage, I think, is one of the most important human institution, and the preparation and the responsibility and the stewardship that's required in order to have a healthy marriage is something that people should be not just exposed to but trained in prior to getting married.

Speaker 3:

When couples are struggling, how do you incentivize and encourage them to to to do the work necessary to see whether or not healthy changes can be made? That that's where I wish the focus were, and I don't think getting away with no fault, no slop, no fault provisions, removing them and going back to a fault-based system is not going to accomplish that. I think it's just actually going to increase the pain that people experience in an unhappy marriage. That would be my fear.

Speaker 1:

Well, what specifically would happen? Do you think I mean? What would increase the pain that people feel as a result of a fault-based system?

Speaker 3:

Well, it's interesting that I think that a fault-based system incentivizes conflict. It incentivizes polarity, right.

Speaker 2:

And blame Peter.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely, absolutely. It's your fault.

Speaker 2:

It's your fault, this divorce? No, it's not, it's your fault. And that puts people further apart and less likely to be willing to compromise to resolve the dispute.

Speaker 3:

I think this is a general statement, but most people going into a divorce process on some level there already is this tremendous mistrust that the other person does not have their interests, their best interests, at heart. Going to a fault-based system is going to amplify that.

Speaker 1:

I want to be careful.

Speaker 1:

I do think there is a bit of a false binary that some people I'm not saying you, pete, I'm just saying that some people have when they analyze this question, and that is it's either fault or it's no fault, right. But you know, like we mentioned before, 33 states have both, and so it's not an either or it can be a mix. I do get concerned, though, when I think about what would happen if there was a state where no fault was abolished, right, like it wasn't even an option, right. I think there's all kinds of problems with that.

Speaker 1:

Well one is is like how do you determine who really is at fault, like when you deal with a relationship. Okay, he had an affair, whose fault was that? Okay, he had an affair, whose fault was that? And, and I mean you might, the simplistic answer would be well, the guy that had the affair. It's his fault, but what dynamic in the marriage led to him having an affair? Or the woman having an affair? It's not just I'm not trying to make this gender bias it could be the woman had an affair too.

Speaker 3:

I do a lot of work with couples where infidelity is the issue that gets them into therapy and what I talk to them about is that all couples co-create a relationship, which is, you know, it's not about ascribing percentages of blame, but it is about both partners realizing that they have co-created something. They've co-created this very big picture and an affair is part of that picture, and understanding that in the context of the bigger picture and what was working or not working for both partners. That's part of the work part of the work.

Speaker 2:

So the question becomes are the courts in a position to be able to examine that big picture and ascribe fault? I would doubt. I mean, we know judges and we know how overburdened they feel. In a no fault system, how would it be where, basically, I would imagine a lot, much higher percentage would actually go to trial? Because if I'm accused of fault and I feel that the end of the marriage was not purely as a result of my behavior, but but that the other my spouse had a role in it too, aren't I going to accuse? Just, I mean you accuse somebody of something. They often come right back at you and accuse you of something, so it's going to polarize people, which, from a financial standpoint, is not going to make divorce cheaper, it's not going to make divorce quicker and it's probably not going to help with co-parenting of children post-divorce. If the process creates more animosity than it already does, which can be significant and a no fault.

Speaker 1:

I mean the reason you have a legal remedy. So like, if I go up to you on the street, mark, and I punch you in the face, there is a legal remedy for that Right.

Speaker 2:

I battered you, unless it was my fault in the first place because I upset you and my behavior was so outrageous that a punch in the face was the only thing that rectified it. Well, that's the problem.

Speaker 1:

I'm sorry, I'm being facetious, but that's the problem with, you know, ascribing fault in divorce, right, but I mean there's a legal remedy that's clearly defined. I walk up to you, I punch you. You've now been hurt, you've been assaulted and battered, probably because you saw me coming to punch you and you would have a legal remedy against me for a intentional tort. But in family law, you know, with no fault, I think the effect that's happened is you have some people that feel very wronged. There's some that would argue that the emotional toll is as damaging as if somebody would have hit them in the face, and so these folks are looking for a remedy in the law. And unfortunately, when you have no fault, a pure no fault system, there is no remedy for bad behavior, and so and sometimes you feel perhaps there should be, and sometimes you feel like there ought to be you

Speaker 1:

know, I've had those cases where you're like geez that guy was a jerk or that woman was awful. Cases where you're like, geez, that guy was a jerk or that woman was awful, you know, but I, you know, I don't know how I come back to. Well, how does the court assign the liability for just being a jerk or just being? Now there is something you know we're noticing in the DV statutes with domestic violence, that fault is being introduced back into marital negotiations as a way to have a financial impact and also an impact on custody.

Speaker 1:

So if I, if I'm married to a woman and I abuse her and she gets a domestic violence restraining order, the history of domestic violence and abuse in the marriage can be a factor in making me pay more alimony, or maybe it means she doesn't have to pay me alimony. The other thing is that it becomes, at least in the state of California, if you're found to have committed domestic violence, there is a presumption that you are not the good parent for the kids to be with. That's a rebuttable presumption, but it's a presumption nonetheless and it has an impact. And so fault has kind of creeped in through the domestic violence statutes. And what's interesting is, in California as well, we've changed the definition, we've expanded the definition of what it means to commit domestic violence.

Speaker 1:

Before it used to be, there had to be some kind of physical thing that happened. I hit you, you hit me, I kept you from leaving the house, I stole your phone, you know I did something to you. That's physical, that we can show. And now we have expanded that to include concepts of, you know, emotional abuse, like coercive control and other forms of emotional abuse. And I do find that it's making it harder for the judges to be able to navigate just outcomes. You know, how do I know? How do we prove that somebody was emotionally abused? Not to say that people aren't. I think people absolutely are emotionally abused, but a lot of times you have people that aren't really emotionally abused and this lately I've noticed there's been an environment where everything's abuse.

Speaker 2:

I think back to what you said before, Sean, where you talked about that in a fault situation, where you talked about that in a fault situation, there may be an issue with co-parenting, for you know somebody who's been, for example, a result of domestic violence. There's only two remedies that the courts have. One is restricting access to the children and two is financial, and we often see people coming into divorce totally financially motivated can I can I add there's one, one other remedy and and that is a mandated treatment.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, for the perpetrator got you and for the family in the dv situation?

Speaker 2:

yeah, yeah, understood, but, jen, but often, you know, I meet with people sometimes just talking to one side and it's all financial. The only thing they're talking about is how they can either pay less or receive more fault that being abused to those ends. In other words, people will look for things to prove fault for financial reasons, not necessarily because the fault during the marriage caused harm.

Speaker 1:

Well, and unfortunately we're seeing it in some of our domestic violence statutes, or at least the application of it. Again, I don't want to speak ill of people that actually have abuse, but I have seen cases where people have attorneys are saying oh yeah, you just need to file for domestic violence, say, emotionally abused you, and then that'll help you get more support, whether it's happening or not.

Speaker 1:

You know, and it's a tactic. Or you know, get a domestic violence restraining order and then that'll give you an advantage in custody. So just just make something up, just make it happen. You know he surely he called you a bad name sometime. That must have been abuse, you know, and and I I think number one those people that do that are doing a great disservice to the actual victims that are out there that really do need protection. Number one and number two um, it's, it's. It makes things fine trying to find the words. It's just it's making it messy to a point where it's hard to know what's real and what isn't. And I think for the people that are actual victims, what we really need to know is what is real here so that we can protect people, and I think what's happening is actual victims aren't being believed because there are bad actors out there that are using this as a pretense. I'm probably going to get letters now.

Speaker 3:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that's Sean Weber talking.

Speaker 2:

But this is. It feels to me like it makes things more challenging, which may be the purpose of the movement to create it and to keep people in marriages, no matter what. And I know it'll make our work more challenging.

Speaker 3:

That's the part, and maybe this has been part of the people that are advocating for the doing away with no-fault divorce. Maybe this has been part of their position, but I haven't heard it. The thing that is missing, as far as I can tell from that argument, is them talking about why they believe doing that is going to create healthier marriages. People staying together is not the same thing as creating healthier marriages, and that, to me, should be the goal and the objective.

Speaker 1:

I think that's a really valid point. And also you know when you look at what's good for children and what's bad for children. You know I'm as big of a family values guy as anybody, right, but I have five kids of my own and been married for almost 30 years.

Speaker 1:

But you know, I don't necessarily think that divorce is what hurts kids, right? What hurts kids and this is I mean we know this from the research what hurts kids is, um, the conflict, and and when children are are exposed to conflict, we know that's harmful to them, and so is locking them in a marriage that is filled with conflict really better for children?

Speaker 2:

Or creating the environment in which you have to accuse somebody and so increase conflict. Is that going to help Right?

Speaker 1:

right. So now I know that I'm going to get an advantage if I can show that this other person was bad. Yes, and so, therefore, I'm going to create a pretense. Or I'm going to create, or it's just I'm going to the temptation I'm going to put the focus on.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to put the focus on the negative is what it does when maybe I would have been able to leave it be yeah, but now that it has something to do with my finances and I know a lot of this comes from Christian circles, and I don't mean, you know, christians are not all the same, that's for sure. There's different varieties of Christians, as various as the sands of the ocean. To what extent is it more Christ-like to want to blame someone or to want to find fault?

Speaker 2:

How is that necessarily Christian professor? I would say basically it's Old Testament more than what I understand to be New Testament interpretation of the Word of God right.

Speaker 1:

Well, I think of the story of Jesus with the woman taken in adultery and who's going to cast the first stone? You know, to stone her to death. And there was no one. That was without fault of their own, yeah, yeah. And the teaching there was it's really not up for us to find fault in one another. The teaching is to leave that to God and to basically just simply love one another unconditionally.

Speaker 2:

And forgive. And to forgive just simply love one another unconditionally and forgive and to forgive, and, and if we think about successful divorces that we have done, I mean, it's often aspirational and we don't get there, but when you see forgiveness occur, you know it.

Speaker 3:

It's a powerful thing and this would decrease it so if, if I can circle back, I think that there are two parts of this that we as a society should be looking at, and that is what is it that we can do to encourage people and support couples to have healthy marriages, and what is it that we can do to encourage people and support people to have healthy divorces when they, together, for the right reasons, have decided that that's what they need to do?

Speaker 1:

I think that's an excellent point. And just from a policy standpoint, I often wonder, like, why is the state involved in our marriages anyway? But that's a whole other conversation. Yeah, you know, but but maybe let's let me take care of my relationship and we'll leave the state out of it. Thank you very much. Well, this has been a very thought-provoking discussion, gentlemen.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I'd hate for this to be the final answer on the topic, like Well, this has been a very thought-provoking discussion.

Speaker 1:

Gentlemen, yeah, and I'd hate for this to be the final answer on the topic. If folks have comments on this, please share them with us, because we're learning together, and I would want to say that my views on the subject would be something that would be movable, based on evidence and based on thoughtful discussion.

Speaker 2:

Well, we've done this again. Yeah, people actually listened this time too. Can you believe that?

Speaker 1:

No, and we know you're out there.

Speaker 2:

That was always my aspiration that people would listen to this.

Speaker 1:

We know you're out there. We appreciate you. We do Thank you. We look forward to having more conversations as, sean, you're out there. We appreciate you. We do Thank you.

Speaker 2:

We look forward to having more conversations and love, as Sean just said, love to have your comments.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, love to hear from you Like us, please. All right, very good, well, let's do it again next time. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Three Wisemen of Divorce Money, psych and Law. If you like what you heard, be sure to subscribe, leave us a review and share with others who may be in a similar place. Until next time, stay safe, healthy and focused on a positive, bright future. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Future. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Every family law case is unique, so no legal, financial or mental health advice is intended during this podcast. If you need help with your specific situation, feel free to schedule a time to speak with one of us for a personal consultation.