Attorneys Dedicated to Family Law
Welcome to attorneys dedicated to Family Law, the podcast where our experienced attorneys at Curran Moher Weis guide you through the complexities of family law. Whether you are facing a divorce, custody dispute, or financial matters. Our dedicated team is here to provide strategic insight and practical advice. Each episode, one of our attorneys will dive into key legal topics. And help you navigate your unique situation with confidence.
Attorneys Dedicated to Family Law
EP #4: Anatomy of a Divorce Case: 30+ Years of Insights from the Courtroom and Beyond with Gerald Curran, Esq.
Gerald Curran, managing partner at Curran Moher Weis, draws on his 30+ years of family law experience to reveal how divorce cases actually work from the inside out. With remarkable candor, he explains his methodical approach to sorting clients' personal narratives into legal "buckets" - spousal support, separate property, marital property, and custody - creating a strategic framework for each unique case.
Ready to protect what matters most? Visit our website to connect with an experienced family law attorney who can help you navigate your unique situation with confidence and strategic insight.
What I do is I let the narrative tell me what is important in a case. So when somebody is narrating this story to me, I am putting everything they say into different buckets. I suppose you would say so. I'm looking at this as a spousal support bucket. This is a separate property bucket. This is a marital property bucket. This is a custody bucket. So I am taking their facts and putting them in the right places.
Intro/Close:Welcome to Attorneys Dedicated to Family Law, the podcast where our experienced attorneys at Curran Moher Weiss guide you through the complexities of family law, whether you're facing a divorce, custody dispute or financial matters. Our dedicated team is here to provide strategic insight and practical advice. Each episode, one of our attorneys will dive into key legal topics and help you navigate your unique situation with confidence. Let's get started.
Charlie McDermott:Well, welcome back listeners and viewers. Charlie McDermott here once again, and today's episode is hosted by Gerald Kern, managing partner at Kern Mohler Weiss and a seasoned trial attorney who has practiced family law in Virginia since 1991. With over three decades of experience, gerald has handled everything from high net worth divorce cases and complex property distribution to child custody disputes involving mental health concerns and relocation. He's known for his sharp litigation skills, strategic negotiation approach and commitment to providing the highest level of representation to his clients, whether settling outside of court or arguing before a judge. Gerald has been consistently recognized among Virginia's top divorce lawyers by Best Lawyers in America, super Lawyers, the Washingtonian and Northern Virginia Magazine. Jerry, thanks for being here today. You ready.
Gerald Curran:Thanks, charlie, it's nice to see you.
Charlie McDermott:Jerry, thanks for being here today. You ready? Thanks, Charlie, it's nice to see you. Yeah, yeah. Well, we've got a lot to cover and you have a wealth of knowledge to provide here. So let's start with just the landscape of divorce. Jerry, you've been practicing family law, as I mentioned, since 1991. You've seen a lot. How has that landscape of divorce changed in that time?
Gerald Curran:Well, charlie, I'll tell you. There's been so many changes it's really difficult to mention them all. When I first started out, virginia still had a difference between law and chancery courts. So when you went to do divorce cases which were chancery, you actually did some of your case in front of a commissioner in Chancery, which was a lawyer, who was educated as being a commissioner, and then they put their name on a list and you would go to their office and you would try issues like grounds for divorce and default-based grounds for divorce and things like that, where you had to hire your own court reporter and do sort of a two or three step process in order just to get a divorce. Now that's all changed.
Gerald Curran:There has been numerous changes to the equitable distribution statute Virginia Code 20-107.3.
Gerald Curran:Statute Virginia Code 20-107.3. Since 2019, spousal support, which used to be tax deductible, is no longer tax deductible and that was a fairly big part of a trial practice when we talked about spousal support doing the effects of the tax. Someone would have to pay, the recipient would have to pay or the payor and the payor would save by essentially having that deductible. We now have same-sex marriage, which was not even contemplated in the 1990s and probably, I would think, the most significant change for my practice is that when I first started, we had very few cases coming out of the appellate court and the Supreme Court that dealt with family law. Now we have a wealth of cases out there that interpret the statute and let us read into situations that I'm handling and it really helps to define the issues and tell us what's going to happen when we put these issues before a judge. So that is probably the biggest change is just the time that's gone by and the wealth of case law that's come out of, as I said, the appellate courts, the appellate court, the Supreme Court.
Charlie McDermott:Wow, wow, yeah. Quite a lot of change Going back then, jerry, to those days. What led you to focus your legal career on family law?
Gerald Curran:I probably would have told you you were crazy. I graduated at a time in 1990 where there was a recession going on in the country and a lot of the big law firms which I wanted to go to straight out of school started laying off people and I moved around a little bit and I got laid off every time and so I determined that the best way for me to get by, originally in the early 90s, was sort of to hang out my own shingle. I figured I knew enough I could probably handle a small practice. And what started walking in the door were divorce cases, and when I got into it I realized that the complexity of what we were dealing with I had to either do it solely or not do it at all.
Gerald Curran:And I like doing it because in divorce law you have a juxtaposition of being a trial lawyer and also being a transactional lawyer. Most of the time in big law firms lawyers are either transactional or they're litigators. In divorce practice you are both. In fact you're sort of a jack of all trades because you have to know real estate law, bankruptcy law, contract law, trial, advocacy, objections, the evidence code and that sort of really helped me to grow in this field and really enjoy it.
Charlie McDermott:Wow, did you ever imagine that the firm would grow the way it has over the years back then?
Gerald Curran:Not a chance. Back then, my first office was one room that I was renting in someone else's office. And I'll tell you, I could not have foreseen what has gone on in the Northern Virginia area in the past 30 years, and I certainly could not have foreseen what has happened with the divorce practice and what has happened with my practice specifically.
Charlie McDermott:Yeah, let's get into the anatomy of a divorce case. So, Gary, can you walk us through what typically happens from the moment someone walks into your office seeking a divorce?
Gerald Curran:Sure, now what I try to do, because there's a lot of emotion that runs through divorce cases someone's coming into my office and telling me about their marriage, their relationship with their spouse, their relationship with their children, and it can be very intrusive and it can be very emotional. So what I'd like to do is I like to have the client essentially give me a narrative when did you meet your spouse? When did you get married? Why are you here today? What are the problems in your marriage now? And then, through that, which is basically a narrative, and I get sort of a chronology of the relationship, the reasons they might be in my office, what situation they have with their children, who's doing what for the kids? Where are their kids in school? What sports do they play? What are their strengths, what are their weaknesses?
Gerald Curran:I look for emotional and psychological aspects of the case and also, at the same time, I'm asking people about their finances facts of the case and also, at the same time, I'm asking people about their finances. What bank accounts do you have? How many pieces of real estate do you own? How many automobiles do you own? How are they titled? Do you have a retirement plan? Does your spouse have a retirement plan. What was your last yearly income? I mean, what I do is I let the narrative basically let the narrative tell me what is important in a case.
Gerald Curran:So when somebody is narrating this story to me, I am putting everything they say into different buckets. I suppose you would say so. I'm looking at this as a spousal support bucket. This is a separate property bucket. This is a marital property bucket. This is a support bucket. This is a separate property bucket. This is a marital property bucket. This is a custody bucket.
Gerald Curran:So I am taking their facts and putting them in the right places. So that's the way it starts. Then I have advice for clients as they go forward and I always tell them that this is a process. So if you think this is going to be over in a week or a month, you're probably wrong. This is sort of a marathon, not a sprint, and we have to deal with this together. And I tell them about my team and I tell them that, look, you know you need to have trust in us. We've done this, we've done this before. We can handle your matter. And if there's you have any problems, I usually give them not only my number but my paralegals number, my legal assistance number, so they have someone to contact pretty much at all times if they need to Wow.
Charlie McDermott:Wow, which is really important. As you said, it's a and we all know it's an emotional time. There's more than just the law going on here, I'm sure for a lot of your clients Right.
Gerald Curran:Absolutely. I mean, sometimes I feel like a closet psychiatrist. You know I try not to fit in that role. If I feel like someone really needs someone to talk to, they should find a counselor, because talking to me about their emotional issues, really isn't cost effective.
Charlie McDermott:Yeah. So with your wealth of experience, at what point do you know whether a case is likely to settle or head to trial?
Gerald Curran:Well, so the first thing we do, once we put everything into these buckets that we have, is I discuss strategy and tactics with the client. The client lays out their general strategy what do you want to achieve out of this case? I look at it as. The client tells me the strategy, I tell them the tactics. How are we going to achieve your goal? Do you want to end up in your house? Do you want to sell your house? You want to keep the beach property? Do you want to keep the Honda car or whatever it is? What are your goals? And once I get their goals, then we develop a strategy and then I basically advise them on how to achieve those goals.
Gerald Curran:With regards to settlement and or trial, I've done both. I probably settle 80% of the cases that are brought in. The issue is, when do you know that that case is going to settle or go to trial? It can be in the first meeting, it can be in the first month, it can be after six or eight months. It really depends upon when the clients both of them get into a problem-solving mode versus a adversarial mode. And once the clients get into a problem-solving mode, I can pretty much tell you the case is going to settle Okay.
Charlie McDermott:Yeah, yeah. So you've handled some incredibly complex cases over the years, and I'm sure no two cases are the same. What comes to mind? What are some of the most challenging situations you've faced?
Gerald Curran:Well, with regards to, for instance, marital fault in a high network divorce, we had a very well-to-do, very high-powered Washington lawyer who was married to a woman who had an alcohol problem, she had a drug problem and she was caught having sex with a jail inmate trustee in the parking lot of a jail, which my client found out by getting a call from the magazine American Lawyer. Well, he was at breakfast with a client and it was national news and that was a very difficult case with the idea of fault and alcoholism and drug abuse that this woman was doing, and that was difficult. When it comes to, for instance, financial issues, I handled a case where the largest asset probably that the couple had was their interest in a business. The husband had taken that business a couple couple years prior and placed all the stock, except for his voting shares, into an irrevocable trust. And when I talked to his lawyers, his lawyers took the position that well, it's in a trust so it's really not subject to the court doing equitable redistribution or dividing it. And we were able to get over that hurdle and we ended up settling that case pretty favorably to my client.
Gerald Curran:With regards to child support issues, I had a very disabled child who was in the custody of the child's mother, who was in the custody of the child's mother, and the mother was looking for something in the neighborhood of $25 million over the next 10 years in child support, where my client made approximately $300,000 a year. So that was the needs of the child far outpaced the parents' incomes and it was tragic, but we were able to get over that hurdle as well.
Charlie McDermott:You have seen a lot. How about a divorce case? I guess how would you approach a divorce case when significant financial or emotional complexity is involved?
Gerald Curran:Well, the two things are pretty different. If there's significant emotional complexity, what I try to do is I try to remind clients that there's two things that really divorce cases are about. One is children, and that is our first priority. The second is money.
Gerald Curran:I tell people all the time you're not probably going to get vindication from your divorce case. But the court doesn't really do sort of vindication or proving one party right and the other party wrong. They divide assets. Those assets have to be existing. So I try to tell people from a financial standpoint that you know, try to get the emotion out of it. And many times as divorce lawyers I know this through my colleagues in the bar that we are trying to be the problem solvers. A lot of the time the clients have emotional issues and emotional baggage they're bringing to negotiation or to trial position and we really try to school them that using an emotional issue is not the way you want to go. You want to look at the hard finances. How much is it going to cost to try this case, what you're going to get out of it, what is the payoff for your time and your money and your anxiety?
Charlie McDermott:Yeah, yeah, that's good. So here's a good question what do clients often misunderstand about divorce litigation?
Gerald Curran:Well, I mean, I think that that a lot of times they look at a client comes in and I'll hear you know, my neighbor went through this and my neighbor's divorce this happened. Or my sister went through this and my sister's divorce this happened. And I'm here to tell you every divorce case this happened, o through this and my siste happened. And I'm here to case is unique Every fac. Every time we try a case, judges are unique. In Fai, 12, 13, 14 different judg was fond of saying you know, we have 14 different judges and any day you have 28 different personalities, and I agree with that. So you have to know how this case is going to be tried, if it's going to be tried, and people should not try to lump themselves in with what happened in somebody else's case because their case is not their neighbor's case, it is not their brother's case, it is their case and it's different.
Charlie McDermott:Yeah, yeah, we talked about, jerry, the emotional factor earlier in the interview here. How do you help clients stay grounded when emotions run high?
Gerald Curran:I try to remind them of two things. One is try to get into problem solving Really. Try to look at what we're doing and try to solve these problems. The other side gets a vote, so I try to get them into that problem-solving mode. I also tell them that this is as I said before this is a marathon, not a sprint. There will be battles, we will win and lose battles, but the battles are not the war. Our goal is to win the war. So don't get disheartened. If a judge on a Friday motions day rules against us, we'll deal with that. The idea is we have to look at the overall picture and we have to win this war. So that is really what I try to remind people throughout the process is that there will be a conclusion to this and on that day that is where we're going to hear what's important this and on that day.
Charlie McDermott:that is where we're going to hear what's important. Jerry, this has been, I know, extremely helpful for your listeners and viewers. Any advice, final thoughts on anyone facing divorce that you can share?
Gerald Curran:Well, my biggest thought, after doing this for a long time, is that your lawyer makes a big difference in divorce cases.
Gerald Curran:I don't know if the quality of the identity of your lawyer makes a big difference in a minor criminal case, I don't know but I do know that in divorce cases, the quality of your lawyer makes a big difference. So you want to look for a lawyer who does this as a job, does this solely. You want to stay away from general practitioners. You want to find a lawyer that's got a good reputation in the field, who's got a good team behind them, because somebody working solo is not going to be able to accomplish what a firm can accomplish. Somebody working solo is not going to be able to accomplish what a firm can accomplish. Also, you need to find a lawyer that you trust and that you can be friendly with. You don't want to be at odds with your attorney. They're your advocate, they are your best friend when it comes to this process and you're going to need that help from them throughout the entire process, from the beginning to the very, very end. So choose wisely.
Charlie McDermott:Well, jerry, really appreciate you jumping on the show here carving out time. I know I'm sure it's never easy for you. And that brings us to the end of today's episode of Attorneys Dedicated to Family Law. A big thank you to Gerald Kern for sharing his decades of wisdom and giving us a behind the scenes look at what really goes on, or goes into, a divorce case. If you found this episode helpful, be sure to follow the show, leave us a review and share it with someone who might benefit. Have a question or a topic you'd like to hear? Next Reach out. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode.
Gerald Curran:Thanks, Charlie.
Intro/Close:That wraps up this episode of Attorneys Dedicated to Family Law. We hope you found today's discussion insightful. If you have questions or need personalized legal guidance, visit us at currenmohurtcom. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss our next episode, where another of our experienced attorneys will tackle an important family law issue. Thanks for listening. Until next time, we're here to help you protect what matters most.