Diaries

Costs of Divorce

Anecdotally there is an embedded bias with any litigator, family lawyers included. They are paid and continued to get paid so long as they are working on a file. There is therefore the implicit disincentive to resolve the matter, as the longer the dispute or fight lasts, the longer they will get paid. It is counter intuitive. I left a domestic violence marriage which left me, for a short time, homeless, jobless, and without money. My spouse was a well-known member of the community and have significant funds. Notwithstanding the circumstances that led to the end of our marriage, I spent $300,000 over the course of 5 years incurring significant debt to simply fund litigation. I came out of the marriage without support, without court ordered custody (I do have “de facto” custody). He still remains in our marital home, and owns our other properties. The money I spent brought no resolution and I could not afford to go to trial to try to get some form of equality or equity. I am an educated woman who does understand the law, and yet the traditional process absolutely failed me and left me handcuffed to continued participation.

In too many divorces there is a power imbalance between the spouses, be it financial, stature, ability to provide or work. The traditional litigation process does not seem mindful of this. Often one or both spouses cannot continue to pay for a lawyer and fund the fight and any funds to divide go to legal fees. It can take upwards of 3 years to book a trial in Alberta, 2 years for a “special” or mini half-day trial. Waiting for trial forces everyone into a state of limbo. Assets may be frozen, custody and support unresolved. Too often the fees and eventual division of assets becomes more likely a division of debt, and at times a bankruptcy by one or both parties. An alternative dispute resolution model could expedite this process and hopefully mitigate the financial drain.

A male colleague of mine, after spending a substantial amount of money on legal fees with two different lawyers, agreed to a fixed fee with his third lawyer. The fixed fee was in excess of $100,000. The day before the trial to finalize support and division of assets (custody was not in dispute), the lawyer advised him that without an additional $100,000 he could not possibly go to trial as the matter was “complicated”. The litigation process took 7 years to resolve during which time all of his assets had been frozen. The total legal fees spent by my colleague was over $1 Million. Had my colleague and his spouse taken a different course, out of court, all matters could have been resolved at a fraction of the cost and time.

Diaries

Anecdotes from a mediator:

In my many years working in personal bankruptcy, I unfortunately saw a lot of bad behaviour and further abuse of an income power imbalance.  In one instance a husband, who ran his own business, intentionally issued T4 slips in his wife’s name without her knowledge.  This allowed for large tax deductions in his business as he reported a large salary going to his wife.  It was 3 years before the wife realized that this had happened, beyond the ability for her to dispute/challenge CRA for the tax assessment.  She only realized what had happened when the CRA registered a writ on the tile of her house and froze her bank account for unpaid taxes which were in excess of $600,000. Adding further pain to her situation, her husband was jointly on title for the home and refused to consent to a sale of the home which would have allowed her to pay off the debt.  In this case our only option was to have her make an assignment into bankruptcy and go to  court to get an order permitting her to sell the house without the husband’s consent. The Trustee in Bankruptcy was able to do this at no cost to the wife as the Trustee obtains their fees from the recoveries of an estate, not directly from the bankrupt.  The woman was able to move on and obtain a discharge from bankruptcy 9 months later but her credit rating suffered significantly through no fault of her own.

Another common occurrence in bankruptcy is jointly held debt and assets.  If one of the spouses has co-signed a loan or provided a personal guarantee to a lender, something that happens in most cases in relation to owner managed businesses, both spouses are jointly and severally liable for the debt.  The bank, or car dealership does not care if the spouses have separated or divorced.  One spouse can recklessly spend and create debt knowing that his or her spouse will get saddled with the liability. If one spouse then declares bankruptcy, the lender will chase the non-bankrupt spouse for repayment of the debt or recovery of the asset. 

Finally, many times one of the spouses is aware that they will be leaving the marriage before announcing it.  The exiting spouse may take several months planning the exit and redistributing assets, taking money out of companies, bank accounts, setting up new accounts in other names or in other countries.  In this case the trail of money has to be followed and almost exclusively would be done by an accountant, not a lawyer.  The value of shares in companies or other assets may be intentionally diminished in order to limit exposure to the other spouse when dividing assets.  Depending on the nature of work, one spouse may intentionally try to show their income is drastically reduced or even non-existent in order to limit the amount of support they have to pay the other spouse. One of the spouses may intentionally file for bankruptcy in order to avoid paying a spouse. When one spouse files for bankruptcy and there are assets, the Trustee must then assess the estate and distribute to the non-bankrupt spouse.  

Diaries

Race to Zero

A few years ago, during one of the numerous times my ex-husband had taken me to court to try and have more income imputed to me (while he was artificially reducing his own income for child support purposes) my lawyer observed we were in a “race to zero”.   You may be wondering what this means…. Essentially, in a shared custody situation, our courts determine child support payments by assessing what each parent earns, taking the difference, and “equalizing” incomes by transferring that difference from the higher income earner to the lower one.  Think of it as a form of equalization payments between provinces.  Unfortunately, this tends to encourage “manipulation” of incomes, whereby one (or both) parents try and reduce their incomes in order to receive (rather than make) child support payments.  I watched as, over the course of 10 years, my ex-husband went from earning a healthy 6-figure income in software sales to becoming a baker (despite having a university degree in Economics), claiming to only earn $30K per year.  Meanwhile, I continued to enhance my career through progressively senior finance roles, consequently paying him more and more child support each year.  It was only after I suffered an emotional breakdown (once again, due to my ex-husband manipulating the legal system for his own personal and financial gain) did I step back from my career to focus on my health and well-being.  As a result, I was no longer making child support payments.  Ironically, neither was my ex-husband, as he evaded the legal system by refusing to provide updated financial information.  I chose not to pursue him, as I was mentally and emotionally drained, though relieved by the fact he was no longer dragging me to court!  Ironically, my ex-husband’s relentless pursuit to get more money from me ultimately resulted in me winning the “race to zero”.  

The Ill-Effects of Having an Ex with Personality Disorders

Is your ex a narcissist, sociopath or psychopath?  Mine is… and he has made my life a living hell since I ended our marriage more than 10 years ago.  Yes, you heard right – we have now been divorced for approximately 12 years, and even though he has remarried, and has a baby with his new wife, he continues to torment me.  From trying to turn my kids against me: “your mother loves [New Partner] more than she loves you; that is why she took a job in a different city”[1], to falsely accusing [New Partner] of physical assault (it took us months, plus 2 police investigations, to finally have the charges dismissed)[2], my ex-husband continues to find new ways to wreak havoc on my life.  Be forewarned – divorcing someone with a personality disorder can cause years of damage – emotional, mental, physical – to yourself, your children, and any new partner / spouse.  Make sure you get help – including professional help, if necessary. 

When Your Ex Decides to Self-Represent

One word – farce. 

When my ex-husband decided after a few years of rotating lawyers to self-represent in court, I was optimistic that we would finally reach some type of resolution.  Boy, was I ever wrong.  His games and lies increased, along with manipulation of the system.  Every judge we encountered would preface the hearing by stating that my ex was expected to abide by the same rules, processes and procedures that any represented client would, but then, would grant him extensions of time and allow him to present “facts” that were wholly unsubstantiated, ultimately leading him to feel ever more empowered.  The family court became a family circus.  Our courts need to ensure due process is adhered to at all times and in all circumstances, and not allow self-represented litigants to “run the show”.  In my situation, my ex-husband was able to successfully lie in court, get away with not having to file documents that would otherwise be mandatory in a hearing, and ultimately rack up my bills with no cost (financial or otherwise) to him.    

[1] Note I continued to actively co-parent, working from home the weeks I had custody of my children

[2] After the charges were dropped, my ex proceeded to file a claim against the lead officer, claiming he undertook an inadequate investigation

Diaries

I had 2 resolutions: I wanted to get in shape, and I wanted to deal with my marriage.

On New Year’s Eve, 2014, my best friend and I exchanged resolutions, and I made two: I wanted to get in shape, and I wanted to deal with my marriage. My husband and I had been married for almost thirty years, and, as I told my friend that evening, we’d enjoyed a good marriage for the first twenty. Then we started to move in different directions, and over several years, our relationship slid into mediocrity. In my mind, he had lost his sense of adventure and generosity and seemed negative about all manner of things.

Now we lived separate lives side by side

united mostly by our love for our daughter. But she would finish high school in June and leave soon after that for university. What would keep us together then?

Establishing a fitness schedule proved a simpler New Year’s project than approaching my husband about the state of our marriage. By February, I was already on track with a regular running schedule and feeling more fit, but I had not yet said a word to my husband.

One day, I flipped on the radio in my car. A man was speaking — I don’t know who he was — about couples growing old miserably together-couples who’d long since grown apart, or, worse, harboured real animosity toward each other. I kept thinking about his words.

I respected and cared about my husband, and I knew he was a good person.

But what if I lived for thirty more years? What if I only lived for one more year? Either way, I didn’t like the idea of spending that precious time in a relationship that had gone stale.

He and I were both finance professionals and had enjoyed successful careers. Now we were in our fifties. I’d asked him how he pictured retirement, and though we’d once agreed, I could see that his priorities had changed — and the life he longed for sounded lovely, just not for me. I liked my career and engaged in community building. I sat on a number of boards, and I wanted to do more, working with organizations I believed in. I wanted to continue enjoying adventures and travel, experience new places, and hike up new mountains. I realized my husband was no longer interested in the same things.  We simply had different ideas of what a fulfilling post-career life looked like.

By March, I planned each evening to broach the topic of our marriage the next morning, but it never seemed like the right time. Finally, one day mid-month, I told him I wanted to sit down to talk about our marriage and our future. It wasn’t my style to spring this conversation on him out of the blue, so we planned ahead for a time when our daughter would be out.

When the time came, we sat down at the kitchen table. We were both calm and collected. We had rarely fought in three decades, and we were not prone to raising our voices. We never accused each other or insulted each other or swore at each other. R and I were both composed as a rule, certainly not cold, but never out of control emotionally. We approached life’s problems calmly and systematically; these were traits we’d always had in common.

I said, “This doesn’t feel like a great partnership anymore. I think we need to consider going to counseling or separating.”

To my surprise, he said I was overreacting — that we were just in a funk. I’d assumed he was just as dissatisfied and frustrated as I was.  Our relationship was in a funk, I agreed, and had been for quite some time. I didn’t want to go on that way. He asked if I was angry because he hadn’t congratulated me on my recent appointment to a high-profile board. It wasn’t a great sign, I agreed, that he had failed to comment on such an appointment. But I wasn’t angry. I just didn’t want to live with a man I barely spoke with. I really couldn’t believe that he was content to leave things the way they were — didn’t he want more? I asked him to consider whether he wanted to go to counseling, or to separate. For me, those were the only viable options.

Something had to change.

The next day, he surprised me again. He said he’d made up his mind: he wanted to “separate-no counselling-the sooner, the better”.

Diaries

Verbal, Economic, and Physical Abuse

You can read Part One here:

When my husband and I decided to separate, our daughter still had three months of high school, along with final dance competitions-the culmination of years of dedication. She studied and practiced whenever she wasn’t at school.
Of course, we didn’t want to burden her with the shock and stress of our separation while she was under so much pressure, so we agreed to wait until the end of June. Then we would tell her about our plans.
Until then, we’d continue to live together as always, which was not as strange as I might have expected. We had been amicable but distant for years already, so we just kept behaving the same way. Even sleeping on our own sides of the bed, with little interaction, felt better than upending her world.

When he and I were home without our daughter, I tried to discuss with him how we should proceed. We were both well-versed financial professionals (he a partner at one of the large professional services firm, and I running my own corporate finance advisory firm); surely, we could sit down and divide our assets and liabilities fairly. Whenever I tried to broach the topic of dividing household contents, he became agitated. One day, when I asked which of our furnishings he’d like to keep, he yelled at me, stabbing his finger at me.

“You initiated this!” he told me. “Go f*** yourself!”

His anger showed itself more and more, until he was yelling at me regularly, once even in front of our daughter, his face contorted with anger. One day, as we drove home from an event of our daughter’s, discussing logistics of our separation, he yelled uncontrollably at me again. We drove into the garage, and as I got out of the car, he came around the front, charging at me with his head forward, yelling and his shoulders back. I believe he was close to hitting me when I pushed his face away. He stole himself, turned and entered the house.

For the last three months of our marriage,

I watched my husband of nearly thirty years transform.

Clearly, he was overcome with rage, and that baffled me. He had chosen for us to separate. He had agreed that our marriage wasn’t thriving. He knew I had no malicious intentions toward him; I had imagined an amicable and simple split. I thought we would remain friendly, that over the years to come we’d meet for birthdays with our grown daughter and we would wish each other well as we moved forward in our own directions. I was truly shocked as this person, whom I had known so well for so long, became someone else. Someone whose actions I could not understand and could not predict.

Several months into our separation, I made a list of eleven separate actions that he would have found obtuse when we separated and that he now engaged in shamelessly.

They included verbal, economic, and physical abuse, and mistreatment of our daughter and housekeeper.

The theft of my personal belongings, misstating financial information to the bank and lying about buying a suit for no apparent reason.

 I brought that list to a psychologist, because I needed help understanding how a person could undergo such alarming changes. And how could I reverse the trend. I will not narrate all eleven of those incidents here, but I will recount a few of them-partly because they led to the nightmare process that unfolded over the next few years, and partly because I want to show the aspect of the divorce that others may not anticipate.

Diaries

The Law Will Dictate How We Proceed

You can read part two of the diary here

A few weeks after my husband advised he wanted to separate, I suggested that we sit down and figure out as much as we could on our own, without the lawyers.“I’m not allowed to meet you without my lawyer present,” he informed me.

I found his words almost comically officious. We were still living in the same house; why couldn’t we sit down and go over some spreadsheets, an exercise that happened to be well within our abilities? He informed me that he’d “hired the best family lawyer in town”. That’s fine, I thought. So, she’s the best lawyer. I had heard her name and reputation from a friend but advised she didn’t sound like the type of professional I would associate with.  What difference could it really make? After all, this is simply a divorce, and if there was anything we didn’t agree on, the law will dictate how we must proceed.

To my former self, I can only say: you were so naive!

I followed my husband’s lead and hired a lawyer too, one theat I understood was more my type of professional. I was so busy with work commitments at the time that I didn’t look any further than the name of a lawyer a friend had given me. 

But my husband continued to behave more and more erratically, and he simply would not speak to me about anything logistical. In early June,

I was shocked to notice that he had cleared out our joint U.S. bank account into his own account.

“I want to control the money,” he said, unapologetically, when I raised the issue. I told him, of course, that he had to put the money back, assuming that taking it for himself was illegal. My lawyer had told me not to undertake any unusual transactions and I assumed the law had addressed that to protect people. Wrong.

That same night, I discovered that he had acquired a new girlfriend a few weeks after we decided to separate. He’d attended a golf trip in Montana, and picked up a woman at the bar afterward. I’d noticed him emailing secretively outside and then discovered his stash of sweetheart notes.  Couldn’t he have waited until we had told our daughter until we slept in separate houses and separate beds?

But, as my lawyer explained to me the next morning, it wasn’t illegal to empty joint accounts. Not only was my husband within his rights when he took our money, but my lawyer was apparently within her rights, too, when she responded to the situation merely by leaving a message with his lawyer and charging me $60 for 18 seconds of work that would amount to nothing. I was stuck in a meeting that morning, hoping in vain that my lawyer would protect me, wondering if he was liquidating all our other assets into his account as I sat there.

Between the money and girlfriend, I was reeling. Who had this person I’d been married to for so long become?

When I got out of that meeting, I immediately took care of the financial situation myself; I called a broker and ensured that he couldn’t move our assets without my say by having the broker tear up the power of attorney over the sizeable account in my name. When I questioned the efficacy of my lawyer’s tactics (on this and other matters), she fired me. I begged her finish the process with me-I assumed it would only take a few weeks- she said no. She said I had lost confidence in her and that she could no longer represent me. I’d had my first taste of working with a family lawyer, and now I had no legal representation and had no idea what my wasband (no longer my husband, not yet my ex-husband) would do next.

My wasband went on to steal my phone from our Calgary house and hide it in our Montana vacation home, where I’d find it months later. He took items from the house when I wasn’t home, stashing them away for himself. As soon as we told our daughter about our separation, which devastated her; he devastated her further by suggesting she meet his new (and, of course, short-term) girlfriend.

He had been a great dad, but now he had somehow lost his capacity for empathetic or appropriate behavior, and his relationship with our daughter grew strained, then alienated.

The litany of bizarre behavior goes on, and I recount some of it in the posts that follow.

Again, the psychologist I consulted told me that people often behave strangely during divorce, especially people who feel that their spouse made the decision for both of them. Though my wasband did decide to separate, he felt like he’d been dumped, and in a way that was true; I was the one who needed things to change.

“I never thought his character would change,” I told her. I showed her my list. “Here are eleven things he’s done since we separated that he would have found abhorrent in the past. These are now things he’s comfortable doing. How is this possible?”

My wasband and I had seen this same psychologist after we decided to separate, to help us figure out when and how to tell our daughter. Now I told her again how we had simply grown apart; even in March, as we decided to separate, I still completely trusted him and thought he was a person of integrity. But now, in September, I couldn’t believe how he was behaving. The stealing, the yelling, the swearing at me, the mistreatment of people. He had falsified a bank document to make his income appear lower than it was. He had taken funds from our joint account. He had launched at me in a physically threatening manner and pushed a door at me. He lied about small, pointless things. Worst of all, he wanted to fire our nanny and housekeeper of almost twenty years without severance — a woman who was our daughter’s third parent, who was so important in our lives, a woman we loved like family.

The psychologist explained that people behave this way when they feel like they’ve lost power and control in their lives. The yelling and swearing, the new girlfriend, and even hiding my possessions, fit with someone who was trying to gain the upper hand. She said he was overwhelmed at losing power, and that someone in this state of mind would not see the impacts of his actions on other people for at least a year.

“Even his daughter?” I asked, remembering how she had cried so hard she was gasping, telling me that her dad had tried to introduce her to his new girlfriend a few days after we told her about our separation.

“Even his daughter,” the psychologist conceded.

She said that he would gradually begin to see how his actions were affecting people like her, and that after three years, he had an 80 percent chance of resuming normalized relationships with people. At the time, I had no doubt he would be in the 80 percent.

That was three and a half years ago. Today I have no relationship with my former husband – he continues to pay his lawyer to manage all his communications and tactics – and he has lost many important relationships in his life. It’s been very sad and frustrating to watch.

Diaries

An open and shut and open and open divorce

You can read part three of the diary here

When my wasband moved into a friend’s basement suite on July 1, three months after we agreed to divorce. I no longer believed my naïve initial assumption that it would take us about three weeks to sort out a separation agreement. By then, he and I had already agreed to a mediation-arbitration process. My first lawyer — before she fired me — had suggested this would be a good process for us.  She suggested we engage a mediator/arbitrator, who was also a family lawyer. My wasband and his lawyer were on the same page. My 2nd lawyer, hired that summer, opposing counsel booked a mediator/arbitrator she had known for a long time.

As I understood the process going in, we would begin by laying out all our assets, liabilities, and cashflow. Guided by the expertise of the mediator, who would also help us overcome any disagreements, we would then divide everything. I understood that our lawyers would be present to assist in the process. We booked three sessions, which I thought was more than enough time. According to our agreement, if we failed to reach an agreement in mediation, we would instead begin arbitration, with the same arbitrator.

The new lawyer I found came recommended by a lawyer friend of a friend. I quickly signed on with this new lawyer without checking any references, still convinced that my divorce was simple enough for anyone with a law degree to contend with. I trusted my lawyer and I trusted our mediator. I even trusted my wasband’s lawyer would behave ethically and within the confines of the law. I trusted that they all knew what they were doing, and why wouldn’t I? To my mind, our file was not particularly complicated. My wasband and I did each have a company, and my income had fluctuated over time, but I couldn’t imagine there was anything about our file that experienced professionals hadn’t previously handled. Other than custody matters,isn’t divorce all about financially disentangling couples? Surely, they’d seen all this many times before.

My wasband, I should have realized, was stoked for a fight, and his lawyer was adding fuel to the fire. In 2015, my husband had a process server attempt to serve me divorce papers. When my assistant informed me of this, I emailed him to suggest the fellow set up a meeting so he could stop paying the process server to track me down between meetings. My lawyer later told that since we had already agreed to mediation-arbitration, having me served was pointless and must have cost my wasband a fortune. I imagine he thought being served would humiliate me. In fact, the saga made me realize how far gone he was—the man I knew would not have wasted money just to satisfy his own vindictiveness. A lawyer had told me that people hire his lawyer to make them feel better about themselves – this appeared to be the case with my wasband.

On December 1, 2015, mediation began. I attended with my lawyer, and wasband attended with his lawyer. The arbitrator’s conference room contained no technology or smartboard system. He stood at the front of the room writing numbers on a flip chart. He had us call out our assets and our liabilities, and he wrote them down with a marker. As he completed each page, he ripped it off the giant pad and taped it to the wall. Finally, he took out a calculator and stood there punching in numbers. It was painfully inefficient and laughable to anyone who had ever used a computer.

Given his $600 an hour fee, this became an expensive process.

The next day, we reconvened. Wasband’s lawyer put forward a wildly absurd demand on his behalf. Apparently, she had convinced him that he should walk away with the vast majority of our assets and incomes. Blinded as he was by his need to regain power over me, he wanted to see me crawl out of the room, across glass, happy to keep the clothes on my back. His lawyer’s argument was that, according to my resume, I should be making a fortune, and that I was earning less than that due only to laziness. Furthermore, my wasband claimed that gifts to the two of us were intended only for him. In fact, he was about to spend a lot of money learning that while his lawyer’s ridiculous proposal may have made him feel good for a time, it wouldn’t be so easy to make out like a bandit. Of course, we got no closer to a resolution than we had the day before. We were scheduled to meet for a third time on March 15. I told my lawyer I would spend one more day on this; so far we had gotten nowhere.

During the interim, offers went back and forth, but we didn’t even come close to a settlement. According to my wasband’s lawyer, I was entitled to much less than half, because I could and should be earning more. I was running my own company and sitting on multiple boards, but her contention was that I would be making millions if only I weren’t so lazy. In fact, she kept sending me job postings, and I could see from the email threads that my wasband had his staff researching potential employment opportunities for me on company time. When I emailed him to ask if he wanted me to close my company and work elsewhere or keep working on the deals my company had, he didn’t respond.

Meanwhile, his behaviour became more unhinged, partly, I was sure, at his lawyer’s behest. At that point we were sharing custody of our dog, (more about that hoopla later), exchanging him every two weeks. When my wasband showed up at my door, he began asking me pointed questions. As I answered, I noticed he had one hand behind his back. In the middle of my sentence, his arm thrust forward, and I saw that he was taking a video with his phone. What he and his lawyer thought they might catch me saying, I can only imagine. I carried on, asking him why he’d asked our daughter to meet his new girlfriend so soon after our daughter learned of our separation. He back up and skittered down the driveway. His videoing of me became a regular bizarre feature of our one-on-one interactions.

Finally, mid-February came around, and the final mediation session approached. My lawyer sent me an offer she proposed I mark up to give to my wasband and his lawyer, but when I sent it back to her, I learned that she was leaving for a three-week vacation. She told me she’d look at my notes when she returned — the day before the mediation. I noted she couldn’t rightly send an offer only one day before the mediation, but she refused to entertain the thought of providing an offer any earlier. I have been negotiating transactions for more than three decades and believe it’s fair and efficient to give people time to consider an offer.  So, I sent my marked up offer to my wasband and his lawyer for their consideration, with the explanation as to why it was coming from me and not my lawyer. 

My lawyer booked a meeting for the day she returned, presumably to prepare for the imminent mediation session.  I requested she send me an agenda by the day prior to our meeting.  I emailed her and she responded the next morning to suggest she would meet me at mediation if I didn’t think the meeting with her would be productive. How could I know if it would be productive?  I hadn’t been informed about what she wanted to discuss, what I should bring, or what I should think about in advance of the meeting. I assumed she wasn’t prepared and hadn’t considered any of these things herself, so suggested I go to mediation and represent myself, and I asked her if she thought she’d be prepared for the next stage of the process.  She then fired me. “I can’t meet your expectations,” she informed me. Another lawyer down. Incidentally, when I reported her conduct to the Law Society, they found nothing wrong with her professional conduct.  Admittedly, I thought the standard would be higher – when  I’m dealing with corporate and securities lawyers, they’re comfortable with agendas, preparedness and deliverables.

I went into the final mediation session without a lawyer, and, again, we got nowhere. The arbitrator concluded the day by noting that we didn’t seem to be making progress so he’d move to arbitration. It was clearly a dance that had been done before – and why had I expected differently?  I had signed an agreement that said we would automatically start another billable process (arbitration) if mediation failed. 

I should know better.

When my wasband and I agreed to mediation-arbitration, we agreed to a binding process; once the process began, we had to see it through to the end, with no ability to withdraw. If the mediation did not yield results, we had to continue into arbitration. Looking back, it seems clear to me that professionals involved in such an agreement might have little motivation to strive for an efficient, effective process.

We were locked into the mediation-arbitration, so of course, they wanted to continue into arbitration. Once this occurred to me, I realized that the arbitrator’s contract was the dumbest thing I ever signed. But I expected him and the lawyers to behave like the legal professionals I’d dealt with in commercial arbitration.

At one point, I had a drink with a friend – a senior lawyer and board director that had been divorced in Alberta.  I told her about my divorce experience to that point and asked why the apparent difference between family lawyers and the corporate lawyers.  Without hesitating, she said “you’re not getting two things – one is that the family lawyers go to lots of courses together and care more about their relationship with each other than ardently representing their clients; the other is that they only expect to see you once – the corporate lawyers are trying to impress you by being efficient and effective so you’ll hire them again.” 

It was an eye opener.

Of course, a mediator or arbitrator needs to know the law, but they don’t need to be a family lawyer themselves. I cannot recommend anyone sign a mediation-arbitration agreement. To me, there is an implicit conflict of interest in such an arrangement. I would have loved to go into mediation with no lawyers present at all. My advice is to move forward with people who know numbers, and with people who know people. In other words, more accountants and more psychologists in the process, and as few lawyers as possible in the early going.  Of course, each divorcing party eventually needs a lawyer to process the agreement. Lawyers are good at dealing with the law. But early in a divorce, couples need experts who can divide up assets and liabilities, experts to help deal with emotional upheaval, and experts to help deal with custody issues and the wellbeing of the children involved. A family lawyer isn’t necessarily trained in any of those areas.

But I hadn’t learned this lesson yet.  For the arbitration, I hired a third family lawyer. Arbitration, in contrast with mediation, resembles a court hearing. The litigants provide their disclosure, and then undergo questioning by each other’s lawyers on the issues at hand. In the arbitration hearing, the arbitrator, like a judge, listens to all the evidence and then issues a ruling, which is binding. In a standard arbitration agreement, You can appeal errors of law, but not errors in findings of fact, which, as I learned the hard way, can lead to disaster.

I came out of our questioning with 38 undertakings to provide additional information. My wasband’s lawyer had me rummaging around through boxes, trying to find all manner of old and irrelevant documentation. For instance, she wanted a list of my jewelry, and she wanted a list of every trip I’d taken in the last five years (yes, when I was living with my wasband who was well aware of where we traveled!). I had nothing to hide, but my time was precious, and I could see that his lawyer was dragging things out, frustrating the process by asking me for more and more information. My lawyer told me that she didn’t want to upset the process by complaining; she wanted to play nice. It seemed to me that she was out of gas, and had lost any desire to be an ardent representative for me. Once again, neither of the lawyers wanted to drive the process efficiently to conclusion. My lawyer had warned me, meanwhile, that the other lawyer was known to be unresponsive when asked for information from her own clients, but demanding and impatient when she wanted information herself. She struck me as a caricature of a serious professional, and I’ve come to understand why she’s never travelled in the same circles as I have and I hadn’t heard of her before our separation. I do see how she makes her client feel like she’s helping him exact revenge versus getting to the finish line though.

After my wasband and I completed our undertakings (his were not onerous), we had a five-day hearing. We each made our case about what should happen with each asset and liability. Unlike my experience in commercial arbitration, the arbitrator asked very few questions – I assumed he was comprehending what he was hearing and reading.

On May 1, 2017, the arbitrator sent us his ruling, which came to about 50 pages, just as I was stepping onto a plane heading to a business meeting. Later that night, I read the document carefully, and I was shocked, again and again. It didn’t appear that he had listened or understood through the five-day hearing, and I saw little evidence that he had reviewed the documentary evidence provided to him. As I told my lawyer, I didn’t think he’d done her the courtesy of reading her closing argument. It seemed to me that he had merely cut and pasted the other lawyer’s closing argument, errors, misleading statements, and all. Though our file should not have a posed challenge to an arbitrator experienced in financial and family law matters, I saw that he got calculations wrong, misunderstood or ignored key documentary and testimony evidence and even created facts that neither party had alleged.  Yet, he hadn’t recused himself or ask questions to assist him in fulfilling his obligation.

I asked my lawyer for an analysis of the rulings, and asked her to list what she thought the arbitrator got right and what she thought he got wrong. She indicated a couple of areas that seemed wrong, and said that was about it. “You win some, you lost some,” she told me. I strongly disagreed. I caught far more errors than she did. She characterized our file as akin to a difficult final exam from law school. While that may be true, none of the issues to be determined were novel.  What became clear to me in that month is that, if there are financial matters beyond a mortgage, RSP’s and steady incomes, one should hire a commercial litigator and book a court date – or hire an arbitrator with demonstrated financial and commercial literacy and arbitration qualifications for the matters at hand.

At that time, I didn’t tally the errors. I was busy with work, moving, and travel that month, and I assumed it would all get fixed. In the end, the arbitrator’s errors amounted to more than $ 1.07 million in my husband’s favour, and that excludes the $500,000 (and counting) in legal fees – including that the legal fees I continue to pay to appeal those errors.  I estimate my wasband has spent over $1 million in legal fees to date.

In that May 1 award, the arbitrator included the caveat that he had yet to rule on two items: the division of household contents, and the process by which we would transfer the title for our vacation home from me to my wasband. The arbitrator’s  services so far had cost $75,000. Given the concerns his May 1 ruling raised – the math errors, ignoring key undisputed evidence and the creation of facts that no one introduced – I realized then that we had an issue of incompetence, negligence, corruption/breach of trust, or some combination of the three. But I could not get out of the process and little did I know the extent of the problem at that time.

Further, I could not have imagined that the two outstanding rulings to be made would balloon to more than 30, which would take nine months to resolve and would cost as much again — another $75,000 bill from the arbitrator.  You don’t pay these fees going to court.

My wasband’s  lawyer continued to throw gas on the fire by not moving to wrap up the file. She refused to provide an opinion she said she had regarding the process to transfer our Whitefish property to my wasband.  She would not respond to my lawyer’s request to finalize matters.  Instead of moving on, my wasband continued to work with his lawyer on finding ways to punish me for not wanting to be married to him anymore, to aggravate me, to prevent me from doing my work, and to keep our divorce from resolving. This family law business is a cash cow if one party isn’t prepared to move on.  Someone that’s known us for a long time said “I thought [your wasband] was careful with his money”. He had been his entire life. But it was clear relationships that buoyed him fell away one by one and his bank account diminished while his lawyer was enriched with what could have been our daughter’s inheritance. My wasband has recently informed our daughter and me that he can’t help her with grad school.    

How could this happen to two finance professionals?  If it can happen to us, what about all those that aren’t financially savy-do they get taken advantage of even more? During my divorce arbitration process, I even asked myself if I had become some kind of conspiracy theorist. But the fact is, I have been in commercial litigation and this is a stark contrast – in those cases, the arbitrators were very smart, had relevant experience, asked good questions and issued sound rulings. I have also heard too many stories now about the issues with family law in Alberta and elsewhere – the shocking injustices to divorcing people and children of divorce. It’s abhorrent to me and significant change needs to occur. Not only for people like me that have a financial background, know what proper arbitration process looks like and have the resources to drive change, but particularly for those that don’t. What’s been shared with me is appalling and shameful. While parents/divorcing couples can create problems, they are not alone – the lawyers and the system are failing families. And it appears the regulator of the lawyers – the Law Society – is turning a blind eye to the problem.

I am and always will be an analyst. If I could reconcile the losses, if I could explain them, then I would be satisfied and walk away. But math is easy for me, and finances make sense to me; complex spreadsheets are my bread and butter. The arbitrator for my divorce agreement made simple math errors, and he made absurd commercial errors. One example is that he opted not to divide up our bank accounts, deeming them in some category distinct from our other assets. When the arbitrator requested I provide a list of concerns, I did so – he then told me that he required a big retainer to address them. I was not about to give him more money. Instead, I realized I needed to appeal the rulings that I could. I am currently set to recuperate payments for which he did not fulfill his contractual obligations, going back to 2016.

Going into mediation-arbitration, there was so much I didn’t know, including that my wasband’s lawyer and the arbitrator had been referring business back and forth for twenty years. In my line of work, that would constitute a disclosable conflict of interest. The professionals involved would disclose that conflict to their clients, who would then have the option to waive or not the conflict. But nothing was disclosed to me about their prior dealings, and I was never asked to sign any such waiver. I learned that family lawyers — the ones I worked with — did not have the requisite financial or commercial savvy to efficiently and effectively carry out their responsibilities. And it’s clear the professional conduct standards for family lawyers needs to be examined, upgraded to the standards in other professions, and enforced. The Law Society needs to get on top of this. In the interim, it might be a good idea for the government to move to protect the unsuspecting public and appoint an ombudsman. I would also now advocate for divorce mediators and arbitrators to be required to disclose their relevant professional credentials and experience pertaining to a file in advance of signing an agreement. I realized well after the fact that our arbitrator was not aware of the nature of the file when it was booked, and we were not aware of the nature of his qualifications and trusted that the lawyers were proposing a properly qualified arbitrator, as had been my experience in commercial arbitration.

I also couldn’t have known back then that the arbitrator would willingly breach the Arbitration Act, would take appeals of his own rulings months after those rulings had been made, and would make rulings beyond his jurisdiction. I couldn’t have known what would happen, but I wish I had. With the knowledge I have now, I never would have signed a mediation-arbitration agreement at all. This is why I am making my experience public — so other divorcing couples can avoid the traps my wasband and I fell into, and in so doing, escape divorce with better mental and financial health, and better outcomes for their kids.