Coates - Divorce with decency: the complete how-to handbook and survivors guide to the legal, emotional, ... economic, and social issues

2017 University of Hawaii Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

22 21 20 19 18 17 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Coates, Bradley A., author.

Title: Divorce with decency: the complete how-to handbook and survivors guide to the legal, emotional, economic, and social issues / Bradley A. Coates, Esq.

Description: Fifth edition. | Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, [2017] | A latitude 20 book. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016051526| ISBN 9780824867355 (pbk.; alk. paper) | ISBN 9780824872144 (hardcover; alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: DivorceUnited States. | DivorceLaw and legislationUnited States. | Broken homesUnited States.

Classification: LCC HQ834 .C62 2017 | DDC 306.89dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016051526

Chapter illustrations by Charles Valoroso.

University of Hawaii Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.

All the relationships, especially marriage relationships, must be based upon absolute openness and honesty.

Dr. H. Norman Wright

Over twenty-five thousand divorces! As close as we can figure it, thats about how many divorce cases my law firm has handled during the last thirty-eight gut-wrenching years. Its enough to make you sick or crazy or both!

I just knew I had to figure out some way to do it better, to handle things less acrimoniously, to perhaps turn things around and find a more positive focus. I had begun to question my own sanity. Was I starting to fit the frequent (and so often accurate) description of a sleazy divorce lawyer?

Throughout my career, my approach has been to try to handle my divorce practice in a radically different, more sensitive, and more positive wayone that endeavors to make the best of xiv the bad situation that divorcing couples inevitably face. In the process I have successfully built the largest divorce and family law firm in Hawaii. Coates & Frey, the eleven-attorney firm that I founded, is generally recognized as processing more divorce cases through Hawaiis family court system than any other.

My raison de writing. Although I feel we do the best job we possibly can for our firms clientele, it became apparent to me that the best way I could reach beyond my own paying clients to try to dispense whatever grains of wisdom I might have to share about my positive approach to the handling of the divorce experience was to write this book. Only in this way could I more widely disseminate information to readers interested in trying to explore a more enlightened approach to the entire divorce process. My intent was to package some of my entirely too extensive experiences into a book format that is available for around $20thereby making it more accessible to people who are understandably put off by the $275+ hourly fees that I and other prominent divorce attorneys customarily charge in the privacy of our paneled offices.

(Authors note: Most prominent divorce attorneys now charge far more than the $275 per hour range that we currently charge at Coates & Frey. I have always made a specific point of trying to keep my firms fees on the more affordable side.)

Although my private practice is based in Hawaii, I have deliberately broadened the scope of this book to include the basic principles of divorce law that apply in most jurisdictions. In this context, it helps that I am licensed in California and a couple of other jurisdictions as well as Hawaii. My aim has been to write the definitive divorce text, providing the maximum possible amount of information about every aspect of the divorce process.

An all-encompassing divorce guide. I knew from the start that it would be a difficult and unwieldy task, but I felt strongly that I wanted to write a book that encompassed all the multifaceted emotional, psychological, and sociological aspects surrounding divorceas well as its strictly legalistic issues. This conviction mirrors the way I have come to view my own role as a divorce lawyer. When I first started practicing, divorce law was basically a meat ax down the middle process characterized by a narrow, and narrow-minded, focus on the single issue of property division. xv (Authors note: In those early days of my practice almost four decades ago, fights over child custody usually werent nearly as big an issue as they are today simply because the kids almost always went to the wife.) I have now come to realize, however, that if you want to do a proper job of divorce lawyering, you have to treat divorce as a multilevel, interdisciplinary behavioral science, essentially peeling away the multiple levels of complexity of the modern American family structure like the layers of an onion.

Not surprisingly, this book is by no means the first to be written by an attorney on the subject of divorce. Attorneys like to talk; they also like to write, and thousands of books and articles have been written about divorce over the years.

In conducting my research for this book, I have turned up numerous how-to books authored by attorneys and relating to the substantive legal and technical areas surrounding divorce actions. I have also read many treatises that consist primarily of a compilation of war stories recounting, often rather theatrically, actual cases, clients, and courtroom dramas that a given lawyer has handled during his or her career. Yet a third rapidly expanding volume of literature deals with a more sociologically oriented (and often touchy-feely) discussion of the psychological factors involved in divorce.

Some of the most useful new divorce guides focus on the art of successfully threading ones way through the thicket of emotional and personal issues surrounding a divorce by utilizing expertise from other disciplines, such as the mental health or negotiation fields. Many of these place a special emphasis on the rapidly growing area of divorce mediation

I have yet to read any book, however, that combines all of these components into one single comprehensive, informative, and above all, readable work. Writing such a book was the goal I set for myself when I embarked upon authoring this summary of insights gleaned throughout my thirty-eight year career as a divorce lawyer. I hope youll find this book to be useful, thought provoking, anecdotal, andbecause divorce is often too tense for anyones goodat least occasionally amusing. xvi

A better and broader revised edition. I felt very gratified when immediately following the release of its initial first edition, way back in 1999, this book went on to win the Hawaii Book Publishers Award of Merit for Excellence in Guide and Reference Books. I have also received many accolades from colleagues and professional peers saying that my book has turned into the single most valuable resource that they recommend to their clients. Several social agencies, academic institutions, and professional organizations have put it on their recommended reading list that they in turn distribute to students, clients, colleagues, and so on. Perhaps the most rewarding responses of all, however, have come from individuals who were going through their own divorces and said it served as a great solace to them in the process. I cant tell you the number of readers who have told me (some actually with tears in their eyes) that they felt this book had been written specifically for them. Ive even had more than a few readers contact me afterward to tell me that my book literally saved their marriage. Many of these folks apparently felt like my book was speaking directly to them personally and describing precisely their exact individual situation.