Regina’s Blog

When we are flooded with emotions, and dealing with various logistical issues all at once, it is important to keep a to-do list to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. While clients that are separating can count on their attorneys to help them with "big-ticket items" like addressing issues of child support, custody, alimony and property division, there are the "little details" that people should keep track of on their own, especially if they want to keep fees down. Here is a list of some things to work on over time when making a transition into 2 homes:1. Call insurance companies to divide policies, get new rates as an individual;2. Go to DMV to retitle cars, change your address; 3. Personally make the necessary trips to your banks to close the joint accounts;4. Make a list of the household furniture, etc. and identify what you want;5. Update beneficiary forms and wills;6. Change your emergency contact forms;7. Notify lenders, the Post Office and all contacts of your new mailing address;8. Alert the utility companies and mobile phone carriers;9. Inquire into splitting synagogue and country club memberships;10. Get quotes from movers, storage places, track down rental options, etc.Some clients require a lot more hand-holding and want attorneys to follow up with them each step of the way. Others are much more self-sufficient, and they are keenly aware that there is a price to pay for having an attorney involved each step of the way. I like to remind people that it is like being in a taxi cab with an attorney-- the meter starts running the second you call, send an email, or want anything done on your behalf. Often, clients find themselves in sticker shock after they receive the first bill because they fail to realize that each call, email, or letter reviewed was being logged.We all need help during transitions, but the key is to pick the right assistance for the right task. Calling an attorney just to vent about the other person is not the wisest use of a client's money. It comes down to a simple cost-benefit analysis-- before hitting "send" or forwarding an email to your attorney, you should really ask yourself, is this worth $30 or more? A half hour call to vent to a friend versus calling an attorney could easily save a person $100 or more. Especially in a time of economic crisis, [...]

Growing up with a bunch of over-achievers starting at age 10 in honors classes until I graduated from a top tier law school in DC at age 25 is not normal, but it did provide me with a high level of tolerance for intense, demanding, perfectionistic brainiacs. In my home life these days, I still dig having brainiacs around, but the other traits I can live without. Luckily, I now have several guys in my life (my dad, uncle, 2 brothers and a son), who are all brilliant, yet low key and laid back, and they have taught me to laugh at the uber-planner Wonder Woman wanta-be me that wants to save the world. Admittedly, my childhood was not normal at all. I was an over-scheduled, only child who tried to make up for what I was missing at home by signing up for all sorts of activities, including dance, gymnastics, debate team, editor of the school paper or journal, student government, etc. I focused all my energies on outside activities because unlike everyone else, there was not much of a family at home-- no father, uncles, aunts, cousins, siblings, etc. Without anyone to really ground me, I soared in the outside world-- great schools, internships, athletic opportunities that included summers at the Olympic Training Center and several stints studying abroad. Fantastic, I became the dream robot-child so many seem focused on creating these days, but here is my biggest confession: no amount of trophies, awards, diplomas, or anything else I have "achieved" could ever replace the longing for a normal family life.For those of us who are built as over-achievers, it is incredibly humiliating to admit failure, and sadly there is no worse public admission of failure than a divorce. So many of my clients that are Ivy League graduates struggle with this issue, and there is this always this amazed look when I ask them, "is this the first time in your life things really went terribly off-course from your plans?" They nod silently, eyes looking down, and I sit there in one split second fully able to understand their devastating feelings of absolute shame because sadly, I lived through them. There is not much you can really say to comfort someone at this moment except to remind them that this happens in life, and it will all be okay.As a parent, my advice to fellow parents would [...]

For over a decade, I have seen some of the most brilliant professionals in the DC Area make some of the worst mistakes in their personal lives. I have learned to appreciate that a mathematical genius may have the emotional IQ of a pea-- because love is NOT logical. My brother teases me that lately it seems I am trying to "tick off the right boxes" when I meet someone, but what I have tried to explain to him and others is that when I got married, I completely went with my feelings and did not analyze the situation at all from a clinical perspective. I married my best friend, who was smart, cute and kind-- but he was Ferris Bueller. The things that made me laugh initially, eventually ceased to be funny as we got older, and often he would tell me in the end that I had lost my sense of humor. I lost far more than that in the end, but together we had a child, and so for the rest of our lives, we will be tied together, so that although we no longer live under one roof, we are still a family.My experience with shared custody over the past 6 years helps me with my clients because I understand intimately what their challenges are trying to co-parent with a former spouse, who may not see the world the same way. The best analogy someone shared with me recently is that a child is like a new house you are building, and each parent is building one half of that house. For that house to be solid, it needs to be able to appreciate and love both its designers. I can tell you first hand what happens when one of the architects/builders goes missing-- it creates a hole in the child's heart.These past six months, that hole in my heart is finally being filled with love by a family I have always longed for, and for the first time in my life I do not feel like I have to tackle life's challenges all by myself. Through my brothers, father, step-mother, aunt, uncle, and cousins who have all entered my world this first half of the year, I am finally learning to appreciate something most people have taken for granted their whole lives-- that the family fabric we create is there to act as a beautiful [...]

In any new relationship, one of the first critcial things to work out is setting appropriate expectations on frequency of contact, appropriate forms of communication and establishing our individual boundaries. This should happen rather smoothly and progress quite normally in a healthy relationship. The trickier task is re-establishing boundaries when a relationship is being re-configured, such as when a marriage is dissolving.It is very hard for people to re-set their patterns of communication, but when they are no longer living in one house, it simply is not necessary or even healthy to maintain daily contact with an ex. Learning to disengage is difficult, and some people unwittingly seem to pick fights in order to stay connected, which of course only further alienates the other person. I cannot tell you how many times people complain to me about the frequency or hostility in the communications they receive from their soon to be exs. My first suggestion is to have the client try and deal with this alone, without the involvement of the attorneys or the authorities. We should all try to be polite, yet firm in setting our boundaries, keeping in mind that boundaries are meant to protect you, not punish the other. Just because we have instant communication available to us, does not mean we have to respond instantly. If something truly is upsetting you, responding in the heat of the moment is probably not the best thing to do. I have often re-written client's emails for them, toned them down, and taken out inflammatory or excessive information. I try to stick to the KISS motto-- keep it simple stupid.It is very sad when clients cannot learn to moderate their own communications and need the attorneys to step in on every day matters. People with children need to learn new effective ways to communicate as quickly as possible, and this to me is the beauty of divorce coaches, who are frequently used in Collaborative Divorces. In high conflict cases, we try to rely on Parent Coordinators to help the parents co-parent. The absolute worst situation to be involved in is with high conflict people. These tend to have major issues respecting other people's boundaries. They will push limits, and sadly in the end the authorities and legal system have to be involved, often resulting in supervised visits (if children are involved) or a complete break in all communication through Protective [...]

After law school, I spent my first six years as an attorney in Washington, DC focusing on family law litigation. I was taught to listen to my client’s story, then advocate his/her position as zealously as possible. While my clients were always happy with their "wins" there were often times were I was left wondering whether in fact the court had made the best decision for the family as a whole.In 2005, after my own marriage ended in divorce, I decided to pursue a complete transformation in my legal training. I became trained in mediation and Collaborative Law. I read various books and attended numerous trainings on psychology. Learning how depression and other mental health issues can impact clients going through a traumatic experience like divorce helped me understand that my role needed to be more of a counselor, not just an advocate. Most importantly, it became clear to me that to truly help people resolve their differences, I needed to hear both parties version of events, as well as their goals and concerns. True understanding can only happen when we listen to each person’s story, and a successful resolution is when we select the best option for the family as a whole, not just one individual. In the last 5 years, applying the Collaborative approach not just in my professional life, but also in my personal life, I learned to methodically think about goals and interest; then identify the issues to be addressed; gather all the relevant information necessary; generate options for a solution to each issue; then pick the one most favorable to everyone involved. Eventually, using this technique, I found the courage to deal with something I had kept secret for most of my life: the desire to find my father, and through him, my half brother. Meeting my father after all these years without any contact was a bit daunting, but I knew I had to face this part of my past if I was ever going to move forward with my own life. I had to find it in my heart to forgive him, and in order to do that, I needed to hear his side of the story and try to understand him, without passing any judgments.When I first laid eyes on him in February 2011, it was surreal-- it was like looking in a mirror, at a much older and much more masculine [...]

After 27 years, my brother finally got to spend a week getting to know his big sister and little nephew. We were thrilled to have him visit us and show him around DC. We got to take in many of the sites, and do fun things that we have missed out on all these years. It was an incredible, life-altering experience, that will last with me forever, but I understand that to fully process what just happened will take some time. My situation is perhaps a bit extreme, but many of us in our lifetime will have an incredibly emotional experience that will require us to slow down from our normal routine way of life in order to allow our brains to think through our feelings and any new information gleaned from the situation at hand. It is sadly my experience that men do not allow themselves much time to decompress. Most men I know simply unwind by watching a movie in silence or vegging out in front of the tv. Meanwhile, women are much better about planning trips to the spa, a Girls Night Out with friends, making time to go to the gym, write in a journal or just pull out a box of tissues and have a good cry. But, in relationships with men, they often want to talk about something upsetting right away, they can be very clingy, and often they suffocate a relationship by not allowing the other the space he needs to work things out in his own head. For relationships to thrive, I think it is important to understand that we all process information and emotions at different rates and in a variety of ways. We need to be sensitive to each other's needs, be honest with one another when we need space or time on our own, repect our differences and encourage our partners to be kind to themselves, without passing judgment on how we may each choose to unwind.My brother and I are not wired the same, and I think many people were concerned about how we would get along this week, but by being open and honest with each other about our needs and respecting each other's boundaries, we got through an incredibly emotional week together with a far deeper sense of understanding and love than I ever could have imagined.

One of my friends told me the other day how much he admired my courage in sharing my story about finding my family. Without hesitating, I responded that it had nothing to do with courage-- to me there is no other justification for the long and difficult journey I had to travel unless I could live to tell the tale and hopefully inspire others in their own lives.Throughout life what I have enjoyed the most are people's stories. You have all taught me so much by sharing your experiences with me. Granted, in my professional life, I hear some of the sadest tales ever, and yet I am filled with hope as my clients manage to put the past behind them, overcome their sorrows, and look to the future with the promise of better days ahead. I think my own father said it best, "life is not easy, but you have to keep fighting." Recently, my own brother told me the same thing. In order to find the strength to keep moving forward, sometimes we all need a little help and inspiration. I used to think I had to be a self-sufficient island, but I have humbly learned these past few years that I cannot do everything alone. We need each other-- both to share in moments of joy and help cope with life's sorrows. By sharing our stories with others, we can hopefully gain a better understanding of one another and learn from each other's mistakes and success stories. Our stories bind us, and together we can help make the journey that lies ahead seem far less daunting and lonely.