Pastor Plek's Podcast
Pastor Plek's Podcast
Navigating Blended Families with Shane Loomis
303: Shane Loomis joins Pastor Plek on this episode to share his expert insights on the unique challenges and opportunities that blended families face. You’ll learn how mediation can promote cooperative family dynamics and protect children’s well-being, sidestepping the pitfalls of adversarial divorce proceedings. Shane dispels common misconceptions about marriage and underscores the importance of respect and understanding in building strong familial bonds.
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And welcome back to Pastor Plek's podcast. I'm your host, Pastor Plek, and with me in studios none other than Adrienne Plekkenpol. Welcome back, Adrienne, Thank you.
Speaker 1:She is my sweet wife ever present with opinions. We love her. And then also a special, very special guest, my cousin, none other than Senor Shane Loomis. Hi, all the way from California. Yes, I am, thank you, I'm so glad you're joining us. We're talking about blended families today, and something you've sort of become an expert in, and the reason why this is so important to me. As a pastor, I do a ton of counseling, and usually I'm dealing with blooded families who haven't thought through any of the ramifications of marrying with children, people that already have children, and what that does to the entire family, and so I would love to talk to you just as a family law person, and then I want you to walk us through some of the mediation that you've had to go through. So we'll just kind of start off right there. Just tell us kind of what your role is and what you do in California, but we are trying to recruit you to Texas.
Speaker 3:I love it. I love Texas. I'm having a great time here. My work is really currently as a family law mediator, and so what I do I think of mediation as a problem-solving technique with families that, quite frankly, I do a lot of divorce work, but I also do a lot of premarital counseling type work, and that's where this blended family idea comes from is families that have children. You know, each spouse has a history and a background and they're looking at how to bring their family together in a way that protects their children, that protects them, and to think about the things that come out of blending those kinds of families Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're not like there's no part of us that's like fans of divorce or like we want.
Speaker 1:God's intention for family was that it would be husband and wife and their kids, and they never separate. But life happens and sin is prevalent, and so we have this reality and we need somebody who's a Christian in the middle of it, trying to put these pieces together in a way that honors God. So talk to me about why you think that just specifically people that have blended families they get married. Usually they just do it. Why do you think that is? Why don't they plan ahead?
Speaker 3:Well, I think there's a couple of things that I would say to that. One is that I think you're right. I've never been an advocate of divorce and in fact you have an ethical duty, when I was practicing, not to advocate for divorce, to give ways out. But one of the things I think is terrible, particularly in California but in other states, is that they create it as an adversarial approach. Talk to me what that means. So one of the things you do in a divorce I would say to people a divorce is a situation where you negotiate the terms of your contract. At the end You've already had the marriage, you had a set of agreements that you lived by, your marital agreement, your marital contract, and then you find out what the rules they're going to apply to you, which have nothing to do with how you lived your marriage and the way they structured, that is to say, spouse one versus spouse two versus. That's a terrible approach to marriage always.
Speaker 2:It is never one versus the other.
Speaker 3:Or a family right, it's not versus. And so I spend a lot of time looking at how can I protect children in this, because one of the things people do when they're fighting, when they come to this and say I'm going to take this marital pie, and it's a battle, who gets more of the metal marital pie? And of course, the attorneys are all. I can't wait, I want more of your marital pie, this is my, my money on the line, um, and I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand what people were doing, and so I started doing mediation because it allowed us to say husband and wife, we have a family. No matter what we do, we're always going to have a family.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Can you explain that and tell me if I'm interrupting here? But I feel like that's the part where just because you're divorced doesn't mean that husband's not going to be involved for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3:That's absolutely right, and I think it's very odd how we as a society I mean I think there's a balance here On the one hand, if you really knew what marriage was going to be, if I gave you the pamphlet and said here's the deal nobody get married, let alone have kids, right, Give up everything, the other person gets everything and you're no longer important, right? That's what it would feel like. Of course, that's not true, but that's how it would read, and so it's good for us to be a little bit of a leap of faith into a marriage.
Speaker 3:On the other hand, to go in with no thought whatsoever. I'm just going to jump in that pool. The fact that it's a painting and there's no water, well, it'll happen right. And we're told this romantic story that love will conquer all, love will conquer all. But it's not love that says fuzzy, wuzzy love. It's true respect and deep understanding of each other.
Speaker 3:And the next step, we get together and we have a child, because that's what we're supposed to do. And we don't recognize that. What we're often doing is saying that love that we felt, feeling a little soft. If we put a kid in here, that'll feel good and we'll have it. But the kid doesn't have that agreement either. The kid came in with two parents who were obligated to take care of the kid, and often families will sort of align around that. They have an idea that we're going to raise this child, that we're going to raise this child.
Speaker 3:At the time they get mad at the spouse. They will start to say, well, if I just excise this person from my life, I'm going to remove them, everything will be better. Because it wasn't good. I didn't fix it by bringing them in, so if I push them out, it will get better. Well, the kid is still around, we still have Christmas and people say, oh, until you're 18. No, not until you're 18, until you're all dead.
Speaker 3:Right, we're all together and even then, hopefully, we're all joining up. So when we look at that relationship and say this is a lifelong relationship with your spouse guess what? Yes, dad is going to be dad forever, and that's a good thing and to really look at that and say I'm not excising this person, we're changing the structure of the family. That continues and the family continues always. So there are some very rare and unusual cases of horrific abuse. There are some very rare, but the vast bulk, the vast bulk of cases involve mad I don't like what you're doing, you don't like what I'm doing, I don't feel good, I'm out Right, and that those cases in our system, particularly in California, we say go after them, make them pay, get revenge and you'll feel better.
Speaker 3:And you don't feel better what you do, is you really scorch earth the thing and then have to go stand on this scorched earth and talk to each other because there's no way out?
Speaker 1:Oh God, that's a terrible, terrible approach. It's like we're going nuclear and then we'll all live in the nuclear holocaust and then we're going to live in the nuclear fallout and hopefully it'll get better.
Speaker 3:Right, and we know nuclear fallout doesn't last a little while, so it's kind of right. So I think one of the greatest things I started to learn in my early cases where I was doing working with families and it's really funny when you take somebody, that person is the most awful, horrific, terrible person in the whole world. They're a terrible parent, they're terrible, terrible, terrible. How did you meet? Oh, it was wonderful. He was just this big, strong man and I saw him working with children and it was wonderful. And I saw her working hard and she was just beautiful and the softening that happens. We completely lose how we met this person and we completely forget that 95% of this marriage was wonderful and that we had this. You know, I'm not saying that marriage isn't stressful. Marriage is not ever in the Bible or anywhere else does it say this is a smooth ride.
Speaker 2:That's not what it says.
Speaker 3:In fact, I think we're promised a couple things like persecution, pain let's look at these great people and marriage is just like that. It is very, very valuable and families are very valuable, but it is not a smooth ride and if we lose sight of that, we can make something that could be smoother worse by the nuclear option.
Speaker 1:Right, okay, so let's go to the planning head. Why don't people plan ahead? Some people are thinking that maybe they have a romantic belief or whatever they do, and you've seen this.
Speaker 3:I have, more often than not, particularly in California. We have a lot of third and fourth marriages, but in first marriages a very typical pattern is the first marriage they get married at 18. And it depends on there's a lot of variables here. I'm thinking of in a sort of middle class family range, middle class area. Most of the kids are likely going to go to some form of college, maybe not Princeton, maybe not Yale, maybe not Ivy, but they're going to go to school and they're going to think of going to school to get some sort of a job that that leads them into sort of a professional life. They're going to have a household with a family. That's what they're thinking they're going to do.
Speaker 3:And maybe they get a little frisky in college and have an accident. Or maybe they get married at maybe 19 or 20 and they grow right. They married this, this cheerleader, they married this football star and they turn into an insurance salesman and a teacher and it is not the same relationship that they had when they started and maybe they didn't know anything about themselves, let alone the other person, and so they can outgrow each other, which is unfortunate. If they're lucky, they sort of figure that early enough they don't have a kid, they don't have a massive financial investment Right and maybe they get out. But then there's the marriage that happens at 25, 30. And I'm using random numbers, but post-college have my first jobs, sort of have a little bit of understanding of life, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:And they get married and at 55 or 60 they're looking around going I'm not happy, and they have now their houses together, their businesses together. Maybe they spent the inheritance that one of them received. Maybe they and they're all their friends are saying let's be happy. Yeah, the problem was at 25. Nobody's thinking I need to protect anything because I don't have anything. I'm about to start working and I really think I have a promising career, but I don't really have it. And they think that counseling or prep is premarital agreements, planning for divorce. That is understandable, popular. And think of every pop culture reference we have. There's no. Cinderella does not investigate prince charming right or it's it's. I take you at your word, because why I?
Speaker 3:didn't I wasn't. I get I'm getting snow white and cinderella mixed up, but, whatever it is, neither of them spend any time getting to know who the person was. They woke up to a kiss boom. We're married and and that is not um uncommon to believe, that's not, and so we think of it as being unromantic or selfish or gold digger to investigate ahead of time, and I think it's the reverse. I think you owe it to your family to to think about it, so talk, talk about that specifically I guess your kids and I think sometimes especially have kids under 18.
Speaker 1:Yeah, uh, and those are the ones that are still being formed. And then you're like it didn't work with the first one. Now I fall in love with the second one and you're moving forward. Tell me about what blended families should be planning for, just when it comes to kids.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think when I went through a divorce myself and I was working very hard not to do all these horrible things that people do and I get along with my I mean it's 25 years. We've been divorced, I think for 10 years almost and we get along great and it was common about my daughter, but one of the things you do if you care about counseling, we use a lot of therapists in California and you go in and they draw these two circles and the circles are overlapping and they say this is mom, this is dad and this is your kid. In the center, in the overlapping.
Speaker 3:Every time you say something about mom, you're talking about your kid. Every time you say something about your dad, you're talking about your kid. Right, and all these feelings that you have towards those kids, you're mirroring what you feel towards the other spouse. Right, those kids, you're mirroring what you feel towards the other spouse. And so if you don't learn to love not romantic, let's be, you know, but love your ex-wife, love your ex-husband, you're never going to love your kid. That's not going to work With blended families. Well, now there's 17 circles because we have mom and dad, mom's mom, dad's mom, mom's dad, dad's dad, so we have the extended family.
Speaker 3:And now we have insert new spouse and their parents and their ex-husband ex-wife and their children of the ex-husband's ex-wives and so this, you know, it takes a village, becomes a whole other message. And if you don't love all of them, if you don't express respect and care for all of them, you are saying I don't love my kid. Wow, how do you do that? Wow, and now I have to take-.
Speaker 1:Because I think it's hard to do that, even biologically, absolutely, absolutely it's absolutely brutal biologically and it's brutal when the society says go get them. Go get them, take more.
Speaker 3:I want a bigger piece of the pie.
Speaker 1:So, as one who's not super familiar with a ton of divorces, tell me about that attitude of go get them. I think I've seen that in movie portrayals of lawyers and stuff. But is that real?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. I think one of the things I've been talking about recently is when, at the start of a case I mean this is an example of how we set that up People believe, no matter how much I tell them don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. It's awful that at the beginning of a case, you go get a lawyer, you sneak behind the back, don't tell anybody you got a lawyer. Then the lawyer will say well, the first step is we've got to serve them, give them a copy of it, and that comes out of a whole procedure designed for civil lawsuits. Where you hurt me, I want the money back.
Speaker 1:That's where it comes from Like a business, like a business versus a business?
Speaker 3:right, apple gets mad that somebody stole their trademark, right, right? So they file a lawsuit and they have to tell the person they're suing that they're suing them, which is why we have this service component. So what they do is, many times they will say oh, he's going to sneak all the money away. The guy has no money. A lot of times, what we're talking about is we have a house and we have a little bit of retirement money, none of which can be accessed, and they're convinced he's been putting stuff in gold bullion offshore. Well, maybe he has, or maybe she has, or maybe, but that's not really what's happening, right? But the attorneys get sued if they don't do it, as though this is the most contentious, horrible, sneaky thing, and they will send a police officer or a sheriff's department kind of thing to serve him or her at work with a petition that they didn't know was coming.
Speaker 3:And what does it say on the petition? I want all the money, I want full custody and you never get to see the children, and I want you to pay all my attorney's fees and I want you to pay every dollar to me that you have in support. Well, the person receives this and thinks, oh my goodness, and what do they do? They go hire the big gun to fire back right and they launch. Well, first things, the petition has nothing to do with the resolution of your case. I don't care what it says. I don't care if it says we're going to Disneyland. There is not one thing in it that matters to the outcome, really.
Speaker 3:The second thing is why serve them at work? Why would you ever want to put somebody on guard? Think about how you would say I want to have a baby. Would you start by saying I'm going to take you at work, make sure you're in the middle of a business meeting and call you out you want to have a baby with me? You would never do that, right, and so that's how we treat this. That's a terrible way to go, and instead, what I would always tell people to do is start by working together before. Can to do is start by working together before. Can we fix this marriage? Can we do something? Is there something so broken that we have to end it, or is there something we can do to fix it? And if there isn't, we don't call this a end of marriage. We call it a transformation of the family, which is what it is. We are restructuring the way this family, which does continue is going to move.
Speaker 1:You said something in there like that. I didn't like 16, 17 circles, which? I didn't yeah. That was wild. So tell me about like, how, like talk about how, when you're dealing with families, how you get them to like I mean, I'm not sure if you've had to do this, but like, here's your coach how would you coach them to siblings? Hey here's your new brother. He's two years older than you Used to be the oldest child. Now you're not Right, I mean man.
Speaker 3:Well, one of the things. Okay, so you learn a lot from how to do it wrong when you end the marriage. Right, what happened? What I do? On the front end there's a stigma that premarital counseling is somehow divorce planning. Right, I think it's divorce prevention. I think it's done properly, with care and with intention. I love when people have a spiritual counselor or a psychological counselor or a mental health person. We are not doing this to divorce. We are doing this to have these really hard conversations to prevent divorce.
Speaker 3:that's the whole point, for example, what some people will do and it's very I don't mean to be so critical, but I'm critical of anybody who doesn't try to learn and that is that they're selfish. I want to engage in a relationship with this person. Okay, you don't get to engage in a relationship with this person. You are dragging everybody in your past into this relationship with this person, and so is that person bringing everybody into their past, into this person. So you believe I love her, I love him. Therefore, we are going to have a relationship. No, that's not what's going to happen. So one of the first things you do is how are you going to introduce this new person to? I'm going to use the husband and wife, because I just don't. I so I'm, if I'm introduced, the husband's going to introduce the wife to his children right right, okay.
Speaker 3:So do you say, here is your new mom. I mean, what are you doing? Right and what again? I said at the beginning, you have to love your ex-wife, right, right, or you have to love the mother of your children. However, you're blended, whatever that configuration is right, yeah, so I really encourage okay, wait, that's what.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're right, because there might be people who never got married but had a kid together, but it's the same thing, yeah because the mom is the mom.
Speaker 3:Right, the mom is always the mom, will always be the mom. So I would say, really, take care, this is the first impression. Don't have mom's potential interviewing mom sleeping over right within the kids. See, you know, it's true, is that the nanny? Is that the mom?
Speaker 1:is that? Who is that? I don't know. We're not going to do that, and usually people don't even say anything it just happens. It just happens, just like I guess bob lives here now.
Speaker 3:Yes all right, and then bob moves out yeah right, right because we so don't do that. You have an obligation and a responsibility as a parent to not do that. Right, right. This is not a model that we want to give to any child. Right, right. Part of some people will say I got married, I got divorced, because I wanted to model a healthy relationship. Yes, I hear that a lot, and proceed to have the string of new no and I think people underestimate how value I did.
Speaker 3:I hate to bring up my own stuff, but when I started dating, I dated a woman who had some children and a very difficult relationship with her ex-husband, who was still in the picture as a father to the children. And I have my daughter and I'm going to introduce my daughter to this woman, and we were very. We spent a lot of. I mean, which side of the bench am I going to sit on? Which side of the bench is she going to sit on? What are we going to call you? How, how long can this meeting be and be? Okay? We're never going to do it at a house or a car. We're going to meet at a place that's neutral. I asked my daughter where she wanted to meet her, so she picked the most expensive restaurant she could think of and that was the place we were going to do it yeah, and we sat there for one hour, not for a three-hour open-ended conversation.
Speaker 3:No, taylor, this is someone who I care about. That's how she was introduced. She sat on one side and I sat next to my daughter because for me, that was the right thing to do to say this is somebody I care about, not ever.
Speaker 1:This is a new mommy no, no there was a little older, but yeah, so I had an experience. So my, my dad, you know, he divorced my mom and then six months later, uh, he, I'm doing a judo tournament while I'm at west point at the naval academy, my dad just randomly shows up. He's like, hey, uh, the tournament's over, can I take you to dinner? I'm like, yeah, all right, let's go to dinner. So we go to up. He's like, hey, the tournament's over, can I take you to dinner? I'm like, yeah, all right, let's go to dinner. So we go to this dinner. He's like, hey, I want you to meet somebody. I'm like, oh, awesome, who are you going to meet? He's like my new wife. Uh-huh, right, right. And I'm like, no, granted, I was 20, so I, and it was one of the weirdest moments and from that point forward my relationship was always just a little bit like of course, giving her a stiff arm, because I'm like who the heck are you?
Speaker 1:And you came out of nowhere.
Speaker 3:That's a very common mistake. You were 20 and therefore Right, no. Right. You were six and you don't know no that's not true. So don't underestimate that Right. And I think that's not true, so don't underestimate that right. And I think you're what you said is right. I want this person to have a, a comfortable relationship with the person I care about. Right, but it's not theirs right and so, where they fit there, I don't think there's a right answer.
Speaker 3:Yeah so is this person? Are we fully integrated? Are we? Um? Uh, you have, my daughter's mother was always in the picture, was always an active mother, was always going to be part of everything, right? So what's the next introduction? You got to do.
Speaker 2:Right, this is not fun yeah.
Speaker 3:But I'm not going to be stupid enough not to introduce somebody who's going to be around my daughter to my, my daughter's mother.
Speaker 2:Correct.
Speaker 1:Don't do that, right? Wow, okay, cause I think people just would. They're just like no, I'm just gonna tell them hey, we're getting married, that's. But that's when you need to know, and I I think you're right, because I mean, don't you want, if you were, if you have a mother of your child, you'd want the mother of your child comfortable with whoever you're bringing your child we've had.
Speaker 2:I mean we've had people show up to church with, I mean like bruises, and they've been violently attacked by the girlfriend or the mother of the children.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:So I've seen I mean I've seen evidence of when it goes very poorly.
Speaker 3:And what do you think is going to happen? One of the most impressive things I've seen the counter, the other end was when I, for whatever reason, I represented mostly women in the divorce proceedings, and it was divorce or child custody. And, as you said, it doesn't matter whether you're married or not, it's the same process. When you're talking about child custody, and the women will say and it's an interesting technique to calm things down she's better at parenting than he is. So I really like new girlfriend, because new girlfriend makes sure that my kids are okay. She wants them to be fed a certain way. Husband will feed them, but who knows what junk food they're eating, right?
Speaker 3:New mom wants them calm and collected and having a good school day, and so she makes sure that they have real meals. She makes sure that they go to bed on time. She doesn't like them to watch excessive amounts of TV. Now, that's a bold move for a woman to make. That new girlfriend is a part of the parenting solution. But wow, is it powerful? We now have one way to look at it is. We've got all these competing things. The other way to look at it is.
Speaker 3:We've got this village of people who love this child Right, wow, you know what? A great way they have new adults to help care for them.
Speaker 1:So one of the things and this is just there aren't very many resources on this, which is why there's like one book. It's called Smart Step Family and the guy's name is like Dr Smart, which is kind of funny Anyway, and one of the things he talks about is, like the integration process is you don't come in as mom, you come in as like aunt, not that you're an aunt for real, but like with the same sort of authority as an aunt not the mom authority, but the aunt authority. Do you ever talk about like, yeah, like the level of authority with a?
Speaker 3:child. You absolutely have to, and one of the things that you'll see in kids is they often will ask what are you? You know who are you to me?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Especially, I mean a young kid might ask who are you to me Meaning? Um, are you? What is your role, what is your authority? That's really what they're asking and what people will say is oh my God, my kid's going to be traumatized. No, what they're actually. I mean even in a reconfiguration of a family, rename the divorce into an appropriate in a reconfiguration, which is the same actual process that happens if someone passes away, we have a new structure. What kids really care about is that they don't have to be the parents.
Speaker 3:And what I mean by that is who's giving me lunch, who's taking me to school? Where am I sleeping tonight? When you say to them and they don't even care what house it is, they don't care if you live in a shanty house they want to say mom's got this, dad's got this. On Monday I'm going to mom's house and mom will be there after school to pick me up, and on Tuesday I'm going to dad's house and dad will be there to pick me up. Once there is security and they feel safe, children can adapt to a lot. What they can't adapt to is I'm not giving you any warning. Here's this new person. Follow the orders, but I'm not going to tell you what her rank is and go for it, right?
Speaker 3:So yes, and I think that's part of the reason new adult figure in the family's life needs to be introduced to the other adult figures in the family life, because the ones who are going to decide that authority level are not the children. That's where they need you to parent. So when we say and I think if the parents can coexist and collaborate, one of the challenges is if one parent says I don't care what time they go to bed and the other parent says I want a routine that needs them to go to bed at the same time.
Speaker 3:Usually what I'm dealing with is like I've got one family that has no rules and the other family has all the structure and the kid is confused and uses one family against the other, and that's where we are parenting, in collaboration matters, because one of the things that's funny is I remember Taylor saying to me you know, I really like coming to mom's house because she makes this particular dish and she likes to watch this particular kind of television show. I love coming to dad's house because at dad's house we have a different kind of dish and he likes to watch these other kinds of television shows and he has the fun bed and she has the warm bed and whatever. But she got this experience of both and one of the things that I had seen in my is this we're going to use them against each other. Whether it's in a divorce or in a blend, it's the same thing was.
Speaker 3:A kid will often say I want, I want, and in mine I knew it was going to be a puppy and she's going to want a puppy. And if the dad says no and the mom says yes, here we go. And I worked with my ex-wife and said look, she's going to do this, this is going to happen. And we orchestrated telling her that the family structure was going to change and we made sure that we knew that my ex was going to live down the street from me like a couple blocks. Now, this is an uncomfortable situation, but yeah, you know what your selfish interests are uncomfortable for your child. So we're going to do that. And the first thing she said to us is you know, I'm not stupid, of course I know you're getting divorced, of course I know, and we're like whoa. And then she said but you know, what would really help is I want a puppy.
Speaker 3:And I looked at Jody and said, no, no, we're not going to do that, but not because we didn't both empathize with her desire for comfort. We were establishing that boundary right, that no you're not going to use this against each other and one of the things we had to say, and it's very hard. People are not sophisticated. If you tell mom something, it's a secret. If you want it to be a secret, unless it's your health, and I will tell yeah and that's hard, because I don't want secrets, I don't want to not know.
Speaker 3:Right and at the same time when I trusted my ex to say if something's wrong if she's hurt I'll know Right and if she's like you know, I like this boy in middle school and I've never talked to him, but he's cute Right.
Speaker 1:If. Taylor doesn't want to tell me that it's not Jody needs to have trust, right, right, okay, so talk to me then about hierarchy. Is that the going into the roles thing, because I thought that was interesting? We talked about this before, about just the hierarchy of, I guess, roles and where I fit.
Speaker 3:Where I fit. Yes, yeah. So one of the other interesting, the analytical component is people often get married without talking about what their estate plan is. And it's funny when you're starting right and you have 20 bucks in your checking account and you're making a hundred dollars a week and you're thinking my rent's 50 a week and there's just there's no estate, I don't own anything, I don't have anything, it's not going to matter, but it's not very long until there is there is some sort of and what do those estates look like? Well, a lot of what I'm doing now is on the trust side, which is I've now got a blended family and we're thinking about inheritance. What happens if someone dies? What happens if someone dies? Often in my area it's one of the top tier family. A grandparent in that upper echelon thing starts with a lot of money, dies and with Alzheimer's, and so there's this who's going to care for each of the parents?
Speaker 3:Right and when you have a lot of children or or a blended family we have more children than you started with, right and even when you just have two, if one of the with one of the grandparent, the parents are going to start to have issues. Who's stepping in and what is their role in that and what then? What do you intend? So if you have, you often have disparate estates. You know one side has a lot more money than the other and maybe they have more children or maybe they don't. However, that's configured Well.
Speaker 3:If somebody passes away, it's not about who gets the money, which is the common disgusting shark eating the whale thing. I don't like that. But when it's, we need to intelligently, intentionally, say how we're going to handle this to cover these problems. Then we've got to think and there's a part where the persons whose money it is gets to decide yeah, but if you don't engage the other family members and what the intent was, there's a lot of anger and frustration. If one of them took care of a moment for me to be paid for taking care of her and the other one says you're stealing mom's money because you're you're close to her when she's having, you know, that same thing can happen at any level.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that is hard.
Speaker 1:Yes and I think and this might be where I don't know if you can go into specifics, but like I think you shared like you know, there's a family. Then one person comes in with way more wealth, with children, and then someone with less but also has children. Is that now that's now their one entity, and does every kid get this? I mean, like that seems like to be a weird thing to have to talk about, but I think what you mentioned to me is there's a war that breaks out post-death that the kids now are battling, because how?
Speaker 3:come so-and-so, gets whatever, and I think it's funny that that's a mirror of the battle that grows when they start, when you think about young children and there's a family change who's making lunch, who's making dinner? I don't want to be the parent. I don't want to be the parent. Well, as a parent passes away, I don't want to be the parent. So all the siblings are fighting with each other. Everybody's fighting with each other, and it's not so much. I mean, there are some selfish, horrible people, but the reality is, I think most selfish horrible things don't come from a deep-rooted sense of selfish. They have no models, right, and we're not supposed to talk about it, right? What do you think is going to happen if we don't think about it and talk about it?
Speaker 2:It doesn't go well, right. We've seen this a few times. Yeah, bible has a few references, right.
Speaker 3:So we have that. So I think I do have examples where there is a family and I'm thinking of one in particular, sort of generally, and the mother has been married a couple of times. One was a very short marriage at the beginning One of those 19 wasn't a good idea Then a long marriage who passed away, and then a marriage so like a bunch of kids with a bunch, like six kids.
Speaker 1:So we've got three different three.
Speaker 3:Well, I, yeah, I think it is. It's actually probably a fourth, because one of the kids was adopted and one of the kids is special needs. So it sounds like a law school project. How do I roll together all of the pieces to sort of put this together? And then the dad was married once, had two children, and then is now linking up.
Speaker 3:Right, okay, well, there's a couple things going on. We've got a special needs kid. We've got a massive disparity in income and wealth. The mom, in this case, has a lot more income and wealth. Mom also has a lot more responsibility with six kids and dad has two kids, and one of the things as we were talking, about— Age range on these.
Speaker 1:I'm just curious.
Speaker 3:I think it's like two to like 24 or something like that. It's some. You know right, it is the law school project. How can I make this complex and configure this in a way that we don't have any idea what's going?
Speaker 1:on Right, right it's great.
Speaker 3:So and I'm not using, I'm kind of mixing a few things together to get the idea across but what they think about is if one of them were to pass from an estate plan, one of the really hard things, and this is a legal technicality. An estate plan often and I don't want to speak specifically on any particular estate plan is usually becomes formal and fixed at the time of death. A premarital agreement becomes fixed at the time of death. A premarital agreement becomes fixed at the time of signing and a marriage becomes true at the time of when you sign the marriage certificate. Right, that's the effective start date of the marriage, which means that if you're trying to negotiate this stuff, people will, in a premarital agreement or in the course of their marriage, trying to negotiate their trust. But if your estate plan doesn't become effective till someone dies between the time you negotiate and the time they die, it may get changed, which makes it a very unusual thing that we don't. So there's a bunch of these.
Speaker 3:So like what you're saying is like establishing it from the get-go of what it is that takes away the mystery it can take away the mystery, but you have to, and if you're using professionals to to do these, they'll think about those timing things and the requirements and give legal advice to make sure you get it right. I don't do that part Right, what I care about. What I'm interested in is when you get married, what do you think would happen? I mean, one of the great questions is, if one of you wins the lottery, whose money is it?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Now there's a California law and it depends on whether you got married before or after this winning, and there's a bunch of there's. Actually it's a really important case, but whatever, but I don't necessarily care what California law is. I don't practice, I don't do law, I do. What do you mean? What? What is your intention? What do you want to happen? Right, right, because we can make anything happen that you want.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Most of the time, what most people think is that I go to the court to get the answer. That's that adversarial. Me versus him, me versus her, whatever. And I'm going to go there and they're going to tell me how it's supposed to be? Absolutely not. That is stupid. That's like saying I'm going to go to the checkout register at the grocery store and tell them how my marriage is supposed to work. Who won the argument?
Speaker 3:And we're going to tell them who has nothing to do with you and doesn't know anything. Right, that's not a good idea. What, instead, we can say is what do we want to happen? So, when you think about whether it's an estate plan or the way you're getting married, it's very interesting when you ask people if there was an influx of resources or an outflux of resources If one of us got sick and couldn't work and needed a lot of care, if one of our kids got sick, if I'm the low earner and my kid gets sick, is it my kid or our kid? Or what are we doing here and are you funding it or are we not funding it? Or how are we paying for that? It's unusual, it's uncomfortable, but yeah, guess what? You did this. You are obligated to do this uncomfortable conversation, right and so?
Speaker 1:but yeah, okay. So now take, I'm gonna go to a different direction of you've seen this, where a blended family comes together and the woman wakes, makes way more yeah, yeah and then the husband has like he's fine, but he's not like killing it or like is making as much as she does, and simple stuff that you'd never think would be an argument starter, like, hey, we're going to go to dinner, yeah, and how much we're going to pay for a vacation or whatever. It's the three tier.
Speaker 3:Here's where it goes. We're going to dinner. Who's buying dinner? Right? Well, I'm the man I'm going to buy dinner, right? Well, we're going to the swankiest restaurant and we're getting surf and turf, can make this meal and I want all the best stuff. And he says, well, I was paying for dinner, but, um, okay. And then the next one is we're going to go on vacation, right, and he thinks, all right, we're going to go spend three days at a campsite, right. And she says, nope, we're going to boro boro for a month, right. And how are we going to?
Speaker 2:end or the high earner. It doesn't matter which way it is right.
Speaker 3:Then there's the third one, if one of us dies, right so but usually if a guy is the more expensive, more higher earner. That's sort of traditional role but it's not what, what there is. There is traditional role, yeah, but on a blended family dad had dad I saw this dad has this problem.
Speaker 3:I have my children. Anything I do with my new spouse is taking away from my children. So it's not me that I have a problem with. It's not the traditional that I have a problem with. It's my legacy that I have a problem with. And she or he the low earner. It's actually bilateral. It doesn't matter who's who. We may know the hierarchy a little bit.
Speaker 2:We may know who's driving the bus but we don't know.
Speaker 3:She's thinking I'm marrying into resources that will pay for my family and he's thinking she's on her own. These aren't my kids. I don't want it to be that. There is a right answer. I mean there is. I think if you pray about it you're going to get an answer.
Speaker 3:But at the same time it is very uncomfortable to say I'm obligated to take away from my daughter to give to the other one who I didn't have anything to. You know, I may love them, I may be close to them. I'm not yet Right and I'm making this decision about for the rest of my life what's going to. You have to think those things through and it's not straightforward. There is a tendency to say, oh, he makes the money, it's ours. And there's a tendency for him to say, well, it's modern, is it drizzle, drizzle, yeah, right. So no, it's not hers, it's ours, right, right, and we're going to, or it's mine, except for what we did after. I mean, a lot of guys will say what we did during marriage is ours Right, but all this stuff from before is mine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what? I, and maybe Adrian, I've seen a lot. It's just people don't actually come to us for advice, they just come to us married, like and they've already like they're. They don't want anyone speaking into any of this, and I think that's a problem.
Speaker 2:Would you agree? Oh for sure. And what's interesting is we were talking about this a little bit yesterday just how, like a lot of our peers, a lot of our church. I feel like I don't know if it's true that the church is typically like the age of the pastor, but it does sort of seem to be a trending reality, and so we do a lot of our church. It has been married in this 10 to 15 year range, which is our same range, and around this time I'm seeing, you know, you're seeing some people that have had the same marital frustrations really since day one, and there's this feeling of like okay, like I've had, I've known people to kind of admit like wow, if I could, just if this marriage could be over. Like a lot of times we're in situations where there has been some level of moral failure.
Speaker 3:So that's kind of what's that's precedenting the conversation.
Speaker 2:So there has been some level of moral failure, so that's kind of what's that's precedenting the conversation. So there's been some amount of moral failure, whether it's emotional, physical, whatever and there's a choice to forgive and stay together and move forward, or there's this choice to potentially like be done with this, be done with this first marriage and I think that that for me has been a really.
Speaker 2:I've walked some people through these conversations, some of which I've been closer to, and I start to process with them. I'm like let's just say like say we decided, you decided today, like I'm done, I said, this is the father of your children and like the amount of working together that you still have is no less really than if we can figure out a way to like stay married and maybe fix some of these things and still have some of the benefits that you see and that you have, and so helping to kind of diffuse this idea that there's a problem to be solved by ending a commitment. It's really just not solving very, very many problems and it might solve the problem of like this person technically I feel safer, that they can no longer continue to hurt me. That's typically the motive when there's been some sort of infidelity. It's like okay, ending this marriage makes me feel like I'm safe from them hurting me. But that's really not.
Speaker 2:It's just it's an illusion of security, because they're still going to hurt your children. Their decisions are still going to affect you. They're going to hurt you, they. It might feel less direct. It might feel less personal.
Speaker 3:Maybe you'll have a distracting relationship that helps absorb, but it's not going to I like the way you put that distracting relationship, I think you're right, and that distracting relationship is really um a good point yeah I think that's that's true, and and then you are justified in whatever pain you put your children through because that guy hurt me or that woman hurt me, yes, and the children become this thing that is um, it's like like it's selfishness right.
Speaker 2:They become second priority to the thing that you were most after, and so so we had thankfully, I think we catch a lot of I feel like very few people that we've walked through this up to now have ended in divorce, but it has often been-. But usually we get the people coming to us with a blended family and they didn't think it through before they got here, and that has been bad every time.
Speaker 1:And now we're all of a sudden right in the middle of their world and we're like how did we even get here?
Speaker 3:And I think that I've gotten in a similar way and again, I think they're more alike than people will admit. But in the divorce where they come filed, even if you get to the very simple stuff and part of the reason, I think the premarital avoidance, a premarital agreement, does not have to be a legal document to prevent for divorce. That's not what it is. What it really is is let's ask those really hard questions that we really shy away from Nobody wants to ask those questions.
Speaker 3:Nobody wants to ask those questions. What do you feel about money?
Speaker 2:So when you say premarital agreement, is this like a prenup?
Speaker 3:Well, that's a great question. What do you want it to be? I'm a mediator, so I don't do the law part. I do, I'm aware of it and I work with a lot of attorneys and I know it. But what I actually think is more important is not the legal effect of the premarital agreement. In California. It's really crazy because there's some rules about what people want to negotiate is support, and if you negotiate support, you can invalidate the whole agreement. They can just throw it out. So most attorneys won't do it because they're worried that they're going to send you this thing that says I just spent a whole lot of money drafting this agreement that will not be enforced and won't matter. I'm not interested in any of that. What I think is more important is talk to me about we're going to dinner. She makes a lot more money than you. She looks at you when you're going to go pay the bill, or she doesn't look at you and pays the bill.
Speaker 3:How do you feel?
Speaker 2:How is your relationship? Growing or not growing, whatever it is so you're saying have this conversation before you're married and would you say this is true, first marriage or yes, really interesting, but I think it is tricky.
Speaker 3:I mean, we talked originally about why do people do this without asking first right, why do they jump in? And I think again those young marriages, they don't know anything, they don't have anything and they're just not. You know, it's sort of like I was talking to my daughter and she was asking something about what's a 401k plan, what's an IRA? Right.
Speaker 3:And I was thinking about all the things. How do you not know that? And right, right, whatever, but you do pick that stuff up as needed as you go. You don't need to start with the full financial planning component, right, but you need people around you that support you doing that, and that's what a mediator can do in a premarital agreement or premarital discussion, whether it's an, you decide. Do we want an agreement?
Speaker 1:or not, so tell me about, like the people that come to you. I mean this. I mean this because when Adrian and I hear this, I think we think if you had a church family like you, would go to your pastor and the pastor would probably sit you down and I'm betting a lot of the people that come to you like have. They're coming from all over the place.
Speaker 3:One of the worst things that can happen is the armchair attorney Right and the armchair attorney who's not your attorney but your friend yeah yeah right. So oh and, and I find that men and women do this differently, but that's becoming less true. There's overlap, I mean, but there's personality types rather than gender, but um, where they'll say to their girlfriend I, he wants me to sign a premarital.
Speaker 3:Oh, you should never do that right, that's and and I'm thinking of marrying this woman I really love her and we get along and our kids are great and we have a. Oh, you need a premarital agreement, right? These are not experts who have your. They may love you, they may care about you, but they aren't intending to give you the answer you should have. They're giving you the answer you they think you want. What's the pop culture?
Speaker 1:I mean look at our.
Speaker 3:Look at Instagram, right, when we, when we learn everything from Instagram. You do not get quality advice that way, right, it might trigger an interesting question. I look at the financial. It's the Dear Abby things and it's for financial advice. And it'll say something like he wants to give me the retirement plan in exchange for the house. Is it a good idea? You can't answer that question on those facts. To do what? And so I think it is very hard to convince a culture that says take them for whatever they're worth, assume their evil intent, assume they are not reliable, and start from a position of go get legal advice to talk about how it will go across If you don't make it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:The church families are a really good place to say. I want to encourage and same with therapists Anyone who says I'm going to work hard enough to find out if I'm doing it right right.
Speaker 1:Is doing better than the one who says I don't care, right, right.
Speaker 3:Or I'm going to close my eyes and pretend it'll all come together, so talk to me.
Speaker 2:Hang on on that. I think the closing our eyes and pretending it all I think I would put that onto that an over-spiritualization also, which I see a lot in the church it's like we are going to close our eyes, like pardon me, like 24-year-old Adrian would have heard this.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And then like oh, that's okay, we have biblical principles, we don't need any of this because we are going to be having this biblical marriage and so our marriage is so spiritual that we don't need any practical advice, and I think and here's what's interesting to me is that is ignorant.
Speaker 2:And what do I have to lose? I have absolutely nothing to lose, and so why am I afraid of it? And I think that those are good questions to ask. But I also think, when I'm thinking about some of this from our perspective, some of these questions, like our bank accounts, have been meshed since day one and so. But you know, what's interesting is we. That was always a given I. That was how I grew up.
Speaker 1:I didn't I didn't question that.
Speaker 2:We didn't have to even have to talk about it except here's what's funny is I've I've joked and not joked about in recent years of like I want my own bank account because I want to be able, like I we did.
Speaker 2:I have these little random projects and I and I'll make some money and it kind of kills me Like it's a lot of work and it's I'm in. I don't ever want to let the home and kids and marriage fall. So I'm just kind of adding onto everything to make this extra money. So I'm like I'm wanting a place for all that money to go, that I can see what's there and then I can kind of frivolously spend it however I want to, and it's really difficult to like see that clearly when it's in this other account with everything else.
Speaker 1:And then I put it into savings or invest it.
Speaker 2:Right. So I'm like, can I just have my own account? I just want my own account, an inherently evil, wrong thing. I think that's fine, but the solution is really through. You can do that within the same bank account.
Speaker 3:I think that you're raising a very important question.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And that question is let's distinguish between transparency and implementation. Yes, it is fine to implement it, however, you want. The reason joint accounts can be useful is there are some technical reasons. What you're trying to do can be useful, right? Some technical reasons what you're trying to do can be useful. But the other reason is because everybody can see everything Right, it is okay.
Speaker 3:And again, as a California person I've met, I didn't know about some of the non-traditional configurations of families, I didn't know about sex clubs, I didn't know about alternative lifestyles with multiple people and those kinds of things Excuse me, but generally, as someone in that, I have to be a little bit aware that that's okay, and what I've learned is it is far more important that you are transparent and open and honest about what you're doing than what your configuration is.
Speaker 2:So I don't.
Speaker 3:I don't, really I don't advocate that Most people who come to me don't say, hey, this is the guy who knows how to do a sex club Not helpful. But I do understand. I want to have a safe place where we say I'm going to be allowed to talk about something and not be judged by it and. I don't judge. It's just. It's not my life. But I don't care what you do. What I do judge very harshly is you are absolutely going to be transparent, right? If you're not transparent, your marriage is doomed. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I don't really mind whether people say I'm going to have this side gig, I'm going to have this side arrangement. If a separate checking account is economically effective, go for it, right that?
Speaker 3:doesn't bother me. What would bother me in looking at a family who was looking about going forward is that they both saw it, that they both treated it as is this our money or is this my money, right? Do I have and am I the other side of that resentful that every time I make something it goes into the joint and every time you make something it goes into the separate? Some people I know my parents had everything we make is joint and then siphoned into separate accounts little amounts.
Speaker 3:And the idea was that they may have different importance of certain expenditures. Right, they, they, like you were saying, there wasn't a lot of talk about what was joint. We pay the house together, we pay the whatever, we buy these things, but little things would be off to the side and they felt that that was some sort of a. I don't know the exact details of it, but I don't really care. My point is they both saw the paychecks come in, they both saw that equal amounts go out and then they didn't really.
Speaker 2:It wasn't that they didn't have access, but they didn't care what was going on in the other account right because they trusted and knew where it came from oh, exactly, and I think, and I think, but I think that if I could, and I think some of that implementation would be helpful and is helpful, and I think what I sort of wish, if we would have done this back when we started, when we first were married, it would have given me an appreciation, like having someone ask some questions that I would have never considered asking would have at least given me some appreciation. Yeah, it's not like we didn.
Speaker 1:That I would have never considered asking would have at least given me some appreciation. Yeah, it's not like we didn't do premarital, it's like we had two different premarital but it was all spiritual. Yeah, we never talked about financial stuff, but he said he just said premarital in terms of emotional and spiritual, and so this is a whole separate world.
Speaker 2:But I mean, like every time, like when we go out, we have the same plastic card. It's like who can more quickly access it to get it to the waitress? But I would value that dynamic more if I would have recognized oh, this isn't just a given, this isn't how it always goes. I have a husband who's willing to give me a card that accesses all of his earnings. I mean, I made nothing for the first several years of our marriage. So I feel like, if anything, it would have given me some appreciation for values that we just automatically did have, that we didn't recognize.
Speaker 1:Oh, I see what you're saying. So, like you would have said oh wow, this is awesome we do agree.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:And then like and then when I wanted to be all grumpy about something about he's so generous I've been, that's always was struggle. I always struggled with that early in our marriage. It was a constant struggle and I'm like I might've been less ticked in how generous he was if I would have recognized that some of that generosity is coming my way and how he views the money he's making. But if someone would have asked me some questions that cause, it was almost like he just got it. Our marriage got a zero in my perspective from some of these mutual agreeing things that really were a big deal.
Speaker 3:They were valuable.
Speaker 2:They were aligning and that was worth something that was significant, but I didn't see it, as I just saw it as like a zero.
Speaker 3:And I think you raised a good point. What do I have to lose if I ask the questions? I don't think you have nothing to lose. I think what you have to lose is this relationship can't work.
Speaker 1:Right, that is huge and the problem is we see that as a negative.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's a win, and I see that as an opportunity to say we aren't going to hurt each other more Right.
Speaker 3:We can prevent. God forbid you have a child with somebody you don't feel on the same level of values with Right.
Speaker 2:Don't do that. That is so true and you know what I like to think, that maybe that could have saved, like I've always wondered, like what if I got farther down the road with different individuals? It would have been so bad, but a conversation like that probably would have stopped it.
Speaker 3:It could have done both. Right. It can actually, like you just pointed out, it can actually build you closer because you say you know what? All these really hard things, we got this right. We're good.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I mean, what are you doing? You're in California, you're doing mediation with not everybody goes to church and loves Jesus. But talk to me about your own spiritual journey and what took you from lawyer to where you are now as mediator.
Speaker 3:Well, there's a couple pieces to it. So the starting place is as a lawyer, I started really pushing towards mediation and the reason is I was so frustrated with attorneys saying this is about steal the marital pie we're going to divide, because a marriage is so much more than the money Money is and I think you've probably heard this a few times that you know where. Where I'm paying attention is sort of that's where my, where, my treasure is Right and what do I want to focus on?
Speaker 1:Where your treasure is there, you're finding your heart.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and so when we look at money, it's not so much how much money or what do you spend on, it's what do you value. Are you saving for a house, are you going on trips and they're valid, but you should be able to have a conversation about what you value right and a lot of financial planning. There was a great financial planner who said something along the lines of if people come to me and ask for retirement advice and they'll say to me, he'll say what do you want to do in retirement? And they say I want to have enough money that I can do whatever I want. And he said that is the silliest plan I've ever heard, because you're not what you need.
Speaker 3:If you want to travel might be very different than if you're empire building or if you're trying to pass to your heirs. The way you financial plan for this activity is different. So I think, knowing what you want. But I was looking at these things saying I'm setting up a fight. I'm setting up a fight to and I win. I make more money when they get mad Right and and we're going to do a bunch of useless crap that I don't believe, excuse me, that we don't believe in.
Speaker 3:that is about fighting right, and I make more money when we do that. Yeah, I make more money when we don't settle a case and we spend all of our time lobbying requests for documents that nobody has for 17 years, that I'm never going to look at. I don't want to do that. I don't like it. That makes you feel dirty.
Speaker 1:It is dirty, I mean it's bad right.
Speaker 3:And California enacted something called the Elkins Commission, which was intended to make it more. We want it more like a lawsuit more adversarial more painful and I just hated it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I saw media and there were a number of attorneys high quality attorneys that I had met in Ventura who were doing a couple of things. One's called collaborative. Collaborative is a structure of settlement that requires the professionals involved to sign off that they can be disqualified if anybody tries to go to court. They're not allowed to go to court and I thought this is really a good plan and so I started doing mediation and so yike Not good at this part.
Speaker 3:In 2019, I was in this accident and you're talking about moral failure, so and I crashed and, while driving, drunk and my passenger passed away and, of course, I. That disrupted my practice and in the meantime, my father passed away, then my attorney passed away, the passenger passed away and my practice had to be closed. And it was just one thing after another and as a result of that accident, I was convicted of a felony and went to prison and did the whole thing to take accountability for that. And when I got out, there's a lot of precedent in California that a DUI itself is not a basis for losing your license. But for a number of reasons, california decided that that wasn't the case with me and they took my bar license. So I got disbarred.
Speaker 3:And during that same time between 2019 and probably 2022, I did a couple things. I started in because it's a long story and I don't want to get into legalistic garbage on it, but I started with 12-step programs and 12-step programs well done, particularly with my particular sponsor is a like like a cliff notes to the bible. Right, it's, it's. How do we recognize that we're deeply flawed, how do we ask for forgiveness and how do we process uh sorry, that shame on a go forward basis? Yep, and I simultaneously became deeply involved with my church and I had what I think of as a, a mentor in my church and he was talking to me about sort of the same. What does sin mean? I had a really difficult trouble with understanding the concept of sin. I thought of it as you're a bad, evil person and we don't want to be sinful. But that's not what it means.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 3:I started spending a lot of time in my 12-step with my sponsor and with my mentor and volunteering and doing a bunch of other stuff to sort of find a way forward of other stuff. To sort of find a way forward Looking at sin as a turning away from God, that this is not a you are bad or good, but it is a you have. We all have are born to reject what we're supposed to do. And what it's supposed to do is very taboo in the psychological realm. You don't say you're supposed to, but guess what You're supposed to.
Speaker 3:You're not supposed to kill someone. You're not supposed to drive drunk. You're not supposed to hurt people. It is supposed to in a very real way. But one of the things that happened was this idea of but you don't get to check out, no, I remember for me it was God saying absolutely not, do not crawl in the hole, do not cave. So I had to come out in public and be present in spite of this sort of thing, shame is really what it was.
Speaker 3:And as I was doing that, one of the things I found is that guess what Other people have made mistakes and weren't completely rejecting of me as a human. And so I also looked in my faith and I started looking at this thing in the Bible that talks about not getting divorced, and I'm thinking I may be off base here If God's speaking to me and he's saying don't give up and no, and maybe divorce isn't exactly. But it also talks about peacemakers and that we as peacemakers are doing things that save people and that how we conduct ourselves attracts or distracts people. And so I started looking at how can I help people without destroying people, how can I prevent this sort of mass destruction? And so I started looking at mediation as a problem solving technique, and and mediators aren't required to be licensed attorneys. In fact, as a mediator particularly in California, but anywhere you are not allowed to give legal advice because it would not be neutral, so I'm not required to have a license to mediate.
Speaker 3:And turns out, I really like it. I really like working with people who are saying I don't want to. If you want a divorce or a premarital agreement or you want to hurt the other person, there are plenty of attorneys lined up. Tell them how much you want to spend and we're going to get them hurt. That's what we're going to do, and the reality is that is a terrible way to live. That is not what I support. I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 3:So mediation provides an avenue where I do the opposite. I say we've got a challenge in front of us. We've got a grieving elder, grandparent, whatever, and the family is trying to tear itself apart because they don't know what to do and they don't want to be children and they don't want to be the parents of themselves. They want a parent Right. Or in families who are thinking about mixed, you know, blended families, how do we bring us together and build, not tear down Right? If we're even in divorce, I still do work with divorcing families, but it's how do we transform our family, not how do we throw it out. Right right right.
Speaker 1:I think what you said was really powerful and I think one of the things that for me, is like when I looked at my own sin, I had to say I am that bad, but God is that good. And so when he goes to the cross, jesus goes to the cross. He takes all that bad, all my shame, which is why I love. Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and so not that you need to hear it again, but I need to hear it again is that there's no shame on you. Jesus took all that shame off you because the resurrection says like he took it all when you put your faith in Him.
Speaker 1:He saved you, and I think I confessed to one of my discipleship groups. Like you know, I still I was thinking back to sins from 15, 17 years ago. That still, it's like time heals all wounds?
Speaker 2:No it doesn't Actually, it doesn't it just delays.
Speaker 1:And then all of a sudden you're sitting there one day and you go, oh, and I was like man, would you guys pray over me about this one thing from 15,. But he is that good to forgive me and remind me of the stuff that I need to bring to him because he wants to take my shame. He didn't go to the cross for no reason. In fact, if he doesn't take my shame away, then he went to the cross for nothing. And I think that's the beauty of what.
Speaker 1:When I watched your life, shane, I was just like so impressed by the way that you didn't run from your life or your past.
Speaker 1:You sort of leaned into it and I really just thought that was really honorable of the way that you hung in with your ex-wife, then you hung in with your daughter.
Speaker 1:You hung in in every aspect to try and do the most good because what Jesus had done for you and you didn't quit. I just really thought that was powerful and I think one of the things that really moved me is like while you were in prison, you did a lot of reading of the Gospels and it was transformative in your life, so that when you came out, you're more in a lost world that I don't get access to as a pastor, and you have ability to minister to people right where they're at, to help them be functionally, get to a place where they could probably most hear the gospel. So I guess all I want to say, I want to encourage you in that. And then secondly, like, how would somebody get a hold of you if they're going to like, hey, I've got a mess, I'm about to get married, I didn't think about this, oh gosh, that brought up a lot of things. And I'm in California or I'm in Texas and I just I'm going to move you to California or move you to Texas.
Speaker 3:How do I get ahold of you, shane Sure, so there's two ways. Shane at shaneflumascom is my email address the website is surprisingly shaneflumascom. We'll put that in the show notes for everybody. Thank you, and uh, or, my phone number is 805-494-7811. Okay, I love to talk to people.
Speaker 3:And again, I'm not a licensed attorney, so one of the privileges of that is that I can work with people as long as they recognize that's the situation. I don't there. Mediation is a range of topics and people use it in a different way. My work generally involves two sides. I do not work with one. I'm neutral, so my purpose is to work with families that are working together. I want them aimed together at the problem, not me versus you. I don't work with divorcing couples on one side.
Speaker 1:Right, well, that's powerful. I almost think you'd have to counsel people to get to that place.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and one of the challenges is people will often believe and again, I think this goes back to our beginning thing why don't we do this at the front? Right. They will say I want a peaceful way, but she's unreasonable.
Speaker 1:Right, we assume the worst of our spouse. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Or they think that they've judged themselves as being reasonable and the other person therefore is not, and often what that's about, which is really the point of when you said. It would help me to have people ask the questions. They don't even know what the person's worried about Somewhere. Often in California we have these very specific patterns the woman wants the house. Why do you want the house? The house is 10 times your income. You can't afford it. You have no, you haven't worked in 20 years, as in a, you've worked, but you haven't worked in a paying job or you don't make enough money what they want.
Speaker 3:Just like those kids, I want to know where I'm going to live yeah I want to know that I'm not on the street. I want to know that my health care is going to be okay and that I'm not a thrown away human. And most people, when they hear that, consider her very reasonable. Even if I want the house was unreasonable when we say we want a place to live and we put two people aimed at that problem. There's some creativity. We can solve some stuff here.
Speaker 1:Wow, I love the way you put that. I think of just some of the marriage coaching I've been doing. Really, it's like when you just change the question. Yes, absolutely. Because, when you take it away from a place of anger. I want the house, or you're going to take the house from me and you're like. We both need a place to live.
Speaker 3:Yes, we can solve that. We can solve that. We do. That's right, Right, right right.
Speaker 2:We had a good conversation yesterday about like helping people identify what it is that they actually want and how people in general really do struggle identifying. It's like you want something like what you said earlier. What did you say? What was your example? You said oh, I want to just have enough money at the end of retirement to do what I want to do, or to do whatever I want.
Speaker 3:Yes, do whatever I want.
Speaker 2:Whether you want to travel, whether or not you want to sit in your house, and each spouse has a different idea of what they desire to do and they're probably not the same thing and so having so marriage is so much of working that out and figuring that out, and I think we experienced this recently, like when I was telling Shane yesterday about the cruise that we went on yeah.
Speaker 1:Identifying like what you want to do. I loved it just the way it was, and you needed more friends.
Speaker 2:Well, no, yes, that's a true statement.
Speaker 1:After about three days I needed some more people. I was not enough. Yes, I'm just like.
Speaker 3:I'm used to a whole lot of social. I'm not sure you were awake.
Speaker 2:But like after but, but before the friends, regardless of the friends, um, of the friends, right um, you are wanting a really stimulating activity all the time, and I'm kind of wanting a social, uh, conversational, vibrance, and those are different things, and so the cruise was everything that chris was desiring in terms of like, here's a schedule where, every 30 minutes or something different, and going into it I don't know that he would have been able to say, oh, this is what I'm wanting, but when we get there.
Speaker 2:It was very clear, oh he's gonna he able to say, oh, this is what I'm wanting. But when we get there, it was very clear oh, he wants to power through.
Speaker 1:I like schedules, yeah, whereas I'm kind of like Power through no, not power through.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:No, I just. I like a schedule.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a schedule that has it moving every 30 minutes. Well, in mediation we call that position versus interest.
Speaker 3:So, my position is I want the house, a house right. My interest is in having a place to live, right.
Speaker 1:Oh, and I think you're right that there's there's a granularity right.
Speaker 2:Oh, chris can say I want a schedule, yeah, and you may say you know what?
Speaker 3:I'm okay with a schedule right, not every 30 minutes but I'm okay with the schedule. Right, I'll meet you schedule is I'm going to spend two hours with friends yeah I can really maybe do that, but you're right, and it is hard to uh pull that out so you know what you want versus yeah, it is hard.
Speaker 1:So let's say, shane, someone doesn't want to get divorced. Or could they come to you as like, hey, we need some help in our marriage? That you've thought through all this stuff? Is that something you do? It is.
Speaker 3:There's a boundary. I'm not a licensed psychologist or a therapist or anything like that.
Speaker 1:You could just be a marriage coach.
Speaker 3:In terms of a marriage coach, yes, and in terms of people, one of the things that's very, very common and I think this is your point. We want an investment property. He won't put the down payment. Well, that is a problem that is more technical and it's lack of communication. What they really mean is we have this idea that we want to do something and we don't know how. I'm really good at bringing people together to say, let's figure out how to solve this problem.
Speaker 3:So yes, in that context it's great if we're talking about your true mental health, I would have to refer you to a therapist and say and and but. But when it comes to that, we want to solve a problem together and we don't know how to bring ourselves to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I love, I love that kind of work and I think many couples need help because they feel like the how, the differing opinions on the how, feel so threatening to the marriage and it feels threatening to intimacy, it feels threatening to everything, when in reality it's like you agree on the same end goal and that was kind of like this cruise example is silly, but it was like I had to keep opening, we had to keep having conversations of like OK, really, we just want to hang out and enjoy each other.
Speaker 2:So this means I'm going to go stand behind him at the blackjack table for an hour. It really is fun and I'm going to just hope that there's another wife doing the same thing, but it's like all of a sudden, the how quit being so emotional and so volatile.
Speaker 2:Which on the cruise. Of course it's not that way, but in our regular life it is that way. A lot of times, the how feels like the end of the world. It does. And coming to a third party to solve the how feels like oh well, this is just because we can't negotiate on our own. Well, we can't. Actually, we've made the house such a big deal that we're not able to acquiesce because we feel disrespected when we try.
Speaker 3:But if you think of anybody who's learning how to brainstorm and the first thing the committee does is shoot down every idea, because it can't happen and you learn that effective brainstorming is not that that. It's more about opening the door to it. It is a skill. The goal is not to say I go to somebody every time I have a disagreement that I don't know how to fill out. The goal is to learn how to turn these disagreements about how into discussions about what is the real goal here, Nice and let's brainstorm and let's learn how to do that in a way, so I think to your point.
Speaker 3:Yes, it is kind of feels like do we have to ask somebody for help every time? No, but we do have somebody who's teaching us how to do it so that we don't do that, yeah Right.
Speaker 2:And admitting like we're not able to do that on our own, and we need to learn because I really because I think what happens is, if you don't eventually go to the third party, you get very resentful because one person probably is constantly like conceding the point every time. And then time, and then the person getting their way might actually not be hitting what they desire very efficiently, even though they think that they are.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:Because they've shut off any other options or opinions or perspectives. And so I really do feel like I think your counseling of other couples has helped us, because I think it kind of bleeds out Like we're forced to practice some of those principles. But I think in marriages where there's less like analyzation of relationship all the time, I think it's just coming to a third party and asking questions, even when you know a lot is still not a bad idea, and I think that ends up being we might get better at this right.
Speaker 3:The worst case scenario there is, not that I don't like it, but that maybe I get a little bit better at it or nothing happens.
Speaker 1:Right, right.
Speaker 3:And I think you're right, yeah, all right?
Speaker 1:Well, hey, thanks for watching. Listen. If you got any questions, you can text it at 737-231-0605. I would love to bring Shane back, as always, to just maybe create more conversation about what blended families look like or what really family mediation is. Love that. So if you have any questions, just text us. We talk faith, culture, everything in between, and so, from our house to yours, have an awesome week.