The Big 3 of Divorce with Jennifer Beckman | RU014

Hello, and welcome to rediscovering U where you will find valuable insights, support and education to help you move through the difficult and often painful process of divorce with grace and courage and hope and find the ultimate gift of rediscovering yourself. I'm your host, Barb Greenberg, award winning author and founder of rediscovering you. If I'd had access to a resource like this during my divorce, I would have not felt so isolated, I would have made much better decisions. I still would have breathed for that for so hard for so long. And I wouldn't have eaten so many boxes of macaroni and cheese. When women heal. Families heal when families heal communities heal. When communities heal. The possibilities are endless. Let's get started. I'm so excited to introduce you to family law attorney Jennifer Beckman. I've known her it seems like forever. She's brilliant. she's funny, she's creative. She really helps her clients in any way they need to be helped resolving their issues whether it's through mediation, collaborative law negotiation litigation, she's comfortable one on one with you. She's comfortable in a courtroom. Speaking of one on one, she even has a little sweet little dog in her office. So when you come to visit, and have an appointment in a meeting, it's not so intimidating, which I love. She's been considered a super lawyer in Minnesota for like, ever for years and years and years. She volunteers with a volunteer lawyers network through Hennepin County, she volunteers at Tubman, which is a Minneapolis based resource for families in all sorts of difficult issues. She assists clients who want to be amicable and creative and resolving their divorces. So she's all about doing that first before you have to go forward into the more contentious pieces. And she really tries to help you resolve things outside of the courtroom. She is a joy to work with. She can help you in so many different ways. Welcome, Jennifer. Yay.

Thank you, Barb. It's good to be here.

This really this is fun. I'm excited to talk with you. First, the first thing I want to ask is I love the story of how you decided to become a family law. Attorney. Are you comfortable sharing that because it just always makes me smile.

It actually is kind of interesting how I got my start here. I went to college, at the University of Minnesota in the family social science program, I decided I was going to become a family therapist. And my I graduated with that degree I came out I was ready to to start counseling people and working with basically marriage therapy. I wanted to work with people. And it was quite obvious to me that I was too opinionated to be a therapist. And I really back then, and this is way back when I was trying to guide people on how to do things in a more productive way. And I I just I maybe was too forthright, too opinionated. So my supervisor way back when said, Have you ever thought of going to law school? Because you really seem to advocate for, you know, one of the parties. So maybe you should think of doing that. And that's how it started. I went to law school, took the LSAT never thought I was ever going to go to law school or pass the test or any of that took the LSAT and the rest is history graduated from William Mitchell. A very long time. Well, in 1987, so I practice for 35 years.

Wow. So she see you've seen a lot.

Iv' see a lot, yup.

And so today we thought we would talk about well, I'd like you to talk about the big three, the top three of divorce and the first one that you mentioned and it's under my piece of paper here.

Kids kids. Yeah, it's always a huge issue when you're going through a divorce. If you have children, you know what I'm talking about the children and what happens to them once one of you decides to get a divorce or both of you is probably the most emotional and difficult area that people deal with when they're going through a divorce and with the kids, you're kind of looking at our last provides for custody, which is physical and legal. Physical Custody has to do with where the kids are actually going to reside. It could be sole physical, meaning they're at one parents house more than the other. Or it could be joint physical where they're sharing 5050, or some kind of an agreed upon more equal relate parenting time schedule with each parent. The other big issue having to do with the kids is legal custody, and legal custody. People often think, why do we need legal custody? I mean, what what's the big deal about that? Well, legal custody is a really big thing. And if people fight about it, they fight. It's just a big area of disharmony if people can't, can't make rightful decisions, or are thoughtful or appropriate decisions for their kids. So legal custody has to do with who gets to make the major decisions regarding the kids education, religious and medical upbringing. And that could be such as what daycare they go to, what schools do they go to, are they going to be homeschooled are they going to go to private school or public schools, while they're in school, is somebody going to allow their child or, or prop or encourage their children or a child to go through some kind of special needs classes, all of those things would be legal custody, whether or not to put a child on a certain kind of medication, we I see often people arguing over whether or not a child should go on Adderall once they've been diagnosed with with having a DD or ADHD. Another issue would be in it you don't see this one as much in the religious aspect whether or not raise a child of certain faith, a certain religion, whether or not to put a child through confirmation, you know, things like that. So it comes up, the religious part comes up, I would say much less as an area where people disagree than the medical or the educational kinds of major decisions. Unless there's something really off with one of the parents, the courts typically like to see that parents are making those decisions together. And so you would call it joint legal custody where both mom and dad are both parents have the right to make all those major decisions together after they discuss what's best for their kids. And when we're looking at the children, and how to determine parenting time and custody labels, were looking at the best interests. And there are factors that we're looking at, that when you sit down with an attorney, they would go through that with you. And that's what the courts are looking at, initially to try to determine what's in the kids best interest as far as who they're going to live with. Our law also allows if you don't if you want to avoid the custody labels, because people often fight over that label. Physical Custody, it's a big argument, because oftentimes one parent is like, Well, why can it be joint? I mean, we're both the parents why the other parent might say, Well, I've been home the whole time raising the kids. So why should I have more time? So if you want to avoid that label in that part of the disagreement, Minnesota laws allows for what's called a parenting plan, where you're really kind of going into how you're going to raise your kids. And more so into what's the schedule schedule going to look like in the in the schedule for whether it's custody you're looking at or parenting plans, or any which way you're looking at what's going to be the weekly schedule, what's gonna be the holiday schedule? And are you going to agree that each of you get some vacation time, such as during the summers with the kids, so all of those areas have to be discussed as part of the divorce and it's it's can be a very contentious area with parties. Unfortunately,

I can't I you know, I hear stories of that often. That's the biggest, most painful piece for a lot of people is I my kids gonna be okay, how can I protect my kids? How am I how can I make sure that you know, when I send them to my exes, things, they'll be safe, they'll be cared for? They'll be it's very. I just talked to somebody last night she said I prayed for my kids every night during my divorce, that they be safe.

And it is a hard area when you think about it. It's such an emotional area and that's the part of the divorce. You forget that a divorce isn't just the finances. It's the emotional part as well in the children always bring out emotions and people and have people act sometimes like they wouldn't normally act and and what you might think is the best interest of the kids is not necessarily what your spouse or the other parent thinks. So it's a tough area, and there is so much people, people will sometimes come to me and say, well, it's just common sense. No, there's so much more the law is so much more than than common sense. So it's it's just encompasses a lot. And our courts, you know, that that's a good thing. Our courts now, you know, practice long enough, that I can see how it's evolved to something much more healthy for parties, but our courts now really are encouraging people to settle their cases, and to not end up in a trial in front of a judge making the decisions for you. So every effort is made to do something called Alternative Dispute Resolution, especially when it comes to issues with the kids. So mediation, or this process called the Early Neutral Evaluation is very, very much so used when we're talking about custody and parenting time. Again, most people do settle. So that's an important thing to know that most people don't end up in front of a judge with a judge making the decisions. Most people settle in one of those alternative dispute resolution ways.

That's good. That's good. That's really good. Wow, that was a great overview. That was really good information. And big three, number two, the second of the big three, is that custody, right? Which kind of

study is number one, cash flow, cash flow, cash, thank you. Yes, cash flow, that is the second part of the big three, the second big issue and cash flow. You know, we legal, attorney, attorneys and and financial people often refer to it as cash flow, and really cash flow, we're looking at child support. And spousal maintenance and child support is something that's I mean, it's a little bit easier to come to a resolution and to look at then spousal maintenance, because Minnesota has out there a Minnesota child support calculator, it's a worksheet that you can do online. Most people will look at it and go, Oh my god, I gotta go to my attorney, because I gotta figure this one out. It's we're looking at gross incomes of both parties. And all of this is, is input into this computer calculator that we do. So it's gross incomes, if you're self employed, it's basically like your adjusted gross income or after business, reasonable business expenses are taken out or deducted, then you're also looking at who's paying for the children's portion only have health insurance and dental insurance. And if there's daycare, if there's any kind of daycare or childcare, what is that and we're looking at each of these in a monthly amount, what is the monthly amount, you can do it in an annual amount, but most people will do it monthly. So you input those numbers, and then dependent on how much time each of you have for overnights with the children, that's what's going to determine what child support is. So if you have more time with the kids, if one parent has more time with the kids, like let's say 70%, the other parent has 30% or 6040, then that person who has the higher percentage of time with the kids is going to get more child support than if they have 5050. And that's just because there's an adjustment in the calculator that will look at how much parenting time each parent has. And then the obligor or the person having to pay child support. Get some kind of a reduction or deduction, parenting time adjustment in that calculator. So it's this, it's this program that figures out how much child support one party is supposed to pay the other. And it it's all dependent on, like I said, parenting time and incomes and all of that. Now, parents can decide to do something different then that if they have 5050, for instance, maybe they're like, Well, we both earn a lot of money. We don't really need child support, per se, but we've got to figure out how to pay for the kids expenses. There are other ways of looking at Child support is what I'm trying to say. So that's why an attorney is really important to kind of bring into the picture and say, Oh, how are we going to look at child support most common and how the law would do it or the judge College would be that calculator. But you need to know that part of child support law is not extracurricular expenses. And if any one of you have small children or high school or middle school kids, you know, that's the most expensive part of raising a child are the things like hockey expenses or dance, you know, competitive dance. All of those expenses are not part of what we're looking at when we're looking at the child support calculator. So if the two of you come to an agreement, how to pay for those things, then that is in addition to the child support that's being paid. Also, part of the child support is looking at any kind of unreimbursed medical dental expenses of the kids like, co pays prescriptions, those kinds of things, is also additional child support.

That's I mean, child support, it sounds simplistic, it's really not, it's pretty complicated, but it's a little bit easier than the second part of cash flow, which is spousal maintenance. Oh, that one is fraught with lots and lots of issues and problems. And there is, first, there's the law that says who's entitled to get spousal maintenance doesn't just mean because I've been married and somebody I've been married five years, and somebody makes 200,000, and somebody makes 80,000 doesn't just mean right away, because somebody makes more than the other that there would necessarily be any kind of spousal maintenance. So first of all, you have to determine if you meet the factors to even look at whether or not spousal maintenance would be part of your pace. And if you do, then it kind of come in, I'm simplifying this, it's anything but simple. There is no calculator. So this is just attorneys or financial people helping you figure out how to get the amount of spousal maintenance, but you're looking at after somebody is entitled to it, you're looking at somebody's ability to pay. And somebody need, the ability to pay is and the need, we're both looking at what are both of your incomes? And what are both of your expenses. And that's reasonable expenses looking, you can also look at the standard of living you had during the marriage. And once you figure out what that need is for somebody meaning the obligation, the one who would get spousal maintenance, then you're trying to figure out what's the amount? So what's the amount we're looking at, based on that person's need? So if their income doesn't, doesn't meet their expenses, or doesn't cover their expenses, then there's a need? And what is that need? Then the next step and spousal maintenance, when you determine there's a need? How long is it going to go for? So what's the duration going to be? And also what is the amount going to be so a mountain duration is what it kind of comes down to. There's many factors that get you there. And and then you're also talking about is it going to be temporary spousal maintenance, something that helps somebody get back on their feet, whether it's through education or some training, or just help them get back on their feet so that they can meet their own needs? Or is it going to be permanent, permanent doesn't necessarily mean until someone dies, the obligor dies, it could mean until that person retires or no longer has income, that would be able to cover their needs as well as their spouses needs. So permanent maintenance just means a longer period of time, it more than likely means you've been married a pretty long period of time. So all of those are things you'd have to go over with your attorney to win. It's it's a really complicated area, extremely complicated. So it's very helpful to sit down and, and understand with your attorney, what it is that your attorney is going to be looking for from you. And what it is that the other side's gonna want to see to.

Wow, that was really good. And that was for me. That was the issue. Our kids were not minors anymore. And that was the issue that got really, we got really stuck on.

Wow. So you know what, it's like Barb. I mean, you know how tough that area is. And you, you know, it's rare that you see the person whose needs to pay like in your case, oh, sure. Barbie, spousal maintenance, I'm gonna pay her. You know, it's rare that you see that so nobody really wants to pay spousal maintenance, but there's definitely a need Like, in your case, long term marriage, kids were growing up and you still needed support. So it's, boy, that's an area that's tough. And it's tough for both sides, you know?

Because I know now there would, there are women that are asked to, you know, I'm dating myself. It's their responsibility to provide spousal maintenance to their ex. Yeah,

I just finished a case like that. I'm just wrapping one up where the wife in the case makes a lot more than her husband and her husband hasn't worked for years and years near squat was home with the children, and then just never really got back to work because his wife made so much money. So it's tough. And trust me, women don't like painted any more than men do. But you are right, you are seeing more and more of that.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And the last one of the big three letter is property. So yeah, the properties to my property?

Well, in property is, people always think, Oh, easy, this is super easy. You're just dividing everything up. It's not that easy. Trust me property we're looking at when we're looking at a division we're looking at. How do you divide up what you've incurred or accrued during your marriage. So that means debt, credit card debt, loans, mortgages, as well as all the things you have like your house, retirement plans, bank accounts, investment accounts, cars, you know, you name it, some people bring in personal property, I always say to people try to divide that on your own, keep your attorneys out of that, unless it's something of tremendous value, like artwork, or something that really might have some value to it. But property is really another area that can be fraught with a lot of issues. You know, I say to people, you look at how long you've been married, you look at the date you got married, and the date that that we at some point, you're going to look at your valuation date, when we kind of take that snapshot in time of what each of your assets is worth. You look at that period of time. And that's what's marital. And that's what is typically divided, we call it equitably. But a lot of times you'll see that the courts divide that or most of the time 5050. It's a little more complicated. Of course, you know you love when I say that, but it is because somebody might say, well, I inherited money. Grandma left me a bunch of money, or property or something during the marriage. So is that marital? No, I said, it has to be and you've got to remember this. It's anything accrued during the marriage with marital assets, marriage or marital income. So if you're earning money during the marriage than that, and you're putting money in retirement, or you're purchasing a house from your income during the marriage, that would be a marital asset. If grandma now left you an inheritance, and you've kept that money separate, it might be in its own account, you haven't commingle it with marital money, or you put that money toward the down payment on the house, and you can prove it, then you might have what's called a non marital interest where you can programa left me 100 grand, I put it into our house. And here are the steps that show that I inherited that money, here's the will, I got the check. I put it into my XYZ bank account. And then I wrote my check from XYZ and made it out to the mortgage, you know, something is that's a very simple example. But that would be you'd be able to probably prove that you had a non marital interest in your house then because it came from inheritance money. You know, very simple and I wish most cases were this simple. As you inherit, you inherit money and it goes into an account just in your name. And you never put your own income in there. You never put any marital money in there. Gee, that one's easy. You rarely see that kind of scenario. But gee, that one's easy, where you can prove Yep, grandma's left me this money. I put it in, you know, ABC account, and now it's still sitting there. So that all in all could be proven to be a marital account. There's other things that non marital issues become very complicated. It's when you have an account and you start putting in marital money. It's like your income and you're commingling it or you have a 401k When you get married, and your 401k when you got married was 10,000 And now you're getting getting a divorce and it's worth 100,000. Well, if you can prove that you had your 401k, and the balance of it when you got married, then that 10,000 Probably will have appreciated some. So you have to, we have to figure that out. What's the appreciation on that 10,000. And then, of course, a big chunk of your 401k, potentially as marital because you accrued the rest of it while you were married. So there's all kinds of things you have to look at.

Other parts it gets even more complicated in property divisions are things like, somebody works for a big corporation, and they get stock, they get stock options, or restricted stock or, you know, cash incentives, something like that during the marriage. And how do you how do you treat that. So if you get stock options, portion of those options might be marital meaning you received them when you were married, but they vested or they're going to vest after the marriage. So a portion of those stock options could be marital. And a portion could be looked at as non marital. It's it is stock options, restricted stock, all of those things can get extremely complicated. But again, it's why you go to an attorney or, you know, your attorneys often reach out to financial people to figure all that out as well. But debt, student loans typically are non marital meaning they go with the person that incurred them for their for their education, but there could be a marital portion of a student loan. So you were married, you went to school, but you weren't working because you were going to school. So you took out $10,000 And you paid every month for a while your rent or your mortgage, or you paid for groceries, so a portion of that student loan, if you can borrow that could be marital. But most of the time student loans, we look at our for tuition, books, those things that would typically be something that's non marital goes with the person that that went to school and took out those student loans. People sometimes want to fight over personal property, and I tell people just don't do it. You know, you go to court, a car could do a number of things. They could either say, Okay, you're each going to take turns. spouse, one gets to pick the first thing spouse to the second, your alternate every time. Or a court could say we're gonna have a sale, they're gonna sell everything. So you just you, you want to resolve those things. And it's not worth attorneys fees for your attorney to be helping you divide up assets, because we attorneys see often that if you ended up having a garage sale and selling the stuff, it's not what you bought the property for the personal property. So you went out and bought a very expensive piece of furniture furniture. Gabbert and let's say it was a $10,000 Whatever sectional, that is not what it's worth at the time you got divorced, unless you literally just purchased it. And then even probably not usually things or garage sale value. So you can imagine, you know, if you've ever had a garage sale, it's hard to people want personal property for nothing practically. So I'm trying to think of anything else, Barb that a lot of things come up and property off it is well, do I have to sell my house? Not necessarily. Not necessarily the house. If you two can reach an agreement, somebody can keep the house but then you have to figure out, well, there's equity in the house, my spouse might be entitled to or would be entitled probably to a portion of that equity. If it's all marital, then they would be entitled to half of that equity. And how are you going to pay that person know what they're owed. So that's all part of the divorce too. So this area, while it sounds like it's super simple, it's not. The other thing I just said this is kind of important, Barb. Some things are more liquid, like bank accounts, investment accounts or more. You can liquidate them, so you could get cash out of them. But if somebody says, Well, I'm going to keep all the equity in the house and my spouse is going to keep all the retirement plans. That's not apples to apples because your retirement plan plans typically are pre tax. So there's some tax effect to that too. So when you're looking at property division, there can be tax implications that also need to be looked at. So it's kind of complicated. Unfortunately.

I love that all three of these things All three of the big three. They weren't like they sound simple, but they're not. They sound simple, but they're not. And that's why you need an attorney, to know somebody who really understands why it's not simple. Because on the surface, it looks one way. But when you go deeper, it's it's not bad at all.

That's a really good way of putting it on the surface. You know, common sense. People think, Oh, this is simple. This shouldn't be difficult. We could figure this all out ourselves. When you start digging in, it's like an onion, you start peeling back the layers, it gets more and more complicated in our law is complicated. And you don't want to all of a sudden go through a divorce and think you can do it all on your own. And then at the end, come back and say, hey, you know, call me up afterwards. Hey, Jennifer, I need help. We're divorce this, we did everything ourselves. We and now I have some questions or No, I think this isn't right or something and my decree shouldn't isn't written the way I thought it should be written, or that we agreed to well, property settlements are final. So you want to make sure you do it right the first time because that the final, you can't go back and all of a sudden open up your divorce decree afterwards, make changes on things. And other things like custody, parenting time, child support, spousal maintenance, while you might be able to modify those things in some way, it's very difficult. There's laws that you have to meet, in order to be able to even modify something, and sometimes you can't. So that first shot at your divorce, you better make sure it's done the way the way it should be done to begin with. And I really important to say this. Please don't say I want my divorce to be fair. Because no divorce is necessarily fair, what's fair to you is not necessarily fair to your spouse. So really kind of change your mindset and look at it as being reasonable. Everybody's going to have to give in some way, nobody's going to get absolutely everything they want. Because that's typically not a reasonable divorce.

Wow, that was really important. That was really important, especially for those of us who are nice girls and want everything to know be nice. Right? That just shifts it. I like that that's that reasonable is a much more workable word to use.

That's so true. So true.

This was so much great information. And she's got more to share. Jennifer has a lot more to share, but our time is just about up. So you have to tune in again, we're gonna have her back as quickly as possible to share some more really important valuable helpful, legal information. But first, I want to have her tell you how to get in touch with her how to contact her. We were trying to figure that out earlier.

You know, you don't you don't tend to email yourself too often or, or look at your own website, but you can email me anytime. And my email is Beckman B EC K ma N Steen SS and Sarah T as in Tom, E. N as in Nancy. So Beckman steen@comcast.net. And if you want to see anything more about me, you can go to our website, which is Backman hyphen steen.com. So backbend hyphen, Steen calm and you should be able to find us that way. And you know what, we still talk to people on the phone. So you could call me at 952-938-3411. And the weird thing is BB, if you talk to me, what, a year ago, two years ago, I wouldn't be saying this, but we are meeting with people, you still can come into my office, by the way, but we're meeting with people via zoom. Also. So that's always going to be something will continue, even if when I'm not gonna say if when people are Maxine each other all the time, we are always going to be available via zoom.

That's really nice. And that's really nice. And we will put that information in our notes too in the podcast notes, Episode notes, so you can find them there. But this was I love listening to you talking mate, you're so real and you're so down to earth. And if I just your wealth of information, if this was a joy, this is a joy.

And thank you, Barb, and I can't say enough about you too. So