Beyond the Break: Transforming Divorce into Unity with Rabbi Avi Kahan
De-escalating High-Conflict Divorce: A Rabbi's Perspective on Finding Peace
Rabbi Avi Kahan joins Seth Nelson and Pete Wright to explore how de-escalation techniques and cultural sensitivity can help families reach sustainable resolutions during divorce. As a mediator handling complex religious and cultural divorce cases, Rabbi Kahan brings unique insights into managing high-conflict situations and helping couples transition from being spouses to successful co-parents.
The conversation delves deep into how fear and conflict often mask deeper emotional struggles during divorce. Seth and Pete explore with Rabbi Kahan how the legal system's focus on "fairness" can sometimes escalate tensions, while religious and cultural perspectives might offer alternative paths to resolution. They discuss how divorce doesn't actually separate parents—it unifies them in a new way as co-parents, requiring them to articulate a new future together for their children's sake.
Questions we answer in this episode:
How can you de-escalate high-conflict divorce situations?
What role does "fairness" really play in divorce proceedings?
How can religious perspectives help in understanding divorce as transformation rather than failure?
Key Takeaways:
Focus on living your life, not your divorce—don't let temporary legal proceedings define your actions
De-escalation often requires helping both parties want the divorce, not just need it
Court litigation can force parents to suppress their authentic selves, potentially harming children
The episode offers valuable insights for anyone navigating a contentious divorce, especially those dealing with cultural or religious complexities. Rabbi Kahan's perspective on viewing divorce as a unifying rather than separating force provides a fresh framework for approaching this challenging life transition.
Links & Notes
Visit Rabbi Avi Kahan on the web, Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube
Got a question you want to ask on the show? Click here!
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Pete Wright:
Welcome to How to Split a Toaster, a Divorce Podcast about saving your relationships from TruStory FM. Today, how do you de-escalate a toaster?
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show everybody. I'm Seth Nelson, and as always, I'm here with my good friend, Pete Wright. Today we're talking about family conflict and the tools that can bring the temperature down. Rabbi Avi Kahan joins us to explore how de-escalation, communication and cultural sensitivity mediation, can lead families to fair, sustainable resolutions, even when it feels like everything is on fire. Rabbi Avi, welcome to The Toaster.
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
Hey, thanks. Thanks guys for having me. Very excited to be here.
Pete Wright:
Our first rabbi. I'm pretty excited about that. 10 seasons.
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
I hope I don't ruin it for the other rabbis.
Pete Wright:
For all of the rabbis, right the pressure is on.
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
For anyone who identifies as the rabbi, I'm sorry.
Pete Wright:
We are very excited to have you here. We're talking about de-escalation and I would like to open the floor with a little bit about the art of de-escalation in contentious situations. How do you end up in the role of thinking so hard about de-escalation in high-conflict scenarios? And give us a little background there.
Seth Nelson:
on a second. Hold on, rabbi, before you answer, this is a rabbi. He has conflict between God and the devil, and you're asking how he does de-escalation in high-conflict questions. What are they? It doesn't get any more high-conflict than that.
Pete Wright:
I speak only from my ignorance, I apologize.
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
By the way, you should know one of the coolest things about Judaism with conflict is that there's this idea that's brought down in what we call the Torah, what the Catholics call the Old Testament who the name Jacob came, it was an individual who was a deceiver. The idea was he was the younger brother. He should have not inherited it. He should have not been considered the son of his father and the grandson of his grandfather. Should have gone to his brother, but with deception, he got it and he was wrestling with that idea. The verse says that he was alone and he met God or he met the angel of God and they got in a physical altercation, whatever that means. And during that physical altercation ... And this is what it says in Genesis, during that physical altercation, he grabbed onto God or the angel of God and he wouldn't let go. Jacob. And God said, "Why aren't you letting go?" And he says, "I want you to bless me. I want you to tell me something true about me." And God said, "Well, your name shouldn't be Jacob, your name should be Israel because you're the individual who struggles with God." The name Israel is the wrestler with God.
Pete Wright:
Struggle with God. Oh my goodness.
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
So that's the name Israel. The land of Israel is the land of those who are struggling with God because yeah, I'm not saying you're supposed to de-escalate the situation. There are some Jews who are like, "Okay, God, you don't really care. We don't really have to be observant." That's more of a de-escalation maybe. But conflict, yeah, conflicts is inherent in Judaism.
Pete Wright:
Well, we're talking about de-escalation in the interpersonal space and when we're dealing with people who are living where conflict is at its peak where emotions are high and stakes are high and they are blind to the rational approach of peaceful reconciliation. What does de-escalation actually look like in time?
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
I came about de-escalation more as a coping or a survival mechanism into my mediation firm. Because we were getting cases of people coming in from mission and they were so adversarial and emotional that there was no way for us to accomplish our job. And if we don't accomplish our job, either we don't get paid or we get a bad reputation. So if you get someone who is going to mediation because the judge said go to mediation, but they have no interest in mediating, they're using actually the mediation to escalate, to use that as an opportunity to continue having conversations that their spouse doesn't want to have anymore. Why did you leave me or what do you have against me? So de-escalation was like a coping mechanism. How is my firm going to survive if divorce is escalating? If I was a lawyer and I would be into litigation, I would be in the business of escalating things and my colleagues who are lawyers are great at escalating situations. A case comes to them and they tell them, you think your husband is just verbally abusive, he's really physically abusive, or you think this and they escalate and they're in the business for that. They make a lot of money. There are lawyers who make really a lot of money on escalation.
Seth Nelson:
That's what we call bad lawyering. Let's be very clear for the record.
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
I don't know if in the matrimonial world that's considered bad lawyering. Sadly, I think those are the good lawyers in the matrimonial world. Those who litigate their divorce in court are doing something that really makes no sense. What are you doing? This is the spouse. Your spouse is the father or mother of your child. What you think a judge knows better for your children than you and your spouse could come out together? The whole thing makes no sense.
Seth Nelson:
Oh, rabbi, listen, I agree with you a hundred percent. I think that the worst place to solve a family conflict is in a court of law. Now the whole system in every 50 states sets up adversarial proceedings. It has a V, someone versus someone else know versus someone else. So with that, we're stuck with it. And I'm with you. I will do everything I can to try to resolve a case, and a lot of that has to do with trying to get my client to resolve the case because it takes two to say yes. But if not, then you go to court and you have to put on the rules of evidence, apply them and put in the evidence. But when you're de-escalating in a mediation, how do you do that?
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
I believe ... And this could be totally, totally incorrect. But I really believe that the escalation and de-escalation of especially a matrimonial matter is because the parties are on two different sides of what they want happening. If both parties want to get their wants right, they both fell out of love with each other, they both found somebody else. They both have a stable income to be able to provide for themselves. The kids are happy in their local public school. Everyone's just going with each other within 10 minutes to mediate and drafting up an agreement on their own and just having someone filed for $400. The second the parties are in two different places in life. One is going to carry a resentment.
Let's take a religious case because I deal with a lot of religious cases. Let's take a case of a Catholic family where the wife leaves the husband and the husband feels betrayed. An oath that they took to their Lord and savior. How can you call yourself religious anymore, he thinks about her. How can you tell me you're going to bring up our kids with the proper value? You left something that's so sacred to our religion. Those divorces, you could try to de-escalate them, but the people aren't fighting. They're using their religion to fight. When you use a religion to fight ... You could kill people in the name of religion. Look what's going on in the world right now. People are killing each other for the name of a religion. Once that comes in, it only gives opportunity to escalate.
One of the things that I realized ... And this is something that I'm trying to do not only with my clients but with other clients that I've interacted with, is how do you get both people to want to be in the situation they're in? So most people get divorced, one spouse wants to and one spouse needs to. The initiator usually might need to also because of abuse or other things, they might not want to get divorced, but they might need to. But could you ultimately get them to want to get divorced? You see what you need to do you don't want to do what you want to do. You don't need to do. Now what's the process to want to get divorced? That's therapeutic. That's like in order to want to do what you're doing in life, the [inaudible 00:08:32] that you need to do to get there is once in a lifetime opportunity. I don't know if you get this opportunity ever again, if not divorce. Divorce could be the only thing that you should do because you want to and not because you need to.
Seth Nelson:
It's interesting you say that rabbi, because part of me getting clients to resolution, I've never looked at it the way you're describing. The way I've looked at it with them is say, "Do you want to feel the way you feel now two years from now?" And the answer is no. So well, if that's the case, you got to get the ball rolling and the only way to get the ball rolling is to get the ball rolling. Let's take the first step. Let's move ahead. Whatever analogy you want to use. And then early on everyone tells me about their spouse and how awful they are and all these other things, but they don't tell me about themselves and they're my client. So I talk to them about where they are and get the basic facts, but more importantly, I talk to them about where are they trying to go? What does their life look like two years from now? And if you get them focused in the future in how we get there from where we are now, that's a way to potentially want to get divorced because you want to have a different life and the only way you're going to get that different life is to get that divorce.
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
Yeah. Could we agree that the only reason to get divorced is to make life better post-divorce than pre-divorce? That's the only reason to get divorced. You want life to be better post-divorce than before divorce, but for some odd reason, so many people's lives are way worse post-divorce than pre-divorce. They're in court for six, seven years. I could tell you cases that I still don't believe. I think I make them up when I say them. 10 years. Millions of dollars of legal fees for nothing. To split a baby. By the time the judge is going to rule, the baby's going to be mature enough to go to therapy themselves and not talk to any of the parents. It's ironic. It's a form of a miracle to try to understand what's going on in divorce court. It makes no sense. It makes no sense. It makes zero sense our divorce court system just ... I don't know of an alternative, but it makes no sense.
Pete Wright:
Well, isn't the trick. I think what's really interesting about it is that we've got this ... When you're looking at individual human motivation, the one who wants to get divorced is intrinsically motivated to move this forward. And changing the person who needs to get a divorce to have a motivation that isn't recalcitrant, that isn't just resentment has to come from somewhere else. I like how Seth ... I like how you frame it saying let's use that motivation two years down the road when you feel better. And yet here we are figuring out how to split a baby. We don't advocate splitting babies. At no point do we advocate splitting babies, and yet here we are finding things to fight about even when our motivations could line up. We're figuring out how to ratchet up conflict that may not be ... I guess I'm hypothesizing here. That may not be directly related to the fact that our pre-divorce situation is horrible. It may be indirectly related to that, and we're using it as a proxy battle, whether we're using our stuff, a painting that we supposedly both really like, a baby, our religion, our culture, whatever, they're all proxy battles for the eventuality of divorce. And I want to know how you go about decompressing the proxy battle in a contentious litigation or a contentious mediation.
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
You're a hundred percent correct. I look at it the same way that you look at it. I never looked at what people are fighting about as really what they're fighting about. It could all be honest. People don't have an emotional vocabulary to the level to articulate the words they even want to articulate when they're going through a divorce. So everything is being used and if you focused on what's being used, you're focusing on the wrong thing. You're not focusing on what matters. So they might have some physical thing that they're fighting about, which is if the kids should get a vaccine or not, but they're really fighting about something more metaphysical that they themselves might not know that they're fighting about. That means they wake up in the morning upset. I have this post-divorce ... Very often post-divorce, like we get a call from the husband six weeks later, the wife held back a visitation and he's like, "Oh, well, it says in our agreement every visit that she's hold back $20 goes to legal fees." And it's like, "Okay. You understand that she's trying to communicate with you something?" Maybe, maybe not, but maybe she's trying to communicate something. The question is how do you want to respond to that communication?
Maybe she's communicating with herself. She's like, "Was I the stupid person who left him or did he actually have a frustration issue? You know what? Let me trigger that frustration. Let me see how he responds and let me validate to myself that it was actually a good reason to leak." Maybe that's what they're looking for and don't give it to them. Don't validate what they're trying.
Seth Nelson:
You can only control how you respond. And Pete, to your point and what the rabbi is saying is the proxy battles is the way you avoid them. Mechanisms that I use is we write down what your goals are. So no one comes to me and says, "My number one goal is to get that painting." No one says that. They might say, "There's an art collection that's really important to me," and that's if it's not kids. But otherwise, number one goal is the kids. So if you write down the top three to five goals of what they're trying to accomplish and you can get three out of five, four out of five, whatever it is, then by the time you get to 12 and they're arguing about the painting, you get to go back to them and say, "Listen, we're well past our goals."
Pete Wright:
Yeah. We're in gravy territory.
Seth Nelson:
We're playing with house money here. Don't overreach and go for the painting and then go for goal number 15 and 16 because you still haven't resolved your case and you don't want them to pull back and say, "You know what? I'm not giving you goal number one, two, and three anymore." So that those smaller in quotes items on your list, once you get your top goals, let them go. Move on.
Pete Wright:
I want to pivot a little bit to a conversation on something I think we hear a lot in divorce cases, in contentious divorce cases. And I wonder if it's a practical solution and that is fairness. Is there ever a situation where de-escalation leads down a road where everybody agrees it's fair?
Seth Nelson:
I've been doing this a long time in Florida. The family law court is one of law where you go by the statutes and the case law in equity. What's fair? What's equitable. To this day I don't know what a fair agreement is. Now I've done thousands of them because I think fairness is like beauty. It's in the eyes of the beholder and you're always looking at from different angles. So I try to get my clients away from fairness. And the reason I do that is because the law is not fair. The law is not equitable. There's a lot of stuff wrong in our statutes. There's a lot of stuff wrong in the case law that when you look at it, you're like, "Seriously? How did this happen?" And what they say in the law is bad facts makes bad law. There were bad facts, the judge ruled. Someone was thought the judge made a mistake, they went up on appeal. The appellate judges didn't really understand the issue, let's say, or they just got poor oral arguments. Whatever. And now we got a bad law and now you got to try to figure out how to get around it or change in the legislature, which might take five to 10 years.
So I get away from fairness and I say, "Look, in the real world, I would agree with you, that is 'fair', but I'm stuck in the legal world and they don't match up. They just don't." So if I can keep them in the legal world and say, "Here's what a judge can do from A to B, C, or D in this scenario," I can get it pretty narrow. Maybe it's just B or C, but the judge might get it wrong and we might be talking about Z and we're way down the alphabet. So that's how I deal with when people say it's not fair. I'm like, "You're right." I just agree.
Pete Wright:
because their expectation is fairness. And the law, once again, this is a terrific case of the law using words that don't mean what the outcome is. When equitable distribution doesn't feel equitable at the end.
Seth Nelson:
Right. Because here's the deal, you get a house Pete that's worth $500,000 and paid off, your wife gets cash of 500,000. Your wife might say, "That's not fair." Why not? It's equitable. It's both the same value, but he gets to stay in the house with the kids and I got to go get a new one. That's not fair. So there's always something else. So how do you measure it? Is it by value? Is it by sentimental attachment? Well, how are we going to measure that?
Pete Wright:
Which is exactly what I'm getting at, which is those are the things that I feel like can ratchet up conflict in this process of if everybody's working toward a thing that isn't possible and yet our emotional drive is toward ultimately I'm going to get what's mine, because of the nature of the way the law is structured, we can't do that. And leading to more and more contentious sort of relationships.
Seth Nelson:
Do you get that rabbi? Do you get that where people say it's not fair? And how do you deal with that?
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
What you're saying makes perfect sense. The law is not always fair. I think what people mean when they say the word fair sometimes they mean, could I survive on this? Is it fair to ask a human to live like this? Sometimes you'll have either somebody who's getting very little child support and now they don't know what to do. They don't have the degree or the possibility of getting more and they don't have the capabilities and they're overwhelmed. Or sometimes you have somebody now who has to make enough income now for two households and only sees his kids at a certain amount of time. And it's like, is it fair to humanity to ask someone to live like this? That's what I understand when people say fair. And one of the things that I realized ... I know this is almost impossible to ask from people. But I saw this arbitration firm that was built in Europe, in the Ukraine in probably the late 1700s, early 1800s while America was being built and the legal system in America was being built. Someone over there who was in the arbitration firm, and they did hundreds of cases over there of settling and ruling on divorces. He wrote a letter of what he wants everybody to say, pre-arbitration hearing and post-arbitration hearing. And it went like this, a very peculiar idea.
It said, "What we're doing today is to unify what should be to what is. And the way we're going to do that is we're going to unify the husband and wife to ultimately fix the father and mother with passion and with love in the name of God." That's what it said. After doing a lot of research to what it possibly meant was like this. People think of a divorce as a separation, hence the word divorce. It's like you're separating. And the Christians already taught us what God put together, no one could separate. It's a good question. The Catholic Church asked a very new question about divorce. In Matthew 19 Jesus told his students, you can't get divorced. Genesis says what God put together. How can you divorce destiny? It was a real good religious question. And Jesus said, "Well, don't look at the Jews and the Israelites." That Moses commanded them of divorce because they were in the desert. They just came out of slavery from Egypt. They were a bunch of rats who didn't know how to be civilized and men were killing their wives. So Moses instituted divorce to be the lesser of two evils. But now that we're in a Messianic era, we can't get divorced.
That became the main idea behind the church. You can't get divorced. In certain Catholic communities you're asked to leave the church if you get divorced. What's the answer to it? What's the answer to the Catholic Church? And I think the answer is that divorce doesn't separate. It unifies you. This father and mother couldn't get along as husband and wife. They couldn't. They couldn't be the best version of father and mother. And the best version of Father and mother is by being the best husband and wife and being the giver and the receiver and having relationships together is the best way to be a father and mother. And they weren't doing it great. So we need to revisit the relationship of husband and wife to fix the father and mother. That's what we need to do. And divorce is a unification between the husband and wife as a divorced family. It's not like we're letting go and we're annulling what happened and we're saying it was a mistake. It's we're picking a new type of future. Divorce is a positive thing.
Look, marriage doesn't need a marriage agreement, but divorce needs a divorce agreement. It's writing the future. When you get married, you don't have to write the future. You can make it up as you go when you get divorced, you have to articulate the future because you weren't successful in articulating the future as a married couple. It's meant to get the couple closer, not further.
Seth Nelson:
Well, it's interesting you say that, rabbi, because what we say all the time is husbands and wives get divorced, but parents do not.
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
Yeah. I found that. You ever heard of the religious mystical book called the Zohar?
Seth Nelson:
I have not.
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
You Google it. It's one of the oldest books of mysticism that ever existed. Like most of the Carl Jung psychoanalytic comes from the Zohar. It's a real deep mystical book. In the beginning it says these words, fathers and mothers are two best friends that nobody could separate. And what does it mean? Of course, you can't ... You can't divorce a father and mother. You could divorce the husband and wife. Why? To fix the father and other.
Seth Nelson:
I could have written that book, Pete. I've been saying that for years.
Pete Wright:
I was just going to say we need to do some rebranding of the firm at this point.
Seth Nelson:
I'm feeling very strongly that-
Pete Wright:
Exactly.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
But no, that's exactly right. And when you can focus on the kids, which is hard. We talk about this all the time on the show, is that none of this is easy because you get trapped into your own perceptions, your own views. Some of them might be absolutely correct. I'm not saying your perceptions are wrong. What I'm saying is though, when you start focusing on the other person and not just focusing on yourself. When you have to constantly deal with the negativity in choosing how to do that is the only thing you control. Look, life is about 95 or 5% what happens to you and 95% how you deal with it. But when you're going through a divorce and you're scared and you're worried about the money and your standard of living, and can your kids stay in the private school or can they no longer do extracurriculars or hey, you're used to nice things, people like nice things, and you're used to getting a new car that's on a lease every three years, but now you might have to buy a used car and hold on to it for 10. That's a legitimate reason to feel fear because we get used to certain standards of living. Don't discount that and just say it's okay.
It's about what do we do next? What else can we give up if you want to keep the car? Where are you willing to sacrifice? Where might you have to sacrifice? Are you going to be house poor because you wanted to stay in the house, but they got the retirement account? So you're living on your retirement, it's your house, you'll sell it one day. Or do you want to say, "You know what, I'll move into a smaller house because I want to keep the retirement for my future." So there's all these choices you have to make. And if you're one that hasn't dealt with the finances, it's freaking scary because it's the unknown and people always assume the worst in the unknown. It's human nature.
Pete Wright:
Well, I think too, Seth, part of what you're asking, especially to go back to our earlier language, if you're the one who needs to get a divorce, taking on all these roles is really asking someone to change a part of their own identity, to change the way they know themselves. And that may be the hardest thing that we do as human beings is to learn to introduce ourselves to ourselves again and figure out who we are in a new reality. And that obviously leads to great fear, uncertainty, doubt, and also reality. Eventually, time does what it needs to do, and we have to embrace this new future us. But I can see so clearly how the journey to that new reality is just being backed into corner after corner, after corner after corner and being asked to change through absolute struggle and fear. And that's a part that feels to me like I'm not connected anymore to my better self. It's reactionary. It's lack of agency. It's I'm being inflicted upon.
Seth Nelson:
The lack of agency in control is probably one of the biggest factors of driving because when you get divorced, you're stuck in that process until either you reach an agreement with your spouse or the court decides. None of that you have complete control over. It's literally handed over to third parties. Now you're part of it. If your spouse is giving you what I would say a reasonable offer ... And what I mean by that is one that might happen in court. You have to seriously think about doing that. And if you say no, well you have agency there, but you won't feel like it because you won't think that offer is fair. You'll find all the flaws and there'll be lots of flaws because it's not fair. That's not what the court's about. So with all that, I agree with you. It's that lack of control piled on with the lack of uncertainty in the future and the fear of not having finances or not seeing your kids and how that's going to impact them. And that creates the conflict and what people miss is the conflict is actually the worst out of all those things.
And so to de-escalate and get through the process as quickly as possible, which some cases we get done quickly because people give us the documents, we need some cases, it takes us a year to get the documents we need and all that. And all the stuff that goes on in 365 days when we're just arguing about documents is very stressful for people.
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
Yeah. I agree with both of you guys. I think the conflict is like what you're saying, it's to hide behind the fear. I think the body's afraid of fear. It could wreck our system. It could traumatize us. And if I could regurgitate that fear through conflict or causing a conflict, it might calm down my body a little bit. It's like I was going to the gym. So a lot of people use escalation as a coping mechanism. Like it's sad sometimes you could sit in a room and you could see somebody pain, like real pain. You could see somebody are in real pain and they're escalating a conflict because they can't cope without it. There's no coping mechanism.
Take for example, someone who's being alienated from their children. That fear must be ... There must be nothing worse than that fear. It's probably from the top five fears that could exist. Will I be cut off from my children? That fear probably is anxiety driven to a crazy, crazy, crazy way. And any coping mechanism for that anxiety will be unhealthy. If it's going to be a substance that's going to be unhealthy to do. If it's going to be drinking, if it's going to be anger, if it's going to be litigation, whatever it is. So someone who gets alienated, the first thing they do is hire a lawyer, go to court, say, "Well, my spouse is alienating." These are escalations of conflict that you the batter needs to do sometimes. And the question is there another coping mechanism more healthy, healthier for the body? But you don't have to escalate. I think it's a big mistake people who go right away to litigate when they're dealing with an alienation case because either what's going to happen is you're going to win and the judge is going to take away the children from one spouse. Children need both parents.
I'm going to jump for something. I'm sorry. This is something I'm thinking about For a really, really long time, I studied Carl Jung for a lot of my life. I really, really, really am petrified of his work. It's scary what he writes about humanity and the brain. And one thing he writes over and over and over about is the kids that end up becoming bad children are from parents who suppress their dark side. Does that make sense? If dad has a certain bad character to them and he suppresses it, it's going to go into the child in a way that the child doesn't know how to deal with it. They never saw their father deal with that negative, let's call it behavior.
Divorced parents or in litigation have to block their shadow from their children. They have to do that because it's going to be used against them and therefore litigation in court is itself harmful for children. It will cause the next generation ... I have it saved, the quote I think, and I want to read it here. The son becomes a thief and the daughter a prostitute because the father would not take on his shadow. It's here in the imperfection of human nature. His children were therefore compelled to live out the dark side, which he had ignored. It's like you're going to be a good person in front of your children, they'll end up really, really bad. And that's what happens when you go through a divorce that I think something could be used against me. I can't even imagine disciplining my children if I would be divorced.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. Well, I agree with you. When you're going through the divorce process, you certainly feel that you're living under a microscope and anything you do is going to be the end all be all. And what people don't realize ... And we talk a lot about this with our client, is live your life, not your divorce. Live your life, not your divorce. You don't want the tail wagging the dog here. What we mean by that is you're a parent, you're going to make a mistake, but nothing is going to be the end all and be all. In Florida, as we've talked about, Pete, there's 20 different factors that the court looks at and you're going to have thousands of pages of discovery and documents and messages going back, and there isn't one that makes it or breaks it. It's a series of behaviors. And what is the most powerful thing to do when you go to court is talk about, yeah, judge, I'm not the perfect parent. Here's where I can improve. And that just outright vulnerability and honesty in a courtroom goes a long ways with judges.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Because it turns out a lot of judges are Jungian it sounds like. That's exactly it. Let's take off the mask and see who we are as human beings and parents and men and women and be honest about our identity is ... Not to put words in your mouth, rabbi, but it is exactly what it means to face our shadow rather than hide it.
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
Us In New York, it's not like that. By us in New York, if you're out on your best behavior, you could lose your children. If you want to be your true self ... It's so interesting because New York is such a progressive state and most of the judges are very highly educated in sensitivity trainings and it's like allowing people to be their honest, genuine self, but not in divorce court.
Pete Wright:
Not from the bench.
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
Yeah. You want to be your honest, genuine self, which means allow yourself to slip up and learn from your mistakes. That's part of being genuine, learning from your own mistakes, being okay to ... You can't do that if you going through divorce litigation.
Pete Wright:
It gets back to the mediation part though. How much can you do? And I'll say from your perspective, how much do you do to allow people to face this part of themselves in the mediation process and be able to come to terms with the divorce before they have to get to court? How can you subvert that pre-litigation?
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
You're asking The best question, at least from my perspective. It's how to know if a case is mediatable, if that's a correct word. How to know. So it's really you don't know. You really don't know. I happen for myself ... I've been doing this for close to 10 years, so I have a few years I had this sixth sense. This case is just this one spouse is using it to hurt the other one. This is not a mediated case. This case is that they're going to settle now, but in three months they're going to make me miserable. This person is going to come back with resentful laughter. And I developed an assessment. It's an AI assessment. It has about 107 questions right now that someone answers and that it shoots me and back to the person, a personality assessment, if they're mediatable, if they should go straight to court, if they're a client that my firm could help. The way it's done, it's done in a politically correct, beautiful way. It doesn't say you're nuts and we don't want accept you. It basically says we couldn't find a mediator right now that would fit with your personality. It says it in a more politically correct way. Or our arbitrators think ... And I'm keep on enhancing it. I probably have over 30 of them done a day right now. I have different judges who make people use it. I have different organizations-
Seth Nelson:
well, there's certainly a benefit to knowing the personality. And that's one of the things with mediation that repeat. I used to mediate hundreds of over a thousands of cases, but over the years I mediate all the time or most of the time. And figuring out the personality is really key. And also if the lawyer is there figuring out knowing the lawyer because that lawyer is going to influence that outcome. Especially if the client has just turned over their process of decision making to the lawyer. That really impacts what's happening. And the lawyer's got to be careful about that because you got to make sure that the lawyer is making the legal decision, giving legal advice and counsel, but the client is the decision maker. So understanding and also where they are within the mediation, that mediation process. Where I used to mediate, I might be two hours in and I could tell you, I know where this case is going to settle. And I'm not trying to influence in any way. I'm just trying to get them to a deal, but I have done so many that I had a pretty narrow range.
Now, six hours later we get there. But it just takes that time to make sure that they feel rightfully so heard. And also they have to have the agency to say, "Yes. They've got the power. I don't have the power as the mediator, I don't have the power as the lawyer. Those are client decisions." And ultimately that's what people need to do is make their own decisions because at the end of the day, they still have to parent with that co-parent. They're still going to have to divide accounts. They're still going to have to move on with their lives. Rarely do people say, "Hey, tell me about the last person you dated when you're out on a date." They will say, "Tell me about your divorce." And you're like, "Why are you asking? Why are we going to invite that in?" But it's just a different kind of aspect of it. That's it's always better if you can make that decision in mediation before mediation and get it done and not have a judge decide.
Pete Wright:
Excellent. There's definitely some new ways to frame some things that we've been talking about on the show for a long time. Rabbi thank you so much for coming and teaching us some stuff. I've got so many Wikipedia pages open for the stuff that you just mentioned. I feel like I've got my next couple of years of research ahead of me already lined up. Where do you want to send people to learn more about you and your work?
Rabbi Avi Kahan:
So my website. And right now I'm trying to go on social media to start branding out there because we do also commercial and family businesses disputes. So my website is vaadhadinvhoraah.com or hadin.org.org. H-A-D-I-N.org for short. Instagram is Vaad hadin V'Horaah. That's where we have our blogs and our information and our new AI. We're trying to create mediation and arbitration through AI. No one really believes it's going to be successful, but we're investing the money and time so let's see.
Seth Nelson:
Nice.
Pete Wright:
Doggedness. That's what it takes. We'll figure it out. That's awesome. We will put all those links in the show notes. For those listening please, please, please check out those show notes and see the good works that Avi and his firm are doing. We'd love to send some traffic that way. And take that AI tool. Give them data. Let's see if you're mediatable. Thank you so much everybody for downloading and listening to this show. Don't forget, you can head over to howtosplitatoaster.com and click that button that says, ask a question. If you want to ask a question, get it on the show. We're back for a new season and we're stacking up questions for our famous listener questions episodes. They are coming. We got a couple of them lined up this season. We're very excited to do those again.
And speaking of AI, don't forget, if you go to the website, there's a little box that says, ask Pete and Seth, you can interview our entire catalog of past episodes. It may be that we've already answered your question. We would love to have you check that tool out and see if it can be of some use to you. So on behalf of Rabbi Avi Kahan and Seth Nelson, America's favorite divorce attorney, I'm Pete Wright, and we'll see you next time right here on How To Split A Toaster: A Divorce Podcast about Saving Your Relationships.
Outro:
How to Split A Toaster is part of the TruStory FM Podcast Network, produced by Andy Nelson, music by T. Bless and the Professionals and DB Studios. Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce & Family Law with offices in Tampa, Florida. While we may be discussing family law topics, How to Split a Toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of NLG Divorce & Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
