From Lawyer to Divorce Coach: Karen's Journey

[Uncle Marv]
Hello, friends. Uncle Marv here with another episode of my Unhealthy Podcast. It's the show where we talk about life and try to live happy.

It's live healthy and be happy. That's how many things I've been doing folks in the last few days. It has been a whirlwind, but we are back.

I've given you a couple of shows already where I said, I will be back with a vengeance and here I am with a guest and I have a new friend of the show. Carrie Covey is in the house and we're going to talk about some interesting stuff. So Karen, welcome to the show.

[Karen Covy]
Thank you for having me, Marv.

[Uncle Marv]
All right.

[Karen Covy]
I'll call you uncle Marv.

[Uncle Marv]
You, you can call me uncle Marv. That works. That's how people know me.

[Karen Covy]
Then that's what I will do. That's the name I will use.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Uh, so we met a while back, uh, at one of these little podcasting mixer events and you had an interesting little title that I thought, Hmm, that's interesting. Um, you were, well, let me start with the fact that you called yourself a recovering attorney.

[Karen Covy]
Mm. Yep.

[Uncle Marv]
And I'm sure you always get asked afterwards, what does that really mean?

[Karen Covy]
What it really means is that I am a lawyer by training and license. I still am a lawyer, but I no longer actively practice law. My business is coaching.

And so I work with people and fill in the gaps that lawyers leave. Um, but that's what a recovering lawyer means, at least what it means in my world. And since I have been a lawyer for more decades than I care to admit to really at this point, the recovering part is a 12 step program.

I keep getting sucked back in every now and then and say no and then coming back. So that's why I'm still in recovery.

[Uncle Marv]
I got you. So when I retire from being an IT guy, I will be a recovering IT guy because people will always ask for my help.

[Karen Covy]
Probably. Yes.

[Uncle Marv]
So the second part of what you talked about, uh, coaching, uh, specifically about divorced.

[Karen Covy]
Yes.

[Uncle Marv]
And so I've never been divorced. And at first I'm thinking, eh, that doesn't mean much to me. However, my wife has, and I thought, well, I've never really asked her about any of that and how the process went and all that stuff from, from my perspective, it appears to have been an amicable divorce.

Uh, she had a son, my stepson now. Um, and they co-parented through all of that. They didn’t seem to have too many fights or stuff, but I know others that have had a divorce and it hasn't been so amicable and I have some family law attorneys as clients and while they don't tell me the gruesome parts of the stories, there are times where I can, I can tell they really want to share some stuff.

[Karen Covy]
Yeah. We do get good stories. I will say that.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. Uh, let me ask this question because what really brought me to have you on the show and, and I'll do a little bit of self, uh, self, uh, discovery for my listeners here. Uh, a few months ago I was at one of my tech conferences and I had a gentleman walk up to me and thank me for doing the unhealthy podcast.

And my first thought was I hadn't told my tech friends about the unhealthy podcast, but he found it. And at the time he was going through a divorce and I had a series, I had actually maybe two different series where we talked about relationships. And he said, that really helped me get through that.

And that was one of the motivations for me to make sure that I got back into doing this unhealthy podcast because you never know who's listening.

[Karen Covy]
Yeah, that's very, very true.

[Uncle Marv]
So that got me to thinking, well, you're a divorce coach, so why not have you on? And, you know, I don't know if he still listens or not, but I'm sure some of my listeners out there, whether they've gone through a divorce or are thinking about a divorce or anything like that. There's all these questions that we always have.

[Karen Covy]
Yes. And the system doesn't work the way most people think it does. It's not intuitive and it's not user-friendly.

So in a tech world, this would be something that you would need someone to help guide you through because it would be like me trying to do something with tech, I would have no clue.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. So from, from the outside looking in, I know that there are these websites that are up now that talk about, Hey, get a divorce. It'll cost you 350 bucks or whatever the number is.

I don't, I don't know. But they make it sound like, yeah, as long as you two go to the courthouse, sign a couple of papers, pay the fee. You're good.

But that's not how most happen, do they?

[Karen Covy]
Uh, no. And those websites, you know, I don't know which ones you're talking about. So I can't of course make a judgment, but I'm a little skeptical.

Let's put it that way because what they lead people to believe is that, Oh, you can get an online divorce. You just pay a fee, fill out a couple of forms, you know, and answer a questionnaire. We'll make a form out of this.

We give it to you, you know, and boom, you're done. And that is not the way it works ever, ever, ever. What they will do is they may spit out documents for you.

Um, but then you have got to figure out how do you file them in court? Where do you go? What do you do?

How do you get a court date? How do you make this work? And Oh, by the way, not to cast dispersions on any of those services.

Um, but as a lawyer, I've seen the documents that they produce. There's no lawyer on the planet that will put their name on that. I mean, there, if you, if you're young, you've got a really short marriage, no kids, no property divide to divide.

How badly could you screw it up? Right? It's not that bad.

Okay. The paperwork isn't perfect, but it's probably good enough. But if you've got anything at stake, anything you care about, then it's worth spending a few dollars to get a lawyer, to do the paperwork properly for you and give you the quality that you need.

Now, in a few more years, like every year with AI and with everything that's involved, you know, all the technology that's coming into every space, those documents are going to get better and better and better. Um, but for, as of today in 2025, they're not the quality most people would want. I'll leave it at that.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. And the, the part of divorce that I've seen in dealing with my attorney clients is the whole financial affidavit portion, where if you are at a point where you have assets and whether they're substantial or not, if they mean something to you, you've got to come up with a way to, to deal with that. And there's always, there's always a little discovery issue where somebody's not being a hundred percent truthful.

So those online sites, you know, assume obviously that you're truthful, but in most divorces, I think people are beyond that point and I'm going to get as much as I can get or keep as much as I can keep and not give you anything.

[Karen Covy]
Okay. I'm going to push back on this. I don't think that's necessarily true.

That's what most people think. And look, when a marriage breaks, it breaks down. The first thing that goes out the window is trust, right?

Nobody believes the other person is being as honest as they thought they were six months ago. Right. But there are a lot of people who don't, who aren’t trying to take advantage.

They just want to get this done. They don't want to fight. They want to be amicable.

And for those people, they're really not trying to hide anything or, you know, maybe they, you know, they'll skew the numbers a little bit one way to give themselves a little bit of an edge, but most of the time, not really, but then there's a whole other world of people for whom you are a hundred percent, right? They will hide what they can hide. So it's important to know who you're married to because the person you're married to is the person you're going to divorce.

And if that person has been tight with money and hiding things and not giving information, your entire marriage to think that their behavior is suddenly going to change and they're going to give you everything you need in your divorce, like that, that doesn't happen. Right. So you've got to know what you're dealing with and know, are you going to get accurate information, complete information or not?

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Pushback accepted. So let me, let me go ahead and do a gear shift here because I want to kind of get at the heart of the way that you coach.

And if you thought my little, my little nuance there, you have a heart and happiness centered approach to divorce. That's what it reads on paper.

[Karen Covy]
But can you describe that really mean look, divorce is hard enough on a good day, right? You don't need professionals who are making the situation worse or making it more difficult or harder. And like it or not, the way the system is set up for most people today, if you go to a lawyer, the lawyer is going to charge you by the hour for their services.

Some lawyers now are starting to go more to a flat fee model, but the vast majority still bill by the hour, which means they make more money if you fight. Right. And so my approach has always been, even when I was actively practicing law and there, so there are lawyers out there.

I'm not a unicorn. There are other lawyers out there like me who just really want to do right by their client, get them through the system as painlessly as possible, knowing it's never going to be painless and get them done and move on with their life. Right.

And so that's what I try to do. But as a coach, it's also, I bring a different skill set to the table. So I'm going to actually listen to you.

I'm going to try to make this the least painful it can be. I'm not going to say painless. That's, that's not realistic, but the least painful that it can be and help you get in the driver's seat of your own divorce so that you can do it in whatever way works for you, works for your kids.

And yeah, even works for your ex to the extent that it can. And if, but you also have to be realistic. You can't just put on the rose colored glasses, plug your ears, close your nose and go, la, la, la, la, la.

That's not a good approach. Right. So you, that's why it goes back to what I said before.

You've got to know who you're divorcing and what you're likely to get and what they're going to bring to the table. Um, but you don't, you can, I I've heard this, someone said this once and it sounds bizarre, but you can divorce with love, right? When you're divorcing, what it means is your relationship isn't working for whatever reason it is not working.

But that doesn't mean you have to become mortal enemies. You can be, but you don't need to be.

[Uncle Marv]
That's interesting. So let me ask you when you got to that point where the system in your mind was broke or not working for people. I mean, you were an attorney.

Yeah. So what was it that flipped the switch for you that said, I need to kind of step back and help people from a different point of view?

[Karen Covy]
Well, I think because I came to family law before I started my career as a trial lawyer, like let's put 12 in a box and let's rock and roll. Right. That was what I thought being a lawyer was all about.

And then I went from there to the government. I was the head of a government office. And then I left the government office to start my own firm.

And I said, I will take any kind of case there is except divorce. And you know what happens when you say that the universe is like, okay. And client after client kept coming into my office and saying, Hey, Karen, do you do divorce?

Hey, Karen, do you know a good divorce lawyer? And after a while, I literally threw up my hands, looked at this guy and said, okay, I'll do divorce.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, before you go forward. Now, let me ask, why did you say no in the first place?

[Karen Covy]
I mean, why did you pick that and say, I don't want to do that because it's so emotional and it's crazy and everybody's out of their mind and they scream at each other. And why would I want to do that?

[Uncle Marv]
Okay.

[Karen Covy]
That was my perception, right? But then I said, okay, there's gotta be something here. Plus, you know, the other thing that most people don't think about, there's a pecking order among lawyers and divorce lawyers and criminal lawyers are on the bottom of the barrel.

Like you've got the antitrust and the corporate guys, they get all the prestige. And I'm not saying they're smarter or they're better lawyers or they know more, but you know, it divorce lawyers are not, they don't have a good reputation with the public. So I'm like, when you add it all up, why would I want to do that?

[Uncle Marv]
I thought ambulance chasers were the worst.

[Karen Covy]
Um, they're, they're down there too, unless you get hurt. See, that's the thing. When you're getting a divorce or you got in an accident or, you know, you, your kid got pulled over for a DUI or something like that.

Now, all of a sudden those lawyers become very valuable. You realize that they might not have the prestige, but they've got a skill set that you really want.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay.

[Karen Covy]
So I said, I'm not going to do it. Then I said, okay, message received. I will do this.

But when I walked into divorce court for the first time, I had a decade of experience behind me. So I'd already been in all kinds of different courts and I walked into divorce court and I went, well, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. I mean, when I have somebody on the witness stand, that's lying about, you know, something that they did that caused serious harm to somebody, or, you know, like I can rip their face off and cross-examination no problem.

And I feel really good about doing it. But when you're talking about, this is your spouse and you, you know, I'm going to rip his face off and then you're going to go sit next to him tonight at your kid's soccer game and be nice. Like that doesn't work.

It doesn't make sense. You have an ongoing relationship with each other and you will continue to have it for the rest of your life. If you have children, why would I want to destroy that?

It didn't make sense to me. And the court system itself operates a little differently in divorce than it does in other areas. So I'm like, okay, if this doesn't make sense to me and I'm a lawyer, how is it going to make sense to other people who aren't lawyers, who happen to be going through it?

So I kept looking for that better way. So I almost immediately became a mediator to keep people out of court. And then I became an arbitrator.

And then I became a collaborative divorce professional. And I kept looking for that better way. And all of those alternatives, because alternative dispute resolution is the name that they give to anything other than going to court and fighting, right?

Because court is the default way that you get through this. So anything else is the alternative. So I did all of the alternatives and they were all better, but they still weren't good enough because I had this.

Here's the story. I was a solo and I was in the office. It was hot.

My secretary was there and my secretary had worked for all of the big divorce law firms in Chicago. And it was hot. So the door was open.

I was having a client conference. I went through my normal stuff, client leaves, go to the secretary's desk. She said, you know, no one else does that.

And I was like, does what? And she said, you just spent an hour and a half with this person telling them, OK, this is mediation, this is what it is, this is how it works. This is collaborative divorce.

This is what it is. This is how it works. Here's what the here's all of your options.

Here's how it all works. Now, what do you want to do? And I said, well, if people don't say that, what do they say?

She said, here's a contract sign here. Give me money. And I said, but that's not it's not my life.

I don't get to make that choice for people. And she said, well, I'm just telling you that's what they do. And what I realized in that moment was that what the lawyer was telling the client was not what the client needed.

It was what the lawyer did. So if you went to the trial or they would say, I will fight for your rights. You need someone to protect you.

I am that person. If you went into the lawyer's office, who was more of a mediative mindset, they say, you know what, we can work this out. Mediation is a great thing.

And same thing for every other kind of alternative. And the client heard, oh, I should use mediation or I should go to court and fight. I'm going to get taken advantage of.

But all the lawyer was doing was selling them their services. And I said, OK, I don't think I can make that choice. So by being a coach, the first thing that I do is educate people about this is the system, this is how it works, this is what your choices are.

Now, choose your process before you choose your lawyer, because if you know you're going to have to go to court and fight, then you want somebody who's really good in court. If you know you're going to try to mediate first, then you need somebody who's good in mediation. So pick the lawyer with the skill set of the kind of process that you want to use both, you know, rather than doing it the other way around, because then you're just going to end up doing whatever that lawyer does.

[Uncle Marv]
So help me understand, like a timeline when somebody's talking to you. Do they show up to you like after they've made the decision and they're going through it and they realize that it's not working and, oh. I found somebody that can help me understand, or have you find people before?

And you know what, I should go back and rephrase that, because I know I've listened to a couple of your episodes. But from a listener's standpoint. It's almost like they should talk to you before they even decide to go through a divorce proceeding.

[Karen Covy]
In a perfect world, yes.

[Uncle Marv]
OK.

[Karen Covy]
The world isn't perfect. And I get clients at every stage in the process, which is totally fine. But I also work with people all over the world, which was as surprising to me as it was to anybody else.

But, you know, I thought I would be able to work with people all over the US. But when you're in that stuck stage of do I stay or do I go, which is a place where many people get stuck for years and years and years. That's a human problem.

It doesn't matter where you live. I've coached people in Australia, in Europe, in South America, in Canada, in the US, does not make a difference because do you stay or do you go has to do with who you are, who your spouse is in your relationship. That's it.

And the legal part of it, or how does the divorce system work is important to know because it's data for your decision, but it's not all of the data you need. Right. So I coach people in the decision making process.

I coach people who know, yeah, this is what I want to do, but I need your help to know how to do it better. Or people whose spouses just said I want a divorce and they're doing it, but they don't want to, but they have no choice. And I take people in the middle.

I get a fair amount of people. Usually these are the legal consults that suck me back in to being that recovering lawyer when they say, but these people have to be in Illinois because I'm only licensed to practice law in Illinois. But they say, I'm in the middle of my divorce.

I'm going nowhere. I don't understand why it's taking so long. My lawyer doesn't answer my calls.

My lawyer doesn't answer my emails or I don't want to email my lawyer because it always costs me money. And I don't know what the problem is. I'm going nowhere.

I'm stuck. I don't know if my lawyer has my back. Can you help me?

Can you help me evaluate whether this lawyer is doing a good job? And I say, yeah, I can do a consult for that. Give me all your stuff.

I'll look at it. I'll read it. We'll talk and I'll tell you.

And I will give you an honest opinion because I'm not going to represent you no matter what. So it's not like I'm going to tell you your lawyer sucks just so I can get your business right. If I tell you that you need a new lawyer, it's an it's my honest opinion.

If I tell you your lawyer is doing a great job, it's my honest opinion. That's what you're paying me for.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So you answered where I was going with that in terms of, you know, the process of when somebody chooses you. The second part of the question was going to be.

Do you ever coach both sides? Like, does a couple come to you in the beginning and say, hey, look, we, you know, we've been to therapy and we know we're on the road to this. Can you help us get started?

Do you ever do it, you know, with couples or is it always one side or the other?

[Karen Covy]
The majority of work that I do is with an individual. I can do what I call divorce one to one for a couple, which is the coaching part of it, which is laying out. Here are the issues you're going to have to figure out.

Here's the timeline. Here's like because a lot of times divorce has so many moving parts. What do we do first?

What do we do second? What do we do third? Right.

So I can coach people through that initial stage. But if they want to go farther than that, usually the professional that I'm going to refer them to is a mediator because they get through the first start. They get through the planning and the preparation stage.

But then what they really need is someone to mediate. Now, how do we divide this? How do we make these decisions?

How do we say, do you get the kids this week or that week? Right. How do we figure this out?

And that I mean, I, I do still occasionally get sucked into mediations as well. But for the most part, when the people are in that stage, the professional they're looking for is a mediator. And you're better off getting a mediator and a lawyer who's in the same area as you, because part of what's going to inform your decision of do we do A or do we do B is if you went to court, what would a judge do?

And judges vary in how they make decisions. The culture of the courthouse varies from courthouse to courthouse and from judge to judge sometimes. So in order to have the best information, you need someone who's local who can say, yeah, that argument is never going to fly in this courthouse or no, yeah, this is how the judge would decide this kind of a question.

And it's not that you're stuck with doing things the way that a judge would do it. But it's very helpful to know, OK, if my back was to the wall and that's what I had to do, how is that likely to go? And then that gives you sort of a bookend for what do you negotiate in between?

If that makes.

[Uncle Marv]
And it's also nice to know if you're going in front of a judge that is known to favor one side or the other and, you know, be prepared for that.

[Karen Covy]
Judges, of course, are impartial, but some do tend to lean one way or the other.

[Uncle Marv]
So now let me ask this other question that's been rolling in the back of my head. And I'm trying to, you know, people can't see, but I'm scrolling through my phone to see when that episode was. But it was a while back and the whole.

Point of the podcast is you do a podcast, I didn't mention that, folks, she's got a podcast that we'll promote a little bit later here. One of the question was, when is a good time to get a divorce? Now, my first thought is, well, probably as soon as you start thinking about it, because if you're if you're thinking about divorce, it's probably time.

But that wasn't the framework in which you were working with that show.

[Karen Covy]
Yeah, no. And again, I'm going to push back. If it's the first time you're thinking about divorce, go to couples counseling, go to a therapist, start working on the marriage.

You know, people think, you know, that the legislators think that that people get divorced too easy. We've got to make the laws harder. I have not seen that right.

Most people are going to stew over the decision for a long time. They're going to take it seriously. Right.

So the first time the thought comes into your head, what that's a sign of is there is a problem in your marriage that you need to address. Now, you can go down the road of divorce, but it makes a whole lot more sense and your kids are going to be way happier if you go down the road of how do I address the issues in my marriage and fix them if I can. And if you can do that 100 percent of the time, go do that.

But if you did that and it didn't work now when you're thinking about, OK, if I'm thinking about a divorce, now you've got to say, what's the timing of going down that road? Because that's looking more realistic. Does that make sense?

[Uncle Marv]
It does. It does. And one of the things that I liked about that show that you did was you really brought up a point of somebody waiting too long.

Where you think, well, I'll wait until this situation passes, the kids are grown or whatever. But in that entire time, no preparation was made for how to live after divorce. So that was good there.

[Karen Covy]
Yeah. You know, people, a lot of people say, well, we'll wait till the kids are grown. I mean, that's the natural thing to do.

However, what people don't take in mind, first of all, in our world, I mean, kids these days stay home a whole lot longer than they used to stay home. I mean, I was 18 years old. I couldn't wait to get out the door.

Right. Not so true today. So just because the kids are grown or off to college doesn't mean they're not planning on coming back.

So that's kids and parents have different relationships than they used to years ago. And, you know, it depends on the relationship the parents had. If the parents were fighting and at each other's throat and it was a very vulnerable atmosphere.

First of all, I would say this to parents who hear this. The one thing that studies have consistently shown is that kids, whether divorce hurts them or not, or to what degree it affects them depends on a lot of factors. And the number one thing is the amount of conflict in the house.

It's the conflict that hurts the kids worse than the divorce. So if you're fighting all the time, that's affecting your children. If you're not fighting it and you're keeping everything on level.

Right. And then, you know, but you don't have a good relationship and you and your spouse both know it. And you're just waiting till your youngest goes to college.

Your youngest goes off to college. Now it's two months later. You call up, you say, guess what?

Mom and dad are getting a divorce. That kid is shell-shocked. You have just cut them off at the knees because they didn't see it coming.

And they what those kids tend to think is, wait a minute. Was my whole childhood a lie? Were you really not happy the whole time and just pretending for me?

And like, they're not stupid. They get that you were just waiting for them to go to college to dissolve the marriage. So that tends to rock their world in a way that, you know, stay that getting a divorce at an earlier time might not have.

So there's a lot of factors that go into timing. But to your point of what you said, yeah, you can wait too long. I'll tell you a quick story.

I used to run a program called Decision Day, which was kind of what it sounds like, right? One day, two day. Yep.

You got it. And I used to help people who were stuck figure out how to get unstuck in one day. And yeah, you're not going to.

Not everybody made a decision in one day, but the idea is let's move you farther down the path one way or the other. Right. I don't try to force people into staying married or getting a divorce either way.

And there was a woman that came to one of the that program one time. And she had been married, I don't know, 30 something years. She was in her 60s.

And I said to her, you know, how long have you been married? She's like 30 something years. And I said, how long have you been thinking about divorce?

She said, 30 something years. And I'm like, OK, well, would now be a time to make a decision. So what happened?

And she said, well, we got married. And yeah, the first year or two of the marriage, everything was fine. But then I could see that it wasn't, you know, things weren't going well.

But I had to wait because I didn't give the marriage a chance yet. I had to try. Maybe it was me.

Maybe I was doing something wrong. So let me work harder. Let me try more.

And then I got pregnant. And then I had my first kid. And then I was busy with the kid.

And then I got pregnant with the second. Then I'm busy with the next kid. And then, you know, my husband lost his job and then he got a new job.

Then I lost my job. And like there was never a good time. And 30 years of her life had gone by and she had been unhappy the whole time.

And, you know, the thesis I have is like, look, when you're on the fence like that, you're not 100 percent committed to your marriage because a piece of you wants to be out of it. But you're not 100 percent committed to the new life because you're still married. So you're not giving your all anywhere.

You're not living the life you want on any level. That's not the place you want to be. So figure it out and make a decision.

But live life to the fullest. Live, you know, as healthy and as happy as you can be. But that requires you to make a decision.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. That's a very interesting story, and it kind of goes to another thought that I've had in my head for, I don't know, the last 10 minutes, because you had made a point of, you know, people saying that maybe we should change the laws to make getting a divorce harder. And I'm like, well, why don't we look at this from the other perspective?

Why is getting married not considered, you know, a place to start? Because. I want to say this the wrong way, because I don't I haven't thought it out.

So and don't point your moral compass at me for what I'm thinking. But it's almost as if people put a whole lot more thought into the divorce than they ever did when they were thinking about marriage in the front end. Does that make sense?

[Karen Covy]
Yeah, it makes total sense. What people think about typically when they're going to get married, especially the women. I mean, I can just speak because I am a woman.

You think about the wedding. Your wedding is important, but it's not your marriage. It's one day.

Right. Your marriage is the rest of your life. And they used to have all kinds of programs, faith based programs and, you know, about like marriage preparation.

And I don't see as many of those anymore. And what's really good about that is it makes you think about the rest of your life, not just one day. And that's why, OK, now I'm going to get controversial on you.

[Uncle Marv]
OK.

[Karen Covy]
That's why I am such a fan of prenups. Oh, because it has nothing. I mean, it does have something to do with, you know, the money.

And what if you get a divorce? It's not that it's encouraging divorce. It forces you.

It forces the couple to have conversations that are hard before they get married. And if things start to fall apart, then, well, it's better to have them fall apart before you get married than afterwards. So you've got to talk about things like what do you think about money?

How are you going to handle your money once you get married? Are you putting it all in one pot? Are you keeping it separate?

Are you? What are you going to do? How much do you have?

And by the way, how much debt do you have? How much debt does your spouse have? Because that might be something you want to know before you get married.

And what do you think about? Like, what do you think about taking care of each other? Or what if one person is going to, you know, they lose their job or what?

How are things going to go? It forces you to have a whole host of financial conversations which are super important in any relationship. And it makes you have them before you get married.

So whether you actually ever sign that piece of paper or not, a prenup is important because it makes you have the talks.

[Uncle Marv]
Which it's still touted as the number one people are the number one reason people get divorced is money. That's or is that just some fable that somebody threw out there?

[Karen Covy]
It's a part of it, and it's certainly important for some people. What I see money is part of it. Like if you've got but usually money is as in either two people have very different views about what money means and how to handle it or one person's making it all and the other's not.

But it's more than the money. It's the failed agreement between them. When people get married, they have an unspoken agreement.

Like, for example, we're going to get married, we're going to have kids and maybe one person. This is the traditional view. OK, the wife is going to stay home and take care of the kids.

The husband's going to go and make the money. And then the husband often assumes that once the kids are of a certain age, the wife's going to go back to work. But the wife, that might have been a 10 year or 15 year period.

She was out of the workforce. Now she doesn't have skills. She doesn't you know, she won't make as much money.

She doesn't want to go back and be a greeter at Walmart. Or she doesn't want to start all over again. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So she's like, yeah, no, I'm not going back. And then they broke the unspoken agreement between them. So it's not just about the money.

It's about, hey, you said you were going to do this and now you're not. And that wasn't what I signed up for. Right.

So that's the money piece. But the other two things that break up a lot of people are infidelity. Cheating will do it.

Or a lot of times, especially in older people, they've grown apart for a long time. They stopped communicating long ago. They never addressed the issues in their marriage.

And at some point it just gets to be that they're married to a stranger and they don't want to do it anymore. That's what I've seen.

[Uncle Marv]
OK, well, I mean, I knew all of those were in there, but that's the stuff nobody wants to talk about.

[Karen Covy]
Of course.

[Uncle Marv]
Very interesting. OK, so I have a question to ask you, because we went down a couple of rabbit holes there and missed out on a couple of other things. And I want to give them their proper time and space.

Would you be willing to come back into a part two with me? Absolutely. I would love to.

Thank you very much. So let me at least do this and give you the proper introduction that we should have. So by now, folks, if you're listening, you've probably peaked at the show notes a little bit.

Karen Covey is who I'm speaking with, the divorce coach. Covey is spelled C-O-V-Y, not leave out the E. She's not that other author that most people talk about.

We mentioned a podcast that she does. It's called Off the Fence with Karen Covey. Mastering decision making, divorce and more.

And along with that is a YouTube channel. And I think it's at Karen Covey 95.

[Karen Covy]
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
Can I ask what the 95 is for?

[Karen Covy]
I have no idea. The algorithm made the number up. I don't know.

Probably should change that, but I'm not as tech savvy as you are. So it is what it is.

[Uncle Marv]
OK. You know, some people always, you know, maybe a sports number growing up or something like that.

[Karen Covy]
No, no.

[Uncle Marv]
OK. So in case you want to get ahead before part two releases, you can go check out the website, check out our podcast and get some interesting ideas on how to deal with divorce and. What's the right rate of phrase that?

We're going to she's going to help divorce, there is more to divorce beyond the courtroom. And we're going to talk about the heart and happiness centered approach to divorce, focusing on non-courtroom conversations that lead to healthier outcomes. That sound right?

[Karen Covy]
Sounds good to me. OK.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, Karen, thank you for coming on. And then we'll set up everything for part two here. Folks, thank you for listening.

And downloading the show. Subscribe or follow whatever the term is there on your pod catcher and be alerted when the next one comes out. But until then, the goal should be to live healthy and be happy.

Holla!