Ep 256: Divorce, Business Ownership, and Wealth Protection with Kelly Lise Murray

We have an interesting episode this week.

We are talking with Kelly Murray and we are talking about divorce and some of the financial aspects and talking a little bit about her podcast where she breaks down some interesting divorce cases.

This one will be really interesting and I hope that you enjoy this episode.

Welcome to the weekly wealth podcast.

I am certified financial planner David Chudick.

I spend most of my days talking with business owners, the mass affluent and the high net worth about their money.

We talk about their financial dreams, we talk about their financial worries and we talk about the decisions that they know they need to make.

That is what this show is about this week.

We are talking about business ownership and we are talking about some of the divorce decisions that may need to be made and some actions for business owners who are in that process.

We have Kelly Murray with us today.

She is actually a divorce attorney in one of the most beautiful cities that, that I know of in Charleston, South Carolina.

Hey, Kelly, how are you?

Hi, David.

I'm doing well and it is very chilly in South Carolina, but we don't have the snow that everybody else does.

In my neck of the woods we got some ice, but thankfully we did not lose power, which is a beautiful thing.

Let's jump right into it and first let's give the disclaimer.

This is not legal advice.

This is general information.

If you have any questions, make to contact a licensed attorney in your state.

And by the way, are you licensed in any states other than South Carolina?

I'm actually not licensed in South Carolina.

I'm licensed in Illinois.

So I taught at Vanderbilt law school for 18 years and retired.

And while I was law faculty, I had a side project with my legal research.

So I've been teaching judges and lawyers and financial professionals about wealth dispute resolution.

And now that I've retired from the law school, it's my main focus.

And so I have an Illinois law license for over 30 years.

And teaching this information in a way that, that hopefully will help people take positive steps to protect their assets is the goal.

So let's talk very generally once a divorce is filed and how both parties determine what the total assets are in the marriage.

Both maybe brokerage accounts that may be in his name or her name, maybe some IRAs, maybe businesses.

But like, how does the process of making an inventory the house, how does process start?

Generally you're required to do the minimum required by the state and that would be a financial affidavit.

So each spouse has a due diligence obligation.

You are responsible to find and value assets and find and quantify debts.

You can't point fingers at the other side if it's something findable by you, like a lien on your house in addition to the mortgage that's publicly recorded.

So you can't say my, my spouse stopped me from finding the lien because that just means you and your team didn't look for it.

But if it's an account in your spouse's name only, you can't go to that account, you can't go to that mortgage service, or you can't go to that 401k, you can't get that information directly.

So after you and your spouse file your financial disclosures, then you each get the opportunity to require in writing the production of documents and answering of questions.

And so that's how it all starts.

That's how you see the spouse who controls the family business or controls separate accounts or individual accounts.

They may not necessarily be non marriage, they're just separately in that person's name.

They have to comply.

Or you and your team can file a motion with the court to compel production.

And that's what makes some divorces with higher net worth or contentious business and other asset valuation issues.

That's what those cases take longer.

It's that discovery process that's the milestone we're talking about right now.

Discoveries where you exchange financial information.

And with a business, it usually starts with documents in the spouse who controls the business.

Possession.

That's what the other side's asking for.

And then from there what you need to do is wait and see.

So if you're the spouse who controls the family business, you're the one working and your other spouse is the stay at home parenting spouse.

You would start by complying with their requests and give them the business documents.

And then if they hire a business evaluator, you need to decide whether you're going to hire a business valuation because the court is going to.

All of that evidence is relevant.

But who's the court going to give more weight to?

A professional business valuation?

The other spouse.

Just saying.

I've looked at the records and here's.

My opinion and one of my services that I provide to my clients is exit planning and preparing businesses to be sold.

And I can tell you a business valuation can vary greatly.

Right.

Like anything else, a business is only worth what a willing party is going to pay.

And it can be sold as can be made to look more valuable or it can, I guess one party might have the motivation to make it look to be less valuable, correct?

Absolutely.

That's what comes up in South Carolina cases and in other states also.

But I was for, in preparation for today looking at South Carolina cases and what the courts, the South Carolina Supreme Court has written recently is that it's fair market value, not fair value.

So just because the party's experts may disagree on a discount or an add back or other aspects of valuation, the trial court decides credibility.

The trial court, based on the evidence, gets to determine what the valuation is.

And the standard is abuse of discretion.

That is so hard.

So you want to win at the trial level because the appellate court will give a lot of deference to what the trial court did.

You have to really show error, meaning there was financial evidence in the record that said the numbers were lower and the trial court went with something higher that would be reversible.

But if it's simply this expert or that expert, the trial court gets to pick.

So when we are looking at a divorcing couple and we have assets, is it just so simple that you just divide everything 50, 50.

If there's a million dollars in a 401k, one spouse gets 500,000 of it, the other spouse keeps 500,000 of it.

There's another brokerage account that's worth a million dollars, you split it 50, 50, and then the business, is it that simple or does it become pretty complicated as far as how different types of assets might be treated when we're coming up with a settlement?

If we start with retirement assets, the question is, was any of it premarital?

That's the big fight there.

So premarital.

If someone started at the 401k before they got married, then what you would do is have your financial folks trace, here's the value before we got married, and then here is the marital appreciation.

So your spouse wouldn't get 5050 if part of it started with premarital financial interests or.

And then the other, the flip side of that is let's say you get an inheritance while you're married that's separate until you do something.

The legal term is commingling.

And the result of commingling leads to transmutation to legal terms which result in your spouse getting part of your inheritance or maybe half of it.

Because if you, for example, use an inheritance, put it in a joint account and then use it to pay marital expenses, pay the mortgage, pay the kids, school fees, and all those things that can become marital, if it isn't split 50, 50, your spouse could still get an interest less than 50% in the appreciation during the marriage.

So a separate asset like a Business if it was premarital and separate, but its value appreciated during the marriage while your other spouse was managing the household, which is viewed as an economic contribution to the marriage and giving you the time and ability to run the business, that there's a marital interest in the appreciation even in of a separate business.

So we're looking at a business and let's say what are some of the factors that either party's business valuation expert might use in order to come up with a value or a range of value for that business.

It follows business valuation for buying and selling businesses.

The difference is you have an adversary.

So hopefully in the purchasing and the selling of a business there it's an arm's length transaction.

But they're not looking to gotcha.

They expect you to be playing fair and doing it right.

But in divorce people have, especially with a business, they can do things that the business valuator would normally add back, for example, and so one consequence of your personal expenses being run through the business in running your business and you know, the business pays for your vehicle, the business pays for your cell phones, the business pays for a lot of things that would could be added back in a business valuation for purposes of sale.

It also will be imputed income to you for purposes of child support.

So if the business pays you less than it would and then you have all these perks, those perks get added back by the court and of course the other spouses, financial folks to determine that your income for purposes of child support is higher than what your W2 show.

That's just one example.

So as we're putting together an inventory of all of the assets, is it a done deal that businesses typically have to be sold during a divorce or can one spouse retain the business and that would just be factored as one of the assets that they're keeping as part of the settlement.

In a South Carolina Supreme Court decision semi recently the court pointed out that mostly businesses are not sold.

So that's actually a direct quote of the South Carolina Supreme Court.

And that's why marketability discount should.

So the South Carolina Supreme Court held that a marketability discount, for example, should not be always applied or never applied.

It should be discretionary with the trial court.

And so this was the Clark case in 2020 where the trial court applied the marketability discount.

And then the, the appellate, the intermediate appellate court held, oh no, it's a bright line rule, okay, you can apply it.

And then the Supreme Court said no wait, the trial court gets to decide.

So that's where it is in South Carolina.

It's discretionary with the trial court if they're going to do discounts.

So it could be a minority control discount, a marketability discount.

All of all of those things that are used to value a business for purchase or selling are are can be brought in to the court but it's just dangerous if you aren't represented by a lawyer and you don't have a certified financial professional, you don't have someone else who's testifying about your finances and your and the other spouse is bring in all of the folks has the lawyer has the CFP has all of that.

Who's the court going to rely on more?

You can just see how that's going to go.

And I have cases in multiple states where on appeal the appellate court holds a trial court had the discretion and only one side had an expert.

Also though you can have experts disagreeing now courts generally won't can't average two business valuations.

That's not mathematically or business fair market value accurate but the court can just pick a number.

I call that picking a number.

So you want to make sure that you've got going into a divorce with a business it should be the same document preparation as preparing to sell your business.

You want to make sure all the records are can withstand scrutiny based let's.

Step away from the podcast for just and we do very little services that I so most of conversation exit their business.

Most of it is so as business owners you're familiar with information challenges and complexities that come with steering your company day to day.

But have you considered picturing your end game?

So imagine having a destination so clear every decision you make speak with you how would they find you?

You have a free ebook called the End Game go to my website www.podcast.com website endgame.

I want them to listen to my podcast which is different from yours.

So my podcast is called welcome Litigated.

This is what I do.

So regardless of it's if it's divorce, if it's IRS audits, if it's selling a business it's hard but we need to have our businesses run very well so that we're not having to scramble in in cases of any of these events.

And one of the reasons that I really enjoy working with business owners because business owners they carry a large burden.

So they're dealing with their trade right.

A home builder first of all is building homes for their clients.

But they're also dealing with hr.

They're hiring and firing employees they're dealing with business taxes, they're dealing with business insurance, they're dealing with all of that.

And then they're also dealing with their personal finances.

So it's very important that we keep our finances straight.

We keep good records.

I think one of the worst things that most that any business owner can do is keep their own books.

Bookkeeping is something that is.

It may not be rocket science, but it does need to be done the right way.

And you're much better off paying someone to keep your books and records straight.

Have you seen scenarios where just bookkeeping, even by a bigger business?

Because I know I've dealt with some big, high multiple 7 figure revenue businesses where it was really a train wreck and they couldn't have, I would guess that they hadn't had an accurate tax return ever.

Bless their hearts.

Yes.

And so just think about it.

In divorce, that gives the other side the ability to argue nefariousness even before they find anything.

Just think about it.

If it's the business owner and it's only one of the two spouses involved in the business doing all the things and the finances running and the books and the taxes, if there's a mistake, they're going to.

The other side's going to paint it as intentional.

It could just be a math error.

But.

And what you don't want in divorce with substantial assets, you don't want the court to view you as not credible about your business finances because then you will have no credibility for any he said, she said issue.

And that generally happens.

I have South Carolina court cases where that happened also.

So this was a husband who had his W2.

One of his W2 payments he deposited into an account in France.

But he had been arguing, oh, that's totally separate.

And when her side was able to show no, you're depositing marital income, W2 income into that account.

That is, that part of that at least is marital.

And he obstructed, he had evasive answers, didn't comply, didn't give the documentation, claimed not to know.

And so the court had to.

Intermediate appellate court had to remand it back to the trial court and they're still divorcing because of it.

It's less expensive and you can move forward with your life doing it right the first time.

And the other thing I want to say about divorce, stress tests all of your business finances.

It also stress tests your estate planning, which are obviously linked.

And so you want to make sure you're getting it right the first time because you're going to spend more money and if you lose at the trial level, you're unlikely to prevail on appeal unless there was an actual error that you have the documentation to prove.

So it's better in the long run to just play it straight.

And it's better because at some point you do want to retire.

At some point you do want to reap the benefits of building up this business to the success that it is.

And you mentioned experts.

Guess what?

Each one of these experts are getting paid, right?

It makes the process more expensive if, number one, maybe we're not able to agree reasonably in the beginning, and number two, if one attorney or one team is having to verify numbers that maybe are purposefully not accurate or impurposefully not accurate, everybody still is paying in that case.

And the process of divorce has never been alleged to be cheap, has it?

It gets more expensive or less expensive, depending of your.

Depending on your choice of dispute resolution method.

So everyone in this state has to start your divorce with a court and end it.

But you have choices in the middle.

Property, including the house and business can be mediated and that would be in a settlement agreement, just like you would settle if you had a business dispute with another business.

In divorce, though, as soon as you sign your settlement agreement, that's a binding contract that the judge can't change.

So you want to make sure you have all of your information early on because mediation happens early.

People have low information or no information and make binding decisions about massive assets like a house with significant equity, retirement assets with significant value businesses which are complicated to value depending on the type of business.

How does South Carolina treat goodwill?

There's, you need to know how the cases come out on that because it's not treated, it's not treated the same way.

Personal goodwill is treated differently.

So you would want to have those answers before going into a mediation.

And let's talk about that mediation process.

What does it look like?

Who is a mediator?

Is that a judge?

Is that an attorney?

Who's paying the mediator?

Are both parties paying the mediator?

And then how might a mediator or how might that process look at different types of assets?

So let's say, I don't know, you have a couple, they're both 35 years old.

And let's say there's a million dollar IRA.

Well, that IRA really is.

It's not liquid, right?

If you take distributions, there's some pretty heavy tax consequences.

And let's say there's another account that's just a million dollar bank account.

Would those two items potentially be Looked at or valued or handled differently.

It's your job to speak up.

Hopefully through your professional team, hopefully you have a cfp, hopefully you have a lawyer.

But it's your job to speak up and say, this $100,000 for a 1K and this $100,000 equity we have in our beach house, they're not equal.

That's apples to oranges.

But plenty of folks can go to a mediation and I'll backtrack on what that is, but they can go without lawyers.

You don't have to have lawyers.

And they look at 100,000 and say, oh, you have that and I'll keep this.

And somebody got more than the other because of depreciation and tax treatment.

So mediation is voluntary with assets.

The court can make you attend mediation.

No one can make you agree.

So you have to go and you have good faith or you'll get tattled on.

The mediator is a neutral and you get to choose.

The only time the mediator has to be regulated by the state is for the court to appoint that mediator.

But if.

Are they an attorney by trade or can they just be?

Can be.

They can be.

So you have to meet the criteria in South Carolina, but only if you want to be appointed by a court.

Anyone can hold themselves out as a mediator.

I've taken the state supreme court mediation training for Tennessee while I was on faculty at Vanderbilt.

So that's why I took the Tennessee training.

And I can mediate in any state because it's not licensed.

I also am a licensed lawyer, but as a lawyer mediator, I wouldn't be your lawyer.

The mediator can be a retired judge, can be a lawyer, but they aren't representing either spouse in the mediation.

They're the neutral.

Their job is to help raise issues.

What I worry about, because I focus on complicated assets and significantly litigated disputes, some that go all the way up to your state supreme court.

What I worry about is if the mediator is not a lawyer and has no background in these complicated assets and the husband and wife choose not to bring lawyers, or they bring lawyers, but they aren't bringing in expertise at valuing that closely held business, valuing that dental practice, understanding what the difference in goodwill, for example, then you're going to have the mediator saying, okay, now let's talk about the business.

You think it's worth this?

You agree with.

Let's divide it.

That could be lopsided or straight out wrong, but no one knew because they didn't bring in the professionals that they needed.

So that's what mediation often happens early, and it can happen with low information or no information.

So I've trained judges on these issues, and I've had senior judges, and that's a judge who is retired from the bench, but is available to come in if an active judge needs to take leave for any reason.

But senior judges in their spare time are mediators, because people have a lot of respect for a retired judge as a mediator.

And one judge asked the senior judge, when you mediate these issues, judge, do you see more documents than we see at trial?

And the judge said, when I mediate, I see less, fewer, and sometimes none.

And we so mediation, because it's not court, there aren't rules.

You're simply get to bring what you bring, and then the mediator asks you whether you agree on these valuations.

So it's a.

It's a little bit of the Wild west, if you let it be.

But you get to decide what, how you're going to be represented at mediation.

And if you have valuable assets, you absolutely need financial representation and legal representation.

So is the end goal of mediation for the mediator to present a scenario and then both parties agree on it?

Yes.

In mediation, each of you gets to be heard, you get to craft your settlement, the mediator facilitates it, and if you both agree and sign, that's a binding contract.

The reason why you should prepare for mediation and take it seriously is the judge.

You don't want to leave this all up to the judge.

People think, oh, my spouse did all this and the judge will just be horrified.

No, the judge has seen it all.

And so what you want to shock them isn't going to shock them.

Now, South Carolina does have rules that could affect the percentage of if someone's at fault in the marriage, for example, that could have a different effect.

But basically, mediation is an opportunity for you to keep it private.

Mediation is private.

One of the cases I read, a South Carolina case, the court's pointing out the husband's name, his bank of America account, and the final four digits of it are throughout this opinion.

I don't want to know that you don't want that kind of thing public.

So mediation keeps it public, but also sometimes the divorce court will make sure everybody's at least a little bit unhappy, because that feels like justice.

You don't want that.

It's better to craft.

These are my priorities, and I would still like that to go differently.

But I'm getting my priorities and you're getting your priorities.

The judge is not bound by your priorities and can just make the decisions based on the evidence and the credibility.

And you may be worse off going to trial on certain issues now, complicated business valuations.

That is something a trial judge would not be surprised to go to trial.

That makes sense if you each have two experts who are approaching it differently based on your interest and your spouse's interest.

But the personal property side of it, for example, that's not something the judge wants to decide.

Who gets the Ikea bookshelf?

I know building it may have been traumatic, but the judge doesn't care.

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In South Carolina or most states do, do they try to make an argument, hey, my spouse is a bad mean person, so I deserve more and does that hold water or it really doesn't matter if you're a nice person or we're coming up with an agreement.

The issue is fault.

And so in a state like South Carolina that does get so for example, South Carolina has a one year waiting period too.

So you file for divorce and you're not.

Your divorce is going to be final until the waiting period expires.

Guess who has short waiting periods?

Nevada and Florida.

But that's not North Carolina and that's not South Carolina.

So in that time that you have to be separated, you have time to get these financial issues handled.

But if issues that would hold up as fault, for example adultery, if that's proven to the trial judge, then that may affect your eligibility for alimony, for example.

So there's a South Carolina case where the wife was the was a high earner, she worked on a business and the issue was what percent was marital, what would the husband get?

But because of her adultery, there was no alimony for her.

So the statutes in state, in all states, including South Carolina, identify the factors for the judge to consider.

But if fault is a factor, it can eliminate someone's eligibility for alimony, for example.

So those are the only ones that work.

The judge has seen it all and that's where mediation is really helpful because if you get a chance to be heard.

But we need to treat this, especially the division of significant assets, as a business transaction.

You are business partners divesting.

And if you treat it that way, you will be better off because emotion does cloud those financial decisions, doesn't it?

Oh, and that's one of the biggest reasons in the world work with a financial advisor on anything, is because we tend to make emotional decisions.

There are times when the stock markets are going down slightly and people say, I watched my favorite news channel, they said, the depression is coming, let's go to all cash.

And then by the end of the week after that, the account is higher than it was and they sold out.

So we all, I think, tend to make not the greatest decisions on our own, which is why wise counsel is important.

The other issue is just on that is if you make a bad investment earn, you know that's not held against you.

But if you are manipulating assets, manipulating your business valuation picture, that is held against you.

So you don't have to be perfect.

But things like gambling and dissipating marital assets to pay, to pay gambling debts and that kind of thing, embezzling, all that's definitely going to hurt in the ultimate result in a divorce.

Before the trial, let's spend just a moment or two and let's talk about the very basics of prenuptial agreements.

What they are, what they might prevent, what they might not prevent, and just some of the thinking points on why someone might want to consider a prenuptial.

A prenuptial agreement is a contract and if you follow the rules, it will be enforced.

What the other side would do in a divorce is try and attack the prenuptial, saying that there was not full disclosure.

That's one of the ways.

So if you have full financial disclosure, that's one of the ways that it will be affirmed or it will be.

It will hold up in your divorce, for example.

So full disclosure of your finances, both parties need to have separate legal representation.

That's another way.

But with prenuptial agreements, in order for a contract to be legally enforceable, there has to be an offer that is accepted for consideration.

That's a legal term for something of value.

And something of value could be money, but it could also be doing something or not doing something.

All of those legally count as consideration.

And with a prenuptial agreement, the consideration or value promise is then we're going to get married.

The tricky thing is a post nuptial agreement because you're already married, so there has to be an exchange of value and it's not this.

In order for us to stay married, this is what you have to sign.

So a prenuptial agreement, if you have a business before marriage, if this is a second marriage and it's going to be a blended family, those are the reasons why it's a good idea.

If your state planning includes trusts or you are the beneficiary of a trust from two generations above you, that trust may require that you get a prenuptial or you will be disinherited entirely.

Because what happens when there isn't a prenuptial?

Those trust assets could become marital.

So the ex, the former in law, is the one receiving money out of the trust that was intended by your grandparents for your benefit.

So those are all of the good reasons.

It's not a prenuptial agreement and you both can decide not to get married if someone's offended by it.

But it's good business and it's good finances to do it correctly.

Give them full disclosure, make sure they have their own lawyer.

That's how it works.

What you don't want is a prenuptial that you have to litigate in the divorce because that's just going to make things cost more.

And what about business partners?

Let's say that you and I are business partners and let's just put a value of on the business of $10 million.

And let's say now you are getting a divorce.

How might that affect me as your business partner?

And maybe what are some things that we as business partners could have or should have thought about to prepare for a potential divorce by either one of us?

One would be a buy sell agreement within the partnership itself that in the event of a forced sale, because with a third party involved, the court can't force the sale.

So I have cases where the parties agree to things or the court, but only within the court's control.

So the court only has jurisdiction over those, the spouse, the half, the partner, which is one of the spouses, and that spouse's interest.

So let's say the spouse is only a 20% owner.

That's all that would be at issue.

The court can't force the sale of that business.

But then in those instances, the court would be looking for offset.

And that is just the legal term for horse trading.

You're not selling the business.

He has a 20 interest, he wants to keep it.

So she gets 20%, even more of the house equity.

So if they would have split the house equity 50 50, she will get 70% or she will get 60% because 10% of that business that would be hers is staying with him.

So offset is a tool.

But the marital estate has to have valuable assets in order to achieve it.

If the business is the only main asset, then that's not going to work.

Then that's when you do things like you would do with someone, keeping the house and then buying out the other spouse.

You get out, you get a business loan and you pay your spouse their share of the interest so that you can keep the business and not affect the running of it or your third party partner.

If listening to this podcast should just reinforce to the business owners that running a business is a privilege.

Owning a business is hard and owning a business requires counsel.

And it is so much more.

Kelly.

I know even there are attorneys in my town and the difference between understanding the law and the ability to run a legal practice, those are two different skills, right?

Absolutely.

They are totally different.

They don't.

In law school, lots of doctors are great at surgery, but if you're running a surgery office that has 15 employees, that's a different skill.

Legal counsel is very important.

I've seen it before where partners don't have valid agreements, they don't have substantial agreements.

Handshake deals are great until they're not, right?

So we need to be working with professionals as our businesses grow, because businesses can be worth a lot of money.

And one of the things that I work with my clients is building the value of their business because typically it is the business owner's biggest asset.

Business owners might be concerned that their IRA went down a little bit because maybe Microsoft stock went down in price.

And yes, that can happen, but the asset that we have much, much more control over is our business.

For anybody who's listening and they're thinking, what this is pretty interesting or I'd like to learn more about this.

Tell us about your podcast and where the listeners can find it.

I have a podcast, it's called Wealth Litigated.

So you can go to wealth litigated.com we are a video first podcast and so we're on YouTube and then we're on Apple and all of the other podcast providers.

And there I deep dive on one case.

Businesses, trusts.

So estate planning, basically all the drama of true crime without the blood.

Because things get pretty dramatic when people litigate valuable assets, so to speak.

So that's what we cover.

And if you're just interested in how did that work, some of it's just absolutely shocking to invite you to go to wealth litigated.com if you just want to listen to an interesting story and be happy it didn't happen to you.

And this is aimed at just regular people, not necessarily attorneys or divorce judges or anything like that.

Correct.

What I'm doing is bringing actually litigated cases.

It's fine for someone in locally to say this happened in my law practice and this happened in my financial practice, but you don't know, we don't know the real answer and how it will litigate until you look at how it litigated for other people.

So this is what lawyers use when they're filing a brief on your behalf or in opposition to you.

I'm taking these really interesting cases and showing you some of the intricacies of Was there evidence sufficient or did one side just not bring any evidence?

So let's make sure that we are getting wise counsel with our businesses.

Let's make sure that we're running our businesses well to prepare for the IRS audits, to prepare for when there potentially could be a divorce scenario.

We need to be ready for these things when they happen.

And let's make sure that we're doing all the right things.

But we are the weekly wealth podcast and we talk about the mindsets, the tactics, and the strategies that help you to build wealth.

Kelly Murray, tell me what your definition of wealth is.

What does wealth mean to you, your family, and the people in your life that you love and care about?

Since we're on the topic of businesses, I would say a business that you're proud of, meaning you found your purpose and you're building that business.

Because more is more for everyone.

Even if the business owner ends up in divorce eventually, more is more for everyone.

And then also though the time you're able to spend away from the business is also important in terms of wealth.

All right, everybody, until next episode, I wish everybody a blessed week.

Thanks, Kelly.

Thanks, David.

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Here is this week's bonus content for the episode.

I think most of us would agree that if we can avoid divorce, it is probably the best thing for all parties involved.

But if we get to a point where that is not possible, make sure that we're making the right decisions.

Make sure that we are not making overly emotional decisions, and make sure that we are retaining wise counsel.

All right, everybody, have a blessed week.