Redefining Divorce: Emotional Intelligence, Mediation, and Money Conversations with Katherine Eisold Miller

Adrienne Garland: 00:00:00 Leadership isn't just changing. It's evolving in ways we're only just beginning to imagine. And women, we're not playing this game anymore. We're the ones reshaping the entire field, building models, movements, and businesses that serve more than just a few. On the She Leads Podcast, you'll hear real conversations with women who've broken through all kinds of barriers, revenue, identity, borders, and expectations. There's no sugar coating here, just the truth told by those who are living it.
Adrienne Garland: 00:00:30 I'm Adrienne Garland, entrepreneur, strategist, educator, and creator of live experiences, gathering women leaders together for over a decade. And this is the She Leads Podcast. Hi everybody and welcome back to the She Leads Podcast. Today I am so excited to welcome my next guest. Her name is Katherine Eisold Miller and she is an attorney, a mediator, an author, and a podcast host whose work focuses on transforming how people experience divorce.
Adrienne Garland: 00:01:00 She's the founder of the Miller Law Group in New York and is a longtime board member and senior trainer at the Center for Understanding in Conflict where she teaches professionals how to navigate high-stake disputes with clarity and compassion. Katherine's the host of The Emotionally Savvy Divorce Podcast and the author of The Emotionally Savvy Divorce: Smart Negotiations for a Clean Break.
Adrienne Garland: 00:01:30 Her mission is to bring emotional intelligence into the cultural conversation about divorce so people can end a marriage without losing themselves. She's the past president of the New York Association of Collaborative Professionals and has been featured in the media including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Divorce magazine and here on the She Leads Podcast. Katherine was also a featured speaker at the She Leads live conference that took place this past November. So, I'm so excited to see her again and welcome to the She Leads Podcast. Katherine.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:02:10 Thank you, Adrienne. I'm really excited and honored to be here with you.
Adrienne Garland: 00:02:20 Well, I am so excited to speak with you today because divorce is a very real reality for so many women. And here on the She Leads Podcast, we're super focused on accomplished women, women that are starting businesses, leading businesses, you know, growing in their professional selves. And this is something that very much comes up for women and probably at a time where they're either accelerating their business or accelerating through their career.
Adrienne Garland: 00:02:50 So, I wanted to talk to you about all of that. But before we get there, I wanted to give everybody that's listening a little bit about your background and how you became a divorce attorney.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:03:15 Sure. Well, I went to law school because I was interested in justice and I realized in the orientation week that was not what law school was going to be about, but I didn't have a plan B, so I thought I'd just stick it out. I come from a family of therapists. So I always knew that I was interested in the intersection between the law where it meets people in their personal lives. So some kind of family law or estate planning was always what I wanted to do.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:04:00 And so I got a job right out of law school pretty much working with families. And after two years I took mediation training because I was like, "Wow, there has to be a better way to help these people resolve these cases." And just to give you a sense of the practice that I had at the time as a young lawyer. Half of our practice was matrimonial litigation and half was child welfare litigation.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:04:45 In the child welfare arena, I have tried hundreds of cases in front of Judge Judy when she was on the bench. Like that was like kind of like the sense of what it was like to practice law for me as a young lawyer in New York City at the time. So I thought, you know what, there has to be a better way. I'm going to take mediation training and start to try to integrate these mediative ideas of settling based on each person's own priorities rather than my prediction or the other lawyer's prediction as to how judge so and so might decide should we end up trying the case.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:05:30 And so but in every single case I ran into the same frustration which was the other lawyer because we just couldn't get on the same page about what it was that we were going to use to reach a resolution and you have to understand Adrienne that currently nationwide in the United States, 95% of divorcing people settle, meaning they make their own decision before a judge makes a decision after a trial. So most people were settling and they still are. In New York, that's 97%. So that's how I, I'm going to stop my little, I'll let you ask me the next question, but that's sort of how I got into doing what I'm doing.
Adrienne Garland: 00:06:50 I am so fascinated with mediation. I actually did some work with a nonprofit organization a couple of years ago called NYSDRA, the New York State Dispute Resolution Association, and they provide mediation training you know, in all the counties around New York, and there are many other organizations across the United States that provide mediation services as well.
Adrienne Garland: 00:07:30 But it's just such an incredible skill to have and I think it's something that people don't even really understand what mediation is versus what a lawyer in, I don't even know what the right terminology, but let's say a professional paying client type of relationship versus mediation services. So before we even go any further only because I like to educate people so that they truly understand you know if let's say they are facing a situation or they even know somebody that's facing a situation of divorce. Can you talk a little bit about what this mediation option is? What is it? What's mediation?
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:08:45 Yeah. Well, mediation is a voluntary process where people agree that they're going to try to work out the issues that need to be resolved and they do it and and it can feel really Adrienne like how could we possibly ever work it out ourselves? We couldn't do it in the kitchen. We couldn't do it at Starbucks. We couldn't do it over dinner, but someone is going to help us do that. And yes, the answer is yes.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:09:30 Someone is going to help you first of all identify what needs to be discussed, gather the information that you need in order to make really good decisions and then walk you through the options. And I just want to say one thing about gathering the information. So there is a lot of external information that anyone needs in any dispute, divorce or anything. You need to know what things are worth. You need to know what the contract says.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:10:15 You need to know in the case of divorce, you need to know what the assets are, what the liabilities are, how it is you're paying the bills, and what those bills are, right? Just as a straight up place. Like that's just outside information. But what's really important is the inside information. What is each person's priorities? What's important to them and why? And that does not have to be the same.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:10:50 In fact, it's better if there's some discrepancy there. It gives you more opportunity for reaching a resolution that is more of a win-win. I don't love that expression, but more of a mutually beneficial, creative, proactive resolution rather than a reactive kind of zero sum game. And one of the ways in which mediators can interrupt the conflict dynamic between a couple is to observe it and to see what that conflict dynamic is and how it gets stuck. I call that the conflict trap where we get into these patterns of conflict conversations with people that we are closely related to right.
Adrienne Garland: 00:11:45 Enmesh, that's a great word. That is a perfect word.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:11:50 Right. So like I have a couple of conversations with my husband where he says something I say something he says something and then the thing that comes into my head to say that I know I'm right, I know you would think I was right all of the listeners would think I was right, God himself would know that I was right. But I also know that if I say that thing that we're going to have this exact same conversation we've had millions of times before and we're both going to walk away from that conversation frustrated and unhappy.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:12:30 And so a mediator can start to see these patterns develop and it's not immediately obvious, but to interrupt that pattern and try to have a conversation that ends in a different place. It might not be perfect, but it would at least be in a different place. And by encouraging the people, the participants in the mediation to talk about their inside information, not just the outside information.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:13:15 Well, maybe the problem and the way it feels so stuck, it shifts a little bit because now I understand myself better. You understand yourself better. We understand the situation we face better and now we see it a little differently. And so from that seeing it a little bit differently place, there's opportunities that we didn't see before to get through it in a way that feels good, or reasonably good even though I am not going to make this easy. It's not easy but at least it feels productive in a way where it felt really frustrating before.
Adrienne Garland: 00:14:15 Thank you so much for taking the time to kind of break that down. I think it's so important and I'm listening to you and I'm thinking to myself, my goodness, when we talk about entrepreneurship and sort of finding opportunity, it is very much about listening to your customer, right? And things that appear to be what the problems are on the surface are often not the problems. They're the symptoms of the problem. So, when you sort of dive down, right?
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:15:00 Yeah.
Adrienne Garland: 00:15:05 So, you're describing mediation in a divorce context and I'm thinking, my goodness, this sounds exactly like, you know, what we do when we go out and we talk to customers to try and gain some insight because that's where the opportunity is. That is where you can come up with a solution to a problem that's truly going to satisfy the person. So there's a lot of parallels there which is very very interesting. I love that. So, you know, I'm smiling talking about divorce and I don't mean to get excited about that, but I think mediation is such a beautiful tool.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:16:15 I think it is the skills that a mediator has to help people express what it is that is really going on for them. These are skills that work really everywhere and they work really well when you're dealing with a customer of any kind because they come and they say, "Well, I want to buy the purple widget." Now, we start negotiating about the price of purple widgets instead of really understanding why the purple widget.
Adrienne Garland: 00:16:45 Yes.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:16:50 Is it the widget? Is it the color? Like what is it you're trying to accomplish with the purple widget, whatever it is, obviously. And so really to understand the customer before you just necessarily respond to what they say they want because what they say they want is their conclusion as to what's going to solve their problem, but they might not understand it as well as you do because you might see the business or the widget business better than they do.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:17:30 And so maybe understanding that actually they don't need the widget, they need the what's-it and it needs to be the yellow color because that's going to actually do a better job. They just only heard about the purple widget, right? And I think that's a really big problem that people make and entrepreneurs make, we make in society all the time is assuming that we're reacting to what someone says instead of really trying to understand what they mean and where they're coming from.
Adrienne Garland: 00:18:30 Wow. I mean, I feel like we could end the podcast there because that is like the essence of everything, right? Like let's just let that settle. And I think maybe a message coming out of this podcast, at least something that I'm taking away right here and right now is, you know, slow down and listen. You know, truly listen. That is something that I think we don't do as a society, you know, as a whole.
Adrienne Garland: 00:19:15 I don't think we do a really good job of trying to truly understand somebody else. We're so hyperfocused on getting our own needs, you know, satisfied that we don't even see what's in front of us. And that's not a great way to move through life. So, I think anybody listening out there to this podcast, let this be your message or, you know, yeah, let this be a sign to you to maybe listen a little bit more.
Adrienne Garland: 00:20:00 And so much opportunity is there. And I think that's what's incredibly important. You know, it's funny that you mentioned the statistic about how 97% of in New York 97% of cases end in, I'm now blanking, settling, 97% end up settling. And you know, I also was just sort of looking at some statistics about divorce because in my mind and even growing up, I kept hearing that statistic about 50% of marriages end in divorce and it seems to be that that number is declining a little bit or at least has declined.
Adrienne Garland: 00:21:00 I saw some recent statistics that it's just under 40%. So, I guess that's a good thing that, you know, more people maybe they're being a little bit more discerning about getting married, waiting a little bit longer. It's resulting in hopefully, you know, fewer divorces. But also something that really stood out to me beyond the fact that maybe we're doing a little bit better when it comes to divorce is that 70% of cases of divorce are brought by women.
Adrienne Garland: 00:22:00 And when they're college educated women, 90% of divorces are brought by women. And that's according to research from the American Sociological Association and I was like wow you know women are the ones that are recognizing that like hey this isn't working for me and I think what's really interesting about this is that women are the ones to say hey this isn't working when they're college educated they say that even more but we also see that women aren't necessarily prepared to divorce.
Adrienne Garland: 00:22:45 So I'd love to sort of talk about that from a couple of different perspectives. So when women are young, you know, before they get married or even, you know, think about it, what are some of the things that they need to do to really prepare themselves and their life, you know, for the potential that one day they may be faced with divorce. That's one thing that I'd like to talk about. And then secondly, for women that, you know, never thought that they were going to get divorced or be in that situation and they didn't prepare themselves. What are some things that they can do today if they're facing the prospect of divorce?
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:23:45 Well, those are two big questions and so let's start with the first one. Would that be okay? Like the things that I'm going to say from the young woman question, young woman thinking about getting married, preparing to get married, the things that I'm going to tell you that will help you if you're in that position listener to sort of prepare yourself for the possibility of divorce are also in my opinion things that are going to make it less likely that you will get divorced.
Adrienne Garland: 00:24:30 Love it.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:24:35 Because I think that one of the things that is really a challenge for a lot of people is talking about money.
Adrienne Garland: 00:24:40 Yes.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:24:45 And I think that a lot of people and as a culture money means so much more than a way to pay the bills. It's really a way that we measure success and power and compare ourselves to our families of origin, our neighbors, our friends, and each other. And so money is also just a way to pay the bills. And each of us have our own, for lack of a better way of framing the sort of money personality, things that we appreciate about money, things we worry about money.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:25:30 If you don't have a conversation with your intended or your spouse about these things, then you are almost guaranteeing yourself that you're going to run into a problem which is kind of like why I like the idea of a prenuptial agreement. There's a lot of legal reasons I like the idea of that too but it forces people to talk about money because all marriages end Adrienne, they end either by death or divorce they all end and the law has something to say about what that means.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:26:15 So talking about the end of the marriage is not cynically planning for it to end and therefore creating a harbinger of the future for yourself. You're talking about how you're going to handle money during the marriage and after the marriage and what partnership, what marriage means to you when it comes to money. I think that's a really important conversation. It's probably a lot more important than the dress you choose or the colors of the napkins at the reception or which caterer or band. And yet.
Adrienne Garland: 00:27:00 And yet so much more attention often goes to those conversations and the conversation about how we're going to handle money during the marriage. Hey everyone. So, for years I've been working with Dr. Kent and sending people in my network his way. He does so much impact work. What do I mean by that? Well, he helps people create books and podcasts and things like that. He even helps with this podcast behind the scenes. Dr. Kent is my thought partner.
Adrienne Garland: 00:27:45 Anyone listening knows that we all need to do what we can to get our thoughts, opinions, and voices out into the world and how important it is for women to invest in other women and for women to hire other women. I am all about that and you all know that. But in this case, I think Dr. Kent is an exception. He's doing something really different via this new program that he's launched called the Genius Discovery Program.
Adrienne Garland: 00:28:30 So, he wants to work with people like me and like you who are impact driven. Dr. Kent has an intensive program that goes for a month. He also has a three-month program where he figures out where you're headed with your brand, your business, your speaking, and your signature story as a thought leader. I've known Dr. Kent for a long time. So, believe me when I say that he has a ton of experience working with people that are looking to make an impact but might not know exactly how to approach them.
Adrienne Garland: 00:29:15 So, if you're interested in talking to him, you can go directly to talktokent.com or you can send me a DM on Instagram at She Leads Media or just shoot me an email over at hello@sheleadsmedia.com. Gosh, that's societal programming right there. Right. Like women just look pretty and select your dress and leave the money and the number stuff to me as a man, right? Like that is a big problem. We need to change that.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:30:00 It is. And then more and more, you know, just go back to some of the statistics that you mentioned a few minutes ago, Adrienne, anecdotally, because I can't remember where I saw this, but I read a study that said that the happiest people are married men and single women. I think you can think about some of the reasons why that might be. I'm not going to, you know, sort of try to come up with that.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:30:45 And also that the average woman who chooses to divorce thinks about it for four years before she does anything about it. The average man, 10. And those kind of those statistics kind of go together, right? And so I think that we also have a disconnect and I think this is changing generationally between the sort of like Barbie and Ken approach to marriage where I, or the Prince Charming, right?
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:31:30 I'm the woman. I'm going to just be, maybe I'll have a career or not have a career, but you know, my husband is going to be responsible for paying the bills and keeping us in a particular style of living and all of that. And yet women are becoming much more, I mean I'm not saying there's no glass ceiling but there are many many more relationships now where the woman becomes the primary breadwinner not having expected to be that from the beginning.
Adrienne Garland: 00:32:00 Right. Yeah.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:32:10 And yet, and there's still the same sense that even if they're making more money well I should get alimony right and so like or or I've done everything in the marriage, including bring home the bacon. So, you shouldn't get anything. And I sort of I think the one of the reasons that I think that having conversations about money early on really inoculates women from having these sort of wake up calls later on in the marriage is that they haven't just swept this conversation under the bed.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:32:30 This hasn't just happened to them. They're really proactively engaged in participating in the money conversation, the money decisions in the family all along so it doesn't become this all or nothing kind of approach to it.
Adrienne Garland: 00:33:00 Yeah. You as you're talking I'm really thinking about you know back in whatever the 50s will go. You know women weren't necessarily having careers and so when they entered into marriage that conversation probably didn't even need to happen because of the way that society sort of set it up that, you know, men were the breadwinners, women were going to stay home and, you know, cook the bacon.
Adrienne Garland: 00:33:30 But it's, you know, bringing values into the marriage conversation, you often align on, you know, values and what you would like your life to be. So, in a lot of ways, it's a recent phenomenon that goes beyond, you know, what our morals are, what our values are. And it's like we need to add another element into that conversation, which is, you know, how do we want to live our money life as well?
Adrienne Garland: 00:34:00 Like what do we expect our lifestyle is going to be? Not just what the man decides in a heteronormative type of relationship, but you know what, whatever the man decides, I'll go along with it. That language needs to be there for women. And I think that when I agree with you, having a conversation or even putting like a prenuptial agreement into place is probably the smart thing to do.
Adrienne Garland: 00:35:00 But I think because it's sort of wrapped in law and, you know, sort of deciding what happens if something inevitably, you know, doesn't work out. That's the part that's scary because you said it before, it's like a harbinger of what's to come if I, you know, if I talk about this, is it more likely that it's going to happen because I'm planning for the inevitability of divorce? And I think that's why so many people avoid it.
Adrienne Garland: 00:35:30 And it's almost like we need different language that is not law language so that we can have those more humanistic type of conversations going into a marriage.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:36:00 Yeah. I mean, ironically, people who have prenups are less likely to get divorced, which is why I said one of the things that is kind of surprising, you know, I think that I think that that really does help people talk about it. But here's the thing that I think is really scary. It's not just that we're talking about the possibility of divorce. It's like, what if we get into the money conversation, Adrienne, and we disagree?
Adrienne Garland: 00:36:30 I think a lot about that. But here's the thing.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:36:40 Isn't it better to know that and work it out with professional help rather than just find that out 10 or 15 years in?
Adrienne Garland: 00:37:00 Yeah. When you are enmeshed in your relationship and then it becomes very difficult to figure out, you know, what those next steps are. I totally and completely agree with you on that and I think it's very powerful what you said statistically that people that have a prenuptial agreement in place are statistically less likely to get divorced. I think that needs to be you know a banner that we put up and read.
Adrienne Garland: 00:37:30 And the question that I had to just something that came to mind and I don't know if you know this or not but is there any type of research or whatever that says that, you know, men are the ones who are more likely to bring up the prenup conversation or is it sort of equal that like a woman wants to have that conversation, like who is the initiator of that conversation?
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:38:00 I think that I don't, anecdotally I feel like it's brought up pretty much equally by men and women. I think there's two circumstances that make people bring it up. One is families of wealth. If one or both parties come from a family of wealth, their parents are bringing it up because they want generational continuation of the family wealth and they're going to sometimes put some considerable pressure on their child to bring it up.
Adrienne Garland: 00:38:30 Yeah.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:38:35 That can be super uncomfortable because then the child feels caught between their parents and their intended spouse, right? That can be really uncomfortable and mediation can be very helpful for that. And the other is when someone has already built something. They have a lot of money in their 401k. They're anticipating a large inheritance or some kind of inheritance. They have a startup.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:38:50 I mean, do you think that Jeff Bezos might have thought, you know, what might be a good idea, a germ of an idea, right? Like, you know what I'm saying? Like a germ of an idea that might be a lottery ticket. And you might want to think about what does that mean for the future of our relationship. I'm not saying that the business should be off the table because I'm just saying talking about it. What is the involvement going to be?
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:39:20 What's going to happen? And getting professional advice on that is really useful. So you're not making assumptions that, well, you know the expression, when you make an assumption, you make an ass out of you and me. Like you're just going to be wrong.
Adrienne Garland: 00:39:40:15 Yes. Yes. Well, I know that after this conversation, when or if my sons ever do decide to get married, I am definitely going to be having a conversation with them about, you know, whether they have anything to talk about in a prenup or not, but just to have the conversation because it's a very important element of a relationship. And it's not something that you immediately think of, but it's actually the thing that probably, you know, is one of the key factors in marriages breaking up. Money troubles are real. Yeah.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:40:00 Absolutely. Another thing that comes up for people a lot, I think, is disagreements about discipline. But if you've already had a difficult conversation about like working out money, then you can talk about your different perspectives on discipline. It's the same conversation. It's just a different topic, if that makes sense.
Adrienne Garland: 00:40:20 Yeah. And so, for those people that find themselves in a situation where they are facing divorce and they haven't had this conversation and they don't have a prenup, and you know they're sort of trying to figure out you know what's next and we're talking about this specifically from the woman's point of view because that's who's listening in to the She Leads Podcast.
Adrienne Garland: 00:40:45 I know there's some amazing men that are listening in too but I like to you know give the advice to the women. So for the women that are potentially facing this scenario and they haven't had the conversation they don't have you know maybe even access to different financial accounts or, you know, they just don't even know sort of what to do, what action steps to take. What is some advice that would be helpful for them?
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:41:00 Yeah. So, don't act out of fear. It's not I'm not saying you shouldn't be afraid that there are scary things. There are. The most important decision that you will make as part of the divorce process that will dictate how you feel about the process, the outcome that you get, and how you feel about yourself going through it is how are you going to make the decisions that need to be made.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:41:25 So again, 95% nationwide, 97% in New York are going to settle. That means you're going to sign a contract that resolves all the issues that need to be there. So you should do some research about what's available. So there is mediation. There is something called collaborative law where people have attorneys and mental health professionals and financial professionals but agree to stay out of court.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:41:40 There's litigation which is the other end of the extreme where you give over the decision-making to a judge or a jury. In some jurisdictions, there's some negotiation. So, when you go to talk to professionals, you should ask them about the various processes that are available because picking the best one for your situation is a hugely important choice and inflection point in the divorce process itself and it is really really I cannot stress this more Adrienne really important because otherwise you're going to feel like you're on a train you never wanted to be on.
Adrienne Garland: 00:42:00 Yeah, I know. I mean I definitely know people and you know people in my family and everything that have just been faced with all of these different decisions and they're getting advice from their lawyer and maybe doing things that they don't necessarily want to be doing because it's going to set them up for some outcome with a judge or something and it does it feels like you just give over control and it spins away from you and then you're left with like okay I guess they know better than me and again it's like this disempowering loop that you can't get yourself out of.
Adrienne Garland: 00:42:20 So, I love the advice of, you know, you can be afraid, but figure out how you're going to make decisions. And, you know, do you have any advice for people? Yes, of course, you know, if they retain an attorney, that person is going to help them as much as possible. But for people that are, you know, very happy with an outcome. Are there other trusted people that they should talk to in their lives?
Adrienne Garland: 00:42:40 Like not a friend that you can, you know, b**** and moan and talk about all the things and cry and, you know, he sucks, but someone that can be really, really helpful to you. What type of person might that be for you that might not be a professionally trained divorce attorney?
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:42:50 A friend or good friend or sibling who is willing to listen to you cry and rant and and just share what what's going on for you is a really valuable resource. I think divorce coaching can be very helpful. It's a lot less expensive than talking to your lawyer about some of this stuff and it can help you kind of get your head straight about where you want to go with it.
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:43:00 Talking to a financial professional or attending seminars on financial planning can help you make a strategic financial plan for your post-divorce life. If you have a better sense of that I think that is really calming.
Adrienne Garland: 00:43:05 I absolutely love the advice of, you know, go out and educate yourself and come up with a plan. How does this impact women entrepreneurs?
Katherine Eisold Miller: 00:43:10 Your business is a marital asset. Having a prenup to protect the value of your business makes sense. It's painful, but you want to think about that operating agreement.
Adrienne Garland: 00:43:15 It is an asset, which is a great thing. Katherine, thank you for being a guest on the She Leads Podcast. If you would like to get in touch with Katherine, you can go to the website miller-law.com or listen to TheEmotionallySavvyDivorcePodcast@divorce.com. If this conversation moved you, please leave a five-star rating and review. Head to sheleadsmedia.com/voice and leave a voice memo. Thank you so much for listening.