Leah Hadley [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Intentional Divorce Insights. I'm Leah Hadley, certified divorce financial analyst, accredited financial counselor, and the founder of Intentional Divorce Solutions. I'll be your guide through the complexities of divorce, finance, and emotional wellness. Join me as we uncover practical tips and empowering insights to help you navigate your divorce with clarity and intention.
Leah Hadley [00:00:24]:
Welcome back to intentional divorce insights. Today, we have a very special guest recognized for his profound expertise in family law. Jonathan Spills have earned him continuous recognition from Illinois Super Lawyers Magazine for the rising star, and accolade reserved for less than 2.5 percent of attorneys under 40 in state acknowledging outstanding lawyers who have attained high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement. Furthermore, he's been designated an emerging lawyer by Leading Lawyers Magazine, a selective honor given to fewer than 2% of Illinois attorneys each year which recognizes only those lawyers who are identified by their peers as the top lawyers in Illinois. Outside the courtroom, Jonathan is dedicated to community service, providing pro bono legal aid through JUS Community Legal Services, and contributing to medical research initiatives as a board member of the Medical Research Junior Board Foundation at Ann and Robert h Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. Jonathan, thank you for being here. You're a busy man.
Jonathan Steele [00:01:32]:
I'm happy to be here. It's it's great to meet you, and, happy to be on your show.
Leah Hadley [00:01:37]:
Fantastic. Tell us a little bit about how you got into Family Law.
Jonathan Steele [00:01:42]:
I started at the age of 16. Child labor laws be damned. I was started as a law clerk, through the summers in high school. I continued that through college. And then, all throughout law school, I kept that same job as a law clerk and then became an attorney upon admission to the bar.
Leah Hadley [00:02:03]:
Wow. So you really got a young start.
Jonathan Steele [00:02:05]:
I sure did. I've been in this divorce field for the majority of my life at this point.
Leah Hadley [00:02:10]:
Okay. Do you have any personal experience with divorce?
Jonathan Steele [00:02:15]:
I am a a child of divorce. And other than divorcing hundreds of people at this point, that would be my personal experience.
Leah Hadley [00:02:25]:
Now lots of our listeners are in the phase where they may just be looking for an attorney. What recommendations do you have? What should they look for when they're with the attorney?
Jonathan Steele [00:02:38]:
You know, it it's sort of the wild west out there. And if you just hop on Google, you you could be led astray. You know, whoever's paying for an ad that day might pop up as the first person. So do a little bit more research than that. Try not to be scared off by the sticker shock of an expensive lawyer or a high hourly rate. There are times when a lawyer that charges 400 an hour can do the work more than twice as fast as a lawyer that charges 200 an hour, and so you may come out ahead in the long run. So, you know, it's a calculated game there of trying to find the sweet spot of what you can afford. But generally speaking, cheap lawyers are good and good lawyers are cheap.
Jonathan Steele [00:03:25]:
So get what you can afford.
Leah Hadley [00:03:29]:
Yeah. That's a really good point. And a lot of times that hourly rate reflects more than anything, and we want to have good revenue.
Jonathan Steele [00:03:39]:
Absolutely. Everything's on the line in your divorce. It's your financial stability, your your kids, everything is your house is on fire. There's no better use of money at that point in your life.
Leah Hadley [00:03:50]:
Absolutely. What kind of questions should people ask when they are interviewing attorneys?
Jonathan Steele [00:03:58]:
Oh, I think it's important to, have an understanding of what is a reasonable expectation, what kind of outcomes can they expect, so that they're they're not coming into it with unreasonable expectations. A lot of lawyers will overpromise, which leads to them underdelivering. So it's important to get a good sense of what is a realistic outcome, what is the most efficient path to getting to that outcome. And then I think it's also important to ask what is the lawyer's preferred means of communicating. You know, some lawyers like emails, some like phone calls. And if you're in front of a phone call lawyer and you're sending them novels by way of an email, you're you're not gonna miss each other. You're not gonna match up very well.
Leah Hadley [00:04:49]:
I think that's such a good point and being proactive around the communication. You know, so often that's the feedback that I hear is people are really frustrated with that communication, and alot of times they never ask the question, what is the best way to communicate.
Jonathan Steele [00:05:04]:
Right it's really important.
Leah Hadley [00:05:07]:
What legal insights can you provide to help reduce stress and help offsetting the different process?
Jonathan Steele [00:05:12]:
You know, I think finding, an outlet for you know, the stress is unavoidable, but you have to find a a healthy outlet for it. And I stress the word healthy. A lot of people turn to alcohol or drug use, to try to get by to cope. I would discourage that especially if you have kids. They need the best version of you all the time. So whether that's exercise, whether that's, you know, time that you set aside for yourself, with your friends or your family, whatever you need to do to take care of you is important. And then I think just trying to this part's easier said than done, but to the extent you can look at your case from a zoomed out perspective on what the big picture is, you'll you'll save yourself a lot of heartache getting roped into every imaginable skirmish along the way that ordinarily is not those aren't worth fighting.
Jonathan Steele [00:06:15]:
So you've gotta conserve your resources, your time, your energy, for the big fight of what really matters.
Leah Hadley [00:06:23]:
That's such an important point because it's so easy for people to get sucked in with some of those smaller things that they just wanna control. But there's so much that has to be divided by really focusing on those big things.
Jonathan Steele [00:06:38]:
You know, I I get used as a weapon, all the time to fight battles that there's just minimal to no gain. You know, you might be fighting over a 315 or a 330 pickup from school, for your child. And then the big picture, it doesn't matter. You're better off putting the legal fees in the college fund for your child as opposed to sending my children to college. So it's important to keep a sense of perspective and what what's really important to you.
Leah Hadley [00:07:09]:
Absolutely. How can somebody protect their privacy and security during and after divorce?
Jonathan Steele [00:07:17]:
It that's an important question, because, you know, more and more, social media posts are making their way into divorce cases. Whether it's because you went out drinking with your friends and so your spouse is accusing you of endangering your child or because you're engaged now in an extramarital affair and so there's an accusation so that you don't get alimony or maintenance. It's important to understand what your footprint is, your digital footprint is. It's important to have an understanding of who whether your accounts are private, whether who your followers are, whether some of those followers are connected to your spouse, and just try to have a good understanding of what is visible, what is available about you. You can start as simple as googling yourself, seeing what's out there, seeing what's available, when you're not signed in to your accounts. And then from a security perspective, you know, a lot of times people will come in and they'll be, suspicious that their spouse has access to their Icloud, their pictures, their Imessages, their emails. And it's important to, detach any such access. You know, there if you're using an iPhone, which a lot of people are using now, there's a safety check feature in the phone where you can go through sort of step by step and see what access you granted to who, and you can pretty easily change all of that.
Jonathan Steele [00:08:55]:
So you're you're at least giving yourself the ability to sleep at night knowing your emails are safe, your texts are safe, your photos are safe, because the last thing you want is your spouse having access to all of that during and after your divorce.
Leah Hadley [00:09:10]:
Such an important point. And one of the things that I see in my practice is people, not necessarily securing their documents very well. Sending documents via Gmail that might have account numbers on it, things like that. But we always encourage people not to email those documents unless they have a description, but other ways of communicating with the professionals that you're working with, in order to keep your information secure.
Jonathan Steele [00:09:37]:
That's a huge pet peeve of mine. It's something that I don't allow my staff to do. Anytime we're sending or receiving documents, it's a secure link where you're uploading. You're not attaching anything, as an attachment because someday your email gets hacked. It's not if, it's when. And all of a sudden, your your attachments are just a treasure trove of information, whereas if you're sending it as a link, those links expire. Those links have the ability to control access. It's so much more secure of a way to transmit things, and it's it's crucial.
Leah Hadley [00:10:12]:
Absolutely. What are some key steps individuals can take to secure their financial future after the break?
Jonathan Steele [00:10:20]:
I I think it's important to to find out where you are in life. You know, some of that depends on are you getting divorced at the age of 30? Are you getting divorced at the age of 50? Because that's gonna have a big part in your investment strategy whether or not you have time on your side. The younger you are, the more benefit of time you have. But connecting yourself after your divorce with a network of professionals to help guide you in that process is important. Whether you're coming out of a long term marriage and you're replacing professionals that you saw as being aligned with your spouse or not, you wanna have a team of people that know what they're doing. You wanna meet with a financial adviser or a financial planner. You wanna have a good accountant. Life coaches can be very important to help navigate that process holistically.
Jonathan Steele [00:11:13]:
So you really have to lean on people, that this is their specialty unless it happens to be yours, which it isn't most people's. You know, dentists don't operate on their own teeth, and they they go to people that do that for a living. So if you are trying to ensure your financial stability going forward and for your children, you gotta make sure you're in competent hands and getting good advice.
Leah Hadley [00:11:42]:
Yeah. That's so important. And, you know, sometimes I see cases years after they've been closed where people haven't actually executed on the agreements that those needs to in their settlement, which can cause all kinds of issues. Right? And so really understanding your settlement, excuse me, and making sure that, you know, assets are being transferred, that everything is being retitled as necessary. All of those loose ends are getting tied up. So that way, you know, you don't find years down the road. Sometimes they're doing, you know, in-depth tracing to get to numbers that, like, could have been really solved very easily right after the reports.
Jonathan Steele [00:12:21]:
I'm sorry to hear that experience. To me, that reflects pretty heavily on the lawyers that are involved. Some a lot of that's the lawyer's job. But from a client's perspective, it's important to take accountability to and to understand the timelines, the deadlines in your judgment so that you can keep on track for sure.
Leah Hadley [00:12:44]:
Now I know you take really, like, a holistic approach of looking at the divorce as this life transition. How can you or what are some strategies that you recommend for maintaining emotional well-being during the divorce process?
Jonathan Steele [00:12:59]:
You know, I I find myself wearing a therapist hat pretty often. If I'm not in a courtroom, that's the majority of what I'm doing during the day. And it's important to understand that's not your lawyer's training. They went to law school. They didn't go to school to field phone calls about your feelings and how your spouse is a bad person and they cause the breakdown of your marriage and they, are a narcissist, your lawyer will listen to you, because they're gonna take your call. But those calls should be directed to a therapist. Those calls should be directed to a life coach. Even family and friends are better than your lawyer, although they're not gonna give you as good of advice as a therapist or a life coach would give you.
Jonathan Steele [00:13:47]:
And I'm leaning more towards coaches nowadays. There's a tendency I've noticed at least in therapy to, to get stuck in your past a little bit and use that as a crutch or an excuse for why you are where you are in life. And I think therapy is important. Certainly, if you have mental health issues or you are, you know, dealing with trauma, there's no better place. But coaching might help you be a little bit more forward looking, a little more goal oriented. And oftentimes, almost always, whether therapy or coaching, the hourly rates that you're paying for these, ears to listen to you are a fraction of what your lawyer is charging you to offer you no solid advice or feedback. So you're always better off coaching, therapy, anywhere pretty much than talking to your lawyer.
Leah Hadley [00:14:44]:
It's such a good point. And, really, it's it's in your best interest to have somebody like that that can be your sounding board, so that way you can be efficient with your time with your employees. You're talking earlier about how, you know, you wanna use your money well. And so that's a a great point in terms of saving on the cost of your divorce, using the right professionals for what they're trained for. Absolutely.
Jonathan Steele [00:15:11]:
You know, one of the coaches that I I work with somewhat regularly, a lot of what she does with her clients and their shared clients at this point, but so our clients is she will have a lawyer prep strategy meeting with them before they come in to see me each time they're coming in to see me because she wants to come in with an agenda and just hit the salient points that she wants to hit, get in, get out. And it's it's very much appreciated by me, and her bills reflect it. You know, we're not sitting around just talking, needlessly. We're we're cut we're cutting to the chase. We're hitting the points that are important. We're coming to resolutions, and it's done in a fraction of the time and, therefore, for a fraction of the cost.
Leah Hadley [00:15:59]:
And I can see how that would really limit some of the frustration I hear some clients when they're working with their attorneys, that they're not feeling like they're getting what they need, but oftentimes it is because they're wasting time talking about other things. You're getting distracted by certain things that they could be processing elsewhere.
Jonathan Steele [00:16:16]:
Absolutely. It's it's it's a it's a great, strategy that this particular coach employs. And whether you're using your coach or not, it's important even as, just an individual to organize your thoughts. Have have some talking points for your lawyer. Come in with, an agenda just like any other professional meeting would have. If you come in with 5 or 6 talking points, specific questions that you have for your lawyer, you're you're way better off. You're not gonna be led down a rabbit hole or you're talking about something that doesn't end up mattering, and then walk out thinking, oh, no. I forgot to even mention x, y, or z.
Jonathan Steele [00:16:59]:
So it's it's can be very important.
Leah Hadley [00:17:02]:
Absolutely. Now the other big issue that comes up with a lot of families is how to foster a positive co parenting relationship, not to make sense. What are your thoughts?
Jonathan Steele [00:17:15]:
It's tough. You know, there there there's no shortage of books out there about how to be a good parent, but there there's no, like, definitive guide on it. There's no definitive, this is what you do and that equals a good parent. There's a host of things that you shouldn't do, if you wanna be a good parent. And that starts with, being the best version of yourself as I mentioned before, focusing on the quality of the time you have with your child as opposed to the quantity. It's easy to get hung up on quantity and lose sight of quality. And, you know, if you it's very easy to, overly concern yourself with what is your child doing when they're with the other parent, what kind of rules are being applied in the other parent's home. And you have to just sort of let go of that because you can't control it.
Jonathan Steele [00:18:07]:
Certainly, if your child is being subjected to harm or risk of harm, then you can try to do something about it. But if it's, you know, what time are they allowed to go to sleep at night? What kind of movies are they seeing? What kind of video games? What kind of phone access, some of that you just have to relinquish control. No more so than your spouse can control what you're doing during your time. You can't control what they're doing during their time. And lastly, to the best you can, you have to avoid, talking bad about your ex spouse in the presence of your child. They're a sponge for that. They they have a tendency to blame themselves for the divorce because that allows them to feel like they have some control over the situation. And that's the last thing you want.
Jonathan Steele [00:18:53]:
They they it needs to be clear to them. It's not their fault, and that you don't have any ill will towards, the other parent whether you do or you don't. It's, you know, find a find a appropriate, setting to express that. If if you're talking to your mom or to a therapist outside of your shot of your child, that's totally fine and encouraged. It's a good stress reliefs, but never in front of your child. It it's it's proven time and again, it's damaging to them, and they deserve better than that.
Leah Hadley [00:19:29]:
Do you have any recommendations when people are putting their parenting plan together, in ways that they can foster that positive parenting relationship?
Jonathan Steele [00:19:39]:
Yeah. I I think every case ends up being a little different. There's nuances for every you know, whether or not you live close to each other is a huge factor in what kind of parenting schedule works. You know, the age of the child matters a lot. The younger a child is, it's the science is more frequency than duration. So, you know, you wanna make sure you're seeing your child often even if for less amount of time per visit. And then as they get older, they they are more equipped to handle longer blocks of time. So as you get to be 13, 14 years old, if you're at, like, a 5050 schedule, which I I would urge people not to get too hung up on the numbers.
Jonathan Steele [00:20:26]:
But if that's the gist of it, the older kids can handle, like, a week on week off block. They can handle summers or vacations where you're split up in bigger chunks of time. So those are, I think, important things to consider in how you structure your parenting plan because one of the most important factors is the schedule. So
Leah Hadley [00:20:49]:
And I I heard you say that you don't necessarily want people focusing on whether it's 5050 or 6040 or what have you. Tell us a little bit more about that. I see that in my practice a lot where people are so focused on 5050 that they're making it more difficult for themselves.
Jonathan Steele [00:21:07]:
You know, people just have a a preconception that that's what's fair. And if it's 5149, it suggests that I'm not a good parent, and it doesn't suggest that. Sometimes it just suggests that maybe you're the working parent or maybe you live far apart, so it's hard to have 5050. And I, you know, I have people come in all the time. I want 5050. I want 5050. And so I ask them, okay. What does that mean? What schedule do you want? Which days? What times? And it's always a blank look after that because what they want is 5050.
Jonathan Steele [00:21:44]:
What they want is perceived fairness. They don't they don't really have a schedule in mind. They just want those numbers. And as I mentioned earlier, it's it's quality over quantity. It's not about counting the minutes. It's about what are you doing with the time that you have. So try to try to let go of did I get 5050 on the nose or do I have a schedule where I make sure that I have time with my child that is quality time. You know, you don't wanna fight for time that you can't use because you're working.
Jonathan Steele [00:22:17]:
Certainly, usually, your child's better off with the other parent if you're working as opposed to, like, a nanny or something. So, obviously, get as much time as you can, but try not to count the minutes.
Leah Hadley [00:22:31]:
Now I know you have a free gift for our listeners, but what is that?
Jonathan Steele [00:22:37]:
I do. I have a a downloadable PDF, which, was motivated by my having my own kids. YouTube to me is, I I used this expression earlier. I think it's it's the wild west to me. One minute, you've got your iPad in your kids' hands, and they're watching, an episode of Bluey, which I love, by the way. And the next minute, you know, you went off to take a shower, you come back and they're watching somebody stabbing somebody on YouTube and it's terrifying. Or you're watching a 60 year old man doing an unboxing of bluey toys in a really creepy way. And some of that can be mitigated by using YouTube for kids, but not all of it.
Jonathan Steele [00:23:29]:
You know, that might just get rid of the stabbing. It might not get rid of the creepy old guy in his basement that's doing an unboxing. So I I try to give sort of like a a tiered approach to parents to help them, apply a belt and suspenders to YouTube access for the kids because it can be a great resource. It can be a great educational tool. You just have to make sure that it's constrained in a way that they don't stumble upon something that ends up being jarring and traumatizing because some of the things you could see on there, you can't unsee. So it's important.
Leah Hadley [00:24:07]:
Yeah. Absolutely. I love that and so appreciate it. Where can people find it?
Jonathan Steele [00:24:13]:
I can give you a link to include in the, the show notes or I I can give it to you here. It's I'll I'll put it at steelfortress.com /youtube.
Leah Hadley [00:24:23]:
Okay. Fantastic. And we will include it in the show notes as well. And, Jonathan, where can people learn more about you and your friends?
Jonathan Steele [00:24:32]:
On my law firm's website is a good place to start. It's beermanlaw.com. Beer as in the drink, and then mannlaw.com.
Leah Hadley [00:24:43]:
Fantastic. Well, again, I so appreciate you taking the time to be here with us and to share your insights. And for our listeners, we look forward to seeing you next week.
Leah Hadley [00:24:53]:
Thank you for joining me on Intentional Divorce Insights. It's a privilege to share this time with you. I hope each episode offers valuable guidance to navigate your journey. If you find our content helpful, please leave a review to help others discover the benefits of intentional decision making in divorce. Until next time, take care and continue to embrace your path with intention.
