Why Relationships Die & Which Ethnicity is WORST in Divorce | The Divorce Expert

Why is it rude to say to someone You guys are getting along. You're in love. You're having fun. Why do you want to get the government involved? What most people call love today was something that was invented in the 50s to sell shampoo. Wow. All three of you have a prenup. The government wrote it. You think that's a good idea? You ever walk into the DMV? You ever walk into the DMV and go

These people should be in charge of everything. You are pro-marriage. You're just anti-marriage without a prenup. People want to do dumb shit. You want to do some dumb shit? Do some dumb shit. Just admit you're doing some dumb. What is your craziest divorce? I shouldn't say this in public, but I will her husband ran her over three times and stabbed her 16 times. Who's the worst in divorce?

Culturally, ethnically, racially. Sometimes stereotypes are a real time saver. Let's just call that out. Russian women, in my experience professionally, they get ice cold. When you're married to a Russian woman, there's nothing she won't do for you. And when you're divorcing a Russian woman, there is nothing she won't do to you. Like she will f*** your s*** right up. Is there anything that you've learned through all these divorces about what makes

I've learned a lot by being a divorce lawyer about what keeps people together. What I've learned, I would say more than anything else, is just pay attention. People get divorced the same way they go bankrupt. Very slowly and then all at once. What's up everybody, welcome to Flagrant and today's guest I just want to point out

was not suggested by any of the people that were sitting here. All happily married or in great relationships, and none of us would suggest such a guest. A prolific guest, mind you. Okay, we got Jim Saxon here. The world's most... murderous divorce attorney. Wow. Shit, that's going on the website. What's most murderous divorce attorney? Andrew Schultz of Netflix fame. No, no, no. Obviously, obviously, you're incredibly...

content that you've put up out on the internet, like in mostly interviews that you've done. It's kind of interesting because you've been this divorce attorney for decades and now you have like a public profile about your job. So bizarre. Yeah. So bizarre. I can't actually stand still anywhere in New York City without someone coming up going, you're that divorce lawyer, you know? The problem is when you do... Like if you're going to be known for a viral clip, don't be wearing the same outfit.

because there's no way to cam it's like your mustache if you shave that shit you can probably get away with it for a few days you can blend right in maybe that's what I'm playing you want to take a week or two off. That's the advice. Are you right there? New Salino and Barnes for us New Yorkers. Wow. I could be both Salino and Barnes. Of course. They had a bad breakup. Did you work on that? Get out of myself. That's a deep cut New York reference. These were like iconic.

New York lawyers and it was like one of the first like call lines for law advice. 1-800-888-888-888. Did that exist? And we had the most leisurely attorneys. 1-800-888-888. There was a lot of eights. And they had the most brutal breakup, like epic level.

break up but then what's he died which is like you know here you go like you finish this brutal hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees trying to get away from each other and then one of you dies yeah that's pretty lucky for the other guy he was like

shit, I could have saved some counts. How many people just kill their wife instead of divorcing them? Surprising number of people. Have you ever been involved in one of those? I've never had one where someone was killed. I did have a client who her husband or estranged husband, now ex-husband. ran her over three times and stabbed her 16 times. This is during the divorce? During the divorce.

and she survived. Like, this guy couldn't even get that shit right. Like, he stabbed someone 16 times, run him over three times, and she's alive to tell the tale when he's in fucking prison. Okay, so she got 100%. In the end, probably. She got 100%. She also had to get like another kidney and some other things. So she lost out. Probably could afford that on the black market. Yeah, I mean, with the amount of money, yeah, she did all right. Now, what role do you play in that?

I wasn't like the lookout, if that's what she was doing. There she is! Meaning, like, how much pressure were you putting on him where he just goes, I gotta kill him? A lot, yeah. I mean, I think... high net worth and ultra high net worth divorces. What is high net worth? So high net worth is generally defined as a divorce where the estate is more than $10 million. Got it, got it.

Ultra high net worth is over $100 million. Got it. So it's a different level in some ways because you're fighting over bigger numbers. It's harder to track the values. A lot of the stuff that people do for like wealth preservation and tax avoidance. Yeah. super rich people don't own anything they have trusts that own LLC's that are beneficiaries of great grandchildren that haven't been born yet own everything and they just borrow it from them so that's why they pay

than a guy who works at Burger King. So it's unbelievable. Because they're not actually generating income. No. And you only pay tax on income. I guess you can pay capital gains too. But not if you do it the right way. So what happens is these people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars. to accountants and tax attorneys to make sure they don't have to pay taxes. But they don't anticipate that when they get divorced,

This is just going to blow up in your face. Wait, why? Why is it? Because it makes it so complicated to figure out where is the money. What is marital? What is outside the scope of the marital estate? What can the judge get their hands on? What can't they get their hands on? So it becomes a really, really tricky, messy thing. Do you prefer the ultra high net worth? I mean, they pay their bill on time, which is not...

But outside of payment, is it just more stressful? Is it more grueling? You know, I'm very blessed. I'm at the place in my career now where I have high net worth and ultra high net worth clients, and you can have a smaller number of clients. who you give a lot more personalized attention to. Because anybody who's at a certain level of net worth, they are used to being weighted on and they're used to their professionals. They've not romanticized a lawyer.

of lawyers so they look at lawyers like you'd look at like a plumber like you know there's a lot of people that do this you work for me yeah and you know they're used to so so you have to give them a certain level of attention but unlike a plumber like you do get to yell at them Sometimes that's what they want. interesting yeah you're almost like an authority figure yeah even though that okay you are even though they're hiring you

That's really, yeah, it's like there's few positions where you're subservient to the person you're hiring. Like a trainer is one of them. Like your trainer can yell at you, tell you you're being lazy, get together, stop eating this shit. There's lawyer and then maybe like doctor. Yeah. People you should never lie to or your doctor and your lawyer. Cause like everything you tell us, every single thing you tell us is protected by privilege. And there's.

absolutely our only job is to protect you. How do you do that in the beginning? So you're sitting down with somebody and you could tell they're being a little fugazi about the information. How do you just go, dude,

you're going to screw yourself if you don't tell me where the fucking bodies are buried. I literally say that. Okay. I mean, I like, I don't pull any punches on it. Like I very much, but what I, what I usually will say to them just to kind of like take it to a place that they can understand is I'll say, look, I just want. At the beginning of this relationship, I want you to understand.

I represent people who've been victims of domestic violence. I represent perpetrators of domestic violence. I represent people who are, by any objective standard, amazing parents. and I represent people who just want to put the kids in the middle for leverage for child support. And I am no one's moral compass. I'm a weapon.

And a weapon in the hands of a hero, right, is going to protect people. And a weapon in the hands of the villain is going to cause chaos. But the weapon is kind of neutral, right? Who's the worst person you've defended? who i can i mean obviously a lot of my clients i can't disclose who they are except not not what did they do oh i've represented people who are you know by any objective metric are are you know malignant narcissists i mean so unfortunately the traits that make

very successful, particularly in high finance, which is what New York is really like. My colleague Laura Wasser is in LA. She represents like every celebrity you've ever seen. I represent a lot of people in finance who could buy those celebrities ten times over, but would walk past you on the street, you never knew who they were. Did you represent any current or former president?

No, no presidents yet. Yeah, no presidents yet. They all seem to keep it together, right? Yeah, they're not. Clint and I got my fingers crossed. Hacking from those. Bomber, maybe. Real quick, because I don't want to get away from that. The reason why I was asking that question, like the worst person you've represented. Yeah.

talking to you even before, you don't seem like a sociopath. Like you seem like, even watching videos of you, like you seem like quite like empathetic. You have a lot of emotion, right? I've seen you get like sensitive in interviews for sure.

So I understand, and there's a lot of times this happens with defense attorneys. You go, how could you represent this person? It's a great question. So you're representing sometimes scumbags. Awful people, yeah, awful people. Is there ever a moment where you're like, I can't. fight for this guy. Real quick, just a caveat. This guy abuses his kids, or this woman abuses her kids.

And by fighting for custody, I'm enabling the abuse of those kids. Yeah, so you have that thought. So first of all, yes, I'm... I'm a sensitive person. I don't think I could do this job well if I wasn't. Because to do this job well, it's just like I think it's like being a comic. I think you...

You have to have a sensitivity. You have to be able to read what's going on with this audience, and you have to know what's working, what's not, and be able to shift, right? So it's the same exact thing. It's just my audience is a judge. So, and I'm really here, like our job's the same. We're here to manipulate people's emotional states. That's our job. Like your job is to manipulate people. You want them to laugh, relax, and enjoy. I want the other side to be scared.

I want my client to feel safe. I want the judge to like my client and hate the other side. So I'm here just manipulating everybody's emotional state. And to do that well... I have to be very open, receptive, empathetic, and sensitive. The downside of that is, yeah, I'm sensitive. I'm empathetic. I feel a lot. I represent the client, but I also represent the system.

And I don't always believe in the client, but I believe in the system. Give me an example of that. I was talking about it on Mark's show some time ago when I represented a guy who was a pimp. like literally a pimp that was his job like he actually was you know he i mean he had other he's in federal prison now for guns but he he was an atrocious human being he was an abuser he was

And I was up against an adversary who was an unskilled attorney and very like it was all this woman could afford. And I absolutely ran her over and we walked out of court. And the guy patted me on the back and he said, man, one good lawyer is worth 20 stick-up men.

And I just remember thinking like, I want to go home and just take a shower right now because that just feels dirty. But so you do have that. I've always wondered if lawyers had that feeling. Of course, of course. And then can you compartmentalize that? and move on. I think you have to because Look, what I'll tell you is the truth has a way of coming out, sometimes despite my best efforts.

Meaning that guy ends up in federal prison. Yeah, well, that's what ended up happening with that guy. He ended up in federal prison. I mean, I think the truth has a way of coming out. I have to tell my clients that sometimes. Like, look, I can throw up a lot of smoke and mirrors, but shit comes out. Like the truth comes out. I have so many questions. I'm sure everybody else does, but very exciting. Okay. So there's, there's this thing with lawyers where like a lot of times our.

engagement with lawyers is usually during maybe the worst times in our lives, right? So the connectivity that we have with lawyers is like, It's pretty abysmal, right? But when you need help and a lawyer is helping you, they are heroic, as you just said. And you've seen TV shows that talk about Lincoln Lawyer was a great movie with McConaughey. Now they have this TV show where the lawyer...

is protecting the innocent that are wrongfully accused, etc. Like you've seen it with Joe Pesci and My Cousin Vinny and that kind of stuff. Suits. Are there ever moments where you get to be the hero. And what does that feel like? That feels amazing. That's intoxicating. Give me an example of like somebody who you protected. It was like a woman who was being abused. Yeah, I'll give you a great one. I'll give you a great one.

I'm a dog person. I love dogs. So I had a woman come in and she said to me, you know... described this situation of like coercive control, domestic violence she'd been in for ages. And this guy was controlling abusive in the worst. worst possible ways, like insidious ways, but also was an incredibly charming narcissist. So like no one would ever suspect. Like if you said to anybody, this guy was an abuser, they'd be like, him? He's the nicest guy. Are you kidding me?

And she told me her story. She said, I'm afraid nobody's going to believe me. He said to me, no one will ever believe you. I'll make sure you're penniless. I'll do whatever I have to do to crush you. And I'm listening to this, and I've handled a lot of domestic violence cases before, so I was like, okay, look, the system has a way of sorting these things out, and let's talk about what we can prove and what we can't.

And she said, you know, I have something. She said, we have a puppy. We have a six-month-old black lab puppy. And the ring camera of our doorbell caught him just beating the shit out of this six-month-old puppy. And I was like, and you have that footage? And she was like, yeah. And I was like, okay, like, give me everything you have and I'll take a look. And I sat there that night, and I watched this footage. And as a dog lover, like, I...

I was shaking. I mean, it was to listen to it, to hear it, to watch this guy just... And the puppy like is a puppy. It's tails wagging. It's trying to like kind of get away from him. And like, it doesn't understand what's going on. And I just remember looking at it and thinking, like, I'm going to torture this fucking guy to death. And I called him the next day and I said, I'll take your case. And she was like, well, I'm worried I can't afford you. I'm like, I'll cut my hourly rate in half.

I was like, I just want a piece of this fucking guy. No pro bono. He didn't kill the dog. Dogs all right. Dogs forget. I got to eat. Okay. All right. So how did you torture him? I'm sorry. That just shook me a little bit. the memory of the dog. For free. Free. Jesus, I cut my rate in half. That's impressive. That's only like 500 bucks. You know, that's pretty good. So I took on the case and, you know, it was like a professional hit. Like I got this guy.

thrown out of his house. I got, I mean, it happened to get assigned to a judge who I knew liked dogs, who had a court attorney who I knew liked dogs. So I just made a meal out of this like you wouldn't believe. And I actually, when I got to the courthouse, I shouldn't say this in public, but I will. I'm close enough to retirement. I can get away with it. I actually went up to the court officers who are, you know, the security for the building. They're armed, you know.

And I said to him, by the way, this is because I had mentioned that there was this case coming in where I had video of this guy beating the dog. And you ever want to see. like people's vindictive side come out tell them somebody beat up a puppy it's like i have to tell you people like a little old lady would be like kill the motherfucker you know so i i said to uh the court officer i said um listen i said this case is in today they said oh that guy's today i said yeah

I said, and by the way, I said, if he and I ended up in the restroom at the same time together, he started whatever fight happened. And they were like, Absolutely. In fact, we heard him shouting at me. I was like, thanks, man, you know. But sure enough, like that was a case where that single piece of evidence. Yeah.

was able to just neutralize his ability to go in and be a charming person. Because you saw the real side of him that you talked about. Exactly. And the more he went in trying to be charming, as opposed to saying, like... the more psycho he looks. The more foolish he is. Sometimes you see a person, and you can see it in smaller examples, but that's such a crystal clear example of like,

Oh, everything you say is bullshit. This is you. This is you. And everything she says, I'm going to believe. Well, and that's exactly what you say to the judge, because I say to the judge, I'm like, no, judge, you know, for every cockroach you see, there's 50 in the wall.

Like, we caught this on video. Like, how many other times did this happen? How many other times? Like, when was the camera not rolling in the last... And the next time I'm in court, it'll be another cockroach. So just remember that, for my case specifically. That's like when Diddy did the... apology video, but then the hotel video came out and was like, we looked at that apology video as such bullshit. And this is in the lobby of the hotel. That's in the entrance of the house.

We're not seeing what's actually happening behind closed doors. You know what I mean? So perpetrators of domestic violence are, in my experience, like they are. they're charming. Like how else would they get victims? Like the way you, you know, there are people that are great at love bombing. They're great at like convincing a person that, Oh my God, I would never hurt you. I care so much about you. And then.

when something happens, doing the whole like, I'm so sorry that that happens. You know, I love you so much and it'll never happen again. It's really interesting because a lot of times when they're portrayed in like TV or film, there are these like... drunken asshole scumbags. No way. But there was that show, I don't know if it was Pretty Little Liars or something, not Pretty Little Liars, the one that takes place in Silicon Valley at Nicole Kidman.

Oh, yeah. I know what you're talking about. Big Little Lies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The husband of Nicole Kidman was an abuser. That was a great portrayal of what they're like. What they actually are like. Yeah, yeah. Good looking, charming. successful great with the kids like all because a lot of that like adjustment personality disorder that like sociopath behavior that ability to sort of blend into your circumstances a it makes

people very effective in their professional lives because they can just go into whatever setting and be whoever they need to be in that setting. But in their home life, it turns into something that, you know, that's... chaos when you have to deal with those DV cases. I'm not going to say who because it's not worth it, but we all know that at my wedding, the guy gave a speech. leveled the room so funny so charming and then behind closed doors it's just like

It's a whole different human being. You thought my speech was funny? That's funny you think we're that close. I'm going to be like this now. All right, guys, you also got to buy tickets. First of all, Columbus, Ohio, two shows have already sold. The only two shows that have some tickets left are March 28th. Hurry up and buy those. Then I'm in Tampa from April 10th to the 13th. We got eight shows, but most of the tickets are already gone. I think there's...

There's like five left at every show except April 13th, so buy tickets to that. April 17th through 20th, it's my favorite weekend of the year. No disrespect to any other city, but Comedy Works Denver is probably the best comedy club in the country. Shouts to Wendy. But I'm going to be there 17th, 18th, and 19th, and then on 420. As always, we're doing a high show.

gummies, maybe shrooms, who knows. All those dates and more at akashsingh.com. Also, man, there's some fucked up things going on with stand-up in India, so just if you are... If you look like me, make some noise about it if you don't live in India because they'll actually listen to us. If you're white, make some noise about it because India's dying for white people's approval. So just see what's going on. And shouts to the Habitat Comedy Club. Love you guys. Love you, Bull Rod.

Let's get back to the show. What's up guys? World's fastest ad read. Don't skip. Okay. I want everyone to come out to my shows on the road platonically and don't do anything weird. I'm going to be in Bangor, Maine. I'm going to be in Portland, Maine. Hey, Maine, suck his dick, Maine. I'm going to Charleston, South Carolina, Atlanta, Stroudsburg, PA, Hoboken, Indianapolis, Buffalo, Raleigh, Portland, Fort Worth, Austin.

Stanford, Connecticut, Philadelphia, Levittown, Chandler, Arizona, San Diego, Montreal, Toronto, and Poughkeepsie, all on my website, themarkgagnon.com. Check it out. I think everything's on sale Friday or something, but I'll see you guys on the road. Love you. Thanks. Bye. You had mentioned to me that you kind of enjoy representing bad people. Oh my god, I got I pilloried for that. Did you really? Well, you put that.

that clip up and all of a sudden all the comments were like look at this scumbag you know like how dare you great job mark yeah thanks a lot you're a weapon you're a weapon but i said you know like i'm sorry you live in a democracy like we have a system everyone's entitled to have counsel And by the way, it's not like fucked up people come in and at the console go, listen.

I'm a straight piece of shit. I've been meeting this woman for years, and I just need you to help me get out of it. It's not how it works. They come in like a victim, too. They come in, and they're like, listen, she's... crazy. She attacks me and once I'd like push her off me and yeah she hit against the wall but now she's going to falsely accuse me of domestic violence.

you sit there and you're cut and sometimes I'm in court. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When I'm, you know, sitting my clients next to me and I realized like, Oh shit, I've got the villain. Okay. All right. Like that was not great. You know, Like when people tell you the story of their life, they're usually the fucking hero of the story. Like rarely do they come in and go, listen, I'm all fucked up. It's one of the few things that like standups, I think do very well. Yeah.

Most people come in and just go like, oh, listen, I'm wonderful. I'm great. And then you sort of learn progressively and you start to look at their text messages. And also, dude, there's like human growth to like who you were. 10 years ago and who you are now. I had a client once who was a custody case about like a 10-year-old. And when the woman was pregnant, when the mother was pregnant, so 11 years earlier,

he had sent her all these text messages saying, because they'd been dating for like two months, like, you need to get an abortion, I don't want this baby, if you have this baby, I want nothing to do with it, you know? And of course, he'd been for 10 years a phenomenal father, loves his... And the other side, in our exchange of discovery, you have to share all your ammunition in advance because it's not supposed to be trial by surprise.

They sent me these text messages. Real quick so everybody understands that. Is that like... all the information that both lawyers are going to use in court has to be shared with both exactly right so no lawyer is going ah but you didn't see this exactly right so anything you're going to put in like photographs audio recordings video you have to exchange it in advance so that's called discovery it's called discovery yeah and it's a process where

It's meant so that everyone has the opportunity to review something, make sure it's authentic, have it reviewed by experts if they need to, and also prepare their case as best they can. You're not allowed to trial by surprise. Did you order the code red? It doesn't really work that way. Like what you have to do is you have to exchange the stuff. So they'd sent these text messages and my attitude was, okay.

we got to get in front of this. Like we got to like Eminem eight mile final rap battle. Like I got to go in and like cover this and be like, now tell these people something they don't know about him. You know, like I got to do something with it. So that's exactly what I did. I put him on the stand and I said, you know. you know, did you send these texts? He said, yeah. And I said,

Is that how you felt at the time? And he's like, yeah. And I was like, how do you feel when you read those text messages now? And this guy legitimately started crying on the witness stand. And he was like, I'm so... He's like, I'm so mad at myself. He's like, and I'm so horrified. And I'm so like, if she'd listened to me, I wouldn't have my son. Like, and he's like, I, I, but I, but I know I was like.

just stupid and scared. And I'm watching opposing counsel just crossing out whole pages because we got in front of it, you know? But that is, like, what happens sometimes. And that's also, like, a more human-relatable moment. Like, it is terrifying.

I imagine when somebody gets somebody pregnant and they're not aware of it, they don't know what to do. And that's this knee jerk reaction. And you sound horrible. And then you have 10 years with the most amazing thing you've ever created. And you are just so embarrassed at that. You could have made one flippant decision that eliminated those 10 years.

Well, and that's why, you know, when people say like representing good people and bad people, like if only we could just put people in boxes of good people and bad people and just separate them. But like, you know, the line of good and evil runs right through the human heart. So I think at the end of the day, what you have to say. If I judge your husband being a husband, your ability to be a husband by your best moment as a husband, you're a phenomenal husband.

If I look at the worst moment you've ever had as a husband, then that's the totality of you. I'm bottom five. But that's not how it works. You kind of have to average it out a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's an interesting thing, too, because I imagine... in divorce or in an argument or in anything.

The only thing that we're focusing on are the worst moments of that person's life. So I'm sure the husband and the wife in those circumstances are just judging them by the most horrible things that they've done.

When in reality, there's probably amazing memories. I'm not talking about domestic violence people. I'm talking about people that had a marriage and then it became loveless and they're like, let's separate. And now it gets contentious over kids or assets. But again, you're just focusing on these horrible things.

not a beautiful vacation you guys went to, not a great time you guys cooked dinner together, the laughs. Like, and again, maybe this doesn't make you enough money, but is there ever, not enough money, but is there ever a moment like in divorce where both lawyers are going, hey.

Should we try? These people don't hate each other. Nobody did something heinous. How can we not prolong this? Do you guys do that at all? 100%. The best of us absolutely do that. You live and die by a reputation in this business.

And if you're the kind of person that just exacerbates conflict, you don't last long in this. Because why it looks like you're just trying to milk it and then the lawyers get rich and everybody else. And you, you, you, your client leaves with a really bad taste in their mouth because they start, they see that you're just amplifying.

like my job very often is to protect people from the part of themselves that's feeling brokenhearted and vindictive oh so like people come in and they're like i caught him fucking his secretary i want to rip his nuts off i hate like i want to kill him and my job is to go look You have every right to feel the way that you feel. But let's focus on the issues right now. Like, you're going to have grandkids with this person someday.

You're going to see him for the rest of your life, no matter what. Like, I have an ex-wife. Trust me, I got to sit next to her at graduations. I got to sit next to her. It's what you do. You have to learn how to interact with this person. And you try to say to them, look, most people, the good news is most people love their kids more than they hate their ass.

Like most people's love for their children is the most powerful thing they have. I mean, I know we've got, you know, we've got two relatively new fathers here, you know. So, I mean, the truth is that that is a powerful emotion. that very often will make you put down a lot of other stuff. And so it really turns into something where my, our job is to try to bring out the angels of people's better nature. So I always tell clients like,

In a negotiating table in a courtroom, I'm a weapon. My job is to just go at a person and attack and do that. But before you get there. When the door is closed, it's me and Michael. My whole thing is, look, I'd rather you pay her than pay me. Like, stand down. Like, let's not do this. Put your kids through college, not mine. Like, let's... figure out how to do this the right way. If I get a sense when I do a consult with somebody,

that they have any chance that they could go to a mediator instead of using lawyers and they could sit, I'll send them right to a mediator. I'd probably send two, three cases a week to mediators. Is that the... What is like the process? Yeah. Well, there's a lot of paths up the mountain, but the ideal process is two people sit down.

And they map out what do you want to do with the kids? What's going to make sense? Like, well, you work this night, I work this night, so you'll have the kids this night or that night. I mean, ideally, people could sit down at the kitchen table with a piece of paper and just map it out. But second best is you go to a mediator.

That's a person who's usually an attorney or an accountant who's trained, who knows what issues to talk about. And they walk through it with you and they'll say, all right, here's the things we have to decide. And they don't represent either person. They represent both people in a sense.

step from that is you get two attorneys that work collaboratively that just don't come at each other don't try to vilify either side and just try to work you know come up with identifying assets valuing them and how to divide them figuring out what's going on and just doing it that way The thing I've got very good at over the course of 25 years

is the warfare part of it, like the courtroom. So the people that come to me now tend to be people that have that kind of complex case. And they need someone who knows how to do that particular set of skills, which is why I have all of these amusing anecdotes of like chaos. The truth is, the majority of divorce lawyers, it's really just about a negotiation. It's about trying to sort of...

work with people in a way that doesn't amp up the conflict. Yeah, 56% of people get divorced. It can't be 56% warfare. No, it's actually, thankfully, a really small percent. Yeah, that's what I've figured. But, you know, the outliers... Very few people can just hold hands, sing Kumbaya, and write it down and solve it. Very few people go to war. But you hear about the war, because A...

Way more fucking interesting. I don't get invited to a lot of parties, but if I'm at a cocktail party and someone says, what do you do? I say, I'm a divorce lawyer. And they're going to go, oh my God, you must have stories. And if I said, I do.

there was this couple and they were married and then they slowly grew apart from each other so they decided how they would like amicably resolve their differences financially and they shared their time with the children they'd be like that's the worst fucking story like they want to hear the like no and then he took a chainsaw and he cut the car in half yeah and then he said pick which half you want bitch you know like that story by the way

No. Let's go there. What is your craziest divorce? I mean, the guy who ran the lady over and stabbed her 16 times. Yeah, fun crazy. Yeah. Fun crazy? No, it doesn't have to be fun. Just absolute insanity. You're involved in this case. You're like, what the fuck is happening? Yeah, I mean, well, I've had ones where, like, there's a lot of cash involved. So I had one where... They, over the years, this guy was a dentist.

And what he used to do is he used to wad it up in like these round things and then fill tennis. ball cans with cash. And then they had a jacuzzi in the backyard and he lined the jacuzzi thing with these tennis ball cans. Wow. So there was like $800,000 of cash in the lining of the jacuzzi. And I actually had to bring in an expert.

size of the jacuzzi and the size of how much could be held in the tennis stands to ascertain what the value of the money that he had then removed from the jacuzzi when he took it out took it all out and he was like what money i don't know what you're talking about so that kind of stuff is like always an interesting bizarre puzzle but yeah i mean people are constantly cutting shit in half i mean the ones that The ones that shock me are the people who come in and they've... And by the way, like...

Apple, like Apple technology. is responsible for more divorces than they have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a real discovery right there. Sorry, shots fired. Jobs, I'm sorry. Tim Cook's gonna, like, my iPhone's gonna stop working now. Love your products. Don't do that to me, man. But the truth is, the whole integration of the different devices. A lot of people don't realize your fucking text messages are coming up on the iPad that your kid's playing with. Oh, wow. And then your wife...

like you're upstairs texting with the girlfriend about like it was so great last night you know and then the kid is like bing bing bing and mom comes over like what's going on they're like i don't know the cartoon stopped and mom's like what is this and all of a sudden there's naked pictures of the girlfriend

And she's reading in real time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this happens like once a week, I get one of those things. Jesus Christ. Okay, question about that. Do you think those people are just at the point where they're okay getting caught? Yeah, I ask myself that question a lot because sometimes people are so brazen that you kind of go, yeah, on some level, subconsciously. Yeah, I mean, you know, subconsciously. They're just cowards. They can't end it. And they're like, I just need something.

If something does happen where it does end, I'm okay with it, but I don't want it. Quiet quitting. Yeah, a lot of them feel... You know, Patrice O'Neill had a thing he used to say about how... He had a great thing about how he said, you know, cheating... If you think about it, a man is leaving his home to get some happiness.

feelings. Go to fuck a girl behind a dumpster. Right, right. Get a little bit of happiness without hurting your feelings. Cheating is for you. It's for you. Yeah, and I remember hearing that and going like, but you know, when you spend enough time with people who've cheated. Yeah.

That's legit. They're like, look, I love her. I love her. But we don't have... anymore like we have this like we're running a daycare center together and like i love her i like coming home to her i like her mom i like her brother like we all get along i like i like all the stuff we do i like our home i like our life but like I want to fuck sometimes. I had a friend who once said to me that the moment you know you're in a relationship...

is when you're in the middle of sex and you think, one of these days I've got to get laid. And I think that most married men do not acknowledge that this is correct. No, it's a bit. It's a bit. Oh, yeah. OK. Like, I kind of get that. Like the difference, because, again, I think there is something really true about you can't.

some of the freaky shit you want to do in your head. Blame Pornhub. It's on everybody's heads. You're not going to do that with the person that then you'll be like, okay, so which of us is going to bathe the kids now? You're not going to do that. So I think men... sometimes move away from that kind of a connection with their spouse. I don't want to hurt her. I don't want to leave my family. I want to chase this shiny object. And by the way, like, I mean, how?

Look at how many half-naked women we are exposed to on a daily basis thanks to Instagram and TikTok and everything else. So it's our fault, really. We have to keep degrading the women we love. I mean, I don't think that's bad advice. I mean, so insofar as they at some point enjoyed that. Yes. Like if they were, if you started out that way, she might.

secretly be like why don't you have like a like a filthy slut like i'm also a mom but i'm also a filthy yeah i'm both we can be both you can't be both i think you probably mark that's why our parents are still married yeah exactly that's what it is

My dad's got like the Gimp costume in the basement. There's no Madonna war complex. You got to just put them together. Your parents got eight kids. I could have told you they were doing some while. My dad always makes this comment. We'll be at dinner. He's like, you know, Amanda, you still got that nurse outfit?

Everyone's like, Dad, what the fuck? No way. He's like, I'm joking. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, that's interesting. Cheating is one of those things. I mean, I joke that I've got a PhD in cheating because you...

You listen to people who've been cheated on. You listen to people who've done the cheating. But the people that I'm... shocked by are the people that like they know their spouse is cheating like they had one of those iMessage moments or they like the cameras catch stuff all the little nest cam security cams the baby cams nanny cams catch stuff And they don't let the spouse know that they know it. And they're like three, four months in to like...

I watched this person having sex with their mistress on the nanny cam, and I'm still sitting across the table from them. And I find myself thinking, like, how the fuck do you... Keep that. Yeah, you're the sociopath, actually. Yeah, I mean, it feels a little like that. Like, kind of go, how are you not, like, just losing your shit on this person at all? You know, but people can do it. Why do you think that? Kids usually are...

I think it's, I don't know, I think it's a combination of, like, if they say it out loud, it's real. They're in denial. Yeah, sometimes people come into my office and, like...

They have a very hard time. There's tissues on, like, every desk because people just... having to say it out loud you know having to like say out loud like yeah this thing's broken you know yeah you also see why like sometimes it's forgivable for people like i think sometimes when you're like young and in a relationship and you don't have like children or anything like that

And there's like a cheating thing. It's like the one thing you can't do. It's like, well, I got to tell you we're in modern society. Like what I will tell you is, a lot more people come back from cheating than you'll ever know. So, yeah, I'm interested to talk about that. Not for personal reasons at all. No, no, no, nothing to do with that. But, yeah, I feel like when you have... X amount of kids, you have homes, you have a life that you guys all enjoy. And then...

The husband does some, when the wife does it, I bet the dads are like, fuck this, it's fucking over. But when the husband does some shit, I wonder if some of the wives are like, Does he not have a relationship with her? Is it a one time fucking? Well, it depends what the shit is.

It depends what you do. What do you mean by that? It depends on the nature of the infidelity. Yeah, if you get your dick sucked while you're on a trip with the boys or something like that, that's different than if you're fucking her friend in the community. Because now you're embarrassing her and there's this whole... Well, what I'd say is the difference between men and women is when a woman gets caught cheating, the man's first question is, did you fuck him?

Wow. And the woman's first question is, do you love her? Because that's the distinction. And I will tell you in my experience, and again, don't fucking pillory me for this one, guys. I didn't make up gender roles. I'm just observing what's sitting on the other side of the fucking desk. But what... I'm not talking about you guys. I mean the comments. The reality is that women...

are much more forgiving of those things because I think there is a part of them that goes, yeah, you're a fucking idiot. You're a guy. Like, you're an idiot. You're a guy. Like, this had nothing to do with me. And there's so much to lose. Yeah. That you losing... so much. Whereas a man allowing his wife to cheat...

He's lost his entire identity as a man. I don't think a woman loses anything as a woman when we cheat because the expectation of us is we're a bunch of fucking idiots and we can't stop putting our dick in stuff. They spend the majority of their lives telling guys that they don't want to fuck them. So when they do... You must have wanted that shit.

Real quick, Bill Maher, when I was doing this podcast with Bill Maher, he had a funny idea. And he was like, I oftentimes hear female rappers say this thing like, I'm going to steal your man. Like, I'm going to steal your man. And it's like. Oh, no. That's the hardest. How the hell? You stole me? It's the easiest thing in the world. That's a hard task to do. It's the easiest thing in the world. Stealing somebody's girl is tough because you're taking away from a life you really want.

Right, that's why I've always said the whole thing of a hall pass. is the fucking dumbest deal in the world for men. Yes, yes. Because, like, think about it. If I say... You know, all right, with my girl, if I say to her, like, all right, we each have a hall pass. And she goes, OK, mine's Bradley Cooper. And I say, OK, mine is, I don't know, Angelina Jolie or whatever. the chances of him if I leave her in the first class can I go listen just so you know

I have permission if you want to go have a little something. But the chances of like a guy being like, you know, she went, listen, I'm allowed to suck your dick right now. I got 10 minutes. It's never a good deal for the men. Well, because we picked the wrong people. I'm being ambitious. You got to pick the camera set up. JetBlue flight attendant. And then some gay guy with tits.

And you're just like, that's the one who I'm going to cheat. Yeah. That's something attainable. Yeah. But it really is one of those things that I think with, Women, what I do feel bad for women about is the women who have been cheated on. They've said, okay, you know what? I'm going to look past this. We have kids and stuff like that. No, what I actually feel bad is that. how other women, they have to suffer in silence because if they told any of the women in their life, I'm taking him back.

They would be fucking excavated. They would be destroyed. You ever want to read vitriolic comments? Yeah. Any woman who takes back a man who cheated on her, like Beyonce got way more shit than Jay-Z. She had to put out a whole album. Because she had to beat him up somehow to have some redemption. And again, from other women. Because women were like, how dare you take him? Because if she left him, she'd have been the girl boss.

She'd have been the, yeah, he has no right to do that. Wouldn't that be the same for men, though, if a girl cheats and a guy takes her back? Wouldn't guys fucking happen? Yeah, same thing. You get pilloried for it. So you have to suffer in silence. You have to not tell people that this happened, which, by the way... It is a hard thing for people to come back from, rebuild trust from. People do it all the time. People do it all the time. And usually what it is, they come into my office,

They're like, I want to kill him. I want him out. I want to foul tomorrow. And I have done this long enough that I'll go, OK, listen, if we want to do it on Monday, we'll still do it. But let's this just happen. Let's take a breath. Let's get our ducks in order. Let's, you know.

And usually a couple of days later, they'll call me and they'll say, you know what, we talked and then we're going to go talk to someone. We're going to go to a counselor. And very often I never hear from that person again. And I think that they figure out a way to navigate. Do kids make a difference? Kids make a difference. Massive.

Look, you have a tremendous reason to keep it together if you have children i mean you're fully going in best case scenario you're going to lose a huge chunk of time with your children you're going to lose the support of a co-parent

I mean, it's difficult to raise a child with two people. It's difficult with one person. It's incredible. It's almost impossible. Unless you have help, I can't believe it. Yeah, it's very challenging. So I think that people... skin you have in the game you know like that's why I always I always say like the ultra people say like oh it must be really hard representing like super wealthy people I'm like no they have enough money to buy another fucking house

and another apartment and another place in the Hampton so they each have one and they have nannies that travel between both places so there's stability for the kids sometimes they keep the kid in the same house The parents, the kids have the nest. So the kids never have to leave, which is really awesome. And the parents each get an apartment and they... kind of come back and forth with the kids. And, you know, look, we don't know.

like a huge privilege how many people can own a free home like it's very but that is probably the best for the children because now they're not packing a bag literally every single week you know what I'll tell you is we don't know who discovered water but it probably wouldn't have fished Like when a kid grows up in an environment where mom was here, dad was here, and I spent time with each other.

that's just all they know like okay that's how it was like when a kid's 10 11 12 and suddenly mom and dad who were living together are living in different places that's traumatic that's challenging it's but if you're a little you're a two-year-old And now it's like, okay, dad lives here, mom lives here, and I spent...

When you ask that person when they're in high school, like, what was your childhood like? They'll say like, well, I don't know. Like it was, yeah, I live with mom sometimes, dad sometimes. I spend time with both of them. Also, if you grew up in like New York City where, you know, divorce is pretty.

popular it's it's probably easier for you to do but i agree with you like the kids can be absolutely destroyed if it happens when they're a little bit older a little bit smarter and aware of what's going on and i see a lot of divorce where the kids are

kind of being used as like a leverage tool. That's really fucked up. Is there every time where you like step in, you go, why are we punishing the kids? I try to do that a lot. I mean, what I always say is that the person who cares less about the children has

tactical advantage in a custody proceeding. Wow. In the same way that a bank robber has tactical advantage over the cops because they can shoot innocent bystanders. Like, the cops can't just spray with a machine gun and hope they'll hit one of the robbers. But robbers can just... spray and hope they hit the cops like they can run over the sidewalk so how would that work in the court proceeding for example

You know, by insidiously alienating a child from their co-parent, you know, by injecting into the child like a dislike or a fear of your co-parent so that you get custody. I mean, by the way. Most of the time, this isn't just done as a vindictive thing. It's also done for financial reasons. Because if you have the children more than 50% of the time, you get child support. And that's a big chunk of money.

New York State, one kid's 17% of your gross income, less FICA. Two kids is 25%. Three kids, 29%. Four kids, 31%. So, like, your gross Income. Think about that. If you're spending 50% of taxes, like say you're some rich person, 31% is going to your wife and the children. If you have four kids. If you have four kids. And only if she gets them 51% of the time. Right. You still got to provide for your life. It'd be a lot cheaper to just hire a nanny and fight for custody.

And that's what ends up happening. And there's alimony that goes along with that? There can be spousal support that goes along with that. But think about it. So if it goes to 50% and you hire the nanny... Yeah. At 51% to 50%, there's no real difference in the amount that you're going to see your children. But the difference in the amount that you're giving to that woman...

Who now you hate and hates you. Wow. And by the way, there's no one like doing an accounting to make sure it's spent on the kid. Sometimes it's like that was meant to be for the kids and it was used for the tit job. Or it was used for sex toys with a new boyfriend. And how is that decided who gets custody?

In New York, we have what's called the best interest standard, but most states have some variation of that, and it's as subjective and crazy as you'd think it is. Like, it really is full-contact storytelling. Like you go in as a lawyer and you just have to try to tell the story of why your client is stable, consistent, reliable.

and a good parent, and why the other side is less than. This may be a New York thing, but I always hear that the mother always gets the custody. Yeah, I mean, that's a pretty common misconception, and I understand why people say that, because... I think women fight much harder for custody than men do. And I'll tell you why. And I probably don't even need to, but I'll point out.

If you and I, all right, if we meet in real life, we're just out in a bar and you say to me, so, Jim, tell me about yourself. And I say, well, you know, I'm a lawyer. I'm divorced. I have my kids. They live with their mom. Every other weekend I have them. You'd go, oh. Divorced dad. Nice guy, probably. I'm a woman.

You don't have those kids. I have two kids. They live with their dad. I see them every day. What the fuck is wrong with her? Social drugs, mental health. And by the way, like, I mean, go on Instagram. Hashtag mom life. Like, believe me, like I've represented some co-parents of celebrities.

that like these people are opiated out of their minds. But when it's time to take that kid out like a Birkin bag, you know, they bring them out and they're like, ah, I'm a mom. And then they're like back to, all right, take this fucking kid away, you know, and they can care less. But it's optic.

You know, whereas for a man, if you go, yeah, the kids live with their mom, people go, oh, yeah, well, of course, the kids live with their mom. So that's where I think that comes from. But the truth is, like... Men get custody all the time. The maternal presumption was eradicated years ago. There used to be something called what was called the tender years doctrine.

seven you let the mom automatically got custody unless you could show she was an unfit mother that was eradicated in the 1980s but you know some of the judges like have been around since then so they remember that And judges, remember judges are human. Like judges are people.

so they have the same bias as anybody else has so sometimes he's uh the judge is a divorced dad who's like dads are just as good as moms what the fuck sometimes they're a pissed off ex-wife of somebody and they're like fuck that guy because they're taking out, you know, these are humans. All right, guys, we're going to take a break for a second. I got some absolutely incredible news, okay? All you Call of Duty Warzone fans out there, the wait is finally over. No?

You're not going to get laid. Verdansk is back on April 3rd, okay? The iconic map you all know and the love is returning. to call duty war zone experience all the chaos and relive the thrill that you've been missing it's the return of the map that started it all with iconic POIs like Superstore, Hospital, Prison, and more. Whether you're an OG Call of Duty Warzone fan or dropping in for the first time for dance,

is ready to bring you the action. Gather your squad and get ready for intense battles and iconic landmarks. Experience new gameplay updates and the return of Verdansk era weaponry. This. is the moment you've been waiting for and is going to be epic. Download Call of Duty Warzone for free and drop into Verdansk on April 3rd. That's www.callofduty.com slash warzone slash flagrant. It's rated M for mature.

Let's get back to the show. All right, guys, let's take a break for a second. It's something I've been talking about a lot, not only in this pod and other pods as well. But it is the importance of understanding how to invest in the market. And by invest in the market, I mean doing it long term, not this.

gambling thing that a lot of people are doing online right now, trying to predict stocks. You're trying to beat hedge funds that have billions of dollars of fiber optic cables around the world so they can get a millisecond advantage on a trade over you. But what you can do is invest in American industry, and you can invest in these businesses, and over a long period of time, you can make some incredible gains, and you can change your future.

your parents' future, or your kids' future. Acorns is a financial wellness app that helps you take control. of your money with simple tools that make it easy to start saving and investing in your future. You don't need to be an expert, okay? Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that matches you and your money goals.

You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you get started with the spare money you've got right now. Even if all you've got is spare change, you can literally create an Acorn account and start investing in just five minutes. Acorns will give you small, simple steps to get you and your money. On track, okay? Sign up now and join the over 14 million all-time customers who have already saved and invested over $25 billion with Acorns.

Plus, Acorns will boost your new account with a $20 bonus investment. The offer is available at acorns.com slash flagrant. That is A-C-O-R-N-S dot com slash flagrant, F-L-A-G-R-A-N-T to get your $20.

Bonus investment today. Also, this is a paid non-client endorsement. Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns. Tier 2 compensation provided. Investing involves risk. Acorn Advisors, LLC, and SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosure at acorns.com. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run,

and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand. Marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time. From startups to scale-ups, online, in person, and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs. entrepreneurs like you sign up for your one dollar a month trial at shopify.com slash setup

Have you ever suggested that a client change their gender to have some sort of advantage? No, you know, I represented actually, I was one of the first people to represent a trans woman in a custody proceeding about. Were they divorcing themselves? No, they were. This was actually a really amazing story. This was like the most manly man I'd ever known. Like he was like the most, he was jacked. He was like a big dude. Yeah. And he, he, I knew him because he'd actually done work on my house.

and I remember thinking because I was married at the time I remember thinking my ex-wife secretly wanted to fuck him because he was like this big dude work boots the whole thing yeah So one day he calls me up. He loves renovations. He calls me up. He's an interior decorator, but he doesn't matter. He's a fixer-upper. He made some significant changes. He calls me up one day. He says, can I come in and talk to you? And I said, yeah, sure. And I knew he was married and he had two very young kids.

So he comes in. I'm like, oh, shit, he's probably having marital problems. Comes into my office. I said, what's going on? He says, look, I think we're splitting up. And then I said, oh, man, I'm sorry to hear it. I said, what's going on? And he goes, well, I... I've decided I want to live my life as a woman. I was like...

Excuse me? This is 20 years ago. This is not part of the cadence. This wasn't a thing. And this was not the dude you would think. There was nothing feminine about this guy. I was way more feminine than this guy. And... He was like, yeah, you know, I've always felt this way. And I, you know. And he did. Sure enough, he transitioned pretty quickly. And like many people who transition initially, he looked like a guy wearing a wig. Like he looked like a dude who was, you know, he'd started hormones.

And when we went to court, the judge actually issued a temporary decision saying that he was allowed to see his kids as long as he dressed like a man when he saw his kids. Now, if a judge did that, now they'd be thrown off the bench and possibly jailed for a hate crime. But back then, that was considered a perfectly acceptable resolution. Funny P.S. to that story, by the way. Ten years later.

And I'm standing there talking to one of my colleagues, and I look off to the far left, and I see a very attractive woman staring at me. and i'm thinking like you still got it sexy yes you know it's the tie yeah And she's just smiling at me. So I'm like, do I know her? This is weird. So I finished this conversation. I kind of do the peacocking thing where I'm like, all right, man, catch you later. And I'm like, I'm going to walk past her. So I walk up. Very cute.

I said, hey, how you doing? She goes, good, how you doing? She goes, you don't remember me. And I said, I'm sorry, I don't. I would think I would. And she goes, it's me. Amy. And I was like, Amy? And she goes, Holy shit! It was that person. It was that person with 10 years of hormones and a bunch of other things. Being hot as both genders seems unfair. It really does. And by the way, could do great home renovations. That's fucked up.

If you transition, you should introduce yourself again. You should lead with that. Hey, by the way, I've done some updates. Yeah, I've done a little work. If you didn't recognize her, you did a bad job. Yeah, I guess so.

But it just felt like, you know, I did feel a little deflated because I was like, oh, I got this hot shit checking me out. And then I'm like, oh, no. OK, it's not for the reasons I thought. Former client. Yeah, yeah. No, but then I was stuck together and it was fine. No. What's the weirdest way you've gotten paid? I was given a motorcycle once. I had a client who said, you know, he used to like fix up bikes and I used to ride at the time. And he said...

you know, I'm going to pay you. I just got to sell this bike that I just fixed up. And I was like, oh, what bike is it? And he showed me, and I was like, I'll just take the bike. What about cash? People try to pay me in cash all the time. And you say no. No, I'll accept cash, but I do tell them there's rules about how we take cash and then we have to report it if it's over $10,000.

Oh, I've had people who come in with like $300,000 in cash and they're like, can I just pay my bill with this? And when you say to them, yes, but I have to then report to the bank where I got it, then suddenly they're like, no problem, I'll bring you a check, you know, instead. Okay, so you're by the book when it comes to payment. You have to be as a lawyer. A lot of lawyers are Wild West with that shit. They'll take a book.

He's almost retired, he said. He didn't let it go. Not lawyers who... He's banging trees outside of town. To a hotel. I'm in class here. I'm a cheap date. No, I feel like a lot of lawyers... What's interesting is if you read the disciplinary opinions for lawyers...

because they fuck up lawyers and disbar lawyers for financial stuff really fast. Almost like you read that they publish these decisions. It runs chills through all of us. But you'll read it and they're like, this lawyer had sex with three of his clients. He, you know, had a serious cocaine problem and he told three of his clients that cases were resolved when in fact they weren't.

you know, suspended for two weeks from the practice of law. And then they're like, this guy did not report $23 that he received in cash disbarred. And you're like, Fuck! The money thing is the biggest thing. So lawyers who play it fast and loose with that stuff, you're not going to be around long. Have you ever hooked up with any clients? No.

No. And I have to tell you. Have they thrown in at you? No, for real. You never circled back after you got the good divorce, got the pain. And I'll tell you why. I will tell you why. Because. I'm trying to figure out how to say this without offending any of my existing clients. The truth is... that if you represent a woman in her divorce, you will never fucking want to date her. Like you see the worst of this person. Like,

Like, you know, there's a rule. That's a good line. He's a good lawyer. I almost believed that. There's a rule in New York. There's a rule in New York. Matrimonial lawyers are not, we're the only lawyers that are not allowed to have sex with our clients. It's a rule. Like if you do a real estate closure for someone, you can fuck them. But if you're a divorce lawyer, domestic relations lawyer, you cannot have sex with your client.

months after the representations concluded. You should have said that. You should have said it's illegal. No, we're saying do circle the block seven months in. But I'm telling you something. Whoever wrote that. ever wrote that rule. Yeah. was not a divorce lawyer because you don't even want to fucking talk to these people, much less fuck them. Some of these women too, they have a hero thing they've put on you that is

so unhealthy. It's the first time you start to sweat all. Can we take a break? I'm going to call my lawyer. So we know you've never fucked a clown around, but hypothetically speaking, if you ever were to circle the block seven months later, eight months later... And now that girl has tons of money that you won for her. And she's really grateful. What would that be like, hypothetically? What is that head like? Hypothetically speaking, when you just gave...

They got her $100 million. I mean, look, it'd probably be fantastic. Just smile and think about it. Yeah, it'd be a lot of money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not, you know, I'm not... She's got enough money to do better than me at that point. No, but she's really grateful.

Look, what I'll tell you is your female clients fall in love with you. They do. But it's not you that they're in love with. You're their hero in this situation. Of course. And so you have to have the presence of mind. It's like when you're a college professor. Like, yeah, of course. You got 20 something year old girls who are like coming to your office hours like they and they're into you. Of course, there's a part of your brain that goes, oh, my God, are you kidding me? This is fucking.

But the truth is, they think you know shit you don't know. They think that you're this genius person. You're just a fucking person. Like, so I really don't like that's not they're not in love with you. I think like 20 of them you fucked up. In two decades, in two decades. You're at a bar, you're drinking. I know, bro. You're a husband's worst nightmare. I know some things. I know some things. I know a court clerk in Manhattan Family Court. She knows some stories about you. Oh, shit.

That's how you get 50% off. It's never pro bono. I'm going to give you my card. It doesn't mean anything. But they should. But they should if it's like a horrible divorce and you free this woman from this oppressive man and then you take the majority of money give it to him and the house and all this other stuff and she can't just you know but you got it in your head too I mean see like in your head

super hot young women I'm representing who now have $100 million and want to fuck me. You're not thinking about the money. It's mostly like women and their... 50s with like they all got that New York you know like surprise cosmetic surgery look and like this is not Like, I could do better than that. What about somebody's second wife? You know?

Somebody second wife, there's usually a prenup. If there's a prenup, it's not as, yeah, they're smart enough to lock him in and say to the three fucking guys who are married and don't have prenups. Well, he's not married yet. Should he get a prenup? There's still hope for you. Should he get a prenup? Of course he should have a fight. All fucking three, all of you should have a fight. Why? It's not fun. What do you mean?

Why? Don't you like the risk of it? Every argument that you get in with your wife, you're like, man, half my shit shit at the end of this argument. Isn't that exciting? Don't you want to live on the edge? I'm Alex Hoddled. I'm climbing the side of the cliff. No ropes. I honestly do feel like... Do I think I can't make more money? Like, go away. I'm paying you to go away. Here's half my shit. Shut up. I'm going to go make more money and then we're done.

Would it be even cooler, though, is keeping all that fucking money? Andrew's whole goal is to have her make more money than me anyway. Who cares? I mean, look, what I'll tell you is, I mean, first of all, I don't think anybody wants their marriage to continue. their spouse to stay in the marriage because they don't want to give up half their shit.

That's like a bad incentive. But you want someone to stay married to you because they want to be married to you. Because they think you add value to their life. That they enjoy your company. That more often than not, they're glad they're with you. Whatever. Any number of justifications.

But to say, well, I'm with him because I don't want to have to give away half the shit. He's got broke boy mentality. He's got broke boy mentality. He's like a child. He's like a big child. So if I were to get a prenup, what should I include in it?

I think the easiest prenup is the one that I would encourage most people to have, which is, I call it the yours, mine, and ours. If it's in your name, asset or liability, you keep it. If it's in her name, asset or liability, she keeps it. If it's in joint names, you split it 50-50. That's it, clean. Here's what I'll tell you. All three of you have a prenup. The government wrote it. The state legislature wrote your fucking prenup. And by the way, like...

You think that's a good idea? Like you think you ever been to the DMV? You ever walk into the DMV and go. These people should be in charge of everything. They're great at it. This is really good. No, the reality is the government is the worst. fucking people to write your freedom. To whom, though? To whom? Worse to whom? To my wife or to me? To you. Both of you. Both of you. The process. You've signed up.

You've signed up for a rule set that you don't even know. I don't know. You bought a house, right? You bought a house. You had to sign a HUD one, a lead paint disclosure. You got all this fucking information about the loan. You got married, you can get a fucking pamphlet. You just did the most legally significant thing you're going to do in your whole life other than die. fucking clue what happened the first time More lead pork. More lead pork. Trans lead pork.

Translate that to go into business and being like, I'm betting it all on black. How much? I don't know all of it. Go. I would do that. That's fucking crazy. I have and I've lost quite a few bitcoins. It is crazy. It is what it is. It is crazy. It is crazy. 100%. Because my attitude is, look.

Every marriage has a prenup. It's either one that's written by the government or it's written by the two people that like each other theoretically more than the other 8 billion other options, right? Right. So who is better to come up with a rule set? than those two people. And that's all a prenup is. A prenup is just saying, look, You know, there's going to come a time, like, if you get married, it's smart to say to your spouse when you're getting along still. Yeah.

We're going to get in a fight at some point. I promise. It's probably going to be my fault. I'm going to say some dumb shit. I say dumb shit. It happens. When we get in that fight... What should that look like? Do you need a minute? Should I give you some space? Like, if I force you to talk about it, is it gonna turn into a whole thing? Or do we need to take care of this now because you don't want to go to bed angry? Like, I want to know. Because the worst time to learn how to fight

when you're in a fucking fight. Like, that's the worst time to learn how to do a fight. So that's all a prenup is. A prenup is saying, look, we're getting along right now. We have an abundance of goodwill between the two of us. In the highly unlikely 56 fucking percent, the highly unlikely chance that we would get divorced. What would that look like? And by the way, there's a way to say it that I think has a tremendous amount of big dick energy, which is to say, you know what?

You're my woman. I want you to feel safe. You can't be loved unless you feel safe. And the way I want you to feel safe The way I want you to feel safe is I want you to feel safe from everyone, including me. So what is... Well, I mean the marriage. She's like, I got this. Yeah.

Actual question. Yours, mine, and ours. How does that go once you're married? Everything is just going to go ours, right? You're going to buy the house. It's going to be our name. You're going to buy the cars. It's going to be our name. It's a conversation you got to have. Like, look, you know this is a married man.

If you can't have difficult conversations with your spouse, don't get fucking married. Like part of being married is having hard conversations, talking about tough stuff. How do you feel personally? Yeah. Let's say you and your wife are both working. Wife decides to not work to raise the child. Sure. Common.

and maybe i'm telling you how i feel without asking you how you feel but like there's a part of me that goes okay well anything first of all anything i don't have a prenup obviously is there anything that we own is both of ours but like I think that if she's going to make that sacrifice and that decision, I think she's entitled.

to half of everything who would disagree with okay good because i think there's sometimes people totally fair okay and i think sometimes people are like well if you're making the money that's all you it's like right yeah yeah but You're able to do that because somebody is looking after the child. like your guy's circumstances they don't have a kid yet right so like he's making money and you know she your wife could be making money

So he might have an argument to go, well, I'm going to keep all of this because you could be working. But I do think once you add children into the mix, there's a very different... But I totally agree, and I think any reasonable person would. But just to push back on that thought a little bit. What I would say to you is, okay, but there's got to be a stop loss somewhere in there, right? Like there's got to be, there's got to be some sense of like, what is that obligation? Cause look.

At the end of the day, we all owe each other things when we make decisions like this, right? Like in some ways, in some ways. You wouldn't have the success you have if it wasn't for your wife. Absolutely. She supported you. Sure. Okay, absolutely. Your wife wouldn't be the person she is if it wasn't for her mother. Sure. So what do you owe her mother? How much? I think at least half. Okay.

It wouldn't be the person she was if it wasn't for her mother. So how much do we owe grandma? Okay, so the math on this gets a little fuzzy. They all need hats. So the reality is... Everybody. Look, I think... Fundamentally. Yeah, they need half of her. Value is an important thing. I just watched your special, you know, and I got a huge kick out, especially as a divorce lawyer, the shit we laugh at.

But when you said the thing about, you know, like... We made a baby. We made a baby. And you're like, oh, just like we made this money. Like, it's our money. Like, okay, look. We know you earn more than her, right? Okay, so why do we have to be afraid to say that out loud? Like marriage is an economy. That's not a dirty word. An economy is.

We're exchanging value. We're giving and receiving. And an economy does not require that everyone gives and receives the exact same fucking thing. You can say, like, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs would have a lot of cool ideas he couldn't do shit with. And if it wasn't for Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak would see a dude in his garage making shit but have no vision.

So together they brought something to fruition. Same thing with the marriage. Does she get half? Does that really make sense? Half of everything? So there's no question of whether what you're saying makes sense. I think the difficult emotional battle, which you've probably done thousands of times, is putting a dollar value on what somebody brings to the table in a,

in a marriage. Like, what is the dollar value you're worth for raising our kid? Yes. That's a really difficult thing to do. It feels icky to say it. It feels icky. But it only feels icky... for reasons that I think we could fix as a culture, and that is that why can't we be honest? Like, I'm a fan of honesty. I'm a fan of just being, just say a quiet part out loud. Yeah.

Like, you give me, like, because here's the problem. Here's the problem with modern marriage from a man's perspective, as far as I'm concerned. Most of the marriages I know, okay, the man provides financially. He protects. He's also there to be part of the family dynamic, taking care of kids, doing the things that he can do. What does the woman bring? She brings love, affection, a little bit of sweetness at the end of the day, you know, sex. She brings, you know, taking care of kids. Okay.

Every single thing on that side of the man equation, he can be compelled to do by the power of the state. And if he fails to do it, they can put him in jail. Nothing on that other side, the female side, is enforceable at law. The court cannot order her to be nice to you, to fuck you, to be a wonderful mother to your children. She can't. They can't force that.

So when you have a contract where only one side of it is enforceable with the power of the state and the other side is not, my attitude is, why don't we then just have an honest conversation about... what we could both be afraid of and what value we want to attribute. But the court can't force you to protect your wife and the court can't force you to make money for your family. Well, economically, they can force you to. They can force you to protect somebody. You can tell, like I've had...

I've had cases where the court says, OK, this person needs a security detail. If it's a celebrity, they say these kids are going to need security for when they go to school, things like that. But the average person, can the court say you have to work? a dad? Well, what the courts say is Lincoln freed the slaves. Like if you're a, you know, if you're a, uh, uh, if you're any, you notice I didn't look old. What does that mean? What does that mean? What I'm saying? What I did?

It's a dude in court there. It's a dude in court. You said her pussy was like a bolo. Yeah, yeah. You said she's thicker than a pussy. You're thicker than a bolo. So if you're... financial status at the moment you were getting divorced determined what your obligations were. Everybody quit their fucking job the minute they were getting divorced. Right.

So what the courts say is, like, if you're a brain surgeon who now I'm getting divorced, I decided I want to be a fucking yoga teacher. Right. The court goes, look, like in Free the Slaves, we can't make you be a brain surgeon. You're just going to be a brain, you're going to be a yoga teacher who has the financial obligations of a brain surgeon.

So they impute an income to you and they'll say, whatever you do for a living, it's fine. We can't force you to work, but we can give you financial obligations commensurate with your earning capacity. even if you're not earning at that capacity. Wow. Which is actually really fucked up sometimes. Like I had a client once who was in air traffic control.

And if you know anything about air traffic controllers, like you can have a high school education, be an air traffic controller, make like three, four hundred grand a year. Wow. You can do really, really well. Well, this guy, his mother passed away. He was very close with her.

He had a lot of anxiety and a lot of depression from it, and he had to go on medication, psychiatric medication to, like, sort of deal with it. You're not allowed to be on benzodiazepines or certain psychiatric medications while you're in air traffic control, so he was terminated from his position. The next best job this guy could get.

But the court was like, no, no, no, your earning capacity is $350,000 a year. That's what you made. And we were like, judge, what job can this guy get where he's going to make that amount of money? So it can sometimes, this is how guys end up in jail for not paying support. It's not their fault. So what'd he do?

He suffered, basically, yeah. I mean, he had a very unfair child support award placed against him. He ended up in jail a couple of times. It was a really... Because he was, like, selling drugs or something to make the money? No, he just was not... He didn't pay his support. It's illegal to not pay child support. You can be put in jail.

But you can't go back for a readjustment if you have. We did after a certain amount of time and then it was granted. Yeah. Like it was the judge sort of didn't buy that this was not done intentionally. Like we joke in our industry that, you know.

we call it sudden income deficiency syndrome, that it hits like nine out of 10 divorcing men. Like guys are doing really great. And then all of a sudden they're getting divorced and they're like, but this year is going to be bad. I'm not going to do well this year. Like you work for Goldman Sachs. They're like, yeah, but we're having a bad year. So it happens a lot.

Judges tend to look at people and go, you know, something tells me that if you're saying you're suddenly not doing well financially and it happens to be when you're getting divorced. There might be, you know, it's not a coincidence. So I hear about these guys who don't pay child support. You see that anecdotally, whatever. But then the saying I always hear is, well, courts are not in the collections business.

So how do some guys seemingly not really pay, kind of be unfair, and then some guys well-intentioned end up in jail? It depends on how bold the judge is. I mean, what I'll tell you is a big—I'll give you some free legal advice. If you ever— have a child support obligation against you, which I hope you never do. And you have to pay it and you don't have the money to pay it. Like if you're supposed to give her $2,000 a month and you don't have $2,000.

Give her $1,226.37. Because then when we get in front of the judge, we can say, judge, I had $1,000. I borrowed $200 from my cousin. I found $32 under the mats of my car. This is everything I have. because what people do is if you gave a thousand why didn't you give a thousand and one if you gave fifteen hundred like a round number it just looks like you're full of shit you know so but yeah I mean look we courts don't always

You know, again, because judges are human. There are some judges, they will put you right the fuck in jail. I've had clients let off in orange, you know, where the judge says, look, you got a week to pay this child support. And if you don't. bring a toothbrush when you come back to court because I'm putting you away. And they'll put some, they'll lock guys up. They have what's called weekend jail.

Where on Friday after work, you check in and you stay in jail until Monday morning. So you can work and pay your child support. Why does alimony exist? That's a great question. This? I get child support. Splitting of assets. You ever want to take a feminism out of a woman? Yeah.

Make or pay alimony. Dude, I think one of the coolest things in the White Lotus episode, they have these three different girls that make up this girl group. It's phenomenal, and each is an archetype of a woman at that age. But one of them... is paying child support or alimony. But it is really interesting to see her reaction to it and how her friends react. They hate it. Yes.

Okay, so can you explain, one, what is alimony? And two, what is the steel man argument for it? Not like, oh, this sucks, but what is the best case scenario? So alimony or spousal support or spousal maintenance, every state calls it something different. is a payment that's made from one former spouse to another. And it's intended to either rehabilitate their earning capacity so that they can kind of get on their feet.

or it's to roughly approximate the marital lifestyle for a certain period of time. So it's very rarely what we call non-durational, meaning like you broke it, you bought it forever, you owe her the marital lifestyle. There was a time where that was the way it was done.

But it hasn't been that way for many, many years now. So just so I can clarify to anybody who's listening, essentially there's this idea where if you're married and you have a certain lifestyle. Right. And there's a wide disparity in your income. And there's a wide disparity in your potential income because the wife might not even be working. Correct.

It is up to the husband or the wife, whoever is the breadwinner, to maintain that lifestyle outside of the marriage. Or some approximation of it for some period of time. Got it. So the steel man argument for it is the following. There are economic decisions you make during your marriage, and you make them as a couple, right? So...

it is very difficult for everybody to be Beyonce. Somebody's got to be Destiny's Child. You know, you can't all be the, you know, Lionel Richie. Somebody's got to be the Commodores. Sure, sure. So what you do is you say, okay, look, you're the star right now. I'm going to stand back. I'm going to take care of home. I'm going to do my thing. In the law, we call it diminished lifetime earning capacity, which basically means if a woman takes her late 20s or her 30s

from the workforce because that's when you have kids. You have kids in your 30s, kids in your 40s. Very hard for her to get back into the workforce. And when she gets back into the workforce, she's behind in the race. Like if you join the New York City Marathon halfway through...

You're not going to finish with everybody else, no matter how fucking fast. Just clarifying behind the race means like when she was 20, she would be in this beginner position. I forget what that's called. Like early entry position.

At 40, she should be like a VP or something. Because she hasn't worked for two decades, she has to go back at that beginning position. So in the law, we call that diminished lifetime earning. And because it's a beginning position, the earning potential is very small. And it'll never catch up. Because by the time she reaches the age she would have been at 40, she's 60. So she's closer to retirement. So it's lost.

So what you're doing is you're sort of saying, okay, we're going to compensate for that. That's the argument for it. Now, I actually think that there's a lot of compassion and empathy in that idea. Like, that's the best steel man I've heard for it. It makes a lot of sense. I don't think most people would disagree with that. No, no, no. Here's the other question I have. There are certain circumstances where there is a divorce.

There's a payment and splitting of assets to the tune of like tens of millions of dollars. Yeah. And on top of that, an alimony payment. Yeah. Isn't there a way where... where it could be calculated that the assets themselves would assume that alimony payment. So what's really interesting is, without realizing it, you've actually just joined the legislative committee, the New York State Bar Association, because a few years ago... the domestic relations law was actually modified.

to reflect exactly that. Where they said, what they call it is the income creating capacity of assets received in equitable distribution. And now it is one of the factors. When I started my career 25 years ago, that wasn't a factor. And then a lot of lawyers, myself included, were like, wait, she's getting $20 million. Put it in treasuries at 5%. She's got an income stream. So the courts and the legislature caught up.

And now they say, yeah, if you're getting, like, I just did a divorce where there was an $800 million marital estate. Wow. She actually had the audacity to ask for Alamo. The judge looked at it and went, listen, you're getting $400 million worth of assets. You're going to be all right. That can kick off income if you want it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I'm glad that they are making these adjustments.

And I think a lot of times you have to put in this legislation because you have to protect women, especially at a time where they weren't able to work. A lot of these laws, I imagine, are put in times where women aren't even part of the workforce. That's when a lot of them came about, and then the laws very slowed it.

change because the way that our law works is it's sort of a living thing that modifies as times and standards change. As it should, but there is bureaucracy you have to go through and that's always going to be done. And by the way, to bring it back to where we started here, that's why I'm a fan of prenup.

Yes, yes. Because if you're a fair person and your soon-to-be spouse is a fair person, couldn't you have this conversation? So this is really interesting. And just before, just to caveat it, like... We all understand the emotional reaction to a prenup and this idea of like the impending doom of your marriage before it even starts. So we get that. But it is interesting to attack.

the prenup, maybe attack is the wrong word, but approach the prenup with this idea that current legislation might not reflect what both parties feel is fair in a relationship, no matter how it goes. And you can... If you love some of the current legislation, put that into the prenup. If you don't, you can remove it. So I think that's an interesting argument for it. That's, to me, the best argument for it, because here's the other problem. Is there another contract that you've ever heard of?

change the terms of the contract without even fucking telling you? That's interesting. Like, imagine if you bought or leased a car. Yeah, this is really interesting. And they said, oh, by the way, this... The state just decided we're going to change how the interest rate works and when you have to make the payments. And you're not allowed to go, oh, well, then I'd like to opt out and return the car. And they go, oh, no, no, no, you can't do that. Sorry.

So there's rules. There's a prenup that was written for all three of your marriages.

by the government that can be changed unilaterally by people other than you and your wife and affect you forever so to me my attitude is listen you can do a prenup one way and then three years later do an addendum and modify it like you can make it a living document just like you make your will you make your will at one point you make it again five years later you change it you change it i think the perception of it is

a person with a lot of assets trying to make sure that the person that they're going to spend the rest of their life with never gets those assets in the event that the marriage doesn't work out, which is the goal of a lot of prenups and by the way not an unfair concept like let's let's let's you're bringing a hundred let's go to an alternate reality wait a minute i gotta pee real quick because the next thing i do want to talk to you about is like

I think we're getting there. What happens with these huge estates, these people that have generational wealth? Anyway, can we take two-minute breaks? Listen, very important that we discuss March Madness. There's nothing... to the people in this podcast than amateur sports.

We love amateur sports. We love amateur football. We love amateur basketball. Are they even amateur? They're just shittier pros. We love shittier pros. I don't have enough time to watch every NBA game that I want to watch, but I make sure I make time to watch shittier, pros most of whom yeah watch guys who will probably never make it to the NBA never make it to the NBA and if they do there'll be huge disappointments there's maybe one or two guys that will have a career in this entire draft

So, yeah, but, you know, it's March Madness. Doesn't feel very mad. Right? Does it feel like so mad? I don't know. Have they been crazy upsets yet? Yeah, probably. St. John's is the only one. That team lost to that team, or whatever. Oh, I heard about that. Yeah, I heard about that. And then everybody, and then all the adults pretended like they cared. Do you remember? Oh, my bracket is boss.

Bastard. My bracket's so busted. No sport has had as much done for it by March Madness with brackets. Like, it's saved. The only reason anybody gives a fuck, because their office is going to give you free lunch. If you win. And that's why you care. Yeah, you're all working at Lumen. Yeah. I think this was fantasy sports before fantasy. In that, like, remember, I don't know, because obviously everybody gambled on whatever the fuck they wanted to gamble on back in the day. But, like,

You rooted for your team. When we were growing up, I rooted for the Knicks. I rooted for the Giants or the Jets, whoever was fucking worse. I rooted for the Yankees. And then fantasy comes around and you start rooting for individual players because it reflects on your team. And I think that the bracket was the closest that we came to that. Most of us

did not go to the colleges that are playing in the tournament. My school, I think we made it the year before I went there. I don't even know if we've made it since. So you end up having this almost fantasy-esque relationship with the bracket. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we pretend that we care about amateur athletics, which we do not. New York people also have a weird relationship with college sports.

In general. Which I don't get because so many New Yorkers will go to state schools and then they should have some patriotism. Because there's no good... state school like at athletics in New York. But if you go to Ole Miss from New York, you should still like Ole Miss. A lot of New Yorkers end up going to Michigan or Wisconsin if they can't get into Ivy League. And they'll still be like, eh.

So like if there's a New Yorker that's at Michigan or Wisconsin, I just want you all to know that that was his last choice. They thought they were better than that. They applied to Cornell. They applied to Brown. They probably didn't think they were smart enough to get into Harvard or Princeton, but they applied to the lower IVs. They didn't get in. And they're like, my safety school.

will be, I will make the pilgrimage with the rest of the New York Jews to Wisconsin or Michigan. They have a good business school. Yeah, that's what it is. So anyway, and then they pretend to like the college, you know, amateur athletic. And ironically, NYU is a... bunch of kids who wanted to get in ivy's and couldn't so they're at nyu exactly but it's actually a good school yeah that's the difference

Whereas Michigan and Wisconsin. They just hated their parents and wanted to get away from them. Yeah. Say again? I said they hated their parents. They just wanted to get away from them. Why go to an even colder place? You did it well.

Go to Santa Barbara. The polar opposite weather-wise. Let's go to a shittier weather state. No winter, no classes. Like, perfect. You know what I mean? That's what you want in a college experience. Good Mexican food, finally. Do you guys remember a single thing you learned in college? Maybe one or two. I don't remember one. I thought about this the other day. I don't remember one thing I learned in college. No, come on. I don't remember one.

I can't remember a single thing. You know all of Gente Fernandez because of college. Not in college. Extravurricular. Yeah, I would have learned that shit here too. You didn't think I would have met a Mexican kid here? go out and watch the fucking movie. That's a good point. If they had that class, though. I'm trying to think. I think I learned some evolutionary biology stuff. That's all I remember. Maybe some Psych 101, but like...

You don't learn anything. Statistics right now? I can't remember. I can't remember. Sign, cosine, tangent. That might have been high school. I don't remember that shit. Anyway, the point is, if you want to bet on useless sports, you can bet on college sports. And you can do that with Stake. Stake is the leader in global betting and U.S. social casinos. Bet on top sports and also college.

And political events and the use of promo code flagrant for your welcome bonus. Now, let me just caveat this. Listen, I'm right. Yeah, well, of course. There's only one way to make it fun, and that's gambling. Can't we just acknowledge that? Can't we just acknowledge that? Yeah, college basketball, they're dribbling off their foot. Oh, but the defense is better. It's more fundamentals. No, no, no. You're gambling on it.

that's what makes it exciting yeah it's the only way it's exciting you don't have to gamble in every single NBA game if you did you'd obviously do a mistake but you don't have to because it's the best of the best But if I'm going to watch Liberty take on Drake,

I need some fucking scratch on it. A 19-year-old athlete putting everything down, trying to get his mom out the hood. I'm putting money on it. Yeah, shout out to Cooper Flag, man. Anyway, let's get back to the show. There are certain people... That are targeted, meaning they come from very wealthy families. Their families might have billions of dollars. And marriage has been almost like a tool to protect those assets.

Hundreds of years, maybe, in some of these families. I mean, well, that's what marriage originally was designed culturally for the purposes of maintaining land ownership and emerging clans. Actually, after we get into this discussion, I'd really like to know some of the history of marriage.

one why it's continued to be around like if this is something that didn't have societal utility i think that we were the first people that were like this is going so great we should get the government yeah you know like that's fucking weird it does seem weird that that

That's an interesting thing. Even when my wife were going to get married, I was like, I really don't care that the government knows about this. It's important to me that you and I know about this, and we are committing to one another. And I think for them, I think that the idea that... The government knows about it makes it feel more real because of like societal expectations or whatever. But you know, what's an interesting thing I've always found fascinating is.

If you said to me, Jim, I'm thinking about buying an airplane. That's not a rude question. You would say, oh, you know, I fly a lot and it'd be nice. I wanted to learn how to do it. Okay. If you're dating a girl for a certain period of time, you say to me, you know, Jim, I'm thinking about getting married. And I go, why? That's rude.

Why is that rude? Like, this is a technology that fails 56% of the fucking time. And let's say there's another 10, 20% that stay together for the kids because they don't want to give away half their shit. Why is it rude to say to someone, You guys are getting along. You're in love. You're having fun. Why do you want to get the government involved? My whole thing is, what is the problem to which marriage is a solution?

Like, what is the problem to which marriage is like anything else in your life? You could answer that. What is the problem to which this is a solution? It's hard to hold water in my hands, so we need a container for it. What is the problem to which this is a solution? It's nice to be able to talk to people when they're not in the room. Okay, what is the problem to which marriage is a solution? I'm lonely?

Marriage doesn't solve that problem. To answer your question, I thought you brought up a really great point when it came to allocating time with the kids in a divorce, which was like... If a dad has every other weekend, it's kind of looked at like, oh, yeah, OK, he's got a job. He's a divorced dad. If a mom has every other weekend, she's looking at it like a psychopath. Right. So I do think that women that are in long term relationships but aren't married.

Sure. Will he not commit to me? Does he not really love you? Is he trying to protect his money or his assets or something like that? And I think a lot of times that informs their decision to quote unquote get the government involved. It's less about the government. It's more about like, how will society view me as this person's partner? Like, and is it a lack of commitment? Which obviously now, like we remove the emotion from it, we can unpack and go.

Yeah, it doesn't change anything in that relationship. You can literally not get married, but you can sign a contract with some lawyers about how assets can be distributed like you can have the government play no part and if you by the way don't even know what role the government plays in that it's kind of a fiction and by the way like You trust that Mark is married. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you checked the fucking paperwork? Exactly, yeah, yeah. No, no, you're right. Like, honestly.

Like, have you ever gone to a wedding? Yeah, yeah. And after, at the end, gone, lovely ceremony, great pigs in the blanket at the cocktail hour. Did you see the paperwork? Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry? I don't have a marriage license. I just want to make sure. Like, your parents might not be fucking married. Did you check the paperwork? I've never.

outfit yeah so you have as many fucking weddings as you want guys yeah like getting married lots of fun it's a great party i'm all for it i fucking love weddings so i like pigs and blankets yeah but the truth is like Does that mean you actually have to go sign a marriage license to get the government involved? Not necessarily. But let's real quick, let's just divide this up.

What you're not saying, you're not saying that having a partner that you guys dedicate your lives to each other and grow a family with is bad. Not only is it not bad, I think it's the best thing in the world. It's incredibly important. Yeah, it's the best pair of bonds.

Like relationships, love, like what is better than love? Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. I guess what happens is I think when people hear the word, like, why would you get married? They often assume that you're like, have a few girlfriends or don't commit to one person or it's not going to work out. you're pro relationship you're pro like

I'm pro monogamy. You're pro monogamy, pro family. I'm pro people building families together. Look, there's a reason why throughout the history of humankind, pair bonds, monogamy, this exists. for biological reasons, it exists for social reasons. But if I saw a correlation between love And marriage. Yeah. And love being sister. by the fact that you've married, I would be the biggest fan of marriage in the world. What I see is the opposite. What I see is people dating...

and in love who then sign on for a contract that they do not understand at all. Yes. And then I think it becomes almost antagonistic to it because our society is so... considers it so acceptable. Come on, listen, look at every group of women you've ever seen out who are married, okay? And one of them is not married.

And the one who's not married is talking about a guy who she just started dating. And they all are, oh, my God, he sounds so great. He's so wonderful. It's so great. Oh, my God. What did he do? Oh, he did that. He's so loving. And then when they talk about their husbands, oh, he's such a, I mean, you know, and then he comes home. All that is. is the guy that she's talking about a couple of years down the road.

Like, marriage becomes very antagonistic to this situation, says the guy who's been married how many years now? I don't know. Like, okay, the reality is, like, listen, I'm telling you, every... The previews is always the best part of the movie. No, no, no. What I'm trying to say is, specifically, one, when everybody knows that you're married, it's...

You'd have to be a psychopath to walk into a room of your friends and be like, My wife and I did the most amazing thing, and she's the kindest person.

that's not what we want to hear about. We want to hear, like you said, like when you, as a divorce attorney and you walk into a party, you're like, tell me the drama, tell me the craziest thing. So I'm coming in with the funny shit, which is a drama. When you're dating a new person, there's no drama yet. It's like, we went on one date, he beat me. That never happened. So it's just like.

Oh, what's the sex? What's it like? Is he good? And we miss that euphoria. Not that the love fades, but it shifts from euphoria to a different love. And by the way, what it shifts... can also be way better than that euphoria. I think my relationship has gotten better since then. Yeah, I think there are a lot of people that will tell you that. And by the way, at its best, That's what happens in a relationship is you give up novelty.

in exchange for a depth of connection, a person who understands you, a person who, look, this all makes sense to me. Again, the question I have is, How does the government get involved in that? And does the institution of marriage add value to it? Like, I genuinely believe what you are saying about how you feel about your wife. Yeah. If you had not married her. Yeah. and you hadn't signed that contract, you would...

still feel that way. I think what I could say in your favor is that maybe law hasn't caught up to society. Society has gotten more egalitarian gender roles-wise, equality-wise for men and women. But especially... 30, 40, 50 years ago, there wasn't that. So women needed that security. And I think that's still left over. I don't think marriage has no place, but I definitely understand women's need for it more than men because they're still coming from.

This equality thing is relatively recent. My attitude about tradition, because really marriage is a tradition. It's a societal tradition. And there's really two ways to look at tradition, and I think they're both valid, okay? One is a tradition is something that worked in the past because there's reasons for it. And maybe the people before us knew some things that we haven't figured out yet because we're younger than them in the scheme of things.

The other way you can look at tradition is peer pressure exerted by dead people. That's really what tradition very often is, is it's peer pressure from dead people. Why are we doing it this way? Because my great grandmother did it that way. Your great grandmother didn't have a smartphone. Your great grandmother did a whole bunch of things differently.

Some of which, by the way, make as much if not more sense now, but some of which make no sense anymore. And how have we evolved as a culture to the point where if you said, my wife is my property. She was her father's property, and then he handed her to me in exchange for me giving something to her, and now I own her. Sounds pretty fire. But some people would have an issue with it, okay? Yes.

What is a wedding ceremony? Most wedding ceremonies is the gives away the bride. It's symbolic of things that most women would find terribly offensive. But because we put all these cultural things around it, it's like, oh, yes, buying a woman an engagement ring. Like how many women have you met that are so feminist that they go I'm not accepting you giving me some expensive thing as a way of purchasing. Is it there? Fuck that. You could be a Bella Abzug feminist.

And you would still be like, oh yeah, no, I want a big fucking rock and it better not be lab made. You know, like that's how it works. I mean, I like Christmas presents. Yeah, yeah, sure. It's the same shit. It doesn't make any sense. It's the exact same. But we like nice things, right? And there's no problem with that. Of course.

But I don't then create a whole vision as to why this is good for society. No, no, no, no. I think what we agree on is two people coming together to share love and then potentially raising a family together. And not leaving each other to go fuck other people and create other families at the same time. I think kids are the biggest thing. Exactly. It is really good and beneficial for society. I think we can all agree on that. And let's just use the term marriage for that. Okay.

If, for example, every marriage Meaning you couldn't get married unless you had agreed on the terms of that marriage. Now we've removed the government doing the prenup, which it seems to me... is your biggest concern. You love love, you love people coming together, you love them creating families, and it's really important for society. What you don't love are these rules imposed on us that might be antiquated or not favorable for either party.

You're a marriage libertarian. I'm exactly correct. So what you want to do is, so I think... what you're telling me, just because I don't want it to seem like you're anti-marriage. You're anti, no, sorry, you're pro what we assume marriage is, which is this union, without this antiquated gunk.

if it doesn't go well. If it doesn't go well. What my attitude is, by the way, and if you want to buy into any of the antiquated gunk, you have every right to. But I think you and this person who you've picked out of 8 billion other options. Yes. You're saying this is my person. And who is more qualified than the two of you to agree on the rules? I think reframing things, and I'm sure you've done this in every single meeting. I'm more talking to the audience.

I think us reframing marriage in that way and having like a real... Cool, understanding, and fair conversation about what would make us both comfortable in this. And then you learn a lot about each other. By the way, and that's the point. To me, that is the point. Because that's a conversation worth having. Even if you don't end up doing a prenup. Having a conversation about, hey, what do we owe each other?

What does this mean to you? Like, what do you expect of me? Because I want to meet your expectations. What do you want from me? And then you learn a lot about each other through that process because... If some guy is marrying a girl, then they have to do this prenup process because that's part of the marriage. The government basically says this. Hey.

Our rules are kind of fucked up. We're going to give you a baseline. Use some, don't use some, but we recommend you go get an attorney. And maybe there's even like a public office where they can do it. I don't know. It doesn't even have to be that complicated. But yeah, so it's basically, so you go do it.

And then you can learn a lot. If the guy goes, by the way, in this prenup, I want to make sure that you don't deviate within 10 pounds of your weight right now. You'll learn what's really important to that guy. I mean, don't you want to know that before you marry this fucking guy? And then you might go, I don't want to get married to this guy.

says to you, well, you know, if you earn less than X number of dollars, you have to... Well, I'd like to have that conversation before we've signed up for that contract. I think that's a very fair way of approaching it, but I like this idea that...

You're not against the union. And I think a lot of times when there's criticism of marriage, people think it's criticism of two people starting a family and loving each other. That's not it. We need that for society. That's a good tradition. Saying I do. isn't saying I can. It's saying I'll try. Right. At best. Right. At best. Yeah, yeah. You know, like at best, what you say when you say I do is you're saying I'm making you a promise. Yeah.

And if you're not fucking three, you know people break promises, right? So really what you're saying when you make a promise is I'm going to really try. I'm going to try my best. I'm going to try my best. I'm going to try my best to love you. I'm going to try my best. that you bring to this relationship and see it in good faith. Yeah. And I'm not going to attribute negative intentions. I'm going to cheer for you and you're going to cheer for me.

and I'm going to see your blind spots and when I have to call you out, I'm going to do it with love and I'm going to try to say to you, babe, I think this is going to hurt you long term, what you're doing right now. Like, what is more beautiful than that? Who would disagree with that? But again... Like, why not call those terms out in advance and have that conversation? I think this is a super healthy way.

of looking at marriage. And if you're telling me right now that the legislation has already changed to adjust some of the antiquated ideas that were there to obviously protect women, but now are no longer needed. What you're basically saying is the government is going, hey, we've got to update the prenup. If the government has a prenup, they're basically going, marriages deserve prenups. And the government, by the way, is...

They're changing it, but they're changing it the way the government changes things, which is way late in the game. So it's like they don't catch up. Like there's a reason why the IRS's lawyers and the tax lawyers that get paid millions of dollars.

the tax lawyers that get paid millions of dollars are always four steps ahead of these fucking guys. Like the top of the class goes to work for these firms. Why? Because they have every incentive to do that. So for me, saying, you know what, I trust the government. so much that I know they'll change the law to protect me. That's the most naive thing I've ever heard a human being say. And even if you want to look at the government acting in good faith,

They're like, hey, there are these people who go, hey, we got a problem. There are these divorced women. They're fucking homeless right now. They're going back to living with their parents. They're struggling to eat. They can't even take care of their kids. Now they're not around their kids. We got to do something to protect that. They overcorrect. And this is the mistake. People come into this and they think prenups were designed for wealthy people only, right? And by the way,

There's a reason why, because look, there's times where a person comes to the marriage, they have a tremendous amount of assets. I want to talk about that. And they say, look, I've got a ton of money. You know, if in an alternate universe, you are you now at your level of success yes and you meet a lovely young woman and you say you know what let's get it let's do this thing yeah

Do you mean if you get divorced in three months, you should get half of everything? That's fucking crazy. That's crazy. And I think even the government would say that that's not how it goes. Yes, that isn't how it works. But maybe there was a time where it was. Well, and there's still very complicated things, which is how guys like me make a lot of money. Because what happens is we have what's called transmutation.

which is if you had a separate property asset, meaning something you owned before the marriage, and then you get married and you mix an asset that you earned during the marriage or income earned during the marriage with your premarital money, you turn... that the separate into marital so we have what's called the marital presumption which is basically so like think of me i always tell clients think about it like you know a your separate property premarital money is like a bowl of water

And marital money is like a drop of red dye. You drop that in, you can't take it back out. The whole thing's pink. You're doing renovations on it. with your marital money, now all of a sudden you're saying the property becomes marital. But you could make the argument that By doing those renovations, it increased the value of that property.

five million hundred percent and you know i get paid a lot of money per hour to make that argument right and then the other lawyer gets paid a bunch of money by the hour to say no no no there was no donative intent there was no consideration but the fact that there's so the reality is is why are we making money on this yeah why couldn't the two

in advance just sit down and say hey you know what let's put aside some like let's decide the rule set if we put it in your name it's this if we put it in joint sets we'll split 50 50 if we use premarital money we'll do it this way Have that fucking conversation. This is great. I love how like, obviously you're an amazing communicator and you're very spirited about this, but like.

to me seems to come from this place of guys, this could be so much easier. But there is this negative stigma about a prenup because we only think about these people with tons of assets that are doing it to protect it from a gold digger we don't think about people who are building a life like in a lot of our circumstances we don't really have that i mean we're doing okay but we don't have like tons of money and then once we get married we start building this amazing life yeah um

And that's probably the majority of people that are getting married. The majority of people aren't coming from $300 million. And by the way, people that don't have as much are the ones who really have to worry about how do we divide it. it because if you got hundreds of millions of dollars like but if you're if you're in a situation where like most people you're kind of basically getting by well now you're gonna have two electric bills and two cable bills and two everything so so to me like

You know, what's so funny is when early in my career... I'm sorry to cut you here, but it is really interesting to understand your perspective on this. You're not... against the institution, you're like, it could be so much more simple. It just could be better. And you've gone through so many where you're like, we're still bickering over this because you guys didn't make this very easy decision early on. And I just don't think it makes it unromantic. Like, we all know life ends.

Life's not like, did you ever go like, well, I'm going to die someday, so I might as well just die now. Like, no, like the beauty is going through the press. Like you're watching a movie and someone says, oh, the movie's going to end. You don't go, well, fuck it. I'm not even going to watch it. Like, no, the beauty is to watch the movie and know that this is a temporary thing. Look, look, every marriage ends. It ends in death.

Your marriage will end, I promise. That's a weird thing to say to a person. I hope your marriage ends in death. But I do. I hope that's how your marriage ends. Because the only two options are just going to end in death or divorce. Right, right.

you have life insurance no one ever would look at you and go you're so morbid with that life insurance like why would you think you have to do that I'm protecting these people that I love like I know something's good okay so what is wrong with two people When I was early in my career, I decided, I thought, you know what?

Have you ever seen, I don't know if any of you were forced to do, you chose well if you didn't have to do this. This is good. You did well with the women in your lives. Where you go see a bunch of vendors or something? Yes. My wife did that. Okay, so she didn't make you go? She didn't make you go? No.

That's fantastic. This is like a whole Indian thing. You ever want to see sad men at that thing? Like they're just like, hold, you know, it's like if you took her to the car show, like she's just like, what the fuck are we doing here? Yeah. So you, you, but, but these, They have photographers, the cake people, the invitations, the little sweats. The whole wedding industrial complex.

The whole crew. They are. Please, I'm not the scavenger in this party. I don't make it rain. I sell the umbrella. These fucking people, they're making, they're monsters. They're full-on monsters, all right? Because they convince her. It's like, you're actually. going to have a wedding and not give away scented candles you don't care about your family I guess you don't have to have the scented candles but I went and I said hey listen

Can I have a table? You pay like 10 grand. Can I have a table? Just for prenups. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, and I promise I'll do it very respectfully and say, hey, congratulations on your engagement. Let's talk about prenups. Yeah.

They wouldn't take my fucking money. Wow. They wouldn't let me in the door. Because, and why? Because there's a fucking fantasy they're selling people. And don't let reality get into the fantasy. And see, for me... I think I'm actually a true romantic because I like reality. Like, and my attitude is I like somebody who looks at the situation and goes, you know what?

Whether we win, whether we lose, let's play this fucking game. Like, let's do this thing. Let's try. Like, let's shoot for it. Like, this is a game we can't win. We're either going to die and lose each other or we're going to divorce and lose each other. fuck it, I want to take this ride. Could you make the argument that going through that prenup process could lengthen the marriage? Well, here's what I'll tell you. I've been doing this for 25 years.

25 years I've been doing prenups, and I always end up having a good relationship with the person at the end of the transaction. Because unlike a divorce, it's not protracted. It's relatively inexpensive. I've probably only had to do three divorces, four divorces of people I did. This is interesting to talk about. I think it's a self-selecting group. What are the percentages? Okay, so we know what the percentage of divorce is for marriage. What is the percentage of divorce?

for prenup. You'll never know. And here's why. A prenup's not filed anyway. Like I have celebrity clients who I did their prenup. And they are doing interviews saying, oh, we don't have a prenup. And I'm like, yeah, you fucking do. It's in my safe. I wrote it. But they tell people, because why? It's one of those things.

everything on it so here's the cake oh here's this picking out flowers no one's ever like here's the signing the prenup because everybody goes yeah they got a prenup yeah all right you know social stigma it's all social stigma and there's no reason we have to normalize prenups we have to democratize prenups we have to by the way prenups are the there there are there are So unbelievably easy for attorneys to draft.

No one is making a bunch of money on prenups. Like, we make our money on litigation. We make money on the way out, not on the way in. So the truth is... like there is no reason why it has to be reserved for the wealthy this is something that can be democratized there can be an access to justice people could go even with AI technology that's out there now. Listen, I've been involved in a startup called Trusted Prenup.

And our thing is going to be we are going to democratize prenups. It's coming soon because AI has made it possible now for there to be like a tree menu where people go in and go, OK, what do we want to do with Alamo? OK, what do we want to do when it comes to our states? What do we want to do?

and put it together spit that document out and by the way it's not filed anywhere you don't have to tell anybody that you did it it can just be a discussion between you and this partner that you tell the most intimate things to, you have the most intimate experiences with, why can't you have honest conversations about that?

So hearing that, are the three of you guys going to get post-nups? No, for sure not. I mean, it's going to be really bad for... I'm going to have him watch this episode. And he's going to show it to everybody. Is that last week? No, that was a rerun. Our wives are going to watch this episode. He said something about Abraham Lincoln, very racist. You know, it was a whole issue.

He got two hands. No, I think I wasn't going to watch this episode for sure. I'm curious their perspective on it, but I... I texted Mark this morning and I said, I was like, you got to tell your wife that you're spending the day with a divorce. Oh, I definitely get some. I brought that up three days ago. Yeah. I was like, by the way, you know, we're going to have this divorce attorney. Yeah. My wife was definitely like, why are you having him on? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Your wives have never met me and all hate me. But hopefully by the end of this episode, they're like, you know, he's kind of a romantic. That's not so bad. You are pro-marriage. You're just anti-marriage without a prenup. Well, what I'll say is I think it's irresponsible to marry without a prenup. I'm not again listening.

People want to do dumb shit. You want to do some dumb shit? Do some dumb shit. Just admit you're doing some dumb shit. I'm just a fan of reality. I'm an Indian kid who's a stand-up comic. I'm new to dumb shit. That might be your brand. It is. It is. But all I'm saying is at least own it. Yeah. Believe me. Believe me. Because America's like lottery. You're probably not going to win. Yeah. But if you win.

It's so fucking good. Whatever, man. I'm just the kind of guy who likes to... I don't go into the casino and go, yeah I'll bet money how much I don't know whatever you guys decide like that's fucking crazy no it is high risk high reward and I think anybody who believes differently is It's crazy. It is high risk, high reward. I just think if you play and you do, and one thing, you brought up a car analogy. One thing I laugh at is people who are like,

You know, you get a car, you get an oil change every 3000 miles each of transmission. You get all the constant maintenance. Marriage, people are like, no, you don't need to go to counseling. You do it one time. Well, what's even more amazing about marriage, if you want to take the car analogy a little bit further, like.

All right, so you get married in your 20s or your 30s, right? All right, when you're 20 years old, if I said to you, you can have any car in the world, what car do you want? You'd be like Ferrari, Lamborghini, whatever, Aston Martin, anything. It might be a muscle car, okay?

And then after you bought it, I said, by the way, it's the only car you're ever going to have your whole fucking life. You'd be like, wait, what? Because I don't want to be 80 getting out of a Ferrari. If I have kids, where am I going to put the car seat? Marriage is you are choosing this person. And theoretically, you are saying in your 20s or 30s, you are saying this person for the rest of my life. Now, again, at best.

It's like those trees that grow next to each other and then become entwined. And it's like they grow together and they become something different, but they become something different together. So that's amazing when it's done the right way.

that like, oh, it'll never change. We're always going to be like we were when we fell in love. That's foolish. Jim, Jim, you need to... you need to switch the name so it's It's called, I don't know why Al's been laughing at me, I got lost when Akash was like, I'm a

I don't know. He was saying something. He's a car. He's a car. But Al's been laughing at me and then I started going like, am I making a weird face? Does it look like I'm regretting my marriage? I got really self-conscious. I know regretting the marriage face. you don't have okay good but but i think that prenup is already so stained like it's just so stained yeah i think that if you called it like estate planning

Like, for example, like my wife and I did like estate planning and you're just playing for the worst case scenario. What if I die? What if she died? What if everybody died? How fucked up was that? Oh, it's awful. When you're like, well, what if we both die? And you're like, oh my God. What if we both die and your sister dies? And then you're like, oh.

it's horrifying it's really fucked up but really important and at no point during it was it this like contentious thing because you're all looking out for the best case scenario of everything and I think prenup is already so radioactive. It's like, what is another thing you could do?

But I really like that idea of like, because you said it best. Call it the marital contract. Whatever it is, the government has a prenup for you whether you like it or not. And most people don't even know what that means.

and it changes depending on what state you're in. That's the part that scares me the most. Which is the government can change any time they want. And you could move to a different state and live there long enough. And now I think that state... takes uh yeah they take precedent six months you've been there six months they have jurisdiction so so the reality is there is nobody that doesn't have a prenup everyone has a prenup so

You could look into what it is. The thought that someone can change the terms and conditions and you can't opt out. Yeah, yeah. This is the education. It's crazy. Well, and that's the funny thing because like, you know, a lot of like.

You know, I did an interview with Matt Walsh a bunch of months ago on The Daily Wire, and he was all about, like, no-fault divorce. No-fault divorce is the worst. What does that mean? So, New York is a no-fault state. Most states are now no-fault states, which means you don't have to prove why you're getting divorced.

you don't have to have fault it used to be you had to show adultery you had to show incurable mental illness you had to call abandonment So it was great for lawyers because we had to like, before we even got into the real fight, we had to get into a fight of, are you allowed to get divorced? So the states eventually said, look, this is stupid. If one person in the marriage has decided the marriage is over, guess what? The marriage is over. So now we're no fault.

A lot of people on the far right, Matt Walsh, you know, Ben Shapiro, it was like their big flavor of the moment for a little while was they were saying no fault divorce is the worst thing in the whole wide world.

Because it incentivizes divorce in a way? Well, like, it's kind of like saying, you know, we got to get rid of all these emergency rooms because, like, everybody who's in there has broken bones. So people must be breaking bones so they can go to the emergency room. Like, that's fucking ridiculous. Like, no, they didn't break it. Like, this is just their...

to solve the problem. So what I said to Matt is, look, why wouldn't we have, why would you have barriers to exit? Why don't you have barriers to entry? Like, why don't you have, you have to take a class.

or you have to sit down with a person who went through an ugly divorce or like Catholics, they have the pre-cana where you got to sit down and you talk to couples who've been married for 30, 40 years. And the guy says, look, you're going to have to say, I'm sorry for some shit you're not sorry for. That's part of being married. And you go, all right, cool. I can live with that. like have some barriers to entry. Like you, you, if you, I adopted a dog.

from ACC in New York City. You know how much fucking paperwork I had to fill out? They wanted to know my third grade English teacher's name. Like, they wanted to know, like, did Mrs. Soibel, did she think you'd be good? She hadn't seen me in 40 years. You need to have a, you want a piss test?

Like, I'm adopting a dog you were going to kill in two days. Like, just give me the fucking dog. Get married. 50 bucks, you can pay all this in Vegas, and you're married. All right, guys, let's take a break for a second. I genuinely want to tell you guys about the best protein bar on the planet, okay? I mean this sincerely. This right here, the David bar, okay?

What do we want out of a protein bar? We want fucking protein and we want it to have low calories. And ideally, we don't want it to have that much sugar. And then after that, can it not taste like cardboard? Those are the things we want. There's no other bar on the planet that's going to give you 28 grams of protein at 150 calories and zero sugar. David figured it out, okay? It tastes good. Figured it out. I'm telling you right now, it is fantastic. It is the best tasting protein bar.

that I've ever had. And I'm not counting the ones that have six grams of protein. That's not even a protein bar. I'm talking about the ones that are actually marketed as protein bars. This has more protein than all of them, and it actually is delicious, okay? I'm telling you, adequate protein intake is critical for building and preserving muscle mass now and as we age. If you're an old guy like me, that muscle mass is going to...

Be what really allows you to play paddle for the rest of your life. Okay? Literally, it's the only reason I lift weights is so I can play paddle. And unfortunately, when I don't do it, I start to get injured. It's that horrible. So David bars are the first thing that I'm gobbling down in the morning before I go get a workout or afterwards. For some reason, you got to get like your weight in protein in a day, which is like almost impossible. But I try my hardest. Anyway, David...

has the most protein per calorie. So eating 100 calories of David will make you feel fuller than eating 100 calories of any other bar. David is also now available in stores in NYC. So if you're in New York, stop by your local bodega. to get your protein fixed, and then tell the guy at the bodega where you heard about it. Let him know it came from flagrant, okay? That's very important. I'm sure that will get back to David.

Anyway, David comes in six delicious flavors, and they're all worth trying. Also, if you buy four cartons, you get the fifth one free, which will not happen at the bodega, so make sure you do that, over at davidprotein.com slash flagrant. I'm telling you, this is the truth, man. It's fantastic. It's fantastic. It's absolutely fantastic.

Anyway, let's get back to the show. All right, guys, I have a question for you. What do a mechanic and auto shop owner in Georgia, a taco restaurant operator in Arizona, and a lifesaving medical innovator in Tennessee have in common? They are all small business owners.

thriving on TikTok. In the US alone, over 7.5 million businesses, and I'm talking everything from family-owned shops to entrepreneurs who own tons of shit and are simply looking to get more rich. They're all using TikTok. It's how you compete. It's how you grow. 74% of businesses on TikTok say it's allowed them to scale operations, increase sales, and expand in new locations. And you know what that means? That means U.S. jobs.

There are over 7.5 million U.S. businesses on TikTok employing more than 28 million people. And that number keeps growing. Small businesses thrive on TikTok. So if you've got a small business, you can learn more about TikTok's contribution to the economy at TikTok Economic Impact.

My wife is on TikTok now, and Andrew's entire goal is to make her make more money than me and make my life miserable. TikTok, that's a platform that will ruin my marriage. But I'm okay with it, because if she leaves me, I'm coming after her money.

Let's get back to the show. You know, it's interesting. Back in the day, I had a different business manager, and this is when we were about to get married. The business manager hit me up on the side. He's like, by the way, I think that we should get this prenup settled or whatever like that. I was operating with good faith, right? So I was like...

Well, why don't you just get a lawyer? And then like my wife and I will talk to the lawyer and then we'll see what the things are. Right. Well, you're already smiling because you know where this is going. I know where it's going. Because I'm like, let's just figure out what these things are. Like, she's not against it. Like, just. And. We talk to the lawyer and the lawyer goes, well, I don't know if I should be having this call with you and your wife. And I'm like,

Well, I'm not trying to fuck over my wife. It's called potentially adverse interest. But there's the perfect example of how could you then go forward with this agreement if... Obviously, it's rational. But how can you go forward with this agreement if the first time you're talking to a lawyer, he basically says, hey, she shouldn't be on because we're going to try to fuck her. Right. Right. Like, to me, I literally was going...

Just give me a lawyer so they can explain what's going on. And then if this is something that we even feel like we should do. Yeah. And I can't say, well, because here's the thing, what the lawyer is saying, and they don't say it in artful ways, what lawyers are saying in that situation is you have potentially adverse interests. More for you is less for her, less for you is more for her, right?

But see, again, this is all stuff that technology has made easier. So people come to me and they go, look. I want my fiance and I want to talk to you about a prenup. I go, look, I'm not allowed to counsel you both, but here's what we can do. Let's do it via Zoom. Record the entire thing. She will hear everything. You can play it for whoever you want, including your fiance. I can't give her legal advice, but I can give you legal advice and you can play for her every word I say to you.

so that she doesn't feel intimidated. But see, this is the reality is we can do it. So what you're saying is you're absolutely right. We're taking an adversarial system and you're hiring lawyers whose job theoretically is to protect their individual client at the expense of the other, which, by the way, one of the things I'm least proud of my colleagues for. is we're so used to dealing with warring tribes in a divorce that then when we're doing a prenup,

We approach it the same way. And these fucking people are getting in a car and driving home together. Like, this is not the same thing as a divorce. So there should be a different approach. And there can be. We just have to rethink the way we do. Even the language. It was like, we just want to protect you. And I go.

Well, my wife's not trying to kill me. Like, why are you using this language as if she's trying to do something nefarious? Protect me from what? Protect me from what? Like, why aren't we protecting ourselves? Why are... that's why I'm saying like the way that we approach this and as you've talked about on the pod I think it's been really healthy which is like hey just come together

on an agreement that you think is superior than the agreement that the government is going to impose on you. Totally. Who wouldn't agree to that? Totally useful. It makes total sense. Why can't you go to sell. And by the way, I think what you said earlier is absolutely correct. Why isn't there a neutral party? It's an opportunity for people to have a really important discussion. But why isn't there like a lawyer that wouldn't represent

each party, but just someone you could go to for information. There are ways to do it. There are people that do it. There should be more of that. There are lawyers who work collaboratively who will say, let's all meet together. We each have a lawyer. There's people that work in mediation to mediate a prenup. There's a lot of ways. There's more than one path up the mountain. You don't even have to do the

Sabrina, just inform us. Maybe we work it all out with you and then we get it. There's so many ways to do it. But again, we're just used to doing it one way. We've handed it off to an adversarial system.

and so to a person with a hammer everything looks like a nail like to a person who argues for a living everything looks like an invitation to have a fucking argument you know I get paid to be paranoid like my mother tells me she loves me I ask for references like that's my job like that's my job because I see the worst

in people all day long. That's heavy. So what you have to do is you have to get to a place where you go, okay, look, this is a conversation. I guarantee when you and your wife did that estate planning, you probably had to have some conversations about like, hey. Something happens. Like, who watches the kids? And what do we do about this? And do we trust that family member? Are they responsible? But I tell you, I bet...

that that deepens the level of connection, intimacy, the two of you have. And by the way, you go doing that estate planning. Like we are never more alive than when we're in the presence of death. Like when you stop and think about, holy shit, if I lost this person.

Like, what would that feel like? You want to hug that person 50 times more. So to me, like early on in a relationship, when you're still madly in love with each other and you're about to sign up for this, you know, I'm marrying you. It's going to be you, you, and only you. that's the time to say, you know what? If we ever hurt each other, if we ever...

What do we owe each other? How do we handle that? How do I love you? How do I make you feel safe? That's a great time to have that conversation. Yeah, yeah. This is really healthy. I really think there should be... a neutral party that you could go to for information about like the laws in the state you are there's mediators you can go to an attorney and say to the attorney look i just want to have an educational

conversation about this. I don't want you to draft the prenup necessarily. Again, I think you're going to see in the coming years, I intend to be part of it. You're going to see more of the democratization of prenup. Because I think the younger generation, like I'm older than all of you, and I have to tell you, one of the things, like I look at my 20-something-year-old sons, and I have a lot of hope for the future because I think that...

you're looking at a situation and going, okay, but why do we do it that way? Like, why do we do it that way? We don't have to do it that way. And it's okay for people to say, hey, you know what? We can do it however we want to do it. It just left a bad taste in both of our mouths. I understood where the business manager was coming from because he probably has these clients that got a bunch of gold diggers trying to go after him. But it's like, I don't have that relationship with my wife.

Like we didn't have, I mean, I had a couple bucks, but like, it's not what it was now. And we were operating in good faith. It wasn't even like. how do we keep this from you? And then these lawyers on the side are trying to talk to me going, hey, well, you know, they should have somebody else do it. And then we don't talk. And I'm like, guys, this feels.

Like I'm trying to screw over the person that I'm about to spend the rest of my life with. And I don't, I don't feel comfortable with that. But, but I'd say something, look, you're, you're, career has been characterized by being somewhat iconoclastic like i've been a fan since the 441 days like i i and and i'm sure when you said i'm going to put this out myself yeah Some people who genuinely care about you and genuinely wanted to see you succeed said, dude,

Don't do it that way. You'll never make a dime. And by the way, they were not trying to mislead you. They weren't trying to hurt you. It's not that they didn't trust you. They were looking at it and going... Dude, I don't want to see it go wrong for you. Okay, so people can in very good faith give very fucking bad advice, right? Because if that... If that's the right way to do it, they did it fucking wrong. They did it wrong, right? Because if you go, no, no, I'm going to do it this way.

and you knock it out of the park like you did, they go, well, what the fuck was happening? Why did I do it this other way? And the answer is because it was peer pressure from dead people. No, that's... You're right. We get caught up in these antiquated systems and they either work for us or we believe that we're invested in them. And yet, and I don't mean to use you as an example, I'm not picking on you. You had the... The intelligence to think of this and the balls to try it. And yet...

There was never the thought of like, oh, you know, why am I going to let the government impose a rule set? Why wouldn't we figure out a way to do it? Now, why? I don't blame you for that. I think it's just never been a conversation we have as a society. My parents also had a really good marriage. And like, I don't, I think when you... come from broken marriages, it's a lot easier to look at how badly it could go. And I think that I'm very lucky to come from a very healthy marriage.

So in my mind, I'm like, oh, yeah, it's just going to go like that. So maybe there's a little naivete. Right. And listen, I think there's a beauty to that. Like, I wish I knew no astronomy when the stars appear. Like, I think, you know, like, I liked it when I was like, look at the pretty lights in the sky. When you're like, oh, actually, that's something that flamed out a million years ago.

just reaching out like, oh, fuck. I didn't know that. Ignorance is bliss. Yeah. So I think there's something very beautiful about not knowing this stuff. But again, I am a fan. I think the truth is actually even more beautiful. Yeah. Like, I think when two people say, I'm going to give you the ability to hurt me. Like, I love you enough. Because I have to tell you something.

I think it's fucking insane to love anything. I really do. Like a dog, a kid. You're going to lose it. Everything you love, you're going to lose someday. So to love something is to... Accept the inevitability that it's going to break your fucking heart someday. And yet we do it anyway because it's the best thing. Because life is better with it. Right. So to me, like that makes it more beautiful to say, you know what? If you break my fucking heart. Yeah.

it will have been worth it. Yeah. It will have been worth it because we got to do this. Sold. Sold. Akash is getting a prenup. All right. questions? Yes, yes, yes. Who's the worst in divorce? culturally, ethnically, racially. Wow, wow, wow. Like, who's the most ruthless? Who, like, treats the... Those are a bunch of different questions you just threw off. Yeah. I mean, what I'll say is, like, the Russians...

Russians, there's, you know, Chekhov's plays are dark for a fucking reason. Like, the winters are long. Like, Russians come in sometimes as a professional hit. Like, they get cold. Really? The husband to the wife, you're saying, or the wife to the husband? No, the wife more so, even. Russian women are, we used to call them the red menace sometimes in the courthouse. Oh, yeah, Russian women. Because, like... I mean, God, it's really hard to say. I mean...

You know, like, sometimes stereotypes are a real time saver. Let's just call that out. Let's just call that out. And sometimes they're wildly inaccurate. I get it.

Sometimes they're a real time saver. And anyone who's ever dated a Latina woman, they will burn your fucking house down and then ask who Maria was who called. And you're like, that's... from work yeah she's like well you should have told me that yeah like before you burn the fucking house down like so so that can be bad right um russian women in my experience professionally not personally professionally yeah they They will, when you are now the enemy, when you have crossed that line.

they get fucking ice cold. And there is nothing. When you're married to a Russian woman, there is nothing she won't do for you. And when you're divorcing a Russian woman, there is nothing she won't do to you. Like she will fuck your shit right up. Give me an example of like... You don't have to give obviously a person, but something that they might have asked you to do or told you about. Oh, I mean, they'll.

surveil the guy. They'll have people follow him. They'll blow him up to the IRS. I've had a couple of people blow him up to the IRS. They'll shoot first and ask questions later. They'll... You know, they'll they'll call the IRS and go, by the way, I called the IRS. Not I'm thinking about. So I can go. That's a terrible fucking idea. Like, nope. They're like, oh, I did it already. And you're like, OK, then I guess let's.

figure out what we're going to do with that you know so that's that's a big one um I mean, I will say, again, I'm being very stereotypical, Italian women, a lot of Italian women in my experience, they're the most willing to put up with infidelity. No, they're... They're okay with the gumas? No, it's just kind of like... What is it? Fridays for the gumas? It's like, yeah, he ran up. It's like he's making a fool of himself. But it's like, don't bring him to restaurants we go to.

Right. Don't bring your fucking whore around. No, but it really is. It's like, I don't want to don't ask, don't tell. But if like somebody sees you out with the girlfriend, you're making a fool of me. You're embarrassing me. You're making a fool of me now. Like if you're running around with some girl, you're making a fool of yourself and you go ahead and make a fucking fool of yourself.

But you run around with some girl in our friend's scene, you're making a fool of me. That's a different vibe. Why do you think that is, culturally? I don't know. I'm not Italian. So, you know, I'm German. We're all about the Blitzkrieg. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think. I think it's all cultural. I think it's the way people, like what you said, you observe your parents' marriage. That becomes normalized. And you just sort of go, okay, this is how marriage is. Got it.

So there are a lot culturally, the idea of a gourmand, like the idea of like, you know, men are fucking idiots, they run around, whatever. Who does he come home to? Who does he take care of? Who does he love? Who does he have kids with? That's what matters. Maybe it's like certain cultures play.

more value on different things. So if he's like a dedicated husband, he's a provider, a protector, there's a lot of emphasis on those things. And if he's killing it in those three things, and then he does this little shit on the side. Whereas there might be other cultures. I think American culture puts like a lot of emphasis on fidelity. Tremendous. Maybe more so than European cultures. Yeah. America has.

I mean, the French, like, I think... like infidelity charming you know it's sort of like well you know i've been taking my way to paris for years bro don't leave her alone yeah it's a but it is there's sort of like sense of, you know, it's where existentialism came from. They invented, you know, existentialism, democracy, and the menage a trois. They came up with a lot. And one of the things, they look at it like, yeah, you know, people have value. Because there's a difference between an affair.

and a dalliance. Like, a dalliance is, like you said earlier, like, you know, you do some dumb shit, you hook up with this person, it doesn't really mean anything to you. You told him you're a race car driver named Steve. Like, who the fuck cares? I'm not making that personal.

I was a race car driver. No. So the truth is, like, I think there's a difference between that and an ongoing affair. Right. You know, like, I found my soulmate, and it's this other person. That's right. That's a whole different level of stupid. I didn't understand the difference in tell. getting married now. I'm like, oh, I see. That's a whole different thing. Well, and that's why people put in prenups sometimes. People put in infidelity clauses sometimes in the prenups. Interesting.

And I discourage people from doing that because In order to make something legally enforceable, you have to define it. And so how do you define infidelity? Because if you define infidelity as like genital contact... That's one thing. But like, which would be more upsetting? Like that your ex got drunk and kissed some dude? or that she was texting this guy every single day and confiding her most personal secrets in with him.

To me, that's much more of a betrayal. It depends on how much less work I have to do on. You're not really annoying me. You're like delegating that. That's exactly the word I use. A thousand percent. That's better. But again, personal decisions, right? This is a personal choice.

Everybody's going to have a different definition of what it is that's offensive to them. A conversation worth having. What is cheating to you? You know, what constitutes cheating? This is going to become a more and more relevant question. What's the weirdest thing that you've constituted as cheating in a prenup? I discourage those clauses. So usually I don't put them in there and I get people, I talk people out of them because I'm good at persuading people.

The weirdest infidelity clause I ever put in is that they wanted to very strictly define what constituted infidelity. So like oral genital contact and genital to genital contact. And then there was a whole whole genital. Somebody's got to do it. What I thought was so funny is, is they wanted to talk about digital to genital contact, meaning. And I mean, first of all, I thought it was kind of great. Grow up. Grow up. Because I was like,

Like, like, like handjobs? Like, that's a thing? Yeah. Like, I thought it was like a Betamax. It's like outdated technology. Like, like, how do you give a handjob? Like, you'd be a fucking grown-up, use your mouth. Like, that's insane. Handjobs! You know what that is? That woman is smart because that's the massage polish. She's finding a way around it. That girl is on it. Anal is open still, though. Anal is theoretically open. Well, actually, there would be an anal loophole.

Did not say did like anal to genital contact. As an attorney, that's what we do. I looked at Mark's head went there first. Mark found a loophole. You're always like that. You're hired. This comedy thing doesn't work out. You're hired. Before we get out of here, you were going to mention the super high net worth estate.

And just the history of marriage in general. Yeah. How does marriage start? Well, marriage, I mean, you know, marriage as a legal definition, not the idea of a pair bond and two people. That started in a cave somewhere. Yeah. But marriage, legal marriage. started essentially during feudalism. It was essentially we were joining clans. We were annexing lands, bringing together armies. It was some Game of Thrones shit.

Like, it was basically people saying, we're joining our families together, we're having children together and merging these clans, merging these lands, merging these armies. It was essentially a land and wealth preservation technique. So it was a financial agreement more so than an emotional one. Absolutely. And then the idea of people marrying for love was a very different thing. How old is that concept? That concept goes back to like the, I mean, it depends on how...

Yeah. I mean, look, I think there was always a romantic element to things. There was always a connection. But the idea that like arranged marriage was not the right move and that you should choose who it is that you want to. marry and that it should be based on the criteria of who you find sexually attractive and compelling as a human being. That's like the 40s and the 50s is when the Hallmark card started that shit. You know, like what most people call love today.

was something that was invented in the 50s to sell shampoo. Wow. Like the idea that like, you know, I just have this. feeling in the pit of my stomach and that means we should sign up for a governmental contract and then fuck like that is not You had to sell that to people, and you sold it kind of insidiously without telling them the whole thing. Nobody read the terms and conditions on that. So I really think the idea of modern marriage...

is very, very different than what our grandparents signed up for. And it needs different requirements. I think it needs, I mean, there is no scenario where, I forget who it was who said it, but, you know, we are... primitive biological creatures living in medieval institutions. holding godlike technology in our hands. How do you think that ends?

Like you think it ends well? Yeah. Or do you think it ends with some really uncomfortable shit that we've got to get our hands in and figure out? Right. And all I'm suggesting, like all of my public work. Yeah. is about saying, because it's just to say to people, look, guys, like, I love love. Yeah. But I don't believe in fucking fairy tales. Right. So why can't we have an honest conversation? Because I don't think...

That understanding the realities of marriage and the legalities of marriage takes away from the beauty of deep connection with a romantic partner and building a life together. Period. Yeah, beautifully said. Any other questions, boys? Who has the most volatile divorces? Heteros, gays, or lesbians? That's a great question. Lesbian couples have the highest rate of domestic violence.

I remember saying to a colleague of mine, a gay man, an attorney, the first time I did a lesbian divorce, I said to him, wow, man, this is fucking ugly. It's two women. And I went, okay. So that's, I mean, yeah. Sometimes Al asks a question he knows the answer to. Lesbian drama can be a big thing. Gay men.

It's changed a lot because there was a time where gay men very often didn't have kids. And there were even like countries that refused to let gay men adopt. And there was not surrogacy law and reproductive rights hadn't gone where it is now.

And there wasn't marriage equality. So, like, gay men had a lot of assets. Because if you don't have fucking kids, you get a lot of extra money. Like, for real. If you didn't have kids, you're like, yeah, that's a Ferrari, this kid. And this kid's a fucking house in the Hamptons. Like, kids are expensive. so gay men just they didn't have kids so they just had tons of fucking assets and they would argue over them you know um

In terms of vitriol, I don't think there's a pattern to it. I think the reality is everybody brings a different kind of crazy to it. And divorce doesn't make people crazy. It just takes the crazy they had and turns the volume way up. So if someone was already anxious, now they're going to have a full-on panic disorder. Because that's the part that's funny to me. What's really funny to me is people come in and they'll say to me with a straight face, like...

Can't believe my husband's being such a vindictive, cheap asshole. And I go, really? Like during the marriage was like, what was he like? And she's like, oh, he was a vindictive kid. I'm like, well, you're divorcing the fucking person you were married to. Like if this person was petty as fuck and nasty and selfish and okay.

then that's who they're going to be when they get divorced. Like if you're married to like a realistic person who's prone to compromise and concedes the possibility of their own error. When you get divorced, they'll do that. My ex-wife's a lovely fucking person.

Like, I love her. She's great. There's a lot of people I love but wouldn't want to be fucking mad. How was your divorce with her? Super friendly. We went to a mediator. We figured out what it was. Kids were five and seven. We've had 20 years since then. She's remarried. Couldn't be happier to a great guy who's fucking nothing like me. Like patient, quiet, sensitive. She was married to me for, you know, a number of years.

Like, you know, I'd come home and she'd start telling me about her day and I'd be like, all right, come on, skip to the end. Let's go. Like, you gotta just fucking move. I got to stand up fucking comics here and I'm running the conversation.

a chance like and the guy she's married to now like she just you know she'll she'll sit there and he'll tell she'll tell and then my cousin said this and he's like and he's genuinely interested like he's genuinely interested and I look at him and I'm like we are made different we're just made different and he's perfect for her I love him enough to be like he's perfect for her and I look at that

But, you know, that's what, but she's the, when I married her, that's who she was. When I had kids with her, that's who she was. And that's why, like, we've had a really successful, and by the way, I do not believe that that marriage was unsuccessful because it ended in divorce. It produced two amazing kids who love their mother, love their father, like get along with all of us like they're healthy, well-adjusted young men.

So to me, just because something ends doesn't mean it wasn't successful. And I think we have to approach relationships that way. That's why, again, having the conversation early on when you're still madly in love and in that romantic, that's the time to talk about. Like, look at, if a person says to you, if every ex-boyfriend they have They're like, that guy was a piece of shit. Every ex-girlfriend you have, you're like, she was such a piece of shit.

that tells you something about this fucking person. Either that they have abysmally bad judgment, or maybe you're the fucking problem. And so I think it's worthwhile to have conversations when things start about how they... What's the dumbest reason you've ever seen for a divorce? Just on a personal basis. The dumbest one? Stupid. We had a lot of weird political divorces.

since 2016. No way. Wow. Oh, yeah. People that were like, yeah, he watches Fox News, I'm out. That's unbelievable. Like, he watches Newsmax, I'm gone. Like, a lot of, like, he voted for Trump. Just because he has good taste numbers. Yeah. No, but for real, like, political shit. I've always said the saddest one I ever had was this guy was in his late 80s. And he left his wife of like 50 or 60 years for a 50-something-year-old woman.

that he was having an affair with. And what was saddest about it to me was not that this, like, 60-year marriage was ending. It was that... I'm still going to be led around by my dick when I'm in my 80s. I legit thought I'm not going to be chained to an idiot forever. I thought in my 80s. Like a beautiful woman would walk by and I would be like, Oh, a human being. Like I would just, and instead I'm like, Oh my God, I'm going to be 86 and still want to fucking chase skirt. Like that.

fucked. We're never going to be free. People get divorced for some crazy shit. What's the most petty thing you saw in a divorce? I once had a divorce that was, there was a $25 million marital estate. We, they'd burned several hundred thousand dollars each in council fees. We'd gone through a bunch of litigation. We managed to settle the case. And the only thing we were down to was the division of personal property.

And we couldn't agree on who got a $45 toaster oven and the settlement blew up. Wow. Settlement blew up. Wow. 45 fucking dollars. Did you not just go all violent? I actually did that. I actually said, I'm on Amazon right now.

Prime delivery. I will buy everyone in this room this toaster. If we could just sign the fucking deal. Because it's never about the toaster. It wasn't about the fucking toaster. But I will tell you, I mean, I have a lot of stories, but I will tell you, this is one you'll appreciate. I had a client who was a devout fundamentalist Christian.

And he was later convicted, actually, of molesting kids and went to jail. But that's a side note. See, it's not just Catholics. It's not just Catholics. Yeah, it's not just Catholics. Yeah, it's all of you. It's all of you. But he was a client that was... He had a lot of money, and we had worked very hard to negotiate a settlement of his case. And the day comes to sign the settlement.

And to do what's called a voir dire, which is where the judge says to each party, do you understand the settlement? Did you agree to it? Are you under duress? You know, so these are the stuff, but like. It was great. I got him a great deal, like a great deal. Like this was way better than it would have been at trial. And he didn't have to go through the trial. And this was great for him. And he meets me at the courthouse the morning of it. And he says, Jim, I need to talk to you.

I spoke to God last night. I prayed on it. Oh, boy. And God said to me that I should not, that I should take it to trial. And I said, that is a terrible idea. And I explained to him again, here's all the ways that we're getting value here. Here's all the things. This is what it should be. And he said, no, I'm sorry. I prayed on it. And the Lord has said to me, you know, so of course it fucking blew up. The whole thing went haywire.

We start the trial. The lunch break, I go back and my partner, Colin, he's been my law partner for many years. I go back to him and I tell him what happened. And he looks at me, he goes, you know, you played that all wrong, Jim. I said, what? He goes, what you should have said is... What time did you talk to God? 1030? Okay. I talked to God. And he said, Jim, my son in whom I am well pleased. My blessings upon you. By the way, are you going to see Steve later? When you do, tell him forget that.

that shit I said earlier, you should take the deal. He was like, it's unfalsifiable. I try to hit him back. Just say, he's like, if you can't disprove what God said to him, he can't disprove what God said to you. You could have just said, I talked to God. a half hour later and he said take the fucking deal so if that ever happens to me again were you kind of satisfied when you saw it go against him in court and does that happen or like You're in court, you realize this person sucks.

And it's under the doctrine of fuck around and find out. Yeah. He fucked around and he found out. I mean, you know, and there's, listen, man, I, I give people advice and I tell clients all the time, like, look, 850 bucks an hour. I'll mow your fucking lawn. I don't care. Like I was a waiter. I've done worship. for less money yeah yeah but like you're paying me for advice so if you want to pay me for advice and ignore it

Go ahead. Your shit blows up. It's good for me. Yeah. Like the more protracted your case is, the better it is for me. I'm trying to put myself out of business here. Like I'm trying to settle your case. But if you want to fuck around and find out, fuck around and find out. So those cases where you're in court and you realize, oh, I'm I'm representing the villain. Yeah. Does that shift your like without you? You can't help it. It just like affects the way you. Not at all.

Not at all. Because, yeah, I'm wondering. Because it's not how it works for me. Like, I look at it as a, it's a legal issue, it's a puzzle, it's strategy. Like, just like I think if a doctor... you know, is operating on a patient and he finds out that patient is a horrible person in real life. It's like, right. But I'm, I'm looking at this as like plumbing. I'm looking at this as like, this is a problem I'm trained to fix. Like I.

I have a God-given talent. I don't know how it came about, but I see seven moves ahead in a courtroom. Half the time, I don't even know why I'm making an argument I'm making, and then... When I think about it, I go, oh, I did that so they would do this so that then I could do this, that then would make the judge. Like, and I, if I'd consciously, you know, they've done studies on how by the time. There's any micro-movement from a pitcher that could be observed by the batter.

it's too late for them to start the swing. But there's still people hit fastballs. Yeah. So there is some exchange of energy that happens there. There's some micro something that can be sensed by a good hitter in a baseball. It's the same thing. Like, I have a talent for this. that I don't know where it came from. I feel blessed to have it. I love what I do. To be able to do something that you love and do it at the highest level and do it well is the greatest gift in the world.

But I really, when I'm in a courtroom, like I am way more comfortable in a courtroom than I am in my living room. I have no idea what to do with myself in my living room. I have no idea. I'm one of those people.

that I'm great in war and terrible in peace. I have no idea what to do with myself. But in a courtroom, I know the rules. I know exactly what to do. And I go in and I am... so calm and cool it's like it's like neo in the matrix everything slows down and i just know exactly what's expected of me and i don't know where that comes from but that's what happens is i i no longer i'm thinking about

This person or that person, I'm thinking about the job that needs to be done and how to do it. And that's it. I want to ask, lastly, just how religion plays a role. I know you mentioned this guy talked to God. Shout out to him. But something like an arranged marriage in Hinduism or Christian fundamentalism. Islam has different rules on marriage.

How does that play in as it intersects with American culture? Yeah, I mean, it comes in a lot. The divorce rate among cultures where there's a lot of arranged marriage is actually quite low. And I think that that can be attributed to the fact that people enter into marriage with a different expectation. Like in a lot of cultures where, you know, particularly Muslim cultures I've had some experience with. where individuals marry and there's an arranged marriage that's arranged by the parent.

It's really done with this sense that marriage is about a family, a partnership, building something together. It's not this overly romanticized. The idea is that we will grow to love each other. A feeling, but love is a verb. too. Like, to love someone is to act with love towards that person.

Like, there are plenty of examples of people who were in arranged marriages or marriages that they weren't quite sure, and then they grew to, through shared experience and common, like, loving children together, they grew to say, you know, this is how it is.

So I think that religion and people's religious backgrounds plays a huge role in how they approach the world. And how we approach the world obviously informs how we do our marriage. I mean, I will say as someone who was raised very strict Catholic. You know, my Catholicism and my like sort of understanding of the rigidity of the mass and when you stand and when you sit and how you address it.

it's very much was good practice for the courtroom. Like, because courtroom is very much the same. Like there's people you treat a different way. There's someone who's in charge. There's, you know, there's like a hierarchy and you, you humble yourself before that hierarchy and you're not. And like bowing and genuflecting is not something that's a source of shame. It's a source of pride. It's like I'm strong enough to humble myself in front of someone. So I think that...

Religion at its best infuses every aspect of a person's life. And so I've seen some couples that are very religious. What is hard to watch... And I've done a lot of divorces where people have the same religious faith. And then one of them loses that faith. And it creates a schism in the relationship that is very hard to fix. Because Religion has certain first principles from which people are working, you know, and so if you lose those foundational first principles.

They tether so many other things in the marriage that it gets really, really tricky. Yeah. Man, that's kind of sad to lose your partner and your faith. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah, but sometimes, again, to throw the counterpoint, I've done a lot of divorces, for example, in the Hasidic community and the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

And that is a community. I don't think I'm giving anything away when I say that if you could choose between being a man in that community or a woman in that community, you're better off being a man. Yeah. Like women aren't allowed to drive. There's a lot of rules imposed on women that are challenging. It's a fairly admittedly patriarchal society culture, you know, enclave.

And so sometimes those women will say like, yeah, I can't do this anymore. Like, I don't want to be in this game anymore. I want to step out of this. And that's very challenging. It's very, very challenging because it is very, very difficult to reconcile an ultra-Orthodox religious life and someone who goes fully in the... Because people like... moderation doesn't play into it people treat dandruff with decapitation like there becomes like people go from i'm ultra religious to fuck that yeah i'm

far from religious as you can be like you ever want to meet somebody who's a virulent atheist find someone who was raised super religious you know it's like people go in that opposite direction and it's yeah it's challenging but it also sometimes is is you know We all change as time moves on. And that's the challenge, I think, is being honest with yourself.

about what's changed and then being able to be honest with your partner. I will tell you, doing what I do for a living, one of the things I've learned is the most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves. And most of the time when we lie to our partner, we're lying to ourself and then we're lying to our partner. And so I just, that's why I'm always a fan of the honest conversation. Like, just be honest, be frank, be candid, just say the quiet part out loud.

And I think that's why to some degree, like I'm not saying this to be, you know, I'm not trying to have your wives not be mad at me, although it would be good to have them not be mad at me or you. I think one of the things I've found about comics, I've represented a couple of comics. There is something really naked and honest about getting up in front of people and talking about your most vulnerable, embarrassing, dumb shit. It's also the funniest shit. It's the shit people can relate to.

But you use that muscle all the time. So I imagine in relationship you do the same thing, you know? And that's probably why, like, there are, like, I know a lot of comics that are incredibly happily married. I know some that never marry because of the lifestyle and the road and things like that, substance use issues, stuff like that. But I know a lot of comics that are very, very happily married because that same...

self-effacing insight and open, unashamed, like, calling out their own bullshit. Yeah. Serves people pretty well in a relationship. Okay, before we leave. Is there anything that you've learned through all these divorces about what makes marriages successful? I wrote a whole book.

Can you give us like, just so we end on a nice positive note, what are some things that you've felt? I think you can learn a lot about keeping things together by watching how they fall apart. And that's why I wrote the book. What's the name of the book? It's called How to Stay in Love, Practical Wisdom from an Unlikely Source. And you can get it on like Audible if you want to listen to me talk for eight and a half hours. Or you can just get it anywhere. It's for sale anywhere.

And, you know, I've learned a lot by being a divorce lawyer about what keeps people together. What I've learned, I would say more than anything else, is just pay attention. Right. Just pay attention. People get divorced the same way they go bankrupt. Very slowly and then all at once. Like, you don't get divorced because your husband's cheating on you, your wife's cheating on you.

Your husband's cheating on you, your wife's cheating on you because there was slippage. There were all these little things. You know those little things you did when you first were dating your wife to let her know how beautiful she was and how you like her better than other options? And all those little things she did. for you that like made you feel like the fucking coolest guy and the best guy like like you love

who you were when you're with them. Yeah, for sure. You know? Like, you stood taller. Like, you went like, yeah, I might be the person this person thinks I am, you know? Yeah. And when we start losing that, like there are these little things, like the advice I give, one of the pieces of advice I give in my book, the one that I get the most feedback on, as I said, leave a note.

whatever every day when you leave the house just takes 30 seconds just like babe like it was so fun watching that movie with you last night like i married the prettiest girl in the world yeah can't wait to see you later yeah like what does it take 30 seconds yeah like What is that doing, though? It's saying, I still see you. I still think you're beautiful.

You're still worth my time. You're still worth my attention. There's all these other things going on in the world. There's the kids. There's a million things, the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, right? But... You're still, it's still you and me. It's still you and me. And those little things, just pay attention. Pay attention and don't let slippage happen. Because it is, look, it is so much easier to stay a healthy weight.

than it is to get super fucking fat and try to lose 100 pounds. So it's the same thing. Once the wheels come off this thing, it is really hard to get back there. So just if you care about this person and you care about the value of that marriage... Just take that little bit of time.

Again, it can be just a kind word. It can just be building this person up when people are around instead of taking the piss out of them around people. It can be anything. It can be any little gestures, but those are the things that make us fall in love. Those are the things that make us... stay in love and when you let those little things slip that's when the wheels start coming off and that's

there's a short road from that to my office. So I always just tell people, pay attention and just make a point of cheering for the person that you're with. That's it. Amen to that. Thank you so much. Awesome.