It’s Time to Put Family Lawyers Out of Business.

You Don’t Need Them to Get a Divorce; There are Other Ways.

For decades, I’ve watched family lawyers do the opposite of what their title implies. They don’t protect or help families — they dismantle them, mentally, emotionally, and financially. Their money is earned from making people miserable, they profit from conflict, thrive on outrage, and encourage the destruction of the emotional ecosystem that children depend on to feel safe and loved. All while standing by with no worries about the after effects of what their dreadful and contemptuous actions cause.

They must not think about how, when couples with kids divorce, they don’t cease to be a family — they transform into a reorganized one. The marriage ends, but the family remains, and they will continue to have interactions with one another throughout their lives. When adversarial lawyers turn parents into enemies by scaring them to death with threats of taking money, children, and possessions away, the children are caught in the crossfire. They will pay the price for the aftermath of the tornado damage caused by the attorneys, absorb the tension, blame themselves for the chaos, and develop anxiety, depression, anger, and lifelong trauma as a result. Most families who endure the adversarial divorce process have anger or trauma-related issues that never end.

The Trap of the Adversarial Divorce System

Nearly every divorcing couple I meet tells me the same thing: “We want an amicable divorce.” But most don’t know how to create one. So they hire family lawyers — the only “experts” they know to call — that’s what you do, isn’t it — and instantly step into a system designed for combat, not compassion. As soon as the first filing arrives, delineating catastrophic demands, rage is manifested, and trust for a positive outcome is lost.

And the attorneys do not seem to care. It’s their job to be extreme. To scare and bully people. They ask for the entire kingdom for their side at first, and work back from there, tiny bit by bit, at around $500 plus an hour. If they even think of you, you will be charged, making their clients afraid to engage with them unless it’s absolutely necessary.

When things move too slowly or don’t seem to move at all, or the other side does something that scares you to death, and you try to call your expensive legal advocate, you will be lucky to get a call back the same week. Sure, they value your business, don’t they?

Once the legal machinery of the adversarial process starts, everything changes. Each lawyer’s job is to “win,” which means painting the other parent as the enemy. I recall being described in letters from my husband’s attorney as one who didn’t want to work, and who planned to sit around and eat bonbons all day at his expense.

I was also told not to expect much because the medical profession was dying, and doctors’ pay was going to go down drastically. Sure. They’ve been terrorizing doctors’ wives with that one for over 50 years, as that reality has never seemed to come to pass.

Now, imagine how I felt about getting along with my estranged husband and being a respectful co-parent, with several insulting letters arriving every week that threatened to leave me destitute?

From the get-go and by design, the family lawyer orchestrates an atmosphere of fear and mistrust. The idea is to turn the tourniquet so tightly that the other side will finally cry wolf and succumb to an unfair settlement just to stop the pain. By the time the decree is signed, the possibility of a positive co-parenting relationship is often destroyed.

A Better Way: The Radically Positive Amicable Divorce and Co-Parenting Plan

After watching this tragedy repeat itself countless times and realizing that couples often had no idea how to orchestrate an amicable divorce and a favorable co-parenting scenario they professed to want, I created a plan that guides them through it, step by step. This new structured alternative — the Radically Positive Amicable Divorce and Co-Parenting Plan — is a therapeutic roadmap that helps families stay emotionally intact and respectful, even as the marriage itself ends, and it will save families thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Here’s how it works:

1. Therapist-Guided Process. Couples typically begin with a marriage crisis manager or family therapist, rather than a lawyer. We identify emotional wounds, clarify intentions, and build a cooperative mindset. The reason for this is simple: A family therapist cares about your family system and every person in it. They focus on mental, emotional, and relational health, using research-based ideas to guide the process so individuals can adjust with as few hiccups as possible. Everything is worked out with the therapist, which may include custody, financial & property division, a co-parenting plan based on creating the best-case scenarios for the children, and ongoing oversight to hold parents accountable for doing right by their children.
2. Structured Separation & Division. Using a fill-in PDF guide provided by the therapist, couples outline how to divide assets, create custody schedules, and write their co-parenting agreements — with empathy, not hostility. Everything that can be negotiated is in the arena with the family therapist.
3. Collaborative Legal Backup. Only unresolved items are handed over to collaborative divorce lawyers — attorneys who agree to negotiate rather than litigate. This choice will ensure that no adversarial issues arise, and the groundwork is laid for as peaceful a process as possible.
4. Ongoing Oversight. The therapist continues to monitor communication and parenting transitions during and after to ensure both parents stay accountable and the children stay supported.

There is nothing better you could do for your family if you plan to divorce.

Getting Started.

If you are interested in what we are doing, or know anyone who might be, to join our Facebook page here. Tell anyone and everyone you know who is contemplating divorce that there is a revolution taking place, and we will no longer pay family lawyers a fortune to tear up our families. If we are going to part, we will do so as amicably and respectfully as possible.

Watch my website for a three-month package designed to orchestrate an amicable divorce. In my package, I provide ongoing support, education, guidance, and coaching, along with documents for custody and property division. We will do everything possible to negotiate as much as we can in the therapy room. The items that can’t be agreed upon will be referred to a collaborative attorney, whom I will help you find in your area.

We can do this without ever paying a family lawyer one dime.

Divorce Should Heal, Not Harm

Divorce doesn’t have to destroy families. It can be a respectful restructuring — a conscious act of maturity and care for the children who didn’t choose it. Keep in mind, adults foist divorce on their children, and most kids will go along and be stoic about the pain and stress they will experience. Parents committed to the Radically Positive Amicable Divorce and Co-parenting Plan will prioritize their children’s needs in the foreseeable future. They will receive coaching from the therapist on how to do so.

I have been coaching families already through the amicable divorce process this past year. My experience is their profound gratefulness.

Typically, one partner is skeptical at first — Who is this Becky Whetstone person? What is this process she is doing? Then, I watch them warm into the process as soon as they get to know me and sense the warmth and well-being I feel toward their family and what they are going through. Things I have been told are:

“You must have been divinely sent to help us through this.”

“I so feel like we’re doing the right thing by our family in this process.”

I am not an angel, I don’t think, and probably not divinely sent, but I feel I’m on a mission to help couples stop the unnecessary hateful madness that comes with divorce. I saw myself and my former spouse suffer. We saw our children suffer, and our daughter still suffers. She is 35 and cries to me about how we handled it, and still handle it, to this day. How I wish I could rewind the clock.

The traditional family law system is broken. It feeds on conflict and ruins lives. It’s time to put adversarial family lawyers out of business and replace them with compassionate professionals who understand that families never truly end — they just evolve.