My name is Steven I Semryck, RFC, CDFA, CLU and I am the new Editor-in-Chief of the ADFP newsletter. I have been in the financial sector for well over 30 years and have a very diverse practice. My clientele are like family. I have had my office on the 110 corridor of Long Island for many years but recently moved to Hauppauge.

When I came upon the Association of Divorce Finance Planners I thought what a powerful tool this could be. Having been through divorce myself, I saw what hard issues have to be faced and dealt with financially. To have someone there to guide and direct you can make all the difference in the world.

Since joining the organization, I have met some wonderful individuals and have learned along the way.

I am grateful for the help and support of so many people who also had a hand in this issue and will continue to play an important role in future issues.

If you have an article of interest or an upcoming event or if you have any suggestions to make each issue that much better, please feel free to contact me at stevesemadfp@yahoo.com.

"Happy Holidays to All"

Steve

The 5th Annual ADFP Conference is a Huge Success

The 5th Annual ADFP Conference: The Changing Landscape of Divorce was held on September 28, 2007 at the Radisson Hotel in New Rochelle, New York. The conference was extremely well attended. Some of the comments of the attendees were:

"I look forward to coming back next year."

"Lunch discussion tables was a nice touch."

"Great job-good selection."

"Great speakers, good information."

"The conference was really impressive and I enjoyed being there."

"I thought the networking time was great."

"It was a good learning experience for me."

We hit many milestones that day.

Record number of attendees
Record number of sponsors
Record number of CEU's - to a total of ten
CPE for accountants
Lunch discussion roundtables breakout sessions
Establishment and presentation of the first annual Pioneering Award
Offers of support from the Hon F. Herbert Gruendel, Pioneering Award Recipient, as well as several prominent speakers

We thank everyone for the success of the conference and look forward to seeing both current and new members at next year's conference.

Judge Gruendel

The Inaugural Presention of the Annual Pioneering Award

The first annual Pioneering Award, honoring individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of divorce, was presented to the Honorable F. Herbert Gruendel of Connecticut at the 5th Annual ADFP conference.

Judge Gruendel was a public school teacher and principal before attending the University of Connecticut School of Law where he earned his Juris Doctor in 1984. From 1983-84 he participated in a mid-career fellowship at the Bush Center for Child Development and Social Policy at Yale University where he conducted research in juvenile law. He was admitted to the Connecticut Bar in 1984 and was in private practice until his appointment as Superior Court Judge in 1988. In 2001 he was appointed to the office of Chief Administrative Judge for the Family Division of the Superior Court. "The judges who hear family cases here in Connecticut are extraordinary," said Judge Gruendel. "They are dedicated to helping the people who appear before them with some of life's most difficult situations. I am honored to have the opportunity to work with them for the families of our state."

Lili A. Vasileff, President of the ADFP Calls for Nominations for Next Year's Pioneering Award

Said Lili A. Vasileff, "We are accepting nominations for an individual who has demonstrated commitment and made significant contributions to the field of divorce for the betterment of divorcing families. This individual must have longevity in the field, expertise in the knowledge of divorce related issues, as well as made a positive impact in the delivery of service to divorcing families. The nature of this individual's contributions to the field of divorce must be recognized by peers and the public alike."

Please send nominations to Lili A. Vasileff at LVasileff@aol.com

Informative and Enlightening Guest Speakers

At this year's conference, we were honored to have Harold Brienes, Collaborative Attorney and Mediator, as a guest speaker. Mr. Briene's has been a family lawyer since 1983. Mr. Brienes presentation at the conference was entitled, The Role of the Financial Specialist in Collaborative Divorce. Should you wish to contact Mr. Brienes, he can be reached at brielaw@snet.net or visit his website www.humandivorce.com. Below is an excerpt from the presentation.

"So, how does the financial specialist fit into the collaborative team approach? It's been often said that the most difficult topic for spouses to discuss is not sex - it's money. That makes your contribution to the success of the collaborative process, well, incalculable. But your biggest contribution has little to do with your credentials. It has everything to do with your humanity. Your ability to gain the trust and confidence of the couple sitting in front of you is the key to financial settlement. How do you gain that trust? And how can you keep it? I suggested part of the answer in my previous printed remarks when I said that:

The alpha and omega of the collaborative financial specialist's role is not the contemplation of facts and figures, or even the drafting of spreadsheets. What distinguishes your contribution to the success of the endeavor is the ability to gain the trust of the divorcing couple as you connect with them on a human level. That means you have to know the emotional aspects of divorce can impair the spouses' ability to fully participate in the process. As a member of a collaborative divorce team, or as an independent consultant, your effectiveness depends on more than number crunching. Unlike your role in the typical litigated divorce, where your expertise is called on to bolster the side that hires you, collaboration puts your squarely in the center of the action. There you can use your skills to serve the interests of both spouses at the same time. Your contribution as an impartial expert justifies their desire to dissolve their union with grace and dignity."

Stephen A. Linker, of Rosenfarb Winters, LLC, spoke about "When to Prepare a Lifestyle Analysis". A lifestyle analysis helps determine the economic reality of the marital standard of living, which is useful in assessing awards for maintenance or providing information when a motion to modify maintenance is made. By interviewing both spouses and analyzing their financial records, including tax returns and financial affidavits, the forensic accountant can pinpoint the income and standard of living to which the married couple were accustomed, both as a couple and individually while married.

Ken Neumann on Collaborative Law

Ken Neumann, as a follow up to his presentation at the Interdisciplinary Approaches to Divorce panel, sent us a presentation entitled Collaborative Law & ADR Alternatives: Complementary or Antagonistic? he had made at the AFCC-NY conference in 2003. Below is a copy of his presentation. Should you wish to reach Mr. Neumann, his website address is www.divorcemediation.com, and his e-mail address is kenneumann@juno.com.

Good afternoon.... We mediators have done our job and now we can go home after our long struggle to get divorce laywers to clean up their act and to offer people a better way to get divorced. After all it was mediation that inspired the creation of Collaborative Law. Lawyers now realize that perhaps what they had been doing all along wasn't really helping their clients. And with this new procedure, Collaborative Law, they can once again assume their proper place as the champions of those needing assistance to get divorced.

So what is Collaborative Law? I'll read from the 2001 Texas statute that sanctioned the practice of Collaborative Law. The bill defines Collaborative Law as follows: a procedure in which the parties and their counsel agree in writing to use their best efforts amd make a good faith attempt to resolve their dissolution of marriage dispute on an agreed basis without resorting to judicial intervention except to have the court approve the settlement agreement, make the legal pronouncements, and sign the orders required by law to effectuate the agreement of the parties as the court determines appropriate. The parties' counsel may not serve as litigation counsel except to ask the court to approve the settlement agreement.

This almost sounds too good to be true. So let's take a look at it in close detail. The parties are agreeing in writing to use their best efforts and made a good faith attempt. Are we saying that unless attorneys were agreeing to this in writing that those same attorneys not working in the Collaborative Law model would not use their best efforts and make a good faith attempt? Did we need to legislate this?

The statue also calls for the following:

A full and candid exchange of information as necessary to make a proper evaluation of the case. Does stating this in any way suggest that there had previously been another standard in place for lawyers, perhaps one that didn't call for a full and candid exchange? Would anyone have advocated for that?
Suspending court intervention in the dispute while the parties are using Collaborative Law procedures. I guess that it wouldn't make sense to simultaneously be working with Collaborative Lawyers and Adversanal Lawyers.
Hiring experts, as jointly agreed, to be used in the procedure. Is someone suggesting that it makes more sense to hire only one expert to evaluate a business rather than have each lawyer hire their own expert and then wind up with two totally different evaluations? It's reassuring to know that if the Collaborative Law process breaks down that we are not premitted to use this one expert's evaluation. And that we can go back to the proven and tested method of having each party's lawyer bring in their own expert, the one that they trust.
Point 4 is most interesting. It requires the withdrawal of all counsel involved in the collaborative law procedure if the Collaborative Law procedure does not result in settlement of the dispute. When you hear this it makes sense if you of course assume the following: That if lawyers are allowed to benefit from a costly litigation then they won't be motivated to settle a case. And that it's only if we take that possibility away from lawyers can we trust them to work on our behalf and not on their own. And that with Collaborative Laws we have just that....Let's look at the issue of fees. One complaint about divorce has been how high the costs can be. What are the real numbers when we compare the cost of a:

"traditional" divorce, that is one where the two lawyers are not bound by the Collaborative Law rules,
a divorce that it is assumed will be completed inthe Collaborative Lawyers process, and
a mediated divorce.

We shy away from openly talking about this aspect of our work... I would wonder if the costs would be different for Collaborative Lawyers who are also mediators and Collaborative Lawyers who are not mediators but also practice adversarial divorce. Just curious, let me ask for a show of hands. How many in the audience think that the two groups on the average would have different totals in what they've billed their average client? This is quite interesting, it seems that the majority of your feel that Collaborative Lawyers who practice mediation would bill less than Collaborative Lawyers who don't practice mediation but instead also practice adversarial divorce. What does this mean? To me it seems that those of us who are trained and practice as mediators are more likely to make the divorce process less adversarial, that we know how to help parties reach consensus more quickly and that therefore it takes less time and thereby generally costs less.

So what do I recommend?

I recommend the following:

That all the rules of Collaborative Law be immediately applied to all lawyers practicing divorce and that any time there is a divorce proceeding where each party has separate counsel that those lawyers are required by law to follow all the rules of Collaborative Law.
That any lawyer upon meeting with a client in addition to now explaining the new Collaborative Law rules that are now in place also explains the option of mediation and how it in fact differs from Collaborative Law as follows: That instead of all the meetings being so-called 4-ways, which generally have followed individual meetings that each client had with their separate counsel and also includes a course of conference or at least a conference call between the two attorneys so that when the first four way takes place the attorneys will be up-to-date. That this be replaced by a single mediator who generally meets only with the two clients, but that each client is free to consult at any time with their attorney and that when the clients choose, their attorneys can attend the mediation sessions. And since all attorneys under my proposal are now Collaborative Lawyers we will no longer need the concept of "mediation friendly" attorneys. Beause all attonreys will not be "mediation friendly". There won't be anyhting else... and we have it all to owe to Collaborative Law.

Come One, Come All!

Join Today

If you are not already a member of a local chapter:

Long Island Chapter
CT Chapter
Northern New Jersey Chapter
Boston MA Chapter
NY Metro Chapter

Or you wish to propose a new chapter in your are, pleae e-mail either Carl Palatnik at carlp@divorceinteractive.com or Lili Vasileff at LVasileff@aol.com.

If you are a member and wish to sign up for a committee:

Programs
Membership
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Please contact Vicki Sosbe at vjsosbe@comcast.net.

Join Now, It's a Winning Situation

As always, we are looking for qualified allied divorce professionals to join our organization. If you are not yet a member, please take a few minutes to go the website www.divorceandfinance.org for the benefits, critieria, and membership application.

Remember, if you join now for 2008 (dues are $195.00) you will receive the balance of 2007 free.

New York, Our Kind of Town

The ADFP is very pleased to announce that our New York Metro chapter is poised to launch. A formal announcement will be made shortly. Check the ADFP website (www.divorceandfinance.org) for all local chapter calendar events and notices.

What's Happening On Long Island?

The Long Island Chapter has held several monthly meetings since May 2007, at the Suffolk County Bar Association, in addition to a cocktail reception held jointly with the Long Island based Accountants, Attorneys Networking Group (AANG). Attendees represented a broad spectrum of professions, including divorce financial planners, business appraisers, accountants, mediators, attorneys, a QDRP expert, mortgage consultants and long term care professionals. Tom Fitzgerald, President of Evergreen Mortgage, helped sponsor our May meeting and Chris Jay, Esq. sponsored our October meeting. Our speakers have included Steward Pollack, Esq., an estate tax attorney: Patricia D'Accolti, founder of Children's Sports Connection, a not-for-profit organziation that recycles sports equipment to children in need; Nannette Watts, CPA/ABV, a business appraiser and forensic accountant, and Karen Rizzo, CMPS, a mortgage consultant. Upcoming speakers include Robyn Weisman, Esq., an attorney and mediator and Robert Dennis, a long-term care insurance specialist. The chapter is also planning to reach out to the Nassau County Bar Association, both as a place to hold future meetings and to facilitate relationship-building with attorneys across Long Island. Future meetings will include presentations by members and outside professionals and networking meetings with other groups.

Association of Divorce Financial Planners Endorses Family Law Software

The Association of Divorce Financial Planners is pleased to announce it is endorsing Family Law Software for use by its practitioner members working in the divorce arena.

Our members who use this divorce financial planning software have found it to be extremely valuable in helping us analyze what the parties' alternatives are and in helping us explain the actual financial situation to the parties and the attorneys involved. Utilizing this comprehensive financial planning software, we are hoping to create a high quality and more uniform work product that family law attorneys and family judges can expenct to receive from financial planners, to the benefit of both groups of professionals.

Family Law Software provides a detailed financial planning, including cash flow projections, equitable distribution, budgeting, federal and state taxes, child support calculations for 20 states, defined benefit pension valuations, and alimony present value, and also provides support for exchanging data files among attorneys and financial planners.

divorce360.com Offers 5 Ways to New Clients....You're Already Doing One of Them Right Now.

You've tried to find new clients through all of the traditional advertising and marketing outlets. You've utilized word-of-mouth advertising, sought out testimonials from previous clients, ran ads in various publications, met with local lawyers and handed out your business card to everyone you've met. These are all worthwhile approaches and should be continued. But as you know, they take time, finances and follow-though.

There is a new website out there that combines all of these advertising mediums into one: www.divorce360.com is a content-focused website that gives advice for people contemplating, going through or recovering from divorce. This site can offer you word of mouth advertising, testimonials, ad spots, and even lawyer interaction in one place.

How?

By combining reporter driven 'how-to' content with a social networking community, www.divorce360.com has opened the doors to meet with, interact with and advertise to potential new clients, (and other divorce professionals), at the same time. You can, with great ease, reach millions of people who are actively searching for (or referring out to) the exact services you offer.

Before we get to the five ways, here's a little bit about what www.divorce360.com is all about.

As you all know, each year, 1.7+ million couples divorce. These 3+ million people are typically confused, scared, embarrassed and lost. They need help to restore their lives financially, spiritually and emotionally. www.divorce360.com is designed to meet their needs.

www.divorce360.com offers:

Original content, daily features, expert commentary, blogger perspectives and a robust social networking community.
Award winning editors and writers that distill difficult and nearly impossible to understand divorce laws into uncomplicated and relatable articles.
Features complimented with videos, calculators, worksheets, and varying viewpoints.
A dynamic social community area allowing people to connect, share stories, ask for advice and offer real-world solutions.
Interactive tools, like Incident Reports, Journals, Dilemmas and Emergencies. Users post situations online and receive immediate advice.
Extensive legal information and tools for every state as well as a professional business directory of over 30,000 divorce related progessionals. Divorce Financial Planners, Marriage therapists, mediators and divorce attorneys alike have detailed profile pages complete with vidoe clips to assist with the time-consuming and sometimes costly interviewing process.

Basically, they have evolved divorce. Here's how this new site can benefit you....

Five ways for you to use www.divorce360.com today:

Make sure you're listed on www.divorce360.com. You might be there already as we have worked with the Association of Divorce Financial Planners to make sure your listing is in the directory. But if you're not there, let Kelly Michols know today.
Claim your profile today. When you finish here simply click to www.divorce360.com. Look in the Directory for Divorce Financial Planners. You should be there. Take five minutes and claim your profile. It's quick, easy and will be the face of your compnay to anyone that is searching for help. You can add in your background, education, memberships...anything you want. If you are not there, again contact Kelly Michols.
Add a photo. We all know the statistics on using photos, and how people gravitate to photos. Think realtor.com. You wouldn't look at a house listing without the photo of the house would you? Many people will simply not read a profile that does not have a photo.
Call and leave an audio mesage. This is a quick, creative and effective marketing tool. If someone is searching for a professional, they will click on the audio link to listen to you. They want to hear your voice. This is a great opportunity to give your 'elevator pitch' and begin to build some rapport with the listener. Note that there is a nominal hosting fee for this feature.
Post a video. www.divorce360.com allows you to put up your own video on your profiles, or work with one of their producers for a more professional shoot. Either way, you know that people will click and watch your video. It's hard to resist when you see that video icon. This is where you can showcase your experience, your office, your philosophy and your personality. Be creative. you kjow what clients need and want to hear. This is your chance to be seen by millions of potential clients. There is a small hosting fee for this feature as well.

www.divorce360.com can help you learn more about your client base, reach them in a personal and approachable manner and keep in contact with other local divorce professionals. You can do most of these five items by simply clicking to the site today. If you want more information or help on these applications, please call or email Kelly Michols, SVP of Sales for www.divorce 360.com. Phone: 561-827-8868 or email him at kelly@smallponds.com.

SPECIAL OFFER FOR ADFP MEMBERS! ADD A VIDEO OPTION TO YOUR DIVORCE360.COM PROFILE BY JANUARY 31, 2008 AND RECEIVE THE FIRST THREE (3) MONTHS OF HOSTING FEES ABSOLUTELY FREE OF CHARGE!! CONTACT KELLY MICHOLS WITH DIVORCE 360.COM AT 561-827-8868 OR KELLY@SMALLPONDS.COM FOR DETAILS.

A Special "Thank You"

To all our sponsors of the 5th Annual ADFP Conference. We are deeply grateful to our renewing sponsors and appreciative of our first time sponsors who helped to make this year's conference a resounding success.

Atlantic National Mortgage
Connecticut Bar Association
Family Law Software, Inc.
Rosenfarb Winters, LLC
MatLaw Systems Corp.
Main Stay Investments
Jackson National Insurance Company
Smallponds, LLC
Maestro Business Academy
Nassau Academy of Law
GE Asset Management
HQ, a Regus Company
Maknet Corporation
The Cambridge Alliance
Divorcenet.com

Calendar of Events

Upcoming National Business Institute Family Law Seminar

December 3rd, 2007 Roslyn, NY

"Preventing Critical Financial Mistakes During Divorces"

Our very own, Michael Goodman is on the faculty of this course.

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