Episode Details

On screen, divorce court ends with a judge who hears the whole history, names the good parent and the bad one, and hands down justice. Raiford Palmer has spent more than twenty years explaining to clients why real family court does not work that way.

Raiford Palmer is a Chicago family law attorney and the managing shareholder of STG Divorce Law, the firm he runs with his wife and law partner, Julie Goodman. He has been a lawyer since 1994 and practiced other kinds of law before divorce, which shapes how he reads a case. He is the author of I Just Want This Done, a bestseller Chris and Lisa put on their short list of recommendations, and a fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. He was married for twenty-four years, divorced amicably, and has since remarried.

In this conversation, Palmer and Lisa lay out why the court struggles with a case like yours. The system is built to declare a winner and a loser, while divorce lives in shades of gray. Overloaded dockets stretch cases past two and three years. The rules of evidence keep you from telling your story as a story. He is candid that a small number of lawyers profit from the warfare and pursue scorched-earth litigation, while many good attorneys simply were never trained for the emotional side and do not think to bring in a coach or a therapist. His own firm follows the Academy's broader standards of conduct for that reason.

They go through the myths that drain money and hope: sole custody as a near-automatic outcome, the biased judge, the judge who reads every exhibit, the sympathy that decides the case. Palmer keeps returning to the cost-benefit analysis his book is built on, weighing a realistic range of trial outcomes against the true cost of getting there, which includes fees, the cash you both burn living apart, the drag on your career, and the life you are not living while the case grinds on. He also reframes a hard truth Lisa repeats to her own group: fair, as he puts it, is a four-letter word.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why the "day in court" where you tell the judge everything rarely happens, and what the rules of evidence actually allow
• Why divorce court's win-or-lose design fits criminal cases better than a marriage ending
• Why sole custody is hard to win absent real abuse or neglect, and how low the bar for "good enough" parenting is
• The truth about judicial bias, and why the cases you hear about are outliers
• Why judges rarely read long motions and emotional exhibits, and how to write to be read
• How to run a cost-benefit analysis: a realistic range of outcomes against the true cost of reaching them
• The costs of divorce beyond legal fees: cash burn, career drag, and opportunity cost
• Why roughly 98% of divorces settle, and what a trial date does to move a case

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why Chris and Lisa recommend the book
3:00 Bad-actor lawyers vs. attorneys never trained for the emotional side
5:00 Why divorce court is a win-or-lose system built for other cases
7:00 Overloaded dockets and multi-year delays
9:00 Why you won't get your day in court to tell the whole story
17:00 Scorched-earth litigation, attrition, and "fair is a four-letter word"
19:00 Don't fight tit-for-tat: the meta case, and what judges remember
28:00 Myths: sole custody, a biased judge, a judge who reads everything
41:00 How courts pour gas on the fire: no early trial dates
46:00 The cost-benefit analysis, and where to find the book

Keep going 💜
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📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https: