Episode Description - The New Divorce Alternative That Saves Time and Money
What if getting divorced didn't mean losing years of your life to an expensive courtroom battle that ruined your finances AND your co-parenting relationship with your ex? That’s the question attorney Amanda Mason set out to answer with her new divorce alternative, Solagree.
Amanda is a family law attorney, mediator, and founder of Solagree, a mediated arbitration process that offers couples a structured way to resolve even difficult divorce issues privately, efficiently, and with more control. Instead of starting with litigation, in the Solagree process couples move through education, negotiation, and, when necessary, private decision-making to resolve their divorce issues.
The process combines divorce coaches, financial professionals, parenting specialists, attorney-mediators, and arbitrators who work with a couple to guide them through their divorce more efficiently and cost-effectively. What’s most impressive is that this process doesn’t depend on everyone being perfectly cooperative. It contains built-in ground rules that are designed to deal with spouses who delay, refuse to provide financial information, or otherwise try to derail the process.
For business owners, high-net-worth couples, and anyone worried about privacy, mediated arbitration can also keep sensitive financial and business information out of a public courtroom while still providing access to tools such as business valuations and forensic accounting.
Divorce doesn’t need to be conducted in an open-ended court battle. Solagree provides a way for couples to get binding decisions, protect themselves, and move forward without putting themselves or their families through exhausting litigation.
If you or someone you know is trying to find a better, more efficient, and less expensive way to divorce, this episode is one you won’t want to miss.
Show Notes
About Amanda
Amanda Mason is the CEO and founder of SOLAGREE®, a groundbreaking nationwide platform that replaces public courtroom battles with a structured, virtual, and flat-fee mediated-arbitration process. A partner at Mason, Mason, & Smith in Wilmington, North Carolina, Amanda brings over two decades of legal experience, with extensive expertise as a dedicated family law attorney and DRC Certified Mediator.
Connect with Amanda
You can connect with Amanda on Facebook at Solagree and follow her on Instagram at amandamasonatty. To learn more about how to work with Amanda, visit her website at SOLAGREE®.
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Transcript
The New Divorce Alternative That Saves Time and Money
SPEAKERS
Karen Covy, Amanda Mason
TRANSCRIPT
Karen: Hello, and welcome to Off the Fence, a podcast where we deconstruct difficult decision-making to try to figure out what keeps us stuck, and more importantly, how do we get unstuck? I'm your host, Karen Covy, a former divorce lawyer, mediator, and arbitrator turned coach, author, and entrepreneur. With me today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Amanda Mason. Amanda is the CEO and founder of Solagree, a groundbreaking nationwide platform that replaces public courtroom battles with a structured, virtual, and flat-fee mediated arbitration process. A partner at Mason, Mason & Smith in Wilmington, North Carolina, Amanda brings over two decades of legal experience as a dedicated family law attorney and DRC-certified mediator. Amanda, welcome to the show.
Amanda: Thank you so much, Karen. It's so great to be here with you.
Karen: I'm excited to have you. As we were talking beforehand, your concept is so revolutionary, I really want to get into it. But before I do that, I've got to ask you: Why? Why would you leave the traditional practice of law where you've been for decades to try something new?
Amanda: Okay, Karen, so honestly, that question brings tears to my eyes, legitimately, just a little bit, because the why has nothing to do with how successful I was, money-wise, in my practice. People who are out there and are divorce attorneys, you know there's a lot of money to be made in that profession, and so the why has to come from something completely sincere and heartfelt.
And it certainly did for me. I spent a lot of years in the courtroom, and in many ways, I felt very powerful as a litigator in the courtroom, but I just knew what we were doing to families. I knew that we were causing them to spend far too much time, far too much money, and keeping them in the dark throughout the process. I kept trying to think about the courtroom experiences that I saw. I saw people mistreated in a court setting—the clients themselves mistreated, my colleagues mistreated, sometimes courthouse staff and personnel—and it's all because of the system. The system that's in place creates so much strife. It sucks energy out of everyone involved, including judges.
I kept thinking: How can I improve this system? How can I break through and make our court system better? I finally kind of had an aha moment and said, "I can't, and I cannot lose any more sleep over it."
I went through one year in particular in 2022. I'd been developing this concept for a few years, but 2022 was the worst year of my professional life. I had the three most difficult cases, I had difficult circumstances, and I was doing my best to hold it together. My mom had just passed away, though personally I had some good things going on, like my daughter getting married, but still a lot of pressure on me.
I said, "That's it. I have to do this differently," and I really felt led to do it. So, that's the why behind it—just a lot of pieces of a painful puzzle that caused me to say, "The money isn't worth it; we can do better."
Karen: I love that. You are so preaching to the choir here, because I went through a similar transition from lawyer to coach, saying there's just got to be a better way to do this. Changing the whole court system across the country, which isn't one system—it's systems county by county, state by state—is just crazy. It's too big for one person to do, so I love that you've tried to create an alternative.
That alternative involves mediated arbitration, or mediation-arbitration. It's called different things in different places, and not a lot of people have any idea what that is. Can you explain it?
Amanda: Yes. Family law is special, and it has to be taken care of in a very particular, phased way, with a team approach if we're going to be productive.
We have three phases in the process that was developed. Phase 1 is about education and empowerment. We work people in with certified divorce financial analysts, parenting planning specialists, and divorce coaches. From the beginning, we're trying to get people feeling strong and knowledgeable. That is something completely missing from the standard process, right? You go to an attorney's office, and they're like, "Okay, that'll be $7,500 or $10,000 to get started, it's going to go on and on with no limit in sight, and I'm going to need all these documents from you." What's totally lacking is, "Oh, and you're going to be okay, and I can show you why."
So we like to have them go through that from the beginning, and then they go to mediation, and then they go to something called arbitration.
I like to talk about arbitration first, because that is the piece that is spreading with what we're doing. Arbitration is basically a fancy or an ugly word, depending on how you look at it, to talk about something quite brilliant: you're basically picking someone who is an attorney, who is knowledgeable in family law, who can render a decision for you if you can't render a decision for yourself.
In every other model that exists, if a couple doesn't get to 100% agreement, they have to go to court before a judge. In our process, they can get to 10% agreement, 50%, or 100% agreement, but they're never going to have to go into a courtroom to fight it out in front of a judge. That's because we have vetted professionals who are highly trained in family law, trained in arbitration, trained to be kind to the people that they're working with, and it's efficient.
The reason why that works is because the couple gets to essentially pick their judge. It's not truly a judge, but they get to pick a professional who's going to help them get through the whole process. It also glues them to a process, because if they can agree from the beginning that they're never going to go to court, then they know that they have saved each other from the threat of a three-year or longer battle, and the open-ended framework of never getting to any of those answers that we talked about upfront.
They can relax; they can dial out of the fight-or-flight mode that is inherent with those concerns. It overarches every process, because it's a vulnerability that exists whether someone's actually threatening to say, "I'm going to take my toys and go to court; we're going to just go in front of the judge if you don't agree with me." That's not always the dynamic, but we know it's there in a negotiation or a traditional process.
Karen: So, if I'm understanding you right, the arbitrator, or the arbitration part of the process, is like a mini-trial, so the arbitrator is essentially a private judge?
Amanda: Very similar to a private judge, and different states have different terminology, but yes.
For our process, this is a vetted professional who creates, in a virtual setting in most cases, the opportunity for the couple to be heard on what remains undecided in a relaxed environment. Each person can be in their safe space, wherever it is, without having to worry about the formalities of trial—which should never be the way a couple gets to answers in their divorce, because it takes forever and it's not designed for divorce. It was sort of like our country said, "Oh, and we'll put divorces in that system," which was meant for criminals or extreme business disputes, perhaps, but not decent people going through their lives. So yes, it's a way to have a private person in a confidential setting get to those answers for them.
Karen: Alright, I have about a million questions. So, this private judge that the people go to—do they get to choose who it is, or is it somebody that your system says, "This is your judge"?
Amanda: It depends on the couple. In most cases, the couple wants to just allow Solagree, our company, to appoint from a panel of trusted people. That's one of the nice things: they don't have to go and scoop up all of these professionals to do this work for them. We go ahead and say, "Here are our resources."
In some cases, there may be attorneys representing the couple through the Solagree process, and those attorneys may have someone in mind. We're not going to turn that professional away.
Karen: Okay, so how do you... because in my experience—I used to practice law in Illinois and have spoken to a lot of Illinois lawyers—they're very hesitant to put clients into an arbitration situation in a divorce, right? In other contexts, arbitration is the standard, but it hasn't broken through so much in divorce. How do you get the lawyers to agree that this makes sense for their client? Because what they're afraid of is that if the arbitrator makes a decision that goes against their client, their client's going to be upset, obviously.
Amanda: Right. First of all, we work a lot on our messaging, and we explain that while the client may be upset, we work with the attorneys to help remember that appeals are very rare in family law. The one thing that you give up with arbitration is, in most states, the right to appeal the decision. Different states have different levels of review—some states might say, "We're going to review all of the child custody arbitrations for whatever standard"—but the main thing that's given up is the right to appeal.
This is not much of a right in family law, because with appellate courts, first of all, you're another year or two down the road before you're getting to answers while you wait for that to percolate back to the lower court. The second thing is that appellate courts are really looking, if they can, to uphold what lower courts did, because appellate courts don't want to deal with family law cases either.
So, it's not a meaningful right in most cases that they're giving up. What you're getting in exchange—which is finality, answers, and that black cloud removed over your head much faster for a more predictable fee—is far more worth what that theoretical appellate right would be.
Karen: Explain to all of us what the difference would be between going to trial and going to arbitration. Other than the fact that at trial there's a judge and you're in a public courtroom, versus at arbitration you're with a private arbitrator not in a public courtroom, are the proceedings the same, or are they different?
Amanda: They are wonderfully different. I love this question, Karen, thank you.
A typical trial, again, is a government process, so you've taken forever to get there, and you're that much more polarized by the time you do. A typical trial operates such that one of the parties, usually the plaintiff, is going to put on all of their evidence. After all of their evidence is put on with cross-examination and redirect, the other side is going to put on all of their evidence, and it's very methodical. The rules of evidence are extremely strict, creating an intimidating environment and taking much more time because it's inefficient.
The judge really is, in most cases, participating pretty passively—they're not asking a lot of questions, and they're not getting to the heart of the matter. The attorneys don't know what the judge is thinking most of the time. We're looking at them trying to read their lips, watching how quickly they're writing, or seeing if they're sitting back. We don't know what's going on, and we can't keep score.
Contrast that with arbitration. It can be in person, but in our process, it's usually virtual. Right there, you're in a relaxed setting with your comfortable things: your sweet dog, your own snacks, and your own ability to take nice, comfortable breaks. You don't have to worry about parking or dressing up particularly. That actually is a significant stressor for clients going to court—where do I go, where do I park? We take that out of it.
It's really a relaxed, conversational environment. Rather than saying, "Okay, I want to hear from one party, I want to hear it all," the arbitrator can say, "Let's break it down issue by issue." They can ask, "Attorneys, if you don't mind, can I just ask the clients a few things?" That's an option available.
One great way that I love to think about it: let's say we have a higher-complexity issue and an expert witness situation where each person has their own expert witness, like for a business valuation. The arbitrator can put the experts together in a room and say, "Okay, I've read the reports. Expert 1, tell me what you think about this piece because I'm concerned about this. Expert 2, respond to them." The way that we can be flexible and efficient in arbitration is pretty amazing, and I absolutely love it.
For the simpler cases, let's just talk. Let's have a nice way to make sure that your information is received, and then let's have a conversation to make sure that everyone's fully heard.
Karen: Speaking of fully heard, that's one of the main benefits of our court system and the justice system: it gives people a chance to present their side and feel like they got a fair shake. What is built into the arbitration process of Solagree that gives people the feeling that, no matter what the arbitrator decides, "I feel like they heard me, I feel like I got a fair shot, they may not agree with me, but I understand the decision and it wasn't completely out of left field"?
Amanda: Right. We have standard ground rules that govern all of our arbitration proceedings. Depending on the level of complexity, there are processes whereby the couples are going to provide their evidence to each other ahead of the arbitration and have an opportunity to respond ahead of time.
There's going to be a conference with the arbitrator, again depending on complexity, that's going to decide how we go about these proceedings and how each person feels they would be most heard in this moment. Even before we get into the moment of arbitration, we've got lots of structure in place to make sure that everyone gets a full opportunity to be heard.
During the proceeding itself, the arbitrator is going to make sure that they have taken time with each person. Because we have heightened standards of professional conduct that all of our professionals have to sign contractually and agree to, they're bound to provide that experience to these people. They're bound by our rules to be kind to the people they're serving.
Think about that compared to a judicial environment, where they don't have that oversight. We're watching and paying attention, and if we find out that one of our arbitrators has been inappropriately behaving during the arbitration process, we can deal with it quickly.
Karen: What about when one of the clients has been inappropriate? For example, let's say there's one party who's not providing all the financial documents, hasn't been truthful, or hasn't been completely transparent. What authority, if any, does the arbitrator have to deal with that?
Amanda: This is twofold. When the standard ground rules were created, we knew that this was going to be a risk, as it is in traditional processes too.
We talked earlier about how there's a threat to a settlement process where one person could at any time walk away and blow the whole thing up. The flip side of that coin is that one person can drag their feet, bury their head in the sand, and not be compliant.
Not only do the professionals sign rules, but the couple has to agree contractually to be bound by our standard ground rules. In those, we have what I lovingly refer to as my anti-ghosting provisions. As the administrative body, our job is to make sure that we are applying this process evenly across the board to all of our cases. Nothing's perfect, but we really do work hard at it.
If we learn in Phase 1 that the Certified Divorce Financial Analyst tells us Spouse 1 is not providing requested documents and hasn't been answering phone calls, I, as the case administrator, can say, "Spouse 1, I am hearing this. How can I be helpful?" We want people to feel lovingly welcomed in this process.
If they're still not responsive after a period of time, we can say, "Alright, I want you to be aware that the standard ground rules allow for consequences if you don't plug in." The arbitrator can allocate attorney's fees should the other person need to seek a court order requiring participation. The arbitrator can make a negative inference that the information you would have provided would have been helpful to the other spouse's case. The arbitrator can also make attorney fee allocations as part of the arbitration award.
Ultimately, it could get to a contempt issue, which we don't ever want to have happen and fortunately hasn't. It's there, and usually, just being able to say these consequences exist and having that one-to-one conversation is enough to get them to realize it's time to participate.
Karen: To a certain extent, wouldn't the Solagree process be self-selecting out the people who don't want to try to do this nicely, or am I being naive? Because if somebody is purposely trying to hide assets, why would they agree to do this?
Amanda: Yes and no. The person who's going to absolutely hide assets and never cooperate with anything, no matter what—well, if you're married to or divorcing that person, they're going to make it incredibly difficult no matter what process you select. You may have to default to the court system. Those individuals who have narcissistic tendencies are less likely in most cases to want to do something that has the kind of oversight that we provide.
You're going to end up spending years chasing them for contempt, and they're probably going to get what they want in the sense that, because you're the wiser person who wants to move on with your life, you're just going to say, "Fine, here's the price of peace," and be done. But they have to live with their tendencies.
What I would say is that because all of the tools are in the toolkit for Solagree, a complex case or someone who feels they may have something to lose if things are exposed—someone who may be nervous to provide things—is going to have the confidence of privacy and confidentiality. It reduces the risk. If there's proprietary business information that could potentially filter out and be leaked in a public court setting, they have the assurance that in this system, we've got confidentiality. Some people are actually motivated because of that, and secondly, because of the money they would otherwise be spending in a public setting.
Karen: Let's talk about that for a moment. Solagree is based on a flat-fee system, is that right?
Amanda: Mostly, yes.
Karen: How does that work? Because there's a big difference in a case where you've got two people with a short-term marriage, no kids, and no property, versus people who have been married for decades, have kids and grandkids, a business, and multiple properties. There's a different level of complexity involved. How do you account for that in terms of fees with Solagree?
Amanda: We have add-on options. Candidly, about 50% of our couples are in the sphere you just described—gray divorced or approaching the kids moving out, ready to move on to the next chapter. They want to do it in a way that is dignified and preserves the relationship with their children that they've worked hard for, which is often why they stayed married throughout high school and early college.
Our basic framework is very adequate for the basic scenarios. When you add in a business component, we can help arrange for business valuations, either a neutral one or where each party has their own expert. If they need tracing work done for assets to determine if something is premarital or connected to an inheritance, we can do that. We just may need to say, "You're going to need some extra CDFA time, and here's what that would cost," or you may need to get forensic accounting done as an add-on.
All of the tools are there. The short-term marriage with no children is not necessarily the easy case, because a lot of times they have pets, which is really hard to deal with emotionally. But the cases where they're not amicable or where they have complexity are where Solagree does its best work, because we're keeping them on track with guardrails around the process.
If we're in high conflict, then they move from our Solagree core program to our Compass program. The difference there is that our arbitrators go to an hourly basis because they're going to have attorney representation and it's going to be complex. We have to protect our professionals doing the work so that we have high-quality professionals at all times.
Karen: You mentioned Phase 1 is the education phase—getting all your ducks in a row. Then there's mediation, which is Phase 2. There's both mediation and arbitration; can you explain how that works?
Amanda: Yes. Mediation is where you have an attorney-mediator who is trained and experienced at helping couples come to settlement agreements. This is your last stop to solve your own problems and design your own outcomes. We want to have as much guidance during that process as possible. They work with attorney-mediators who understand their state's legal framework to help the couple figure out creative answers.
They come into mediation extremely knowledgeable, which isn't always the case in other frameworks. They understand their cases, what's possible financially, and where they have hurdles co-parenting. The mediator uses their skill set to help them settle the case.
From there, a summary is created and passed to the arbitrator, who adopts all of those areas of agreement into what's usually called an arbitration award. At the end of the day, you have to have a binding document. We want it full of agreements—ideally 100% agreement. You get that one additional set of neutral attorney eyes looking at it and adopting those agreements, operating as a safety net to help make a decision if they don't reach complete agreement.
The Phase 2 attorney-neutral mediator helps the couple solve things for themselves. The Phase 3 attorney-neutral arbitrator acts as a decider and creates the final binding document.
Karen: What happens after the arbitrator creates their final binding document?
Amanda: State by state, we have a wide difference. We have our three phases of Solagree, and then a post-Solagree process. In the post-Solagree process, we strongly recommend that at least one of them take that final document to one of our referring attorneys and have them enter it into court.
I practiced law most of my career in North Carolina—a great state with 100 counties. I can barely figure out how to navigate my own county clerk's office, much less the other 99 where I don't practice very often. I don't want my clients to feel like they're dropped off a cliff. There's so much customization state by state, county by county, and office by office that it would be impossible for us to do it directly. We cannot file anything because we are neutral and cannot lose our neutrality.
We work with a network of attorneys to do that work for the clients. We build in credits for the couple as a bridge toward outside legal work to encourage them not to try to navigate that on their own.
Karen: So people have to go through all three phases—they have to get to arbitration even if they agreed on everything in mediation? Am I hearing that right?
Amanda: That's correct, because we want to have that one more layer of protection and integrity in what they've created. I'm a big believer in taking a moment to adopt and try on agreements before finalizing them.
This was a product of seeing high-pressure mediations where couples made exhausted decisions at the end of the day and had buyer's remorse. As an attorney, going back through how we got to that decision point wasn't comfortable for me or for them. I wanted to have nice cooling-off periods and multiple sets of eyes looking at the agreements.
Karen: Okay, so they go through mediation, the arbitrator writes the final document, and then they take that final Solagree document to an attorney to walk them through the court process so a judge signs off on it in whatever way their jurisdiction works. Is that right?
Amanda: That's correct, and usually that's a very non-controversial moment. In basically all of our cases, one party just has an attorney draw it up and sign it. The couple never goes to court in most of these situations, so it really is almost a rubber-stamp kind of moment.
It's usually incorporated into getting the actual divorce decree. We've done the hard stuff dealing with the children and money, but a court is the only place where they can actually get the divorce decree. We have great attorneys who can just add this document in as part of that filing.
Karen: That makes sense. Since you have three distinct phases, is the mediator a different person from the arbitrator, or does one professional serve both roles?
Amanda: 100% of the time, a different professional. That goes back to wanting multiple sets of eyes and perspectives on what the couple is doing.
It's a very high-touch situation. You see a lot of AI-based solutions coming out, and I get it because attorney's fees can be expensive and risky. You plunk a ton of savings into a trust account with no end in sight. I understand wanting certainty in pricing, but there are a lot of people practicing law without a license—people who went through a divorce themselves and went into coaching or therapy. There are wonderful coaches and therapists, but some people out there say, "I can write this up for the two of you." Seeing that around the country gives me stress as a jurist who created something to protect people.
We need to be very careful what process we're selecting. Those of us who are professionals need to adapt to our clients' increasing expectations: "I want this limited in duration, I want to know what I'm going to pay, and if you don't adapt, I can find another solution."
Karen: Yeah, that makes sense. Is Solagree available everywhere? Where is it available right now?
Amanda: We are active right now in seven states, and we are activated—meaning ready to take cases—in over 20, gaining about three to five states per month. We're looking toward the end of 2026 to be available in most states, with probably a few stragglers in early 2027.
We're developing relationships in our network of professionals as quickly as we can. This was built not just for clients to get a better experience, but for attorneys to get a better experience as well, bringing more tools to the table with divorce coaches, CDFAs who understand finances, and professionals who help couples develop a parenting plan early. The good news is there are a lot of really awesome, great professionals out there who want to do very good work for people.
Karen: I couldn't agree with you more. I know that divorce lawyers in particular get a bad rap. Some of it's well-deserved—like any other profession, there are professionals who are really good, and some who are not so good. But in general, I know a lot of divorce attorneys who would love to have a way to divorce people in a way that is more civilized, efficient, and effective. This sounds like a great alternative. If the people listening want to find you, where's the best place for them to do that?
Amanda: They should go to our website, www.solagree.com (S-O-L-A-G-R-E-E.com). We have an interactive quiz you can take to see recommendations, and you can sign up for an introductory consult with one of our consultants to learn more with a human touch. You can ask questions and talk about how to approach your spouse about going through this in a better way, appealing to their pain points to keep your families as intact as possible despite uncoupling.
Karen: That's a beautiful thing. This program sounds like it is going to fill such a need. Thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge and wisdom.
Amanda: Thank you, Karen, for all you do for these couples.
Karen: Thank you. For those of you watching and listening who think this is a great idea, if you'd like to see more episodes just like this, do me a big favor: give the episode a thumbs up, like and subscribe to the podcast and YouTube channel, and I look forward to talking with you all again next time.
