Episode Description
The scariest part of divorce court isn’t knowing you’re right. It’s realizing that being right may not be enough. In this podcast episode, family law attorney Wendy Hernandez, who has spent 27 years in Arizona family courtrooms, explains why preparation is what turns your facts, evidence, and story into something a judge can actually use, and why simply walking into court expecting “the truth” to win can be a costly mistake.
From understanding the rules of family court to deciding which battles are worth fighting, Wendy breaks down what it really takes to prepare for divorce. She also reveals what really happens at a divorce trial, where tight time limits, credibility problems, unexpected objections, and a judge’s discretion can dramatically affect the outcome … even when you believe you have a strong case.
We also explore why settling can give you something trial never can: more control over what happens next.
Whether you have a lawyer, are considering representing yourself, or are trying to decide whether to settle or keep fighting, understanding the divorce process before you make your next move could save you money, reduce uncertainty, and change the way you approach your divorce.
Show Notes
About Wendy
Wendy Hernandez has spent 27 years in Arizona family courtrooms, guiding thousands of clients through divorce, custody, and child support with preparation instead of false hope. She is the creator of Command the Courtroom, a popular YouTube channel and education platform with over 46,000 subscribers and 5 million views worldwide. Drawing from decades of courtroom experience, Wendy distills complex legal processes into plain-language strategies, empowering individuals—whether represented or self-represented—to navigate the family court system with clarity, confidence, and peace.
Connect with Wendy
You can connect with Wendy on Facebook at Command the Courtroom. You can follow Wendy on YouTube at @Commandthecourtroom and on Instagram at commandthecourtroom. To learn more about her book, Legally Ending Love: A Courtroom Savvy Guide to Divorce and Beyond, and access free resources, visit her website at Legally Ending Love.
Key Takeaways From This Episode with Wendy Hernande
- Preparation Is Your Truth-Delivery System: Tying your strategy to solid preparation is what actually gets your story and evidence believed by a judge—simply showing up and telling "your truth" isn't enough in the legal system.
- Decoding the 3 Steps of Case Prep: Successful court preparation involves understanding the rules of the court, diagnosing the specific legal issues in your case (like custody or debt), and structuring your evidence to make reasonable requests grounded in local law.
- Did You Know? Representing Yourself carries Huge Financial Risks: Going pro se in divorce court comes with high stakes, as missing legal nuances or making an impression the judge distrusts can result in paying heavy spousal support, court costs, or opposing attorney fees.
- Why Trial Is a High-Stakes Gamble: Even experienced attorneys get nervous before trials because placing the decision in a judge's hands relinquishes all control; plus, factors like a strict time limit (sometimes just 1.5 hours per side) or a judge having a bad day can drastically impact the outcome.
- How Being Prepared Saves You Money with a Lawyer: Walking into your attorney’s office with a baseline understanding of key legal concepts—such as legal discovery or disclosure—reduces the time they spend educating you, directly lowering your legal bill.
- Settle Early or Face Stonewalling Penalties: Aiming for mediation or an early settlement grants you certainty and control over your own life, whereas forcing a case to trial or ignoring settlement attempts can lead to hefty court-ordered penalties.
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Transcript
Telling the Truth in Divorce Court WON'T Set You Free
SPEAKERS
Karen Covy, Wendy Hernandez
TRANSCRIPT
Karen: Hello and welcome to Off the Fence, a podcast where we deconstruct difficult decision-making so we can discover what keeps us stuck, and more importantly, how we can get unstuck and start making even tough decisions with confidence. I'm your host, Karen Covy, a former divorce lawyer, mediator, and arbitrator turned coach, author, and entrepreneur. And now, without further ado, let's get on with the show.
With me today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Wendy Hernandez. Wendy has spent 27 years in Arizona family courtrooms and has guided thousands of clients through divorce, custody, and child support with preparation instead of false hope. Wendy is also the creator of Command the Courtroom, a YouTube channel and education platform with 46,000-plus subscribers and 5 million-plus views that has reached people as far as Africa, Australia, and Europe.
Her new book, Legally Ending Love: A Courtroom Savvy Guide to Divorce and Beyond, distills decades of courtroom experience into a plain-language guide for anyone facing the family court system. Wendy believes preparation is a system and that people who understand the divorce process move through it with more clarity, confidence, and peace. Wendy, thank you so much for coming to the show.
Wendy: Thank you, Karen. I love the fact that you invited me, and I'm happy to be here.
Karen: I'm thrilled because you and I speak the same language, we're on the same page about so many things, and we're going to dive into all of that. But before we do, I'm curious: how did you get started in divorce court? I mean, you could have been a lawyer in any kind of courtroom. Why divorce?
Wendy: I'm going to try to make a very long story short, but the bottom line is I started my career as a criminal attorney. I was a prosecutor for a few years, and then I left the state and opened a criminal defense firm. For many years, I had clients asking me for help—those criminal clients asking me for help with divorce, child custody, and child support for them, for their families, and for their friends. I resisted for a long time. I didn't know where to start, and I didn't have any mentorship. But at some point I thought, "Okay, I'm being called to do something, so let me give it a try." Honestly, Karen, the way I learned to practice family law was by using the self-help forms on the Maricopa County website. And then a lot of trial and error and mistakes.
Karen: You have become very accomplished since then, helping thousands of people. I love your focus on preparation—that's a focus that I have as well. But I'm curious: why do you think preparation is so important?
Why Preparation Changes Everything
Wendy: Preparation is important because that's the way you get the truth in front of the judge. A lot of people go to court and think the truth is going to win—like the truth will set you free, the judge is going to hear me speak my truth, the judge is going to believe me, and I'm going to get everything I want. In a perfect world, that would be great—telling the truth would be enough, but in the judicial system, it's not.
Preparation is the delivery system for the truth. If somebody's not telling the truth, preparation is what reveals that. That's why I'm such a big proponent of preparation. I know from my own experience that when I'm prepared, I'm a lot more calm. I am more peaceful going into the court, even though I still get nervous, and I feel more competence and confidence as I'm setting up to prepare the case. I believe that to be true whether somebody has an attorney or not; if they're prepared, they're just going to feel better walking into the courtroom.
Karen: What does preparation mean for you? If someone's listening to this and they're facing a divorce, they don't even know how to prepare. What do you mean when you say prepare? What should people do?
Wendy: There are so many aspects to that question. We could go on for days, Karen—you know how much goes into preparation. In my book, I boil it down to three different sections.
The first step of preparation is decoding and understanding the system that you're in. Whenever basketball players or baseball players go onto a court, they have to understand the rules. If they don't, they violate them, they get penalized, and it's the same for the family law courtroom. So you have to decode the rules. There are lots of different rules, and you don't have to know every rule perfectly—I don't. You just have to know where to find them. So that's number one to being prepared: understanding the rules of the game.
Number two is diagnosing the issues in your case. If people are going through divorce, there's a handful of issues they're encountering: property, debt, spousal maintenance, custody, parenting time, child support, maybe attorney's fees. Diagnose which of those issues exist in your case. Once you know the issues, you can research what the law in your area says about them so you can make asks that are in alignment with the law. Those are going to be deemed reasonable asks if they're in alignment with the law.
The third part of preparation is preparing the case to deliver it, whether it's settling it or going to trial. The book delves into that. Those are the three broad categories of preparation, though of course there are a lot of little pieces underneath each category.
Karen: I've had the honor of being able to read or look at your book beforehand, and I wonder: are the people who should get this book thinking of going to court without a lawyer, or do they have a lawyer?
Wendy: It could be either—it's going to help both groups of people. I know in my own practice, when somebody does not have information about the law and has no baseline, I spend a lot of time educating them. Anybody who has an attorney knows that time equals money when you're talking to your attorney. If you can go to your attorney already understanding what the word "disclosure" or "discovery" means, you're already ahead of it. Your attorney's not going to have to take the time to break it down, which is going to save you money, and you're going to have knowledge on your own terms. If you have an attorney, it works great. Especially if you don't have an attorney, it's a must-read. You can't go into the courtroom without it, or you need to watch the Command the Courtroom videos.
Karen: I can understand that completely because you and I both know the court doesn't work the way most people think it works. If you don't know the rules, you don't get a free pass just because you don't have a lawyer.
You said something a couple minutes ago about how, even going to trial, you still get nervous. You've been through a lot of trials and have spent day in and day out in the courtroom for decades. Explain to people why, even as a lawyer, when you go to court, you're a little bit nervous and unsure of the outcome.
Wendy: The ball is in somebody else's court when it comes to the decision. Whether it's a judge or a jury making the decision, you're placing control in the hands of somebody else. I often tell my clients that I'm happy to go to trial if we need to, and I will 100% support you and do my best. But it's like going to Las Vegas and gambling your life savings—you don't know what's going to happen. It's always a gamble.
That's why I get nervous, because the stakes are so high for my clients. It's their family and their financial future, and they've probably invested a lot of money in me. I want to come through with the value, but I don't have control over the result. Nobody does. That is the biggest problem with family court, and that's why it causes so much stress for everybody.
Karen: I really hope people take that away from this interview, because even a seasoned lawyer can't guarantee an outcome for you. There's a story in your book about a man who had a gambling problem and insisted on going to trial. You were close to settling the case, but he said, "No, I can do better at trial."
Trial Is A High-Stakes Gamble
Karen: He went to trial, and he did not do better. Can you tell everybody about what happened there?
Wendy: That was a huge loss. There's never a clear win or loss in family court, but in that case, he ended up paying the other attorney's fees and costs because the judge ordered him to. The judge didn't think his position was fair or well-grounded, so my client was ordered to pay many years of spousal maintenance to his wife, as well as child support. He was ordered to repay 100% of the gambling debt and 100% of the community debts—even legitimate community debt—because the judge couldn't trust what was gambling debt and what was legitimate community debt.
My client was a car salesman. I don't want to disparage car salesmen—there are a lot of wonderful car salesmen—but he was the stereotypical car salesman on the stand, and I don't think the female judge liked him. We got hammered at trial, and he had to pay the other attorney's fees to kick our butt in court. It was a hard lesson, but he was a gambler, he gambled again, and he lost.
Karen: That is such an important message. I want to talk for a minute about what you just said regarding the judge not liking him. How important is it when you go to court or trial that the judge likes you or doesn't? Why does that even matter?
Wendy: With a fair judge, liking may not be an issue because a good judge could not like somebody and still think that they're a credible witness. They may just not like their personality. When you go to court, you have to do your best to be credible, which means making sure that the judge or the jury believes what you're saying. That boils down to how you appear on the stand, how you testify, your body language, your nonverbals, and whatever evidence comes up in the courtroom. Is there evidence that contradicts what you say on the stand? If so, that's a problem in many cases. It's not just about getting the judge to like you; it's getting the judge or fact-finder to think that you are credible and believable.
Karen: They have to believe what you're saying, essentially. If they don't, you can be in a world of hurt.
Wendy: Oh, yeah. Once you lose the faith or trust of a judge, it's difficult to get it back. I had a client once who lost the trust of a judge, and I continued to be his attorney in later rounds of litigation. Years later, the judge never forgot and never forgave him, which affected him for years. People make mistakes—we all do. It's easier to acknowledge and figure out how to address the mistake rather than keep lying about it, saying it didn't happen, or not being accountable. Judges don't look kindly upon that.
Karen: That raises an interesting question. A lot of people continue to litigate or go back to court years after their divorce is done because something changes or somebody doesn't do what they're supposed to do. When you do that, how does that work? Are you in front of the same judge that you were when the case was tried, or does that change?
Wendy: It depends on your jurisdiction. In my jurisdiction in Arizona, judges are usually on a family law rotation for about three years, and then they get moved to civil or criminal law. You may get a different judge who doesn't have the background about your case, which may help you or hurt you. Most judges, for whatever reason, don't like being in family court, so they're happy to move on. There are a couple of judges in my jurisdiction who are lifers. They were family law attorneys, love being on the family law bench, and stay. I welcome that because I like the judge having background knowledge about a case if we're going back.
Karen: A lot of people think, "If this judge doesn't like me, I'll just change judges."
Judges, Trust, And Switching Courts
Karen: How hard or easy is that?
Wendy: In some situations, it could be easy, depending on the rules of procedure in your jurisdiction. There are certain boundaries. Early in a case, if you've never changed judges before, you can easily change a judge. But if you've already changed a judge, or time limits have passed, or you're close to a hearing, you may not be able to change a judge—even if that judge has made a bad decision in your case.
Karen: Even if you know that judge doesn't like you or doesn't believe you? Liking or not liking is theoretically not part of the equation, but if the judge doesn't like you, they're not likely to believe you, and that is part of the equation.
Wendy: That is. I've had clients say, "I want to try to change judges, I don't care." The problem, at least in Arizona, is that the judge who's making the decision about whether you can change is the judge that you're trying to get away from. So I file a motion saying, "Judge, I want to get off your calendar." The judge says no, and guess who I'm stuck with for the rest of the case?
Karen: Then they know that you were trying to get away from them, and it makes everything awkward and harder.
Wendy: It's a little bit tense.
Karen: Let's say somebody is coming into trial and wants to be prepared, but they're also thinking maybe they can settle out of court or in mediation. Do they still need to prepare, and do they need to prepare the same way?
Wendy: It depends. In my cases, I try to settle the case well in advance of a trial date, but sometimes I have cases settling on the courthouse steps on the day of trial. In that case, I'm ready to go because I've done all the preparation. My client spent the money, but I still feel like that's a better outcome because my client has certainty, whereas if you go into the courtroom, there is none. That's worth something.
Karen: You mentioned the client has paid for that preparation. Can you tell people what it's like to prepare for a trial and why it costs so much?
Wendy: Generally, I tell people that for every hour of trial, I spend at least three hours of my own time preparing, evaluating evidence, drafting questions, drafting cross-examination, and revising my questions because I want to do the best job for them. They would not be happy with any less than that. If they want the best presentation and want to give themselves the best chance, it's an investment. I'm invested, but they have to be invested too.
Karen: What do you do when clients say, "I want you to prepare for trial and be ready, but I only want to spend $X," or "You can only do 10 or 12 hours of work"? How do you deal with that?
Wendy: Money is always a difficult conversation because most people don't have unlimited money. The key for me is having open communication and talking with my clients. I ask, "Do you just want me to be a little bit prepared?" Because that's what I hear you asking, and most clients don't want that. They've already spent tens of thousands to get to this point.
Settlement Prep Versus Trial Prep
Wendy: Now, when it's the championship game, you're going to get cheap? No, this is when we have to really buckle down.
Karen: Because people don't know what a trial entails, how long do divorce trials normally go, or what's the range? I know it varies based on how many issues there are, but people have this idea from television or movies that a trial takes a couple of hours and it's done. How long do trials really go?
Wendy: It depends on where you're located. In Arizona where I practice, trials can go up to a few days in length, but those are only for the most complex trials with multiple businesses, commercial real estate, complex custody issues, and long marriages. The normal case that I try, judges only give us three hours. That could be for a 20-year marriage—it's crazy. For a three-hour trial, each party is allotted half of that time, which means effectively I have an hour and a half to present my client's side of the case, and that includes cross-examining the other side. There is enormous time pressure and stress.
Karen: What do you do if you have a long-term marriage with so many issues that came up, and you want to bring up so many things in only an hour and a half? That's not possible, so what happens? Does the judge just not hear that evidence?
Wendy: A couple of things happen. I've had judges just cut me off mid-word because time is up. I've seen it happen to other attorneys, so I plan my time with the client. While I always want more time, it really makes you focus and get to the point quickly without beating around the bush. We focus on the high-priority items, create summary charts, inventories, and one-pagers that a judge can look at to make our presentation efficient. It's hard, and I'm usually out of breath and stressed out by the end, but I can do it.
That also means preparing with the client—not just telling my client to read a list of questions. We practice and trim things. My client might say, "I don't like that question or area, let's get rid of that." We refine it until we hit the target.
Karen: It also depends on how quickly the client answers questions on the stand. If they draw a blank or break down, it takes more time, which affects the amount of time you have to present your case.
Wendy: You just don't know how it's going to go in a courtroom. A client might be fine when rehearsing, but it hits them differently when they're sitting on the stand. An attorney on the other side might object to every piece of evidence I try to admit, which eats time. Long text message strings, email strings, and financial documents take time and are burdensome. As an attorney in the courtroom, you're trying to juggle a lot of things: managing priorities, objections, and your client's emotions. That's what makes the courtroom stressful. You put stress plus uncertainty together, and I would say if you can avoid it, do not go to trial.
Karen: You give up control of so much. What do you do in the instance where a spouse won't respond to a settlement offer and forces the case to trial by not responding or making outrageous demands that aren't grounded in reality?
Wendy: That is really difficult. That's a stonewalling strategy. Unfortunately, in those cases, sometimes you're forced to go to trial. In those cases, I always ask for attorney's fees on behalf of my client. We carve out time to show the ten settlement offers and follow-ups that I sent to the other party or their attorney, alongside their lack of responses. In many of those cases where they are unreasonable, not responding, and stonewalling, my client does get attorney's fees and costs. I just had a huge case where my client got around $60,000 because of that.
Karen: That's amazing. That doesn't always happen depending on the jurisdiction and how the judge feels. But let's say the clients go all the way to trial and don't get the result they want. How common is it for somebody to appeal a judge's decision, and is it something you recommend?
Stonewalling, Fees, And Appeals
Wendy: I tell clients to talk to an appeals attorney first. An appeals court is going to look primarily at whether the trial court abused its discretion or made a decision that was not in alignment with the law. In most cases, an appeals court is going to give a lot of deference and respect to the trial court's decision because the trial judge was the one sitting there listening to the witnesses and reviewing the evidence. There are lots of successful appeals because thousands of cases come out every year on an appealed issue, but I think appeals are rare and require a unique issue to be successful. At least where I am, an appeal takes years. If you get a custody decision that you don't like, unless certain circumstances happen, you're still following that arrangement ordered by the court until the appeals court decides the issue a couple of years down the road.
Karen: That's a really important point. It all comes back to settling out of court if there's any way that you can. To go back to preparation: is the way you prepare a divorce case different if you're going to trial, mediation, or using the collaborative process? Does the process dictate the preparation?
Wendy: Leading up to the point where you're trying to settle out of court or do a trial, it's really the same. You're disclosing and gathering evidence, and there's a system for that. The process is the same, but you might prepare differently for mediation. You don't need to prepare for a trial if you're going to mediation. I prepare a mediation memorandum outlining our asks and reasons, but I'm not presenting evidence or rehearsing testimony at a mediation. We're just getting our positions and reasons in order. Trial takes it a step further. If you've gone to mediation and didn't settle everything, some of that trial preparation was done getting ready for mediation, but you still need to take it a step further because now you're getting ready to present in the courtroom.
Karen: Everything sounds so complicated. Is going to trial in a divorce case without a lawyer something that you would recommend?
Wendy: I do not recommend it, but I have seen it a lot. Where I practice, statistics show that up to 80% of people in family court represent themselves. That's a crazy number. It is complicated and the stakes are high. People could talk to an attorney, get a consultation, and at least get pointed in the right direction—that's better than nothing.
Karen: Legal representation is expensive, but the cost of getting a judgment against you because you didn't have a lawyer can be way more expensive than that. It's a "pick your poison" situation.
Wendy: It really is. I represented a guy a few years ago where the main issue was spousal maintenance. At some point, he said he couldn't afford to keep me on, so we went our separate ways and he represented himself. I kept track of his case, and the spousal maintenance award against him was so bad—hundreds of thousands of dollars over several years. My fee wouldn't have cost that, though I can't guarantee I would have prevailed for him either.
Karen: How do you help clients deal with the uncertainty of divorce? If you go to trial, the outcome is uncertain; if you settle, you never know whether you could have done better at trial. How do you help people make good decisions with so much uncertainty?
Self-Representing Risks And Final Takeaways
Wendy: A lot of it is having decision-making frameworks for them, emphasizing that even when they feel out of control or powerless, they do have control. I lay out the options and paint a picture for them. I say, "If we make these choices, these are the things that could happen; if we make those choices, these are the things that could happen." When you frame it that way and they have most of the information they need, they make wise decisions and feel good about them. The outcomes aren't always perfect, but when people have decision-making power as opposed to somebody telling them what to do, they feel better about the outcome.
Karen: Everybody wants to have control over their own future. Having a judge tell you when you can see your children, how much money you're going to pay or get from your spouse, and essentially how you're going to live your life doesn't feel good.
Wendy: Nobody likes that. It's like telling a teenager they have to do something—they push back. That's how it is for all of us as humans, even adults, when somebody tells us how we will do things for the rest of our lives or our kids' lives until they emancipate.
Karen: How do you help people stay out of court and make those decisions, especially when they have unreasonable expectations about what they're entitled to or going to get at trial?
Wendy: I tell them about the bloody battles I have gone through with clients and the worst imaginable outcomes happening. I've seen it over and over. I've had clients spend hundreds of thousands of dollars with me who were convinced they were right, and it didn't go that way. It was hard and sad, but that's what they chose.
I use those stories to educate other clients. Even when you have a great, experienced, fair judge, they can still have bad days. We all have bad days—we wake up on the wrong side of the bed, have a fight with our kid or spouse, get a health diagnosis, or have a struggling parent. An almost perfect judge can issue an imperfect decision on a bad day.
Karen: People expect the judge to be on at 100% of their game every single day, but judges are human. What if they see the world differently?
Wendy: A lot of them do. A lot of the judges in Maricopa County have been practicing a lot less time than I have. There are different beliefs, systems, and backgrounds, and I see that play out in decisions. It's hard to watch because I always think I'm right, but I see in decisions that I'm not.
Karen: You can do everything possible for your client and still lose because the judge was having a bad day, didn't see things the way you did, or didn't believe your client. There can be factors entirely out of your control, and you are a lawyer. People trying to do this on their own are taking a huge risk.
Wendy: A huge risk with their future and future generations—maybe a financial future for the rest of their lives. I would say get a lawyer, and if you can, get to mediation quickly.
Karen: Is there anything else that you would like to leave people with if they're listening to this episode and want to be as prepared as they can be?
Wendy: What I want to say to people is I know that divorce is a time of fear and anxiety for a lot of people because you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know if you're going to be able to take care of yourself or if your children are going to be cared for in the future. Uncertainty is what causes that fear. Even in uncertainty, you have control.
The thing that you can control is preparation. When you prepare, you seize control, and that's going to make you feel better. You're not going to feel as much fear or anxiety, and you're going to try to control the things you can. There are a lot of things you can control in this process.
Karen: Your book goes through a lot of them. I love that you have diagrams and visuals. It helps you see where you are in the process versus facing a big black hole. Be prepared no matter what you're going to do, whether you go to trial or mediate. A big part of being prepared will be to get Wendy's book. Wendy, when is it available?
Wendy: It's available October 13th on Amazon. You can type in Legally Ending Love or go to legallyendinglove.com. Right now, you can get on a list to be notified when the book drops. When I get the link, I'll put it on the website.
Karen: If people want to get the benefit of your advice and guidance, where's the best place for them to find you?
Wendy: They can find me at hernandezfirm.com. There's a form people can fill out. People can also go to YouTube, check out Command the Courtroom, and subscribe to get notified of all the videos when they release. If you do nothing else, watch the videos.
Karen: Wendy, thank you so much for all that you've shared. You have provided a wealth of information.
Wendy: Thank you for having me, Karen, and thank you to everybody watching.
Karen: For those of you out there watching or listening, if you've enjoyed today's episode and would like to hear more episodes like this, give the episode a thumbs up, like it, and subscribe to the podcast and YouTube channel. I look forward to talking with you all again next time.
