Episode Description - Divorce Taking Forever? A Judge's Opinion Could End It Now
Stuck in a slow, expensive divorce that seems to feed on confusion? Karen Arndt, CEO and co-founder of “What Would a Judge Say”, has created a groundbreaking service that's turning the traditional divorce process on its head. After watching countless couples drain their savings fighting over finances while navigating an opaque system that takes months or years to complete, Karen asked a radical question: What if you could skip straight to a judge's opinion before spending years in litigation? Then she and her ex-husband created a company that does exactly that.
“Whatwouldajudgesay.com” is a UK company that connects divorcing couples with real family court judges who provide opinions on asset division for a fixed fee … and they do it in just three months.
The service works by having couples submit their financial disclosures to judges who review the information and deliver a professional opinion on how the assets should be divided, exactly as if the case had gone to court. What makes the judge’s opinion particularly powerful is that it gives couples clear parameters for how they should settle their divorce based on actual legal standards, not emotions or wishful thinking.
While this service is currently available only in England and Wales, Karen is exploring expansion to the United States as well as other Commonwealth countries.
Whether you're a couple seeking clarity together or someone investigating options independently, this innovative approach offers something the traditional system rarely provides: certainty, affordability, and control over your own future.
Show Notes
About Karen
Karen Arndt is the Co-Founder and CEO of whatwouldajudgesay.com, a UK-based legal-tech startup transforming divorce settlements through judge-led clarity and AI innovation. Having lived and worked across London, Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo, Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Atlanta, she speaks fluent Dutch and German and has a deep appreciation for American culture — her son now lives in New York, and her ex-husband is based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Karen’s career spans IBM, Ogilvy, RTL, and BBC World, giving her a rare perspective on leadership, reinvention, and what it takes to build a business from the ground up across cultures and continents.
Connect with Karen
You can connect with Karen on LinkedIn at Karen Arndt and Facebook at What Would A Judge Say. You can follow Karen on Instagram at What Would A Judge Say and on X at What Would A Judge Say. To find out more about Karen’s work visit her website at What Would A Judge Say.
Key Takeaways From This Episode with Karen
- Karen Arndt is the Co-Founder and CEO of WhatWouldAJudgeSay.com, a UK-based legal technology company transforming divorce outcomes through early judicial insight, fixed-fee services, and AI-supported innovation, informed by her global career across media, technology, and leadership roles
- The traditional divorce process in England and Wales is costly, slow, and opaque, averaging 69 weeks to complete and costing approximately £44,000, largely due to adversarial legal structures and billable-hour models
- WhatWouldAJudgeSay.com unbundles financial resolution from the broader divorce process, focusing first on asset division—the most contentious and determinative element according to family court judges
- Clients submit a comprehensive financial disclosure, which is reviewed by an independent family court judge who provides a non-binding early neutral evaluation of likely court outcomes
- The judicial opinion establishes clear negotiation parameters, significantly reducing uncertainty, emotional escalation, misinformation, and prolonged litigation
- The service operates on a fixed-fee, fixed-timeline model, typically resolving financial matters and formalizing divorce agreements within approximately three months, at a fraction of traditional legal costs
- The platform serves both couples and individuals, including clients already engaged in prolonged litigation who seek an independent judicial perspective outside the adversarial process
- A significant portion of clients are women, reflecting broader divorce-initiation trends and highlighting the platform’s role in addressing financial uncertainty, affordability concerns, and power imbalances
- The model complements rather than replaces legal professionals, with many lawyers and mediators referring clients due to improved efficiency, transparency, and reduced court congestion
- The company has strategic plans for international expansion, including the United States, Canada, and Australia, responding to growing demand for outcome-focused, client-centered divorce solutions
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Transcript
Divorce Taking Forever? A Judge's Opinion Could End It Now
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
modern divorce solutions, judicial opinion divorce
SPEAKERS
Karen Covy, Karen Arndt
Karen Covy: 0:10
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 divorced 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 another Karen, Karen Arndt. She is the co-founder and CEO of What Would A Judge Say.com. It's a UK-based legal tech startup transforming divorce settlements through judge-led clarity and AI innovation. Having lived and work across London, Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo, Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Atlanta, she speaks fluent Dutch and German and has a deep appreciation for American culture. Her son now lives in New York, and her ex-husband is based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Karen's career spans IBM, Ogilvy, RTL, and BBC World, giving her a rare perspective on leadership, reinvention, and what it takes to build a business from the ground up across cultures and continents. Karen, welcome to the show.
Karen Arndt: 1:32
Thank you. Thank you. I'm really, really happy to be here.
Karen Covy: 1:35
I'm thrilled to have you here because we've talked offline and I was just so excited about what you're doing. I couldn't wait to have you on the show. So can you let's start with you explaining what is What Would A Judge Say.com?
Karen Arndt: 1:51
What is What Would A Judge Say.com? Interesting. It's a world first in terms of service. And what we decided to do was kind of look at divorce and deconstruct it. Now, I personally have been through divorce, went through divorce 20 odd years ago. It was a horrible process. You know all about the billable hours. We have the same thing here in England as well, just the never-ending hourly billable hours that you get billed, and you have no idea where your divorce is going. It's very opaque, and the communication is just terrible. Now, coming from the communications industry and come coming from more of a technology background, we decided to really kind of uh look under the under the bonnet, or you say look under the hood of divorce and really kind of deconstruct it and say, okay, how is generative AI going to change this industry? Do we need lawyers? Do we need judges? How about Chat GPT? I can tell you ChatGPT does a really good impression of a judge, of an English judge right now. It's not too bad. It does hallucinate, it does make mistakes, but it's really not too bad. So all of the people that I've come into contact in my long career, as you just mentioned, some of them were ex-googlets, and some of them are judges, some of them are lawyers, and we all kind of sat back and said, Why is this system so horrible? And how is it possible that you have two adversarial lawyers, we call them solicitors, solicitors at each other. And to give you an idea, in England it takes on average 69 weeks to get divorced. So, if you were to start your divorce today, you'd be finished on the 20, 27th of March 2027. So, if I told you today your divorce is going to be finished in March 2027, you'd be like, oh my goodness.
Karen Covy: 3:57
Oh no. In America, I would be saying to you, that's not bad.
Karen Arndt: 4:01
Oh, really? Really? Is it even longer? Oh gosh. Yes. Well, the average time is 69 weeks. I mean, obviously, it's a lot longer than that in some cases. And on average, it costs you about 44,000 pounds to get divorced, on average, in this country. You sound surprised. Is that a good price?
Karen Covy: 4:21
No, that actually 44,000 pounds is how much would that be in in years?
Karen Arndt: 4:28
Would that be about $70,000?
Karen Covy: 4:30
Oh my gosh.
Karen Arndt: 4:32
That's crazy. Yeah, it's very expensive. So the whole sector in England and Wales, um, the legal jurisdiction that we work in is within England and Wales. It doesn't even cover the whole of the UK. Um, so our legal jurisdiction is England and Wales, and that topped over £2 billion last year in terms of revenue. So, there's a huge sector behind it. It all thrives on this, you know, opaque, very long, horrible process that people don't understand, and they're paying for it at the same time. So, we said, look, how if you break down divorce, what does it look like? In England, finance and children are very much kept separate. So in England, you have three stages of divorce, if you will. So, the first is finance, so you agree who gets what in the marital pot. The other part is children arrangements, who gets the children, where do the children live, access, things like that. And then the other part is the divorce paperwork itself. So, it's three quite separate components. And in England, you can go to one lawyer, and that lawyer deals with all three. That lawyer is supposed to keep each component separate, actually. While your finances are being arranged, you can start divorce proceedings with the paperwork. So that's kind of running concurrently. But the finance and the children have to be absolutely kept separate.
Karen Covy: 6:18
Okay, let me interrupt for a second because there's the idea of child support. I don't know what they do in England, but that sort of merges finances and children. So, what do you do with child support or paying for children's medical care or the kinds of expenses that are tied to children?
Karen Arndt: 6:39
Absolutely. And so judges here will absolutely make the assessment of the child's needs. So, from a financial perspective, the child's needs are absolutely paramount. And that judge will look at uh where is the child living, is there private schooling involved, are there private medical bills, is there spousal support or child support required? And so all of this will be taken into consideration within the financials. The judge will also look at uh who is the primary carer of the children now, right? So the judge will make some assumptions. The reason why we set up What Would A Judge Say is because and I've been around judges and lawyers for over 20 years just because of my family are all kind of involved in that. So you really get a sense of what's happening behind the scenes, right? And every judge I've ever spoken to has said, get the finances sorted early doors first, separately, the children just fall into place beautifully after that. And also don't necessarily go to a lawyer for the children arrangements. There are people like yourself, there are wonderful child mediators, but go to somebody where you can discuss it, don't litigate it, don't involve the children, because judges really do not like this when you start to use the children as leverage to gain more finance. But it does happen, it absolutely happens, and it happens quite a lot, I have to say. So we said, okay, let if that's the most contentious part of a divorce, if finance is the most contentious part of a divorce, let's help people sort that out. Let's kind of unbundle that service from a law firm and say, okay, fill in a financial disclosure, that is the heart of your finance, fill in a financial disclosure, submit it to us, we'll take it to a real judge, a real family judge. That judge will sit there and say, Okay, they've been married for 15 years, one spouse gets that, the other spouse gets that. That's the law, pretty much. The law in England and Wales is quite formulaic when it comes to financial remedy in divorce. That's the good thing, that's the good news. So a judge can really look at this quite quickly, um, submits the opinion back to us. We work with a wonderful law firm. That law firm will then sit down with the couple and say, okay, here's the judge's opinion, here's the basis for your divorce, here's your goalposts, if you will. There's a little bit of back and forth that the couple can say, Well, I want that, I prefer to have that, I don't want to, you know, share this pension, you could have more of this. We do believe that some couples that come to us have agency, they can decide for themselves how they work it out. But it's very, very important. One of the key things that we found was that especially in financing divorce, everybody's got an opinion. So if you're going through a divorce or you're separating, you walk into a pub down the road, 10 people will give you 10. Oh, my sister got divorced, my brother got leave the house. Don't leave the house, you know. Um get a separate bank account, don't get a separate bank account. There's so much opinion out there as to what you should do. We launched What Would A Judge Say, and we just launched it in January this year, and people are calling us and saying, wow, this is this is interesting. This is great. We've had so many different kinds of people contact us that we hadn't expected before.
Karen Covy: 10:46
Wow. So let me see if I've got this straight. So if I understand you correctly, the way this works is a couple decides they're going to get a divorce, and then they come to you before they come to a lawyer? Go to a lawyer? So they go to you and they say, We want to know if we put this case in front of a judge, what would the judge, how would the judge divide up our property? What would a judge say? And so they submit their financial affidavits to you, you submit it to a judge, a retirement or a judge that works in your organization. The judge says, This is what I would do, gives you an opinion, you give it to them, and then what? Is this binding?
Karen Arndt: 11:29
No, it's without prejudice. It's uh a judge's opinion. It's not legally binding. These are not, these judges are not part of our organization. They're family law judges sitting now in courts uh around the UK. Uh, but judges have the capability in this country to offer their services via their chambers, via barristers' chambers. We have barristers here. And so I can buy uh what we call an early neutral evaluation. So the actual legal term of what we offer is called an early neutral evaluation. You can give it to a barrister that also sits as a judge, and you can say, okay, in your opinion, if this couple came to you today, what ruling would you make? Now it's a name judge. We create um a whole bundle for the couple to be able to say, okay, this is your uh we call it a for me or a financial disclosure. That's got everything in it. Here is the judge's opinion, here is the name judge. Now, how do you feel about that? Is there any back and forth? Do you feel as if you need some mediation uh in some of the finance? Do you feel it's fair for you? Some of them feel as if they need to go and do some mediation and then come back to us. And we then say, okay, if you would like us to formalize this into a divorce, we can do that for you for a fixed fee and create a consent order, which then goes through to the divorce decree, and the judge will then sign it off and say, That's great. And it's all done within about a three-month period. I uh the couples that have come to us at the beginning of this year are through, they're through three months, they're done. And because it's a judge's opinion that carries that weight for them, it really carries that weight to be able to say, This is this is really interesting, that's great. And a lot of women that come to us, we don't just get couples that come to us, we get women coming to us. And in this country, and I think it's the same in the US, 70% of divorces are initiated by women. Women are starting, you know, they've got their own money now, we are out there, we're earning great salaries, we're in academia. We are saying, okay, I think my marriage is on the rocks. I think I need to go down the divorce route, but I don't know if I can divorce, um, if I can afford to get divorced. Can you tell me what would happen if I got divorced? Um we had an interesting, uh, interestingly uh relay to our counselling service here in England. They're a nationwide marriage counselling service. And I spoke to them the other day, and they said, on average in England, people tend to wait about six years before they decide to uh I think divorce is on the cast. So within that six years, they've been to marriage counselling, they've maybe separated, they've come back together, they've been through this horrible roller coaster of six years of should we, shouldn't we, should we stay together for the kids? So by the time they get to us, they're just done. And one of the biggest issues, especially for women, is finance. Can I afford to get divorced? Do I have to sell the house? What's going to happen to the kids? Will I get spousal maintenance because I supported his career? I stayed at home. Do I have to get a job? These are all big questions that a lot of women ask themselves. And we can do that too.
Karen Covy: 15:24
So, you can either work with the couple to give them um an idea of what how a judge would divide things for them as a couple, or if there's only one person, one person can come to you and say, Look, I just want to check this out, you know, quietly myself. Here's the financial affidavit. What would a judge do? And you can do it for them as well.
Karen Arndt: 15:45
Exactly. And we we get quite a few people actually contacting us and saying, um, my spouse doesn't know I'm calling you. Interesting. And our first question is always, okay, that's fine. Do you have a good understanding of the marital pot? Do you know the mortgage, the gas, electricity, the cars, the private school fees? Do you have a good understanding of his income, his bonus, your tax situation? And nine times out of ten, interestingly, women are on it. They do know, actually. They can, because at the heart of everything that we do is the financial disclosure. So if you don't know the financial disclosure, our judge is just looking at that. If you find later on, oh, that was wrong, or things have changed, then we have to adapt it. And we had a lady come back to us actually because she said her husband lost his job during the divorce proceedings, and she said, What happens now? What do we do now? And actually, interestingly, we do tend to find that quite a few husbands miraculously either lose their job, or I didn't get such a big bonus, or all of a sudden things dial down, they get divorced, and then all of a sudden their salary goes through the roof later on.
Karen Covy: 17:14
So it's interesting how that happens.
Karen Arndt: 17:17
So we've had we've had couples call us, we've had uh individuals call us, either husbands or wives. We've also had interestingly, we've also had people contact us that are deep in litigation. So they've been deep in litigation with their lawyers, with their wives' lawyers for over two years or whatever, and they've said, Karen, I just need a fresh pair of eyes on this. I feel like we're just going round in circles. I need to step out of the process now. And not telling their lawyers, they come to us. And we will we will get a judge's opinion outside of you know whatever they've been told by their lawyer. Now, obviously, we do, they would know the full financial disclosure, they would know the full information, um, and they have to disclose quite a bundle to us. That goes to the judge. The judge takes a look at it and then says, This is a pretty good uh fair uh division of assets. That's the offer you should make to the other side, essentially, if I was looking at it now, and that that has been really interesting. That has been very interesting, and I have to say, just to mention, people said to me, Oh, you know, lawyers are gonna hate this. This is gonna be awful. You're gonna put lawyers out of business. That might happen, but I have to say, most of our clients uh have been recommended by lawyers within their family. So I I've had my sister's a lawyer, my brother's a lawyer, my father's a lawyer, they get it. Lawyers understand. You just go straight to a judge, get an opinion on finance, you're done. That's it.
Karen Covy: 19:04
Yeah, I love that, I love that idea. And it just to be clear, um, your whole service is all done on a fixed fee basis, is that right?
Karen Arndt: 19:14
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So we not only do it on a fixed fee basis, but we do it within a fixed time period as well, or your money back - I've never had to.
Karen Covy: 19:27
Wow That's unusual.
Karen Arndt: 19:29
Yes, very unusual. So in the UK as well, it's very unusual. We said if we're gonna do this, we've got to go big or go home. So we've got to actually say this is your fee, it costs you five thousand pounds, two and a half thousand pounds each if it's a couple. So five thousand pounds for one opinion, and then if you want us to, or us, our partner law firm, if you want them to draw up the divorce papers, that costs another 1,500 pounds. Somebody said to me last week, they said, Oh my god, damn it, six and a half thousand pounds all in, done.
Karen Covy: 20:09
Yeah, and that's like yeah, that's for both people.
Karen Arndt:
For both people, yes. Which is astounding.
Karen Covy:
Now, what if somebody wanted to, let's say there's a couple and they come to you and they get this early opinion from a judge who said I would divide things this way? Um, can those people then take that opinion to independent lawyers, their own lawyers, and say, What do you think? Is this good? Is this bad? Should I sign this?
Karen Arndt: 20:39
Absolutely. And we encourage that as well. We give them a bundle uh of the opinion, all the information they give it, they've given us. We create a report, they can take that to a mediator if they feel they need some, you know, some more back and forth on the finance, or if they feel that actually, you know what, I don't really like this. I think I'm gonna fight it out, actually. Okay, fine. No, no worries. Go to a lawyer, go to a lawyer, take it to a lawyer, see what a lawyer says. A lawyer is in a solicitor here in this country, is in a different in a difficult situation because there's a name judge there. That that barrister or that solicitor will probably know that family law judge. And we'll will also see with full transparency, they will also see what the judge, what information the judge had at the time in order to make that opinion. So within it's full transparency, and lawyers have said to me, external lawyers have said, This is really good. I really like this. We've also had some lawyers actually contact us and say, Can you help out with this? Because we are uh stagnating in this. We need a judge to step in. What I have to tell you, Karen, and I don't know if it's the same in in the US, but in the UK, it's very, very difficult to get into court. Uh the courts are clogged, the courts are very, very busy. Uh, it can take you quite a few months to get in front of a court.
Karen Covy: 22:20
Oh, yeah, 100%. It and here in the US, it depends on where you live. Are you in a big city? Though the city courtrooms tend to be busier and more clogged up because there's so many people. The, you know, if you go out into the countryside into more rural areas, maybe not so much, but still, courts across the country, they're busy. And the ability to get a decision from a judge early is just brilliant. It could solve so many problems. But I'm curious whether you've expanded this at all to the United States, because the difference that I see is that I don't believe our judges could actually do that. That they could take, you know, they don't sell their time on the side. A judge is a judge, they work in the court, that's all there is to it. However, we have a fair number of retired family court judges who work as mediators now. So, do you think that that would work in the US? Um, and do you know of anyone who's doing it?
Karen Arndt: 23:29
I have not heard of anybody in the US. I have to say that one of our co-founders is based in the US. So, he's based in North Carolina. Uh, he's my ex-husband, as I as I think I mentioned before. This is the funny thing about this. Uh, my ex-husband became my best friend, uh, interestingly. And we get on so well. And he's in he's in the US, he's married to lovely Valerie. Uh, they live just outside Charlotte. And when we were putting this together, I said, I want Martin as the chairman of this new company. And Martin is our chairman, and he keeps saying we have to bring this to the US. Now, as you know, this is the way that I met you as well on LinkedIn. I've had quite a few US lawyers reach out to me and go, I love this. Yeah. How can we make this happen? And if we could partner up with US law firms, that that would be amazing. That that would be that would be great.
Karen Covy: 24:25
I love the idea. And you know, for people who are listening, even now, if you're getting a divorce now and Karen, your company's services aren't available here, there is no reason that I can think of, other than that you might have a stubborn lawyer, that you can go to a lawyer and say, look, is there a retired judge? Can we do this? Can we get an early opinion? Or can we even try to go to the judge who's been assigned to the case in the context of the courtroom and get an early opinion? Now, it wouldn't be as nicely packaged as what you have. It might, you know, the lawyers would still be billing by the hour for it. But even still, the idea of knowing what the judge would likely do solves so many problems. It answers so many questions. And I have to tell you, having practiced in divorce law for more decades than I care to admit to, I have seen, I don't even, I can't even tell you how many cases where somebody makes an offer early on and says, this is how we should do it. The other person says, absolutely not. They fight for two years, they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they end up settling for pretty much exactly what they could have settled for right out of the game.
Karen Arndt: 25:44
Exactly. That's exactly right. I was a media trader back in the day, so I I'm used to negotiating on multi-million pound big TV deals, that that's what, and I always say, as a negotiator, I would never go into a negotiation without knowing my parameters. Now, why when you are this is the biggest negotiation of your life, you are essentially splitting your whole life from this other person that you've lived with for 15, 20 years, 10 years, you have properties together, cars together, children together. This is going to be the negotiation of your life. What I say to people is this judge's opinion gives you the goalposts. This says, This is how the law is, that's what you've got to negotiate on, and that's beautiful. That that's so great. And if you have that in the US as well, that would just make things so much quicker and fairer. And it angers me so much that people are required to give so much of their marital pot to lawyers. I like lawyers, don't get me wrong, but really, honestly, it's not needed. It really is not needed, all this back and forth.
Karen Covy: 27:05
Yeah, I absolutely agree. I mean, that's one of the reasons why I switched into coaching. There were a lot of reasons, but I think the whole billable hour model is fundamentally flawed. However, I can also I see both sides of it because I practice law. And as a lawyer, you can't say to a divorcing couple, I'll do as much work for you as you want, I'll fight for you all the way through trial for this small fixed fee. You'd go out of business. You can't do it. On the other hand, um, to be charging by the hour and run up the bill, it puts the client's interest often at odds to the lawyers, because the lawyer, it's in their interest to keep churning the file. And there are some lawyers that will do that, right? So there's got to be a happy medium. And what in my mind I would love to see is something like what you do. The What Would A Judge Say? The fixed fee that is, you know, you get this amount of service for this amount of money. And if it doesn't work, if you choose not to abide by what this judge said, that's totally fine. You can go fight and pay by the hour.
Karen Arndt: 28:15
Exactly. And what I notice with some clients that I speak to, I speak to all the clients that call in. I love talking to them. And one of the big things is the emotional side of it. And one lady said to me, she said, but he, Karen, he was awful throughout the marriage. I suffered, he had affairs, he did this, he did that. I want to take him to the cleaners. What I should get more just on the base of that. And I say, well, if you want to take him to the cleaners, you're going to take yourself to the cleaners at the same time. It's all just going to come out of the marital pot. The only winners are the lawyers. Um, you know, don't litigate your feelings through this. You know, you need to move on, yes. But in in England, we have something called the no-fault divorce. And so I don't know if you have that in the US as well.
Karen Covy: 29:13
Oh, yeah. Every state in the US has no-fault divorce.
Karen Arndt: 29:17
But a lot of the lawyers here, they they will uh, you know, ramp it up and they will kind of let you know, let's go get his shirt, let's go uh make him pay. Um and it it really is very, very sad uh that so many people spend so much money on lawyers, and it's absolutely the judge doesn't care. All the judge cares about is financial disclosure and then what's happening with the children. Are the children's needs met? Yes, great, and that's it.
Karen Covy: 29:47
Well, I'm curious because here in the in the United States, we tend to do things the in the reverse order. Like if you're going to a mediation, nine times out of ten, the mediator is going to start with children, and the judge. In the court is going to start with children. The idea being that you we all want children's lives to be settled as soon as possible. So, everyone's going to try to deal with that first and then go on to the money. Um do your judges ever weigh in on like what the couple wants to do with the children, or does that ever become the bone of contention that blows up the case?
Karen Arndt: 30:29
No. Generally, the couples that come to us say, look, we do have some specific questions around the children and why the children will go. Sometimes if there are special situations for uh special needs children, special education uh measures that come into place. Um and these can be addressed by the judge as well within the finance. Um, so there are specific questions that people can answer or ask us right at the start to say, would it be possible if the judge could address this or that? Sometimes it's also about things like inheritance or you know, um things like that, uh, especially if inheritance has been mingled into the marital assets. Uh so you know, they may have got a major inheritance 10, 20 years ago, and that now it's part of the marital pot. Is that part of the marital pot? Or my parents help buy the house. Do we give that back to them and then we divide what's left? Um specific questions for the judge around children, around inheritance, around certain non-marital assets, those can be addressed uh within the opinion as well. The judge will certainly, I was gonna say make a ruling, but it's not a ruling, it's an opinion. I agree. It's not a ruling.
Karen Covy: 31:51
Let me ask you, too, about the whole idea of support, because in the US, every state has guidelines for what support should be, and it's a calculation. Of course, the challenge is, and where the lawyers have the room to argue, is what goes into the calculation, what counts as income, what doesn't count as income, how do you take into account variable income, like someone who might be on a commit or working on a commission basis? There's a lot of different issues that go into all of that to come up with the calculation, to come up with the numbers for support. Do your judges also weigh in on that and say child support should be X, spousal support should be Y?
Karen Arndt: 32:39
Absolutely, absolutely. And they really, they the whole financial disclosure is very, very important to the judge. And then the judge will then distill down as part of the opinion who gets what, uh, spousal support, child support, anything else that that may be required to make sure that the children especially are looked after and their needs are met. Um the children's needs trump everything in divorce in England. So it's it is the number one priority to make sure the children are well cared for. After that, it's each party uh they get the division of the assets from that. But certainly in terms of spousal support and child support, our judges do give an opinion on that too. Uh that again, that is an area that I was talking about when you look at the goalposts. So because we're looking at finance first, and then later on, children, there could be a variable if they come back and say, okay, we did the finance through What Would A Judge Say? Then we went to a mediator and did the child arrangements. Um and now we want to have a consent order based on that. Now we know some wonderful mediators here in England and Wales. They're also ex-solicitors, very much like yourself. So, they also are very keenly aware of what would be fair and what would be unfair. So we have some wonderful uh mediators that we can refer clients to and say, right, if you need child arrangements organizing, these people are very good. We kind of have a kind of uh divorce team, if you will. But the good thing about that divorce team is you opt in and opt out as you as you need it.
Karen Covy: 34:34
So it's like an a la carte menu.
Karen Arndt: 34:36
Exactly, exactly. And um, we were talking before about Richard Suskind and his wonderful book, and we follow tomorrow's lawyer. This is kind of a north star of our whole business. And what this is saying, which Professor Richard Suskind talks about what does the future client want? The client wants an unbundled service, and the client of the future and of today wants outcomes, it doesn't just want a never-ending, you know, hourly rate. The client wants to ask the question what do I get? Um uh what do I end up at the end of my divorce in terms of finance? What do I get at the end of it? And that's what a client wants to know, and so this is why we've unbundled that. Now, I was talking to somebody a couple of weeks ago, and they were going, it's very dry, isn't it, Karen? It's very dry, it's very unemotional, your company is very niche, you know, it's not it's divorce and it's also just the finance, and I said it is, but if you need a coach, a life, you know, a divorce coach, a um an IFA, an independent financial advisor that can help you reorganize your finances after divorce. We know some wonderful people that we have personally met, and we have worked with them in the past, and so we can recommend these services that you can go opt into, and then you use them as you as you require. It's not we'd have no skin in the game there. And so we just pass them on, they sort that out, and then sometimes they come back to us a few weeks later and say, Okay, Karen, I'm now ready to proceed with my divorce. We now have everything in place, you need to create a consent order, and that's what we do. That's why it works so beautifully, because people say to me, you know, I feel as if divorce happened to me. Now I feel as if I'm in control of the divorce.
Karen Covy: 36:50
I love that. I I think that is so powerful because look, divorce is going to fundamentally change you as a human no matter what. But what you want is that change to be for the better, that you grow through it. And if you feel like you have no control and no agency and nothing you do matters, it's something that happens to you, as you said, you end up coming out of it as a victim, and that's no way to live your life. Um, and that I love that this you provide an alternative. And I can imagine that this doesn't work for everyone. I mean, for the people where their spouse is hiding income, hiding assets won't prepare that financial affidavit. You're stuck. But for those who are looking for the better way, this makes so much sense to me. It just really does. And I know stateside, like I said, some places you can persuade a lawyer to try to get that early opinion. But do you have any plans on expanding to the states anytime in the future?
Karen Arndt: 38:01
Um, we absolutely do. We absolutely do, yes. Um, Martin, our chairman based in the US, has said to North Carolina, we'd love to bring it to um Chicago, to New York. Uh, I've lived in New York, so I'm kind of an honorary New Yorker. I feel more of a New Yorker than an Atlanta. Uh, I've lived in Atlanta as well, but I loved, I love both cities. Um if we could make it work in the US, there's absolutely no reason why that shouldn't happen. One of the things we are looking at the moment is within the Commonwealth, uh, we find that that's going to work very well because uh within the Commonwealth, you know, Canada, Australia, UK, these all have very similar legal structures and they all follow the same kind of legal structures uh as London. Uh they all hate me for saying that, but they do. It's kind of London is the heart uh of the Commonwealth for law. I'm going to say that. And so we have looked at Canada, we've looked at Australia, um, and so yeah, we'd love to go into the US as well. That would be great. At the moment, we are just building our brand in the UK so that people know there's an alternative. Um, one of the things that we've we found more and more often, I don't, I can't I can't tell you why this is, but more and more women are contacting us through almost like coercive control. I've noticed it more and more often that they're saying, uh, I'm not allowed to do this, I'm not allowed to, you know, have my own bank account, I'm not allowed to uh spend money as I need to, I get an allowance. Uh he's told me that this is how it's going to be in my divorce. And it's almost you feel terrible for them because it's almost as if they've been through this terrible marriage of coercive control by the husband, in many cases, I'm sorry to say. But then the husband is continuing this in the divorce as well. And I think there's something really wrong with that. Um, and I think if you know, if we can help more and more women get out of this situation as well, very quickly, with a judge opinion, to say, there you are, husband, that's what a judge would say. Then that's all the better for it. I don't know if you're finding the same thing.
Karen Covy: 40:35
Oh, there's a lot of here stateside, we call it financial abuse. Uh and what it is is one party keeps really tight control over the finances. The other person, the challenge that I see is that often the person who doesn't have access to the money doesn't even know what it is. They don't like they really don't know where the assets are. And if that situation has been going on for years and years, it's not surprising that things get hidden and buried away and you know, and that kind of thing. And in that situation, it's like we said before, if your spouse is hiding assets and won't do a financial affidavit, then this program might not work for you. But if you know what that information is, whether your spouse does it or not, I've had instances where, you know, one party has said, I'll I know what we have. I can just fill out the affidavit. I don't need him to do it, or I don't need her to do it. And then fine, you know, you can kind of look and say, this is what how this is gonna go. Um, but if you don't even have the information to start with, it's very, very difficult. And it's and it's sad, and it it's in those cases that people might need extra services, a forensic accountant, um, maybe a CPA to go digging into you know the tax things. And I mean, it's just it's more of a struggle, but it is what it is. You married who you married.
Karen Arndt: 42:05
Yeah, yeah. We uh we have something very useful in the UK, and the name escapes me, but it's a website that you can go on to register your name and address, your information, and then say, if anybody applies for a loan against my name, because we found out quite a quite a number of cases where women have all of a sudden found out, oh my goodness, he's taken out so many loans against my name, he's in financial debt. They find so much credit cards, everything. And so the other person does not know that you've done that, but what happens is it flags it with all the financial institutions in the UK just by registering onto this website in the UK. Um, and you can say if anybody applies for anything or a loan or anything with my name attached to it, it's flagged and it's put on hold while you are asked, is this really you or is this your spouse? And that's a really great service. I don't know whether you have that in the US as well.
Karen Covy: 43:12
Uh I don't know.I'll have to look into that. I know you can put a freeze on your credit through the credit reporting bureaus, um, but I'm not sure like exactly what that applies to more globally, like if someone was going to take a personal loan or a mortgage or something like that. Um but that's so interesting. Okay, I could talk to you for hours and hours and hours. I love what you're doing. I love this idea. I can't wait until it comes to the United States. And I'm thrilled that it's going to be available, that it is available in the UK, in England and Wales, um, and hopefully soon throughout more countries as well. This has been such an amazing conversation. Karen, if somebody is interested in learning more about this and maybe helping you bring it to the US, um, where's the best place they could find you?
Karen Arndt: 44:06
Oh my goodness. Um, yes. Uh go on to the whatwouldajudgesay.com website. We have a form there, fill it in. It comes to me. So you can put anything on there that you want to ask me. Uh, also I'm on LinkedIn, Karen Arndt on LinkedIn, so you can also reach me there. We are on other uh, you know, we're on Facebook, we're on Instagram. I'm trying to think about other social media platforms as well. But yeah, the best way to do it is just to contact us through um [email protected], and then your email will come through and ask anything you want. And especially if you're in the US and you think, oh, this could be interesting, and you have an you are a lawyer, you are judge, you are somebody that says we should try and make this happen in the US. As I say, we have a wonderful our chairman is based in the US, we'd love to talk to you. Thank you for having me.
Karen Covy: 45:00
That's awesome. Thank you so much for being here. And for those of you who are watching or who are listening, if you enjoyed today's episode, if you'd like to hear more episodes just like it, do me a big favor. Give it a thumbs up, like, subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to the YouTube station, and I look forward to talking with you again next time.
