Navigating Divorce, Custody, and the Rise of AI Lawyers – with Tom Daley & Neda Garrett

What happens when seasoned family law attorneys collide with cutting-edge tech? I down with Tom Daley and Neda Garrett—two legal powerhouses who balance court battles and code. From jaw-dropping courtroom stories (yes, there’s a demon voice) to how AI is transforming the legal landscape, this convo is fast, funny, and full of insight. Whether you’re curious about ChatGPT in the courtroom or just love wild legal tales, this one's for you. You can find Tom on his website thomasjdaley.com.

Transcript

Intro Song

Rob Valincius: Like I was saying before I hit record, uh, technical difficulties with, with just about, uh, everyone across the world happens typically when you're doing this, this podcasting stuff, really any technology stuff. So, but we figured it out. At the end of the day, that's all that matters. Right?

Tom Daley: This felt like, uh, 2020 when we were all learning how to go to court on Zoom. Yes.

Rob Valincius: I can only imagine What was, what that was like with, with the, the judges, the plaintiffs, the defendants, you know, everybody just kind of like trying to figure their way out. I actually, hold on, let me, let me in. Let me introduce first before I tell you guys this. 'cause I, I think it's funny, but my name's Rob Valencia.

I am the host of the Drink o'clock podcast. I have the pleasure of having with me Tom Daley. And I should have asked you this before I started. Is it Neda Garrett?

Tom Daley: Yes.

Rob Valincius: Ned Garrett. All right, cool. I I was close. Now you guys are board certified family law attorneys, um, but you're a little more than that as well over there, Tom, right?

You got a lot of tech background over there that we're gonna get into today. Welcome to the podcast.

Tom Daley: Glad to be here.

Rob Valincius: Um, but what, what I was, what I saw today, and maybe you guys will get a kick outta this, A guy created his own lawyer in AI and played it for the judge. And the judge said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What the hell is this?

And the guy's like, oh, that's my AI lawyer that I created. And he's like, what the fuck?

Tom Daley: Yeah, that whole episode baffled me because somebody sent me the, uh, a reel of that on Instagram, and so I see the, what I guess is the chief justice of that court, and I see the AI guy talking, and so I thought it was a remote appearance.

Rob Valincius: That's what I thought too.

Tom Daley: I thought, how did the judge figure it out that quickly?

Because I didn't think he was that bad. Mm-hmm. But then she points to this guy, slouched in his chair and said, is that you? He goes, no, I said ai I made, so then he goes to the podium. It looked like he wanted to play it from there. He screwed around with his phone until she finally said, your time has started.

So that I'm like, have we learned anything since the I'm not a CAT video. Uh, which Hales out of the proud state of Texas

Rob Valincius: Uh, it's, it's, it's wild to think like, this is where we're heading. Like, and to be honest, I mean, if you look at it from someone who can't afford a lawyer, it's, you get your choice between a pro bono slash you know, defend, you know, was a public defender or whatever, right. Or an ai, and at some point the AI's probably gonna be better.

Then like, you know, obviously not an expert, right? Because a lot of times, uh, you know, public defenders, I feel, and I don't know this right, maybe you guys can shed light on this, but I feel like the movies and TV shows shed on public defenders, like they're just kind of like people who got a law degree, but you know, they don't feel like doing high profile things.

They just, you know, work for the courts or whatever. Um, you know, maybe you could shed some light on that. 'cause I think, I think, uh, most people, that's what we think of when you hear a public defender.

Tom Daley: Well, so we, so the public defenders are in the criminal world. So Ned and I are familiar with public defenders only on those rare occasions when our clients have acted so crazy that we can't handle 'em in the family court system. And the criminal law system takes over. But there is a, you know, you can tell the difference between somebody who's defending, not necessarily defending, but representing themselves in a family law matter with and without ai.

In fact, I remember, uh, about a year or so ago, I had, I filed a motion and I wanted the judge to talk to a child to get the child's preferences for where she wanted to live and who she wanted to live with and that sort of thing, which we could do in Texas. And dad didn't want that to happen. He was representing himself.

So he drafted this insane non-sequitur that he then submitted to the court. And of course, the, the court didn't have any leeway. They had to grant our motion. But I thought to myself, what if he had just taken my motion, p pasted it in to chat GPT or Claude or Gemini, or you know, one of the big LLM products and said, draft something opposing this motion.

So that's what I did. I swiped my motion, pasted it in, said draft something opposing this motion, and it came back with a very cogent response. So I thought, okay, maybe AI's not ready to take over, but a person who knows how to leverage that tool will do better than the person who doesn't.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's wild to think and, and I mean, there's some really cool stuff. I mean, I, I, uh. I, I've got a, I'm an entrepreneur to a certain degree, so I have a couple things always going on and, uh, I, I saw someone's website for something that I'm, that I'm doing, and I was like, that's a really good website.

And I plugged it into chat, CBT, and I said, Hey, I want you to recreate this website exactly how it is. Just don't use any photos, none of that stuff so I can make it my own. And it kicked out something that looked really freaking good. I was like, wow, okay. Like if, if it could do this now, just think about it when it's gonna be able to do in five to 10 years.

Tom Daley: Well, this is the worst it's ever going to be. And of course, I come to the, to using AI as a tool from a, from a technology background. Netta doesn't, she comes to it from a background of, you know, MBA law school and that sort of thing. So you've got a totally different experience. Not, not qualitatively, but just experientially.

Neda Garrett: Yeah. Um, I didn't even know what chat GPD was up until what, about a year ago or so, and Tom was telling me about it. And I've used it for all, all sorts of things from create a, you know, trip itinerary to kind of like what Tom said was, you know, you can upload something that's really, really long and, and ask it to give you bullet points on what it is or draft an outline based off of what you upload.

But going back to what you mentioned earlier about, uh, a pro se litigant, like we have seen pleadings come in from people that are representing themselves. It's very obvious that this came from chat, GBTI mean, some of 'em don't even change the formatting that chat DPT spits out, so it's like, you know, the same font, the same formatting and everything.

I 

Tom Daley: hope this pleading finds you well. 

Neda Garrett: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah.

Rob Valincius: It's like, come on man. Put in a little work, you know?

Neda Garrett: Yeah, but some of it's not bad. And so, you know, we're just like, oh, okay. You know, you just gotta kind of deal with it as it comes. But we have also seen, like, it spit out, there's a, a federal case I believe, where um, there was a lawyer that put a brief together for a judge and it citing to wrong case law, but it, it's a made up case that doesn't even exist.

And we've seen it before too in, in our line of work where it'll make it sound like a real case, like Chevron oil versus, you know, such and such and it'll have a citation and everything and it's like it found it somewhere. Looks like real law. 

Tom Daley: Yeah. 

Neda Garrett: Yeah. And so that lawyer got sanctioned for, for using a fake case because I mean, at least go check your sites, you know.

Rob Valincius: I, and I, look, I'll tell you this, and I've said this before in my podcast, it's gonna sound silly. Maybe not to you, Tom. 'cause you've been, you've been in the tech sector for a while. I still, anytime I ask any AI to do something for me, I say please

Tom Daley: I do too. Okay. I do too. But we've also all seen the memes or the reels where it shows the, uh, you know, kinda the post-apocalyptic cyber cyborgs walking around and you sees some little guy like me sitting like this and it, and it like, no, leave him alone. He always said, please, and thank you. So,

Rob Valincius: Yeah, that's all I'm saying is, is when they rise up and take over, I'll be in the line that's, they're not gonna kill. I'll probably be a slave or something, whatever,

Tom Daley: but you'll

Rob Valincius: but I'm not gonna die.

Tom Daley: Yeah. So, and actually there was some research done by, I wish I could tell you who one of the big universities, uh, you know, MIT or somebody like that who said that politeness to the LLM or to the, uh, to the AI does give better responses. And I'm sure you know, you, you, right.

And so of course an optimistic person like me would uh, say, oh, may, maybe that's some. Uh, you know, the emergence of s others would say, no, man, this is a mathematical model. And it's just that polite. So remember, it is vacuuming up all the content from the internet and put it into its mind to figure out what the next word should be, and that all this content is vacuumed up off the internet.

People who have addressed other people politely have tended to get back higher quality responses. And so when it's mimicking the same, you know, uh, predictive algorithm for figuring out what the next word should be, a little bit of politeness kind of gives it a, a little better runway to that. So, you know, whether it's, whether it's tensions or just a, a, a, you know, strapping yourself into a better set of content, it does really help besides our, uh, post-apocalyptic anxieties.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. I mean, look, I, I have manners too, so I guess it's just for me, I don't just like to just tell something, to do something for me. It makes, it makes me feel weird. I feel a little bit better. I. Saying Please. You know, even though I know right now it, it probably doesn't matter.

Tom Daley: Okay, so let me ask you a question. When you're asking it, say to, say, to replicate a website, or you're asking it to come up with a, you know, do some programming for you if that's what you do. And like, like I'll just give an experience for me, see if you had the same experience. So last week I was having it, uh, work on something for me.

And I, so I don't use Docker, and I know that's a, no one who wants to hear about law is gonna know what that means, but maybe you do, but I don't, I don't really, I, I've heard about it forever. Never used it. So I kept saying, well, I'm having this problem. I'm gonna say try this. And I'm like, I don't completely understand what you're talking about.

And I felt like, God dammit, I'm coming back for like the fifth time asking for help on this. And it was a human, I'm like, I'm about to have the door slammed in front. I'm like, so like I start getting reticent to ask the, the, like the fifth question. Like, I'm still not getting it. I don't know. Have you had that experience?

Rob Valincius: Yeah, I've had, well, you know what I'll do, even though it's got memory now, which, which kind of fucks with me a little bit. 'cause it's like, oh, hello Robert. And I'm like, uh, I keep forgetting that there's memory built into it. Um, is I will just delete it and then I'll start a whole new chat just, just to make myself feel better.

Tom Daley: Doesn't judge you.

Rob Valincius: now. So it, it remembers a lot of stuff. Like, like I'm start, I started a collectibles business and I asked it about, I helped, it helped create a logo for me. It helped pull a website for me and it helped me come up with social media and things like that. Structures right? And so when I bring up certain things, oh yeah, you, you know, your collectibles business.

And I'm like, ah, man, there's something about this that's freaking me out a little bit, but I'm going with it.

Tom Daley: Yeah, let's go.

Rob Valincius: with it.

Tom Daley: Yeah. Well, that context does help but give better results, but it is kind of freaky that you can be away from it for 10 days and you come back and it is like, there was no pause between the last bit of the conversation, which you're continuing with.

Rob Valincius: Did you guys download the app? Have you had the voice conversations with chat? GBT.

Neda Garrett: I have the app, but I haven't had a voice conversation with it.

Rob Valincius: you all right When this podcast is over. Now, I, I I hope you guys email me okay after this. 'cause I want, I want your feedback. Have a conversation with chat GBT. That'll freak you the fuck out. It's like that. Oh, because it.

Neda Garrett: we have, like, I've written an email before and he's laughing. You know 

Tom Daley: exactly what this is. Yeah. 

Neda Garrett: So I was irritated about something that happened, uh, with my son's soccer team. And so I wrote an email and it, I said, this is what's happened, and I need you to write an email to the directors and it spit something out.

And I was like, nice, but I need you to be angrier. And so it spits something else out. I go, no, I need you to be really angry because this is exactly what happened. And I just started typing what happened, and it just wrote out this really, really angry email. How did it even sign it? It was like. Something like, 

Tom Daley: I don't recall.

I do recall that at his, at the apex of its, of its, uh, I, she's like, perfect spend. 

Neda Garrett: Yes. It's like, okay, but, but you can negotiate with it. You know, you can tell it, change this, do this, change your tone, et cetera. Which is so interesting to me. 

Tom Daley: Of course. What, what his experience is telling us is now chat. GBT remembers you as an angry person 

Neda Garrett: probably.

So

Rob Valincius: I'm just saying, me, me and Tom sound pretty safe in the apocalypse. That's all I'm saying over here. Right.

Tom Daley: right. This is why all of Ned's emails start with, I hope this email finds you dead. Yeah.

Rob Valincius: look, I work, I work in an office, so a lot of times I'm typing the angry email and I'm like, all right, let me plug this. And I've taught, I, I'm, I'm, um. A trainer for our, our company. So I will, I had to teach.

Um, so our support staff is, is some, um, some older ladies. And they're, they're all, they're awesome. I, I fucking love them, but they're, you know, they, they know technology, but they don't know it. So I had to have a whole chat GBT class, and I'm like, this is what you could do if, and, and look, I work in the insurance world and people say some really messed up shit to you because they don't give a shit, you know?

Um, so I'm like, all right, what I need you to do is copy their response, put it in the Chatt BT, and say, how would you respond to this? Telling them to go fuck themselves, but in the most businesslike manner you could possibly handle it. And, uh, it kicks out some great stuff. You read it, you're like, oh man, I, if I can only have a camera and watch this guy read this email, you know, he's bright red and fuming

Tom Daley: Oh, right. Sure. Well see, I, so I, I have the opposite because I start with the angry email and, uh, and, and I'll just tell it my email is likely to be printed off and shown to a judge at a hearing. Please rewrite the, the above draft in a manner that won't get me sanctioned. And it, it seems to have some idea what that means.

I really get, I'm very happy with the results it comes up with.

Rob Valincius: It's, it's getting better. And before you know it, I mean, you know, I, I'd be, I'm really interested to see what GBT five, which I think we're, we're getting pretty close to, so it'll, it'll be, uh, it'll be a trip

Tom Daley: They keep teasing us with it. Yeah,

Rob Valincius: Yeah, yeah. Four, 4.5. Then there'll be 4.75 and there'll be, there'll be mini five

Tom Daley: right.

Rob Valincius: you know it.

Right. Um, but let, let's talk a little bit about you guys. So before we get into the meat and bones of this, um, you know, can each of you kind of tell me a little bit about, you know, what growing up was like and, and what got you into, um, studying law and eventually becoming a lawyer?

Neda Garrett: I, 

Tom Daley: I, I 

Neda Garrett: don't even know where to start. So, um, you know, I just went to a and m for undergrad, um, and I got a business degree. Because I wanted to go to law school and I didn't wanna just get a poli-sci degree in case law, you know, fell through. So I got a business degree and then I went to tech for law school and I thought I was gonna be a corporate lawyer and came out and,

Rob Valincius: Fun.

Neda Garrett: yeah.

'cause everyone wants to do that. That's what you see on tv, you know, and came out, got to, came, graduated in 2009 where the economy was in a great state and, uh, just tried applying to wherever I could get in. Got a job at a small firm that kind of did a little bit of whatever, walked in the door. And my boss did not want to really do family law, so I was, you know, stuck doing it and trying to figure my way out.

Landed here at the firm I'm currently in and we've, I, I've been doing family law exclusively now for 15 years. So, I mean, just kind of fell unto all the right pieces. The pieces fell in place, just, you know, met this person, met this person, met this person, and. I can't imagine doing anything else at this point.

Rob Valincius: It's life, right? It's all life. Life is just a big net game of networking.

Neda Garrett: yeah. And you talk to, you talk to interesting people. Everybody has a story and, um, you know, there's always some drama sometimes, and it just keeps it interesting. You're not sitting at a desk just reviewing documents, you're just dealing with people and their problems so

Rob Valincius: like a psychologist in a way too. You gotta like really get into someone's head, think how you know what they did, how they reacted, and then how you can use that against them, you

Tom Daley: well. Right, right. I mean, that's, that's really, you know, I was telling somebody the other day, the essence of our job is that, you know, we have these chemical reactions that occur in our brains. We call 'em thoughts, and then either through compressing air with voice or electromechanical with typing. I'm trying to create that same chemical reaction as somebody else's head.

I want to convince them of my idea and that that's all we do all day long. It's just about communications. Uh, and so that's why some of this AI stuff is better because to the extent that we can communicate more effectively or in a manner that doesn't automatically, uh, inspire, I, uh, we start to get better and better at creating that sympathetic chemical reaction in the other brain.

I started the life as a also business, well economics is what I got my undergraduate degree in. So I've got a 20 year head start on deta in life, uh, almost, almost to the day, uh, like, like about like a month. Yeah, a little less than a month apart. So I was, uh, so no one has to know how old I am and or by do the delta to figure out how old she is.

But anyway, I, I got that head start. So I graduated with a degree in economics, a bachelor's degree in economic, which is almost as useful as a bachelor's degree in psychology, right? You're not gonna get on the president's economic, uh, advisor's forum. So I got into

Rob Valincius: I wanted to do, by the way, I wanted to be a psychologist and that's actually where, where I met my fiance in college. And, uh, it, uh, I just didn't feel like doing, I was one of those people. I was already working full-time and I just didn't feel like doing another four years to get a master's to get a job.

Um,

Tom Daley: And then on to get the PhD. Yeah. Yeah. So I was kind of in the same boat, so I got out and I thought, well, I gotta do something. I don't want to go. My, when I, one of my professors said, you gotta get an MBA at Stanford or somewhere. I'm like, I gotta get a job. I'm tired of being poor. So, you know, I went and got a job that didn't pay much.

But anyway, started at a call center and then just decided to become a programmer. Got got onto Wall Street, did some stuff there, started a software company, sold it. And then in 2002 I learned to go to law school a long time ago, but I just didn't have the money for it. So I joined ROTC 'cause they would pay for me to, okay, well I was military material, not at all, like the opposite of that.

I lasted, I didn't last a week in ROTC in college. Like I, they're like, Hey, you gotta do 20 pushups. I'm like, at once.

Rob Valincius: Do I get a break?

Tom Daley: Can we, can we do these in installments? I'll do four or five today. Come back tomorrow. Is there a deadline? Deadline? I gotta get these done by. I'm doing 

Neda Garrett: four or five, either. 

Tom Daley: 40 years ago I had a different shaped body with

Rob Valincius: we all?

Tom Daley: but I probably wasn't doing it then either. So, uh, so I, I just didn't do it.

Then after I sold the company, I was just kind of tired of the electronic trading world. It just seemed like there were other things to do and there were greater things to do, but they were gonna be done by greater minds than mine. I had done probably all I was gonna do in that field, so I thought, well, I remember I used to wanna be a lawyer.

I wonder what that would be like. And so off I go. And then, uh, you know, I, I, I met a gal who did family loss. I'm like, well, I only want to do family or criminal 'cause I like people. I. And if I just wanna do transactional stuff, I can get back in the software world. 'cause that's all trans, that's how civil law is, is you're, you're just programming, uh, a Microsoft Word instead of uh, you know, Python or whatever.

So, just started practicing. So Ned and I probably started practicing law in earnest about the same time I graduated in oh seven, but then I ran for office, uh, didn't win. And so I, you know, basically screwed around oh seven and oh eight doing that. So in 2009 I'm like, okay, you know, my wife saw how much money I spent on the campaign and said, you've, you've gotta get, go, make money instead of spending.

So we probably started about three months apart.

Rob Valincius: That's cool.

Tom Daley: Yeah, three months apart and worlds apart. But, uh, just by pure statistical chance, wound up at the same firm.

Rob Valincius: And, and you decided, so your decision was between criminal and family and you went the family route. Was there a reason you chose family over criminal?

Tom Daley: So I, I keep trying to figure out a way to articulate a noble reason for that. And, and I think I could, but it would be a lie. You can't make money. You can't make money in the criminal world. You're either gonna, you're either gonna represent the really high profile criminals and it's like the eight guys and gals to do that.

Or you're gonna be doing the public defender work for $50,000 a year. Well, I'd do all kinds of stuff to make $50,000, uh, besides putting on a suit and going into a courthouse. So I thought, lemme do family law. But the other part of family law and criminal law, we say you've got, you know, bad people on their best behavior.

They're, they're, they, they've done something bad or they're certainly accused of doing something bad and they're just. Best suit, best foot forward first haircut they've had in 20 years trying to, in family law, we generally have good people on their worst behavior. These are people who are, they've been married, maybe they've got some kids together maybe, and they're generally more or less productive citizens.

But something's happened in this relationship that has triggered them to act like monkeys. And so we get to come in and help them resolve the problems, their family dynamics. When counselors give up, that's when the family law attorneys catch and we try to carry it across the, uh, the finish line for 'em.

Rob Valincius: That's gotta be, that's gotta be pretty interesting. Um, I, I, I can tell you the family dynamics with my fiance's family is, I'm sure you guys would have a field day over there.

Tom Daley: Oh, I bet.

Rob Valincius: She's laugh. She's behind the green screen. She's laughing. Um, so, so let's talk a little bit about law. Um, you know, maybe can you guys talk a little bit about, you know, what you do as, um, you know, uh, family law attorneys and, you know, kind of go over, you know, maybe some misconceptions that people have about family law.

Mm-hmm.

Tom Daley: Well, the primary things that we will do, there's, there's other parts of family law than what Ned and I work on. But the primary things that we're gonna do is either a divorce, child custody issues, and sometimes that's the same lawsuit of people are divorcing with children. Um, and then either a modification of the custody arrangement as the kids go older, uh, grow older, and the, uh, circumstances change enforcement of the order.

If somebody's not letting the other parents see the kids or they're not paying their child support or enforcing that divorce decree, you know, I was supposed to deliver some property to my ex-wife and I didn't. So she files a lawsuit to collected from me. So. That's the bulk of what we do is gonna be those sorts of lawsuits.

There's also, within family law, there's adoptions and terminations and that sort of thing. But, and, and we've got attorneys at our firm to do that, but that doesn't really make up much of the practice, uh, for me and Netta. So by focusing on those, those touch points in a family's life or in a person's life, when the marriage is falling apart, or where the co-parenting relationship maybe they were living together, has fallen apart.

And so they've gotta figure out how we're gonna raise these kids together when we're not together. So that's where we're entering into people's lives. So the first thing we're having to do is like, what got us here? Not from the mental healthcare professional's perspective. So maybe as the, as the family therapist, if that was your job, you might be saying, okay, how did we get here?

How do we get you back? Right. How do we, you know, how do we reconcile the marriage or reconcile the co-parenting relationship? No, the counselors have given up. That's when we pick up, the marriage can't be reconciled. The co-parenting relationship can't be reconciled. So how do we put in place, uh, you know, basically a peace treaty to stop the warfare that it, that erupts between people?

Rob Valincius: Which I'm sure you've seen some messy, crazy stuff

Tom Daley: Uh,

Rob Valincius: that's gotta be some of the lowest points of people's lives typically is, is divorce and uh, the family,

Tom Daley: well it's the pain, right? Yeah. Just the, the, you know, talk about that a little bit. Just the unresolved pain that people come in with. 

Neda Garrett: Yeah. I mean, one of the harder cases to deal with sometimes is when you have a client who doesn't want the divorce and, you know, so it is not always two people coming, you know, in their, in the trenches with their weapons pointed at each other.

Sometimes you have one that absolutely just doesn't wanna be there. Um, some people religiously oppose divorce. Um, some people, um. Just, you know, I love my wife, I love my husband. I absolutely don't wanna be here. Um, we have represented people in all stages of their lives. I've represented people that are, um, pregnant and going through a divorce.

Um, and we're talking about who's gonna be in a delivery room and what are we gonna name this unborn child. Um, we've represented people that are in their eighties that are getting divorced after being together for 60 something years. Um,

Rob Valincius: just, come on man. I work in the senior world and I gotta tell you, that's just silly. You know? You made it that long.

Tom Daley: well, or, or, or just let actuarial reality deliver for you.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. I mean, at that point you're just lucky to get up every

Tom Daley: Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Valincius: Breathe. See?

Tom Daley: One, one of you will cross the finish line of life before the other one. The last one across wins everything. Yeah.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. I mean, I, I, I mean, I get it. I get it. Especially because we live in a world now where like, especially, you know, I deal with seniors every day, I mean. 65 is the new 50. I mean, I deal with some 65 year olds that are in better shape than me, and I'm 38. You know, so like, they take, you know, you have a lot of people that are taking way better care of themselves.

So, I mean, I guess 80, if they take really good care. Like, I, I mean, I work with a couple insurance guys that are, you know, PL 80 plus, and they're so out there selling insurance

Tom Daley: Okay. Exactly.

Rob Valincius: And I mean, I, I, okay, I guess I could see it if they, if they feel like they got more years left to live. But that's crazy to me to give up after, you know, 60 years of being together.

Neda Garrett: Well, you could be 80 and be like, I got 15 years left. You know, my dad lived to be 95 and I don't wanna spend the next 15 years, or last 15 years in my life in this situation.

Rob Valincius: True. Yeah. I mean, I, I could, I guess I could see that, I mean, I don't know, I guess some, whether there's people, if you stuck it out that long, why, why? Wait. You know? Um, but that's.

Tom Daley: at that age is child custody battles.

Rob Valincius: Yeah, I would imagine

Tom Daley: By then, your, by then your children are 55, 60 years old. But 

Neda Garrett: sometimes that gets messy too. 'cause you get those adult children, um, that are getting involved and sometimes they're aligned with one parent over another. Sometimes you have some cognitive decline for one parent or, or I guess one party or another in that situation.

Mm-hmm. And sometimes you're litigating a divorce and it's really the adult child of the parties that's really litigating it in the background. 

Tom Daley: That's true. Um, 

Neda Garrett: so it can get messy on the flip side.

Rob Valincius: And typically it's because of assets when you're, when you're talking that too. So you have the puppet master in the background because they want, they want more of what would be coming to them rather than, you know,

Tom Daley: That happens a lot,

Rob Valincius: their family.

Tom Daley: right? That happens a lot. They're just, whether it's for good reason or bad, sometimes it's greed, and other times it's just like, I know that if dad, who I'm not aligned with, if he gets a bunch of assets, my grandchildren or his grandchildren, my children will never see it. The more I can get into mom's side of the balance sheet, the more I know she's willing to leave to either me or my grand or, or her grandchildren, my children, so that that happens too.

Yeah.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. I mean, I could see it. I mean, I know, um, it just, money money's a, a ter. I mean, it's, it's the greatest thing because if you have it, you're happy and you can do whatever you want. Right. But it's also like one of those motivators that's like, I don't, for me personally, and I've always been this way, look, I love money.

Money is great, but that is not my number one motivation to do things. Like I, I love when I love something. I love it unconditionally, right? So it love for me is, is way above money because, you know, at the end of the day when you die, you're not taking that shit with you, you know?

Tom Daley: Well, and the money battles that baffle me are the ones kind of in the middle of the, of the combined wealth curve. And by that I mean, let's say that together we've got a good nest egg. We're gonna, you know, we retire together and we have retired together. We've got, we've got, we've got enough, right?

We're not. Super, super rich, but we're not broke. Well, if we get divorced, that ain't gonna be true. We're both gonna be, we're gonna go from prosperous to not prosperous. So I get that those battles are worth waging. The ones that baffle me are the ones where there's not even two crumbs in the cabinet.

You're poor together, you're gonna be poor afterwards. What does this fight over? Or where You have these extremely wealthy families, everybody's walking away a billionaire, everybody, but let's fight about the last crumb. And am I? And so when I was talking to dad earlier about the pain, that's where it comes up for us.

Not everything. In fact, most of the time it's not about what it's about. They'll, they'll come in screaming about how he's done something with, with this payment that he didn't make. And you're like, oh, well, we'll get right on that. How, how much was it of $40? Like a day or an hour? Like, well, no, it's per year, but it, but like, do you really think we're litigating over $40?

No, he's gotten away with everything throughout the marriage. That's her perspective, right? He's gotten away with everything. Finally, I've got this pedigree blue chip, uh, army on my side, and today the battle turns. It, fortunately it turned on a $40 deal, but we're gonna mount our troops and attack. And so that's, so that's what trying to get us to go heal the pain and we just don't do that.

You know, we, we, we end the conflict, but we don't, you know, the legal conflict, but we don't end the, the interpersonal conflict.

Rob Valincius: Well, all right. Tell me if there's, this could be for both of you or either of you. Um, tell me, uh, one courtroom moment that you'd never forget, and you don't have to go into specifics, obviously I know with, um, you know, HIPAA and all

Tom Daley: know what it is for me, and I bet I want to hear hers. I bet it's the same one. 

Neda Garrett: No, you go ahead. 

Tom Daley: So Ned and I were, were, were trying a case together one time and uh, you know, 

Neda Garrett: it is the same one. Go ahead. It's the same one, one, yeah, ahead. Go ahead. 

Tom Daley: And, and we have, you know, somewhat, we have, we have slightly different styles, you know, in the courtroom, and she, her, her thing is cross examination.

Okay. So, I mean, I've, I've been in court with her before where, I'm not kidding, the opposing party, we were trying the case actually in our, in our conference room because it was a private deal. And, uh, the opposing party was sitting like right there for me and that it was sitting here. And she examined here.

I swear to you, he shit himself and nearly vomited, but that's not the unforgettable moment. So the unforgettable, because she was just pounding, you know, he's sobbing and so she talks louder, so her voice carries over his sobs. So, so that's, that's her cross-examination style. So the one that I'm about to talk about got witnesses on the witness stand and.

I'm sitting kind of in the courtroom like, like this, just next to Nevis, kind of, listen, what's going on? It's, it's not a big deal. She's just asking some background questions and then she asked a follow up question, maybe more stridently than he was expecting. But nonetheless, I didn't, I wouldn't sit there going, good God, what are you doing? He responds back, no, I can do voices too.

Rob Valincius: What,

Tom Daley: That face you just made, that's the judge. That's what the judge did.

Rob Valincius: what like was he trying to be like a demon or something?

Tom Daley: That's what it sounded like. And I, I was kind of looking down. I didn't even see him. I was just, I was just kind of looking down at the desk, kind of paying attention, listening, you know, kind of sitting in that sort of a posture. And I looked up at the judge and I looked at nettle. I'm like, what did you do?

I didn't, what did you do? You didn't do anything. Didn't do anything. He didn't, that was it. It was gonna get worse for him as time went on that day, but that was. Pretty early on the process, and I will never forget, uh, the exorcism that she conducted within the first 90 seconds of a cross examination.

Rob Valincius: so, so did he go back to, nor that was the only time he said, said something like that.

Tom Daley: So what did you reply? 

Neda Garrett: I objected. Um, because

Rob Valincius: Attempted a demon possession,

Neda Garrett: Yeah, I know. Except we have to use legal objections. And so the legal objection to a comment that is not responsive to my question is a sidebar. So I stood up and I said, objection, sidebar. And the judge said, sustained, which means that he agreed with my objection.

And then I sat down, I asked my question again, and this time he took a deep breath and answered it

Rob Valincius: What you can never, like, underestimate what a human being is willing to do and just, could you imagine this, uh, their stenographer, like, like,

Tom Daley: I know. We need to get the transcript of that trial and see what she wrote. You know? Yes. In a demon voice. Like what did, what did she write?

Rob Valincius: you just hear, you just hear this. She's like,

Tom Daley: exactly,

Rob Valincius: like, I don't even know what to, what to say to that. You know?

Tom Daley: and, and of course the part that by itself was weird enough, but part of the allegations the poor guy was dealing with was that he might have a substance abuse issue. It's like

Rob Valincius: tells me he shot himself in the foot there.

Tom Daley: just like both feet all at once. Easy shot.

Rob Valincius: Oh man. I mean, that's, that's gotta be rough. And, and you know, what, uh, you know, to, to kind of go with that, how do you guys, um, be, because obviously you deal with, I feel like, like if I'm looking at law as a whole, right. You know, you could get very into these cases, right? Especially like on the criminal side, you know, if you're trying something for murder or whatever, you can get pretty invested into that.

But I'd imagine on your side with the families, how hard is it for you to not put emotion into this? Like, because you know, obviously you have to be the litigators, right? You have to be like levelheaded and you're also fighting for one side. Right? How do you keep your emotions outta that and how do you go home and, and just, and cut that off?

Because that's gotta be hard to just exercise that from your, your being when, when you leave the courtroom.

Neda Garrett: Yeah. I mean, I, I think the longer you do it, the easier it gets. To kind of, you know, have a better work life balance and turn it off. But, um, sometimes you just don't. Um, you know, like I'll be at home and just working on something else and I'll think about a case, you know, and sometimes I'll even send myself an email so I don't forget whatever it is I thought about.

Um, but 

Tom Daley: don't forget to be mad about this tomorrow. 

Neda Garrett: Exactly. But, um, because we deal with families and we have our own families, there is a lot of intersection, you know, um, I, I represent people whose kids go to my kids' schools, you know? Um, and, and so it's just, there is intersection all the time. Or you'll see something and you're like, oh, I had that one case where my client was mad about something similar to this.

Um, but just the longer I've been doing it, the easier it is to try to turn it off. Like when I go on vacation, um, I'm getting better at, you know, not checking emails and turning it off. He disagrees, but, but 

Tom Daley: it's 'cause the wifi on the cruise ship didn't work, doesn't mean she's got discipline. 

Neda Garrett: Oh, that's true.

Rob Valincius: Just go to the Dominican Republic. Man, the wifi sucks there.

Tom Daley: Yeah. There you 

Neda Garrett: go. All right. But sometimes we really do get into a case, especially when we have a multi-day trial coming up. Um, we'll clear our calendars. Um, we've had cases where we've come up here on the weekends and I'm sitting on the floor with notebooks in front of me and just trying to, you know, go through it and he'll do the same thing.

And we've been up here till two, three in the morning before trying to get ready for a trial. You didn't sleep one night? Um, they just stayed up here and worked the next day. Somehow 

Tom Daley: Fucking miserable. 

Neda Garrett: Yeah.

Rob Valincius: Lot of caffeine.

Neda Garrett: well. It wasn't just the experience he was as well. 

Tom Daley: Oh yeah. 

Neda Garrett: Um, but, but sometimes we really just do, I mean, these are people's kids and, and you get, you have a relationship with these clients at some point where it's like, you know, you're really trying to fight for them and you, you take up a cause where you really believe in your client and, and their their case and you fight for it passionately and in and outta the courtroom.

Tom Daley: I think that also what I've observed is different attorneys, probably just different personality types, will feel a little bit of emotion about different parts of the case. Like some will say like, this is fundamentally unfair to this poor person. They, this, they shouldn't have to go through this, screw this person for doing this, you know, this, uh, to our client or that kind of thing.

Where sometimes you're mad at your own clients for being horrible. Where I tend to have to control is, um, stupidity. So the clients will like. I don't know. Transiently get me mad. Like, like every single whiny email. I'm like, I'm like, eh, alright, gather yourself. Go. But we're I go stomping around the room until someone pours water on my head is when another attorney sends over something so disconnected from Rationale Facts or the law that it just, like all you're doing here is making these people's lives worse.

And yeah, I'll storm around about that for, for, I mean, I can't, I none here. I'd lie saying it over pretty quickly, but, but she knows I don't, I get over it very quickly at all. 

Neda Garrett: That doesn't bother me. Like, I, when something like that happens, I kind like, ha ha, you know, I just get over it. What bothers me is when people do stuff, when it comes to kids, well, like, I just can't handle that.

You know, the recordings that we hear and, and the pictures and people, you know, fighting in front of their kids and doing stuff like that. Like, I can't get past that. And that's what sticks with me for the longest period of time. 

Tom Daley: But when you go home. My, my, I only have one child, she's 27 or about to be 28, so I don't go home to little kids anymore.

And my wife's, you know, she's got a career, so it's not like she's waiting at home like, oh my gosh, let's see what Tom wants to do tonight. Like, she's happy if I come home and I'm distracted. But, uh, but I, I can't be fully present. We've been married 38 years. I can't be fully present to make that 39th year work or that 40th year work if I'm carrying all this home.

And so sometimes I have to remind myself that I cannot take responsibility for the circumstances these people put themselves in. And there's always an apportionment of cause to the situation. And I don't mean to blame victims, but if you are solely a victim, then you have no ability to make your situation better so everybody's got something.

Like even if, even if the responsibility is I've married the wrong person, or I've stayed in the marriage for too long, whatever it is. But, uh, I just like, I cannot take responsibility for what you did. I can help you unwind it. I can try to help you get, adjust an equitable outcome, but I can't take responsibility for it or I'm not gonna make it to year number 39.

Neda Garrett: And one thing, one of our law partners said to a client one time that stuck with me was he's been practicing law for 45 years or so. 

Tom Daley: Oh yeah. 

Neda Garrett: And, um, he said that, and he's been married for longer than that. Um, and he said it was like being an ER physician and going home to a skin knee sometimes. Because, because what we do sometimes is so heavy and we hear about some crazy facts and just, you know, there's family violence, there's substance abuse, there's all sorts of things.

And then you go home and your spouse is, you know, harping on you about something at the house, and you're like, okay, hold on a second. What I

Rob Valincius: Never happens to us. I don't know what you're talking about.

Tom Daley: Yeah. Right. Is that right? Exactly. That's just a lawyer thing that, that's not to have anybody else in the world. 

Neda Garrett: Yeah. And you know what the flip side of it looks like too?

So if I go home and I want to, you know, strangle my husband, I'm like, okay, well I also know what this looks like post-divorce as far as co-parenting and whatnot, and maybe I don't wanna go there. You know? So, um, sometimes it's, it's helpful to know what the flip side looks like. That's, 

Tom Daley: that's probably true.

Rob Valincius: that's actually really good. I didn't think about it like that. You're like, ah, you know what? I know it's on the other end and the grass is not greener there.

Tom Daley: No, it's not. Sometimes there's not even any grass.

Rob Valincius: Um, is it, is there any truth, and I, you know, I, it would behoove me if I didn't ask this, but is there any truth that, um, and, and it might be different in Texas, I know law everywhere is a little different, uh, that the guys men get the, the short end of the stick in, in most cases.

Tom Daley: I'm glad you asked that, because earlier when you said what, you know, a common myth. That's the common myth. Mm-hmm. And so I was doing an interview one time with, uh, Annetta knows the name of the person. Remembering names isn't my strong suit. But anyway, I guess she's famous for not liking women, whatever.

Anyway, so she's interviewing me about, uh, the topic was how to destroy a man or something like that. I think was the, was the book they were trying to do a, a develop a documentary around, and, and so she was asking me, uh, yeah. Right. Um, well, it was a critique of the family law system saying that it's, it's put together to destroy men.

That's the idea of it. And so she asked me that. She goes, do you think the family law system is put together to destroy men? And I said, in Texas, all of our laws down in Austin are passed by a bunch of divorced men. It, to me, it just doesn't seem statistically very likely that a bunch of folks put in place a system designed to harm their bros.

So I don't know that the system is designed that way. Where I think you see problems is. Is, uh, say co-parenting is an example. Okay. So in, in my marriage, when our kid was little and she was living with us at home, uh, Ava, my wife, she did, she did all the lifting. Okay? I, I mean, if she dropped something, I might pick it up.

She asked, but, but like, she was the captain of the parenting ship. But I got to see my daughter every single night. We had, you know, because we lived together, right? So we, we were married and we saw my kid every single night. Now imagine if we get divorced, she's gonna go up and tell the judge, this child should primarily live with me.

And I'm gonna say no. I want the child to primarily live with me. Because we both know that no matter how this turns out, we're not gonna get to see our kid every night like we used to do. We're we're, even if she's with mom 90% of the time, 10% of the time mom's not gonna get to see her kid again. Whereas she used to see her a hundred percent of the time.

So even 50 50 is a hard thing to follow. So we're both up there kind of asking for the same thing. So what's the judge asking? The judge is saying. Who's been doing the lifting, who's been the primary caregiver of this child. And often enough, you know, the way our society's working these days, it, it has, you know, for about the last 5,000 years, uh, it's the mom.

That's not always the case. Sometimes you have the moms that are, they have their own mental health problems or substance abuse problems, or career, career, you know, uh, traveling career, that kind of thing. And they can, they can, they never were the primary parent. And those are always the contra examples of the, the fathers winning custody of their children.

And we have plenty of cases like that. We represent fathers and get them custody because they've been primary caregivers, or at least equal caregivers. But it's really, I don't think the family law system is set up that way. I just think that we've adopted, again for about 5,000 years, some social norms that have Mom like net.

Net is one of the highest producing partners in our firm and a primary caregiver of kids. That's just, that's, yeah. Well, three. Yeah, exactly. Well, I, I can't count as an army, an army of kids. Right. And that's just, that's just how that works out. And, uh, I'm not an advocate for that or necessarily a critic of it.

But the outcome of that is that in a custody dispute, uh, she would have a hard time losing. Same thing with the asset division is, you know, my wife and I have accumulated, you know, a thousand dollars time to leave, time to split up. Well, I've got really high earnings capacity and I don't have any medical issues and I don't have any, you know, educational deficiency.

You know, I've got. Graduate degree and all that and, and my wife has all that stuff too. But hypothetically to say she's leaving, she doesn't really have much of an earnings capacity. She's got a degree in crayon sorting. And that was part of our deal, right? That I wasn't critical of that through the 38 years of marriage.

But here the marriage is breaking apart. I can go on to make law partner money and she's gonna go on to make crayon sorter money. And so the judge may say, you know what? We're in Texas. We certainly don't want you on welfare. We're not gonna pay you, Tom. That's your mistake, not ours. We're not gonna pay for her.

So outta that a thousand dollars maybe, maybe we're gonna give her 600 and you 400. Well, now I feel like I've been deprived of the fruits of all my labors all over all these years. And mathematically that's true. But, but existentially, what really happened was the court's like, Tom, you're gonna make it back.

She won't. 

Neda Garrett: Well, and sometimes it's not even dividing it disproportionately. Some people have the attitude of, well, I earned it with my blood, sweat and tears and I was the one working and she never worked a day in her life or flip side. Um, you know, some women have that attitude if they make more than their spouses.

And um, honestly, I think men handle that portion of the law better sometimes in my cases where I'm like, oh yeah, you know, it's all community property. It's all gonna be divided 50 50, doesn't matter who earned it. And then women, because of that role reversal there, um, when they're the ones working in earning more money than their, their husbands, um, and you tell them, yeah, I understand that you worked, I understand that you had babies and then you had to go back to work right away and you earned all this money, but it's, he gets part of it too.

Um, so and so it, I've seen it both ways and I'm with Tom. I don't think it's a, it's a legal issue more of just a societal. Norm type situation.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. I mean, I can see that and I, I can see that and you know, you do have to value, I mean, yeah, working. I. You know, and, and, and bringing in the money, you know, obviously you pay the bills and stuff, but you know, if the woman's taking care of the kids, I mean, that's a job and it's on it on its own for sure.

Especially if there's more than one. We don't

Tom Daley: my wife, you know

Rob Valincius: gonna stick with dogs.

Tom Daley: well. Yeah, exactly. Well, one of my wife's bumper stickers I wish she was selling, says, you know, and she's not a crude person, but this is her little, her bumper sticker. Nonetheless, she says, uh, if you want to be the primary parent, do primary shit. Yeah,

Rob Valincius: I mean, it's a great bumper sticker, you know.

Tom Daley: yeah, exactly.

I don't, I don't, we probably wouldn't even have to do this. We would just sell bumper stickers that come out of her mind. But that's, that's the thing is, is your past comes home to roost when they divide things up, and it doesn't, it feels like a qualitative judgment of who you've been. And it's, but it's not.

It's just that we've got these. These what the, what the parents like to focus on is their rights and the, and the, and the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court have made it real clear parents do have rights, but what the Texas Family Code tells us to do in this very thunderous language, at the beginning of Title V, it says essentially that the, the needs of the child shall always be the primary consideration of the court.

So, so when I tell a client, look, if you, we want something from the judge, we're not gonna talk about how I have these god-given rights and these natural rights and these constitutional rights. We talk about how, how does this affect the child? So if the kid, if let's say that our kid has, um, is uniquely talented in math, and I'm really good at math and mom can't do any math, so I go, that's part of my argument.

This child needs what I can offer on math. So at least let's come up with a possession schedule that lets me have homework nights or that sort of thing, as opposed to, I'm an equal parent, I should have equal time. That's just a, a weak argument. The way to get there is to argue from the perspective of the child.

How does this affect your child?

Rob Valincius: Oh, that's a good way to look at it. I didn't really think about that. Um, you know, when my parents divorced, it was, you know, it was all right, well, going to live with mom because that's, that's what happened. And there was, there wasn't really anything about it. Um, you know, my mom, I don't even think tried to take my dad to court for anything really.

Uh, and then living with my mom and the new stepdad was awful.

Tom Daley: Oh, I'm sorry.

Rob Valincius: uh, decided that I was, and I'm the older son, so I have a brother, he's five years younger than me. And, uh, I felt bad leaving him, but I'm like, nah, bro, I can't do, I can't do this. I'm, uh, no, fuck this guy. Uh, but living with my dad who was 30, he's my dad, was. old was my dad? Let's see. My dad is 62, I'm 38. My dad was probably younger than me. He was maybe 35, 36. So in my head, I'm imagining me getting a divorce, like, and it wasn't his fault. My mom cheated on my dad and then, you know, it all went downhill, whatever. And I could only imagine what my reaction would be, which was probably what my dad went off the rails we'll say.

And I decided to live with him. So my life as like a 13-year-old was pretty interesting.

Tom Daley: Oh, I bet. Wow.

Rob Valincius: um, my mom was not happy, but I made the decision and, uh, I gotta say, uh. I learned because my mom, I was a, a mama's boy for sure. Like she did everything. Laundry, dishes, cooked, cleaned everything. When I went to live with my dad, my dad did zero.

He's like, nah, bro, you're gonna learn how to be an adult. So I did all the dishes. He had col, he had roommates that were in college. So you just come downstairs, people would be passed out on the couch. There'd be a bowl on the table. And like my dad would try, like my dad, my dad always worked with his hands.

So he was doing, you know, whatever he could to pay the bills. And he would try to explain it off for a kid who didn't really understand what that was. 'cause I was very naive. Um, now looking back, I'm like, they were, they, they were smoking weed, all

Tom Daley: Right.

Rob Valincius: All those bastards, you know? Um, but it, I, I, I do, I am happy I did that because I learned, I learned how to be an adult early in life and I saw how hard my dad had to work to make ends meet.

And I saw my dad make a lot of fucking mistakes. And, uh, you know, for me it was a really good learning experience of what to do and what not to do. Um, had I stayed with my mom, I mean, I'm sure I would've turned out fine, um, but I don't think I would've been an adult as fast, you know, it took me a lot longer.

And she's, my mom's a caregiver. That's what she, that's what she does. She takes care of everybody, you know? So if I had a little sniffles, she's like, oh, you know, you know, like one of those, uh, and she still does it. My mom, I love her to death. They, I live in Northeast Philadelphia. She lives an hour from me.

If she sees a news story that there was a car crash, I'm getting a phone call. Are you okay? I'm like, mom, I'm fine. Northeast Philly's a pretty big area, you

Tom Daley: Right, right. Well, you know, uh, not to, not to minimize, uh, what you had to go through as a kid. 'cause, because no one can, no one ever knows what another person experiences. But when I hear your story, what I don't hear is the stuff that makes our light stay on. In other words, you get the sun, and, and that's a pretty common scenario.

The sun gets to a certain age, like, yeah, I wanna go live with dad. I'm starting to identify with male role models, and I like my dad. Okay, first of all, apparently you didn't get alienated from your dad by your mom, which she easily could have done. So I, I thank her for that. And when you made that decision.

That custody battle, that's a million dollar battle. Yeah. Are you kidding me? I can get this whole floor of people signed up in billing to fight her off or to fight your dad off. And your mom said, you know, do what you need to do. I'm not happy about this, but do what you need to do. Mm-hmm. So, I, I'm kind of grateful to both your parents, uh, that they didn't let it turn into that

Rob Valincius: Yeah. And I think, I think it was it, well look, it wasn't a clean break, that's for sure. But, um, I do think that over the years, you know, it just kind of, you know, I think the nice thing about my, my family and my parents is they always kinda let me be me.

Tom Daley: Right.

Rob Valincius: and I guess, 'cause I'm the first born and, you know, I was born in the, the eighties, you know, that's, that's kind of like an old school mentality I guess, maybe.

I don't know. But they let me make my own decisions. And when it got to that point, I, I, you know, I, I said to my mom like, I can't do this. And she let me do, now my brother was the baby, he wasn't going anywhere.

Tom Daley: You go anywhere. He was perfectly situated.

Rob Valincius: uh, and uh, he's still there by the way. He's still at home and he just had a baby. But she's loving it because she always wanted a grandkid and now she's got it.

Which it was supposed to be me 'cause I'm the responsible firstborn. But, uh, you know what, uh, did, it's not in the cards. And uh, you know, we love our little dogs, like they're our babies anyway,

Tom Daley: Absolutely.

Rob Valincius: And, uh, captain Morgan are the names of my

Tom Daley: Oh, very good.

Rob Valincius: Uh, yeah, we love rum here. Um, so let me ask you something. So, you know, if you could fix anything in the family law world, um, is there anything you would change right away?

Tom Daley: You know, so there's a lot of principles that are common across states, but there is also quite a bit of uniqueness state to state. So I'll think specifically about Texas. One of the things we have in Texas is the way we handle child support, the way we handle child support. Let's say Ned and I are getting divorced and she's, I'm the primary caregiver 'cause she's running a, she's running a law firm, she's making a lot of money.

The way we do child support in Texas is we take her gross income and run a really simple math problem on it. Very simple math problem. And that's the amount of child support. Okay. Whereas a lot of states will do a comparative income deal. So to look at, well, I make this much, she makes that much, they've got grids and charts and mathematicians getting involved in heavy formulas.

But nonetheless, it comes up with, you know, just looking at the resource between the parties. So in Texas. She's thinking, you know, fuck this guy. I don't feel like writing him a check like that. You know, he could be making more if he wasn't so lazy and playing, you know, playing video games all the time, or screwing around with his AI experiments.

He could be outing making money. I don't wanna write checks for him and particularly if his new girlfriend's gonna be profiting from it. So then she must have fight me for custody so she doesn't have to pay child support. And so we end up in these high dollar, high conflict, knock down, drag out sometimes heartbreaking custody battles, which are really proxy wars over child support obligations.

So if Texas would do more, what would adopt, what I think is a more civilized, comparative income approach, then we'll fight custody where custody needs to be fought and not have to have it as a proxy war to try to keep, 'cause because either way, you know, if, uh, whether, whether we were having 50 50 with our kids or, or slightly different pattern.

Her child's support obligation isn't gonna change a whole heck of a lot based on the possession schedule, just because of the difference in incomes. So if you have a state and, and, and many states in the United States have adopted that, hell, Oklahoma's adopted it. Mm-hmm. Just north of us are, can you kidding me?

Texas is behind Oklahoma. Lord give me strength. So that's where we are. So we'll have these just, and, and sometimes these custody battles are righteous. You know, the other parents is, has got serious mental health concerns, uh, substance abuse issues. They're violent. I mean, that, that can happen. Or, you know, I had a client one time, he's a great dad.

He's a, and he's a sweet man and his daughter loved him, but he worked at a airport and he had to be at work at four o'clock in the morning. So he just can't have a child overnight. 'cause he didn't have a, he didn't have a new spouse or a roommate or anything like that. So who's gonna take the child from him at three o'clock in the morning when he leaves?

So it just wasn't practical for him. So some of those battles are righteous, but where it's a proxy war over child support, it destroys people. 

Neda Garrett: That's what I was gonna say. Child support is the issue. Like something that's never made sense to me was in that scenario, if I made, you know, a hundred thousand dollars a year and Tom was the primary caregiver and he made half a million dollars, the child support calculation would just look at my income as the payer of the child support.

Um, if it was a guideline support and it would say, okay, Netta, based on your a hundred thousand dollars a year, you're paying this guy that makes five times what you make child support based on your income alone. His income does not matter at all. On the flip side, if I made $5 million a year, my child support for one kid in Texas is 1840 a month, $1,840 a month.

That's it. It caps out and so it just, it the child support in Texas, like Tom said, like we'll have people that are like, how do I get out of paying him or her child support? You know, some of 'em are like, fine, I'll ask for custody, or I'll ask for a 50 50 custody schedule just so it offsets the child support and I don't have to pay as much.

Um, and it, if it just was separate, I think it would really help with the conflict that we deal with sometimes. 

Tom Daley: And lawyers shouldn't be afraid of that because if we didn't have those proxy battles, I promise you, and you know this from your studies of psychology, we will always find something to fight about.

Rob Valincius: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Especially in today's world,

Tom Daley: Are you kidding me? Absolutely. So it's not like if they solve that, because all these other 51 states that do a comparative income approach, but that might. 49. Well, I was counting Canada, but you're right. But it's 49 Canada.

Rob Valincius: future 51st State.

Neda Garrett: it. 

Tom Daley: We're now gonna have a fight. Canada. Canada, 

Neda Garrett: Greenland, sorry.

Yeah, we're, we're gonna have a fight out 

Tom Daley: the podcast, so thank me for that. 

Neda Garrett: Yeah. 

Tom Daley: But anyway, uh, yeah, 41 other states. And even that number may not be exactly right, but anyway, if we adopted that family law attorneys in those states make money. Family law attorneys in New York make money. They have a comparative income approach in Pennsylvania.

They have a comparative income approach. Family law attorneys make money in Pennsylvania. So it is not like, oh my gosh, we'd have to go learn how to be golf caddies, or dig ditches or other noble work that just doesn't pay as much. If we didn't have that to fight about. 

Neda Garrett: Well, and we're not the ones making the laws.

It's the legislators involved. We've got the attorney General's office involved. You know, we're not the ones making those laws. 

Tom Daley: Right.

Rob Valincius: Gotta love it. Gotta love it. Um, let, let, let's end on this. Um, you know, and we, I didn't get to half the stuff I wanted to 'cause this is a great conversation. It's always what happens, man. I always have some great questions I want to ask and I never get to 'em. We'll have to do this again.

Tom Daley: Yeah, we'll catch up.

Rob Valincius: So since we started with technology, let's end with technology.

Um, do you ever see, um, a future where someone navigates divorce or custody battle solely with ai?

Tom Daley: Yes. I, I, I can see that happening. I don't think that'll be, uh, an optimal outcome, but as opposed to navigating it all by themselves. Yeah, I think that that's around the corner as opposed to, uh, replacing attorneys. Uh, so Fu Lee, he's a, you know, he's one of the guys who has admitted to being a father of AI for a long time.

You know, AI experiment's been going on for, you know, 40 or 50 years, and almost all of 'em failed, and nobody ever wanted to claim anything to do with ai. Now everybody wants to say that, you know, everybody's claiming paternity now, right? So they're, they're all

Rob Valincius: oh yeah.

Tom Daley: Kai Fu Lee's been claiming paternity for a long, long time, and he's the reason that you can talk to an, to an iPhone.

He, his team's developed a hey Siri, and then how to process, uh, those voice signals into some actionable insight. So anyway, Kai Fu not you and Rob though. No, not us. We're, but, but you know, hey Google. Same kind of technology though.

Rob Valincius: Same thing. It works. It's the same thing,

Tom Daley: Has to get the apple dig in, you know. But anyway, so what Kai Fu Lee does, he's got a great Ted talk about this.

So he divides jobs into a quadrant, into quadrants where one axis is, uh, routine work versus, uh, creativity. And the other is compassion versus optimization. So, uh, insurance claim processing, that's routine work. You wanna optimize it? No compassion. The rules, the rules, uh, psych, right? Psychologist, highly creative.

'cause you've got a, you know, you, you have your body of knowledge, but each patient brings its own context. So, so you can't say. You know, you've gotta treat the patient that's before you, right? And so you need the creativity and you also need the compassion because when they're complaining about problems, you've gotta care enough about that to want to get down to maybe what a root cause is.

So, so you look at the family law world, or the law world, somebody who's reviewing oil and gas leases, that's low quadrant work. You know, there's not much creativity there. Not compassion needed. In fact, it's so low creativity, so low compassion, the most that's been automated and those people don't have jobs.

But in the litigation world where we're dealing with family issues, we have to think creative creatively, not nec, not artistically, creatively, but you know, like earlier when I was telling you, take it from the child's perspective, argue that to the court, right? Well, you said I hadn't thought about it that way.

Well, a lot of people haven't, including a lot of attorneys haven't. So, you know, I can bring that to the table. And also, uh, just bringing the, the concerns of this family to the table, not as a statistical analog to all other families that have existed since the beginning of time, but as their own independent unit.

And so I think that there's always this notion of a human in the loop, bringing that compassion and creativity where it has value. And in our world, I still see human compassion and creativity augmented by technology, substantially augmented by technology as, uh, as being beneficial to people going forward for quite a while.

Rob Valincius: And, uh, I know you're not the, the, the tech guru over there, Nita, but let's, um, let's end on this, you know, uh, 'cause I think it'll be fun. And I do agree with you by the way. I think AI is gonna augment a lot of things. I mean, a lot of people are gonna lose their jobs. 

Uh, but look, it was a pleasure having you guys on, um, you 

know, I 

know we fought a lot of tech issues, So thank you so

much for taking the time outta your day 

to hang out.

Uh, please plug yourselves, tell us where, you know, I don't know if you guys operate just in Texas or if you have anything else, you know, you know, 

around the country.

Tom Daley: So we handle cases all around the country. 

but primarily in Texas and primarily, uh, in Collin and surrounding counties in Texas. So the name of our firm is Koons Fuller. You can find us at www.koonskoonsfuller.com. You can find me@thomasjdaly.com. You find net@konsfloor.com because she practically runs the firm so that that's how to get in touch with us If anybody ever wants to follow 

up 

Rob Valincius: Remind me to never have any sort of cross examination by Netta because, uh, 

Tom Daley: you do not want that brother. You do not want 

Rob Valincius: I, I don't, 

Tom Daley: Hire her so she's on your side. 

Rob Valincius: it's good. It's good. Remember, I just, I'm just gonna say please and thank you for everything I do. 

Tom Daley: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. 

Rob Valincius: uh, my podcast is Drink o'clock podcast. You can listen to this anywhere you listen to podcasts and, uh, drink o'clock pod on all socials.

So you guys have a great night and, uh, you know, hopefully you, you crack one of those old fashions when you, when you leave. 

Tom Daley: Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. A good time. 

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