So You're Getting a Divorce During a Global Pandemic.

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It's great to be back on my podcast, I took a couple of weeks off. Things have been a little bit crazy around my house and I suspect the same for you - but I wanted to change the topic up a little bit today to discuss, “so you're getting a divorce during a global pandemic…” What we've talked about so far, either in the podcast or our blogs or our press outreach is how to navigate divorce if you're in it right now or you started just before the pandemic.

We also discussed co-parenting during a global pandemic. What I focused early on when we first sheltered in place were some of the crises that were coming up; whether you should do a child custody exchange, how do you manage a co-parent who is not taking shelter in place seriously or not following the CDC guidelines on being safe and trying not to get infected with the Coronavirus.

That crisis, at least for the moment, for a lot of people, has been resolved either through communication with each other or an emergency order with the court or, in some cases, appointing a special master or parenting coordinator to help people navigate these uncertain times. What we haven't discussed is just how many people are coming to us, and not just us but the rest of the world, and announcing that they now want a divorce.

I just wanted to explore this a little bit and I'm hoping that this becomes a conversation that we ultimately have across social media or on our website. I think it's important to bring up the fact that I, first of all, taking off my lawyer and founder hat for a moment, have just heard from so many friends and people that I know and love that divorce is imminent, that they have decided that they now want a divorce.

Then, of course, on Hello Divorce, we've had far more leads than we ordinarily have. I'm not saying this or sharing that because I'm arrogant or I want to show off or anything like that, we haven't really changed much in terms of our marketing strategy, our advertising strategy, but what has changed is the number of leads, and so that's really telling.

One thing we learned from China, after they lifted the quarantine lockdown terms, is that the divorce rate there went up substantially. It skyrocketed. One of the first things that some people did when they were allowed to leave their home was file for divorce. I expect that we will see a pretty big increase in divorce here as well. I don't know that it will be as high as it is in China because we have different economic considerations here.