Divorce Mediation in San Francisco
We’ve written on divorce mediation before, but people who know SF know it’s a pretty unique place, and that uniqueness, for better or worse, extends to things like divorce mediation. This post will cover some of the unexpected differences in San Francisco proper, as well as covering the basics of how mediation interacts with the court systems.
First, one of the tricky thing in SF divorces is valuing intangible assets. For example, if you have funder’s stock in a start-up, it may be worth basically nothing now, but it could be worth a huge amount of money in a few months, if the company launches well. Similarly, we’ve handled a few cases with crypto assets, which are, at best, extremely volatile and sometimes nearly impossible to turn into USD to be split. Mediators who have only traditional training will struggle with these sorts of issues, being more used to slow-moving assets like houses and retirement accounts. Getting to a reasonable figure for the value of IP, stock, crypto, and similar SF assets requires mediators who not only know what these things are and why they matter, but which can communicate the important factors here to both parties. Commonly, the person who holds assets like IP knows a lot about them, and the other party may be rightly skeptical of the right holder’s valuation; the goal of mediation here is to have enough facts on the table and enough shared understanding to reach agreement.
Second, real estate in SF is not like real estate almost anywhere else. Of course the prices for houses here are very high, but they’re also very volatile, and a lot of things that seem like options in other counties are simply not possible in San Francisco. For example, if Alice and Bob share a duplex with a couple of renters, but are now going to get divorced, in many counties you’d say, get the renters out, sell the house. Anyone familiar with the eviction process in SF is laughing now, because there is no fast way to get renters out of a house in SF. The average payout to tenants to move, per tenant, is about $45,000.00, and while it’s true that the housing courts are a lot faster now than they were in the beginning of the pandemic, they’re fast in dismissing eviction filings that don’t rigorously comply with SF’s ordinances, which are some of the most protective in the country.
So, the question of what a house is worth in SF is very different than the question of how much one party might pay to another in a divorce, because getting at that value can be very difficult. It’s also generally not realistic to assume that one party to a divorce will be able to find another place in a comparable neighborhood in a reasonable amount of time, because many real estate deals get sniped by out of state developers who will offer a price over asking, in cash, with inspection waived.
Thus, parties gain immensely from a skilled and knowledgeable mediator. We have the ability to deal with many more creative solutions than a court, and we know that some of the off-the-shelf solutions just don’t work here. Our goal is to get the parties to a realistic and complete agreement, which fairly values difficult assets like business ownership, and doesn’t rely on the parties being able to do things that are, around here, very difficult.
Last, of course, a divorce is a legal contract, and so a mediated agreement needs to be accepted by the court in a divorce filing. This is harder than it sounds: the vast majority of proposed settlements in divorce cases are reviewed with a fine-tooth comb, as it were, by clerks, not judges. A minor deviation from local rule, or even local custom, will result in a rejected settlement, which is a major headache, in addition to being expensive. We work with lawyers who know the SF family court clerks by name, and can maximize your chances of a clean and easy divorce judgment.
If you’re looking at getting divorced in SF and want to explore a more humane, cheaper, and faster process, contact us today!
