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If you are reading this at two in the morning
You are not alone in that. This is the page people find when they cannot sleep.
Maybe you already filed. Maybe you have not said the word out loud yet. Maybe someone else decided and you are still standing in the wreckage of a life you thought you had. Whatever brought you here, you are probably carrying some version of the same three questions:
What is going to happen to my kids.
Can I afford this.
Am I going to be okay.
Nobody in your life right now is equipped to answer all three. Your attorney will answer the first one in legal terms and start the meter. Your therapist will sit with the third one and should. Your friends love you and have never done this, or did it badly and are still angry about it. Meanwhile you are making decisions that will follow you for a decade, on four hours of sleep, in the worst emotional condition of your adult life.
That gap is where I work.
The role
What a divorce coach actually does
I am the person who helps you show up to the rest of it well.
Practically, that looks like: getting your financial picture on paper so you know what you are actually negotiating over. Preparing you for your attorney meetings so you use that hour on strategy instead of venting. Helping you write the email to your ex that gets a result instead of the one that feels good to send. Building a parenting plan proposal you can defend. Talking through what you actually want on the other side of this, which almost nobody asks you.
And the other half, the half people do not expect: helping you stay a person your kids recognize while it happens.
What we work on
Four fronts, usually at once.
Money and logistics
- A real number for what two households cost, before anyone proposes anything
- Understanding your marital balance sheet: assets, debt, retirement, the house
- Budgeting for the transition year, which is almost always the hardest one
- Rebuilding credit, income, and savings on the other side
Strategy and communication
- Getting ready for attorney meetings, mediation sessions, and court dates
- Writing messages to your ex that lower the temperature instead of raising it
- Boundaries that hold up when the other person keeps testing them
- Deciding which hills are worth it, and letting the rest go on purpose
Kids
- Language for the conversation with your children, by age
- Parenting plans that fit your actual life, not a template
- Co-parenting with someone you no longer trust
- Staying the stable parent when you do not feel stable
You
- The pattern that got you here, and whether you are on track to repeat it
- Grief, anger, and the guilt that shows up even when leaving was right
- Who you are going to be when this is over
Who is who
Everyone you are talking to right now, and what they are for
- Your attorney
- Advocates for your legal position. Expensive, essential, and not the right person to process your feelings with at their hourly rate.
- Your therapist
- Works on your mental health and your history. Essential. Usually not built for the tactical question of how to answer a hostile email by Thursday.
- A mediator
- Stays neutral between two people. I do this work too, but a mediator cannot take your side because taking a side would break the process.
- A coach
- Takes your side and stays practical. Forward looking, action oriented, and available for the whole ugly middle of it.
- Your friends and family
- Love you. They are also grinding an axe of their own, and their advice usually comes from their divorce, not yours.
You probably need more than one of these. I will tell you when what you are bringing me belongs to a therapist or an attorney instead, and I will say so directly.
Ways to work together
Three ways in.
One on one
Private sessions, virtual, scheduled around your life instead of a court calendar. Most people start here. We meet weekly through the heaviest stretch, then step down as things stabilize.
Group coaching
A small closed group moving through the process together. Same material, lower cost, and something one on one work cannot give you: a room full of people who understand exactly what you are describing without you having to explain it. There is a specific relief in being the fifth person to say a thing out loud instead of the first.
Single strategy session
Ninety minutes on one decision. Whether to file, how to respond to an offer, how to prepare for one particular conversation. For people who do not want ongoing work and need a clear head on one thing.
The honest line
What I will not do
I am a divorce coach and a personal finance coach. I am not an attorney and not a therapist.
I do not give legal advice, predict what a judge will do, or tell you what to sign. I do not treat mental health conditions. I do not tell you whether to leave your marriage, because that decision has to be yours or it will not hold.
If I coach you individually, I will not mediate your case.
Coaching means I am on your side, and a mediator has to be neutral. Doing both in the same divorce is a conflict I am not willing to blur. If you and your spouse want mediation, we start there instead, and I stay neutral from the beginning.
Why me
I write about this because I lived a version of it.
I grew up adopted, with a father who taught me what fear feels like in your own house, and I spent years figuring out how not to hand that down. In 2025 I published a book about it called Why You Keep Choosing the Same Pain, about the patterns that keep people cycling through the same relationship with different faces, and what it takes to actually stop. I have a tattoo that reads "It ends with me."
I am also a father of three boys. Everything I know about doing this well, I learned because doing it badly was not an option I could live with.
You are allowed to want more than survival on the other side of this. Most people show up here just trying to get through. The work is bigger than that.
Homework
Where the free stuff lives
Coaching works better when you are not paying someone to explain vocabulary to you.
I built LegalReportCard.com for exactly that reason, and it is free. It has a hundred and fifty term glossary, a step by step roadmap and court forms for every state, a self representation guide, and client reviews of family law attorneys with no paid placement of any kind. No sponsored listings, no premium profiles, no way to buy a better position. That is the whole point of it.
Clients use it between sessions. If you never book a call with me, use it anyway.
Get started
Book a free consultation.
Tell me where you are, and I will tell you honestly whether coaching is what you need right now, or whether you should be spending that money on an attorney, a therapist, or your rent this month.
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Thank you for reaching out. I will get back to you personally, usually within a day.