Choosing a Divorce Lawyer for a Financially Complex Case

By Brian G. Seastrom, President of Seastrom Tuttle Murphy Dockstader, Irvine.

Most advice on hiring a divorce lawyer is about personality. Is the lawyer aggressive or calm, available or hard to reach, a fighter or a peacemaker. Those questions are not wrong. But if you own a business, hold equity compensation, or have assets sitting inside entities and trusts, personality is the second question. The first one is whether the lawyer can actually do the work, and almost nothing written on this subject will help you find that out.

I have practiced family law in Orange County since 2002 and I have spent a good part of that time on the credentialing side of the profession, including chairing the State Bar commission that writes the certification exam for California family law specialists. So I want to give you the questions I would ask if I were hiring someone for my own case, and tell you how to check the answers.

• Ask a technical question and listen to the shape of the answer
• Verify the credentials rather than trusting the badges
• Ask who is going to do the work
• Ask whether they do both halves of the job
• Ask about tax and structure before you hire, not after
• Ask what happens to your privacy
• When you should hire someone else
• What this comes down to

Ask a technical question and listen to the shape of the answer

The fastest way to sort a field of candidates is to ask about a problem your case actually has, then notice whether the answer arrives in specifics or in process.

If you started a company before you married and it grew during the marriage, ask how the growth gets apportioned between your separate property and the community. A lawyer who does this work will tell you the two competing approaches, one that credits the business with a fair return on the separate capital and allocates the rest to the community, one that pays the community a reasonable salary for the working spouse’s efforts and leaves the balance separate. They will have a view on which one a court is likelier to apply to a company like yours, and why. A lawyer who does not do this work will tell you that it depends on the facts and that they will retain an expert.

If you hold restricted stock or options granted before separation that vest after, ask how the community and separate portions get divided. If you have carried interest, ask what happens to distributions received after the marriage ends on capital committed during it. If your spouse runs the company and you do not, ask what they would look for in the general ledger.

You are not testing for the right answer. You are testing whether the lawyer has been here before. Someone who has will get animated and start asking you questions back, because these problems are interesting to the people who solve them for a living. I have written at length on how California divides executive compensation and on what the financial analysis in a private equity case actually requires, and either one will give you a sense of the level of detail these cases turn on.

Verify the credentials rather than trusting the badges

Every law firm website in California is decorated with award badges, and they are not all worth the same thing. Some are peer-reviewed selections with published methodology. Some are paid placements from organizations that exist to sell the badge. From the outside they look identical, and the way to tell them apart is not to squint at the logo. It is to go look the credential up.

Four checks take about ten minutes.

Certified Family Law Specialist. Treat this as a floor, not a distinction. The State Bar of California grants it through its Board of Legal Specialization, and it tells you a lawyer sat an examination in the specialty and does family law for a living rather than as a sideline. That is worth confirming and it is where the usefulness ends. A large number of competent family lawyers hold it, and holding it says nothing about whether someone can handle a layered business or an equity compensation package.

Verifying it takes one search. The State Bar’s attorney search tool lets you search by practice area, and it will only return attorneys who are certified specialists in that area, so a lawyer either appears in the family law results or does not.

What is worth more than the certificate is who built it. I served on the State Bar’s Family Law Advisory Commission from 2013 and chaired it in 2017. That commission writes the certification examination and grades it. I have drafted questions for that exam and read the answers of the attorneys sitting it, which is a different vantage point from having passed it, and it is the reason I can tell you what the credential does and does not prove.

Fellowship in the academies. The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers and the International Academy of Family Lawyers both admit by peer nomination and review rather than application, and both publish their member rosters. A fellowship claim is verifiable in one search on the academy’s own site. The IAFL fellowship is the one to look for if your case crosses a border, because that is what the organization exists to address.

Lawyer of the Year. Best Lawyers gives this designation to one attorney per practice area per metropolitan region per year. That is worth understanding, because it means the phrase is either literally true or it is not, with no room in between. Best Lawyers publishes its selections and its methodology.

Anything else. Ask one question about it. Who selects, and can you see the list? An organization that selects by peer review publishes its roster and explains its process. An organization selling recognition does neither. You do not need to be cynical about awards, only specific.

Ask who is going to do the work

Firm size is a real question and it gets argued badly. You will find larger firms explaining that only a large firm has the depth to handle a complex case, and smaller firms explaining that only a smaller firm will give your case attention. Neither of those is an answer to anything you care about.

What you want to know is narrower. Who will read the forensic accountant’s report and find the error in it. Who will take your spouse’s deposition. Who sits in the room at mediation. Who appears at the hearing that decides support for the next several years. Ask for names, and ask what else that person is carrying right now.

The reason this matters more than headcount is that complex financial family law cases are not divisible. The lawyer who understands the valuation is the lawyer who has to cross-examine the valuator, and if those are two different people the case leaks value at every handoff. Whatever size firm you hire, you want to leave the consultation knowing which human being owns your file.

I limit the number of clients I represent at one time for this reason. That is a tradeoff and it has costs, including that I sometimes cannot take a case I would like to take.

Ask whether they do both halves of the job

The large majority of California family law cases resolve without a trial, and that fact gets used to argue that trial skill is a luxury. The inference is backwards. Cases settle in the shadow of what would happen if they did not, which means the value of your settlement is set by how credible your lawyer is in a courtroom. Opposing counsel knows who tries cases.

The reverse failure is just as expensive. A lawyer who only litigates will run your case toward a trial date you did not need, and you will pay for two forensic accountants to disagree with each other in order to reach a number two competent professionals could have built together in a conference room.

So ask both questions. When did you last try a contested financial case, and what was the issue. When did you last mediate one, and how did you structure the buyout. A lawyer who can answer both is a lawyer who can tell you honestly which path your case should take, because they are not steering you toward the only service they sell.

Ask about tax and structure before you hire, not after

This is the question that separates the top of the market from the middle of it, and clients almost never ask it.

A divorce involving a closely held business or concentrated equity is a transaction. Internal Revenue Code section 1041 lets property move between spouses incident to divorce without triggering tax, and that provision creates room to build an outcome, an equalization note at a market rate secured against stock and amortized against the company’s real cash flow, community interests in the operating company offset against separate real estate or retirement accounts, an out-spouse’s economic interest placed where it does not carry a vote. A court cannot write that deal. It can divide, order a sale, or assign a value with an equalization payment.

Ask a prospective lawyer what structures they have used and what the tax consequence of each was. If the answer treats tax as something the accountant handles afterward, you are talking to someone who will get you a division rather than a deal. This matters most for business owners and company executives, whose wealth is rarely sitting in accounts that can simply be split down the middle.

Ask what happens to your privacy

Once a California divorce is filed and contested, the file is public. Financial statements get attached to support declarations. Forensic reports get filed with motions. Bank records become trial exhibits. Lenders, competitors, key employees, and reporters can all pull a docket.

Mediation is confidential by statute. Evidence Code section 1119 protects what is said and written for the purpose of mediation, and protects it in a way the parties cannot casually waive. There are also steps available inside a litigated case, and they work better when someone plans for them at the beginning instead of reacting after something sensitive has already been filed.

Ask what the lawyer would do in the first thirty days to keep your financial information out of the public record. A specific answer is a good sign about a great deal more than privacy.

When you should hire someone else

Some of these cases should go somewhere else.

If your case is two W-2 incomes, one house, retirement accounts, and a parenting schedule to work out, you do not need a firm built for financially complex cases and you should not pay for one. That case has real stakes and it deserves a careful lawyer, but the capability you would be buying from us is capability your case will never use.

If there has been coercive control in your marriage, or if your spouse will not participate honestly in a financial exchange, be skeptical of anyone who pushes you toward mediation. That process depends on both sides negotiating in good faith with accurate information, and a mediator paying attention will decline a case where those conditions are missing.

And if you have already met a lawyer you trust who answers the technical questions in specifics, hire them. The purpose of this page is to help you recognize that person, not to route you here.

What this comes down to

The questions above are all versions of the same one. Can this lawyer do the specific work my case requires, and can I check. Personality tells you whether you will get through the next year without additional misery, which matters more than most people admit. Capability tells you what you will own when it is over.

If you own a business or hold concentrated equity and you want to talk about your case, call the office at 949-474-0800. Bring the hard questions. More about my practice and background is here.

Brian G. Seastrom is the President of Seastrom Tuttle Murphy Dockstader in Irvine. He represents business owners and executives in financially complex California divorces and mediates the same matters statewide. To discuss a case, call 949.994.9251.

Frequently Asked Questions

What credential actually means something in California family law?

Certification as a Family Law Specialist by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization. It requires a defined level of experience in family law matters, a written examination, education requirements, and peer review, and it is renewed periodically. Fellowship in the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers and the International Academy of Family Lawyers are invitation-based and carry weight in complex matters. Many other honors are directory listings rather than qualifications, so it is worth knowing which is which.

What experience matters for a specific case?

Experience with the kind of case at hand rather than years in practice generally. A dissolution with a closely held business is decided on valuation and income analysis, so the relevant question is how many such cases the attorney has handled, which forensic accountants they work with, and how they approach normalization and discounts. A contested custody case turns on evaluations and the local recommending counseling process. Asking about the specific financial or custody structure produces a far more useful answer than asking about experience in the abstract.

What should be asked about cost?

How fees are structured, what the retainer covers and when it must be replenished, the realistic total range for a case with this profile, and specifically what drives cost up. Whether a fee contribution from the other spouse is likely to be available, since California allows the court to order one party to contribute based on relative ability to pay. Who performs which work and at what rate. And how billing is presented, since a clear monthly statement is the difference between managing cost and discovering it.

What questions reveal how the case will actually be handled?

Ask what the attorney expects the process to be and why, because a case aimed at settlement is sequenced differently from one aimed at trial. Ask who will handle the day-to-day work and who appears in court. Ask how often you will hear from them and through what channel. Ask what they would need to know before advising on strategy, since a lawyer who commits to a plan before seeing the financial records is guessing. The answers tell you more than any credential list.