A Conversation with Laurie Israel
Today I am meeting with Laurie Israel, a lawyer, mediator and collaborative lawyer who focuses her practice on family law in Massachusetts, but, with zoom, she can work with parties all over the world as a mediator. Laurie is set apart because she has a substantial tax and estate planning background. Laurie is also one of the few mediators in the country who focuses on mediating prenuptial agreements. She has authored two books entitled The Generous Prenup: How to Support Your Marriage and Avoid the Pitfalls (2018) and forthcoming The Marriage Friendly Prenup: How to Create a Thoughtful and Caring Prenuptial Agreement.
My mediation, litigation and prenuptial agreement practice involves participants and clients who are often small to medium sized business owners, or have certain investment assets that involve issues beyond just family law. Because these issues are broader than just family law they require that I bring into the mediation room (or as consulting attorneys) additional professionals. With close to 35 years of experience as an attorney and 25 years of experience as a mediator, Laurie is just such a professional I like to bring into the room to help optimize the experience for my family law clients.
Here are ten ways that she has assisted in these matters and can assist both in the prenuptial agreement mediation and prenuptial agreement consulting settings going forward:
1. Discuss the emotions, interests and concerns of the prenuptial agreement clients.
2. Look at the problems inherent in the existing drafts that other lawyers have presented.
3. Try to solve the problems in a way that is agreeable to both of the future spouses.
4. Discuss marriage nourishing financial agreements that are possible in the context of a prenuptial agreement.
5. Determine the best process when the other attorney is inflexible.
6. Guide clients to the best choices for the process in formulating a prenuptial agreement.
7. Find the best prenuptial agreement attorneys who care about the marriage and fairness as much as asset protection.
8. Think outside of the box when dealing with clients affected by generational wealth.
9. Address issues raised when one or both of the future spouses are actively engaged in businesses.
10. Discuss and analyze gender issues in prenups, for example, he does not want to seem weak and she does not want to appear as a gold digger.
Laurie and I met through Forrest Woody Mosten, who has led me to innumerable talented people around the globe available to help family law clients with their matters.
Laurie is also a Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent Attorney®. She is one of the initial practitioners and developers of the field of marital mediation, the practice of using mediation to help couples solve marital problems and improve their marriages and also works with people wishing to enter into postnuptial agreements. Laurie has served on the boards of the Massachusetts Council on Family Mediation and the Massachusetts Collaborative Law Council. She has written for, and been interviewed in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine’s “The Cut,” and other publications. She is a frequent presenter on the topic of prenups in podcasts.
Ashley Andrews has practiced exclusively family law for close to 20 years. Her firm is set apart because she handles high-conflict and complex child custody matters, divorce cases with business owners, high-asset divorce cases, and domestic violence cases. She has an in-house forensic accountant who works on all her cases in some capacity. She has litigated family law cases all over California, including multi-week trials in the following counties: Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange County, and Riverside. While still taking the litigated family law cases, she is optimizing her practice by adding in mediation and collaborative divorce, a shift that she finds harder for the family law practitioner but better overall for the participants and their families. In her spare time, she is learning tennis, growing orchids, walking her Yorkshire terrier, frequenting the Norton Simon, and attending every Mosten Guthrie class she can fit into her schedule.
This material is provided for educational purposes only. Providing this information does not establish an attorney/client relationship. None of the information contained in this post should be acted upon without first consulting with an experienced family law mediator and attorney. Should you have questions about the content of this post, please arrange to discuss via a consultation.