Lex Fridman: uncertainty

Transcript context

…It’s a great question. Average divorce, what I always tell clients in the first consultation is I tell them the most reasonable question a person could ask me sitting in that chair across from me is two, how long is this going to take, and how much is it going to cost. And those are two questions I can’t answer. And then, the next thing they say is, “Give me a range,” which is a bit like calling your doctor and saying, “I have a headache. What is it?” “Well, I can’t tell you. I’d have to do tests.” “Give me a range.” “Okay, it’s a reaction to the barometric pressure and it’ll be gone in 15 minutes or it’s a brain aneurysm and you’ll be dead in five minutes, there’s your range.” And so, it didn’t really help. The least expensive divorce I’ve ever seen is two people who, one of whom comes into my office and says, “We’ve written down on a yellow pad what we figured out at the kitchen table. She’s going to keep the house. I’m going to keep the 401k, we have a bank account at this bank. We’re going to split that 50-50. I’m going to pay her this much in child support each month, and We’re going to agree from time to time on what we’re going to do in terms of the schedule with the kids, but they primarily going to live with her. Can you write this up and make it legally binding?” Yes. 3,500 bucks. Just as a side note, I have a friend who went through a divorce and handled it just masterfully by giving more than he’s supposed to and having nothing but love in his heart and happiness with the kids and just, I don’t know, that to me is just an inspiration. His whole view was like who caress about money? And also, he refused with every ounce of his being to have anything but complete love for the other person. Yeah. I’ve had clients who, with a straight face, will say to me like, well I’m not going to quibble over a few million dollars. And they mean it, because to them it’s numbers on a page. So I’ll personalize this a bit. So I have a friendly relationship with my ex-wife, who’s the mother of my sons who are adults, and we have maintained a very good relationship. And so now, it’s many years divorced later, 17, 18 years later and we were able to sort of post-game that relationship, even our co-parenting relationship, we kind of post-game it when we chat with each other. And I remember once saying to her, “Yeah, you never screwed around with me when it came to the kids. You were always so cool. If I called you like if I was having a really bad day at work,” or seeing just an ugly custody case and it just felt like I would call her and say like, “Hey, can I just pick the boys up and take them out for ice cream or something tonight? I know It’s not my night, but would you mind if I just took them out for a couple hours?” She’d be like, “Yeah, sure, come on by.” She was always flexible like that. And I said to her, “Was that just goodwill. You’re just a good person or what was that about?” And she was like, ” Yeah, it was partly that.” But she was like, “It was partly that you never screwed around with me when it came to money. If the kids needed something or if I needed something as the mother of the kids, you were always like, yeah, sure, of course.” Her air conditioning kicked out and she needed it to replace it and she didn’t have liquidity at the time. I didn’t have a lot of money at the time because it was a long time ago. And I was like, “All right, no, because I don’t want you hot and upset and I don’t want the boys to be in… Of course.” And so, I think, yeah, when you approach a conflict, it’s very hard to argue with someone who won’t argue with you. If the person approaches the argument from the point of view of like I’m not going to argue with you, I’m going to absorb your aggression, I’m going to just not meet it with that. I’m going to meet it with love, I’m going to meet it with positivity. It doesn’t always work because sometimes people are so angry that they’re relentless. But I have to tell you, the louder you get, the quieter I get, the more you seem irrational and that’s what I always try to bring that to court proceedings. I always try to bring to court. If I know my adversary is coming in hard, I’ll come in quiet and slow and deliberate because I want the volume to be turned up way too high over there. And then, it looks like, “Your honor, what’s their problem over there?”…

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