 I'm Marianne Sasaki, you're watching Life in the Law at Think Tech, Hawaii. We're thrilled today to have a guest who practices in an area that I don't know really much about and I'm dying to hear all the developments in that area and that's Family Law. So please welcome Evans M. Smith, that's Evans of Plurl, I love that name. Thank you very much. Welcome to Life in the Law. Thank you very much for having me. Yes, I'm so glad you're here. So have you always practiced Family Law? I started out doing criminal work as a prosecutor, but that had a Family Law element in and of itself because I was doing domestic violence and abuse jury trials. Sure, that's so hard. Very much so. But the good news is that I took those skills and brought them into the full-on, full-spectrum Family Law practice and domestic violence comes up, comes up quite often. It's good that you had experience because I was a business lawyer in New York, but I had to practice Family Law for a period and they'd throw me in the courtroom and the family court system is really unique, at least in New York it has a unique set of rules, a unique set of ways people practice, and I was always foundering it so that you had experience beforehand that's terrific. Yeah, and it's definitely been a tool moving forward, especially being able to do the jury trial aspect of things and having to prove things to members of the community as opposed to just a judge really helps because that common sense aspect, what actually people will hang their hat on in terms of making their decisions, really helps as the judges are quite practical in Family Law practice here in Hawaii. They are. They have to be. I mean, otherwise, if they weren't ultra-rational, they'd lose their minds because everybody has, at least like, beef or some kind of small thing that they need done. I find it to be a very hard practice. I think it's very difficult. So how long have you been in private practice? So I've been an attorney for, I just made nine years on June 12th of this year. So private practice, I was a solo from 2010 until 2015. Again, I started working for Cotes and Fry, AAL, Attorneys at Law, LLC, the largest Hawaii law firm for Family Law practice. So it's huge to get that opportunity. It's great, isn't it? Because you can interact with fellow lawyers, and really that's a lot of creativity comes along with that, I think. That's why I like working in a firm. Absolutely. I mean, we've got an incredible team of talented attorneys, and everybody's talented in their own way. So you don't really kind of have that fungibility, except to the degree that anybody from the firm can pick up a case at any time and approach it with the skill required to achieve the client's objective. But do you handle a specific area? Do you handle custody disputes, or that's your specific area? For me, they've actually assigned me to domestic violence and temporary restraining order cases, military divorces. And then I also handle an array of other types of family law cases, such as divorce, paternity, et cetera. So now I'll show you my total ignorance. So military divorces, do they take place in family court in the state? They do. Yes, they do. Okay, so they're a state matter. Okay. There's not a special military divorce court somewhere that I've never heard of. Right, right, right. So that's interesting because the military life is such a lot of pressure, and I'm imagining it puts a lot of pressure on relationships. So there must be a high degree of divorce in the military, I would imagine. The military divorces make up about a third of divorces in Hawaii. And certainly they keep me busy. You can't tell. I've got some grays going now. No, you look like a baby to me. I was like, he's so young. But you've been practicing since 2008, so I know you're not so young. Right, right. And an excellent application of dark and lovely to the sides here. That's very attractive. So you're from Austin, why'd you come to Hawaii? Well, my sister was working on her master's here in audiology. So she said Hawaii is the place to be applied to the law school here, and I was fortunate enough to get accepted, came out here, and really haven't ever looked back. I intend to live out the rest of my days in the archipelago. I think it's terrific here. I mean, people say it's so different from New York, but I don't think it's very different from New York in the diversity and the nexus of... It's like the nexus of world travel. People come through here, a lot of people from the Pacific Rim, and it's... I couldn't live in a place where everybody was just all alike. It would be very boring for me. So I think Hawaii is really... If you're going to have to live someplace other than New York, but I don't want to live in New York, I want to live in Hawaii, but it's analogous at least. The diversity is definitely a huge, attractive quality for the state. Isn't it? It's incredible. It's super tolerant. I mean, I think there's a super high level of tolerance here. Absolutely. Right. It's wonderful. And the sense that the good stuff happens here and the bad stuff kind of takes a while to get across the Pacific. It really does. It's really a good thing. Because I told you, and I'm not going to sucker you into a political discussion, but I'm very, very liberal, and I still have a lot of friends back east. And so the discussions we're having and the marches we're going on, people are like, why? And we're like, because this stuff is happening now. But people here don't really feel like it's happening to them the way people in urban areas feel it's happening to them. There's really that six-hour disconnect or whatever it is. So it's a comforting feeling, but I like to stir things up. So we'll see how far it goes. Absolutely. But what's good is the information, there's no information lag. We get the info right away. But in terms of the effect, I think you're absolutely right that there's just, sometimes we don't even feel the effect. Well, there's the very live and let live attitude here, and that goes a long way in fostering Ohana community. And something that's sorely lacking in New York at least, and something that I really like here. That's one aspect that I really like here. So tell me, are you married? I am engaged. So I do wear the man-gagement ring because we're on different islands. I want my sweetheart to know I'm committed and dedicated. So she knows I'm always wearing the ring at all times. I was in a long-distance relationship. It's not that easy. Yeah. It's really pretty hard. It's very tiring. How much of a commute is it to where your fiance is? Not too bad. She's only as far as the airport away, because she's right over on big islands. That's a 30-minute flight, maybe. The cost kind of catch up. Yeah. Well, my husband was in New York, and I went to school in Massachusetts, and we come and go every weekend. And it was much longer than that, three-hour, four-hour commute. And it definitely takes its financial toll. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So we're over in volcano Hawaii, so it's a very nice area. It's still developing, and obviously the volcano is in the news these days. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So what's good is she gets to come over here and get a break from the country life every now and again, too. The country life. So this still amazes me. I live someplace that has a country life, just only. So tell me a little bit about the firm in general. I mean, how old is the firm? If you know, I don't even know how old my firm is. I may be from the 70s or something. So the firm's been around 35-plus years. So Brad Codes is the founder of the firm, and he's also the author of Divorce with Decency. Greg Fry is the managing attorney, and also just a stellar, stellar divorce attorney. Really the standard bearer. Divorce with Decency, that sounds terrific. Yeah, it does. I mean, that sounds like the best possible way. I mean, I'll be honest with you, I've married three times, I'm on my third marriage. But I'm very, very close to my ex-husbands, and people are always surprised. But neither of us were very greedy, and they're really like your family. They're not quite your friends. They're closer to you than your friends, and they're not your brother or sister, but they know you very well. So if you can retain good relations with your former spouses, particularly if you have children. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's what's the core principle underlying Divorce with Decency, that essentially if we can do it in such a fashion that everybody walks away on speaking terms, maybe everybody's happy. Maybe everybody's not as happy as they could be, but they still can be amicable. That's critical. And so really the question is, settle or litigate. And it's really a question of getting out in front of it. If you wait around, and you start to lose that relationship or start to lose that friendly vibe, remember that you once loved this person. You have to keep that in mind when you're divorcing, which is hard, really hard. Right. And there's that thin line between love and hate. And when you start talking about divorce, you're dancing on the edge. So we try to get the people to take a step back from the edge, take a look, see if there's ways to resolve this thing. Everybody's going to go their separate ways. In Hawaii, it's pretty much inevitable if one party wants to divorce. That's the end of the discussion, really. So you can mediate under the law whether or not the marriage is irretrievably broken, but really it just takes one person to say, no, I'm not into it anymore. Do you do a lot of mediation? I'm really into mediation, actually. I studied it in school. So is there a lot of mediation in your practice? Absolutely. I mean, we've had to come up with different ways as family law practitioners to try to stem the rising of the tide. There's just so many cases. And they can't afford it. And people don't realize that they can ruin themselves in a divorce. They can just spend all the money they have. You can keep going and going. Absolutely. I mean, you see cases that can range from a couple thousand dollars to a hundred thousand dollars to fight them. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's wild. So do you go to the Mediation Center of the Pacific? Or is there a mediation in court? Do they court-ordered mediation sometimes? Yes, all of the above. So, you know, there's Mediation Center of the Pacific. Obviously, there are retired judges, such as Mike Town at Dispute Resolution, Prevention Resolution. You've got retired judges like Aline Sui-Mori from the family court that will do private mediation. You've also got Brad Cote and Greg Fry that will do mediation for you with the Divorce with Decency Mediation Center. Good. Oh, there's a Divorce with Decency Mediation Center? Oh, yes. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, okay. Yeah, I know about the Pacific Mediation Center, but not that one. And do they do exclusively family law? Yes. Okay, okay. So I'm telling you, listen to me. I'm a lawyer. This is not legal advice. This is just friendly advice. If you're thinking of getting Divorce, settle. Do not argue. Be as nice as possible to the other person, and in five years you'll thank yourself for having done it. You know, the little things that seem so important are you're going to just completely forget, but the money you could lose, you'll never forget. Right. But once again, this is not legal advice. This is like Aunt Mary I'm telling you a good thing. Yeah, very good. So, yeah. Yeah, I'm in agreement 100%. Uncontested divorces, mediation, settling it, figuring out where everybody can get a meeting of the minds going is the really best way to do it. A long way to go. I mean, I just wrote an article on mediation in the Hawaii Bar Journal, and to me it represents the evolution of litigation. Like, can we do it a better way? Yes, we can do it a better way. Everybody can participate. You don't have to throw your lawyers in there to fight each other tooth and nail. There are things that are important to you. There are things that are important to the other side. It's important to be heard. And in marital relationships or domestic relationships, it's even more important. Absolutely. Although I always say, you know, businessmen are like, you know, business partners, they're like married. It's like the same if they have a breakup and it's like a divorce because, you know, people get really enmeshed in their private lives becoming enmeshed. Absolutely. And it's interesting that you say that because that's actually the standard for property division in Hawaii is the marital partnership model. So it essentially follows partnership principles and deciding how assets and debts are going to be split. And, you know, and yeah, it can get kind of salty like business partners breaking up. But certainly the structure is there to tell everybody what the ground rules are. I think people don't realize in domestic disputes that there's very little room for blame and it's pretty much a contractual issue and it's going to be decided like a contractual issue. So I'm going to take a quick break and I look forward to discussing more about family law and we should discuss the Han issue. We're going to discuss the Han issue when we get back. You're going to love this. Hi, I'm Chris Leetham with The Economy and You and I'd like to invite you each week to come watch my show each Wednesday at 3 p.m. Aloha, my name is Danelia D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo. John Newman, welcome. We are co-hosts of a show called Keys to Success which is live on the ThinkTech Live Network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. We're looking forward to seeing you then. Aloha! Aloha, this is Reg Baker with Business in Hawaii. We're a show that broadcasts every Thursday at 2 o'clock. We would love to hear from you and you can reach us in several different ways. We have a hotline that you can call in at 415-871-2474 or you can email us at ThinkTechHawaii.com or you can tweet us at ThinkTechHI. Looking forward to hearing from you and seeing you on our next show. Aloha. Yeah, I am sorry. We're not Marianne Sasaki, I'm Marianne Sasaki. This is Evan Smith. We're talking about, well, we're talking about Donald Trump but we're not going to go there because I'm going to take a Donald Trump-free show today but we're happy to have the news to read. It keeps us occupied reading the news. Wouldn't you say that? Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. But what we will talk about is this recent ABA ruling that came out. You want to tell everybody what the story was there? Right, so it's now inappropriate. Now there's a rule saying you can't refer to a woman attorney as Han or say things like what's a really good example? Settle down, sweetheart, things like that. Right, exactly. Right, dismissively. There's so many condescending and dismissive things that male counsel can do. A friend of mine told me that one time when she was arguing a point the counsel on the other side said you look cold and put his jacket on her. I think that at its worst litigation can be condescending back and forth irrespective of gender. You want to get in there, you want to fight, you want to show the other side. But there is a very special sexist slant and there's so many women judges now. I've seen women judges wince when guys have done that. They're like, the judge is not going to be down with this at all. Right. They're not going to be happy. But they've codified it, so you know who you are. Stop. You know I know who you are. Stop. Okay. So, yeah, yeah. Now if we could just trade my clients not to call me. They love to call me Han or dear or sweet because they love me and I understand they love me but I'm your lawyer. I had one client say to me this. I swear this is true. I went to pay for lunch and he said a girl will never pay as long as I'm eating with them. And I was like, I'm no girl. I'm your lawyer. Right. So how did it make you feel? Well, I mean I thought it was very sweet and I understood exactly where he was coming from but I thought given his age he should have known better. I think, well you know I think that about a lot of people you should know better. Right. You know what I mean? That's the whole, if I have a political position it's like you should know better. Right. Don't do that. Don't be like that. Right. Interesting. Yeah. Yep. Yep. So, well we wanted to talk about that but also, so tell us how has gay marriage for example impacted the practice? Well you know because of the Marriage Equality Act it hasn't actually impacted that much. I mean the practice is pretty much exactly the same. There are some special circumstances. I think that throughout the country we're learning more when we start talking about assisted reproduction and things like that. That's huge. Like so many of the couples I know are having babies. They're all having babies you know. That's a big issue because that can go very right or go very wrong I think. Right. We're waiting for the law to catch up with reality and I think that's one of the things that you know I think Hawaii is awesome for and built for. Right. So what can go wrong? Tell me what are the problems people can face if they choose that avenue? So one of the things that's popped up in say California is you know one party saying you know even though we made this decision together you know I don't want you know XYZ person to be involved in the rearing of the child or etc etc. And that's when they're genetically involved like the biological dad can say to the non-biological dad this is my kid basically. Exactly. Exactly and so then the non-biological dad has got to fight his way into the picture. Right. Well we have to change the law to not to favor biology over you know contract really or I mean if people want equal rights then we have to make sure that they have equal rights. Absolutely. I mean that would be gut wrenching if you know you got into a dispute over you know a potential baby. Yeah that's so what else can go wrong? Are there problems with surrogates? Occasionally I read about problems with surrogates. Oh yeah I would say that the scenario that you hear most about is the surrogate deciding that she's going to hang on to the child. To remorse right. Right. That's a special yeah. But you know there's tons of written materials on this I mean the issues go far and wide and certainly greater minds in my own are dealing with it you know this is just an area people are very concerned with as we find out new problems that can come up every day throughout the country. Is there a template or a guide to how the law should go with respect to these disputes? I mean there's nothing it's still a fresh question. Right everybody's got to pull from everywhere if you get one of these cases you find yourself looking all the way to the East Coast sometimes to other countries. Right. There's you see these issues of first impression in the nation coming up in random spots and if you just so happen to get something that hints at that or is very analogous to it you know you're looking and watching for what happens with this other case before you take any action in yours. Can any of my LGBTQ clients do anything to protect against this? I mean can you actually explicitly contract that the biology will not trump at the end of the day? Can you essentially sign away your parental rights to equalize the playing field? Can you do that preemptively? Interesting question. So you know with regards to contracts about children and generally speaking they're no good. Right. Right. And that's public policy. So really you kind of need an independent judgment to bless that agreement by a judge saying okay this serves the best interest of the child. So in other words you really don't have anything until you go to court anyway. Well maybe you know people who are thinking of having children maybe all people who are thinking of having children should go to court and have it blessed by a judge and make sure that but you know it's such a momentous decision and so you know maybe we need a system in which people are really sure and they need to take a separate step to ensure that there won't be divisiveness you know at least until the child is born I mean obviously people get divorced all the time so you know but that's a very interesting question and look there's so many interesting questions associated with that because I know that there are issues associated with multiple births and people anticipating multiple births and not wanting multiple births and wanting multiple births so if you have a dispute there between the two partners you have a problem also. Right. You know you're not on the same page with how to go forward. Right. So yeah it's a very interesting area of what but also once again heart-rending. Yeah very much so you know I think it's the most important area of law. Hear me out on this that essentially if we're saying that families are the fundamental building block of a society of a nation. They are. So those that are bound by duty to either preserve the family or safely kind of you know divide the families such that you know the relationships are somewhat intact and the children are always safe and the best interests are always served. They're performing a very important role. Right. And you know I think lawyers really need to take this officer of the court you know sort of garter of civil liberties very seriously because this is not just a you know a customer coming into a shop buying a you know loaf of bread. This is this is a real person and you're influencing many people's lives when you advise them and I think some lawyers unfortunately not too many but some just want to keep the money you know flowing and the want to litigate, litigate, litigate and you know I don't know if that's really consistent with our duties as officers of the court and you know civil well not we're not civil servants but guardians of civic but pride whatever. Right definitely we definitely should as attorneys seek justice for sure and definitely try to do the right things not only with regards to the law but with regards to our professional ethics and in some degree our principles. Right. You know I take ethics very seriously. Absolutely I'm with you there. Right yeah. And so that's that's exactly I think we're on the same page with regards to that certainly our firm Coat and Fry our practice we are the guys that are pushing for settlement we are the guys trying to figure out a way to do this with as minimal bloodshed as possible the reality is that we still have to be ready for a fight. Well you have to I mean sometimes it's just it's an insurmountable thing one side is intractable and there's nothing you can do you know so that it and unfortunately sometimes that that's the case you know I had a case where the grandparents got involved and that gets really hairy there because you have like a parent and then you have a set of grandparents who might even be more interested in custody than the parent's mother the mother might be very young for example or something and I mean this it's really it can really get acrimonious and complex with the number of parties that could get involved. Right absolutely and so Hawaii's kind of got an interesting relationship with grandparents so if you look at the law you know you look at the statute itself it talks about what the rights the third parties may have etc but then there's a supreme court decision that says well you know it's unconstitutional to have these grand parental visitations so the question is where does Hawaii sit with that and really I the dust hasn't completely settled I would say you know you got to be careful got a lawyer up before you go addressing that particular issue it's one that you would want to have the advice of counsel well maybe you'll be the one to settle that precedent yeah I hope so you can have that juicy case that you know that becomes you know a publicity you know and is the triumphant moment for for I don't know parental grand parental rights maybe or not parental rights depending on what side you're on I guess yeah here's hoping you know every every opportunity to do something that that fits my belief system you know is a wonderful thing it is we're lucky if we're lucky if we can practice and help people that's that's the best possible way to practice law the best possible career and I'm so delighted you came here to visit us and I could talk about family law and families and psychology family law all day long but thank you very much I appreciate the enlightenment and you're watching Life in the Law and I'm Mary Ann Sasaki