Vault: This Divorce Attorney Has Advice For You

Summary

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The Bert Show: Vault – This Divorce Attorney Has Advice For You

Podcast: The Bert Show
Host: Pionaire Podcasting
Episode Date: January 30, 2026
Featured Guest: Evan Summerstein, Divorce Attorney (Hunter Weinstein & Summerstein)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, the Bert Show invites divorce attorney Evan Summerstein to answer listener questions and share real-world advice for anyone navigating a divorce. The conversation highlights the emotional and legal complexities of separation, featuring direct, relatable, and sometimes surprising wisdom. The hosts field a variety of candid caller scenarios, revealing a wide range of divorce challenges from paperwork pitfalls to child custody concerns.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. First Steps in Divorce: Emotional and Legal Landscapes

• [00:01] – [00:51]
  • Evan explains his approach with new divorce clients: he first asks whether the couple has attempted to discuss things between themselves.
  • Quote:

    "Are we going to war, or is this amicable divorce? Or have they already figured everything out already on their own?" (Evan, 00:45)

  • The process varies wildly depending on how much is already settled and the emotional temperature.

2. Managing Emotions Versus Legal Realities

• [00:51] – [01:20]
  • Evan notes that successful divorce attorneys must manage both the legal aspects and the emotional volatility of clients.
  • Quote:

    "To do this kind of business, you have to be able to deal with both the legal side of it and the emotional side of it." (Evan, 01:15)

3. Attorney Dynamics and “Nemeses”

• [01:20] – [01:33]
  • The hosts joke with Evan about competitive rivalries among attorneys.
  • Evan admits there are always a few attorneys known for contentious cases.

4. Caller Q&A: Complex Real-Life Divorce Scenarios

A. Withholding Signature and Inappropriate Demands

• [01:41] – [04:01]
  • Caller Situation: Filed for uncontested divorce, but spouse refuses to sign unless she meets his inappropriate demands.
  • Advice:
    • File the papers with the court or through an attorney if the other party refuses reasonable cooperation.
    • It’s possible to serve papers through the court (e.g., sheriff's office).
    • Having sex post-separation can reset the separation clock; legally, you must stop to avoid complicating the process.
  • Memorable Quote:

    "Once that's been filed with the court, you can no longer have sex with your spouse, because it would, in essence, prove to the court that you are not separated." (Evan, 04:01)
    "Every time that you have sex with your spouse, if you're going through a separation, takes you another 30 days away from a divorce." (Bert, 04:20)

B. Child Custody and Child Support Nuances

• [05:15] – [06:54]
  • Caller Situation: Shared custody, concern about child support, and whether the judge can force house sale.
  • Advice:
    • Child support calculated based on incomes and the custody split, with possible offsets.
    • If one spouse wants to keep the house, the court might require a buyout of the other's share, based on equity.

C. Attorney Fees and Counterclaims

• [07:17] – [09:43]
  • Caller Situation: Self-filed divorce; ex gets attorney via family and counterclaims for attorney fees.
  • Advice:
    • Courts usually order attorney fees only if there is a big income gap, or if one party behaves badly in the proceedings.
    • Standard for counterclaims to include request for fees, but rarely enforced without justification.
  • Quote:

    "If he hasn't paid your child support in two years, the odds of the court requiring you to pay attorney's fees is pretty much zero." (Evan, 08:56)

D. Unfinished Divorces and Attorney Accountability

• [10:17] – [12:38]
  • Caller Situation: Settlement agreement signed but not finalized by judge, now outdated.
  • Advice:
    • Lawyers are responsible for ensuring paperwork is filed and finalized, but liability for failures is case-dependent.
    • If the agreement is considered “stale,” you may need a new agreement; court favors established arrangements if working.

5. Switching Attorneys and Negotiating Fees

• [12:55] – [14:14]
  • Evan suggests only switching attorneys when absolutely necessary, as it’s costly and time-consuming to bring someone new up to speed.

6. Emotional Toll & Humor in Divorce Proceedings

• [14:15] – [14:45]
  • Hosts observe the raw emotion and varied personalities of callers, highlighting how common (and complex) divorce-related drama is.
  • Friendly banter about attending court and pretending to be attorneys.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Most attorneys fees are probably less annoying than that.” (Evan, 02:15) — Humor about bizarre demands during divorce negotiations.
• “If you can stay with the lawyer, do. Because changing a lawyer is really expensive. You got to pay someone to catch all the way back up to where you are." (Evan, 12:59)
• “The request for attorney fees, that's totally standard. We put that on every single complaint or counterclaim we file with the court.” (Evan, 09:16)
• “The emotional side of it is definitely one of the things that keeps my job interesting.” (Evan, 01:06)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:01] – Opening: How do you even begin a divorce?
• [01:41] – Caller: Spouse refusing to sign papers unless... (Sexual coercion)
• [04:01] – Legal implications of intimacy during separation.
• [05:15] – Caller: Joint custody and child support explained.
• [07:17] – Caller: Counterclaims and attorney fees.
• [10:17] – Caller: Settlement not finalized, legal limbo.
• [12:55] – Switching lawyers: When and why.
• [14:34] – Observations about the “venom” and emotion in divorces.

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Conclusion

This episode delivers both practical legal insights and a real look at the messiness of divorce—from paperwork mistakes to emotional battles. Evan Summerstein’s advice is both candid and compassionate, highlighting the need for sound legal guidance and emotional resilience. Whether you’re considering divorce or just fascinated by the drama, these stories and expert clarifications give a grounding in what to expect when splitting up.

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Transcript

[A]

The Bird Show.

[B]

Evan is our divorce attorney. And as we say every time we have him on, man, if you're just like starting to go through the. A divorce right now, there's a million different angles on this thing that just must be just like your head is spinning. Where do you even start? Well, you start with calling a divorce attorney. Like, what is the very first piece of advice when somebody walks through the door for you, Evan? Like, what's the very first thing you say to them?

[A]

I typically want to find out if they've had an opportunity to talk between the two of them first before they come in to sit down with me, if for no other reason, just so that I can get a feel for what they're actually going to be dealing with.

[B]

Okay, so you're getting a sense, kind of like right off the bat, how big this mountain is exactly?

[A]

Are we going to war or is this amicable divorce? Or have they already figured everything out already on their own?

[B]

Gotcha.

[C]

Evan, is it really difficult to kind of make your clients kind of diffuse their own emotions as they're talking to you? Because I could imagine when you're being very matter of fact about the legalities of a divorce, they usually are offended that you're not taking one side or the other.

[A]

No, I mean, I'll tell you, the emotional side of it is definitely one of the things that keeps my job interesting. And I think to do this kind of business, you have to be able to deal with both the legal side of it and the emotional side of it.

[B]

Do you have a divorce attorney? Nemesis? Every time this guy rolls into the office, you know it's going to be an ugly fight.

[A]

Oh, I would say there's probably two or three of them.

[B]

It's your divorce attorney, Antichrist. Good morning, Ashley. You are on with Evan Summerstein from Hunter Weinstein and Summerstein.

[D]

Hi, Evan.

[E]

How are you?

[A]

Great.

[D]

Okay, my question is, is there any way to. I filed uncontested because originally agreed on everything, but now I've given up. I've lowered the child support, things like that, and he will not sign. He told me that if I have sex with him twice a week until the divorce is final that he'll sign the papers. I told him he was crazy.

[B]

Well, what are you waiting on?

[D]

No, I told him that, you know, I didn't want to do it when we were married. Why do I want to do it now?

[A]

Most attorney's fees are probably less annoying than that.

[D]

And I just. I don't know what to do now. I'm Kind of at a standstill with him because he's kind of like, well, I'm not signing the papers unless you do this, and I'm not doing it.

[F]

So isn't that what you charge for a divorce, Evan?

[A]

Okay, a little bit. Have you filed anything with the court yet?

[D]

Yeah, I've drawn up all the papers. I've got the papers, gave them to him. All he has to do is sign them.

[A]

Okay, so nothing's actually been filed?

[E]

No.

[A]

I would suggest either filing them yourself or speak to an attorney and get them to go ahead and file the paperwork. Have him served, probably by the sheriff. If you want to go that route and be that strong in essence, to say to him, look, this is going to happen whether you want it to or not. We can fight about it or we can do it. Nice, but it's going to happen.

[D]

Okay, so do I just. Do I go through an attorney to do that, or do I. I mean, I have no idea how to do it.

[A]

I mean, obviously the easiest way is to go through an attorney because they can handle the filing and getting someone to actually serve the papers on them. But especially if you've already gone ahead and prepared all the paperwork and everything yourself, you can go down to the courthouse, file it down there, they'll take it over to the sheriff's office, and the sheriff will go ahead and serve the papers on them.

[D]

Okay. Will that switch it from uncontested to contested, though?

[A]

As far as the court's concerned, there's no real difference.

[E]

Okay.

[A]

I mean, that's kind of something, I think, that we all make up as far as contested or uncontested. I mean, it sounds to me, if he's not willing to sign the papers, that clearly, at this point, at least it's contested.

[D]

Well, he's like, he's agreed on everything except for the whole, I want to have sex with you twice a week until the party.

[B]

I don't know why you're being such a bell.

[D]

And I just. I don't know what to do.

[A]

I will tell you, this is a little interesting side note, also, when you'll notice on the papers that you prepared, we have to put down a date of separation. Once that's been filed with the court, you can no longer have sex with your spouse.

[B]

What?

[A]

Because it would, in essence, prove to the court that you are not separated.

[B]

So every time that you have sex with your spouse, if you're going through a separation, takes you another 30 days away from a divorce, if that's what.

[A]

You want, in essence. Yes.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

I have plenty of cases where we go to actually finalize the divorce. And we're sitting there ready to go, and the client goes, oh, by the way, need to tell ya, we had a couple drinks to celebrate last week and accident happened.

[B]

How do you even prove that? Like, let's say one says we've had sex and the other one says we haven't.

[A]

I will tell you, if my client tells me they did, we will dismiss and refile it because it would actually void the divorce if it were ever proved later that it happened.

[B]

Really?

[A]

So just there's no reason to take a chance when all we're talking about is 30 days anyway.

[B]

Okay, hold on one sec. I got to put you on a different line. Hold on one second. You still there?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay, Tanya, you're on Q100. You're on the voice disguiser. Go ahead.

[E]

Hey, I have a question. We almost did our temporary papers, and we decided on doing custody. Whatever you have on one week here, we're having one week there and. But he still ended up paying child support. He said he shouldn't have had to pay. Is that true?

[A]

Under the new child support guidelines, typically what we do is we would run the numbers as if you had primary custody so he was paying you child support based on both yalls incomes, and then run it as if he had custody and get the same, you know, the same thing from the other side and then do an offset on those numbers. So if you guys are dead, even on income, the result would be no child support.

[E]

I'm much lower.

[A]

Okay. Then he would end up paying you child support, but at a reduced amount.

[E]

Okay, okay, okay. And then we have, like I said, we have a house and stuff that's supposed to be selling it. If it doesn't sell, I'm moving out. Can he, the judge, force him to sell it?

[A]

Judges look at houses like money instead of looking at it as a house. So if he wanted to stay in the house and you wanted to leave.

[G]

The house, the agreement is that he.

[E]

Can'T make any profit from it. He can't keep it. He says, supposed to be sold. Now he's saying, well, it might not sell. And I'm like, well, what the heck am I getting out for if it's not going to sell?

[A]

What the court would typically do in that situation if he was going to stay in the house is they would have him buy you out and pay you. You know, if you guys were doing a 50, 50 division and there was $50,000 of equity in the house, he'd have to figure out how he's going to pay you the 25,000 if he wants to stay in the house and not sell it.

[G]

Okay, so if there's no equity.

[A]

I'm sorry, say that again.

[B]

Hold on. She wasn't on the voice disguiser. Go ahead. One last question real quick because I got to get to a whole bunch of them.

[G]

Okay, that's fine.

[B]

Is that it?

[G]

Yeah.

[B]

All right. Thank you. Yeah, I think once they get, like, online, they're like, I finally got someone in front of me.

[A]

I gotta ask everything.

[F]

Yeah, he's not billing me per hour.

[B]

Yeah, I can't get that. Good morning, Q100.

[H]

Good morning. I was on hold the eternal. You're not taking calls anymore?

[B]

Yeah. You know. Yeah. You're on with them right now.

[H]

Oh, my God. Hi, Bert. Hello, Bert Cho.

[B]

Hello, Yvonne. Hey.

[E]

Hey.

[H]

Okay, here's my question. I'm a single mom. I've been separated for two years. He hasn't paid me anything. And of course, he hasn't filed because he doesn't want to pay me anything. So me, with my little brain got on the computer and I filed myself people by myself. I paid to get them served. So what does he do? His mommy gets him a pretty badass attorney, and now he counter. I don't know how you say counter. Claimed my divorce, and so now he's suing me for his attorney fees. Am I screwed?

[A]

Probably not at all. Where are y' all, income wise? Does he make more than you or vice versa?

[H]

You know what? I'm pretty proud to say that I've been. I was married for 20 years and I didn't work, and now I actually make almost the same amount as him.

[A]

The most common reason. There's two main reasons the court would make someone pay the other side's attorney's fees. One is a huge disparity in income. You know, if you were making 20,000 a year and he's making 100,000 a year, and the court will do that to kind of even the playing field so that you can hire an attorney and he can hire an attorney, so it's kind of fair. The other reason is, in an ongoing case, if someone's doing stuff that just wastes time or wastes attorneys fees or wastes money, Right. The court will kind of punish the other side for doing that by making them pay the other side's attorney's fees.

[H]

I'm praying and I'm hoping the judge is just going to be logical and I'm going to go in there and say, listen, he doesn't pay me child support. I'm not asking for alimony. I'm not asking for bad child support. All I want is what's fair and what you say is fair for him to pay me and half of my 401 and I'm on the way.

[A]

I will tell you, if he hasn't paid your child support in two years, the odds of the court requiring you to pay attorney's fees is pretty much zero. But all that's coming from. He served you a counterclaim. And at the end of the counterclaim, he asked the court to award fees.

[H]

Oh, yeah, he asked for that. And he wants custody of the three minor kids so that he doesn't have to pay me child support.

[A]

Right. That request for attorney fees, that's totally standard. We put that on every single complaint or counterclaim we file with the court.

[E]

Okay.

[H]

So that's scared to the heck out of me.

[A]

So that does not mean that he's actually thinking about getting attorney's fees. That's just something you put on there because who knows what's going to happen. And if you ask for it now, then you don't have to worry about it later. If something came up that would justify it.

[H]

So do you think I have anything to worry about because I'm walking in there with no representation, just little old me.

[A]

I will tell you, anytime you are dealing with custody stuff, I always suggest you have an attorney if it's at all possible. If not, you know, you go in and present the facts. And if a guy has not paid child support in two years, and depending on how involved he's been with the kids over that two year period of time, I mean, the odds of the court changing a custody situation unless there's some facts you're not telling me about are probably pretty slim.

[B]

All right, let me take one more call for you then we got at.

[F]

Least have to stay at a Holiday Inn.

[B]

Tracy, good Morning. You're on Q100.

[G]

Hey, good morning. Okay, my question is this. We've been separated since 2004. We went through two years of arguing and finally came to an agreement, went to court and had what we thought was our final day. We signed everything. I did not get a copy that was signed by the judge that day. However, it was filed with the court a year later. I requested a copy. The judge never signed it. So I thought that we were divorced. My attorney said we were. We found out we're not even divorced.

[A]

Ouch. I hope nobody got remarried in the meantime.

[G]

No no. However, now circumstances have changed. I personally no longer agree with our agreement. I settled for.

[C]

Now that the judge didn't sign it.

[G]

Yeah, well, I won't even sign the original agreement now. The judge signed as that the original agreement is outdated and that we have to come to a new agreement. And so it's like starting over. Is my attorney not liable for that? I mean, I spent $5,000 and thought I was divorced.

[A]

That's a good question. I would say, first off, yeah, I think the attorney has some duty to kind of stay on top of it and make sure everything is finalized correctly. I don't know if that would rise to the level of liability as far as kind of what to do from here with a new agreement. It's real interesting to me that the judge would say that agreement's kind of stale at this point, but I guess if that's the judge's take on it, then, yeah, you kind of start all over again as far as trying to reach an agreement.

[G]

Yeah. So my attorney said that. That's what the judge said. I have not been in court. And he just said, judge won't sign it because you guys agreed on sign split custody, which never happened. She spends four overnights with her father a month. We agreed on no child support. I did all of this just because he was so difficult. And I agreed to things that I didn't really agree with just because I could not seem to get divorced from this guy. So now the judge is saying, you know, no, those things never really work. Everyone's always back in court anyway, come up with a new agreement. So I'm starting at square one. Is that not correct?

[A]

It sounds pretty much like you are. I mean, I assume the property stuff was already taken care of and.

[G]

Absolutely.

[A]

Okay, so none of that's an issue. You're just kind of dealing with the custody stuff.

[G]

Custody and where to file. We live in different counties now. I mean, and I guess technically we still have an open case that I don't even know whose court the ball is in. I mean, he had filed the last counterclaim, and that's what we signed.

[B]

At what point, Evan, do you say, get a new damn lawyer?

[A]

Well, you know, I mean, I will tell you, my goal with folks is if you can stay with the lawyer, do. Because changing a lawyer is really expensive. You got to pay someone to catch all the way back up to where you are. But this may be one of those situations where you just don't feel safe or comfortable with that lawyer anymore. And it may be time to Hire someone else. But if you do, stay with that other attorney. Either way, it sounds to me like you're actually in a great position because that happened. You can walk into court and say to a judge, if you guys can't reach an agreement and say the judge, look, this is what we've been doing for two years, and a judge is going to say, you know, kind of if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and probably stick with the exact custodial setup you guys already have in place.

[F]

In the situation with that, can she go to the first lawyer and go, look, I got to switch a lawyer, and it's going to take him 20 hours of time to do the research to get caught up. Can you pay for that or I'll sue you? Like, is that an option?

[A]

I guess that's a possibility. But most lawyers, I guess, would probably say, yeah, go ahead and sue me. I don't have to hire a lawyer. You do. Yeah, but I would talk to that lawyer and see if you can reach some agreement about what he could do to hopefully try to make it right, at least do some kind of reduced fee or something in trying to negotiate the new agreement.

[B]

What are you laughing about?

[C]

I'm just laughing because it's like a front row seat. I'm fascinated by all the callers. Like I said, Evan, earlier about the emotions with it, just about how the attitude and this is what's going on. And let me tell. I mean, you know, the head's going, the fist is in the air, and it's just because you don't know anything about their story. It's just fascinating on the outside looking in on just the venom that comes with divorce.

[F]

We have way too many smart people.

[B]

On the show today.

[A]

If you guys are ever bored, you're free to come hang out at the office for this.

[B]

I would love to observe for just one day.

[F]

Can I pretend to be a lawyer?

[A]

Sure.

[F]

Excellent.

[B]

All right, Evan, we'll talk to you soon. Thank you for your time.

[A]

You got it, guys. Take care.

[B]

Bye bye.

[A]

The bird show.