Today I’m pleased to present a guest post from Lisa Trustin, a truly fantastic vocational evaluator here in San Francisco. Vocational evaluations are frequently used in divorce cases on the issue of spousal support. Lisa and her partner present the gold standard of vocational evaluations in the city, so it’s a real pleasure to hear from her on this topic.

A vocational evaluation is the process used to assess a person’s current or future employability and wage earning capacity for the court. The evaluation is a neutral process that describes the person’s relationship to the work world. Often a career plan is one result of the evaluation, worked out in cooperation with the person who is being evaluated.

The vocational evaluation usually involves two to three meetings (more, if needed) with an evaluator who has master’s level training and who is qualified as an expert with the American Board of Vocational Experts (ABVE). Research about the labor market and earnings are performed and the results are included in a report that is distributed usually to the attorney(s).

The first meeting is a question and answer interview to gather information about a person’s employability. This may include information about education, work and volunteer experience, health, age, length of absence from the work force, career goals, motivation and current family responsibilities.

The next meeting may include vocational testing. There are a wide variety of vocational testing methods used. These instruments cannot be passed or failed but are used to develop a profile that includes abilities and aptitudes, skills, interests, personality, decision making style and work values. You will be able to discuss the results of the assessments with the counselor to understand your profile which is helpful in several ways. It can guide someone who is uncertain focus on a career direction, uncover interests and abilities that were hidden or forgotten, and provide positive feedback on a person’s strengths or indicate where more resources may be needed.

In between appointments, you and the counselor may research career or work options to gather information about job outlook, earnings, qualifications and training requirements for different job titles within an appropriate geographical area. All resources, such as information about organizations, industries, trade associations, job openings, training and education that we know of or discover are shared with you.

In the next meeting, all of the information gained in the evaluation process including client interviews, counselor observation, medical/ psychological reports, if needed, and test data are integrated and discussed with you. Your feedback is always an important part of this process.

Next steps are recommended based on both immediate and long term job or career objectives and goals, which may include several options. These steps are based on your expressed interests as well as your ability to be employed, whether or not you want to return to a previously held job or career, and the conditions of the labor market. You have the right to a fair and impartial vocational evaluation and the opportunity to review the test results and the information contained in the report.

If you have any questions about evaluations, please feel free to contact us, or reach out to Lisa directly.

Jessica Simpson and Kobe Bryant have been in the news recently, both because of their respective prenups. I thought I would take a moment to reflect on the nature of celebrity marriage contracts, and what this can tell us about the marriages of mere mortals.

To recap in case you’ve missed the news, Kobe Bryant’s wife has just filed for divorce, and there’s no prenup. Kobe’s wealth is estimated to be around $150 Million. Assuming the entire fortune was earned during marriage, it’s all community property, meaning Vanessa is entitled to half of it. Moreover, because Kobe continues to earn an income, and because Vanessa will likely gain custody of the children, Bryant could end up paying spousal and child support on top of losing half his net worth. Not to mention the attorney’s fees he’s going to pay.

Jessica Simpson appears to be on the first chapter of a similar story. Her fiancé has apparently backed away from signing a prenup, citing his belief in true love. Like any celebrity, Jessica’s income streams are fairly complex. She is apparently worth approximately $20 Million, and in addition to earning fees for appearances, she continues to earn royalties from her licensing contract with the Camuto Group who bought her clothing brand in 2005. Absent a prenup, Jessica’s income from all of these sources could very well become community property during a marriage. The same, of course, would hold true for her fiancé’s income, assuming he has any.

When celebrities marry, the process is very much like a corporate merger. All of the various income streams need to be charted. The books need to be balanced. The liabilities disclosed. The expectations for future growth must be set, and an exit strategy mapped. Without this process, a split becomes a financial disaster. This is true of course for all marriages, it’s simply more evident with celebrities.

The procedures necessary to create a valid prenup are time consuming, confronting, and tedious. There’s no way around that fact. Nonetheless, celebrities with complex financial structures would be insane to attempt marriage without a prenup, just as a corporation would breach it’s duties to shareholders by merging without a contract.

More important than those obvious considerations, however, is the opportunity that a prenup presents to lay the groundwork for a strong marriage. This is the point that we miss in the gossip columns, and that most people forget when proposing a prenup to a partner.

Premarital agreements require couples to take a very serious look at their expectations for finances and relationship. These expectations say a lot about the marriage, they say a lot about love, and they say a lot about how the couple works through adversity. Celebrities need prenups – that goes without saying. What isn’t said often enough is that they could also use the process to avoid rather than to foreshadow divorce. And the same goes for the rest of us.

Working with divorce every day, I am very aware of the financial struggles that couples face at the end of marriage.  None of these issues are strawberries and ice cream, but the one area that causes more heads to explode than any other is without a doubt, the area of spousal support.  Spousal support (also called alimony in some States) is the payment that the higher earning spouse typically makes to the lower earning spouse after a separation or divorce.

Rather than go through a lengthy explanation of support law in California, I thought I would dedicate this post to a brief discussion of perspective.  Higher earning spouses always want to know why the heck they have to pay.  So here’s a primer for you.

The historical concept of marriage is that two people come together to form one financial unit.  When that happens, a division of labor is generally efficient.  One person does laundry, the other dishes.  More traditionally, one takes care of children while the other takes care of money.  Or perhaps one plugs away at their small business while the other stops working to manage construction on a house.

Either way, the upshot is that typically, one spouse is advancing their career and saving money while the other is not.  This works just fine so long as the family unit remains intact. Without the rules we have in place for division of community property and payment of spousal support, non-working spouses could be left without anything to live on after divorce.

California wants to protect the non-working spouse so that the welfare system doesn’t have to feed those people.  On the other hand, public policy also detests abuse and does not want to overpay recipient spouses.  For this reason judge’s have quite a lot of discretion to limit support when appropriate.

The point is, California has rules in place that are intended to protect both parties in a marriage. Both sides typically think the rules are unfair when they’re being enforced, but the legislature hasn’t come up with anything better.

If you are concerned about the payment of spousal support in your marriage, the best way to minimize it is to have signed a valid premarital agreement (prenup).  Postmarital agreements can also be effective in this area.  Absent those documents, however,  support is virtually guaranteed when there are disparate incomes.

Does it matter that he was cheating with his secretary for half the marriage?  What about the fact that she was never home for dinner and spent all her time at the office?  Guess what… In a California divorce, the answer is no.

California is a no-fault divorce state.  That means the court has no interest in who you think is to blame for the downfall of the marriage.  California courts do not want to hear about the lying, the cheating, the fact that he never listened, or that she was constantly nagging.  On the Petition for Dissolution of Marriage (one of the forms you file to get a divorce or “dissolution” started in California), there are only two optional grounds for a dissolution: Irreconcilable Differences, or Incurable Insanity.   That’s it.  Irreconcilable differences means that blame doesn’t apply.  Incurable Insanity means that you can prove by competent medical testimony that your spouse was incurably insane while you were married.

A related concern amongst parties is whether a judge will view one spouse in a better light because he or she filed first.  The reality is that judges do not care who files for dissolution first.  There may be other strategic effects to filing at different times, and you should discuss these with your California Divorce Lawyer.

One great advantage of a no-fault divorce system is that you don’t waste time and money proving blame, or cruelty, or infidelity, as in some states.   This is not the case everywhere.  Take, for example, supermodel Christie Brinkley’s recent divorce in New York State.  Through the course of that trial, the court allowed Ms. Brinkley to expose publicly husband Peter Cook’s tawdry affair with his 18 year-old assistant, as well as his addiction to pornography.  This kind of dirty laundry usually has no place in a California divorce.  Instead, you and your California divorce lawyer can focus on the legal issues: property division, support, and child custody if there are children involved.

One important exception to the no-fault divorce rule is a situation involving domestic violence.  The topic of domestic violence is outside the scope of this blog posting, but suffice it to say that California courts take domestic violence very seriously.  If you are in immediate danger, you should contact the police immediately and make sure you are safe.  If you have been a victim of domestic violence in the past, you should contact a competent California family lawyer to discuss your options.

A no-fault divorce means it’s not about who did or said what to whom during the marriage.  It’s about getting the divorce completed by applying community property, custody, and support laws, so you can leave the skeletons in the closet and out of the courtroom.