Tracy Hightower-Henne: Today’s podcast is the first of a three part series about gray divorce upcoming podcasts. We’ll talk about how prenuptial agreements and estate planning is affected as well in grey divorce, but today we’ll tell you what it means to have a great divorce and some other implications. So what’s new with you?
Susan Reff: Well, at the office we just got a new phone system.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Oh yes.
Susan Reff: And change is hard, right? Change is really hard for people. So we have 14 people in our team 15, 16, 16,
Tracy Hightower-Henne: 17, 18. Oh, just 16
Susan Reff: People are coming in the door like mad. No. Yeah, 16 people now on our team. They aren’t really mad. Right, right. Like, I met like lots of people coming in the door. But so we’re changing over to a phone system where we no longer actually have a phone and people are using headsets and there’s an app on your cell phone and the internet. Right? Well, there’s an app that you can put onto your cell
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Phone using the internet.
Susan Reff: Yes, using the internet, and you can use your laptop as your phone. And so lots of just new things. And it’s really interesting how people are like adapting and
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Frustrated and not adapting and
Susan Reff: Yes,
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Including me.
Susan Reff: And it seems like the thing that’s been the hardest to adapt to is. The headband part of the headset,
Tracy Hightower-Henne: But headbands are coming back. You know this, right? Like as a fashion,
Susan Reff: Yes, I’ve seen a lot of the head.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: We’re just preparing everyone to like get back on the wagon.
Susan Reff: I think the headband trend and the headset are very different, so could try on that one.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: It’s like a headband with one side of a what’s it called? Not a muffin? Why am I thinking the muffin?
Susan Reff: There’s a muffin on your ear
Tracy Hightower-Henne: That’s like earmuffs.
Susan Reff: Thank you. Close. Close, close. Ok. It’s like it’s the speaker on your ear. And then the little thing that kind of comes out by your mouth that you can talk into. And then you’re yeah. The other part of the headband just goes over the top of your ear. So it’s like a lopsided earmuffs. You’re right. Yeah.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Not muffin. Maybe like a Cinnabon that did make sense.
Susan Reff: So, you know, I think that, you know, for the most part, people have been really helpful with each other trying to like, Hey, well, how do you do this? How do you do that?
Tracy Hightower-Henne: How do you answer this phone call?
Susan Reff: Really? Yeah, that’s been hard. How to answer the phone call, how to hang up a phone
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Call, how to not hang up on accidentally? Yeah.
Susan Reff: I was trying to listen to a voicemail and I actually was calling the people, which ended up being fine. But yeah, all of it.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And then you got in trouble. Didn’t you hear my voicemail before?
Susan Reff: Well, it was one of those salespeople that’s trying to sell us something, and they just randomly go into our voicemail. Oh, no. And it was horrible. Yeah. So I just had to hang up.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: It’s like that song on TikTok. Oh, no, oh no. Oh no, no, no. Oh, you don’t watch. I don’t see. You have no idea.
Susan Reff: I don’t. I don’t do enough tic talking to know that song.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: So for the technical people, because we are not, it’s a VoIP system. I think a lot of people know what that means. Yeah.
Susan Reff: So that’s that’s kind of I feel like Ben, the major thing that’s been happening around here this week. And I don’t know when they’re going to come take our old phones away because I don’t work right. Um, yes. Are you still using it only to intercom?
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yeah. We won’t even have that soon. I know you should stop using it.
Susan Reff: But I did hear that there’s some concern about them untangling all the cords. So we’ve been in our office for what, two and a half years to almost three, three, three and a half.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Not yet. Three.
Susan Reff: Ok, so it’ll be three in September. And so we’ve all got these phones with cords and wires that are, you know. All under desks and around computer monitors and stuff like that, so that’s kind of been a stressor for some people
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Why we’re getting rid of it. Why is it a stress?
Susan Reff: Because they have to undo all the cord management and potentially move desks away from walls to get the phones undone.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: So we need to go to Costco and buy a large bag of zip ties.
Susan Reff: We have zip ties, OK?
Tracy Hightower-Henne: I’m just saying one needs zip ties. Yes, and we’ll re manage the cords, right? So as a lady lawyer, these are the types of things that happen, right? You don’t have to talk about just the law, but sometimes we have to talk about wire management.
Susan Reff: This actually happens a lot that we have to talk about cord management,
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Non legal topics.
Susan Reff: On the plus side, the headsets are wireless.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: I thought you were talking about the cords that get all crumpled up because people play with them while they’re on the phone, like the other piece that goes from the headset to the bass because spiral cord. Yeah. So now now we need to also get like fidget spinners for people who used to play with the cord while they’re on the phone because the headsets are cordless. So while we’re at Costco getting more zip ties, let’s get some fidget spinners. That’s the result. Ok. I just came up with that.
Susan Reff: That sounds like a good plan.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: So how about gray
Susan Reff: Divorce, gray divorce? You know, some people don’t know what gray divorce is.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yeah, and we did not come up with the term. Some people don’t appreciate the term. It’s a good term for that whole overarching idea of people who have been married for a long time and they may have gray hair. That’s where it comes from. Some people don’t have gray hair, so but it still applies. It’s the longer term marriages and the different implications that can apply to those gray divorcees.
Susan Reff: Right? I have heard the term silver divorce, but I don’t think that one took off as much as gray. Right? So, yeah, generally the people who have been married for a long time, they generally I mean, obviously, they either their kids are grown and out of the house or they didn’t ever have kids.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Right. And and. Sometimes it’s still a long term marriage, but it might be a second marriage, right? So I’m thinking of one in the news lately. Right, the Bill and Melinda Gates, yes, they’ve been married for a long time. They’ll have a lot of of these great divorce applications. Disclaimer No one at high tariff law is representing Bill or Melinda Gates.
Susan Reff: But if you need a lawyer, give us a call.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: You don’t have to be billionaires.
Susan Reff: Oh, I was speaking directly to Bill and Melinda.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Oh, right. Give us a call.
Susan Reff: Yeah, I’m not sure Nebraska’s the jurisdiction.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Are they in New York?
Susan Reff: I don’t know California, but maybe we could just, you know, we could get admitted for just the limited purpose of representing one of them.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: For the listeners, Pro Hawk, which is a Latin term that means something about being represented in a jurisdiction you’re not licensed in. I think
Susan Reff: It’s like be the voice of,
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Oh, Pro Hawk Vijay, you’re a professional. That’s what it means. Yeah.
Susan Reff: So some of the issues that people who are divorcing that may or may not have gray hair face are mostly fine. I mean, primarily financial, right? Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that we always have to look at is, are they are they are they currently employed? Are they looking to retire or are they retired if they’re retired, what benefits are they receiving? So these are areas that. Really are important because if they’re retired, most people are very they kind of have their future mapped out based on whatever kind of benefits they have through their retirement.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yeah. And I think it’s also important to to note to that not all gray divorcees are in a good financial position right there. They may be in a struggling financial position where they may be haven’t saved up enough for retirement, that they feel like and they want to retire, but they’re not prepared to. And on the flip side, there are the gray divorcees who have a very nice retirement plan. And that thinking about divorce and separating those retirement plans into two different pockets can also be really stressful.
Susan Reff: Right? I had to learn about Medicare for these kinds of divorces. Yes, or and even some of our clients who maybe we wouldn’t categorize as gray, but they’re they’re almost there. So when they’re getting divorced, we have to think about how Medicare might affect them and Social Security benefits, too. Right?
Tracy Hightower-Henne: We often will have consultations with clients who are getting close to retirement, getting close to sixty five, you know, where Medicare starts becoming a topic of discussion, getting closer to Social Security benefits and receiving them. And sometimes in a consultation. You know, the result of that conversation can be that they don’t want to get a divorce because they care about the other person still. We see that a lot in gray divorces. They understand that, you know, maybe they’re the party that’s providing health insurance. If their soon to be ex spouse may no longer have health insurance, but maybe a year down the road, they’ll be eligible for Medicare. And so maybe they think, All right, I’ll wait one more year. There’s also other, you know, parts of that conversation that are unique to gray divorces. Such things like having a conversation about legal separation versus divorce, too.
Susan Reff: So I. Have a case where the the folks are older, it is a second marriage, but they have been married for, you know, 15 plus years, so they have no children together. All the children that they had both had in their first marriages are grown. They are physically separated. The attorney, who wrote their estate plans just casually, was talking with one of them about, you know, because they they know each other. And he and he said, you know, well, we’re separated now, and he’s the estate planning lawyer said, Why are you planning to get divorced? And the person said, No, I think we’re just going to stay separated. And he knows their estate plan. And he said, Well, if you don’t get divorced, you and you die, you know, everything’s going to go to her. And I’m not sure if that’s what you want if you’re separated from her. So there’s there’s so many layers to your divorce and or separation and your estate plan that, yeah, overlap. So ultimately, they, you know, they decided to divorce so that they could each have that control of what they’re going to get and do what they want with it, even though they do, like you said, they get along really well. They have no animosity towards each other. They’ve just kind of come to this decision that they don’t want to be together anymore.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: So and we’re going to in part two or three of this series, we’re going to bring our resident expert Tasha Rivkin in to talk about estate planning and how it applies to gray divorce. So we’ll let her give us super details on that, right? So I mean, I think. It the other thing that I really want to talk about with gray divorce, you know, my parents divorced about 38 years of marriage and the thing that
Susan Reff: Neither one of your parents had gray hair when they got divorced.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Um, my dad has very gray hair now. I can’t remember if it was like that a couple of years
Susan Reff: Wasn’t
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Ok. All right. So the divorce maybe caused the gray hair, but you know, thirty eight years of marriage. It’s just my brother and I, and we’re now almost 40. And the thing that I tell a lot of clients who are going to go through a gray divorce that have adult children is don’t forget that adult children also are going to be emotionally affected, right? People, I think sometimes forget about adult children, and they think they’re going to deal with this on their own. And when we have clients who have little kids, they have to talk about them because they have to do a parenting plan and all of that. And I think with gray divorcing parents or divorcing clients, they often the theme that’s very typical is that they want to remain amicable and friends because they have adult children. And then they often may have grandchildren and they want to be able to go to the birthday parties together and be friendly. So I think that’s the other pointer that I talked to. A lot of clients that have adult children is don’t forget about them.
Susan Reff: So why is it that younger people with younger kids can’t think that way? They can’t think like, Oh, it’s important that we get along because we’re going to have to go to the band concert together in the soccer game and the parent teacher conferences. You’d think that would matter more than here.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: I’m going to answer the question, and then you’re going to give me a million dollars because I’m going to have the answer to the million.
Susan Reff: Yeah, what’s what’s the what’s the answer?
Tracy Hightower-Henne: I don’t know. Otherwise, you were going to give me a million dollars?
Susan Reff: I don’t know. Right.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: I think I think there’s just the different things that come with. Assuming your child is an adult now and they’re going to be able to deal with it, I know the answer. Oh, I don’t have a million dollars to give you.
Susan Reff: That’s OK. Here’s here’s what I think it is. I think when you’re newly parenting kids, you know, because when you’re when you’re gray, you have perspective. When you’re newly parenting, you more. Look at your children as a possession, as something to win. And if you’ve raised a child and they’re out of the house, you have a whole different perspective on that child. So I think that’s what it is.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yeah, I think that’s true for a lot of people.
Susan Reff: Like when your parents were divorcing, they didn’t have to think about in the context of their divorce. Is Tracy going to spend more time with me or with with the other person? Right? Because you already have like your routines when you hang out with your parents?
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yeah. And I think parents with adult children know that like we have the ability to go where we want, when we want, which becomes an interesting piece. When some parents have like 16 plus year old kids, right? They have a car and they can kind of start going where they want, when they want. Right?
Susan Reff: So something with gray divorce, too is splitting some pretty big accounts sometimes, too. You know, these people have accumulated. Some some of them have accumulated a lot more of a savings in a 401k or retirement, something some of them are already drawing on their pensions and some pensions do provide for for ex spouses and some do not. So that’s a whole nother area that we have to work on when we’re doing a great divorces. How to divide these things and then, you know, maybe doing some. Research on that pension to know if that spouse, if there’s a divorce, if they’re going to get a benefit.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Right. And there’s something that we do in our office that I think a good majority of good lawyers do is consulting with other professionals to help make sure that all of the desires and goals of our clients are going to be met, right? They’ve been going on 20 plus years planning for retirement with this other person with all these joint funds. And now, if they’re thinking about separating the funds and being on their own, their goals are drastically different now. And so we often will make sure they are in touch with a financial planner they trust and know. And that might mean that they’re changing to a different financial planner that the couple’s been using and also talking about how Social Security is going to play into what they’re going to receive versus what they’re getting in the decree, right? And there’s some really unique, different type of retirement plans like Union Pacific has very different retirement plans, military retirement, all of those things. Hmm.
Susan Reff: Yeah, I I learned that some pensions have a, you know, a death benefit for a spouse, but not for an ex spouse. So that’s like a benefit that you no longer have a death benefit that you would no longer have. So potentially even a consideration that someone going through a great divorce would have as like all of a sudden, you’re not you no longer have a life insurance policy. So because they were relying on that policy attached to their spouses pension, they now have nothing. And you know, most people want to leave a legacy and pass on something to their kids or grandkids, so their purchasing life insurance for the first time at an age where maybe you’re not getting good rates. Right? So, you know, working with a financial planner and connecting them with maybe a good person to sell them some affordable insurance to. This is something that we have to do.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: The other thing I think about talk about good stories is. And it happens in non-gay divorce situations, but inevitably in gray divorces, there’s often a timeshare.
Susan Reff: Oh, or maybe a second home, here’s
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Some free advice we won’t send you a bill. Don’t buy a timeshare.
Susan Reff: Here’s some more free advice, and I’m going to send the bill directly to Tracey. Don’t go to a timeshare pitch.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Oh, oh gosh, that was in Puerto Vallarta. Yeah.
Susan Reff: Quick side story. Tracy and I and a couple other gal friends went to Puerto Vallarta and we were using a friend’s timeshare and we got sucked into the timeshare speech and they were promised a liter of tequila per person per person.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: So we got four liters of tequila promised
Susan Reff: A day at a, you know, resort a meal.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: What else? I’m having PTSD right now. So.
Susan Reff: So there were four of us and two of us were like, including me. We’re like, I don’t want to do this. This sounds horrible. And Tracy and the other gal were like, Well, let’s just do it. Let’s go like, we have a whole day of nothing planned that day. Let’s just do it. We’ll just check it out. So we get this car and we go to the other resort. It’s way nicer than the one that we’re staying at, and they set us down to this amazing brunch buffet,
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Like the fruit was all cut into shapes of like every food on our plate was cut into a shape of something.
Susan Reff: Yeah, open bar. They bring around a very handsome guy who’s going to hang out with us like the whole day,
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Although I think later they thought we were lesbians. So that didn’t make sense, right?
Susan Reff: Well, so yeah, they were definitely profiling at the beginning. And then we spend some time with him eating brunch. Then we sit through the presentation where they tell us they’re basically turning this resort into like the next Disney World
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And then showed this video.
Susan Reff: And then we got a tour of a room that looked really, really great. And and then they then they put you in this other room and they give you the pitch and try to sell it to you.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Wait, so go back to they promise the tequila
Susan Reff: That was at the very beginning, OK?
Tracy Hightower-Henne: They promised the tequila, but they also told us it’ll take approximately an hour to two hours.
Susan Reff: I think they said like two hours on the resort and then like, it took us probably half an hour to get there and back. Ok, yeah. So now we’re at like our six on this resort and they’re giving us this pitch. And this is where it got really bad.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: They gave us the pitch like five times with like five different people,
Susan Reff: And then they just kept saying no,
Tracy Hightower-Henne: They got more aggressive each time. But then at the end, when they realized two of us were married
Susan Reff: And you and I and the other
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Two, but not to each other, right? And so they realized that we’re not there with our husbands and they get pissed.
Susan Reff: Oh, and one of the other gals was engaged like she was about to get married.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Like they needed to know this because then they wouldn’t have spent so much time in breakfast fruit on us that we didn’t even have. Like the other potential decision making person. And they wanted
Susan Reff: Like
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Thirty thousand dollars from each one of us that day. Yes, so please don’t go to a timeshare. That’s our free advice. It’s not legal advice.
Susan Reff: It’s just common sense.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: No matter what they say, don’t buy the timeshare because when you’re getting a divorce, I promise you no one wants the timeshare.
Susan Reff: Right? And what? What it boils down to in a divorce is, it’s a contract that you will that says you’re going to continue to pay a certain number of dollars every year for the timeshare. And so it’s a debt, really,
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And you’re only paying the maintenance, right? You’re paying the maintenance monthly and then you get one week out of the year to use it. And some of them, you get a deed like one one fifty second, you know, fraction one out of fifty to bad at math. But all of that. And so then you but
Susan Reff: Really doesn’t have any value.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yeah, I have a I have a case right now where they have a timeshare in Hawaii. So then we’re looking at what is Hawaii law quit claimed eating in Hawaii. Anyways, don’t get a timeshare if you already have one will help you figure it out. It’s not messy, but it’s just a thing, and then you have to decide what happens when neither of you want it, and maybe that’s what you need to talk about when you’re getting the free tequila. It’s not worth it. Just go buy the tequila. It also wasn’t that good of tequila,
Susan Reff: And we ended up only with two bottles instead of four.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: But they weren’t going to give us any, and we were like, Give us the tequila,
Susan Reff: And they were back now. They weren’t going to pay for us to go back to the hotel.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Oh, that’s right. It’s over somewhere in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. But here we are. We’re back in Omaha.
Susan Reff: Yes, it was. It was fun afterwards.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: It tells four good stories on our podcast. You would have never known, right?
Susan Reff: Yeah. So don’t get it. Don’t get a timeshare. Yeah.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Here’s the other thing with gray divorce. You know, often when you think about all the different pots of investments that people have or the, you know, maybe people think about, and a lot of it is rental property too or investment property. So sometimes people, maybe they don’t have a huge retirement because they put some money into investment, property and in great divorce situations. We look at or anyone that has a lot of investment property, we look at identifying the properties, putting values on them, who’s going to keep which houses or commercial properties and who wants them. And then if they’re going to get sold, you know, getting them ready for sale or their tenants in them. So that becomes an interesting aspect when you know you have those properties, maybe we’re going to be a retirement plan, too.
Susan Reff: So I did a divorce for some folks that had, I think, over 50 rental properties and some of them are multi-unit and they wanted to continue to because they got along. They wanted to continue to own, maintain and rent those out as their business. But because they were married, they didn’t really have a business entity for these rental properties to kind of go into after they were divorced. So that added an extra layer of setting up a business entity, putting all the properties in it. What are we going to, you know, creating a an operating agreement, a partnership agreement going forward? And then obviously that then would affect their estate plan. You know, when you when you’re married, you own things together. You know, when you’re divorced, you don’t necessarily continue to own them with that person unless it’s titled the correct way. So we had to deal with that in that case.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: So did you knock on Tasha’s door? Hello. Resident Tasha Expert, let’s do some business planning.
Susan Reff: This was before Tasha was here. Oh, but now Josh is here. And yeah, Tasha can take care of all of those issues.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: So I’m part two or three of this series, Tasha, we’ll talk about that as well.
Susan Reff: Yeah. Two point two. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing to take away on on. On the account side is. They don’t any longer have time to grow their accounts. Potentially, you know, that they need for retirement. They are at the point where they’re drawing on them or they’re about to draw on them. So it’s, you know, when you’re divorcing and you’re 30, you still have a lot of years to work to continue to deposit money in that account and for it to grow.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And I think it, you know, going back to just personal experience and looking at like at my parents situation, they had these plans of what they would do together. And then very quickly they started to have goals of what their lives look like without each other. And I think a lot of that is what happens outside of our representation. You know, some soul searching of what your new goals look like to and that’s helpful as we look at how do we split accounts like maybe maybe an answer if you go to the judge is the judge is going to split everything 50 50. But maybe that’s not really that doesn’t work into your goal. Like, let’s look at offsetting something else, right? Maybe one person wants to keep all the rental property because the other person is like, I never wanted these anyways, right? So I think looking at like, what is your goal? And we like to talk about that in the first consultation.
Susan Reff: Right? Yeah. I mean, in that sense, a great divorce isn’t any different than any other divorce where we find out with our client, you know, what is your main objective here? What are some red flags that might come up in reaching that? Is that a realistic expectation? You know, is it realistic to think like maybe one person is going to walk away with all of the assets? No, that’s not a realistic expectation. So then we have to set a realistic expectation, right?
Tracy Hightower-Henne: I think the other thing too about gray divorce, you know, as a takeaway is. In most divorce situations, a good chunk of them, once the decree is signed, there’s not a whole lot of work to do after the decree. When we have a lot of separating of accounts, whether it’s a gray divorce or not, there’s a lot of what we call aftercare. There’s a lot of things that still need to be taken care of after the decree is done and signed by the judge. And that can be making sure you know, financial accounts are separated correctly. The money’s actually transferred. And then also, who’s going to pay the maintenance fees on the timeshare well?
Susan Reff: And then that person obviously gets to go to the timeshare if they’re paying the fees,
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Because I think the thing is you’re never going to sell the timeshare. No, like, no one’s buying your timeshare.
Susan Reff: I can’t believe timeshares are still a thing.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: I know now we Airbnb, just Airbnb. People don’t buy the timeshare or
Susan Reff: Just go stay at a hotel. I like what? Why? Why? I don’t know. I don’t understand.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: All right. So on this topic, we’re going to talk next time about estate planning and also prenuptial agreements. I think often and prenuptial agreements are relevant to gray divorce because often we see if you know, a longer term marriage is ending, there’s a potential that that one or both of those people will get married again. And having a discussion about whether prenuptial agreement is appropriate is a really important thing and secret. It’s not a secret, but secret is when you talk to a lawyer about whether a prenuptial agreement is good for you, your spouse or potential new spouse doesn’t need to know that you’ve had that conversation, but like at least have the conversation, get the information and whether you think that’s going to protect your assets from your first or second, but your first great divorce?
Susan Reff: Great. I can’t wait.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Awesome. Well, thanks for listening to the Lady Lawyer League podcast. Please like and subscribe anywhere you get your podcast and give us a five star review on Apple. If you want to know more about our firm, please visit our website at
Susan Reff: Our Law Omaha.
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