Kyrsten Niemiec, Author at KN Legal

No one gets married looking into the future and seeing divorce. Ending a marriage is more often than not an earth-shattering event in a person’s life. Here is attorney James Sexton’s advice regarding how couples can avoid finding themselves in a lawyer’s office.

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If You're in My Office, It's Already Too Late

“We’re raised to look at marriage as this milestone and we keep signing up for it,” says James Sexton. “There are very few behaviors that end so badly so frequently that we would just sign up for it with such reckless abandon!”

Sexton has personally witnessed the demise of more than a thousand marriages — but that’s right folks, you guessed it — he still believes in love. Not only that, but his career helping people out of marriages inspired him to write a how-to book on staying together: If You’re In My Office, It’s Already Too Late.

So what does a divorce lawyer, who’s seen the worst kind of behaviors in human relationships, know about how to do it right? “Over these years, I’ve seen so much of what people do wrong that you could probably reverse-engineer that into what they might have done differently,” he says.

Interview Highlights

On never hiring attractive babysitters

The nanny thing is a thing, and it’s amazing to me, because again, I learn about this sitting at the other end of the desk from people that have gone through it. And I’m not speculating, I’m doing ethnographic research. I’m like the Margaret Mead of divorce here, I’m sitting there with my nose in it, people are cheating with the nanny, husbands are running off with the nanny, husbands and wives are running off with the nanny, as I talk about in the book … I think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that the nanny has a life outside of the home, and a life outside of the family, and what I try to talk about is how spouses, how wives in particular, could leverage that nanny fascination into improving their own daily life and having time for themselves.

On reinventing yourself with your partner, as opposed to after divorce

Do it in a way that’s constructive, as opposed to destructive. And do it sooner rather than later. People come to me, they’ve already lost the plot. They had a story they were trying to write together, everyone who gets married wants it to last. No one can pretend — in this curated world we live in where everyone puts everything on social media and it’s always the best version of what they’re doing, divorce is refreshing in the sense that you can’t pretend you meant to be in my office. No one meant to be in my office.

On preserving a union

The core answer isn’t that sexy. What it really is is, just stay connected with your spouse. Communicate with your spouse, remember that you fell in love with a person who had unique traits, and there were little things you just did for each other. You were cheerleaders for each other at some point. But when you’re married it’s very very easy to just not even see the person anymore, much less cheer for them. You know, whoever discovered water, it wasn’t a fish. When you’re in something, you don’t see it so clearly anymore. So I encourage people to step back from their marriage, to take a very clear inventory of it, and to really pay attention. And the other thing I think is equally important is being painfully honest with your spouse about what’s going on in your heart, and what’s going on in your head.

On advice for his clients

I just tell people that they should just try to see the best version of themselves in whatever choice they make. It’s really hard to stay together, and it’s really hard to split up. And what I really try to tell people in the book, and certainly in the conclusion to the book, is whatever path you choose, try to remember that marriage was appealing to you and to your spouse because you both had a very human need for connection and for love, and for someone who was cheering for you in a world that feels very antagonistic sometimes. And my advice to everyone is, stay out of my office if you can, but if you need to come to my office, I hope I see the most compassionate, thoughtful version of you, I hope I see a version of you that focuses on your kids, and that focuses on ending your relationship with dignity.

This story was produced for radio by Sophia Boyd and Barrie Hardymon, and adapted for the Web by Petra Mayer.

The following is an interview with Larry Krasner, the new District Attorney for Philadelphia. In my opinion, his views regarding criminal justice reform are reasonable, realistic and refreshing.

To read the article at npr, please click here

Every day, judges around the country are deciding the fate of criminal defendants by trying to strike the right balance between public safety and fairness.

In Philadelphia, the new progressive district attorney has launched an experiment. He’s asking his prosecutors to raise another factor with judges: the cost of incarceration.

The move has ignited a debate about whether the pricetag of punishment belongs in courtrooms.

Do a little math

“Fiscal responsibility is a justice issue, and it is an urgent justice issue,” Larry Krasner said at a press conference recently.

Krasner is a former civil rights lawyer who rode into office on a platform of radically revamping the city’s district attorney’s office by opposing the death penalty, stepping away from cash bail and seeking shorter prison sentences for offenders.

He sees asking prosecutors and judges to grapple with the cost of locking up a defendant as a stride toward fulfilling his promise of trying to fight mass incarceration.

At sentencing hearings, when prosecutors traditionally talk about the impact on victims and the community and the need for deterrence, they now will also have to do a little math.

Since the average cost of housing a prisoner for a year in Pennsylvania is $42,000, the prosecutor might say something like, judge, we are recommending four years in prison for this person. And that will cost taxpayers more than $160,000.

“A dollar spent on incarceration should be worth it,” Krasner said. “Otherwise, that dollar may be better spent on addiction treatment, on public education, on policing and on other types of activity that make us all safer.”

Asking prosecutors to tell judges the taxpayer tab of putting someone away is unusual. If cost is mentioned at all, it would far more likely be cited by a defense lawyer. Putting that responsibility of prosecutors has not been tested much in the country.

In 2010, Missouri made a similar proposal, making cost information available to judges, but it was not a mandatory consideration.

Mass Incarceration Is A Major U.S. Issue, Georgetown Law Professor Say

University of Pennsylvania law and economics professor David Abrams said whether the move impacted the prison sentences judges handed down in Missouri has never been studied.

In Philadelphia, Abrams said it may just force judges to ponder the societal cost of incarceration a little differently, though he does not expect it to have sway across the city’s entire justice system.

“I think there are going to be marginal cases where the judge is somewhat indifferent between harsher and maybe more expensive and slightly lass harsh and maybe vastly less expensive sentences, where this will make a difference,” Abrams said.

“Absurd, irrelevant, ridiculous, nonsense and horrific”

Not everyone in Philadelphia’s criminal law world is embracing the news. Some prosecutors say privately that they plan to ignore the guidance completely. And one judge recently said he would hold an assistant district attorney in contempt of court if the cost issue was raised again.

Richard Sax, for one, is not surprised. He spent more than 30 years as a homicide prosecutor in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office before retiring last year. Here is his appraisal of Krasner’s new policy: “The words that come to mind are absurd, irrelevant, ridiculous, nonsense and horrific,” Sax said.

Sax calls the announcement a public relations stunt and said it is insulting to victims of crime.

“It should have no bearing on whether a society, or a community or people who are at risk of being victimized should be protected from a human being, an individual,” he said.

And some families of crime victims agree with Sax, saying it is impossible to quantify what it is like to be the victim of crime.

Just ask Celestine Shorts of North Philadelphia. Her brother, Christopher, was fatally shot last year. She said a courtroom debate about money would be upsetting to her.

“When you voluntarily hurt someone, I think you should be accountable for your actions. Was it only set to work if it’s in the budget, or was it set with laws or law? Rules are rules, we have a structure,” she said.

Celestine Shorts’ brother, Christopher, was fatally shot last year. She is opposed to the policy and says a courtroom debate about money would be upsetting to her.

In Krasner’s estimation, that structure has caused America to have more criminals locked up than any other country.

Krasner said input from victims and their families will still be considered, along with public safety, the defendant’s criminal background and the gravity of the offense.

The money factor, Krasner said, is just an additional consideration.

Research, he said, has consistently illustrated that shorter sentences for criminal offenders do not cause more crime. Instead, studies indicate that certainty of punishment — not the length of time spent behind bars — has a meaningful impact on deterring crime.

Defense lawyer Michael Diamondstein said prosecutors, in recommending punishment to a judge, have an incredible amount of sway over a defendant’s life and liberty.

The cost question will not please everyone, but he said it is about time the criminal justice system experiment with something new.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Diamondstein said. “The worst thing that happens is that it makes no difference. But it may. It may make a judge or two stop and think what the actual cost is to sentencing someone.”

With the help of money from the MacArthur Foundation, city officials have been working for the past few years to cut the prison population with the goal of a one-third reduction. But individual decisions by a judge are harder to influence. Krasner is hoping to give them a nudge.

And if it does shorten sentences, Krasner said he is confident it will not spike violent crime.

“We are not concerned that this is going to produce a zombie invasion of crime,” he said at the press conference earlier this month. “In fact, we consider it highly doubtful that people being arrested will even be aware this policy exists.”