Summarized Transcript of The Moving On Method Podcast

Host: Michelle Dempsey-Multack
Guest: Marilyn Chinitz, Divorce Attorney and Family Law Expert

Opening – Navigating Divorce with Strength, Strategy, and Compassion
HOST (Michelle Dempsey-Multack):
Divorce isn’t just a legal process, it’s a deeply emotional transition that affects your identity, your family, and your future. Today, we’re unpacking what it means to move through divorce with clarity and confidence.
GUEST (Marilyn Chinitz):
That’s right. The end of a marriage can feel like the end of everything, but it’s really the beginning of a new chapter. When you approach divorce with intention, both legally and emotionally, you reclaim control over your life.
QUOTE: “Divorce is not the end of your story; it’s the rewrite that allows you to live in truth.”
Key Themes:
Emotional empowerment through informed legal choices

How strategy and self-awareness intersect during divorce

Why empathy matters as much as evidence in family law

How to Approach Divorce: Strategy Over Emotion
HOST: Many people enter divorce in fight-or-flight mode. How can they shift from reaction to strategy?
GUEST: It starts with mindset. You can’t negotiate effectively if you’re fueled by anger. I always tell clients: pause, breathe, and let logic lead. The law protects fairness, not feelings.
HOST: That’s so powerful. I often remind women that The Moving On Method® is about taking emotional responsibility, you can honor your feelings without letting them drive your decisions.
Bullet Highlights:
Learn your rights before making emotional decisions

Don’t weaponize the children or the co-parenting dynamic

Keep communication concise, factual, and respectful

QUOTE: “When you make decisions from anger, you give your power away, when you make them from clarity, you take it back.”

Co-Parenting With Boundaries and Grace
HOST: One of the hardest shifts after divorce is moving from partners to co-parents. How do you encourage clients to manage that?
GUEST: Boundaries are everything. You can’t control your ex, but you can control your reactions. Co-parenting works when parents communicate with respect, or sometimes, with restraint.
HOST: Exactly. Healthy co-parenting isn’t about constant communication; it’s about clear expectations and consistent behavior.
Key Principles:
Separate parenting from personal conflict

Document communication when necessary, not to fight, but to protect clarity

Always center decisions on the child’s emotional stability

QUOTE: “The most loving thing you can do for your child is protect their peace, even if that means limiting your words.”

Legal Wisdom Every Divorced Parent Should Know
HOST: Let’s talk practicalities, what are some legal blind spots people often miss during or after divorce?
GUEST:
Financial transparency: Understand your assets and liabilities before settlement.

Custody language: Ambiguity breeds conflict; be specific in parenting plans.

Post-divorce updates: Wills, insurance, and beneficiaries often go overlooked.

HOST: That’s such vital advice. Many of my clients think the legal part ends with the decree, but the paperwork is just one layer of protecting your future.
QUOTE: “A smart divorce is one where you plan for peace, not just for closure.”

The Emotional Side of Legal Resilience
GUEST: People assume lawyers only care about the law, but the best outcomes come from understanding the human side. Divorce is grief. It’s identity loss. We have to hold both the law and the heart in balance.
HOST: That’s the foundation of everything I teach, resilience is emotional literacy in action. When we stop labeling emotions as weaknesses, we start making empowered decisions.
Highlights:
Emotional self-awareness strengthens negotiation outcomes

Legal resilience = emotional regulation + informed action

Healing requires both inner work and external support systems

QUOTE: “Resilience is built not from what happens to you, but how intentionally you rebuild afterward.”

Closing Reflection – Reclaiming Power After Divorce
HOST: Divorce isn’t just an ending, it’s an invitation to rise. When you learn to advocate for yourself legally and emotionally, you begin building the life you deserve.
GUEST: That’s exactly it. The courtroom may finalize a divorce, but you define how you move forward. Every decision you make after this moment is part of your healing.
Takeaway Summary:
Divorce is both strategic and spiritual, it demands self-awareness

Boundaries protect your peace and your parenting

Legal clarity empowers emotional recovery

QUOTE: “Healing after divorce begins when you stop proving and start protecting, your peace, your energy, and your future.”

Raw Transcript:
Welcome back to another episode of Moms Moving On. Today, I am joined by Marilyn Chinitz, big New York divorce attorney who has represented A-list celebs like Tom Cruise, Michael Douglas. She’s been on shows like Good Day New York, Dr. Drew, and she’s frequently an expert legal source for high-profile print outlets like the New York Times, People, Insider, HuffPost.

I’m so excited she’s here with us today. She’s fun, she’s funny, she’s knowledgeable, and she’s gonna help us see why divorce can actually be a positive in a lot of ways. Marilyn, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to talking to you. Me too.

So, oh my God, Tom Cruise? Was it the Nicole Kidman divorce or the Katie Holmes divorce? It was Katie Holmes divorce, and I have to say it was one of the fastest divorces on record. It took us about a week working 24-7 and the case was settled. Wow, I mean, I can imagine she just wanted out of there.

Well, that was a credit to not only the parties, but the attorneys on both sides working together and very much taking what their clients were saying, which was that they did not want to drag out litigation. And so we were committed to work 24 hours and get it done, and we did. That’s incredible.

You must have seen so much over the course of your career. Tell us a little bit about your practice and all the work that you’ve done. Sure, so I have been in practice for 41 years.

It’s a long time. I started out as a corporate litigator and I ended up doing matrimonial when one of the partners at the law firm I was working with asked me if I would represent him. And I thought it was the most interesting area of the law because it was not only very people-oriented, it was involving very interesting types of businesses, trust and estate work, real estate transactions.

So I felt that I could incorporate all these different disciplines into one area. So I have very happily built a practice over 40 years and it’s a high net worth practice. I represent a lot of hedge fund managers and private equity and celebrities and just normal folk like me and you, but it’s very dynamic.

That’s incredible. And I believe you have probably seen no matter what background your clients have come from or what they were fighting over, everybody kind of really, I feel like divorce is a great normalizer. We all sort of struggle with the same things going through the divorce and coming out of it, we all sort of find these very similar positives life after divorce.

And I’m not sitting here saying get divorced, your life is going to be better, but you and I just discussed off camera that there are some positives to this very negative life event that goes on. There are, I happened to be married for 38 years. And so here I am one of the top divorce lawyers and I’ve never been divorced.

But what I have been able to see is identify the problems that occur and how even though you go through a divorce, how you have a life that can be very enriching and very fulfilling and provide you with opportunities that you didn’t have when you were married. But I am a very strong believer that women need to be independent all throughout their marriage. And if they stay the course, and I’ll explain what I mean, then when you get divorced, you already have your community of friends, you already have your social network because divorce can be very isolating and alienating and people find that they no longer are invited to the parties or dinners.

And creating a community of people during your marriage, you don’t have to start at divorce, I find is really important. And I have clients who got divorced because they were controlled all throughout their marriage. They could not make a decision, not about their children, not about their finances, not about their homes, not about their travel.

And so it was stifling. And living that lifestyle for many, many years and several cases, decades, has a very debilitating effect. And when a particular client who I just finalized the divorce two months ago, she gave me a call and she told me that she is having the best time of her life because it’s the first time that she made a decision that she was gonna travel.

She made a decision about an investment. She made a decision about a painting that she loved, but her husband did not like that artist. So all of a sudden the world opened up and that’s pretty special.

It is, and I think there are, I find in my line of work, there are two types of people after divorce. There are the people who will sit and pity for themselves and play the victim. And then there are people who say, you know what? That’s my past.

It’s not my future. I’m gonna grow and move on. And despite whatever the horrors were in the marriage, despite if there was abuse or infidelity, it doesn’t have to dictate what’s going to happen moving forward.

And I very much align with that because I don’t know, you either learn and grow or you stay stuck, right? Yeah, and the pity party is not a very good thing for your kids. They are the collateral damage to that. We mentioned it, we were talking about it earlier that I always believe and tell my clients that if you do well, your kids do a hundred times better.

If they see a parent who is depressed and down and miserable and critical, you’ve now brought them down to your level. And that’s not what we do as parents. We elevate our kids.

We make their lives happy. Gospel over here in the Moms Moving On World, Marilyn, because I work tirelessly to get people to believe that. And then you’ll have the people who say, well, shouldn’t my children know the truth about their other parent? Sure, if you want them to accuse you of alienation down the line.

And why should kids know what happened during the marriage? Why should they be privy to that? I think it is a terribly destructive thing to do to your kids. And I think you hamper their ability to be happy. And if you’re really a caring parent, you’re gonna do everything you can.

So I tell parents, if you wanna pity yourself, go hire a private therapist and lay it all out on them. But nobody wants to be around somebody who’s constantly a Debbie Downer, always looking to the negative and always blaming everyone else. Everybody else.

I agree, I agree. And many people will argue, well, that person did so many horrible things to me. Two things can be true.

They could have been horrible to you. It could have been a horrendous marriage and a terrifying existence. And you can move forward with strength and empowerment.

Like you’re saying, this client who was finally able to travel and feel empowered about it. That’s these things we take for granted in marriages. That’s right.

And it’s not to say, look, divorce is extremely hard. I work with men and women. And men suffer, women suffer, everybody suffers.

It has a domino effect. But how you handle that suffering, it’s gonna be short-term, it’s gonna be long-term, it’s gonna have a domino effect on other people. That’s all up to you.

That’s in your hands. And so I think that the best thing that you can do is if you go through this process, I do believe that it does take a village, that it’s nice to have a support system, but not to unload, but to do things with. And so I have a client who goes biking now and never did that before.

And she has a community of bikers. They travel to Europe. I happen to bike also, so I loved the idea and I actually sparked it in her head.

But she’s become this great biker who travels all over the world. So there are so many things that you can do positively that get you moving in a good way so that you’re protective and that you are somebody who is productive and open up your own abilities so that you can see things that you never saw before. So do you think that the people who come to you that are just so distraught over the divorce and they don’t want it and they can’t believe this is happening, do you think a lot of that is driven by how much they actually love their marriage or because there’s such a stigma around divorce and a fear of what life might be like without the person? Well, they’re definitely scared.

I mean, people for the most part are scared to be alone. And again, if you didn’t have an active life that was more than just dedicating yourself to your husband or wife and to your kids, but you had no hobbies, you had no outside interests, you’re gonna struggle. And it’s very, very difficult.

I think that, again, I’m a big advocate of being independent, of doing things. What does independence mean? Not everybody can be financially independent. I get that.

But independent to the point that if you see that there’s fantastic theater, that you can make that plan with a friend and go, that you have the opportunities to do things and that you’re not just at home. I think that you need to start working on yourself now. I love talking to young people who come to me for a prenuptial agreement and kind of advise them, including my own young daughter, who’s in her thirties and married with kids.

It’s really important to be active. However you define activity. So that if you find yourself and the marriage has ended, your life is not over.

There are things that you can do to activate yourself and kind of get all the good stuff back. People get depleted. They feel that they are not good enough.

They feel that they’ve lost their confidence. They’ve lost their footing. And so how do you instill confidence back in someone who feels like they’ve been depleted? And some of these relationships are in fact really abusive, not just physically abusive, but emotionally abusive.

And somebody who’s been abused for decades has a lot of learning to do. And one of the things that they have to learn is how to love themselves. And that’s important, taking care of yourself and loving yourself.

Absolutely. So it sounds easy to tell people, but it’s not so easy to get people in that path. And as a matrimonial attorney, my job, and I’ll share with you, I have a wonderful woman’s luncheon every year, and it’s actually gonna happen in April where I invite 50, 55 women.

And it’s women who have gotten divorced, women who are going through divorce, but it’s only women who have become very successful business people. One is the president of a major clothing company. Another is a plastic surgeon.

One is a founder of a hotel so that everybody can share their stories. And I always believe in the philosophy, where are you going and who are you taking with you? Because you wanna be able to help somebody and mentor somebody. So my job as a matrimonial attorney is not just to extricate them and divorce them, it’s to also help build them so that they then move on to the next platform in their lives.

And I love the stories when people come back and they say, wow, I have learned so much. Here’s what I’m doing now. And then I’ll say, okay, well, where are you going and who are you taking with you? Because now it’s your responsibility.

That’s incredible. But there’s lots of things that you can do. Not everybody can do something for you.

A great lawyer is gonna get you hopefully a great result. Right. Great result with the least amount of time in court.

Well, and that’s key. And I can’t tell you the number of men who I have said, pay the extra X amount of dollars. Pay it, bite the bullet because you’re gonna be making that money back in the next six months.

And then you will turn around and say, well, not only did I make it back, but you gave me my life back. And that’s the same for a woman. You have to pick and choose your battles.

Some things are important, other things, just let them go. Exactly, well, picking battles is something we educate a lot about here because having been a child of divorce and then going through my own, I knew exactly that I needed to get through this quickly and that the longer my ex and I were in conflict, the worse it would be for our young child and the harder it would be to repair into some sort of co-parenting relationship. So I love that you are making people realize that a little money up front will go a long way and save you down the line.

It does. And you don’t have to get every single penny. If you want every single penny, then you have to be prepared to fight every single day.

And it’s a choice that you make in life. I’m not saying you take less. Believe me, I’m not saying that.

But again, pick and choose your battles. Yeah, for sure. If you feel that having the home is more important than having something else, that’s your focus.

Yep. And so I think a good lawyer with a good financial person evaluates what you’re gonna get out of this divorce financially. And then you have to evaluate, do I wanna go the extra mile or two? Or do I feel that this is a great result and I’m ready to move on? That means you have to shed a lot of anger.

A lot of anger. Because it’s anger that keeps people going. A hundred percent.

And you have to also kind of, like the racehorses, put your blinders on and not follow the advice of the friend who’s been divorced who might’ve done it one way or what your family thinks you should do because you’re deserving of the world in their eyes. I find that a lot of times when I work with clients, they’ll say, well, my friend said I should fight for this and I should do that. And what we do, ironically, is we create, I ask them to draw a wedding cake with three tiers.

The bottom tier, tier one, those are your non-negotiables. Those are the things that you need in this divorce to be able to lay down your head at night peacefully and move forward. The other two tiers, that’s where we’re like, that’s the thing the friend said you should get or you should ask for.

And I help people realize that if you have a list of 10 things and you get two, you’re lucky. And that’s okay. Because the less time you spend fighting, the more quickly you can move forward with your life and adjust your kids to this new normal.

Staying in the legal process is purgatory. I mean, I absolutely agree with you. Noise that you hear from others has nothing to do with your life.

That’s their noise. And so they’re asking you to put on their headphones and their particular case is based upon their particular facts that will not apply to you. And you don’t know the whole story of somebody else’s divorce.

So you have to do what’s right for you based upon your situation. And most importantly, based upon the impact that it has on your children. I’m not saying walk away from anything.

But what I’m saying is that you prioritize everything in life. You prioritize the important things. As you said, you use the analogy of a wedding cake, which I thought was interesting, but it’s spot on and it’s a good analogy.

Yeah. Now I have to ask you a question because you’ve been in this game a long time. It seems now in the last couple of years that everybody, everybody who’s getting divorced is divorcing a narcissist.

What are your thoughts on this word? You are absolutely right. But you know what? Most people are narcissists. I hate to say that, but it’s true.

There are elements of, right? But there are degrees of also. So there are people who are true narcissists. They don’t care about the way you feel.

They don’t understand the harm that they have caused. They don’t take any ownership or responsibility. You will never change people like that ever.

And so if you continue to bang your head against the wall thinking that you’re gonna change them, you’re not. It’s impossible. And so those are the kind of people that you wanna get away from quickly.

But there are elements of selfishness that people have. Well, and I share this because I’m trying to get people to realize that just because somebody is being a selfish asshole in the divorce process does not necessarily mean, we have the right to label them with some sort of personality disorder that is outside the realm of what we know about psychology, right? And so I ask people to not focus on that label because we all become self-serving and our egos all go into overdrive in the divorce process. Well, so that’s an interesting point because sometimes when you understand the characteristics and the psychology of someone, you are better able to handle it.

If you have a husband or wife who’s bipolar, who just really is not mentally well and screams at you and then comes back and a half an hour later is so nice to you, people take things to heart deeply. But if you understand that they’re not well, that this is really a psychological problem that they had, you don’t blame yourself. You don’t say, I did something wrong here and weaken your whole composition.

So I think sometimes it’s kind of interesting and important to know what their problems are because then you will then handle it, I think in a different way. You won’t take the blame. You won’t take the blow in the same way.

But I also ask people that, okay, so even if they’re a narcissist, an asshole, a gorilla in sheep’s clothing, whatever, you still have to learn to move forward. Even if you’re the kindest person in the world, you have to learn to emotionally separate. You have to break the marital cycle of codependency and communication.

You still have to do all of these things. So I ask people not to get lost in a diagnosis that this other person may or may not have even received because it sort of takes away from self-work. Allowing you to move on, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So I find it interesting because my stepfather was a divorce attorney in New York and my husband’s a family court judge. Ooh, now I know, I want to know who it is.

Well, my dad has since passed, but my husband’s a family court judge and we always talk about this. He’s like, when I started this, we didn’t hear the word narcissist. Now everybody that walks into the courtroom is, well, wait, before I tell you anything, they’re a narcissist.

And it’s like, well. Right, and we never heard, you know, when I grew up and I’m 68 years old, no one had ADHD, nobody even discussed it. It was just a kid that was wild or whatever.

But does it help us by labeling people? And you’re right. You know, I think you’ve got to be able to recognize the qualities, the difficulties and how you are going to help yourself. But I imagine, you know, Supreme Court judges, family court judges, they get very frustrated because they want you to focus in on the most important thing.

A, your children, first and foremost. Yep. B, how do you get out of this situation, focusing in on what you need, what you’re entitled to and how do we get you moved on? Absolutely.

So, and divorce lawyers face that same task, which is having clients refocus their attention on, I hate to sound cold, but the dollars and cents of a divorce, the financial situation. Here’s what the marital pot looks like now that we’ve done all the discovery and the depositions. Here’s what you need based upon your lifestyle.

It doesn’t matter that your husband just bought a Ferrari. You also have a beautiful car. You have a home, but here’s the expenses that you have with your kids.

Focus in on that. Yeah. And I just want to say to anybody listening that if you are being, you know, emotionally abused or physically abused by a narcissist, true narcissistic abuse is very, very, very challenging to deal with in many ways.

If you’re scared, if you don’t know how to handle it, please seek extra help. Work with an attorney who you know can really go toe to toe with this person, not to fight, but to protect you. And please seek therapy.

Coming out of a relationship that is abusive and dealing with someone who is emotionally manipulative, it takes a lot of work to learn to stand on your own two feet again. So if you really are in the throes of hell with a narcissist, please know that there are resources for you. And I think that a lot of people experience that in divorce.

And when I said earlier, it takes a village and a community, it does. It’s really important as a divorce lawyer to tell my clients to get the best professionals around you. Not the noise that, you know, a friend told you about in their divorce, but a really good therapist, a good psychiatrist.

I’m a strong believer in self-help. So any wellness mode, it could be sound bath, it could be massage, it could be yoga. Focus in on getting yourself healthy because when you are healthy, you have all the tools to move on.

You’re not being pulled back by that narcissist or that abuser. You have, you know, now looked at, this is what I can do in my life and I can move forward. So being healthy is physical, but it’s very much emotional.

Absolutely. Oh my God, that’s such a great line. And I think that’s a great place to wrap it up, Marilyn.

So you’re still practicing. You’re in New York City. I’m still practicing, working harder than I’ve ever worked in my life, but I love it and it’s great.

I could tell that you like radiate this aura of empowerment for your clients. And I think that’s incredible. Where can people learn more about you or have a consult? I’m a partner at Blank Rome, B-L-A-N-K-R-O-M-E, and I’m in the New York office.

And they can just either Google me or go on our Blank Rome website, they’ll find me. And it was really a pleasure to talk to you. And you’re doing great work.

I mean, you really are doing tremendous work. I can’t tell you the number of clients that I have that are looking for what you do, somebody that does it the way you do it, because they need that extra help. And so I’m gonna refer my clients to you.

Thank you. Maybe one day I can come to one of your lunches. I’m jealous.

I wanna be at one of these parties. That’s awesome. Everyone listening, thank you.

I’m sure you got as much out of this as I did and feel empowered and really ready to take on your divorce and find the positives. Don’t stay stuck in the past. There’s too much goodness out there.

We’ll see you next time on Mom’s Moving On. Thank you.