Dirty Laundry: The Divorce Podcast

Send us Fan Mail In this episode about the Halle Berry custody battle, divorce mediators Alex Howard and Amanda Silver talk about how children can be heard in family court without having to testify in a courtroom. The hosts say they do not know the facts of the case and are not taking sides. They suggest a child mental health professional meet with kids in a neutral setting, and they talk about pa...

Send us Fan Mail Former family court judge Michele Locke is back for part two, and this time she joins Alex Howard and Amanda Silver to talk about the Lindsay Clancy case. Michele is a family lawyer in Texas and the host of the lovelustlaw podcast. Together they share their thoughts on why this case has touched so many people, especially women and mothers. They talk about how important it is for n...

Send us Fan Mail Former family court judge Michele Locke breaks down the Netflix series Death of the Pastor's Wife and the Mica Miller case. Michele is a family lawyer in Texas and hosts the lovelustlaw podcast. She joins divorce mediators Alex Howard and Amanda Silver. Mica Miller died on April 27, 2024, in North Carolina. She was 30. The medical examiner ruled her death a suicide. Her estra...

Send us Fan Mail The Cornell 7 case got national attention only after the woman at the centre of it filed a civil lawsuit, about two years after the alleged assault. Kathryn Marshall is an employment and human rights lawyer at Marshall Law who represents survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. She joins divorce mediators Alex Howard and Amanda Silver to talk about why cases like...

Send us Fan Mail Is 50/50 custody really fair? Should you co-parent or parallel parent? In the Season 5 premiere, divorce mediators Alex Howard and Amanda Silver share the divorce myths they believed when they started, and why hundreds of cases changed their minds. Why a 50/50 default can shortchange kids when one parent carried the load, why the conflict often changes instead of ending after divo...

Send us Fan Mail Mary Anne Popescu is the Executive Director of the Ontario Association for Family Mediation and a practicing family mediator of over two decades. In this encore episode, she introduces the concept that changed both her practice and her own marriage: the attack-defend loop, and how naming it in real time can stop a conversation from spiraling. She and Alex and Amanda dig into insig...

Send us Fan Mail Most people think the first step after deciding to divorce is calling a lawyer. It isn't — and starting there can cost you time, money, and options you didn't know you had. In this encore episode, Alex and Amanda break down the entire divorce process from the beginning: why taking a beat before making any decisions matters, how to gather information and build the right t...

Send us Fan Mail Your attachment style shapes everything — how you fight, how you grieve, how you date after divorce, and how you co-parent with someone you're no longer in love with. And most people have no idea what theirs is until something breaks. In this encore episode, Alex and Amanda dig into the four attachment styles with a therapist and attachment expert — anxious, avoidant, disorga...

Send us Fan Mail In this encore episode, Michelle joins Alex and Amanda to talk about what dating actually looks like as a single mom in New York, the impossible time math of fitting dating into a life that already includes a daughter and a comedy career, why she gave up hiding who she was for men a long time ago, and what three things automatically make someone a red flag. Funny, honest, and deep...

Send us Fan Mail Jessica Frew's first marriage looked like a great fit from the outside. Then she found something on their computer. Her husband Steve was gay — and couldn't yet admit it to himself. In this encore episode, Jessica shares the seven years of gradual mourning that followed, the affair that finally ended the marriage, and how she and Steve built a co-parenting relationship s...

Send us Fan Mail Betsy Pake is a master coach, speaker, and founder of the Navigate Method. She has also lived this question herself for nearly a decade before finally getting clear. In this episode she talks about what keeps women stuck, why taking accountability for where you are is actually empowering rather than letting anyone off the hook, how to calibrate for action rather than words when yo...

Send us Fan Mail Emotional intelligence isn't something you either have or you don't. It's a skill. And it might be the most important one you can build when you're navigating divorce, co-parenting, and figuring out who you are on the other side of a relationship. Kristen Harcourt — business coach, speaker, podcast host, and emotional intelligence expert — joins Alex and Amanda...

Send us Fan Mail The engagement ring meant everything when he gave it to you. Now it's sitting in a drawer and you're not sure what to do with it. Sell it? Save it for your kids? Or turn it into something that finally feels like yours? Jessica of Jessica Jewellry joins Alex and Amanda to walk through every stage of the post-divorce jewelry journey, from the woman who calls fresh out of a...

Send us Fan Mail After the most difficult experience of his life, Chris Coulter spent a decade speaking with more than 2,000 parents who were struggling to understand what was really going on with their teenagers. What he found was a consistent gap — parents dismissing warning signs as normal adolescent behavior, and teenagers who wouldn't open up to the people who loved them most. In this ep...

Send us Fan Mail She spent 27 years married to her abuser. She was a domestic abuse counselor the entire time. And she still didn't recognize what was happening to her until year 20 of her marriage. Dr. Christine Cocchiola — licensed social worker, professor, therapist, survivor, and protective mom — joins Alex and Amanda to talk about coercive control as the foundation of all abuse, not just...

Send us Fan Mail Over half of all criminal cases in Canada involve intimate partner violence or sexual assault. And those are the exact cases being quietly pushed to the bottom of the pile when courtrooms run out of time and resources. In part two of her conversation with Alex and Amanda, Kathryn Marshall breaks down how trial stacking is working against abuse survivors, what the Hockey Canada tri...

Send us Fan Mail Hundreds of domestic violence and sexual assault cases are being thrown out before they ever get to trial. Abusers are walking away with no criminal record and nothing on their file. And survivors are being silenced in the process. Kathryn Marshall of Marshall Law is suing the federal government over it. In this episode she breaks down exactly how the justice system is failing abu...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Alex and Amanda get candid about the reality of Mother's Day — why it so often becomes the most exhausting day of the year, why divorced moms are doing something categorically different from married moms who think a solo weekend qualifies as the same experience, and why giving yourself permission to skip the celebration entirely is not only valid but sometime...

Send us Fan Mail Stepmoms are expected to show up like a parent, step back like a stranger, and never complain about any of it. Jamie Simkins — licensed therapist, stepmom coach, and stepmom twice over — has been there herself. In this episode from the vault, she gets into the real dynamics of blended family life: navigating a high conflict bio mom, connecting with stepkids before ever trying to d...

Send us Fan Mail One in three Canadian girls has experienced childhood sexual abuse. One in eight boys. These aren't abstract numbers — they're children in classrooms, on hockey teams, in families across the country. Ismena Toscan is 15 years old. She is a survivor, the founder of the Hula Hoop Initiative, the author of two children's books on body autonomy and personal safety, and...

Send us Fan Mail Mae Scott joins Alex and Amanda to share the full story of escaping her abusive, narcissistic ex‑husband, a respected lawyer who was eventually sentenced to 12 years to life in prison. This episode goes inside the escalating violence, the therapist who warned her she had to leave immediately, and the five felony charges that finally led to his conviction. Then we walk through the...

Send us Fan Mail In part two of this conversation, Philip breaks down the legislation that came out of that loss — Keira’s Law Law, passed unanimously across all party lines — and what it actually does to change how judges are trained on domestic violence and coercive control. He also gets into why reunification therapy has no standardized training, no governing body, and no consistent methodology...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Alex and Amanda sit down with Philip Viater, a family lawyer with 17 years of experience at VP Family Law Group, for one of the most candid conversations about the failures of family court we've ever had. Philip breaks down why parental alienation is predominantly used as a defense against abuse rather than a genuine diagnosis, why he views it as junk science...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Alex and Amanda sit down with family lawyers Sean Valentine and Ryan Osbourne — co-creators of I Do Prenup, an app that lets couples generate a real marriage contract in hours for a fraction of traditional legal costs. They break down who actually needs a prenup and why the answer is basically everyone, what three things must be included in any agreement, why coup...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Alex and Amanda sit down with Dale and Annabel, the duo behind We Are More Than Moms, to talk about why the postpartum identity shift is so disorienting, how they built a thriving community for career-driven women who refuse to shrink themselves after having kids, and why the early parenting years are such a genuine test of a relationship. Dale also shares what it...