How to Split a Toaster: A Divorce Podcast About Saving Your Relationships

We continue our hiatus as we prepare for season five. In today’s episode, we return to season three and our conversation with Megan Hunter at the Hight Conflict Institute in a great conversation about dealing with divorce with high conflict people. Ninety percent of divorce conflict can be resolved through dialog and negotiation. But what about that last ten percent? In these situations you might...

“Get over your divorce before your divorce is over.” So says divorce coach Nikki Bruno in one of the programs she offers, guiding participants through the divorce process with a coach’s attention. And as a coach, she is dedicated to the internal work, the processing required to move through the grief of conflict, anxiety, fear, depression, and grief that comes alongside the legal separation. We’re...

Happy New Year! In our season break we brought the team together to talk about divorce in the movies. From hyper-stylized to hyper-real, how well do filmmakers capture divorce? Producer Andy Nelson joins Pete and Seth as we build our divorce movie watchlist. Seth It’s Complicated (steal) The First Wives Club Something’s Gotta Give Under the Tuscan Sun Pete War of the Roses (steal) Crazy, Stupid, L...

We’re on a short break as we celebrate the holidays with our families and gear up for season five coming in 2022. While we’re away, we thought it might be nice to take another trip down memory lane and share some of our favorite episodes from our early seasons of the Toaster. This week, we’re talking about your space. You’re newly divorced. You’ve moved into a new place. Let’s say, to really put a...

How do you heal after living through the trauma of divorce? How do you help your kids heal when they live through their own experience of your trauma? Whether you consider yours an easy divorce, or a hard one, the act of separating lives is traumatic, and the impact of trauma can sneak up on you. As we wrap up this season of the show, we want to take some time to talk about that healing process an...

We’ve talked about divorce and the law. We’ve talked about the emotional rebuilding after a divorce, too. But somewhere in between the legal and the emotional exists the practical: how do you present yourself to the world? This week on the show we’re talking all about brand YOU. Becca Bycott is a writer based in Washington D.C. and the pen behind Bride In Reverse , a personal branding and lifestyl...

What happens to your life after divorce? Author Chidima Anusiem, or “Author Chi”, joins us this week to talk about the transition. From social rebuilding to emotional health, her work as a divorce coach working with other divorced women offers a unique perspective on transitioning from the legal constraints to the practical realities of life after divorce. We learn about her 7-step divorce coachin...

If you’re newly divorced, this episode is going to hit home. Today, we’re dealing with one of the central questions that form the overall arc of your divorce story: how do you handle the money? This week on the show, we have a guest seasoned in helping the “suddenly single” through the uncertainly, a financial educator for his clients in how to avoid the financial vultures the circle the divorce p...

We’ve talked about grey divorce on the Toaster. We’ve talked about high dollar divorce on the Toaster. But what are the issues facing the messy middle, sitting right at the top of the divorce bell curve? That’s the topic of this week’s show, and to lead us through it we’re talking to Daniel Herrold, co-founder of Divorced Over Forty, a community dedicated to providing support for those in their 40...

JT Tapias is a trainer, coach, and health counselor and his practice is all about teaching others how to live a fit and healthy life that is sustainable. Your health is more than a casual pastime and the stress of divorce can have an even more drastic impact on your health than you might expect. The Power of Re-Programming Today, JT talks to us about the things we put in the way of our health and...

How has divorce impacted your sex life? Have you noticed a difference in intimacy as you move through your separation, dating, and even sex in your subsequent marriages? How has your experience communicating about your sexual interests and experience changed through divorce? Dr. Joe Kort is a psychotherapist and founder of The Center for Relationship and Sexual Health and a board certified clinica...

What does it take to move from case to case as a divorce attorney? Which systems are in place to manage client, judge, opposing counsel, and assorted other relationships on your case? What tools keep material organized and accessible? The inner workings of a busy law firm might not be quite as dramatic as you see in the movies, but understanding what’s going on behind the scenes can help you work...

Erika Anne Englund spent 15 years as a divorce attorney, professional mediator, and law professor before becoming Chief of Strategy at SupportPay . And she tells it like it is — divorce is hard for everyone involved. That’s why it’s so important to trap the language we use that piles negative emotion on an already difficult situation. To start, let’s agree to stop reading articles that have some v...

Jordan Shapiro is a professor at Temple University, a senior fellow for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, and Nonresident Fellow in the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. He’s also author of two books, “The New Childhood: Raising Kids to Thrive in a Connected World” and his newest book, Father Figure: How to Be a Feminist Dad ,” a new take on “dad-psychology...

All right, we get it. A review of benefits programs might not seem like the most entertaining fodder for a podcast about divorce. But wait, just hear us out. See, if you're on your spouses benefits program, you could be looking a unraveling a potentially expensive web of coverage, from life insurance to health plans to pensions, IRAs, and 401ks, each of which leads to choice you get to make on a s...

This week on the show, we’re taking on one of the BIG divorce questions. It comes right along with “where am I going to live,” and “what am I going to do with my life?” … it’s the question of money . Divorces can get expensive and you need to know how to pay for it. One option — one of several — is Divorce Financing, and our guest today is fouder and CEO of New Chapter Capital , an organization th...

Bringing in a "forensic accountant" to your divorce team sounds serious, and it is. But it's far from the dour experience the title implies. In fact, having an expert in understanding the numbers in your divorce can play an invaluable role in creating a clear, accurate, and fair split. As you listen, if you're not a numbers person (as Pete is certainly not), you might find the thought of the whole...

Soberlink is a tool used to identify, test, and communicate alcohol use. If you’re in addiction recovery you might think of it as your accountability partner. For our purposes, it’s all about being accountable to yourself, to your former spouse, and to the court, in an effort to keep clean and preserve your relationships with your kids in the divorce process. Chris Beck joins us from Soberlink to...

Our guest today has spent years in the publishing business, but it was only when her marriage broke up that she found the inspiration to write a book of her own. Available: A Memoir of Sex & Dating After a Marriage Ends , is a no-holds-barred look at post-divorce rehabilitation and the experiences of a woman on a journey of invention. “Don’t judge me,” says author Laura Friedman Williams. And...

This week on the show we welcome Tracy Poizner, parenting strategist who specializes in helping divorced moms and dads navigate new parenting duties and help them raise well-adjusted, fully-parented humans. She teaches us how to move through shallow expectations and work toward forging relationships of trust within a new family, challenging preconceived notions of perfection in favor of respect. W...

Gabrielle Stone pulled on the threads of her own marriage, until it came apart. At the other end, she'd discovered spare phones, receipts, emails, and an extraordinary web of social media posts that came together to paint a picture of her husband's extensive affair with a younger woman. In her day job, Stone is filmmaker. Her films It Happened Again Last Night and After Emma earned her awards for...

It's safe to say we're all dog people around Toaster HQ. They're not big dogs. They're small, cuddly dogs that like to sit on laps and couches and generally give us peace. Unless they see a bike. Bikes are bad news. In the eyes of the law, these adorable creatures are considered pretty simple property. Sure, they're about as easy to split as a toaster, but the court doesn't care. Pets become anoth...

We're gearing up for our fourth season which will begin in just a few weeks. Along the way, we've been reflecting on lessons learned in the last three seasons, reviewing which episodes have resonated with you. As such, we thought we'd use a bit of our break while we're preparing new episodes, to share a few of our favorites from the first three seasons. This is where it starts. You're in a relatio...

It’s the last episode of our season and we’re going out with a bang. We introduce Pete’s new favorite acronym by way of Subsequent Lawsuits After Divorce (S.L.A.D.) and talk about all the ways you might find yourself back in court after your divorce is over. The law is made up of some confusing statements on responsibilities as they’re assigned in the divorce process and we outline the major bucke...

Let’s just say you’re a woman and you’re about to divorce. We know, crazy, right? But stay with us on this. When you walk away from your marriage, what is it that you most want your former spouse to know? If you could wave a magic wand, not to somehow recover your relationship, but to cast a spell that would ensure that your former spouse truly understood your perspective, what would you say? This...