Karen Heller Berdy

Karen is extremely knowledgable, communicative, empathic, forthright, and focused on helping both parties move the process forward. She explained various aspects of the law, likely outcomes on issues if we took them to court, explained pros & cons of different property division scenarios, and did a flawless job with executing & recording the required paperwork. She also had a knack for bringing us back to ground when emotions ran high and conversation ceases being productive and focused. Her calm, rational, and fair demeanor was critical to the success of our mediation . Note that our situation involved shared custody and division of assets, the sorting out of personal versus community property, and accounting for a small business. I’ve recommended Karen many times since and always hear she is great. Highly recommend for a couple who wants the assets to stay in the family and not go to lawyers who only win by the two of you fighting.

It took me over a year to write this review. I have actually never written a bad review about anyone or any business. I do feel, however, that if I can spare someone from wasting the money that I wasted, it will be worth it. I used the collaborative process for my divorce and was represented by Karen Berdy. My ex husband and I had agreed on everything except how to split a business and spousal support numbers (using TWO HOURS of mediation) prior to starting the collaborative process, but we needed a little extra help finalizing and didn't want to go through the court system.
We had so many wasted appointments in this collaborative process. SO MANY appointments when literally nothing was accomplished except the 7 (YES SEVEN) professionals in the room were paid a lot of money. There were prep appointments, prep time, there was time for each "specialist" and "coach", there was time billed for the attorneys to talk to each other and EACH SPECIALIST for hours, there was time that the "coaches" had to meet with us. It was the biggest racket and the biggest waste of time. Custody was never an issue.
After my ex and I had each spent over $60k, there were STILL no attempts to talk numbers, every appointment was just fluff. We decided to communicate on our own and came up with what we thought would be fair.
Karen just typed it up and filed it.
Now, I don't want to share any more about my personal situation, but I was not well represented or informed about the final agreement that we came up with. It continues to come back to haunt me years later. My friends are constantly asking me if I actually had an attorney represent me and why didn't my attorney tell me these things that keep coming up.
So... save yourself. I think the entire collaborative process is a racket, but if you are going to use it, look elsewhere.