Jason C. Kohlmeyer

I have practiced family law in Minnesota for more than 26 years, and since 2010 it has been the only thing I do. That focus matters. Most of my clients are going through the hardest stretch of their lives. They need someone who has seen their situation many times before and can tell them plainly what is likely to happen.

My approach is practical. I help clients separate the fights worth having from the ones that only cost money and wear down their kids. Most cases are better resolved with a common sense agreement than a trial. When a case does need to be tried, I am prepared to try it.

I also spend a lot of time teaching other lawyers I have presented CLEs for the ABA, MSBA, Minnesota CLE, and AAJ. I also wrote The Divorce Survival Guide: Getting Divorced in Minnesota as well as the Deskbook Chapter on Family Law attorney fees. Teaching other lawyers keeps me sharp on the law. Teaching clients helps them make better decisions in their own cases.

The first three questions are almost always the same: How long will this take, how much will it cost, and what will happen with my kids?

The honest answer to the first two is that it depends mostly on how much the two of you are willing to agree on. A divorce where the spouses can work through the issues with their lawyers can wrap up in a few months at a reasonable cost. A divorce where every issue is a fight can take more than a year and cost many times more. I tell clients early which issues are worth fighting over and which ones aren't.

On the kids, I tell clients that courts focus on the children's best interests, not on who was the better spouse. The parent who stays child-focused, keeps the conflict away from the kids, and supports the other parent's relationship with them is usually in the strongest position both to settle or in court.

This past year I was asked to provide an expert opinion on Minnesota family law for a court proceeding in the Netherlands. The Dutch court needed to understand how a Minnesota court would handle a specific property division issue in order to decide the case before it. Explaining our system to judges trained in a completely different one made me look at Minnesota law from the outside. It also showed me how many of our rules come down to judgment calls rather than formulas.

Clients have to make some of the biggest financial and parenting decisions of their lives while they are under the most stress they have ever felt. People who are normally sensible become angry, scared, or exhausted, and that is when they are asked to decide about their house, their retirement, and their children's schedules. Much of my job is helping clients slow down and make decisions they will still agree with in five years.

The other challenge is that family law gives judges a lot of discretion. Two cases with similar facts can come out differently. That makes it hard to promise anything, so I focus on giving clients realistic ranges instead of best-case predictions.

I ride adventure motorcycles. At home that means a Ducati Multistrada and long rides through Minnesota, northern Wisconsin Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho.... My most memorable ride was in the Himalayas. Halfway up the  1 pass, at around 14,000, the battery on my Royal Enfield died. We were 10- hours from the nearest town, with no cell service in the rain and it was old. It took a few tries I mastered the Push-Start method of starting and we finally rolled into Leh in the dead of night but in one piece.

That trip taught me something I see in practice all the time: plans fall apart at the worst possible moment. The people who get through it stay calm, look at what they actually have to work with, and solve the next problem in front of them.