# A Map of Every Mistake You're About to Make at the Start of Your Divorce — and How to Avoid Them with Lyerly Spongberg

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/divorce-happens-6931880/a-map-of-every-mistake-you-re-about-to-make-at-the-start-of-your-divorce-and-how-to-avoid-them-with-lyerly-spongberg
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/divorce-happens-6931880/a-map-of-every-mistake-you-re-about-to-make-at-the-start-of-your-divorce-and-how-to-avoid-them-with-lyerly-spongberg.md
Podcast: [Divorce Happens](https://stenobird.com/podcast/divorce-happens-6931880)
Published: 2026-04-17T16:35:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/divorce-happens
Audio file: https://episodes.captivate.fm/episode/bd900c18-a951-4539-98a7-e8d239100a94.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/divorce-happens-6931880/episodes/a-map-of-every-mistake-you-re-about-to-make-at-the-start-of-your-divorce-and-how-to-avoid-them-with-lyerly-spongberg
Duration seconds: 1117

## Resource

You've made the decision. Maybe it took months — maybe it took years. But you've finally arrived at it, and now your brain is telling you: move fast, do something, protect yourself. And that instinct, as understandable as it is, might be the very thing that costs you the most. In this indispensable episode of Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell sits down with Lyerly Spongberg — certified ADR divorce coach, pre-mediation coach, and co-parenting specialist — to walk through the most common and costly mistakes people make in the early stages of the divorce process. Lyerly brings years of front-line coaching experience to a conversation that is equal parts educational and deeply compassionate, pulling back the curtain on why even intelligent, capable people get derailed right at the start — and exactly what to do instead. The first thing Lyerly wants you to understand is that when the divorce decision finally lands, your nervous system is not your friend. What looks like urgency is often dysregulation — a survival-mode brain that is neurologically incapable of making clear, future-focused decisions. From that dysregulated state, people make the same predictable mistakes: they call the most aggressive attorney they can find, they ask their hairdresser and their college roommate and their coworker what they're "entitled to," and they latch onto other people's divorce settlements as a blueprint for their own. Lyerly dismantles all of it with precision. Every divorce is different, she explains. The laws vary by state. The finances vary by marriage. And perhaps most crucially, the person across from you is not your aunt's ex-husband. What worked — or didn't — in someone else's divorce has almost no bearing on yours. The second major pitfall she unpacks is what she calls the fou…

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/divorce-happens-6931880/episodes/a-map-of-every-mistake-you-re-about-to-make-at-the-start-of-your-divorce-and-how-to-avoid-them-with-lyerly-spongberg/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/divorce-happens-6931880/a-map-of-every-mistake-you-re-about-to-make-at-the-start-of-your-divorce-and-how-to-avoid-them-with-lyerly-spongberg.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.