When Divorce & Faith Collide (Pt 2): When to Turn to Your Church—And When to Look Elsewhere Ep 57

Divorce can feel overwhelming—even when faith is a big part of your life. Many people turn to their church for guidance, but what if you don’t feel comfortable talking to your pastor? What if the advice you’re given doesn’t match up with what you know is best for you and your family? What is there is abuse?  

In this episode, Kelly Bennett, Esq., continues her conversation with Denny Brewer—a longtime family law attorney, Executive Pastor, and General Counsel at Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas. They explore what faith communities often get wrong—and right—when it comes to divorce (hint: especially if there is abuse involved), how to navigate faith-based guilt, what to do if your place of worship isn’t the right fit for support, and why mediation can be the best choice for handling divorce for privacy and mental (and financial!) well-being reasons. 

Kelly and Denny chat about:

Why many people feel uncomfortable discussing divorce with their faith leaders 

• Why pastors and religious leaders should ask, “Is there abuse?”
• How abuse can go unmentioned and lead to tragedy 
• When to seek professional guidance outside of your faith community
•  Why mediation is often a better option than going to court 
• Why there is no better time to embrace faith and lean into prayer than during divorce 
• Plus, a couple of very surprising stories… 

Dennis Brewer is longtime family law attorney, and executive pastor and general counsel at Texas mega Church Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas. He is the co-author of the new book, Back to Court: A Complete Guide to Child Custody Litigation.  

Note: This episode touches on abuse and real-life incidents with unfortunate endings. If these subjects are difficult for you, please listen with care. 

RESOURCES:

DENNY BREWER'S BOOK: Back to Court: A Complete Guide to Child Custody Litigation. 

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Victim Is Not Your Name: Remembering Your True Identity In the Midst of Life Challenges

Transcript

 Kelly Bennett: Domestic violence is an equal opportunity evil. It happens in the church, it happens outside of the church. We want to handle this issue of domestic violence very honestly and frankly. And so it happens from time to time where there will be a couple in the church, and I'm going to call it the she. It happens with men too, but there's another whole topic on that. I could talk all day on men suffering from domestic violence. But let's say it's the woman.

And there's some things going on in the background and it's become intolerable. She's beaten and abused or maybe not even beaten, okay? You don't have to be beaten to be a victim of domestic violence, but the control and abuse has gotten to such a fever pitch, it's not tolerable. I tell you, you shouldn't tolerate it for a second anyway, by the way. And she goes and she's going to leave the marriage. And she tells him, “I'm leaving.” She may not even have a restraining order yet. We've seen... 

You've seen it, I've seen it, where a perpetrator, if you will, of domestic violence will often use the church or try to use the church as a weapon and weaponize the church against that spouse because they don't want to have the marriage fall apart and what we do know with many years of handling domestic violence cases and studying it there's a lot behind this the psychology of it we do know that the biggest issue in domestic violence tends to be the fear of losing control by the person who is perpetrating the harm. And so the church is fertile ground for trying to get control over the spouse back.

And so that lady all of a sudden, maybe she doesn't go and gets her restraining order, but she doesn't tell anybody in the church. She's not particularly comfortable, or she's told a few close people in her inner circle, but she said, please do not share that. And that guy goes to the pastors, or the divorce recovery people, or the married couples’ ministry pastor, right? And says, "My wife has threatened to leave me and take our children. Would you be willing to do some counseling? Would you call her and ask her to attend?" So here's the hypo. And this is just - it's a common thing. So that pastor, not knowing what's going on of course, calls her up and says, "Hey, you know, would you be willing to come in? You guys have been married a long time..." And she says, no. And then the husband asks again, "Just ask her one more time. into counseling with you." And maybe he goes a time or two and so he's willing to counsel and they call again. And she says, no. . And now it starts getting uncomfortable because what does it look like in her mind?

Denny Brewer: Yeah. 

Kelly Bennett: Okay. So let's talk about if a pastor knows there's domestic violence or even allegations of it, should they be trying to convene the parties together? What do you think? 

Denny Brewer: No. Can I give you an example of a case? I was a very young lawyer... this happened many years ago. I had a young man come see me – it seemed like he had it together, his wife had filed suit for divorce.

He went to my church. This was another church I was attending, not Fellowship Church. This was again, many, many years ago. And he told me that she wanted a divorce. He wanted to reconcile, told me that "I've made some mistakes. been the bad guy, but I'm a Christian now, I've changed my ways and I don't want a divorce.

I want to save my marriage. Would you represent me?" And he tells me that he was referred to me by someone that was in the church. So, I tell him I'll take the case. Well, what I quickly learned from his wife's lawyer and who wanted me to speak directly to the wife, which doesn't happen very often outside of the presence of the lawyer.

I found out that this young lady was very frightened of my client. Had been subject to a lot of violence in the marriage and that he had actually followed her to the church and was basically stalking her at church. Now, if you were on the outside, if you were one of the pastors there, you would look and you might meet with this guy and think, well, you know, he's coming to church.

He wants to save his marriage. And I need to step in and try to encourage that. Well, fast forward several weeks. He doesn't do what I tell him to do. I withdrew as his lawyer, which you don't do that often, but I did it in this case and to make a very long story short, about four weeks later, I get a call.

As it turns out, he had gone to his wife's apartment. She had a little three year old daughter from a previous marriage. She opens the door up. He shoots her point blank, murders her in the presence of her little three year old daughter. Now that's a situation where if you had told me that that was possible, I would have said no way under the sun.

But the point, Kelly, is that you never know. So you better be very careful when you, when you step into that. There are very often times, when even the lawyers, you and I, in the role of that party's lawyer, we don't know everything that's gone on. You don't know how severe. You’ve got to take, you know, if the question's raised, you got to take it seriously.

But there are many times where you hear, yeah, “I'm afraid of my husband,” or “I'm afraid of my wife,” even. And, you know, they may do this or that, and usually nothing happens. And if you're not careful, you can dismiss it and go, yeah, that's what everybody says, but there are those exceptions and those exceptions - and in this case, a wonderful young lady lost her life in front of her little daughter. 

Kelly Bennett: And it's tragic and it does happen. This is important for pastors to understand and for you to understand if you're listening to this and you've had some abuse happening in your marriage and for your family to understand… Just because there's not a restraining order doesn't mean things aren't happening and that there's not a risk. For example my girlfriend, past presiding judge, she tells the story a couple comes in wife's asking for a restraining order. She's not represented. She's not doing a great job of it by herself, but she's afraid and all the things. But kudos for her for being able to walk into a courtroom all by herself and ask for a restraining order. Husband has counsel. Wife isn't able to present the minimum thresholds required for a restraining order.

It doesn't feel good to the judge, but she doesn't have the law behind her. So she denies the restraining order. They leave the courtroom. The next morning she comes to work and finds out that afternoon, similar to your situation, he went to the marital home and he killed the wife and the three children. 

What that does to a judge, and the attorneys as well, but to a judge… My girlfriend, she left work the minute she heard that news and she went into a movie theater. And watched, like, three movies back to back all afternoon, sat in the dark. She couldn't handle the guilt and the enormity of what happened, but she did her job right.

Right? So, it's happening. So, if our church leaders aren't understanding that there's so much more than meets the eye here on abuse and domestic violence. And you've got someone like your guy who, you know, wants to go to the pastor and say “I'm attending church. Can't you get her to come back and let's have a reasonable conversation?”

I would probably argue that the very first question that should be asked is, not in a joint session, is to call her up and say, “Has there been abuse here? You don't have to tell me.” And she may not tell you. She may not tell you. But has there been abuse here? It's what we do, the minute we have someone come into our office, it's what I do as a mediator, when people are going to come in, to talk about the idea of mediating, I'm going to talk to each spouse separately and ask, “Has there been abuse here?”

 I know you've got, you had an experience and it speaks to this and it's another nuance for our church leaders really to pay attention to here. They may tell you some, but you may not, you still may not know all of it.

Can you talk a little bit about what happened in the barn? 

Denny Brewer: My client, very wonderful, sweet lady been married to a medical doctor for a number of years, there were children in the marriage. She had been through cancer, had surgery, chemotherapy, radiation. Her husband, found himself a girlfriend. We'd taken depositions. We had looked under every rock. I knew all of the facts of the case right when we went in. And it was only in the middle of this trial that my female paralegal said, “Hey, I need to talk to you.”

She pulled me out in the hallway and she goes, “Let me tell you what our client just told me….” It was a huge, shocking bit of evidence that my client had been so embarrassed to tell me, she finally felt comfortable enough to tell my female paralegal, Almost unbelievable what was revealed. This is what she just told me happened in the barn. I don't think I can say this on the air, what happened, but it was not good. It was, it was terrible. And now I'll tell you the way I used that. While I had the good doctor on the stand, I just, I was about ready to pass him and I looked at him and I said, “I'll tell you what. Why don't you just look over and tell the judge what happened in the barn?” Well, there was shock on his face, on his lawyer's face. He turned bright red. And that's frankly, all I needed to say. Because again, we had looked under every rock. Everybody had had their deposition taken. The right question had never been asked of my client where she had to reveal that. But the point there, Kelly, is that this was a client that quite frankly trusted me. With all of that trust, with all of the work that we did, all the questions we asked, all the discovery…

There was still embarrassment, reluctance, even though she was the victim to tell me what had happened. So what's the point of that story? That oftentimes you never know everything that goes on behind closed doors. You're just not going to know it. And, you know, if your lawyer doesn't know it, your trusted lawyer, then probably a lot of your trusted friends - and certainly your pastor - likely doesn't know it. And your bible class leader doesn't know it. So you just got to be careful about thinking you understand the dynamics of the situation because you may not have a clue. 

Kelly Bennett: That's right. And I think that's such a good word to pastors and any kind of person in leadership in church and support people is, and you may never know.

And quite frankly, in certain situations, it's not for you to know. It's not for you to know, which I think when we talk about biblical counseling, it's important and you're going to get a sense when there's just deep resistance. Listen to that little, you know, again, if you're not from the Christian faith, we'll call it the holy spirit.

There's a little tap tap tap on the shoulder: Something's not right here. You better listen to it. Encourage that person into honest to goodness therapy. Because that's where it belongs on that level and it needs to be okay for that person not to share, take them at their word for it, right?

And again, to your point, we're not saying that, you know, marriage should be something that's just easily disposable. You made a commitment. Let's get to it. Right? But at the same time, this is such a serious issue here. And if you're the person of faith and you feel like you can't talk to your pastor, be okay with that. 

There should not be shame in that idea. Please don't hold it here. Go to somebody who is a professional where you can share it because there are ramifications for holding that kind of information, that eats you alive inside. 

Hey friend, if you or someone you love has gone through some recent life challenges, or maybe you're in the middle of one right now, whether that be a challenge with your health or a relationship challenge, perhaps a marriage is ending. I want you to know I wrote a book for you and that loved one, and it's called Victim is Not Your Name.

In this book I describe six victim habits that you and most other people tend to get into unknowingly. And these are the kinds of habits which are just behavioral patterns, mindset patterns that keep you in a place that keeps you stuck and keeps you in a place of deterioration within the challenge that you're facing.

I also provide you six key strategies for disrupting those victim habits and getting you out of that place and back to a place where you can start to remember and rediscover your true identity, who you were meant to be, who you were made to be, and your purpose in life. It's not in being a victim.

Victim Is Not Your Name is available to you right now on Amazon. Grab yourself and your loved one's copies today. I'm very honored to be able to present this material to you. I know it's going help you.

Kelly Bennett: Let's talk about the role of mediation, particularly, for faith based divorces.Where do you see the role of mediation for people of faith when it comes to a divorce?

Denny Brewer: I think it shouldn't even be a thought not to go there. Now, you know, I'm someone that, I started practicing law when, if you asked somebody, what is mediation?

They would have no idea what you're talking about. There was no such thing. I can actually remember the day, Kelly, when at a grand gathering of family law specialists in Dallas, there was discussion about this thing called mediation that was coming up and the idea was that this would be horrific for the practice.

. In Texas, we have the right to a jury trial for many, many things that you can't try to a jury in other states. It's expensive by the way, typically. So that's why it doesn't happen more often, but any kind of factual question can go to the jury. So the trial lawyers, when mediation was first coming into the scene, it was like, you know, this is terrible. Now what's happened over time, the courts have embraced it because it helps them move their docket.

That's not the good reason for mediation. Mediation, especially in the arena of family law, is the way to go. It's an opportunity to take your dirty laundry and not air it out for the world. I mean, there's scripture on that, right? It's dealing with a fellow Christ follower in a civilized manner.

And here's the thing, Kelly, you know this, and a lot of the people listening know this. Our court system is based on an adversarial model. The idea is that you go down to the courthouse and you try things in the fire, so to speak, right? You cross examine. The idea is that that person's probably going to stretch the truth.

I say in the Dallas courthouse, the old red courthouse, there was more lying that went on that square block than maybe any place else in the city. And that was people under oath. You know, under the penalties of perjury. It's a nasty place, but you got to go there from time to time. 

 Divorce is tough enough, right?

But if the process is destructive, then just, you know, it's exponentially worse. And the best thing that two believers can do is find somebody like, and Kelly, I'm going to plug you here, like a Kelly Bennett. That's who I want to help get the couple and the family through a divorce.

Number one, you're a legal expert. I want a legal expert as my mediator. With all due respect, there are some fine mediators out there that are not lawyers. There are some fine mediators out there that are lawyers who practice maybe general civil litigation, but they don't know that much about family law.

No, I want a family law experienced lawyer. I want a family lawyer that knows how to go into the courtroom, quite frankly, who has in the past has gone in the courtroom and been very effective. That understands what that looks like. Now I'm going to walk you through a process that's so much better. And you're going to have an understanding of what the rules are, what the law is. Now it's your job as a mediator to facilitate settlement, right? You're not a judge.

Kelly Bennett: You have to remember in mediation, I can't give legal advice, but I can give information. So what does that look like, right? And people are well, “Why go to mediation if you can't give me legal advice?”

Well what that looks like is I can, because of exactly what you said, that it's called reality testing. “Look, I have been litigating for 35 years. I sit on the bench as a temporary judge from time to time and the reason I'm not tooting my own horn but what I'm telling you is I know what's going to happen if we can't agree on this issue over here or all these issues. Let me tell you what I’ve seen happen time and time again, and I will give you a nice prediction of what's going to happen.” Because I have that experience, right?

And that's what's so important about someone who's been in the courthouse. That's reality testing. 

Denny Brewer: Yeah. No, and you know, and there are settings where there are attorneys involved and there are no attorneys involved. And I think that depends upon the case. I lean towards liking to have the attorney with each party. So each party's in there with an attorney. And they have a mediator, but here's the reality… Some lawyers, they want to push it to a fight. Some lawyers have no idea what's going on, unfortunately. So that highly experienced mediator can really, really help.

Now, Kelly, you know this, in mediation, it takes two parties to settle the case. . two parties to reach an agreement. And, sometimes there's one side that is just obstinate. They're just not going there. But you, you’ve got to try. 

Most cases settle in mediation has been my experience, Kelly, maybe you've had a different experience. Would you agree that most do settle in mediation? 

Kelly Bennett: They do. And, I'm going to speak to our neck of the woods. We have at the present time, 18 bench officers, county-wide, all the way from Palm Springs out here to, we call where we are in Temecula, north, San Diego County, but we're really Riverside County, all the way out here, all the way up into the deep inland empire. 18 family law bench officers out of all of our judges.

There are, at any given time, 2,600 cases ready for trial. That's not counting how many are on each judge's docket.. Each judge is around 1,300 sometimes upwards of 1,500 cases - pending cases - on their family law dockets at any given time. Okay, so you get the picture that it takes a long time to get to trial here.

Most people are so anxious to avoid that mess and the expense. And the dirty little secret is the longer your case goes, the cost exponentially goes up. I'm sure that's not anything different in Texas, right? So the faster we can get to yes, and get a settlement, the better off the family's estate is, the children are, you know, get into a groove of a set schedule, we get everything divided, all of that.

So those are the practical things. We typically will settle a divorce case when we start it from start to finish, and we'll handle it from the filing, to the final divorce… Nobody ever walks into a courthouse. They don't even know what a courthouse looks like when we mediate these cases from beginning to end.

And if they're cooperative and do what they're supposed to do, 60 to 90 days from start, we're done. Versus an average of 18 to 24 months to get heard and get a trial, and we're not talking about the complex cases. That's the average time to get in front of a judge and get a trial, right? And so in those 18 to 24 months, you're going to average on, let's say, we've got a basic basic case.

A house, two dogs, two kids, two cars. A 401k, maybe a government pension over here. And that's about it. Credit card debt and some lots. Each side, if they don't cooperate, are going to spend a minimum of $50,000 apiece. If not, $100,000 to $150,000 apiece. Now our kids don't get to go to college. Now you're not going on a vacation for a very long time. 

 At any rate, that's a long answer to your question. Do most of your cases settle when people understand the playing field out there? They're motivated to go, "I don't want to do that." And quite frankly, as lawyers, we shouldn't be taking the college fund. 

Let me talk to my faith based friends out there. If you're going through a divorce, absent, we're going say absent domestic violence going on, okay? When you go through mediation, it allows you and your spouse to decide what happens. When we go over here, the traditional court route, because we're mad and we want to have our day in court and mete out a little justice, right?

Kelly Bennett: Maybe there's been an affair, whatever. Right? That, because that's a common response to that, it's anger. You're going to let the man or woman in the black dress decide. Now, when we see divorced couples and they've got minor children and somebody comes along and injures that child. Mom and dad, typically, regardless of their differences, come together and say, “Oh no, you're not going to mess with my kid.”

The child needs medical treatment, whatever, right? The parents are going to come together and say, “We're deciding together what's going to happen next for our child.” Well, if you think about it, when you don't go through mediation, which is really what it allows you to do, come together and decide what's going to happen for our children's future. What's going to happen for our future as a unit that is now going to be a divided unit?

When you don't do that, it's like going to the court and saying to the person on the bench, “Could you please decide what's going to happen to our children? Because we're not capable of doing it. So you decide.” 

Denny Brewer: To your point, when you think about the two big tests that you deal with in a family law case, one, in dividing the property. In Texas, the standard is what's a just and right division. And the child related issues it's what's in the best interest of the child. Well, do you see how gray those two areas and how broad those two areas are? What? Very subjective. Now we have some guidelines, but they're guidelines. At the end of the day, that person - your judge - has huge discretion as to what they find to be a just and right division, what they find to be in the best interest of the child. 

Kelly Bennett: I think the other thing is on the faith based piece, if you're people of faith, going to a faith based mediator who is skilled and, you know, can handle themselves in the regular world, but has a deep understanding of where you're coming from and your faith culture makes all the difference in the world.

Because in the mediation arena, if you want to agree that we'll have the children in church every Sunday or Saturday, whether they're with mom or dad, you're going to get that. You can come to that agreement and turn that into a court order. You go to the court and ask about that. 

Denny Brewer: They don't have a law behind them to do that. And they also, they've got to move you on and just deal with the nuts and bolts. I'm just using that as an example. Danny, tell me really quickly as we close it out about your book 

Well, you know, the title is Back to Court and the reality is that iif you've gone through - especially if you've gone through a contentious custody case - you're probably looking at another round.  

Denny Brewer: Unless you can work with the other side and avoid it. 

And, the book, really is designed, Kelly to give a broad education, if you will, on what to expect in a contested custody case, whether it's an initial custody case or you're looking at going back. And, we talk a lot about mediation, faith based mediation, talk about arbitration, faith based arbitration. 

Kelly Bennett: Frankly, the book is designed to encourage you to look to those alternatives to going back to court, but it's also designed to prepare you and educate you if you find yourself going there because again, it only takes one party to bring you back into court.   

That's right.

Kelly Bennett: Very valuable resource and I’ll put the link in the show notes. You guys should take a look at that. It's on Amazon and get it immediately. As we're talking to the person of faith that is feeling horribly challenged in their faith life because they're going through or about to start in down the road of divorce, what are your final comments and, words of encouragement for them? 

Denny Brewer: You know, Kelly, I've had more than several people tell me, you know, I almost feel guilty turning to God now when I'm, you know, going through this and maybe they haven't been looking to God in their lives enough, and now they're going through this crisis and they're like, gosh, isn't this a lousy time to now try to look to God to help me.

No, there's not a better time. You want to embrace God, embrace His word, stay in prayer. 

Denny Brewer: We mentioned being with the right day and revolve your life around the church. There's no better time to do it than when you're going through the crisis like this. And for those who've never been through a divorce, they don't know.

For those who've never been through a child custody contest. They have no idea. It's very, very difficult, very trying. So you want to have the right people around you go out and get yourself a really good lawyer, really push towards mediation. Kelly, you know, you're someone that knows how to do both extremely well.

Kelly Bennett: And that's who you want in your corner and then revolve your life around your faith. 

I couldn't agree more, and I think what I'd love the listener to hear of this is, it's very easy to look at the church and saying, “You're not helping me, you're not supporting me, I'm walking away.” But the amount of grace and mercy that we are seeking and forgiveness of ourselves, I would hope that you could also put that into, if you've had some misguided folks at church that maybe have done a little damage because they didn't know.

Kelly Bennett: Or you felt judged, extend the grace and mercy to them. And look at it this way. There's a distinction between God's children and God. You got the, you got the crowd over here that we call the Trinity. Then you got the crowd over here that's the human crowd, God's children, and these guys are going to make mistakes every time.

Welcome to the human race. And I think I want to close with a little, what some people might hear as poetry, we recognize where it comes from, but you know it.

And so, to encourage your friends, the promise is that those that wait on the Lord, they'll renew their strength. They'll mount up with wings as eagles. They'll run and not be weary. They're going to walk and not faint. And ask God to teach you to wait and be patient. 

Denny Brewer: All right. You know, can I get you, do you have just one more second? I know I'm running over. One more second? You mentioned at the beginning about how your dad was kind of a legend, and I just love that I got to meet him. Will you tell the story about his, just one little story about his Jack Ruby experience?   

Yeah, it's kind of crazy.

Denny Brewer: We have, Dennis Brewer, Sr. BC and AD. So BC was Before Christ, before he became a Christian. And AD is after. So I was, I was 18, 19 when he gave his life to the Lord and, it was a very dramatic, very dramatic life change. But during the BC era, he had a very active practice. He was old school.

He would do a little bit of everything,: criminal, civil, divorce. And, along the way, he represented Jack Ruby on some matters. And, what's kind of crazy is that, we learned that, along the way at some point, Lee Harvey Oswald - who lived in Irving, which is where we had our practice - the firm had handled a traffic ticket for him.

I would love to be able to find the traffic ticket record, but I don't think I'll be able to do that. So we, we had the, is it the honor or the dishonor of having both of them as clients at one point in time? Now, this was before I was practicing law, but Jack Ruby had a nightclub in Dallas so my dad would frequent that club from time to time.

That's, I think, how he met and, so I had actually had a discussion with Jack Ruby about, representing Ruby after he shot and killed Oswald and at the time senior was, he was both the city attorney for Irving and the school board attorney for Irving. And he weighed the pros and cons and decided, "Well, you know what? There's no way I could represent Jack Ruby and keep my job as city attorney and a school board attorney here in Irving." And, gosh, I'm, and I probably shouldn't mention, I'm reading a book right now that goes into that. There was a lady that was, he was on the show “What's my line?” And, she was an investigative reporter as well. And she was doing research into the death of Jack Ruby and his involvement and Oswald's involvement. So it was kind of strange. I've just been reading up on that.

You know, she died somewhat mysteriously. So there's still a lot of speculation about that.    

Kelly Bennett: All right, Mr. Brewer. This has really been wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me today. 

Denny Brewer: My pleasure. I really enjoyed it.