How we work.
Four phases.
One arc.
Better Divorce Austin is the consumer-facing brand of Trusler Legal PLLC. The practice is settlement-first by design and court-capable by training. The work is organized into four phases that the firm runs the same way every time: Clarify, Chart the path, Resolve, Forward.
Clarify
Figuring out what is actually true before anything is filed.
Chart the path
Choosing collaborative, mediation, or trial, with real numbers.
Resolve
The structured work of producing the actual decree.
Forward
The thirty days after the decree, and the decade after that.
The conviction that organizes the practice is unfashionable in family law: no family situation has ever improved at the courthouse. The courthouse is excellent at assigning consequences. It is poorly suited to designing futures. A judge, constrained by rules of evidence and the finite minutes of a docket, can decide who is at fault and how to allocate the consequences. That is the work the courthouse was designed to do.
A courtroom is an indifferent venue for designing a parenting plan. It is a worse venue for reconciling two careers, three bank accounts, a house with a mortgage, and a pair of children who need both parents to remain present in their lives. So the practice is built around keeping work out of the place that was not built for it. We do not avoid court because we cannot try cases. Cristi is Board Certified in Family Law and we have tried cases in Travis, Williamson, and Hays counties for over two decades. We avoid court because most families do better when they decide their own future.
"Settlement is not a compromise.
It is a discipline."
Clarify.
Before anything is filed.
The first phase is the longest and the least visible. It is the work of figuring out what is actually true before any pleading is drafted, any retainer is signed, or any spouse is told what is about to happen.
That means understanding what each spouse owns separately, what the marriage owns jointly, what the children need now and will need in five years, what the household actually depends on each month, what the businesses on either side look like at the bone. Most divorces get into trouble because they were planned on incomplete information. We do not draft pleadings until we have a working picture of the estate, the parenting reality, and the income on both sides.
The output of Clarify is not a filing. It is a one-page summary that lets two reasonable people see the same case from across a table. From there, the path forward is shorter, and so is the bill.
Chart the path.
Three routes, real numbers.
Once Clarify produces a shared picture of the case, we map the route. There are roughly three: collaborative, mediated negotiation, and contested litigation.
Most matters can use the first two; some need the third. We tell you which one we think fits your facts, what each one will cost, what each one will take in time, and what each one will require of you emotionally. The point of this phase is to make a real decision about process, not to default into the most familiar one. Filing first is rarely the right move. Sometimes it is.
We explain the recommendation, give you the choice, and run the path you select. Decisions made here save more legal fees, and more years of family difficulty, than any other phase of a Texas divorce.
Resolve.
The actual divorce.
Resolve is where the divorce actually happens. The shape of this phase depends entirely on which path was chosen in Phase 02.
In the collaborative path, that means a series of structured meetings with both spouses and their attorneys (sometimes a financial neutral, sometimes a child specialist), each meeting designed to make decisions, not to perform conflict. In mediated negotiation, the work happens between counsel and at mediation. Mediation is often the day a case actually settles. In contested litigation, Resolve is the trial calendar, the temporary orders, the discovery, the depositions, and the courthouse.
In all three paths, the work is the work. The difference is the venue and the tone. In the first two paths, you have leverage over the outcome. In the third, you have less. That is part of why we work to keep matters out of the courthouse where it is possible to do so, and prepare hard for the cases where it is not.
Forward.
After the decree is signed.
The decree is signed. Now what. A surprising number of family-law firms treat the signed decree as the end of the relationship. We do not.
The thirty days after a decree are when the QDRO drafting happens, the property transfers happen, the title work happens, the tax-year coordination happens, and the beneficiary designations are updated. If those tasks slip, the decree never quite finishes, and the work that was supposed to settle the case stays half-done.
Forward also covers the long tail. Most decrees need a modification at some point in the next decade. A job change, a relocation, a child aging into a different stage of life. We tell every client to come back when something material shifts. We do not chase. But we are still here, the case file is still on a shelf in our office, and we already know the case.
A practice built around keeping matters out of court only works if you are also good at court. We are. Cristi is Board Certified in Family Law (TBLS), the State Bar credential that certifies trial depth, and the firm has tried cases in Travis, Williamson, and Hays counties for over two decades. Trial readiness is not a posture. It is the actual preparation that goes into every case from the first meeting forward.
We go to court when the facts require it: family violence, a parent who refuses to be reasonable about safety, a hidden estate that needs court-ordered discovery to surface, an emergency that will not wait. We also go when the other side forces it. When we do, the years of preparation that were going into a settlement-first practice become the work that wins the case.
The posture in court is fox, not bulldog. Strategic, prepared, and surgical — not aggressive for its own sake. The cases that win in Travis County's family courts win on the strength of the record, the discipline of the cross-examination, and the credibility a lawyer has built with the bench over twenty years. Not on volume.
Forty-five minutes,
on the phone.
The first conversation is free. There is no retainer involved, no engagement letter, no homework before, and no follow-up email pressuring you to "next step." We will tell you what we would do, what it would cost, and whether you even need a firm like ours.