The Key Stages of the Divorce Process (Ep.6)

[00:00:00] Nobody wants to end up in family court, but if you do you want an honest, experienced family law attorney by your side, to help minimize the stress mental anguish and legal costs that divorce and custody matters bring. Welcome to In Your Best Interest. Texas divorce attorney and entrepreneur, Justin Sisemore of the Sisemore Law Firm, entrepreneur, Andrea Jones, freelance writer, Mary Maloney, and guests share insight on what to expect and how to handle family law matters, the changing landscape of family law and living the entrepreneur’s life. Now onto the show.

If you are in the early stages of divorce or hope to modify existing divorce or child custody orders, you may wonder what to expect during the process. In this episode of, In Your Best Interest, we’ll discuss the key stages of the divorce process, including temporary orders, discovery, mediation, and final steps. [00:01:00] And, we’ll also provide insight on different tactics divorce attorneys may use to maximize the outcome of divorce and custody cases. Thanks for joining us for this episode of, In Your Best Interest. I’m Mary Maloney and today attorney Justin Sisemore, entrepreneur, Andrea Jones, and I will be discussing the divorce process.

So, Justin, for starters, can you give listeners kind of a brief overview of the different steps involved in the divorce process and then take a deeper dive into each step.

Sure. So, the divorce process, we go through this in the consult, but is really broken down into four key areas. And this is just the general nature of civil litigation. You generally have a petition, which brings everybody kind of to the playing field of getting a dispute resolved. That petition generally will request the relief that you’re asking for in the form of attorney’s fees, what the petition looks like with respect to child custody, visitation and access [00:02:00]  and property division. It’s more of a broad stroke in divorce litigation. You’re not going to see like you do in other states, all of the facts that it lays out, kind of what’s been going on in the marriage, but from the petition, the respondent will get served a petition. Or if you’re the counter petitioner, you would serve their attorney and, and the other party, with the counter petition.

But that basically gets you to where you can either set a temporary hearing for relief while the case is pending, which is step two. So, you have a temporary restraining order, a divorce petition, or a notice for temporary orders. And then when you get to the temporary orders phase, that feels like a mini trial. So that’s where we’re dealing with the issue of visitation and access, child support who’s paying what debts and expenses while the case is pending any kind of ancillary details with regarding use of vehicles or control of a business. And then those temporary orders are kind of your roadmap that you’ll be dealing with until you get to step three, which I’ll skip step two for a second, but step three is mediation. [00:03:00] And step two is the discovery process where you’re basically marrying up the inventory. You may have some questions about some assets or valuations, and that discovery phase is kind of where the case seems to drag a little bit, but that’s where you’re getting all of the back office information to be able to come up with a fair and equitable division of the marital estate, just and right division of the marital estate and, dealing with the best interest of the children. The discovery phase is really important and it’s kind of the painful stage because that’s where clients kind of have to do some work. That’s where we have to do some work to gather information and documents and obviously the more prepared a client is with that information on the front end the better, easier, and more cost effective approach it is. Step three, like we said, is the mediation. Mediation is where two parties and courts, by the way, will generally order media.

Two parties sit in different rooms. You have a mediator going back and forth between the two rooms to come up with what the parties can kind of meet, create as a [00:04:00] deal. And that mediation agreement will be binding and enforceable. If the parties sign off on it, that then gets converted into a final decree of divorce if the parties reach a resolution. And in the event, they do not reach a resolution in mediation, then you would have a final trial. Again, that’s going to be an expanded version of what the temporary orders hearing looks like. That’s where all of the details from the history of your marriage come into play, all of the text messages, all of the pictures, all the valuations experts and all that.

There are other alternative forms as well. You do have informal settlement agreements, which parties reach agreements outside the need for mediation. You have private judges in various other aspects, which we’ll get into in a bit, but those are kind of the four key areas. So temporary orders, discovery, mediation and trial. That’s the process of divorce after the petition is on file.

So, on the topic of temporary orders, Justin, can we talk a little bit about why they are so important and it’s so important to get those right. And then what happens after those initial temporary orders are established? [00:05:00]

So, the temporary orders are extremely important and I don’t really like the connotation of temporary orders because these temporary orders can last about a year, or more sometimes. So, it’s really important to get that right, because you’re not going to be able to a go back to court whenever you should see fit to try to change those with ease.

Number one and number two, they really set the tone for what the mediation is going to look like so, if you don’t have a tiebreaker i.e., the court or somebody making a decision for how you guys are going to operate temporarily, what you’ll see is a party parking in a house not wanting to agree on values specifically if they’re getting spousal support or various other aspects.

And then on the child custody end, we see a lot of times where the temporary order as well if I just agree to a standard or expanded standard right now, I’ll go back at mediation or a final and change that and keep in mind, one party probably got what they wanted when they did the deal or they wouldn’t have done it.

And if you were [00:06:00] hesitant because you wanted some other, aspects to kind of meet your needs or the child’s needs it can become very difficult to get the other party to acquiesce via agreement. So that’s where we see, you know, the courts becoming involved again, or third parties becoming involved again with respect to experts and depositions and further discovery.

So it’s just really important to make sure that you think through that roadmap and you’re not given a lot of time. And, I think that’s where the shortcoming is. You know, a lot of times someone gets served and they have three or four days to go find a lawyer and get their ducks in a row, so you won’t see us try to rush to the temporary orders phase without adequate explanation to the client.

And, if somebody gets served and they have a temporary orders hearing coming up very soon, I often and my team will often advise them, let’s sit down and go through that before we get there so that we’re not just rushing and signing off on an associate judge’s report and keep in mind these temporary orders and the associate judge’s report are one or two pager so, when you get the actual temporary orders, they have [00:07:00] 30 pages of various things from what the insurance looks like to enforceability and it’s not easy to explain that in short form. So, it’s really important to be prepared on the front end for sure.

Discovery is that next critical phase in the process? Can we talk a little bit more about what discovery is, what type of information that you’re trying to dig out essentially, and then why it’s really also important to talk to an attorney before you even start that process?

Discovery takes various forms. The purest form is request for production, interrogatories, disclosure, and depositions and again, discovery is information gathering phase. It can be used as or it has been used as somewhat of a punitive tool where one party is trying to make the other party gather every single piece of paper from 1985 forward and we really don’t like to see that. It makes it very challenging for the client to sift through information if you’re not specific on your [00:08:00] requests and many lawyers have software programs out there that they pay a lot of money for that kicks out this boiler plate discovery and the short theory behind that is, well, if we don’t know that there may be a trust or that we don’t know that there may be so let’s ask for everything. What you see happening a lot of times is that a lawyer on the other side will literally mirror the discovery request and send them right back to you and then both of you just either have a ton of documents that are totally irrelevant to what you’re trying to resolve, or you see parties, not sharing information because the other party didn’t do it.

It’s really important through the discovery phase to, you know, see what experts we can agree to so that we’re not spending money that the parties may or may not have getting both sides to basically disagree. And so, I think, that the discovery phase is really important to streamline the information that we don’t know and get that together, down in an inventory and back up that [00:09:00] inventory with the supporting documents in an organized fashion. And then depositions obviously are the phase where if you’re trying to figure out some of the information that you can’t get specifically with interrogatories, because you may not have the answer.

And again, interrogatories are written questions. Production is the producing of the documents. And then disclosure is your legal theories and factual basis. Your deposition is the chance where you can open more broad based conversational questions that are being documented by a court reporter.

So it’s important at the early stages if you think someone is hiding assets, or they may have engaged in some conduct that they’re not proud of to get those answers locked in because over time people tend to forget things, they tend to not have access to documents with bank information, and then also in the discovery phase and deposition phase they tend to kind of learn that some of the information the other party may or may not have, and they can give you very vague answers. You know, generally the inception of a [00:10:00] case parties don’t really know exactly what you know or don’t know. And let me be very clear we never allow our clients to be evasive or to manipulate valuation.

It’s very important that you keep integrity through the process because I have discovered, and we have discovered many times one party not sharing information or being untruthful about the information and when that gets exposed it destroys credibility. I’ve had a client do it in trial. So think about that.

You go through a year of process and in trial, they come up with an untruthful answer and I’m sitting there going, you’ve got to correct that and they’re saying, I’m not going to correct that. Well, at that point, we actually have legal and ethical duties and we will adhere to those. So, if you are the type of client that wants to hide assets or not be truthful or forthcoming, you’re not getting help and we can’t help you the way that you need to be helped. And I really think that’s important for people to understand. Don’t try to hide the ball, let’s get this thing over with so you can move on [00:11:00] with your life so that you can raise your kids. Co-parent and cooperate. Let’s not make this some big war.

But if some party’s not being forthcoming with information, we need to be prepared and firm on how to dissect and diagnose those shortcomings. And that does not end well for the other side, I can assure you.

So, then the next phase of course is mediation. So, can you talk about why the court requires mediation and the other question too, is that, can you go straight into mediation if you have an uncontested divorce?

So, mediation generally is required by the courts. I believe for two reasons, one, obviously the efficiency of the court system and expediency to get parties to a resolution and that’s, you know, when we talk about 90 to 95% of cases getting resolved by mediation. Divorce and the process can be expensive. So, paying people and the cost of litigation can obviously be a burden on anybody going through the process and mediation allows you to expedite and streamline. The[00:12:00] process and get it done in a manner where you can have an open forum. Mediation is also a place where you can really think through some issues that the court may not do. Extracurricular activities, for example deciding how we’re going to run a business, who’s going to be a part of that business. And, getting outside of the box and allowing parties to be in control of their own destiny, more so than having a black robe decide that. And, with a 90 to 95% effective rate of success in mediation, you can see why courts mandate it because obviously that unclogs the docket so that they can get to other cases that may have some issues that are not capable of being resolved in a mediation fashion.

And then the final point there is, as far as the mediation is concerned, you can get to mediation much faster. So generally, about three months or so in the process and we’re very specific on who we use as to mediators. There’s a lot of mediators out there and you could get in tomorrow if you wanted to, but we don’t see high success rates and really thinking outside the box [00:13:00] for our clients with mediators that are not as experienced. And, there’s also different temperaments of mediators, just like there are of judges and some clients need different types of personalities to be able to walk them through what can be one of the most stressful times of their life and some mediators just don’t have the temperament for that. They’re very forceful, they are very abrasive, they want to talk over you and some mediators just don’t have the experience to divide up the property or understand the legal facets that are involved, that a court may decide because they haven’t litigated those matters before.

And so, we try to use mediators that obviously have a great deal of experience in the complex litigation world and they can really give a client in the life so that they can expedite the conversation and get them to a resolution.

For Andrea. Now you have obviously people that have listened to this podcast before know that you were a client of Justin’s. When you went through your divorce and custody battle, do you have any tips or lessons that you learned through the mediation process when you went through [00:14:00] divorce?

Yeah, I went through the whole process. So yes, I, what Justin said, I can just, just confirm that and reiterate that. The temporary orders, whatever we achieved in a temporary orders, it pretty much stayed the same way throughout the divorce process, into the final orders.

Even though my ex-husband and I tried to change it, it didn’t work because the best interest of the children and everything else stayed the same. So I think that’s super, super important and it’s overwhelming all the stuff that’s in there. So, it’s, again, it’s super, super important to have a lawyer that explains those things to you and doesn’t brush over and answers all your questions, because you don’t think about all the details. If you’ve never been divorced, you don’t think about visitation on the weekend and when do the kids go to the other side and why? You have no idea. So very important to, to pick a lawyer that can help you with the process and explains it and doesn’t get irritated by your questions.

There are people out there that just want bullet points and then there are others that need little hand holding. [00:15:00] So pick somebody that matches your personality and you don’t feel rushed off the phone or rushed out of the meeting. The discovery process is super stressful. I can tell you that when I received the discovery, I was like, oh my God, how am I ever going answer all those questions and get all those documents together?

Again, use your lawyer as, as a support system and the legal staff to help you with that, you can save a lot of cost and reorganizing all those things, and don’t give them a big shoebox and say, he, he figured this out on the other hand, it’s super important to get all the information beause we found a lot of stuff that my ex was hiding and making withdrawals from accounts he’s not supposed to.

So, it is important to be detail oriented, but let your attorney help you. And then the last. The mediation, if you have a partner that is, that wants to do what’s best for the kids and, and is, is honest and forthcoming, a lot of things can be resolved there because I mean, the laws, in my opinion are pretty straightforward on how [00:16:00] property is divided and what visitation can look like.

So only if you don’t understand the law or the other party a lawyer doesn’t really want to go by that then you’re going to have a fight because you can really resolve a lot of stuff there and help yourself a lot of cost in going in there and, and don’t fight over stuff that’s not necessary. I mean really like if you want to fight over the couch and spend three hours fighting over a couch that you can buy for whatever for another $200, like, is that really worth it?

So again, use a lawyer that, that helps you guides you through that process and, and really looks at the stuff that’s important, the materialistic stuff, all that stuff is not that important, look at the kids and look, what has sentimental value to you? Make sure you get those things. And then the rest it’s, again, five years down the road it is not even that important anymore. Stuff that you think about today that is so important together, you get couple years down the road, it’s like, oh my God, why we did we even argue about that? So, follow the guidance of your attorney because in every step of the [00:17:00] process you’ll see a good lawyer and you see one that is not really making this an effort for you and you’re just a number. So, make sure you pick the right one from the get go that’s for sure.

A hundred percent. So on the topic of uncontested divorce, because a lot of people come to Justin saying that they have an uncontested divorce and maybe even couples try to come to you and say that they have an uncontested divorce and can you help them with that? Can you talk about what qualifies as an uncontested divorce and why it’s important, especially for both parties to see their own attorneys prior to even going down that path.

I think uncontested divorces are typically the ones that don’t involve any dispute whatsoever with respect to assets property division or children.

And let me just be very clear. As far as the word uncontested, you can have disagreements and it can still be called contested, but it doesn’t have to be. So if a party disagrees about who gets the [00:18:00] house or what the valuation of the house is, or the business, or the day to day child visitation aspects, that doesn’t mean that it has to be this contested war. So contested just means you, you guys have a fundamental disagreement as to what that looks like and again, with a 90% effective rate in mediation, those parties didn’t agree at the outset or they wouldn’t have been in mediation. So that carries the connotation of contested. But it’s very challenging in today’s world when you have banks that are unwilling to refinance one party because of their credit score, uh, you have one party that’s, uh, has the vehicle in their name, you have children that reside 30 minutes apart, one party has a different work schedule. It’s very challenging to just say, we have sat down and thought through every single one of those elements.

So, I tell clients often if you think it’s uncontested that’s okay, but just understand y’all haven’t thought about these things. So, before we started at an uncontested fee, [00:19:00] and then let’s say it switches over into a contested divorce, and you’ve made your strategy and preparation around everything’s going tobe, everything’s agreed to, and, and you’re not getting prepared.

What happens sometimes is you get caught not understanding where you need to be. So I like to say that, you know, we are in a cooperative approach. There is collaborative law out there, obviously, that, you know, it sounds like this real big kumbaya term. We all try to cooperate in the process, good lawyers are certainly trying to get their clients finished and, and taken care of in, in a timely manner, being responsiveness and being responsive. And so that may have some contested connotations involved in the process, but it doesn’t have to be a war. It’s just important I think that we don’t call something uncontested when we haven’t thought through all of the issues. And that’s what we go through in the consultation and then further in the early stages of the process. So I think that’s the definition of contested when you’re, when you’re dealing with those issues. But I [00:20:00] just want to be clear that you know, we don’t have to make it an uncontested divorce to make it a nice divorce or a co-parenting or cooperative divorce. We don’t have to use that terminology.

So Justin, your firm settles many of the cases that you work on out of court. So how can attorneys help their clients finalize divorce and custody matters without going to court? And obviously, can they save money by doing that?

Sure. I would love in a perfect world for every client to come and say, we’ve resolved all issues, we have, we’re here to co-parent and cooperate with our children, we’re here to be, you know, at least civil with each other afterwards, and we’ve resolved all issues, Justin, can you resolve this, at Sisemore Law Firm? Can you finish this up for me? I know people think that lawyers want to make a big war, but I can assure you, especially in today’s day and age, everybody wants to fight about many, many things, I say everybody. Many people want to fight about many things. So our best day is when we can explore possible [00:21:00] resolutions without having to go to court. I can service more people. I can scale our business better. We can have pure conversations with clients and really think through situations when we’re not being rushed over to court.

So some examples of how we do that. There are private judges out there who actually will do a private court setting inside our firm, There’s arbitration, there’s mediation, there are informal settlement agreements and what’s really important for people to understand I’m not a big proponent of sending a bunch of offers back and forth. And the reason I’m not big on that is because often eternally on the other side and or the client don’t have the information, they need to make a deal. And so what you see sometimes is a client really being ready to get it over with they’ve made a very fair proposal that in their mind, uh, it’s exactly what they’re asking for and probably what the court’s gonna do and the other side saying they’re going, I don’t even know what we have and I’m not really ready for a divorce yet. [00:22:00] Uh, so you kind of have to let the process take form. And, you know, sometimes that involves the temporary orders, getting that roadmap in place that we talked about doing a little discovery, allowing a little bit of time for the divorce case to mature before you just force a proposal down the other side and just get upset and frustrated when they don’t acquiesce to the deal proposal that you make.

It’s just like a business dispute or a business acquisition. You know, there’s a due diligence phase and that due diligence phase is finding out what the company’s worth, figuring out how many employees there are, who are the key employees are. And we’re finding out the exact same things. When we’re dealing with dividing a company in valuation, uh, same with the house, what repairs need to be made.

What’s the market like in the stock market? Uh, what are the tax consequences? What’s this going to look like five years from now, when we divide up the property and maybe we had a stay-at-home wife, who’s going to get the lion’s share of some retirement assets. But what, what ends up happening is there’s tax consequences for early [00:23:00] withdrawal.

And the attorney didn’t think through what the cash flow of the client looks like. And so I, I think the key thing is understanding that there’s these vehicles out there, but the lawyer should be driving those at the time and place when they are mature enough to be able to get to that division of property and that can take some time. And that’s where clients feel like my case is dragging on a little. The other thing I would say is that with respect to informal settlement agreements, when you’re dealing with property and children, there is a proponent that creates a binding nature and a non-binding nature and when you have children involved, it, you cannot put in the irrevocable settlement agreement in place like you can with just property division. And the reason that’s important is because specifically with waiting periods in Texas, for example, 60 days in Texas or there are some assets that need to be sold or disposed of before the divorce case is finalized you see people revoke their agreements and when they revoke those agreements, now all of a sudden the gloves have come off and it’s [00:24:00] become a much bigger war. So I’m a big proponent of keeping the process and maintaining a consistent process throughout the, throughout the course of litigation and divorce and that involves getting that discovery together before the informal settlement agreements, uh, getting the discovery together before the mediation, the inventories all mapped out so that when we get there, we’re ready to go. And, and, but I just wanted to touch on those brief areas that you do have those options as far as other ways, outside of the court to resolve it.

So there are some cases, obviously when you can’t resolve your issues outside of court, when do people really need to go to trial to resolve their differences in their divorce and custody matters?

I see most people going to a final trial when steps are skipped. Uh, so we get a lot of midstream hires where, you know, mediation, they went to mediation way too early they didn’t have the discovery and now they’re just kind of stuck in this never, never land, like, okay, well we’ve got [00:25:00] a trial date or maybe we don’t even have a pre-trial scheduling order in place giving us our deadlines, but we’ve already gone past some of the informal ways to resolve the case. And, and those are the ones that get pretty frustrating as well, because you may not have big disagreements. We try to set up a follow up mediation, but maybe one party had a really bad experience cuz the other party just walked out in 30 minutes and, and or the other party wasn’t prepared with the documents they need going into mediation.

So midstream trial happens quite a bit in our firm. We get hired a lot midstream, uh, second attorney situation. And then the other times that it, that it happens property division, probably not as common as the custody side, but it does happen and that happens because, or occurs because there’s a situation where two parties fundamentally disagree on who gets what assets or what the division looks like with respect, valuation, uh, of the business, who controls the business, uh, who has use and control of certain accounts while the case is pending and, or wasting of assets, or there’s been a scenario [00:26:00] where one party may have committed adultery or there’s physical family violence, so usually those are the bigger ticket items. And then on the custody side, when you’re trying to deviate from what the court presumes in the best interest of the child, the expanded standard schedule, maybe one party wants to go for primary, one party wants supervised access, one party wants a morality clause to keep other third parties from being around. And when you get too far outside of what the norms of the court will do, that’s when we try to wrangle you back in. But some clients say, no, I, want to go try this.

I tell people all the time. I’ve been surprised when I tell you. No, it doesn’t mean I’m clairvoyant it doesn’t mean I’m always right. I just don’t think it’s a really good thing to take in front of a judge, but I’ve been surprised before, so we’re not going to, be this gustapo, this is how it’s going to be.

If you don’t take this deal, see you later you know that’s just not the way to handle it, but by the same token, if I don’t feel in my gut that we have a fundamentally good argument, when we get into court, it’s very challenging to really get the court to understand where you’re coming from. So [00:27:00] I’ll actually pitch that to the client.

Okay. Well, you want him to take a drug test because he’s used drugs before, how long. Well, I don’t know. I’ll never feel safe. And, so we get them off that ledge of the words, never, or there’s no chance that he or she’s gonna rehabilitate or there’s, there’s just no chance that I’m gonna allow, uh, the sale of the residence.

Those are the scenarios where we really have to do the behind the scenes, relational aspect of our business. And that’s why the trust is critical and you have to be able to really deal with your lawyer. If you’re not getting responsiveness, they’re not calling you back and, or the communication is really lacking it can be very difficult to put trust in someone at that point. And, and it becomes very challenging not to just get to trial and ask the Q & A session. The other thing clients have to remember is trial is stressful. It’s stressful for a lawyer that’s done this 15 years. It’s certainly stressful for a client that may have never been through litigation before they’re exposing and airing all of your dirty laundry.

You’re being asked [00:28:00] questions on the fly that you may or may not have been prepared for. Some people are nervous public speaking, so we really try to gauge how the party’s gonna testify. We look at the financial aspects. We look at the benefit pros and cons there to the bargain and, and that’s how we make a determination.

And I think I found too, first of all, I agreed a trial is stressful. Cuz even if you’re not, didn’t commit a crime as a family matter, but it’s still stressful if you’ve never been in court before. And the other thing, my file was so big, they had to haul it in with this little cart, cuz there was it dragged on so long.

How in a world is a judge gonna read the entire file and truly understand everything that was going on. That’s another thing to think about if there’s been dragging on for a while, you have somebody Judge making a decision that has not been able to read everything out there. So I think it’s again, is it worth fighting over stuff that is pretty straightforward.

It might make more sense to solve it and give in a little bit. And again, couple years down the road, it’s not even that important anymore and custody stuff. [00:29:00] I agree, custody stuff. You need to listen to your lawyer.  I didn’t think I could ever be without my kids. And then they told me like, you’d be okay having every other weekend to yourself.

I didn’t think that’s possible. And then I was happy. We did it the way. So again, if you never went to divorce, never been away from your kids, listen to your lawyer and listen to what they suggest. Make sure there’s everything in those orders. For me, for example, we realized at certain holidays and stuff we need to pay attention to they’re important to me. They might not be important to the other side, Easter. I mean, all those things, you can put all that stuff in the orders and if you have it in there, you don’t have to go back to court. You wanna make sure everything is the order. You don’t have to go back to court a year, two years down the road.

Yeah. And Mary, just one more brief point on that. So we have two cases right now that we tried six months ago. Okay. So the concept of a court remembering everything that was said, they haven’t issued a ruling yet. And I’m not saying that’s a commonality, but it does happen. You have cases where [00:30:00] you try a case and all of a sudden somebody gets sick in the middle of trial, uh, or another case pops up and the schedule gets moved.

And so you’re in a situation that’s out of your hands of control. You’ve tried a case and started a case midway through and you’ve coming back two or three months later. So. Keep in mind, there’s a lot of things that pop up in litigation that are outside of your and the lawyer’s control. And so knowing that if we can resolve matters without having to think about all the uncertainties, it’s it, it can be, it can be beneficial.

All right, Justin and Andrea, I think that’s a great place to wrap up and we have a lot more to talk about on this topic. So why don’t we, next time we get together talk more about the tactics. The attorneys used to help the clients through divorce and custody. What happens when you need to modify those arrangements and maybe we will also provide some great examples of real life, examples of things that have happened in your practice as well.

If anybody wants to get in touch with the Sisemore Law Firm, we’d love to hear from you. You can call the firm at [00:31:00] (817) 336-4444. Or visit www.lawyerdfw.com. And please, if you know anybody that could benefit from this podcast, please share it and we’d love it if you’d follow the podcast as well.

Thanks so much for listening and have a great day. Thank you for listening to In Your Best Interest with Texas divorce attorney and entrepreneur, Justin Sisemore, the content presented here is provided for information only and should not be construed as legal tax or financial advice. Click the follow button to be notified when new episodes become available.