Join the referral network
The Cusp sends divorcing people to a small panel of agents in each county — two to start, and never more than five. Two separate things happen here, and it matters that you do not confuse them.
Anyone holding an active real estate license can become certified. Training, assessment, certification and your verification page are free, and your county does not have to be open. A place on a referral panel is a different thing — scarce, free, and filled from the certified when one comes up. It cannot be bought at any price by anybody, including you.
In most states an automatic order takes effect the moment a divorce is filed, barring either spouse from selling or encumbering property. An agent who takes a listing in breach of one has created a problem that nobody can unwind — not the client, not the brokerage, not us.
Most agents have never heard of one. That single fact is why there is a training kit rather than a sign-up form, and why nobody receives a referral having skipped it.
Palm Beach County, Florida and Fairfield County, Connecticut are ours. Hyleri is licensed in both states and works those two markets herself, so there is no panel in either and no application to make.
Everywhere else in the country is open, including the rest of Florida and the rest of Connecticut. We say this here rather than letting you find out after you have done the training.
Who is eligible
Published, so that nobody has to guess and nobody thinks we decided it afterwards. All four have to be true.
An active license, in good standing
We check it against your state regulator ourselves, on the date shown, and we re-check annually. Any unresolved disciplinary action is a no — not a conversation.
At least three closed transactions in each of the last two full calendar years
Six closings across two years, minimum, with at least three in each. It is a low bar on purpose: we are not looking for production awards, we are excluding the agent who renewed a license and did nothing with it. A divorcing client cannot afford to be somebody’s first deal back.
Send us your last six closed sales, straight out of your MLS. That is the same six the rule asks for, it takes about ninety seconds to produce, and because MLS records carry closing dates it shows us the spread as well as the count — five in one year and one in the other is the case this rule exists to catch.
We ask for it before your first referral, not before your first conversation.
A public rating of 4.7 or better, across everywhere you are reviewed
Not your best platform — all of them, taken together, and at least ten reviews in total. Tell us where to look and we will look at every one you name.
The sample size matters as much as the number. Five stars from four reviews tells us nothing; 4.8 from sixty tells us a great deal. And an agent who is 4.9 in one place and 3.1 in another is telling us something that no single-site rule would ever catch.
We do not require a perfect rating and we would be suspicious of one in this work. A divorce sale has two principals, at least one of whom is frequently unhappy however well you behave. An agent who has handled twenty of them has collected a bad review; an agent with a spotless record has probably never handled one.
If you have no public reviews — which is true of plenty of good referral-based agents — give us two recent clients we can call instead.
The training, and its twenty questions
Sent to you once the license check clears. About forty-five minutes. Nobody receives a referral having skipped it, and nobody pays for it.
Free, permanently: applying, the training, the assessment, being certified, your verification page, and your place on a panel. None of that can be bought and none of it ever will be. An agent who pays us nothing and an agent who pays us the maximum receive referrals on exactly the same basis.
Paid, and optional: the annual license to display our certification mark in your own marketing, currently $149 a year, which includes the media kit — social graphics, a client one-pager, a listing-presentation slide and an email signature block.
The mark carries an expiry date on its face, so a license that lapses stops asserting anything. Buying it gets you a graphic and a set of materials. It does not get you a single client.
Read that last sentence again, because it is the one people mishear. Paying for the mark does not put you on a panel, does not move you up the waiting list, and does not affect who receives a referral. If it ever did, the whole network would be worth nothing to the people it exists for — and every agent on it would know we sell placement.
Once you are on a panel, the public rating stops mattering and ours starts. We email every client we refer to you at seven days and again at six months, and ask two questions: did this agent get in touch, and how did it go.
Nobody can game that, because we ask the client rather than you — and we tell you we are going to, which is the point.
Completing the training and joining a panel does not guarantee you a single referral, and we will not pretend otherwise. Some counties produce a steady trickle. Some produce nothing for months. Some will never produce anything, because the traffic simply is not there.
We will tell you honestly how many inquiries your county has actually produced whenever you ask, including when the answer is none. A network that oversells its volume wastes your time and ours, and there is no fee riding on your optimism because there is no fee at all.
What we can promise is that if an inquiry comes from your area, it goes to somebody on the panel, and that nobody can buy their way past you.
How it works
You apply, and we check the license and the production ourselves
License state, license number, and a screenshot of your record showing it is active and in good standing. We verify it against the state regulator rather than taking the screenshot at face value — the screenshot tells us where to look.
A day or two, usually. If the county is already taken we say so straight away rather than leaving you waiting.
You get the training and the questions
Seven short modules and seven questions, drawn from material already published on the site. Around forty-five minutes.
There is no score and no certificate. It is a filter, not an exam, and the only thing it establishes is that you have been told what an automatic order is in writing.
You sign two things, and the county is yours
A one-page network letter that sets out the county and how you lose it, and — separately, at the time of each referral — a standard per-client referral agreement.
The referral fee is 30% of the gross commission on the client’s side, valid 24 months, paid by your brokerage on a completed transaction — nothing up front, and nothing at all if it does not close.
We are asking for 30% because a client who reaches you through us has read our house material, been told what an automatic order is, and asked for an introduction by name. That is not a lead, and we do not price it like one — in either direction. Nothing is payable by you at any other point, ever.
If your county is already full
Get certified anyway. It costs nothing, it takes about forty-five minutes, and it is the only route onto a panel that exists.
Ordered by the date you certified. Nothing else.
A place opens two ways, and the second one is the one people do not expect.
One: somebody leaves. An agent moves, stops responding, or loses their place. When that happens we go to the certified agents in that county and start at the top of the list, which is whoever passed first.
Two: the county gets busier. A panel starts at two. We add one more place for every six genuine inquiries that county produces in a year, up to a maximum of five, and we fill the new place from the same list in the same order. So the list can move without anybody ahead of you going anywhere.
The cap is real and it stays at five. A panel that grows without limit is a directory, and a directory is worth nothing to the agents on it — which is the entire reason we are not one.
Not whoever paid, not whoever asked most recently, not whoever we liked best. First come is the only ordering rule that cannot be quietly sold, which is exactly why it is the one we use. It is the same reasoning as the rule that governs the directory.
We will tell you honestly where you sit and how often that county has actually turned over, including when the honest answer is “it never has and it may not”. A waiting list nobody moves up is a waiting list we should not have put you on.
The certification itself, and your verification page, whether or not a place ever opens. Some agents want the credential more than they want our referrals — they work divorce sales already and want something checkable to show for it. That is a perfectly good reason to be here and we would rather say so than pretend everybody is queuing.
What you would be agreeing to
All of it is in the network letter, and none of it is buried. The short version:
- Contact a referred client within one business day. These are people in the worst month of their lives and a slow reply is not a neutral event.
- Before taking any listing, confirm in writing whether a court order restricts the sale or encumbrance of the property. This is the most important term in the letter and the reason for the training.
- Tell us within ten days when you sign the client, when the deed is recorded or the sale closes, and when a client decides not to proceed.
- Give no legal or tax advice, and express no view on how equity should be divided. Referring to a CPA on the closing-date question is not a courtesy, it is the rule.
- When your two clients are not speaking to each other, put everything in writing and copy both of them, every time.
Deed transfers are public records, and we check them at 90, 180 and 365 days. A closing we discover that you did not report ends the county immediately, whether or not the fee is eventually paid.
We would rather say that out loud now than catch somebody later. Everything else on this list is a conversation; that one is not.
What we promise in return
- We will not sell your county to anyone, at any price. Placement here is not for sale and never will be. That is the same rule that governs the professional directory and it is the reason either of them is worth anything.
- We will tell you honestly how many inquiries your county actually produces, including when the answer is none. A network that oversells its volume is wasting your time and ours.
- We will not pass your details to anyone, or use your name in marketing, without asking first.
- Either of us can end it, any time, in writing. Agreements already signed on referred clients survive.