Divorces are incredibly ugly. And of course, spouses who are hurting and angry lash out and make things inevitably worse.
u/inkonskin asked:
Divorce lawyers of Reddit, what's the worst way you've seen someone f*ck over their spouse?
Here's what they had to say.
50. Crazy Begets Crazy
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My step dad has a terrible ex who's constantly dragging him to court claiming that he smokes pot, is a raging alcoholic or whatever she can think up. She's absolutely insane and is trying to push my step brother to be a doctor and signs him up for school activities to take more time away from his father, I don't like my step dad but his ex is far worse. The good thing is that my step brother is finally realizing how bad she is.
49. True Malice
Not a family attorney, but a long time family friend is. Story goes as follows: Guy had a feeling his wife was cheating, hired a PI to get evidence, didn't take long. He then transferred his deed of the house over to her (she couldn't afford alone), hired every family law attorney within 100 miles as retainer ( you basically drop $50 or so and your spouse can't hire them) and he filed. Throughout the divorce, the house got behind, but he had copy of the deed transfer. Long story short she lost everything.
48. Showed Up To The Game
Man claims wife moved a new man into the home and got a restraining order as part of the agreement for the divorce proceedings. Man has to live in hotels, family members home and access to his daughter is completely gone. Obviously frustrated, the wife continues to antagonize the husband while he has to pay the mortgage in full and has the new boyfriend playing father to his daughter.
Eventually, husband is fed up and shows up at their residence and gets his legal firearm from the home and tells the man to leave his house. The wife won at that very moment, violation of the restraining order and possible criminal charges for the firearm. She got the house and custody of their daughter while also keeping the new boyfriend in the house while he has to continue paying for the mortgage as his wife didn't work, she was a housewife. She was playing chess not checkers.
47. It Is Practiced And It Is Preached
I specialize in divorce financial planning. Here's the numerous ways I've seen over the years:
When document requests are responded to, spouses will purposely disorganize/shuffle documents, inadvertently forget a page here and there, had their pets soil the documents, etc. Basically you mess with production - your looking at thousands of dollars just to get the documents back in order.
I've performed forensic analysis and found hundreds of thousands of dollars wired/taken out of the country. Which is fine that they were identified, but neither party had enough to further litigate the issue - or enough to reimburse the other spouse. Became a void/moot point.
Have seen one of the spouse manipulate the children and painting the other spouse as the devil, in order to win custody or just to piss off the other spouse.
Have seen spouses liquidate assets prior to settlement and then claim impovershment/assets no longer exist. Hint, even if you sell your $100,000 sports car - the court knows you have the cash and if you bargain sold it, they'll impute the value to the marital estate.
46. Ze Scum
My dad cheated on my mom, then changed the mailing address of all the bills to his new place because my mom stayed in the house with us kids and stopped paying the bills. She had to sell the house and find a new place to live in 2 weeks while working full time and raising a 3 year old and a toddler.
45. All Kindsa Craycray
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Friend is a family lawyer and whilst I can't think of anything too bad yet I do recall one nightmare case she had that finally finished last year.
Basically crazy Russian wife and possibly criminal Russian husband. Messy divorce and both sides had money and were out to take EVERYTHING from the other party.
By the time it got to courts both sides had practically nothing on paper, she was living in a multimillion pound townhouse in the city and he was off in Russia. They were both somehow on the poverty line as they'd hidden everything away everywhere, because of a number of shady dealings and loop holes and trying to screw each other over the tax man got involved and they both got some hefty fines beyond what they would have lost had they just amicably split their tens of millions since they were both rich before even meeting.
Added bonus points for the death threats (from the husband) to my friends firm and it eventually coming out that of course she was still sleeping with him on and off during the legal proceedings. She was all kinds of crazy.
44. Out Of The Blue
My neighbor has been married for probably 30+ years, had two kids together. One day he comes home and his wife served him divorce papers out of nowhere for the good old "irreconcilable differences". He was supposed to retire in a year from a gas company he's been working at for probably just as long as he'd been married.
Wife took his entire retirement savings and he essentially has to keep working probably forever now. She did leave him the house though which I guess is a silver lining, but what a f*ckin sh*tty, sh*tty thing to do. I feel so bad for the guy.
43. Who's The Other Guy That's Singing In Van Halen
My good friend used to have this extremely expensive Eddie Van Halen signed Frankenstein guitar, worth about $50,000 and his divorced wife found out that he hid it. She found out 16 years later and his divorce lawyer made him hand it over and she sold the guitar for $3,000.
42. So Much Money Changing Hands
The father put the mother in the hospital to get mentally evaluated. During that time he transferred all the money out of the joint account and had one of the children forge the mother's signature on taxes. For the separation the father kept one child, mother had two, and the oldest was left with another family while finishing HS. The house was sold by the father and he kept all the money. It was a large brick home 1 master br, 3 br, and a suite for the nanny.
To give an idea about how much money in the bank, think 2 officers in AF with one having a doctorate and the other in the medical field. They were separated many years and eventually the courts brought the last three children together with the mother. No child support during the separation though. The father made huge accusations like abuse both sexual and physical, and also that the mother was not physically capable. After the divorce was finalized the mother was able to keep the children due to many issues but the father still would try to buy out the children to live with him.
At one point during this the father tried to go against the custody agreement and keep the children for good during a visit and tried to cut off all communication between the mother and children but that didn't last for too long because the FBI ended up getting involved. Sorry this isn't much for story telling and mostly listing out the facts. I'm not very good at story telling. Mother won custody and with the new lawyer started to receive child support.
41. The Worst Possible Things To Do To Other People
Not a divorce lawyer but worked in a criminal law firm. Client was a doctor going through a divorce and needed a criminal lawyer because the wife accused his father of assaulting their 7 year old daughter and claimed the husband knew about it and let it happen. Everything was dropped ultimately because the grandfather was innocent but the little girl went through medical exams and it left the husband and grandfather shells of men.
40. Nuttin Civil About Civil Court
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Not a lawyer, but my stepdad got royally screwed by his ex wife. She got both their houses and full custody of the kids. Her lawyer happened to be married to a judge who sat on the Supreme Court for Oregon and used this fact to pressure other judges into making incredible court decisions. In the court transcript during the divorce proceedings he literally told the judge who his wife was. I'm pretty sure that is illegal but he's apparently never called on it because of who his wife is.
All of the kids ended up living with my stepdad over time, because she was a shrill of a woman that was pretty much crazy. Yet he couldn't get rid of the child support payments even though none were living with her anymore, and other lawyers wouldn't even take the case because of her lawyer and his reputation.
Fast forward 20 years. She starts getting his social security checks, because the lawyer has gotten some judge to make a decision that he owes her spousal support AND child support for the rest of his life, even though the kids are all grown.
It's complete madness. I keep telling them to sue her and the lawyer in civil court and get the money back, because there is no way any of this is legal. They don't because they feel they will just lose.
39. Blindsided
I signed my divorce papers a week ago Wednesday. My now ex-wife left me while I was laid out with a broken leg. I knew our marriage had recent issues, and I had even planned a 5 day weekend trip for us (leaving our 3 and 5 yo girls with our family) so we could sort things out, before I broke my leg.
While I was down, she quit talking to me for three weeks, leased an apartment, and moved out one day while I was trying to work (I had people take me to my job sites so I could supervise). Two months later, after having her bring me the kids every few days for a couple hours, I get served papers (on my birthday).
Two months after that, I'm now divorced, soon to be homeless (she got the right to auction our house in the proceedings), but have my full half of all our shared possessions. What I don't have is any reason why she chose to leave me.
I think this is the worst punishment to give anyone - tell them they're guilty, but not tell them what they're guilty of. She's not with anyone else, she's never spoken bad of me to anyone (her lawyer and our mediator took special pains to assure me of this), and she makes more money than me (by about 25%).
I still don't know why she quit. I'd give anything to have not broken my leg and taken that trip with her. I love her and miss her and my girls so much. She tells me I need to move past it, but mentally I haven't even gotten TO it yet. That's how divorce can f*ck some people over.
38. Spite Is A Powerful Motivator
In law school my prof told a story about how a couple spent lots of money on who would get this antique vase. They spent more more on representation than that actual vase cost itself just to spite each other. Husband won it, grabbed it, smashed it in front of the wife. And he could, as it was his.
37. Dirty, Evil Tricks
Not a lawyer, but the way my mother got custody:
File her statement to the court that he was unreliable, always drunk, and violent. (None of this was true), and just before the hearing have her friend call my dad and tell him the court date was changed to a few days later. Then, when he did not bother to show up to the custody hearing, judge awarded her custody.
All this was on the sly, my siblings and I never knew, she just told us he left one day and never came back because he wanted nothing to do with us. I was 8 or 9 then.
I only found out what happened when I was 16. I went to visit my grandparents on my father's side. they were great people, and I missed them. I asked why dad left and wanted nothing to do with us, and they were shocked. He had fought so long and hard for custody, only to get no custody and a restraining order to stay far away from us all due to that evil trick.
I have had a great relationship with my dad since then. I hardly talked to my mother after that, till she passed away.
36. Taxes Are More Certain Than Death
My parents. F*ck. So ugly. But one of the most brutal things that happened:
My mom was having an affair (which she still denies to this day even though she's now married to the guy). She also didn't work, and my father was heavily invested into residential real estate, and is a tax genius. My mom demanded only free and clear properties so she didn't have any debt to worry about and could liquidate....
my dad brought the tax basis of all of the properties he knew she'd get to zero, and the following April after their decree came down, and after selling much of the property, she ended up with massive tax bill.
She still hates him for it 10 plus years later... and he is beyond pleased with himself.
35. A Tangled Web
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Not a divorce lawyer but a buddy of mine came back from deployment and all of his stuff was just packed into his car and his wife was waiting at the front door with her new husband and told him "Yeah I found someone else sorry." Pretty sh*tty no warning even kept writing letters and pretending everything was okay up until he got home.
34. Tax Evasion Ain't Cute
Not a divorce lawyer, but I used to work with an electrician who said he did a lot of side work without reporting it. In the middle of a nasty divorce, his soon to be ex wife decided she was going to report him for not paying taxes. It turned out that there was over 20 thousand in taxes owed. Of course she didn't realize that since they were married when he did the work, she owed half. He said it was the best ten grand he ever spent.
33. Literal Murder (TW: Violence)
Lawyer here. There was this client of mine who wanted divorce but his wife trying to drag things out just to stick it to him. There wasn't any cheating, abuse or anything of sorts. He just wasn't in love with her anymore and they argued about meaningless things that made him want the divorce. They didn't have any children.
After some time we filed for divorce (5 or 7 months can't remember) she called him and told him that she wanted to meet and would accept the divorce, just wanted to see him one last time. He told me about it and I told him to meet her, thinking that can save us from a lengthy case.
After, I learned that she asked him to come to her house and have dinner but something happened at that dinner. To this day, I don't know what; he never told me, even during the criminal case.
At the dinner he loses it and starts stabbing her. To a point that he breaks 13 knifes stabbing her and then going to the police to turn himself in. I knew him before the case because he was a family friend, but after that night he was a very different man. His eyes were blank and he never talked about it, not even at the court. I asked for a psychological evaluation about his faculties but it came back normal. I sometimes still wonder what made him lose it that much...
32. Ain't Hiz
After asking my husband for a divorce, I got home and discovered that he and his father cleaned out the house of everything that he deemed was "his", including every single tv, video game console, my computer chair AND monitor, etc etc. When I asked him where everything was, he kept calling me materialistic.
I also had a car I had been driving and paying on for years that was in his and his mother's names. While trying to get it in my name, his mother calls mine and tells her that she is reporting it stolen, so I dumped it in front of her house at 4am. He has been trying to sell it ever since and nobody will buy it.
Out of the goodness of his heart he gave me back my computer monitor and one of the 5 tv's though.
31. Goodbye Jerk, Just Came To Say Goodbye Jerk, Goodbye
Son of a bad divorce my parents went thru. Little back story, my dad is an engineer at a large automotive company, General Motors. He's pretty high up there, I found out after the divorce he makes quite a lot of money. My mom, on the other hand, used to be a nurse but stopped after having several kids to be a stay at home mom, per my dad's orders.
Usual start to a divorce, my dad was physically and mentally abusive to my mom for many years after a head injury he had before I was born. When my mom filed he was livid.
She was willing to give up EVERYTHING for us kids, and she even wanted him to have part-time with us so we would have a father in our lives. He wanted us kids full-time, solely because it would crush my mom.
Some of the things he did include stealing literally every single photo and video of me and my siblings, so my mom no longer has any infant and childhood pictures of her 4 kids, and no memorabilia of her 2 children that died at birth.
Shortly after my mom filed she would sleep in the same room as us kids so she wouldn't be with him but be there for us, and he took a picture of her in bed with me and convinced the court something bad happened. I remember waking up that night with lights flashing, and complete confusion on what was going on and why it was happening, not able to comprehend it all.
Another major thing he did was intentionally go into bankruptcy, absolutely ruining my mom's credit and putting her home into foreclosure, since they both had their names on a rental home my mom was going to move into with us kids. He could fix his credit in due time, considering his highly secure job and excellent pay, but my mom at the time was unemployed.
He has done plenty more to my mom and us kids in an attempt to hurt her, but I doubt I can fit it all in, plus my memory does not hold all of what he did and in chronological order. This was back in 2008, the divorce ended officially in 2012-2013, can't remember exactly. Needless to say, I don't like the guy.
30. Save Your Badmouthing
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Child of divorce here. My parents still talk bad about each other with 7 years past. And they work pretty well considering in order to figure out scheduling with me and my brother. But they're still badmouthing each other. Recently in tears I yelled at my dad about a time he went off about my mother at my birthday party and he said he had no recollection and wasn't really perturbed by the fact, to which I responded with, "but she's my mother!" He still didn't understand.
Digging through a file cabinet recently too trying to find some financial records and found the 8 page document with all the details of the divorce agreement and got infuriated at it. Deep down, I hate my parents for being so selfish and not thinking about their kids, but then again I don't wish for them to have stayed together.
Their divorce was also a major contributor to my depression and anxiety that I'm tryna deal with now.
My message to anyone getting a divorce is that to remember that your ex-spouse is also somebody's family member. If you gotta bad mouth them to feel better, do it to a therapist, not to those who love your ex-spouse.
29. Shrimpy Prices
Not lawyer, but friend of the family. (edit this was told as if it happened to a friend of the family, not that I'm a friend of the family this happened to)
Husband cheated on his wife and she found out. One day she went back to their old house and put shrimp in all the curtain rods, the husband who was trying to sell the house couldn't figure out where the smell was coming from. He ends up for selling it at a massive loss and below value due to the smell. The wife was the one who ended up buying it.
28. Landmarque
This is a real case happened in our country, its a landmark case, actually. Divorce is not allowed here in the Philippines. So this is an annulment case where the woman filed for declaration of nullity of her marriage to his husband because the latter does not want to have sexual intercourse with to her, neither want to see his genitals.
The wife claimed that husband was impotent, and they never had sexual contact for almost a year from the time of their marriage. In the husband's defense, he said, that he forced his wife to do so but she does not want to, so he did not do it again. The Court asked the man for examination but he refused. At the end, he agreed, the doctor found out, he's not impotent but the size of his penis is 2inches or 5cm and only have a soft erection but still capable of having sex. The annulment was affirmed but not because of his reason but because of the refusal to comply with the marital obligations & further they have no spiritual intimacy as husband and wife.
27. Poor Baby
Wife was caught cheating. The ex-wife looking for 10s of thousands of dollars of alimony plus child support. Gets a small fraction of what she wanted.
Takes out revenge by asking 8 year old daughter to lie about how her father's new girlfriend verbally abuses her. Now the ex-husband's new girlfriend is legally dragged into the child custody matter. New girlfriend stays away from the little girl just to be legally safe.
Ex-husband's friend reveals that 8 year old daughter is probably not his. Overwhelming evidence says so. Since he loves his daughter and doesn't want to add even more emotions into this mess, he doesn't pursue paternity test.
Ex-wife drives a brand new car while she shares a one-bedroom apartment with her daughter as she brings boyfriends back home.
26. You Played Yourself, Playa
I'm a legal intern, shadowed a divorce lawyer during the settlement phase. represented the wife, the husband was just a lazy human being, didn't have a job for the last 2 years, didn't want custody or even visitation of their 2 kids, and refused to pay any child support.
Basically the case should have been wrapped up nice and clean, the wife and husband had already done all the number crunching on assets and whatnot. Wife was basically like "fine if you don't want to see your kids or pay child support, I work and will support them I'm just done with you". husband comes forward and claims he feels responsible and would like to pay some child support even though the agreement didn't require him to as he didn't meet a certain income threshold.
Turns out to all be a ruse in order to call out the wife for hiding assets that didn't exist. Judge has the lawyers go talk it over for about 2 hours, which bumps up the billable hours. The husband's lawyer is next to incompetent, as we already had the paper the husband signed and notarized saying they accept the asset findings to be true.
Go back to the judge, he basically says you already acknowledged this deal, nothing is changing except now I'm making you pay child support you lazy SOB.
25. The Pettyness Ain't Pretty
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Banker here. I had a customer tell me his wife left him for her ex fiancé she left at the altar. After being married to him for 20 years, she thought it'll be a great idea to find her ex on Facebook. They hit it off and left him with two kids. Now she is fighting to take half of his multi-million dollar company he built before he even met her. She would tell her attorney to ask for documents to be due for discovery on days like thanksgiving day, Christmas, birthdays of the kids, just so he wouldn't have time to spend it with his kids.
She's evil and never worked a day in her life with him.
24. The Need For Distance
Not a Lawyer but worked in a Law school and heard this one in a Family law class. A couple were married for 3 years, He worked a decent job but wasn't happy in it, He saw a gap in the market and wanted to go for it but she said no. Things drifted apart and they separated, with no one to answer to he goes for it and the company is a huge success.
10 years later divorce becomes legal in Ireland. She comes crawling out of the woodwork looking for blood, I think she ended up owning half the company she was so against in the first place. He had to buy her out to get it all back costing a fortune. I can understand how people are driven to do bad things when I read the stories on here.
23. Save The Children
Am an actual family law attorney. There's two kinds of f*cked over in divorce in my experience:
There's the financial assets f*ck over and I've had people spend more in attorney fees than what they're fighting over. The worst is when the couple owns a small business and they try to cheat taxes by putting everything in the business name, which is nightmare to untangle. Or squabbling over what is and isn't premarital (I'm in an equitable division state) or separate property.
Then there's the f*ck you over with the kids, which is honestly the worst. Some parents shouldn't be parents. Some people fight, not because they have the better home for the kids or want to be with the kids, but because they want to either receive or not pay child support. And the biggest f*ck over is not growing up and acting like adults and parenting your children, but choosing to use them as weapons and basically fucking them over too just to get back at the other parent.
Have seen a woman try to turn kids against her husband so she could collect child support and spousal support while continuing to do nothing in a $300k home. Husband was leaving her because she couldn't come to grips with $90k/ salary not being enough to support her and her lifestyle and three kids in private school.
And I've seen an alcoholic Dad fight to get full custody of a disabled kid and two other kids even though he didn't even know the names of the doctors and wouldn't admit he was an alcoholic even after rehab. All because he didn't want to pay any child support on principle.
22. This Is Why We Go To Therapy Kids
I have talked about this before, but it is worth a retelling.
A family friend started dating this one woman for a while who was separated from her husband and getting divorced. At one point, she tells him that she decided to work things out with her husband. 12 years later, she is getting a divorce from her husband, only now there is a kid involved. The husband tries for full custody, only for her to drop the bombshell that the daughter isn't his. My friend gets contacted to do a paternity test by a lawyer after not hearing from this lady for years, and it turns out the kid is his.
The husband gets denied custody or even visitation as the kid isn't his biologically. My friend ends up being ordered to pay child support, including the 11 or so years of back child support. On top of that, he isn't even allowed visitation with the kid, because the judge thought it would be traumatic to the kid to have this other random person be their father after thinking someone else was your dad for their whole life.
At least when the kid was older, she reached out to him and started a relationship.
21. Damaging For The Sake Of Being Damaging
My aunt was in a 12 year custody battle after her divorce. Only one child, but my ex-uncle was a guy with a lot of money. Knowing she was financially dependent on him during the marriage (because he demanded it be that way), he did everything he could to make my aunt spend as much money as possible.
He finally was awarded visitation, and promptly has not seen his daughter in 3 years.
Some people really just don't give a f*ck about anything bit their petty revenge. Unfortunately sometimes kids are involved, too.
20. No Pre-Nup Please
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Dad is a divorce lawyer. Had a guy whose wife cheated on him, took the kids and served him with papers. At Court, the woman then said she needed the house (needed to come back to the house) so the kids would have a place to live and the guy willingly agreed. She puts some storage related stuff in the house and moves herself and the kids into a boyfriends house.
Guy starts really struggling financially so he asks the Court if he can move back into the house while his wife lives with her boyfriend.
Wife says no so Court says no. He spends a cold (read northeastern US) winter "breaking" into his own un-heated garage to sleep.
The house was bought solely by him before the marriage even started. He got half the proceeds of the sale after the post-nuptials and was finally able to get himself a place.
Marriage contracts are terrible for people to sign. Cohabitate if you must where there is no common law marriage.
19. The Revenge Tho
I worked for a man years ago who was going through a divorce. He just started a small sales company which was doing quite well and earning him six figures a year. He also was dating again and his new girlfriend was his partner in this business.
His ex-wife was really aggressive and trying to get as much $ as she could from him. He took the advice of his lawyer and put all of his business in his girlfriend's (partner's) name and made himself an employee only making $12/hr so his ex-wife would get very little in alimony.
Fast forward a year and a half later after the divorce is through and he "won" the alimony battle, he breaks up with his girlfriend due to insecurity issues. She then turns around and fires him from his own company that he made. He couldn't do anything since nothing was in his name anymore.
The karma was amazing to watch unfold.
18. Forgery Cost Us All
I am not a lawyer, but I was an intern at an engineering firm when the following happened.
A coworker was deported during a divorce when it was found he forged his wife's signature on an official document. It was part of a large number of documents signed when he was filing after marrying an American citizen. There were 4 lines on the page that his wife had signed, but apparently she neglected to sign one and thinking nothing of it, he signed the missing line.
This was discovered by the wife's attorney while reviewing documents for the divorce filing.
He ended up being deported, and the company had some trouble trying to get him a work permit to come back.
He was a degreed and licensed engineer, and last I heard before my internship ended he was working on a coffee plantation in Colombia.
17. Humans Sometimes Don't Deserve Any Good Things
My high school sent me to a law school camp going into my senior year and a mock divorce case turned out to be real. Wife was dying of terminal cancer and wanted to ensure that her money would be left for their children, husband knocked up his girlfriend and wanted all the money for that kid instead. He kept changing lawyers, which delayed the proceedings, until she died and he got everything. It's been 4 years and that still messes with me.
16. Clever Revenge
There was one case I studied in law school where out of spite during a divorce, a guy bought a junk car, registered it to his wife and parked it at long term airport parking.
Sometime after the divorce was settled, wife suddenly gets hot with a bill for thousands and thousands of dollars from the airport for parking there for 6 months.
He wound up paying it after she took him to court for it. I wish I could remember more details.
15. Literal Hits
Parents divorce seemed simple: dad cheated on mom, mom gets custody of me. Dad didn't like paying alimony and child support to the tune of $2k a month after he gave up rights. Dad had great idea, pay a hitman $15k to kill soon to be ex-wife. Dad goes through with it, idiot actually pays undercover cop the money.
Dad then flies back to Canada (home) and wait for results. International task force is formed to try and detain him. Geraldo Rivera covers story, idiot dad gets arrested in Toronto and flown back to California. In this process I was 3 in care of family back down south, mother in protection by police. Dad's family is apparently wealthy, gets a good lawyer, is charged with 17 felonies can't remember how many he was convicted of. He gets 18 months. After all of this mom still had to sue for divorce it still took 2 years.
14. Canine Revenge
My uncle represented this guy getting a divorce from his wife of 15 years. Super toxic breakup and they split everything 50/50, even the land that the house they lived in sat upon. Well she decides to build a house right behind the other house, mind you this was a lot of land probably 200 yards separating both home sites, so that the back of the houses faced each other.
The house gets built and my uncle gets a call from his client asking about the legality of a situation he had gotten himself into. Apparently his ex wife would spend a lot of time in her backyard, so he saw her all the time. What he did was buy a female dog and name it the same name as his ex-wife. Anytime he would let his dog back in from letting her out he would yell "Susan you b*tch! Get in here!" He would also yell if she was peeing on the flowers,"Susan you b*tch! Quit pissing on the flowers!" or "Susan you b*tch! Quit digging in the dirt!" The ex-wife called the cops on him a couple of times, but there was nothing they could do because the dog was registered under the name of Susan, and it was in fact a b*tch so there you go.
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13. Instability
My mom was a real piece of work in this department. My mother is mentally unstable and was very abusive to me as a child. When my father finally moved out and asked for a Divorce I was luckily old enough (13) to legally decide who I wanted to live with. I, of course, chose my dad and that enraged my mother. By court order, she was allowed to live in our 4 bedroom house while me and my dad had to move in with my aunt into a two bedroom house.
We lived there for 4 years while my mom did everything she could to slow down the divorce proceedings. During this period my father was court ordered to pay the mortgage and utilities on the house my mother was living in. She would leave all the lights on and crank the heat with the widows open just to drive the utility bills up.
She once left the garden hose on for a week into a drain to even make the Water bill outrageous. When it was finally all over and she had taken my dad for as much as she could she decided to sue him for my college fund.
I called her and told her if she went through with it I would never speak to her again, she told me if I wanted it I needed to move in with her before I turned 18 so she could get child support from my dad. I refused, she won the case for the money and my dad had to use most of what was left of the fund to pay for her lawyers costs.
12. Mind-Gone
Worked at a law firm that was subpoenaed as part of a divorce between a partner at the firm and a partner at another major law firm.
The woman issued more than 70 subpoenas to banks, firms, investment companies -- you name it -- because she was convinced he had squirreled away $20+ million overseas behind her back. It got so bad that she dug up receipts from 25 years ago to try to put together this grand conspiracy puzzle.
In the end, after she racked up $1.5 million in legal fees, and 7 different lawyers, the judge said this sh*t is ridiculous -- there was no conspiracy, and you are not entitled to a portion of this phantom $20 million.
Mind you: this was a major law firm partner who was acting this way. She made millions per year in her career. But she apparently lost her mind.
11. Spiteful, Hateful
Not a divorce lawyer, but my father went through the process recently. Amounts of money aren't the real concern. The assets must be split as close to 50/50 as possible. So the f*cking over generally comes in the form of inequitable distribution of one-of-a-kind things.
My father had a precious set of old, inexpensive kitchenware that his late mother gave him before he even married my mother. When the divorce went to mediation and she told the mediator that she wanted those pots and pans, she got them. She got them because she was willing to give up something else of equal monetary value (so, something worth less than $10), and was willing to sit in mediation for hours, racking up thousands in lawyer fees for both sides, until my father consented. Again, an even financial trade, but a sentimental trade of overwhelming disparity. Just as a final "f*ck you."
10. Overzealous Division
Not a lawyer, but I met with a scummy one when I was looking to get a divorce. The first lawyer I met with, who had been recommended by a coworker as an amazing divorce attorney, suggested that, if I wanted full custody, I should make sure people knew the relationship was abusive. Tell my friends/family, make sure the neighbors heard me screaming/begging him not to hit me, document every bruise even if I wasn't sure it came from him. Thing is, my relationship wasn't abusive and I'd already told her that multiple times.
She never outright said I should fabricate evidence or anything, but she ignored my repeated statements that there was no abuse and kept on with her detailed instructions of how to document any abuse that might happen. I got the distinct impression that she was letting me know how to create an abusive relationship out of thin-air in order to get custody of my kids.
I ended up not using her as an attorney, for obvious reasons, and in the end my ex and I shared 50/50 physical and legal custody of our children and raised them together despite whatever issues we had with each other. I can't help but wonder, though, how many dads lost a relationship with their kids because of her zealous coaching.
9. Peteapizza
A friend of mine in high school worked at a pizza place. One of the delivery drivers was just ridiculously smart when I talked to him. Later I found out that he use to be a nuclear physicist. His wife was also a nuclear physicist, but left him for her lawyer.
He got screwed out of his kids, most of the assets, and had to pay a lot towards alimony/child support. He did the math, and figured out the tips he didn't get taxed on plus his minimum wage delivering pizza was more than keeping his job as a nuclear physicist. Plus he got a little satisfaction not having to pay her as much. The guy was really nice. I always felt bad for him.
8. An Unfortunate Fight
My dad actually got f*cked by his divorce lawyer during my parents' divorce last year.
My dad and my sister have never gotten along, and over the years it got more and more strained. They eventually got into a physical fight which led to a CPS report and him getting slapped with a child abuse record (they labeled it as 'confirmed but isolated', so he's not on the registry and you can only see it with certain background checks).
In this case, my mom was OBVIOUSLY going to get full custody of my sister. My mom also wanted to give my dad the house, and his cars, and his money pit of a boat.
Lawyer decided, because my dad is stubborn as f*ck, that he would string ol' dad along. Lawyer spent HOURS with my dad trying to convince him that Dad could get more money and custody from my mom.
They did a divorce mediation (so they wouldn't have to go to court), and lawyer dragged it out for 4 hours. The whole time he was riling my dad up, thinking he could get things like the original down payment on the house, half custody of my sister, my mom's car, etc. At the end of the 4 hours of mediation, Lawyer told my dad he should take the deal that my mom and her lawyer had originally offered in the first place, and Dad signed that.
So he paid about $12,000 in completely unnecessary legal fees.
7. Tried To Help, Oh Well
Dad was a real *sshole and mom tried to save him a lot of money during the divorce. They have 3 kids who were 16, 13, and 8. Dad wouldn't sign ANY agreement my moms lawyer produced. It had to be his idea and from his lawyer or it wasn't getting signed. Dads lawyer was incompetent and sends an agreement that states he will pay $2,000 a month in child support until all kids are 18.
Mom tried to explain to dad that it needed to be revised to lower every time a child turned 18. Dad called mom a c*nt during that negotiation so mom said f*ck it and signed the agreement and dad paid the $2,000/month for 10 years when he should've been paying around $1,400/month for 5 years and $700/month for the last 5 years.
6. Left On The Street
My friends husband was a cop, got a judge friend to commit her. He filed for divorce while she was committed, got same judge to grant him custody while she was committed. When she was released because she wasnt a danger to herself or anyone, she had no one to come get her, (she was committed in Atlanta, no family anywhere close) she had nowhere to go and nothing with her, had to spend 3 homeless nights in Atlanta before someone came and got her. She still only has supervised visits 3 years later.
5. Fraud Marriage
A good family friend was a lifelong post office employee, 30+ years of savings and retirement. Mid 50's, one of the funniest, best natured people I've ever met. Married an early 30s woman, very well educated and seemingly nice person. They had a child, shortly after she filed for divorce for no apparent reason. Family friend never owned a credit card, excellent money management his entire life with a credit score over 800. Proceedings start, he finds out she opened over 13 credit cards in his name and drained his accounts of over $70,000.
He's had to relocate to another part of the state just to see his only child, and will never be able to retire. Somehow she has gotten away with fraud to the tune of over a quarter million dollars, and the courts have done nothing thus far to prosecute her for anything. It's the disgusting reality of modern day human nature, and it makes me sick just to write this out. Stuck with massive court costs, absolutely no savings and a sub 600 credit score just so his ex wife can live the extravagant lifestyle she wants. Some people have absolutely no moral compass whatsoever.
4. Vile Creature
Handled a divorce between a teacher (wife) and a CVS cashier (husband.) I represented the wife.
For all intents and purposes, the wife was the breadwinner of the family and she supported herself, her husband, and their two children. I should note: one of the children was severely autistic and required intensive (and expensive) rehab and education.
During the process of the divorce, the husband (living alone) sued the wife (caring for both children) for temporary spousal support. He met all the statutory guidelines to receive it. But, it just came off as slimy.
At the day of the hearing, the judge reviewed all of the facts and spent 20 minutes lambasting the husband. He called him a "vile creature" that was everything wrong with society.
The judge then told us that his "hands were tied" and that he was forced to grant the spousal support. But he let everyone know how little he thought of the husband.
As we were leaving the court, the husband just kept saying to my crying client "Just like Goodfellas - F*ck you, pay me."
It was literally humanity at its worst.
3. Uncomfortable Insights
In family law particularly, people can behave in extreme ways because this is the most emotional flash point in their lives. It usually involves their children or their home, or both. However, clients with character who care about their children, go about divorces in the same way they do the rest of their lives; and they are a pleasure to represent.
The problem clients… As you practice law longer, you recognize clients that aren't emotionally functional and do crazy sh*t. I want to list some comic examples, but once you really understand that these are human beings who are victims of physical and sexual abuse, suffer from debilitating addiction problems, or have serious psychiatric disorders, it loses its panache. The hardest thing to do is look at some ignorant alcoholic 45 year old 250 pound tattooed bully that just beat the sh*t out of his wife and see that he's really a 10 year little kid that watched his mom get beat up and he never moved on from that. Or some screeching middle aged woman that lights a car on fire but it turns out she's really a little girl that got molested and told her mother and her mother told her she was a liar and never to tell anyone. Or the innocent spouse that never saw that one coming. Now try switching the races. Being a lawyer means getting uncomfortable insight into people's lives and it usually isn't very funny.
From the lawyer's perspective, he or she is putting their reputation alongside someone going through this. These are red flag clients and our job isn't to fix all these problems. If they are abusive or display psychotic behavior to their spouses, they will do it to you. Same principal as seeing as how they treat the waiter. They also won't pay your bill or be satisfied with your legal work. I generally turn these clients away unless I know their family and no one else is going to represent them. But you have to be very heavy handed with them.
2. Send The Police
Omg finally one I can answer!
There's the typical cleaning out the accounts and running, claiming the children first on taxes so the other party can't, claiming the other party as a dependent so they can't file separately, stuff like that.
Then there was this one case.
My client fled the home with her baby after an incident of domestic violence. In my state, both parents have full rights to the children unless a custody order in place. In other words, whoever has the kid, gets the kid. Police will not intervene where one spouse is withholding a child from the other spouse if there are no orders in place.
Well my client had the child for two weeks at her new place when H showed up demanding the child. She refused. He called the police. The responding officer was a family friend of both, but originally a friend of H. This PO shows up and decides to try to mediate the conflict. The PO tells my client something along the lines of "let him hug his son goodbye and he will leave peacefully."
My client was hesitant, but agreed. H took the kid and exclaimed "he's mine now!" And ran to his car with the baby. No supplies, no clothes, nothing. The PO claimed he had no idea what was happening (yeah right). And since no orders were in place, there was nothing my client could do.
While we were trying to track him down, we got an order returning the child to my client's possession. He suddenly contacted my client saying he was at a hotel in the area and if she wanted her son back, she could if she came over and slept with him. We sent the police.
1. High Profile, Low Key
I do some work for the attorney on this one...
Local investment broker has done well. Strong practice and very affluent client base. Wife owns a small shop in the local community (a pet pastime - doesn't really turn a profit). Been trying to get pregnant for a couple of years - working with reproductive doctors / clinic. Wife finally gets pregnant - one in a million chance. Has the baby - its a boy! Fast forward a couple of months. Wife has to go to market for her shop and takes a day trip to "the big city" a couple of hours away. Husband prepared for this and takes opportunity to have baby tested for paternity - not his. When they started fertility clinic, he was tested and knew he was shooting blanks.
So, he contacts his attorney (my "boss") and we start "the plan". While we are preparing the case, we have PI follow wife. A few doctor visits, tennis lessons, lunch at the country club daily, hanging out with her friends. Her friends decide to throw her a birthday party at the Country Club. This is our opportunity.
I serve her the divorce papers, loudly asking her name and, after confirming, announce the reason for the divorce - infidelity. You are hereby ordered to appear, in the {blank} county court, blah blah blah... Her friends are stunned. Discovery reveals that she and her friends are all cheating in the same circles. Go to court - present evidence showing husband is not father and request to have his name removed from birth certificate. Judge, not wanting the child to become a ward of the state orders her to produce a list of all people she has slept with during the reasonable window of conception.
She provides list. Next court appearance, ten men show up running the full gamut of "personalities". One doctor, one architect, a tennis coach, two chefs, one "trust fund prince", and a few others to "round out the mix". One was actually the father of the person they really needed, but when she said, "John Doe", she didn't specify "John Doe Jr". All ordered to take a dna test. Our client succeeds in getting his name removed from birth certificate, no child support, no alimony.
Wife strikes a deal with baby daddy for child support and "support payments" for a number of years - she "wins", it's the doctor. Part of agreement is she has to move from area (paid by Dr.), NDA signed, Doctor VERY rich and must protect his name / reputation. Court allowed no dad on birth certificate because of guaranteed support for child (trust fund).
Yea client. It sucked for him keeping everything secret, but he a smart and patient man. He has since remarried and is very happy. Because of evidence produced, several other high profile (but low key) divorces followed.
