An insight was recently shared with me – that when you get a divorce the divorce lawyers are adversaries . not to each other but to the clients.
I never thought of it that directly but in fact the divorce lawyer that I retained was an adversary to me.
Not because I was unreasonable but because I resisted for the most part his efforts to control and manipulate me. He was the expert and how dare I question him.
A divorce lawyer is supposed to be an advocate for the client, right? Doesn’t work that way in reality.
A divorce lawyer with 30 years of experience has 30 years of experience seeing children separated from fathers — regardless of who they represent. So that is what they expect and will have happen in a case. Who are you and who are your children to expect anything different? So that is what will happen to you and your children if you put your divorce in the hands of divorce lawyers.
Divorce lawyers have a program and that is the program. If you don’t go with the program, your divorce lawyer will be upset with you. If you question your divorce lawyer, your divorce lawyer will be upset with you.
My observation is that divorce lawyers don’t think too highly of their clients to begin with – so not to go with the program that your divorce lawyer has for you makes a bad situation even worse for you in terms of the relationship.
As a practical matter, it isn’t reasonable to expect a divorce lawyer will use up his/her goodwill fighting for a client. Your divorce lawyer if your situation is like mine will sit there as a potted plant while you (the dad) are slandered and smeared by others.
The divorce lawyer deal with fathers who have assets that can be converted into billed legal fees seems to be to terrorize the fathers with all of the possible horrible things that could happen to them and their children to cause anxiety/dependence, to get into meaningless skirmishes with opposing counsel to run the billing meter, to create distrust and antagonize conflict with the other divorcing spouse to preclude reasonable settlement, to blather about legally irrelevant points to try to sound like an expert and to do no genuine case preparation because that is actual work and who wants to do actual work – and after the client has been billed near to the point of death to bully for a settlement on unfavorable terms or on terms that could and should have been negotiated as a settlement at the start of the case (tens of thousands of dollars of billed legal fees in the past).
My divorce lawyer would do things like tell me that I would get put out of my home, that he’d seen far better fathers, that he just read a case where a divorcing wife took a divorcing father to the cleaners for no apparent rationale (and when I asked him about the case/facts he’d not be able to find the case for me to read but would make the facts sound like my case), etc.
Near the start of my case, I prepared a comprehensive settlement proposal document that was ignored by my divorce lawyer and the divorce lawyer for my now ex-wife. My divorce lawyer who from time to time made Freudian slips it seems told me that it was “too early to settle” the case; I wish I knew then what I later found he meant by that comment. It was too early — for him and the other divorce lawyers who had fees to bill.
A few months later I tried to get a settlement meeting scheduled. The other divorce lawyer and my divorce lawyer were not going to let that happen if they could help it while there were fees to bill. I finally got them to schedule the meeting in the distant future and the day arrived; on the day, my divorce lawyer made some comment that allowed the opposing divorce lawyer to say “we’ll never be able to accept that or settle so let’s cancel the settlement meeting”. I got word 30 minutes before the scheduled meeting; I told my divorce lawyer that I was going to the meeting in any event. The opposing divorce lawyer was able to have stop my divorcing wife from attending by calling her on her cell phone as she was driving to the meeting. My divorce lawyer came to the meeting and sat beside the opposing divorce lawyer with me on the other side of the table. “We’ll never be able to settle” they told me, “you are unreasonable.” “How is it that two divorced lawyers each with over 25 years of experience and totaling almost 65 years of experience can’t figure out how to settle a relatively simple case like this?” I asked. In unison, they said “we never know what a judge will decide”. “But don’t over 95 percent of cases settle before going to the judge?” I asked. Again in unison, they said “you are unreasonable, this case will never settle.” Translation: We want to make sure we get $100,000 of legal billings out of this case before it ends and sizing up your assets, your divorcing wife’s vindictiveness/nastiness and manipulability, and your desire not to be excluded from your children’s lives, we think we can do that kind of billing if we keep the case going. (By the way, the case did settle about 20 months later — the day of the trial.)
Later in the case we had a trial date (the first of three) and I pressed to go to trial but my divorce lawyer insisted that he wasn’t prepared. I told him to go to trial anyway because the amount at issue was less than he would bill me to prepare for the trial (how complicated is a divorce in terms of legal-factual issues that matter?). Of course he did not go to trial as instructed; instead he told me that he had reached an agreement with the opposing divorce lawyer to mediate — but that agreement turned out not to exist. (The case went for nearly three years in total but there was never a mediation; the divorce lawyers did not want to settle the case.) He then realized that his days of having me as a client were numbered and seemed to try to bill his last few extra thousands out of me before I could pull the plug.
At one time I asked my divorce lawyer why he was such a lousy advocate for me when it came to my children. By then we were well over $30,000 in billings into the case. He told me that he “thinks children should be with one parent rather than two parents”. He suggested that I accept an unequal and unfair for my children placement schedule.
When I fired him and represented myself I ended up doing better — ultimately having with equal parenting time, which was all I had ever sought.
Some divorce lawyers actually want to get themselves fired and precipitate it by increasingly poor client treatment after they have billed what they feel is a nice sizable amount to the client.
In retrospect, it is clear that my divorce lawyer did that – degraded the relationship to the point where it had to end – after he had billed over $40,000.
Once the divorce lawyer is fired, there is no obligation for the divorce lawyer to do much of anything — all that has been billed is pocketed but nothing much has to be delivered to the client in terms of result.
That the divorce lawyer actually did no trial preparation will not be exposed because the divorce lawyer won’t have to conduct the trial. The divorce lawyer collects the fees but doesn’t produce any of the result. The client is left in the lurch.
And of course within the community of divorce lawyers clients who have had multiple divorce lawyers are given a black mark. That doesn’t mean that another divorce lawyer won’t sign on and take your case/money; but it does mean that if anything goes amiss due to the next divorce lawyer and you complain or get to a point where you are disputing an issue with the next divorce lawyer, a smear will be cast on you that you “had another divorce lawyer”.
Who is your adversary in a divorce? Your pwn divorce lawyer, for starters, if you are in a case like mine.