55 Divorce Lawyers Share Dirty Secrets About Couples That Had No Business Being This Messy

Not an attorney, but my parents spent tens of THOUSANDS on a divorce and led us kids through all the things associated with it. Only to get back together 8 months later, not fully going through with the divorce, and setting us back financially for years. We lost all of our cattle and most of our land. Then 10 years of them constantly fighting and hating each other until they got divorced when I was 19. They once again spent thousands and led us kids along with them, using us as pawns against each other with threats of cutting us off if we didn’t comply.

One reason they fought so much was because of money, money they had spent on the first divorce.

Moral of the story, if you’re going to get a divorce, go through with it the first time. Also, don’t stay married for the kids, I’d much rather have split time between my parents than live with two people who hated each other.

She got back with him because she believed he’d “changed” #facepalm.

I got a good one. I’m not a lawyer, this happened to a family member. When the divorce happened two of the three kids where adults and the third was two years away from going to college. The wife took half of everything, including retirement accounts. She made him sign a divorce agreement that said among other things he would keep a life insurance policy to her name until he passed away, and to pay her 11k a month until she passed. They were both in their early fifties, and that was almost 3 decades ago and he is still paying her. 11k a month is still a pretty decent amount of money per month. Neither were exactly wealthy. She didn’t work most of the time they were married, and hasn’t worked a day since they divorced. He was a doctor and now has cancer, and most of his retirement goes to paying her. He probably doesn’t have much time left. But the ex wife has threaten their children saying that everything he has must go to her when he goes. He’s so out of it now, that he doesn’t even remember the agreement, and the children are stuck managing his finances now and having to pay their mother every month, even though they don’t speak to her anymore and she doesn’t even want to see her grandchildren. The whole situation is unbelievable.

I am not anything near a divorce lawyer, but my clinical psych teacher specializes in kids and relationships and he said the worst place in the world is divorce court (sometimes he has to sit in with divorcing couples). He said until you witness divorce court, you'll never see anyone so brutal, spiteful, and sometimes just plain evil. Props to divorce lawyers I suppose, because someone has got to do it. It seems tough.

Not a lawyer, just a client myself, spontaneously got married, been used for a donor, then kicked out, she took her ex back in, she filed for divorce asking for €1000s in moral and whatnot compensation for not fulfilling her image of marriage and wanted at least 50% of my paycheck for child support...

Edit. Its getting ridiculous, no need for witch hunt, key points people missing and jumping the gun. Firstly I would've taken this girl in my care in a heartbeat was I given the opportunity. To hell, if it was my mess up that marriage broke up I wouldn't have second thought of paying for the child! But the whole set up just imbalanced my whole world, I couldn't think straight, I stayed awake for multiple nights in a row analysing myself and what I did wrong, while she comfortably was sleeping in another man's arms, at the end she had audacity to take advantage of a "victim" and ask for compensation claiming "I failed her". We lived together 2 weeks after wedding and that was enough for her to make a lifelong decision that affected multiple people, my whole family suffered together with me. Part of me went away with the fact that my daughter growing without me taken care by someone else. I will never be the way I once was, and here people spitting on you and insulting. No surprise that man are ashamed to be victim. No surprise the amount of mentally neglected people.

Not a lawyer. Divorced twice. At the first divorce hearing, my lawyer was listing the details of the split financially and came to the part where she would have to get her own health insurance. Apparently this was the tipping point for her and she starts crying and yelling about it being unfair. Her own lawyer looks at her and says for everyone to hear “what did you think was going to happen? You kick him out of the house and keep all the benefits without him being there? That’s not how it works.”

My ex had 7 lawyers during our divorce proceedings. The first 6 fired her. Finally got to trial day and they started to negotiate (which she would not do up until then). Her lawyer would shuttle back and forth between us and her. At one point we were talking about a couple of points and he blurted out “well you can have them, she’ll never know the difference”. He only took her because she paid a very heavy fee up front. Which she did by getting a new credit card with a pretty high limit, and then declaring bankruptcy the next week. And yes, before you all beat me up, I know it doesn’t say a lot about my judgement that I married her. But we all make mistakes.

not a divorce lawyer, and my parents haven’t had divorce but this is only because they never married. they separated when my mum found out she was pregnant as he did not want another child. he is very wealthy and my mum spent a few years with lawyers getting a settlement to make sure I had money.

my mum was very silly and didn’t know a lot of tactics, but basically the settlement was never agreed for 3 years because he was playing for time until he retired so he had to give my mum less child support and put less money away for me. she always thought that was just how long things took and only realised recently.

one of the things we always believed was that there was a trust fund set up for me when i turned 18. my name is a word and the trust fund was called ‘(my name) trust fund’. turns out the jerk never set up a trust fund for me he just set up a discretionary trust fund ‘for his children’ (he has 3 sons (30+) and me (20f) ). because my name is a word there was actually nothing in writing saying the money was for me, and my mum had never checked cos she was too busy being a single parent when i was born and thought my father wanted the best for her (they were together 6 years).

when we found this out around my 17th bday, we contacted lawyers and wanted to take him to court. we found out if he had not waited until he retired for the settlement we would be getting 6x as much money my whole life and we would be provided for until i got a job (was no longer a dependent on my mum). we were trying to get assurance my university fees would be payed and i would get a personal allowance whilst i was at uni (like he gave his sons). after a year or so dealing with lawyers we settled as we didn’t have the money to go to court as we would need a very good lawyer to go up against his legal team (he used to be a lawyer so had money and contacts). he made us sign a document saying we wouldn’t take him to court ever and that he was being generous in what he was giving me. this was ridiculous to me and my mum, but we needed the money.

But because we didn’t agree with it, we didn’t want to sign it in our names… so we didn’t. my mum and I legally changed our names to Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck to sign the document.

so somewhere in the world there’s a very rich man who has to pay Daisy Duck money every month because he used to be with Minnie Mouse.

Honestly wish we could have got more from him since he has the wealth and has never treated me the same as his other kids (i have met him once before in my life). he has never cared about me or my mum and didn’t want another child but he could have been nicer about everything knowing that we had nothing.

(Also note - my mum was a very successful business woman before she had me and owned a house in london, but she hasn’t worked my whole life and we have been living off that money for 20 years. just making sure nobody thinks my mum was a gold digger because back then she was pretty wealthy in her own right).

OMG. And here I thought divorce lawyers had it easy compared to criminal lawyers. I at least hope the pay makes up for it.

A man took half a million and retired to a home in miami.

I filed nearly 4 years ago and my ex is STILL dragging this out. No, I don't have millions but, you'd sure think I do. My ex retired 8 years ago and I am considerably younger and have at least another 10 years before retiring. He's done everything to make me completely miserable you can think of...(removing me from the title of our vacation home without my knowledge and then losing it to foreclosure) since he had no desire to pay the mortgage and my ex knew I'd go livid. My mantra has been (stay cool and stay out of jail!)

My regular emails or communications to my lawyer often starts...."I hate to bring up this petty bad but, we should really document it...) (way too many to list!)

I've come home to find my clothing, personal property and more in the garbage collection for pickup. (and retrieved it JUST in time!)

Yes - we still live in the same house - because I refuse to give up my stake in the house and he won't leave. (He can't buy me out but, doesn't want me to have the house either). Kind of a "if I can't have it nobody can" scenario - (in his mind anyway).

I'm buying my ex out but, he refuses to sell to me (as if..) he could actually do that - since his income is considerably less than mine - he wants EVERYTHING... alimony, child support and 50% equity a share in my businesses (that I started after I filed but, they are profitable - so he sees dollar signs.)

Because we were married for 22 years in a community property state, I do have to give him 50% equity - (but we're negotiating less because of his shenanigans).

I'm fighting the alimony and child support but, because he is retired and I am not, the court is entertaining this motion. (The kid will stay with me) We discover that my ex was using our son's account as his own personal piggy bank and basically stole over $50K - (you should have seen his face when my lawyer had the account frozen!)

Yes, women want equal rights (and some of you would say what's good for the goose is good for the gander) I get it but, I haven't stooped to childish behaviors because the marriage is over.

This whole thing has been a nightmare. I told my ex for YEARS that I was unhappy. I moved into another part of our home so we could avoid each other.

He literally kept saying ("she'll never go anywhere - plus she can't afford it") - We've had separate bank accounts for years - so this was a guess on his part at best.

When I finally did file (and we had to share financial disclosures he couldn't believe that I was quietly making a very generous salary, while living very humbly) he asked if we could go to counseling. I said ok. He proceeded to bad mouth me and badmouth me to the counselor. I basically said "if this is how you feel, then I was right to file and I'm done with counseling!"

He said... "but YOU are ruining our family! It's all your fault!"

At this point, I've personally spent more on attorney fees than we did on our wedding..($30K more than 20 years ago!).

I'm done people - sign me up for the BEEN THERE, DONE THAT! (Never again!)

We could save ourselves a lot of legal trouble and money by just making it law that if you knowingly have intimacy with a married person then you assume their spouses’ financial responsibility to them in the divorce. If you can have intimacy with her you can also fund her and the cheated on spouse keeps the assets.

Barring that it’d be neat to see dueling make a return. Only rule is men can’t challenge women but can accept if a woman challenges them. If you get challenged you either pay what the other side wants or fight- there are no stand ins.

I’d pay good money to see affair partners have to face down for their stupidity.

It's not that I hoped my client would get shafted... it's just that he was shafting himself, AND I TOLD HIM HE WAS SHAFTING HIMSELF, and he refused to listen.

I represented the husband in a nasty divorce case. Custody fights. Protective orders. Subpoenas for text messages. Allegations of infidelity on both sides. Lots of assets in play. The guy had a stereo installation business. Good margins, good money.

Legally, it was going okay... until my client started giving his wife temporary maintenance payments USING COMPANY CHECKS. I said, "Hey bud, that is unwise." See, if you treat your business like a personal asset, the court will conclude it should be treated like a personal asset, viz., shared 50/50. My client disagreed with this. He felt it was important to show the court how good his business was doing.

As it turns out, the judge DID think it was important, and the wife essentially got a 50% share of the business' profits.

Book-learnin' folks call this "hubris."

When my ex moved out he said he “didn’t want to continue his relationship” with the child we had adopted, and he “wanted some me time” for a few months before having to take the teenagers “maybe one weekend a month”.

Our mediation lawyer was absolutely dumbfounded. She flat out told him “I can’t go before the judge with an agreement that says you just aren’t ever going to see your kids again. That will look VERY BAD for you.”

EDIT: She was actually still very fair after that and he got away much better financially than I did, so he can’t complain.

When my ex and I got divorced we were fairly poor. Mostly a DIY divorce, but we had to appear in court to finalize it. He was violent and an alcoholic, so when it came to splitting our belongings I let him take everything to make the process easier (literally everything, I moved into an empty apartment with the clothes I owned, and that’s it.) The only thing I wanted was a blanket his best friend’s mother had made for me as a wedding gift. He chose that one thing to fight tooth and nail about. He got the house, the dog, everything in the kitchen, the car, the motorcycle… I just wanted the blanket. On the day of court I finally relented, and said he could have it. When we went before the judge he asked if anything was contested, and I just looked at the floor and said no. He said “You agree to him having everything?” I said “Well, there is this blanket…” My ex lost it, the judge was incredulous, and I have a divorce decree that says my maiden name is restored to “Smith” and lists the blanket as the “asset” I got to keep! … I threw the blanket away a few months later.

Not a lawyer but when my parents got divorced my father suggested a Parent Trap-like arrangement, where he would get full custody of my brother and my mom would get custody of me because "it's only fair that each parent gets to keep one child, it's 50/50'. Pretty sure this is illegal here and even if it were possible no sane lawyer would ever agree to this.

He actually sent that to her over text and we still have the screenshots. Mom only sent back "are you delusional?".

I used to volunteer at an animal shelter. There was one beautiful large dog there who barely fit in the kennel. He had been surrendered because his owners had divorced and couldn't agree on who got to keep him.

Not a lawyer, but this is one of the memories my husband has of his parents' divorce.

They were ordered by the courts to go to family therapy so they could learn how to coparent. They each refused until their lawyers told them that they would be held in contempt of court for not going. So they finally went. At the end of the very first session, the therapist said that the best course of action was for them to interact as little as possible because they were in no way capable of being civil, even for the sake of their children.

I’m not a lawyer, but I had a friend who interned for one as an undergrad. There was a child custody case (though I don’t think it was a divorce case) on zoom (COVID times) and the mom took a hit off a water pipe on camera. When called out, she turned the video but not microphone off and they could still hear here until they called her out again. Not sure what the outcome was.

Obligatory not a lawyer, but I had the displeasure of meeting a women who swore that she was going to ruin her soon to be ex-husband’s life once she got out of jail. He had called the cops on her for attempting to take her kids in the car while she was on substances.
That same night she had gotten into an accident, running off road and hit a pasture fence.

NAL, and never got the full details, but just about a week before our final hearing, my ex's lawyer voluntarily withdrew from the case. My ex ended up being a piece of work so God only knows what she did to cause that. Still wishing I could find out the details some day.