But to the OP, yes, these things rarely go to “trial” (although we don’t call it a trial, we call it a final hearing, which is exactly like a trial, but we don’t want divorcing parents to feel like it is a trial). It makes no sense to pay lawyers $200/hr to fight over a used sofa that grandma gave you and not him.
Almost all cases start out with my client declaring that they will fight until the death and appeal it all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, but that is because of the emotional nature of it. Once everyone calms down and goes through mediation, people see the value of striking a fair deal and moving on with their lives.
The few times it goes to a contested final hearing is when the parties are filthy rich and have cognizable legal arguments as to why they should get the extra $250k instead of the other party. That makes attorney’s fees a wise investment. Other times it goes to a final hearing is when one person, in the face of everything, simply remains unreasonable, and those are fun because the judge will hammer that person.
In my experience in domestic courtrooms (mercifully limited), very few domestic cases go to trial. The ones that do are epic. We all knew who the couples were by name. All you had to do was say, “Smith hearing on this afternoon,” and whoever was clerking in the Smith hearing courtroom that day would groan.
Such cases were usually fought for years and years. The dissolution would be granted, the actual divorce complete – yet they’d be back for revised visitation schedules, modified child and/or spousal support orders. The case files were multiples, sometimes up to 12 thick files or so. (An average domestic case file was usually less than a third of a file thickness full.)
These are people’s core issues. They will fight and fight and fight over their children, homes and money. Most legal folks will recognize the old saw that criminal court consists of bad people on their best behavior, while domestic court is full of usually good people on their worst behavior. I found this to be true.
I worked for one judge who absolutely would not do personal property division for household goods. If the parties couldn’t agree to their own personal property division, he would hold an auction between the parties for each item. Then he got bored with doing that and simply ordered all remaining personal property sold and proceeds divided equally. That usually sobered things up quick.
He also drew the line at crafting visitation schedules for pets and plants. (Yes, one party actually asked for a plant visitation schedule.)
Good luck to your friend, Bijou Drains. Sounds like he’s in for a rough time, for sure.
court was moved from next week to Sept. for his case. And it sounds like the lawyer will work with him if he can pay her some money now instead of a big chunk she wanted.
This is actually what I mean, but I’ve sure seen plenty of cases personally where a child under 18 moved in with the other parent full time (and usually for some very good reasons) or refused to see the non-custodial parent (also usually for some very good reasons), and there wasn’t much the court could do about it beyond modification of child support.
Yeah, imagine trying to keep a straight face through that. I struggled.
To their credit, both the lawyers looked miserable. They knew exactly how the judge was going to receive that particular motion. They were right.
Of course the judge understood the problem was unreasonable clients, not unreasonable lawyers. He expressed his displeasure accordingly. Ordered the parties to work together to reach a solution and said if they could not, he would order the plants destroyed. Funny thing; they managed to come to an agreement.
I heard of a similar episode from a lawyer I know. The couple could not agree on division of the ordinary household furnishings and applied to the Court.
The Judge: “Counsel, there appears to be a misunderstanding about our respective roles. It is not my job to decide on division of the family Tupperware. If your clients cannot agree, it becomes your job to mediate the division.”
I asked what happened?
He said that he and the other lawyer spent a weekend in the matrimonial home, mediating the division of forks, spoons, bed linens, etc., shuttling back and forth between their respective clients. But they got it done!
I said that sounded tedious, but they provided a necessary service to their clients and should feel some contentment at a job well done.
“Yes,” he said, “until they got back together a month later and re-commingled all the Tupperware.” :smack: :smack: :smack:
As much as I agree that attitude usually gives the best outcome in these types of cases, I think it is overly paternalistic. There is something to be said about the attitude that “Hey, I paid my filing fee, judge, so yes IT IS your job to decide these things.”
But that is what a judge is for. To judge. Filing a court case isn’t free. That’s what the litigants paid for. They shouldn’t have to pay an additional fee to hire someone who will really, really judge for them.
You’ve heard of people who are Bipolar…? For a short while a few years ago I was married to a gal that was TRIpolar at the least, maybe more. One of those voices in her head wasn’t a bad gal, but some of those other were real witches.
I could deal with a little bit crazy, but it turned out she was dangerous as well, so I had to make that hard decision.
Since we hadn’t been “married” long the division was very straightforward… yet she was adamant and asking for more than she was clearly entitled. If you had to put a number on it I’d say about $15k more than she was entitled to. I didn’t want to pay… to me it seemed straightforward, so I quizzed my attorney.
He wasn’t an expensive attorney, but his cost for a basic, short trial would still likely be $2k… So not a deal breaker. But, he told me, It doesn’t matter what is necessarily, right, common or generally accepted as fair, That Judge, ( randomly picked ) has a lot of leeway and can mandate whatever they wake up feeling like that morning. Yeah, most of the time they come up with what is generally accepted as reasonable, but they might say I should give her $100k… or $1k a month until “she gets back on her feet”… You NEVER know.
It was smarter to go ahead and pay $15k extra right then for her to go away and be done with it than to risk what MIGHT happen.
My lawyer said it was under five percent. (We didn’t come anywhere near going to trial - it just came up in conversation. My ex and I wrote the divorce agreement ourselves.)
I have known a lot of people who got a divorce, and never known any who had to go to trial.
I think that was the same comment with Giuliani’s past divorce - he paid $30,000 in “child” support for the dog. One commentator questioned this on TV and another said “She’s going to get the money one way or another so why fight about it? Cheaper to give in.” Mind you, apparently he could easily afford $30,000.
and his case is still dragging on. The latest is that he decided not to pay child support for a kid living with him but that was a really bad idea. Now’s he being hit with contempt of court charge for not paying child support.
That was stupid. He should have gone back to court and had the child support order rescinded now that the kid was living with him and he was paying the support for the kid directly.
