Obviously, the husband could have been presenting a partial picture; I told him that his initial failure to provide financial disclosure to his wife’s attorney had probably cost him some creditability.
The following week the husband turned up for our next appointment. We waited half an hour for the wife; he tried calling her — no answer. He also told me that she had had a fight with him the previous weekend — she would not let him see his children after they had a fight over finances.
The husband left to hire an attorney — and off they go down the litigation tunnel.
The husband had started out with an arrogant, I know best, attitude that simply confirmed for the wife that she could not trust him. That was compounded by the revelations that they were not only not rich, but broke. The wife did not have the personal knowledge or resources to evaluate the truth of what her husband was telling her, so she made an entirely rational decision to rely on her attorney.
I happen to know the wife’s attorney professionally — a tough, no-holds-barred litigator who sees her job as getting the most for her client through litigation. She is not someone likely to settle.
The fact is that the husband’s presentation of his finances is probably substantially true. The parties will now spend tens of thousands of dollars establishing that. The will spend a couple of years, $50,000 or more, and cause themselves and their children no end of grief — for what? It will come out the same regardless. They could have made a deal if they had each been more forthcoming and realistic at the beginning.
You have control over your own divorce. If you hand it over to the lawyers you only have yourself to blame for the disaster than ensues.
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