Hostile Divorce: How to shield your family from the harmful effects

Recording this on a Sunday after about 14 ten hour days at work, which included, at the end, a three day trial.

I am recording a series of videos this month about how to be better at divorce than you were at marriage. How to look back on your divorce and feel proud of the way you behaved and how to shield your family from the harm caused by a hostile divorce.

So it is fitting that I start with what I am still recovering from and what I know the family at the center of this trial will be recovering from for years and years.

Here’s the story

My client, the father and husband came to me seeking a collaborative divorce after an explosive separation and altercation between the Husband and Wife

This couple had three children, one of whom was barely one year old.  The other two were under the age of 6.

This case began in late 2018.  It seemed to me that the Father was quite reasonable in his expectations. He wanted his children half the time and he had up to the time of separation been a very involved parent. Making birthday cakes and Halloween costumes. Taking kids to school, cooking meals and grocery shopping. 

Try as I might have, I could not get the Mother to discuss, negotiate or agree to anything.  She demanded majority timesharing (I think she knew that would make my client nuts). Her parents, their friends got involved and started taking sides. Her mantra was that she would do only what the court told her to do.

Week on week off

18 months later, magistrate

As always happens when trial actually approaches all sorts of things happen

New allegations, new witnesses, new alliances, depositions, costs for transcripts of those depositions, etc

So what happened?  Almost three years after the case began. After three different lawyers for the Wife. And three weeks of the most intense scrambling and new revelations by both clients about each other. After the disclosure of the most intensely personal photographs and texts you could imagine. Texts that no one would want others to see. After both had spent in excess of $60,000 (by the way all of which had been loaned to the Wife by friends and family in service of the fight,   we had a trial

And then what happened? Watch this short video and find out.