“My Shark is Bigger than Your Shark”
Right up there with terms like “jumbo shrimp,” “amicable divorce” numbers are among everyone’s favorite oxymorons. Embattled in a fierce contest over assets, custody, responsibility, and debts with all the legal concerns blown completely out of proportion by rage, recrimination, doubt, and guilt, “amicable” is probably the last thing you feel. It’s not like breaking up with Tommy in the tenth grade, assuring, “But we can still be friends,” and imagining that might really be possible. In divorce, all too often, you’re enemies, and you know it.
The longer you and your soon-to-be ex have been married, the more you need separate counsel. Even in states where the laws hold both partners blameless in the marriage’s breakdown and where community property statutes determine who gets what, a so-called “mediated” settlement still puts both partners at risk of coming up on the short end of the stick.
As in any other legal proceeding, you are entitled to “zealous” advocacy. “Zealous” in the context of “amicable divorce” translates “shark.”
In a mediated settlement, the attorney acts more as a referee than an advocate, trying to do what’s fair and reasonable for each spouse and especially looking out for the children. In a fully contested divorce, the guy’s shark battles the woman’s shark, each looking out solely for the client’s best interest, and going all out to win. Clearly, more dramatic, and in the long run, probably better for the man, because men typically forfeit their rights too quickly and too easily. Motivated either by guilt or by impatience, men often say, “Let’s just get it over.” Translation: woman takes everything and man feels bitter for decades afterward.
Studies indicate the Family Courts still harbor some bias in favor of women—especially in matters of child custody. Although judges have become more responsive to fathers’ pleas for primary custody, most ex-men get forced into the uncomfortable—and expensive—role of “Disneyland dad.” And the bias also can manifest in financial settlements; especially if a wife supported a husband through graduate or professional school, she may claim she is entitled to half his earnings for a period matching the duration of the marriage. Sadly but truly, even a well-intentioned guy needs his own attorney.
Even if a mediator completes the settlement for you, you need your own independent counsel to assure the fairness of your agreement. No matter how guilty, impatient, bitter, acrimonious, enraged, ashamed, ambivalent, or just plain confused you feel, you need your very own attorney. The case lasts a few weeks; the consequences last a lifetime.
