Interesting, my case isn’t to the scope of the ones in that trailer, but I figured out very fast, as soon as I interacted with her atty that this was going to end badly... To top it off the guy was one of the most incompetent boobs I’ve ever met in my life.. (at least half a dozen times he made procedural mistakes that I could have taken her to the cleaners on had I truly desired to harm her) I have been around atty’s my entire life, father is one, and sniffed this guy out as a bottom third of his class within the first meeting.... So, Not only was he just out for confrontation for no reason, he was completely incompetent to boot, so I had to pay my attorney even more to basically deal with his ineptitude. But of course I can’t fire him, even though indirectly I was paying for him.
Family Law is fundamentally broken, for what was my situation, to still be dragging on 3+ years later, is ludicrous. The thing should have been a no fault, $300 and done deal, at most some quick arbitration to settle a few minor issues, instead its been 3 years and more money than most people make in a year, and turned an uncomfortable situation that could have at least survived into one where I will never ever trust at any level the mother of my children again. She got a horrible attorney, and listened to every idiotic thing that he told her, and because of this, a relationship of nearly 20 years, which sadly came to an end, is to a point it will never be salvaged. It shouldn’t have and had no need to come to this point, there was literally NOTHING to fight over.
However the court system offers no recourse to end pointless fighting. And the kicker of it all is, we literally never went into a courtroom, I can’t imagine dealing with a truly contested divorce, where you literally do need to enter a courtroom to plea your case.
From separation to decree was 2 and 1/3 years, and there was no need for it. Even now to this day a year+ after the decree its still not fully over, because the amount of the retirement that’s hers, that we all agreed to over a year ago when we finally got the decree has not been transferred because her attorney is still fighting that I should pay any tax liability on it if she were to cash it out.... The money has been sitting waiting to transfer to her for over a year, yet here we still are... and I am prisoner to this lunacy.
The Hell won’t end until the youngest child is 18 (19 in my state). Every time the ex hears from a friend you may have gotten a raise, expect to be served with papers.
My advice is to keep your income as tight a secret as you can manage.
Oh dear, HamiltonJay...what a mess! I am truly sorry for your troubles.
My own parents are divorced, and while I am STILL not happy about it 30 years later, the divorce itself was completely amicable. In fact, my folks employed the same lawyer!
This film caught my eye because I have a friend whose divorce is still going on after (are you ready for this?) 13 years!
She is an immigrant from Ireland and has a 6th grade education (she never had the opportunity for further schooling). While she is not stupid, she IS ignorant and confused by the whole system. She has no family here, and no other support except, I think, for me. Her husband comes from a large family with a fair amount of money. It has been his family’s wish that she be utterly destroyed, and they’ve done it.
They keep hiring and firing lawyers to keep the case in court. He stops paying child support just long enough to get called into court, then says, “Sorry,” and pays it right before the judge(s) throw him in jail. But this wreaks havoc on my friend’s budget, and she can no longer make ends meet.
The house is gone, and the younger children have decided they don’t want to live in an apartment, so they went to live with their father (at Grandma’s house). The father tells them if they want to go to college and have cars that they should not visit their mother at all. And they don’t.
It’s all so very sad, and my poor friend is destitute now, and without her children. I worry for her all the time — I’ve even had to buy groceries for her because the only thing in her fridge was an old jar of mayonnaise.
The system is broken, to be sure, and I’m sorry, but the lawyers AND the judges are responsible. How this can go on for more than a decade is beyond me. What’s wrong with these judges that allow it??
Something’s definitely got to change.
Regards,