The Good Divorce

Babble has an article on mediation brokered divorces. Sounds just too good to be true!!

"This is how it happens," said Christy Mann. "You get in a fight, or admit an affair, or just decide that living a life of quiet desperation isn't for you, and you vacate the marital residence. You're now officially separated." Mann's an expert on the subject. She was a family attorney for two decades, before being appointed a District Court judge in 2005. "You can stay like this forever," she continued, "and this state won't get in your business." But marriage is a state-sanctioned union. So if you officially want out — to remarry, go gay, or simply change tax brackets — you need the State to dissolve it for you. You're getting divorced! What now?


(2) If you're like me, you probably imagine that divorces are decided in a courtroom by a Judge, and feature conflicting testimonies, private investigators, hidden assets, and machinating attorneys. Sounds technical and terrifying (or like a great Joan Crawford movie). But as it turns out, this is exactly the venue some sparring spouses desire. "These people think that their divorce is going to be like Oprah," said "Leah," a long-term New York City Family Court employee. "They think they'll get to come into the courtroom, spill all their intimate details, be heard, and be vindicated: that an impartial judge will tell them, Yes, actually. You're right, and your ex is an asshole." She paused, dramatically. "Sadly, that's not how it usually happens."

The 3 Worst Divorce Stories

We've all heard horror stories about weddings going incredibly wrong, with dog-eaten rings, tacky gowns, and bridesmaids caught in the back bedroom with grooms. But what about the travails on the other end of the marital spectrum? I interviewed a number of people in the divorce industry — lawyers, judges, mediators, court officers — for "The Good Divorce." Here are their top three tales of separation spectacles and post-annulment antagonism.


1. A man leaves his wife, vacating the marital apartment. In order to be free and clear of his spouse, he's willing to give up all of his possessions, including their home and its contents. But he has amassed a collection of rare and expensive tropical fish. "All I want," he told the judge, "is my aquarium." His soon-to-be-ex turned to him dispassionately. "The fish," she said, "are dead."


2. After the recent downturn in the mortgage market, a banker who has gone from making $1.9 million a year to making just $600, 000 comes into court to request a reduction in his child support payments. When his ex requests a closer examination of his finances, it is discovered that he has just purchased a $71,000 diamond engagement ring for his new trophy wife. Case dismissed.


3. As a means of supporting his claim that his ex-wife is exposing his son to people in the "drug underworld" a father brings into court a plastic bong and a zip-loc baggie full of weed that he has uncovered in the boy's room. This does not go over very well with the court officers during the random bag inspection. "Sir," they tell him, "possessing this is illegal, and bringing it into a court of law is simply unwise." The man points at a label he's pasted to the bag, it reads: EVIDENCE. "But I labeled it," he says. So how does it happen? Well, according to my divorce industry experts, when one chooses the traditional route — using oppositional lawyers, indirect communication, and the court system — things tend to get . . . combative. The attorneys are paid to represent only their client's interests, the spouses are told to go for the jugular, and the judges are left to use the blunt cudgel of property law to resolve an incredibly intimate conflict. "The court system isn't really geared to solving these kinds of interpersonal disputes," said Judge Mann. "If you think of a divorce as delicate surgery, as a Judge, my finest tool is a chainsaw!"

While the great majority of court-based divorces don't end in tabloid-y trials, they do have to wend their way through the system, racking up fees for the attorneys on both sides. The average cost of a fully-litigated, courtroom divorce is nearly $80,000, and even a standard one with dual legal counsel comes in around $27,000. "In the long run, the lawyers make out," said Jack Maiorino, a recent divorcee and New York City Court Officer, who's overheard his share of bitter battles in the halls of justice. "You've essentially given your attorney permission to tear the head off your spouse. Let's just say, it can get ugly."

Things can become even "uglier" in court when the battle-worthy marital assets include children. Arrangements regarding the kids — where they'll sleep, who'll make decisions, who'll pay for what — are approached with the same greedy antagonism as the division of the 401k. "People find ways to take the kids on the ride with them," said New York Family Court employee, Leah, "bringing them into their animosity and despair. They'll fight to the death over holiday schedules, who should pay for shoes, or who can come to which little league games."

For many divorced parents, it's this intractable sense of being trapped in a relationship with someone you despise that's the stickiest marital residue. We kids of divorce witness this fallout all the time: in the subtle digs one parent makes against the other; in the TMI stories of an ex's transgressions. One interviewee discussed moving back home after grad school. Her parents had divorced when she was a teen, but whenever she and her mom argued that year, the fight would inevitably end with her mother screaming, "You're just like your father!" "Once, when an argument started, I said to her, Why don't we just skip all this and go right to you screaming that I'm like Dad. She threw a lamp at me. This is a sane professional woman, years later. The pain remained that profound."

So if you've bought a one-way ticket to Splitsville, but don't want to arrive at your destination all nasty and bitter, what are your options? "I think a lot of divorcing couples would do better in a mud-pit," Leah said. "Get that aggression out early on." But if such a venue isn't available — or it's occupied by female wrestlers — another functional alternative exists: Mediation. Instead of squaring off in court using attorneys as stand-ins, in a mediated divorce, the participants agree to sit face to face with an impartial third party, and hash through their problems and property.