Random Divorce Lawyers And Legal Industry Employees Describe Nastiest Cases (19 items)

• (#17) NASCAR Bans, Shooting Trophies, And Custody Reversals

  From Redditor /u/jennifer1911:

  I had a few.

  One guy had his wife served with the divorce papers while she was in the hospital undergoing cancer treatment. She had no idea he wanted a divorce.

  One guy wanted a provision in his divorce that said his sons couldn't watch NASCAR because the wife's new boyfriend was into NASCAR.

  In the same case, the property division was so contentious that the judge had the parties list every piece of furniture in the house and try to work through who would get what. The guy made sure that he wanted everything she did, down to things like lace doilies her grandma made and some trophy she won in a women's shooting competition ("I bought her the gun so its pretty much my trophy").

  Another guy wanted no custody and no visitation with his four sons until he learned how much child support would be. Then he wanted full custody with no visitation for the wife in the hope that she'd have to pay him child support.

  I only did divorces for about a year before I moved on to mortgage foreclosures. Those are far less depressing.
• (#7) Who Gets The Frozen Embryos?

  From a former Redditor:

  Not yet a lawyer (law student), but frozen embryos. Both treasured them at one point as the future children they have the potential to be, already have a child from IVF, but now one wants custody and the other wants them destroyed.
• (#1) He Named His Dog After His Ex-Wife

  From a former Redditor:

  My uncle represented this guy getting a divorce from his wife of 15 years. Super toxic breakup and they split everything 50/50, even the land that the house they lived in sat upon. Well she decides to build a house right behind the other house, mind you this was a lot of land probably 200 yards separating both home sites, so that the back of the houses faced each other. The house gets built and my uncle gets a call from his client asking about the legality of a situation he had gotten himself into.

  Apparently his ex wife would spend a lot of time in her backyard, so he saw her all the time. What he did was buy a female dog and name it the same name as his ex-wife. Anytime he would let his dog back in from letting her out he would yell "Susan you b*tch! Get in here!" He would also yell if she was peeing on the flowers, "Susan you b*tch! Quit p*ssing on the flowers!" or "Susan you b*tch! Quit digging in the dirt!"

  The ex-wife called the cops on him a couple of times, but there was nothing they could do because the dog was registered under the name of Susan.
• (#10) She Ruined Her Relationship With Her Daughter Forever

  From Redditor /u/CptRobBob:

  Not a divorce attorney but I clerked for a judge that handled divorce cases. We had a couple that were both lieutenant colonels in the Air Force. They had one daughter that was about 11 or 12. Both had graduate degrees and were generally intelligent people.

  Well the husband had an affair and things went sour with the relationship. The daughter was at that age when her relationship with the mother was starting to get a little strained and she mentioned how she wanted to stick with her dad because he was about to be stationed elsewhere and the parents would be going their separate ways.

  The mother absolutely freaked. The first thing she did was go to the local police department and claim the father had been sexually assaulting the daughter. They investigated and couldn't find any evidence so they dropped the case. The mother, still furious, then goes to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and reports the same thing. The Air Force then suspends the husband from duty and conducts their own investigation.

  They reach the same conclusion that there was no evidence of wrongdoing, and they dropped the case. The mother then goes to the next state over where the husband is about to be transferred and contacts the local police there with the same story about [...] assault. They of course do their own investigation but same result, case is dropped

  Of course this whole time the daughter has been interviewed a dozen times by psychologists, various therapists, the police, the Air Force, and who knows else. The daughter is straight up traumatized by this. People constantly asking her if her dad had been [hurting] her. Not to mention the harm it did to her father's career. He was basically screwed from any possible promotion just because of the allegations. As well as the fact that infidelity in the military is a big no no. But that was his own doing.

  Well once word of all this gets back to the judge he is furious. He's a former Air Force Jag and still has contacts in the ranks. Well anyway the couple comes in front of him one day for a hearing and he outright tells her she better stop this behavior or he's going to hold her in contempt of court for the maximum amount of time he can lawfully hold her in a cell, contact the DA and recommend the filing of charges, contact her Air Force superiors and recommend reprimand to the fullest extent possible, and basically anything and everything he can do within his power.

  It was one of the most messed up things I've seen during my relatively short experience in the legal world.

  Edit: For those of you freaking out because she received no consequences: She lost any hope for a relationship with her daughter, possibly for the rest of her life. Her Air Force career was over. And last I heard the DA's office was looking into possible charges. I don't know what happened with that because I left soon after all of this happened. The judge in this situation didn't have much authority outside the divorce itself. He can make recommendations and suggestions to the DA and Air Force, but has no power to bring charges. The most he can do is put her in contempt of court.
• (#13) They Spent Thousands Of Dollars In Legal Fees - Over A Picture

  From Redditor /u/Stebes30:

  I'm not a lawyer but a law student. Worked for a firm over the summer and one of the lawyers worked a divorce case that he knows as the "Praying hands" case.

  Divorce is all but finalized, but by the hand of God, there a couple more issues to deal with. One of them was a picture of praying hands with a rosary around it. Apparently the divorce was pretty messy and it all just culminated over this picture. Each client paid their lawyer hourly (hundreds of dollars) rates to try to figure out who got this one, essentially worthless picture. Like you could get this thing at any Christian bookstore or whatever.

  But this apparently went on for over a day. Just two lawyers arguing and negotiating over a worthless picture where they both know it is purely out of spite and a waste of their time. I guess you don't bite the hand that feeds though...
• (#9) He Didn't Want To Give Her $3,000 - And Ended Up Paying $60,000

  From Redditor /u/toml3030:

  I'm not a lawyer, but I have worked for a lawyer who worked divorces. This was his favorite case.

  Guy was making $150K a year, [marries a Thai woman], has three kids. Dude has an affair... and initiates a divorce. The woman's only priority is to have custody of the kids, so against her attorney's advice, she's willing to take a deal where she takes a car and gets $1200 in child support, no spousal support, and $3,000 lump sum from their joint account so she can rent an apartment (there's ZERO chance that he actually wants custody of the children because he's already shacked up with the girl he's having an affair with).

  She wanted full custody so bad that she was willing to live with three kids in a modest [two bedroom] apartment and pull the kids out of expensive extra curricular activities they were doing to economize, as well as getting a crappy survival type of job after being nothing but a housewife since coming to US. One of the kids has some talent in an Olympics event, to the level where she was getting professional coaching lessons.

  The husband takes it to the front of the judge against the advice of his own attorney, who tells him that he's nuts to turn this down, because he doesn't want to give her $3K, and he figures the judge will decide between what she wants and what he wants, not realizing that there's a formula based on income judges use to determine child support payments.

  At the court, the judge awards the wife the $3K lump sum and $1700 child support... FOR EACH KID. So because he didn't want to give his ex wife $3K so his kids could have a place to live, about 50% of his take home pay is going to his ex for the next 10+ years.

  The attorney I worked with was a hardass about money and never did anything for free, but this was the one case where he represented the woman for just a nominal fee.

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