How Married People Try To Screw Each Other Over According To Divorce Lawyers

"Turns out she's been collecting..."

"I am not a lawyer but work in the court system. One case that came in was a couple divorcing on mutual terms, the husband had one child with her and the wife had a child from the previous marriage. He agreed to pay child support for both children, I guess he really cared about this other enough to support her even though it isn’t his obligation."

"Judge signs the order, they go to set up the child support account and it gets kicked back saying you can’t have two accounts for one child. Turns out she’s been collecting child support from the biological father the entire time and never told him. She basically tried to milk two fathers for one child... and the other attorney knew about it."

Dikutoy

Wow! Imagine if she had succeeded. Sounds like she totally expected to.

"Decided that day..."

"Not my case, but during my first year of law school lawyers from different practices came to give us a peek behind the curtain of different areas."

"The divorce lawyer told the story of rather well to do couple that spent months and months and many tens of thousands of dollars fighting over absolutely everything all the way down to a single ceramic ashtray. He couldn’t remember the significance, but somehow it had come through the husband’s family."

"Even after everything else had been decided, they spent many more months and nearly $100,000 fighting over just this ashtray. Then, after a court hearing the wife finally won the ashtray. She promptly strode out to the white courthouse steps...and smashed the ceramic ashtray. Left the pieces all over for the husband to see on his way out."

"Decided that day I would not be a divorce lawyer."

105degrees_andrising

Honestly, it sounds like you made the right decision. This story is insane.

"He gave her..."

"I didn't handle the divorce, I handled parts of the aftermath. In the divorce, she went AWOL, was living in a truck somewhere, and just couldn't handle it mentally."

He gave her five of his nine companies. They were the ones that owed seven figures in payroll taxes. He had made her the bookkeeper on paper. She spent decades trying to shake the IRS for the results."

[deleted]

Is there a way to say, no, I don't want this, or is it just that she didn't know about the debt? I would image she didn't know, and that her lawyer didn't know the right questions to ask.

"The first case I ever worked..."

"I’m a lawyer but have had a very limited amount of experience in divorce cases. The first case I ever worked the husband shaved/waxed every single hair off his body in an attempt to avoid a court-mandated drug test."

NegligentNeanderthal

"Wife spent the next several years..."

"Worst I saw was a decades long case. Husband had been in a motorcycle accident, suffered brain damage. Has severely limited capacity going forward. Got a huge settlement afterwards."

"Wife spent the next several years stealing the entirety of the guy's money and property variously by forging his signature or putting documents in front of him that he couldn't understand and telling him they were something benign so he'd sign it."

"She then forged a bunch of letters from a tax authority and convinced him he was about to go to jail and further convinced him to flee the country."

"He finally came back several years later to find out everything he owned was in her name and one of the documents he was told to sign were divorce papers."

"Dude got left with nothing. I moved on before I found out how the story ended."

dissociator

This is nightmarish. I can only imagine how horrible the pain must have been for that man.

"A soon-to-be ex-husband..."

"A soon-to-be ex-husband left his wife's prized Koi to die on the doorstep of their house. Apparently the value of these fish (six in total) was over $100,000. She was, according to her lawyer, so distraught that she couldn't be in court. Only in LA."

[deleted]

Is this not destruction of livestock/property and animal abuse? Koi are really long lived fish and can become a bit friendly too.

"The final object..."

"Not my divorce, but my divorce lawyer told me about a case she was involved in where both clients were so petty that they had to all meet to argue over literally every single scrap of everything. The final object that neither would settle on was a ceramic rabbit statue, a really generic one from Home Depot or whatever."

"Zero sentimental value but since it was the final item, neither side wanted to "lose" the last thing and they dragged it out over 3 separate meetings for this one thing. I don't remember which ended up getting it, but once they settled it and signed everything, the "winning" party stuck it on their lawyer's desk as a gift and walked out."

Much_Difference

They must have felt so cool yet looked so stupid.

"He texted his wife..."

"Had a client whose wife wanted him out of the house. I told him not to leave, just move to a different bedroom for the time being because once he was out the chances of him ever getting back in were slim."

"He texted his wife and told her he was staying in the house. She called back and left a VM that she wanted him out and if he wasn't out soon, she would start taking out her unhappiness on the children, and would remind the children that mommy was being mean to them because daddy wouldn't leave."

Armada5

This sounds like a perfect way to lose custody. Wow.

"Spouse had been out..."

"Divorce lawyer here. Spouse had been out of the house for weeks. She waited until he was on a business trip, came into the house, turned on all of the faucets, plugged the drains, turned off the furnace, and left. It was -10 degrees . He came back five days later. The house was ruined. The water froze and cracked the foundation."

Slagathar1

I'm guessing no insurance... or insurance didn't cover a deliberate act of damage, or something.

"He claimed that his ex-wife..."

"I don't practice divorce law, but I did an internship with a family law judge in law school that involved me sitting in on a lot of stuff. One divorced couple came in because the ex-husband wanted to lower his spousal support payments, due to his lowered income, great financial responsibilities, and the fact that his ex-wife was declining to seek paid employment, all of which sounds reasonable on the face."

"It turned out that while his income had been lowered due to 'cuts', his new wife, who technically worked as his 'assistant' (and had done so prior to the divorce) was now making quadruple her salary, more than he ever had."

"He claimed that his ex-wife had "unpaid renters" living with her and could have money to survive if she charged them rent— it turned out they were the couple's shared 18 year old twins who were living at home having just graduating high school and were going to keep living at home while starting college in the fall."

"(It also later turned out that he allowed his step daughter and her two children to live with him and his wife rent free and paid for her college. His ex-wife produced evidence that he told his own kids to figure out paying for college themselves.)"

"He claimed that his ex-wife worked as a nanny for free by choice and should be getting paid for work elsewhere. The kids she watched for free were their three joint grandchildren from their eldest child, two of which were severely disabled."

"He claimed that when he married his new wife he gained over fifteen new dependants, which was technically true, but those dependants were all in Mexico and included his new wife's grown siblings and their families, none of whom he had ever met."

"This dude was shocked when spousal support wasn't decreased."

wolfmalfoy

It sounds like he’s trying to bleed his ex wife dry, not realizing he’s being bled dry by the new one!

Well, well, well... I think I just won't get married now.

Yeah, I need some time to think about that one.

Oh, and please don't be like any of these people. Just don't. The world will thank you later.

Have some stories of your own? Tell us about them in the comments below!