The High Cost of an Angry Divorce Ep 60

They were supposed to be spending their golden years traveling, relaxing, and maybe spoiling any grandkids. Instead? They spent two years locked in a bitter divorce that racked up over $100K in legal fees—and that’s just one side.

In this episode, I’m walking you through the story of my client "Jeremy," a retired man who did everything right. He offered fair settlements. He tried to keep it calm. He just wanted to move on with his life. But his ex was stuck in anger—and her attorney wasn’t there to solve problems, only escalate them.

You’ll hear how a judge finally stepped in with a scolding from the bench, and why it still took two years, multiple court hearings, and over $100,000 (double that for both sides!) before a resolution.

But this isn’t just about one couple. It’s about what happens when you let anger run the show: the stress, the time lost, the way it impacts your health, your family, and your future.

Whether you’re the one feeling angry or you’re up against someone who is—this episode will help you understand what’s really at stake, and how to stop the madness.

We’re unpacking:

• How a “simple” divorce turned into a financial and emotional nightmare
• Why fear often hides behind deep-rooted anger
• The mental and physical toll of prolonged litigation (including health scares)
• Why grown kids start pulling away when things get messy
• How some attorneys thrive on conflict—and drag things out
• The moment a judge said, “This should’ve settled long ago”
• How divorce mediation could’ve changed everything

MEDIATION STARTER GUIDE: https://mailchi.mp/2939c428981d/mediation-resources  

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NEED SOME ENCOURAGMENT? Kelly wrote a book just for YOU: Victim Is Not Your Name: Remembering Your True Identity In the Midst of Life Challenges

Transcript

1:16

Hey, welcome back to the Splitting Smart podcast. I'm taking you to court today and we're going to be talking to a client that I represented for two long years on a case that really had no business going all the way to trial. But I want you to see what happens behind the scenes when we do go to trial and when there's somebody who is unreasonable and angry in the case. What you're going to hear is a conversation between myself and my client, Jeremy Johnson. Oh, the names have been changed, of course, they have to protect the innocent. Anyway, you're going to hear a conversation between Mr. Johnson and I, and he's very frustrated because he's been the reasonable guy in this deal. And then you're going to of course hear from the judge as I take you into the courtroom. Let's talk to Mr. Johnson. I'm so frustrated. I can't believe it's been two years of this. And now here we are at the courthouse going to trial. How many settlement offers have we made, Kelly? We've made at least four to five serious settlement offers early on. I get you. Am I being unreasonable? I don't see how I'm being unreasonable. We're both retired and our kids are grown. I've offered her an even split and even a little bit more just to avoid the expense of this trial. What's the problem? Well, we've talked about this before. She's angry. She's really angry. I mean, it's hard to see somebody take anger and bitterness and carry it on for two years. I know it's been terribly hard on you and it's got to be really hard on her and wearing on her as well. So honestly, sometimes these cases just have to go to trial in order for the voice of reason to be heard. Oh, you know what? The bailiffs opened the door. It's time for us to go in. Ready? Yeah, I'm ready. All right, let's go. Calling the case of Johnson and Johnson are counsel and the parties present? Good morning, your honor. Kelly Bennett on behalf of petitioner Jeremy Johnson who is present and has been sworn. Your Honor, we're here for day one of trial and we're ready to go And I see Ms. Johnson and her attorney are here as well. Counsel, got an extremely busy calendar this morning, three domestic violence cases to get through. So obviously we're not going to get started on your trial until this afternoon, so I'm going to order you to come back at 1:30. But before you go, I have to say that I've reviewed the trial briefs and the status of this case in preparation for today, and I can't understand why you two are still here. This seems like a pretty straightforward case and there are no complicated issues. It seems to me that someone must be being unreasonable. I don't know which one of you it is, or maybe it's both of you, but there is no reason that this case is going on for two years under these circumstances and it hasn't settled. Quite frankly, a case like this should not be taking up this court's time and away from other cases that need immediate intervention, so I'm going to strongly encourage that Mr. and Ms. Johnson go out in the hallway with the lawyers and make your best effort at settling this thing. You're entitled to your day in court in a trial. But I can tell you that I will be looking to see who's been the unreasonable one in this, and if I find that one party has been extremely unreasonable and that's why we're still here, then I will consider the sanctions that are available under the code for someone who has unnecessarily run up attorney fees. Am I making myself clear? Yes, your Honor. Let me say that Mr. Johnson and I have made every effort throughout this litigation to make reasonable settlement offers and try to engage in some meaningful settlement discussions. I won't go into that here. I know it's not the appropriate time, but rest assured that Mr. Johnson and I will step out in the hall and again, we will attempt to, make every effort to get this thing settled. Thank you, your Honor. Well, needless to say, we did go out in the hallway and we did get a settlement after that tongue lashing from the bench. And I have to say it was a little hard to sit and listen to that from the bench. The judge had no idea what had gone on over the last two years as far as settlement efforts. But my client and I really had made the efforts to get this thing done, and I think we made four or five settlement offers in the case. And we're not talking about just making a phone call saying, "Hey, let's do some horse trading." We sent very detailed global settlement offers to try to get this thing done. And none of them had a response. None of them, not a single response, just carrying on with litigation. So the case did settle after a lot of time and expense, and the other side was extraordinarily angry. And so while the case settled, where was the client at the end of this, let's find out. I'm glad this finally settled, but it's really a shame that it took coming down here to this dirty courthouse to get it done when we could have done this in the first month of the case. I remember you telling me that the best scenario is if there is just a little fight, it could be as low as $30,000, and that's what I thought the top amount would be. Boy, was I naive. I can't believe that at the end of the day this thing cost me $116,000. I never thought she would be so ornery and drag the case out this long. Imagine the cost when my client spent$116,000 that was just on his side of it. You know the wife spent just as much money, if not a little bit more, for an attorney who was not interested in helping her settle this case. This demonstrates the high cost of an angry divorce, and it's something that needs to be talked about because our judges see this all day long, every day, and it's really tragic because at the end of the day, the client offered to settle the case and he did settle it. But guess what? What the wife received in this settlement because so much money had already been spent, she received much less than the lowest settlement offer that my client had made in the case. And I got to tell you, not all clients are as reasonable as this one was, but he truly saw this as relatively black and white. They were retired people. They were living on a nice retirement income, right? And it was pretty black and white, divide it down the middle, and let's go. And as you heard from my client's comments, he even offered a little bit more as we went along just to avoid the expense of this litigation. But she was so, so angry and at the end of the day, she took a lot less because she drove the cost of this litigation so far up. Unfortunately it took an irritated judge scowling down from the bench at both the parties and the attorneys saying, "Why are we here?" This is ridiculous. I had to bite my tongue to not say"I agree, this is ridiculous, your Honor," because it was ridiculous. Well, there's other costs to an angry divorce. Those other costs are things like time. Now, as I said, our clients were retired people here, and so when you're retired, it's not that they were on their deathbed or anything, but this is the time, you know, the golden years, the time that they're supposed to be enjoying life, and they spent two long torturous years going through an unnecessary litigation. This was not a complicated case, but this counsel was hell bent, I think, personally, on getting every bit of money out of this case possible, meaning let's blow it up bigger than it needs to be. And keep the billings going. Now, I don't like saying that about colleagues in the law, but you know what the hard truth is? There are attorneys who do that, and that was part of what was going on here. So time was a huge cost because listen, while we encourage you to keep your life going the best as you can during a divorce... when a divorce is happening, there are a lot of things you just feel like you can't do and you're not really interested in going on big fancy vacations or something that was a dream of a lifetime. A lot of times people put those things off. Because they can't get their head around it while they're in the throes of a divorce. The other thing that is really common, and this happened in this case unfortunately, the other cost when we have angry divorces going on are cost to our health. My client had had some earlier bouts with cancer. And his cancer recurred after many years of remission during the litigation. This isn't the first client I've had that, that has experienced this. We know that stress affects everything negatively, including your health, and it's not great when you have serious health issues like cancer. The wife also started having heart problems. In the middle of this and we find about, out about these things kind of on the by-and-by, especially when you've got one spouse that's so angry she won't even talk to the other side or communicate on any level during the divorce, I found out through the attorney, when he set my client's deposition and then he had to postpone it because his client was having medical problems and that's when it was discovered she had heart problems. So, and here we are in the midst of this case that should have been settled long ago when they should be out enjoying their retirement years, one's got a recurrence of cancer, very life-threatening and deadly. And the other one is having heart conditions. Nothing that people in their seventies should be dealing with. Another common cost of an angry divorce is alienation from the children. Look, that's not unusual when we're talking about angry hotly contested, child custody cases, but here, there were adult children. Right. And how was that alienating? Well, quite frankly, the adult children didn't want to talk to either one of them. They felt like they couldn't get away from the divorce because it was on both the husband's mind and the wife's mind and the children just felt like, "I just can't be around it and I don't want to hear it." So it did create some serious alienation issues. When we talk about angry divorces, then you might be asking, "Well, Kelly, how did it get to this? How do we wind up with these angry divorce situations?" L et me tell you something. A spouse who doesn't want a divorce and is angry and no, there was no cheating going on in this - this was a case where the parties had lived like roommates for years and just didn't do anything about, you know, therapy or anything to restore the marriage. It just kept devolving until one day my client said, "Look, I might not have a lot of years left. I wanna have a happy life." And so he initiated these divorce proceedings. The wife did not want the status quo upset. She was just happy the way things were, you know? And so she became very angry and bitter that her whole life was going to be turned upside down by this change. And look, some people don't do well with change, and I get it. And this was no exception here. Well, how did we get here? So we started out being very angry. And closed off, and I guarantee you the wife did not get any kind of help from a therapist or a professional to help her process what was going on. What we do know is when people exhibit serious, deep, deep-rooted bitterness and anger, it comes out of fear or frustration. Here it was quite clear that this was coming out of significant fear. I mean, after all, the wife in this case, she hadn't worked for 35-40 years. When they were very young marrieds, she worked, but then she raised children and did all of those important things working from the home. So here she was in retirement feeling she had to have felt completely disadvantaged because she didn't have any earning capacity and now they're in retirement. And what was she going to be left with? Her lifestyle was being disrupted as well. So the anger that comes often is a result of fear. And when you don't get some professional help for dealing with the fear, then you take that angry feeling and you let it drive the case, and that's exactly what happened. So angry people who are looking for lawyers to help deal with a legal situation the source of the anger, right? They seek out like-minded legal counsel. It's very, very common. And so when you seek out like-minded counsel, and we'll get this from time to time, folks will come into our law firm and say, "I want a junkyard dog. I want you to stick it to the other side. I want them to be stripped of everything that they ever thought they were going to get out of me. I want you to make their lives so miserable." And we say, "Stop!". Because our approach is first, settlement and mediation are the way to go. And we know that in most cases. Of course, there are some cases that really should go down to the courthouse. This wasn't one of 'em. But our approach is settlement is the main view here, whether it's by negotiation or through mediation, because it's usually what's in everybody's best interest in the case. But if you want us to come in as a junkyard dog to go for the jugular at any cost, you're in the wrong place. It doesn't mean that we don't advocate zealously and enthusiastically and we go for it when it's time to go for it. But we don't go after people in a way that is intended to harm them. And that's what the angry spouse seeking an angry divorce seeks out in a lawyer. And in this case, she found one. Now, the counsel in this case was extraordinarily unprofessional, as I said before. He didn't bother to respond to settlement offers. We would have to call and say, did you receive the settlement offer? Yeah, I got it. Are we going to have a response to the settlement offer? No. Just no. Now, he had duties under the law to communicate that to the client, but bottom line was, no, my client's not interested. Not even a counter offer. Right. Terribly unprofessional, and that happens when we have lawyers who are willing to feed into that anger and just keep that case going. In fact, lawyers like this adore the angry client because at least in the beginning, they've got a bit of a blank check to just go hog wild on the case and bill, bill, bill, bill by the hour and jam up those billables and they can make a lot of money on the cases. Hey, before we get back to the show, would you like me to serve as your personal mediator? You know, where I help you and your spouse or your soon to be ex navigate some pretty important family law issues, deciding things about your kids, how to split up your assets, your debts... all outside the chaos of the court. How do we do that? We do it faster, way more economically and with absolute civility and confidentiality. If you want to know more, go ahead and hit that link below and you'll find out how you can connect with me and we can talk about what's most important to you and your future. Now, back to the show. Another unprofessional piece here was he would show up to court and he would show up to meetings, depositions late. So he had called for the deposition of my client. And because this attorney was in a city about 60 miles away down in San Diego, and the clients were all up here in the Temecula area of California, we decided to have the deposition at my office, even though he was taking the deposition of my client. That's normal. Whoever calls for the deposition, it's usually in that attorney's office, but we agreed it would be at my office because we're more central to everybody but that one attorney. And so on the day of the deposition, of course my client is an hour early. I'm conferring with my client in advance, and then his wife shows up without her attorney and she shows up about 15 minutes appropriately before the deposition's supposed to start. We place her in the conference room, we get her some coffee. We tell her we'll let her know as soon as her attorney's there. It's time for the deposition. Her attorney's still not there. It's 15 minutes after the deposition. We've got a court reporter that he's hired sitting there in our conference room. No counsel for wife. What's happening? He's running extremely late, and so of course my office calls him because we're not receiving any phone calls to say, "Hey, I'm running late. Oh, yeah, I'm stuck in traffic on my, I'm on my way." This counsel showed up 45 minutes late to take my client's deposition. I could have called it and said,"We're outta here." We just didn't want to have to start all over again. So we waited and made it happen. But imagine the feeling of his client sitting there in my conference room all by herself. Those are the earmarks of what you get on the other side when you have a very angry spouse seeking somebody out as counsel to perpetuate the anger. Counsel was also very incompetent, unfortunately. Counsel would bring a few motions to the court for things that under the law his client wasn't entitled to, or that were extremely unreasonable. And we would of course reach out and say, "Look, what you're asking for is X. You're not entitled to that. You're entitled to Y? Here's the law. Let's just resolve this." Nope. And we'd go into court and he would quite honestly make some very embarrassing arguments, but it ran up the expense and he'd get denied by the court. So when we have that duo of unprofessional and incompetency in an attorney representing a very angry spouse, that equals extraordinarily inflated attorney's fees on both sides. Why were the fees so high on my client's side when he was the guy that was acting like the pill in the case, he being counsel and his client? Well, because their behavior would create work for us. Just like in that ex example I just gave you, filing a frivolous motion to the court. We had to file a response to it to tell the court we objected to it, and then we had to roll on down to the courthouse for a hearing and sit, wait for all the cases to be heard until ours is called, and then argue it just to get the result that we knew that he was going to get, which was a big, fat denial. But my client has to pay for an attorney to be there. The moral of this story is now you know why we encourage everyone who is getting ready to go down the divorce road to look for the civil route. When you look for the civil route, is going to save you so much time, money, and heartache, quite frankly. And in the end, just like in this case. Had the wife dealt with her anger, the divorce was going to happen. It just was happening. My client was set on it, and he was not being unreasonable in the way he conducted himself. So it was going to happen. Had she gotten some help for her anger, it would've saved herself. Let's just only look at it from her side. She would've, first of all, received a lot more money in the settlement why? Because my client wouldn't have spent so much money just to get to trial and settle the case on the day of trial, when honestly, we sent the first settlement offer out along with the Petition for Divorce when it got served right at the beginning, within the first week of the case being filed. And then subsequent offers. So she would've received a lot more money had she gotten reasonable. The second thing that would've happened from her side is I guarantee you she would not have had the significant health issues, at least not manifesting at trial, that came up with her heart. She would've been able to spend time relaxing, recovering from the divorce and paying attention to her health. And then there's the lost relationship, the capital that was spent on the relationships with her children. Why do you want to lose the relationships with your children? Because you're so angry, meaning you're so afraid of what's going to happen instead of doing the work in the moment to address really what you're afraid of. Most of the time - I'm not saying the fears weren't real or valid - but most of the time when we allow the fears to snowball, they become much bigger when they're really a much smaller issue. And that's what happened here. So I want to encourage you, if you or someone you love is on the path to a divorce, slow down or send them the link to this podcast. They need to hear this. It's time to slow down and really examine the civil route. Look for it at all times. Even if you've gotten yourself into a nasty, contentious divorce case, it's not too late to jerk a knot in your own tail, jerk a knot in your lawyer's tail, and hopefully in the other side's tail and say, "What are we doing here? Can we do this better? Maybe we should talk settlement now. And if we can't do it through the attorneys we have maybe we should consider mediation as an option because this isn't working. The court system isn't really designed to, serve your very best interest on both sides. That's the story of the angry spouse, and I hope you'll take it to heart. So rarely is the court option, the best option. I hope you'll explore things like early voluntary settlement and mediation, and let's hope that we'll never see you in court.