102 DIVorCe wItH DeCenCY
Divorce lawyers should make every effort to encourage cli-
ents to settle uncontested and out of court. But unfortunately it
doesn’t always work out that way. When a case doesn’t settle,
we lawyers (and our clients) have to be fully prepared to go the
contested litigation route. This is simply the nature of our legal
system’s adversarial structure. It is unfortunate and certainly has
a tendency to fray everyone’s nerves. Of course, it also has the
perverse side effect of making far more money for the lawyers.
Attorney Selection
People are getting smarter nowadays; they are letting lawyers, instead of their
conscience, be their guide.
—Will Rogers
How do you go about making sure you direct your divorce down
a productive settlement-oriented track, rather than letting your-
self be led around by the nose by whatever attorney you hap-
pen to wind up hiring? For starters, you should interview sev-
eral attorneys and ask them exactly how they plan to run the
case. More important, you should insist on controlling the overall
direction of the case yourself—don’t let the attorney just take hold
of your life and run amok with it.
Make your lawyer follow your directions. Stay an active partici-
pant, find out what your attorney’s strategy is, look for settle-
ment junctures, maximize the opportunities to physically meet
directly with your spouse to discuss settlement (even though it’s
not always exactly fun seeing them). Above all, try to steer your
case (and your lawyer) toward the uncontested track (i.e., costing
only a few hundred bucks and requiring only a few months to
complete), rather than letting it go contested, taking forever and
costing a fortune. To a large degree this is your choice.
Considerations for female clients. Yet another sexist injustice seems
to be at work against women in many divorce cases. A recent sur-
vey of New York divorce attorneys indicated that handling cases
for women is often more expensive because of the time it takes
to learn about the assets and incomes of husbands, who tradi-
tionally have controlled the family finances. Ninety-three percent