170 DIVorCe wItH DeCenCY
This does, of course, make for great theater. Think of the hate-
filled duel played out between Michael Douglas and Kathleen
Turner in The War of the Roses. Then came The First Wives’ Club,
which succeeded in spawning not just its own cult following,
but also a whole series of seemingly scholarly sociological arti-
cles and analyses. My own favorite scene in that movie is Ivana
Trump’s cameo appearance, in which she sagely counsels, “Don’t
get mad. Get everything.”
Documenting the divorce wars. One of the best compilations of
the venom and vitriol of divorce case histories is Divorces from Hell
by North Carolina divorce lawyer Jacqueline Stanley. It features
140 stories of the weirdest and worst divorce battles in history,
including the one about the wife who mailed her ex-husband a
poisonous snake; the wife who actually petitioned the court to
award her her husband’s toupee (apparently figuring that with-
out it he’d be less attractive to other women); and the husband
who held a fire sale of the family home one day while his wife
was at work.
I can personally relate to this last one, since I once had a cli-
ent whose wife actually did try to burn down the family home
rather than give it up. In my own practice I have witnessed myr-
iad examples of otherwise very nice people turning into monsters
during their divorces. There’s an old saying among attorneys:
“Criminal lawyers represent some truly horrible people who,
when in court, are on their very best behavior. Divorce lawyers
represent ordinarily very nice people who happen to be acting
their absolute worst during the divorce.”
One of my clients took a butcher knife into her husband’s
clothes closet and slashed several dozen of his expensive Italian
silk suits into ribbons. I’ve seen several cases where one spouse
sells every personal effect the other once owned at a spontane-
ous garage sale, or where one spouse’s entire wardrobe winds up
being tossed into a dumpster, or out a second-floor window and
left to lie in the rain.
Frayed nerves and fisticuffs. Frankly, frayed nerves are so com-
mon among dissolving couples that virtually every horrible
behavior imaginable can, and does, occur during their divorce.
This behavior often stems from a sense of hurt and helplessness.