As you can see from my bio, I’m a divorce financial planner by profession.  Some of you may not know much about this profession or may have misconceptions about what divorce financial planners do.   Although not the purpose of today’s post, I hope you’ll learn more about divorce financial planning from future posts.

Basically, the job of the divorce financial planner is to help people going through divorce arrive at financially workable outcomes.  My job is not to help people “win” their divorce by stonewalling, playing “hide the cookie,” posturing, raising phony issues that cause roadblocks or delays or put pressure on the “opponent’s” finances, playing “chicken” or playing similar type games to gain some sort of advantage in the process.  My job is to provide useful information, so people can make informed decisions during the process.

Nowadays, there are three major dispute resolution methods used in divorce – litigation, mediation and collaborative divorce.  All three methods have their good and bad points.   I will periodically discuss the good, the bad and the ugly of these methods in future posts.

I’d like to focus today on a case I’m currently working on.  This is a traditional litigated case, with attorneys representing and therefore advocating for each of the parties in the divorce.  I enjoy working on litigated cases, which have a tendency to be complex due in part to the interjection of dueling advocates into the process (the attorneys).   The bottom line is that people in litigated cases often need my intimate involvement to help them keep focused on their financial futures and avoid distractions caused by the process itself.  It can be very rewarding to help keep cases on track or to help prevent the process from blowing up in the heat of battle.  I don’t mean to imply that I don’t enjoy working on cases involving alternative dispute resolution methods, such as mediation and collaborative divorce – quite the contrary.  These cases are also challenging, but often in different ways.  You will hear more about these other methods in future posts.

This is a roundabout way of getting to the subject of today’s post – the attorney from hell.  I know I should be making my point at the beginning of this post and filling in the details as I go along, but this blog is a stream of consciousness type of thing for me, and I hope you’ll bear with me.

I’ve had enough experience with attorneys to know that not all divorce attorneys function in this fashion, but I’ve also had enough experience to know that this type of behavior is not uncommon.  Today’s attorney from hell represents the husband.  I was hired to work for the wife.  Perhaps if the shoe was on the other different foot I would have a different point of view.  I don’t think so, but perhaps.

I could do lots of whining about everything this attorney has done but will save the ugly details to make other points in future posts.  You can use your imagination for now by referring to my list of “games” at the beginning of this post.  There has been a very predictable pattern here.  I’ve seen most of it before, although I have seen some new creative energy as well.  My challenge in situations such as this is to help keep my client focused on the issues that need to be resolved and not on the battle itself.  This is not easy since emotions are a major component of the process and a strong driver of client behavior.  Unfortunately, this case will likely go to trial in a couple of weeks when it actually should have been easy and a lot less expensive (for both parties) to settle.  Furthermore, it will possibly lead to an unhappy outcome for both parties and possibly an unworkable one as well.  It could still also settle.  These cases often have a funny way of resolving themselves at the last minute, unfortunately after much money has been wasted and many scars and unhealed wounds planted.

Are attorneys from hell representing their clients well, or are they doing their clients a disservice?  Are they aware of the unintended consequences of their actions, or are they simply caught up in the emotional roller coaster of divorce?  I often wonder about this.  These are not bad people.

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