Most of the time, when a couple gets married, they do so with the intention of staying together forever. However, marriages occasionally do not turn out as expected, despite the best of intentions. When this happens, it can be important to admit that the marriage isn’t working and to choose to end it. Recognizing that things come to an end is an important step in being able to let go and move on. Holding onto something that is no longer working or healthy is not always helpful.
However, it is also a reality that sometimes when a relationship ends, especially if it ends on a negative note, one of the partners may harbor feelings of resentment or ill-will towards the other. This can manifest in the form of spiteful behavior, where the person may act out in hurtful or vindictive ways towards their former partner. The stories that will be told will show the various ways in which people may act after a relationship ends.
Once had a boss who had to leave his house for 6 hours while his ex-wife grabbed all the belongings to which she was legally entitled too. When he returned home every knob and handle was gone. Door knobs, cabinet handles, drawer handles, anything that was screwed onto something and used to open it, she had taken. Every day for the next week he would occasionally yell out “SHE TOOK THE F*CK*NG KNOBS”
I represented a guy who was in his second marriage. His first wife passed away from cancer, and he and his kids were obviously devastated. My client was a pretty sensitive guy with a big heart. His second wife could be very charming–which was why he fell for her–but it was all a facade. Anyway, to make a long story about a lengthy divorce short, my client met a very kind and affectionate woman during his case. They really hit it off and were basically engaged (even though his divorce was far from over). The fiancee started having health problems and was diagnosed with a form of terminal cancer.
Somehow the Second wife found out about this and tried to use the cancer diagnosis against my client in court. She developed this crazy theory that my client had killed his first wife by giving her cancer and that he was doing the same thing to his “fiancee.” The second wife’s attorney–who was quite good–refused to be a party to it. The attorney never addressed the argument in court and didn’t even ask the second wife any questions about it during testimony. Rather, the attorney informed the judge that the second wife wished to address the court directly about an issue. The judge allowed her to do so (in a highly irregular move). The second wife told her crazy conspiracy theory to the judge, adding that she was certain my client had tried to give her cancer at some point as well.
I wish I had an artist’s rendering of the scene, capturing the Second wife’s crazy eyes, her attorney’s look of shame/embarrassment, the judge’s look of confusion/ennui, and my look of awe-inspired disgust.
There was a super wealthy guy that was a top exec at a fortune 500 company who was getting a divorce and it was rather nasty. This guy was pretty much set for life, he had a bunch of stock, houses, and assets in so many places. The ex-wife wanted everything she could possibly get. The husband came up with an idea that if she let him keep everything, he would give her half of his paycheck for the rest of his life. She quickly agreed because his checks were huge and this also included any bonuses which were in the millions.
As soon as the paperwork was finalized, he quit his job and started to work part-time at a sporting goods store (I can’t remember which one). This story was told by another employee there not the actual guy that got divorced. Anyway, he still had all of his assets so he would drive to work in a super expensive car and one day the employee asked how he could possibly afford that car. The guy said he was set for life and didn’t even need to work at all but every Friday when he got his paycheck it made everything so worth it knowing his ex-wife would only be getting about $150 per check.
I am no longer practicing but when I was active I practiced in a small firm. We represented the wife in a divorce against her husband who was a very prominent businessman. As a show of force by the husband he purchased the building where our offices were located and proceeded to make small but annoying changes. Parking spaces were moved to the furthest spots. The elevator would randomly be down for maintenance (our offices were located on the top floor). The cleaning schedule and crews would sporadically change. The firm’s lease also happened to end during the divorce representation and we were given the notice to vacate in the middle of the winter holidays. After our departure husband put up signage about his company on the outside of the building where our offices used to be located.
My dad is a divorce attorney. His clients couldn’t decide who would get the Labrador puppy’s from a new litter they just breed. The pups are worth $1000 a pop. Well, they also hadn’t been up to date on their payments. So dad brought a litter of 8 floppy puppies home as collateral for us to have until they could negotiate the settlement. So much fun for us kids
I worked at a computer repair store as a sales technician. Had a guy come in with a desktop that he wanted Windows reinstalled. I asked him if he wanted me to back up all of his data first and he told me that he had everything he wanted and just do the wipe. I put it in the queue and he paid and left.
I started it about an hour later since an XP install was only about 45 minutes off the network. I didn’t bother doing anything else except deleting the original partition and making a new one and installing windows.
About an hour after that, his wife came running in asking if we had a computer with “Smith” as the last name. I told her I did and she showed me her ID and said that her husband brought it in to try and destroy all the proof of him cheating and stealing money from their business. When she asked if I had wiped everything yet I told her I just did a windows install and didn’t actually really wipe anything.
I called her husband and told him the situation. I told him his wife was here to get the computer. He asked me if I reinstalled windows like we spoke about and I told him I had. He told me “I don’t give a sh*t, give her the computer. There isn’t anything left on it anyway.”. I said alright and hung up.
I told her that he said I could give it to her and then explained to her how reinstalling windows doesn’t magically delete everything and explained to her how I could recover all of her files in a couple of hours. I ended up staying late that night and she bought me pizza and mountain dew. I ended up recovering every file he tried to have me destroy and made multiple copies for her. She ended up calling him from the store and reading off some of the messages he had tried to delete from his emails. I was worried that he might try to come back in and confront me, but nothing else ever came of it.
This one hits close to home because it happened between my parents. We had a family “friend” who was a lawyer and my parents agreed that he would be the lawyer for both of them as a mediator. So, as the assets were being divided my dad got absolutely slammed. She was going to get the house, cars, half his retirement, and an insane amount of alimony. To the tune of like $2,500 a month for the rest of her life. My dad has a good job as a municipal employee, but that was probably 70%ish of his paycheck.
Turns out that my mom and the “family friend” actually conspired to rip my dad off and make it seem like that’s what a divorce settlement looks like. And she was going kick back more money under the table after the dust had settled. Dad just didn’t know how these things worked. So, after some convincing, he finally went out and got his own lawyer. He got a very fair divorce settlement after that.
Mom still to this day can’t understand why we don’t talk to her much.
The most malicious thing I know of personally involved a coworker of mine. He was sleeping with a married woman, and ultimately the husband found out she was having an affair. A really ugly divorce ensues, during which they fought over a lot of assets, but the real point of contention was their dog, a lovely GSD named Orion. Eventually, the husband gets custody of the dog, and in under a month, has the dog put down, just to hurt her back for the affair.
Not a divorce lawyer but worked for one- back in the 90s a woman and her kids went on vacation and came back home to find that the soon-to-be ex-husband had broken into their house with his attorney, thrown a party, and microwaved the kids’ kitten. The husband’s attorney got disbarred I believe but that was about it.
I work for a divorce attorney now but the craziest thing came to my attention when I worked for the prosecuting attorney.
This couple was breaking up and Mister left the house. The missus went to work the next morning as usual. When she returned home in the evening she found Mister had been to the house and removed his clothing and belongings as she expected.
What she didn’t expect was that he had also Gorilla glued her belongings together. He glued the tv remote to the table, the phone to its cradle, the couch pillows to the couch and even glued the vacuum cleaner to the carpet. She called the police and reported this as property damage. The police went with her through the house documenting dozens of items glued to various things but for days she was discovering random things and she would call to amend or update her report. “My gd oven mitts were glued to the wall.” or “He glued the effing sheets together in the linen closet!”
I’ve seen people do and say really awful things to each other but that was diabolical.
How about a wholesome, insane one? IANAL, but this was told to me by my mom regarding the divorce she got from my dad. They couldn’t settle on an alimony amount. Mom and her lawyer came in with a number, and dad countered with a number. They couldn’t agree… BECAUSE my dad thought my mom should get twice the amount in alimony she was asking for and my mom didn’t want my dad to give her that much money for a month. It took months for them to settle on a figure that appeased both of them. Even then, my mom puts aside the extra above what she wanted in case my dad ever has a financial emergency and my dad puts aside the extra she didn’t want in case my mom ever has a financial emergency. The funny thing is, they don’t know the other is putting the money aside for the other. My mom told me about her emergency stash and my dad told my brother about his emergency stash, bro and I discussed it while talking about what nutjobs our parents are.
Not a lawyer. But my partner has a mate who was going through a messy divorce. He registered as a “gambling addict” and went to some gambling anonymous (or whatever it’s called) and proceeded to go to the casino every day, taking wads of cash with him, pretending to gamble it all away, while he was secretly squirrelling it all away. That way, when it came to the divorce and he was questioned where all his money went, he could “prove” that he lost it all through his gambling addiction and never had to pay her a penny.
Not a lawyer, just grew up in a sh*t*y family situation.
My mom was an evil mastermind with this divorce let me tell you, so my parents had been separated but living in the same house for a while and it was around the time of year the family would normally go for a camping trip (Canada day I believe) she convinced my dad that we would break the trip up and he would get a week, then when he returned she would get a week with us (the 3 kids). Secretly during my dad’s week, she got her friends to help clear the entire house out, and I literally mean clear it out. There was nothing left, not a single clothes hanger, no couches, TVs quite literally nothing. She chose this vacation setup really well too, camping meant we didn’t need money or have access to cell service which she took advantage of as well and emptied the bank accounts and hid all the money away. She didn’t stop there though, she also maxed out lines of credit and all credit cards, normally this would take a while but she was smart as h*ll in this approach. Earlier when planning this divorce she had convinced my dad to quit his job (quite high paying I should add) to start a company. This company was still new and needed a ton of expenses paid so the banks didn’t think twice about this ridiculous amount of money being transferred as it wasn’t out of the norm anyways from their new set-up with the company. Then, when it came time for my dad’s trip to end, she told him he needed to call her when he got back in cell range. Upon calling, she told him that she was on the way out in the same direction anyways so we could just meet halfway to spare us, kids, a bit of driving time on our way to the next trip.. which was odd considering after a week of camping we all wanted to shower and clean up but she was very adamant. We met up and swapped vehicles then my dad was on the way home alone, while we were off to hide away at a location different than where she had told my dad. When he got home he thought we had been robbed, it didn’t sink in. He called the cops, and started phoning family because of how empty the house was he broke down and didn’t know what to do. That’s when my mom’s dad came over and told him the truth, he said she left him and took everything. She hid us and I believe tried to steal us but that part is a bit fuzzy for me. Eventually, it somewhat caught up with my mom, the judge was shocked at what she did. She even went as far as trying to convince us, kids, that my dad was abusive and had us interrogated by a cop wanting us to lie about him. The whole situation was crazy, she ended up blowing all the money on fancy trips and shopping sprees with her friends, and when the judge ordered her to pay it back she fled the country.. now she lives in Australia and doesn’t have to pay anything.
There are so many and I mean SO many things I could post on this thread about how terrible my parents were to each other, but this takes the cake.
My parents were separated, in the process of divorcing, and had split custody between my brother and me (we were 5 and 7 at the time). My dad didn’t have his own place yet so when it was his turn to be with us he came back to our house (the one he purchased mind you) and my mom was supposed to leave. One weekend they were arguing over something and it got so bad that my mom wouldn’t leave and told my dad she would call the police (something she apparently did a lot to get her way, which after growing up with her I can attest she did this a lot unnecessarily to control us). So she left, called the police, and told them my father was dangerous and had a gun (my dad was in the army and we had plenty of guns, locked in a safe of course).
Of course, the police were just doing their job and took my mom at face value. It went so fast from my brother and I watching tv with my dad to the police knocking at our door, my dad opening the door and getting pepper sprayed without the cops saying anything, and then my dad locked the door and the cops couldn’t bust it down, so they came around back and broke our sliding glass door in so they could arrest my dad in our front yard with all our neighbors watching. I didn’t really understand what was happening at the time but it was traumatizing for sure.
Then my mom tried to get full custody of us in their actual divorce, and thank god the judge ruled for split custody. My whole childhood was sh*tty honestly bc all they did was explain very deep and emotionally complex situations to very young children who just wanted their parents to love each other.
But yeah, I’ve never quite forgiven my mom for that one.
I read about a case where the wife was trying to take half of a guys business and millions in personal assets, only to find out that the business had been moved into his son’s name years earlier, and the guy donated all their savings, millions of dollars, to a children’s hospital in his soon to be ex-wife’s name so she couldn’t get the money.
The judge said what he did was technically legal since it was community property and no freeze had been placed on it yet but was morally unconscionable. The lawyer said in his entire life he has never seen a bigger smile on a man’s face. He just kept saying “I just wanted to help the children” and smiling.
Not a lawyer but a child of divorced parents. Mom got custody of me and my brother. She told my dad she would make us hate him. Went from a big house to a 3-bedroom apartment and grew up poor. Only saw my dad 3 times a year and talked to him on the phone once a week for an hour. Turns out that’s what she asked for in court but she lied and said our dad didn’t want to see or talk to us. He paid her child support and alimony every month AND she worked full-time. We grew up with no wifi or cable, no sports or after-school activities and I never went to a summer camp. Apparently, we also didn’t have insurance for like 2 years when I was 12. Turns out she was pocketing all the money and keeping it in her savings. Apparently around the divorce hearing when I didn’t have insurance she had 12k in savings but the judge didn’t see that as a red flag. We did hate our dad until we got older and realized he was trying to give us stuff the whole time and offering to send us to summer camp but she refused. Even after her hoarding all that money and us not growing up with our Dad he still paid for my college and books and bought me a car when mine broke down. I ended up stopping a relationship with my mom when I found out she called me a wh*re in order to defend my brother’s behavior. She didn’t bother to reach out even though she was the parent. Later I contacted her on and off trying to fix the relationship.. she never bought a book for uni and also refused to let me use her tax info to get a better loan for school when I had to my last year of University. In the end, her bitterness f*cked her over because she no longer has a daughter and she has a son who yells at her and uses her for free rent.
Not a lawyer, but a child of divorce. My parents owned a couple of duplexes in town as well as our house. They had saved enough up to pay a property off in full and my dad convinced my mom that it was better to pay off one of the duplexes instead of the house. A couple of months later he files for divorce and only asks for the paid-off property. He got it, lived on one side and rented out the other and stuck my mom with 2 kids and 3 mortgages (and of course refused to pay child support for my sister because she wasn’t his bio daughter even though he had legally adopted her). Still makes me feel icky how conniving he was.
I was a divorce paralegal for 15 years. The WORST opposing party we ever had represented himself. He cheated and left his wife then proceeded to file for custody…. OF THE DOG. After 2 hearings just about the dog, the judge orders that they share the dog alternating one week at a time.
On his first round of visitation, he collects this sweet dog and then immediately has it put to sleep. The following week he gives his ex-wife a canister with the dog’s ashes.
Obviously, she was devastated. It was heartbreaking. The judge was NOT happy. He sanctioned this man and then gave literally everything to the wife in the Judgment.
This guy was such a nutball, he even tried to claim the condiments in the fridge as property. Literally wrote it out in his property claim. Ketchup, mustard, mayo. He also claimed that his wife’s sex toys should be awarded to him. Real classy guy.
30 years ago a friend of mine was going through a messy divorce. His wife had cheated on him and was trying to take him for everything, really spiteful when she didn’t get something.
The court had instructed her to turn over the car to him. She waited until the last day of the order and then returned it with serious body/ engine damage. It was pretty clear she’d run it into a wall or tree out of spite right before doing it. But since she just left it parked on the street by his apartment and dropped the keys in his mailbox, there was no way to prove it.
I came up with a solution, get it stolen. As a favor to him, I drove the car up to Harlem while he followed in his other car, parked it in front of some gang members, waved to them, blatantly tossed the keys on the driver’s seat through the open window and then got in his other car with him and we left.
We went around the block, waited 10 minutes, went back and the car was gone.
The car was never seen again. He reported it as stolen and collected the insurance.
A few months before my parents started their divorce, my Mom presented my Dad with a life insurance policy out of nowhere. My Dad had been suspicious of my Mom for a couple of years, but this sent him into full paranoia. He decided to buy a device that records phone calls to see what my Mom was saying to her (evil) sister.
Turns out they were coordinating how to have my Dad killed and make it look like an accident. When my Dad told me this, I was so upset that he would lie to me like that until a few months later he let me listen to the tape. I still have the tape to this day in my safe downstairs. You’ll never know the feeling of listening to your Mom talk about killing your Dad to your aunt.
As part of their 8-year divorce, they also did some fun things to each other:
– Mom flooded my dad’s house by intentionally breaking the washing machine
– Mom stole his work computer and all of his accounting files (he ran a business) and almost put him under because he didn’t know who to bill
– Dad would sit outside of my Mom’s house and record her mowing the lawn so he could argue she wasn’t too sick to work
– Dad simply wouldn’t pay her any child support or alimony after the divorce was finalized. It caused her house to be foreclosed on.
Those were just a couple of things that they did to each other… sh*t like this went on for years.
I was a fam law paralegal but my worst was my own divorce, actually. My ex came out as gay and decided he wanted to be a costume designer. OK, well bad for me but more power to him.
He decided the historical collection of paper dolls my grandma had left me should go to him because he wanted them as models for his costume designs. My lawyer had to claim them – the shoebox of paper dolls – as nonmarital property due to being an inheritance. His lawyer made some sort of legal claim about how they were “co-mingled” (and thus marital property) because I’d put other stuff in the box that I had bought during the marriage (such as a coloring book).
So in an otherwise uncontested divorce, there’s a giant paragraph in the decree awarding me my nonmarital, inherited box of paper dolls.
When my parents were in mid-divorce (took years because my cheating awful alcoholic father refused to sign the papers) my dad had a weekend visit with us and ended up “kidnapping” us from our mother for about a week. I was maybe 10 and my brother was 8, so that puts us in 2005ish. He enrolled us in school (This is the only part of the story I remember we went to for about 2 days) at my grandparent’s house and took us to ‘live’ there. My mom couldn’t call the police since they were legally married with no custody agreement he was allowed to keep us wherever he wanted. My mom could not come to pick us up because she filed a restraining order against my father previous to this incident. He and my grandparents threatened to call the police if she came onto the property. So my clever mom called him and was like let’s talk about this, my dad- still in love with her and dumb as f*ck- agrees and meets her at a “mutual” friend’s home (really only mom’s friend) and they get him trashed, he’s an alcoholic and would never turn down booze. She keeps him up drinking all night and convinces him to take us all out for breakfast. She waits at the end of the driveway while dad gets cleaned up he sends us outside and when we get in the car (with none of our stuff, mind you) mom whips it out of there and we didn’t see dad for a long time after that.
When my parents got a divorce and all the financial stuff was settled, my mom agreed to take on the existing debt they had. As the paperwork was filed and things progressed with finalizing the divorce, my dad went out and ran his credit cards up to their limit buying himself new home entertainment toys and random sh*t. To the tune of about 12K. There was nothing my mom could legally do about it so she was forced to slowly pay it off over the next 10 years.
Saw my friend get arrested and brought to jail. He’d married someone 20 years his junior, but they were splitting up after about two years of marriage. He had just gotten his own apartment at that point and he was in the process of moving out and filing for a divorce. He wasn’t quick enough.
One day, they get into an argument, he turns his back on her, she pushes him from behind, he falls to the ground, he hits her leg, bruising her, and she tells him if he doesn’t give her X amount of money, she’s calling the police and saying that he’d choked her and punched her in the face. He refused. She called the cops and made a fake report.
His lawyer advised him to plea out. Said he wasn’t sympathetic enough. He’s an older guy, has some type of aspbergers, and is very stoic. He still has PTSD from the event, it’s going on for about 20 years now—he had never been arrested before.
This doesn’t really fit the mold of what you’re asking for—it’s not particularly insane or creative. But it is evil, what she did to him. Says something about how much destruction a simple push and a lie can cause.
I have an IT client that is a family law firm. I am in one-day going server maintenance, the IT room is right off the reception area. I hear this guy come in and I hear the receptionist shriek, this guy has apparently pulled a gun on her and says he wants to see a particular lawyer. He can’t see or hear me, so I call 911., then call the cell number of one of the lawyers I know who works there.
The receptionist is crying, she is telling the nut that the guy he wants is in court. I hear the nut yell that he will wait for him. Not sure what to do, but after a few minutes he tells her he is not going to hurt her, then he just says “f*ck it” and he leaves.
I came out and try to calm the poor hysterical receptionist. The police arrested the guy in the parking lot, he had a deer rifle and a pistol. Luckily no one got hurt, turns out the guy was falsely accused of molesting the children in a divorce.
Next time I went there, new receptionist. I don’t blame her.
My dad went through some financial troubles. One day he decided he could have more money if he chose not to pay mortgages, property taxes, car notes etc. Eventually, he was arrested for tax evasion and my mom found out and immediately filed for divorce.
My mom was a shopaholic and took no about as well as a toddler being told they can’t have ice cream. She insisted my dad didn’t make enough money and kept maxing out her AMEX weekly. Thus my dad’s solution.
During the divorce, she said she wanted nice cars. Great, take them. Then she told my dad she wanted the house. My dad begged and pleaded with her not to take the house. Point blank told her that the house was days away from being foreclosed on. He told her that she couldn’t afford to take that hit on her credit, but she really wanted to stick it to him so she thought he was bluffing. After a week of the mediation, he finally gave in and said, “Fine, take the house.”
The house and the mortgage were transferred into her name and the house was foreclosed on and a lien was placed on the house. Through some shady deal, she short-sold the house without informing the new owner of the lien, failed to claim it on her taxes, and spent the money.
When the new owner finds out, she is screwed. Not to mention, if the IRS ever comes to collect capital gains. All because she wanted to screw over my dad.
No attorney, but my mother’s attorney did state their divorce case was the worst they’ve ever seen.
Not only was my father planning the divorce for years to steal her inheritance and hide money and property prior, but he also ended up with my college funds and stole all the money saved for my for school. I’m now left with 50k of student debt that I shouldn’t have had. He also stole my inheritance from my grandparents (who passed when I was 17) by making sure to remove all the money from the account before I was 18.
It’s been 10 years and there are still issues resolving the money he’s trying to get. He’s obsessed with money.
This was several years ago when I was a fairly new attorney.
A man in his 60s comes in. Tells me he wants a divorce from his wife of about the same age. They had been physically separated for quite some time, but not legally separated and nothing had been filed. Turns out his wife had been living with someone who was moderately well off for a couple of years and gotten sick. She had been angling to get included in his will. I’m fairly certain it was a sexual relationship but she definitely cooked and cleaned etc. Apparently, she never managed it but tried to probate a handwritten document that was decidedly NOT in the dead guy’s handwriting. She got shut down quickly. So she tries to come “home”. My client was having none of it.
Hence why the guy came to our office. The divorce hearing was pretty straightforward except for the time she showed up to court whacked out of her mind on what had to have been opioids. She about fell on the floor a couple of times, and a ziplock bag of pills fell out of her jacket. Bailiff confiscated that and she was charged later with public intoxication. (Don’t know if she ever got charged with possession). She wound up with no alimony, and pretty much the only property she could claim was hers. When she left before she took his dog and his laptop. Well in the final decree, my client got both. She was hysterical about the dog but finally gave the dog up after giving my client the runaround a few times.
However, the laptop was far more interesting. She refused to give it up. Period. So I motioned for civil contempt. She claimed to the chancellor (judge) that it was stolen and that she had asked her church for a collection to be taken to replace it. Her credibility was already at level 0, so the chancellor held her in contempt. The bailiff arrested her. She went to jail. I kept seeing her car parked in the parking lot for the next three weeks. Finally, she admitted where the laptop was and my client got it back and was released.
Definitely the strangest divorce I’ve ever been involved in, but definitely not the only strange divorce.
I was acting for the wife in a divorce and we trying to negotiate the settlement of their midsized property pool split. The husband was still living in the marital home. She was proving a difficult client and I wasn’t looking forward to representing her to be honest.
One day I get an email from her. She had decided to let herself into the marital home while he was at work with the keys she has still retained, go through the husband’s desk, read all the privileged legal correspondence between the husband and his lawyer: regarding the relative strengths weaknesses etc of his case, take photos of all said correspondence and send it to me.
As soon as I realised what I was reading I immediately closed the email and she called me almost exactly the same time very triumphant and determined to change her whole strategy to take advantage of this newly ill-gotten information.
She was most put out when I informed her that what she has done was not only highly illegal, but I was going to have to withdraw as her representative AND I had an ethical obligation to inform the other side of the breach of confidence. She literally could not get her head around the fact that not only was what she did legally wrong, but it was also extremely morally messed up.
I ended up having to represent myself against my ex during my divorce, and while we had temporary parenting orders in effect, she decided to keep my daughter the entire Christmas holiday and attempted to get out of the contempt charge by making up some lame excuse. Long story short, when it came time to present evidence to the guardian ad item, we both had recorded conversations of the exchange that day.
They both were obviously recordings of the same conversation, however where mine ended her recording kept going. You heard her sound apologetic and concerned throughout the call but as soon as she hung up she started talking all kinds of sh*t about me in front of my daughter, and it showed the guardian how she really was when she thought no one was listening. She never even previewed it before she sent it to the guardian and basically torpedoed her own case.
My Uncle married a woman that no one in the family was very fond of. He was very well off so he made her sign a prenup before getting married
They were both fans of the finer things in life. All of their clothes were designer and expensive.
They inevitably split up after a few years, but before she left she cut one sleeve off every shirt, one pant leg off every pair of pants and took one of every pair of shoes.
I suppose there are still ways to get “half” even when there is a prenup.
IANL but I do research for one. During one case our firm was representing the wife, and the husband had his own lawyer. The husband’s lawyer suddenly started agreeing to all our points with little or no negotiation. My boss thought this was hinky and asked me to do some investigating. Turns out our client had started sleeping with the husband’s lawyer right about the time the negotiations started. Poor husband was going to get totally wiped out because of her deviousness. We turned our evidence over to the husband and the state bar and dropped our client as fast as we could.
I have no idea how the divorce finally turned out but I’m pretty sure the husband was able to use her shenanigans to his benefit in the final proceedings.
My best friend got divorced 25 years ago. His ex-wife was such a messed-up person, the judge awarded my friend the house, the better of their two cars, and primary custody of their two daughters. His ex-wife got her personal effects and just had to maintain payments on the car she kept. A couple of months later my friend received notice that the ex-wife’s car was about to get repossessed for non-payment. His name was on the loan, so he called her to try to get her to catch up on the late payments. She contacted the bank and said they could repo the car. When the tow truck arrived, the ex and her boyfriend had stripped the car – radio, tires, catalytic converter, and anything else they could sell. My friend had to pay the difference between the loan amount and the value of the stripped car to keep from taking an even bigger hit on his credit rating.
Obligatory not a divorce lawyer but when my mother was divorcing her first husband and trying to get custody of their daughters (this was before I was born), she had a scheduled trial, but her husband had a friend fake a phone call to her to tell her that the trial was canceled. So, she went to work that day, not able to afford to skip a day. In reality, the trial wasn’t canceled, her husband showed up to court without her, and he won by default.
Luckily she was able to explain to the judge what happened. Unfortunately, another day when she was at work, he picked up their daughters and booked a flight all the way up to South Dakota from their home in Arizona. She couldn’t afford child support, let alone afford the lawyers to get them back, so she was forced to give them up.
Used to work with a divorce lawyer; we had a client whose ex-wife was trying to get spousal support and he said she always had extra spending money and he didn’t know where she got it from. She was a stay-at-home mom but she would always have designer purses, and clothes, she even bought herself a new Acura. So we hired an investigator. Turns out she had her own webcam page and had been doing live cam and p*rn for years and he knew nothing about it. The lawyer suggested he go for spousal but the wife was so pissed that her page had been found that she gave up and they settled very quickly.
