Divorce Case Studies | The Undomesticated Man

Each year over five hundred thousand men will face divorce. The overwhelming majority of them will lose. Marriage. Matrimony. Wedlock. This union between two people, it tends to end badly and when it does, it’s usually the man that gets the short end of the stick.

The reasons men end up losing this battle is two-fold. One, the legal system is bent in the direction of the woman. Two, men don’t realize that divorce is something with a winner and a loser. For a lot of men their wife was their best friend and their closest confidant, she was the one person they felt they could trust with anything. Think of DeNiro as gangster Sam Rothstein in Casino giving his wife, Ginger, the key to his safe deposit box and everything he owns. That didn’t work out so well for him, did it?

If you’re feeling sentimental, if you trust her and think she’ll only take what she absolutely needs then it’s time we tore off the proverbial Band-Aid: the person you are divorcing is not the same person you married. And for the person you’re divorcing, nothing is ever enough.

Let’s look at some divorce case studies,

There’s the 1990 divorce between former model Patricia Kluge and her industrialist husband John Kluge. The settlement broke records, not only did Patricia walk away from the divorce with a 23,500-square-foot, 45-room home on 3,000 acres but she also got a cool ONE BILLION dollars. A billion dollars, that’s like being guaranteed an annual income of 50,000 dollars for twenty thousand years. Now that’s financial security. But it wasn’t enough for Patricia, by 2011 she was bankrupt and that 23,500 square foot property had been foreclosed.

Or what about corporate CEO George David, maybe you haven’t heard of him but in 2005 his wife, Marie Douglas-David, filed for divorce. She was given 38 million and their Park Avenue apartment. Unfortunately this wasn’t enough for her and in 2009 she demanded an additional 100 million dollar settlement and 130 thousand per month in alimony. She claimed that she had accepted the previous settlement under “duress” and that she couldn’t survive on the previous amount, after all, her monthly expenses included things like $8000 for travel, $4500 for clothing, and $600 a week for flowers. Six hundred dollars a week on flowers. Let that sink in, in a world where someone working full time – 40hrs a week – at minimum wage makes about fifteen thousand a year or 288 /week after taxes. She can’t figure out a way to spend less of other people’s money (her ex’s) on flowers.

The point of these stories is simply to show that you can’t expect fair and rational requests during a divorce. It is very possible that she will take from you everything she can and then some. Going in to this you need to expect and be prepared for the worst. Be ready for it to get so bad that if you make it out with your vital organs intact you’re pleasantly surprised.

Divorce Czar has previously covered the best means to go about finding an attorney for yourself as well as how to block your wife from getting her attorney-of-choice (assuming she doesn’t already have legal counsel). Now even though you’ve blocked your wife from getting preferential choice in her divorce attorney, she will still get some form of legal representation. What comes as a surprise to some men is that they are at times expected to pay for their wife’s legal team as well as their own.

Getting divorced is always a financial burden, but for some men it is much larger than others. If you were the primary bread-winner of the relationship and your wife had little or no personal income it is possible she will look to have you pay all her personal legal-fees when divorcing you. It is not uncommon for wives to have the judge issue a court order demanding you to pay her legal expenses in advance of and during the divorce proceedings.

If her request for you to pay her legal expenses gets to the point of a court order, there is no fighting it. This means a judge has already decided that it is up to you to carry the burden of the expense of the divorce.

As a slight silver lining to this, the amount paid towards your wife’s legal counsel fees is usually considered to be an advance on her share of the assets. Once the assets are fully divided (everything from bank accounts to property) the amount that was previously given to the wife is subtracted from what her settlement would be.

Once a divorce action has officially been filed, you may find that it includes an ATRO. An ATRO is an Automatic Temporary Restraining Order. This order specifically prohibits either spouse from:

Selling, transferring ownership of, or borrowing money against any properties owned
Canceling or selling insurance that is held for the other spouse.
Modifying the beneficiaries on policies (health and life insurance, wills, etc.)
Destroying or hiding assets
Changing or closing bank accounts

While this is good in the sense that it will keep your spouse from looting your finances, it also limits your ability to move and control your finances, by putting everything into the hands of the legal system. If you are the one filing for divorce, ensure everything is as you want it to be before filing.

Not all states have ATRO’s, the concept is relatively new but each year more states are putting them into action. For example, as of this writing places like South Carolina and New Jersey do not have ATROs.

In most cases this type of temporary order can be requested by either spouse at the onset of divorce, so if it is not automatic in your state or Country but you would like something akin to it then you need to request a restraining order that covers those specific issues.

Unfortunately if where you live has automatic temporary restraining order’s it is not something you will be able to have struck down, you’ll have to wait it out and follow the correct legal procedure and this is only the beginning of the divorce – things are about to get real crazy real fast, but the good news is if you’re looking for a way to win you’re divorce, then you’re in the right place: let’s get started!