Due Process Before the Due Process

IT IS TRUE THAT MORE than half of all marriages in the United States end in divorce. And it is equally true that we are as unprepared for divorce as we are for death. In fact, we go to great lengths to avoid the inevitable, and in both cases, we are always the loser.

Divorce is the ugliest, most profound grief I have known. It is a guaranteed "failure to thrive" event, and it is my deep belief that only the most pained, abused, horridly unhappy people rejoice in this life transition. It is worse than death, because it signifies the end of love. There is no idealized loved one, no dead body with which to have closure. Children become split in two and the archetypes of father, mother and child become something to scoff at as what was once called a family dissolves in the pain of single parenthood. Stressed out mothers and fathers try to take on superhuman roles while children "rule the roosts," unbearably unhappy, talking tough, yet staying dependent and childish much longer than normal.

I don't believe in divorce. Funny coming from someone who has been divorced twice.

I don't believe in abortion. Funny coming from a liberal Democrat who is pro-choice and who has had an abortion.

Divorce, like abortion, leaves a hole in the soul, a grief so profound that there is often no resolution, just a resonant tug of pain, triggered year after year after year.

I dealt with both life transitions the way I deal with everything: humor. Humor and Tylenol. Humor and tears and screams and coffee and writing. And the irony of all of it remains the fact that I wouldn't want my ex-husband on my land, yet I would have done anything to save the marriage. Anything. And I damn near died trying.

This book is about self-empowerment. It is about facing down the legal system. It is about not giving up control, even when you're hysterical on a daily basis, tragically menopausal, not presentable in public, a single mother, bereft, literally penniless, and fighting a near-fatal illness. It is about the clear, simple and rather alarming fact that divorce lawyers cannot possibly know about your unique case; and giving them money, unless you are extremely wealthy, is absurd. I would argue that it is absurd to give any attorney money in this highly specialized game of über warfare. Most especially it is true because the family law game represents two people who are equals, and since no crime purportedly has been committed (no matter how convinced you may be that your ex is a criminal) it becomes even more ridiculous to throw money at the very system which is guaranteed to make everything much worse.

Guaranteed to make things so much worse. And more painful. And make you angrier longer. And result in the state having control over your children while having no interest whatsoever in their welfare. Guaranteed to make you suffer so much that the very people you walk past on the street are split in two—a reflection of the warfare in your own mind.

So, empower yourself. If I can do it, you can do it.

Because I say again, and will say it over and over and over: the moment a retainer is handed to a family law attorney, you have lost. No matter how amicable your matter is, you have lost. Your money, your power, your love, your self-respect, and the welfare of you and your children, is lost.

Some readers may have thrown this book across the room or bookstore by now. I do not mean to be as glib and smug as to say that in cases of severe abuse or malfeasance, help is not needed. I, myself, hired an attorney for my first hearing because the man I was divorcing (he was actually divorcing me, "under the radar," as he so tactfully put it) had taken our assets without my knowledge and I needed a temporary support order. Soon afterwards—about $15,000 afterward, gobbled up in less than a month—I became aware that family law was a game and that I could and should and would carefully read the hideous forms thrown at me, that nolo.com—where I would find legal forms from a book and accompanying CD—would become my friend, and that anyone could be a lawyer.

You did not have to be particularly bright, but you did have to be able to endure the tedium and drudge of due process. I had to surrender to the fact that because my divorce was to drag on, each little item—including spatulas—fought over and contested by my mentally ill spouse, I would be doing the labor of fact-finding anyway. To pay someone $450–$650 an hour just to file what I had turned up in court, well, it stopped making sense. This was in California, in 2005. Now, in 2013, the cost of a family law attorney is even higher than the rate I was quoted.

Not only did I not have the money, I did not have the time. Who does? But I was well aware that lawyers have clocks on their telephones which aid them in billing in fifteen-minute increments. And, believe me, anything over fifteen minutes will most likely be billed at the hourly rate.

Now for the most amazing fact of all: I was divorcing an attorney.

I was divorcing an attorney who had been a partner in the world's largest corporate law firm for 20 years. I was divorcing an attorney with a mind like a steel trap, who could refer to "Article 30, Page 780, Paragraph 4, Section III" as if he were casually scratching a mosquito bite. Who answered every question with a question. Who could throw anyone off track. Who liked to say he could make Jesus question his motives.

Eli graduated first in his law school class of 380 students. That says a great deal, because he went to one of the country's top law schools.

But, smart as he was, I outsmarted him. I became:

In Pro Per

In Pro Per (adj.): A term derived from the Latin in propria, meaning "for one's self," used...