6 Things Only Divorce Lawyers Know About American Marriages

A few years ago, I had a divorce case involving a conservative couple in their mid-40s (I represented the husband). Right before we started the trial, the opposing lawyer handed me a photo I'd never seen before. It was of my client, the down-home country boy, wearing a long brunette wig and provocative black lingerie ... in the act of getting oral attention from another man.

So we immediately lost, right? Well, no. The wife was the photographer, and since she was the "trois" of this menage, the photo had no relevance and I got it excluded. But another time -- again, with me representing the husband -- the opposing lawyer sent me a video of my client's alleged mistress masturbating on a bed while moaning my client's name. Speaking purely as your defense, this does not qualify as a "fun little surprise."

Surprise evidence is a tricky area for lawyers, though. When you plan to use something solely for "impeachment" (that is, to catch someone in a lie) and you accordingly do not disclose it to the other side ahead of time, you are running the risk that a judge might not allow it into evidence. Your potential pro is catching the witness in a lie, but the con is going into trial down a piece of evidence on very short notice.

Also, you'll then have had to watch porn of unattractive people for no good reason. That's more of a personal downside, though.

But adultery isn't always the end of the world in a divorce case. Judges hear about crackheads leaving babies in locked cars during the summer, couples brutally abusing each other, vehicle fucking Voltrons -- a single moment of sexual indiscretion doesn't necessarily cause them to fly into a righteous rage.

We even have a defense to the statutory grounds of adultery called "condonation." This means that if someone has an extramarital affair, and their spouse finds out about it but then forgives the affair, then the spouse can't later use said affair as grounds for divorce. You don't even have to formally say "I forgive you." One way to "prove" that a spouse has "gotten over" adultery is if they continue having sex with their partner after finding out about the affair.

This leads to some shady strategies. I once had a client who discovered his wife was cheating on him. She then found out (or at least strongly suspected) that he knew about it. They started sleeping in separate bedrooms. Then she talked to a divorce lawyer, who told her about condonation. The next morning, my client awoke to find her on top of him, naked. Luckily, he was still angry enough to refuse the attempted seduction, but not everyone has that strength. My client ended up having to put a deadbolt on his bedroom door until she finally moved out and stopped ambush-stripping for him.

Now, are you skeptical of my client's story? Do you think perhaps he made up the prior incidents, and he really was the guilty party? That's how the court thinks. Claims of abuse require corroborating evidence -- another witness, photographs, medical records, something more than the spouse's testimony. But most abusers know better than to helpfully record their crimes for later archival. Abuse typically occurs in the home with solely the concerned parties present. This is a problem, one that is often insurmountable. I personally do not like the requirement of corroboration. We're not talking about criminally convicting an allegedly abusive spouse here, after all -- we're merely trying to meet a legal standard for someone to stop being married to another person.

In another case (a custody modification case, not a divorce, but it illustrates the point), I represented the biological father of an 11-year-old boy whose stepfather was abusing both him and his younger brother. The stepfather -- who happened to be a professional with a wealthy family -- continually denied the abuse and insisted the kids were lying (he claimed they wanted attention). The mother even went along with this and helped with the cover-up.

Luckily, the dad bought his son a smartphone, and the next time the stepfather started screaming and choking his little brother, the kid recorded it. Law enforcement finally got involved, and the kids were removed and placed with their biological father. But without that video, the abuse would probably still be going on today. With it, criminal charges are now pending against the stepfather, and hopefully at least some serious karmic backlash is pending for the mother. We're talking paper-cut-on-the-webbing-between-the-fingers-caliber punishment here, at least.

Another divorcing couple had been married 15 years. After much argument, they finally agreed on everything except one issue: an autographed AC/DC T-shirt from a concert they'd attended earlier. They both wanted it (or at least, each didn't want the other one to have it). They nuked the whole agreement over that T-shirt -- we again went to a lengthy trial, with all the exorbitant costs involved. The judge ordered the T-shirt to be sold online, and the profits divided between the parties. They ended up getting about $20 each from the sale. King Solomon's a motherfucker sometimes.

So when she filed for divorce, we filed pleadings denying she had any grounds. Throughout pretrial litigation, she went berserk. She showed up at his business one day and started screaming at the employees, calling them homosexual slurs and "crackheads," accusing them of all sorts of wrongdoing. She and their adult daughter got into a fistfight, and law enforcement became involved. She even claimed my client was having an affair with a male employee (he was not, and it was easily provable). But after lengthy discovery and a trial, we won. The judge denied the divorce.

They're still married today. And the last time I spoke to them, they were ... somehow getting along. It probably helps that he buys her nice cars and gives her money every week, which is certainly a lot more than I'd do under those circumstances. But they're both making an effort. They make dinner together, go to their grandchildren's ball games, and so on. It's perhaps my most shocking case of all. Especially since this case was already mentioned earlier in the article. This is the woman who had another man's condom fall out of her while having sex with her husband.

Love is beautiful.

Sometimes.

Other times, it's super gross.

Ryan Menezes is an editor and interviewer here at Cracked. Follow him on Twitter for stuff cut from this article and other things no one should see.

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