Divorce Lawyer: Is Fighting Really Worth It?

Legal fighting is usually a very unpleasant experience. This is also true for Family Law cases. A couple divorcing typically feels a lot of antipathy towards the other spouse.

When there are children involved, however, the two have to work together. It is usually impossible for one spouse to simply walk away. This is sort of ironic, however. You got divorced because you no longer wished to be married, but now you are finding that you are still spending time and interacting with each other. Eventually, one spouse will do something to anger the other spouse, and there will be problems. This may lead the spouses to contact their divorce lawyers to see whether there is anything that can be done to punish the spouse that upset them.

Divorce attorneys in this situation face a conundrum. On the one hand, it is usually not in the best interests of their client to re-litigate the entire case. Nor is it necessarily good to push a court to hold the other spouse in contempt and issue some nominal punishment. The anguish and expense associated with litigation, for the most part, outweighs the temporary and not especially meaningful injustice that they felt. In other words, striking back simply is not often worth it.

On the other hand, divorce lawyers know that a lot of billable hours can be accumulated by challenging the other spouse. Filing for contempt will likely make the other spouse very angry and causing that spouse to want to attack back with whatever slights that they may have felt. The result is a huge fight in which both former spouses are fighting really hard and are unlikely to want to back down and compromise. Such a path can be quite lucrative, but only for the divorce attorneys.

Wealthy couples are especially susceptible to being victimized by their own zealousness. With more resources, there are far more options. Not just can the parties now afford lots of discovery, such as depositions of almost everyone involved, and can they afford to take their cases to trial, but it also is possible to bring the case to an appeals court. Going to a supervisory court essentially means that the billable hours will continue long into the future. This is because appeals courts often send the case back to the trial court level, meaning that the case then can be litigated yet another time.

Ultimately, the couple will find that they have gone through lots of money, multiple years, and lots of emotional involvement simply to prove a point. This is all simply because they were not advised of more preferable ways of resolving their dispute, such as through mediation or some other form of alternative dispute resolution. Or, they were not informed that they would be better off simply dropping the issue in order that they may battle over things that are truly consequential.

This makes one wonder is it really worth it to the divorce attorneys to put their clients through such agony just because it will increase their billable hours? Wouldn’t it be better to direct their legal focus and passion to matters that are actually consequential?

The above material is intended for information purposes only. It is not intended as professional legal advice and should not be construed as such. Attorney Will Beaumont practices in New Orleans, La.