“During the summer of 2018, I got work regarding what seemed, from the client’s description, a pretty drawn out and messy divorce case. The husband was my client, and he made it seem, very adamantly, that his soon to be ex-wife was after his every penny. Given he seemed to have a fairly high paying job, it seemed like a pretty common type of case, the city I work in has many instances of this, it has a high cost of living and a lot of well-paid working professionals in the private industry. He was a very well-spoken, amiable guy in his late 50s, and truly seemed like he’d been taken by surprise and betrayed by his soon to be ex-wife.
When I actually got to the case, however, I was basically floored.
His wife was a working professional as well, worked in government, they’d been married for over twenty years and had two kids together, and a paid off house. Before taxes, he made almost three times what she did, not counting his stock options, and yet she’d contributed equally to their mortgage on every home they’d owned over the course of the marriage. By all accounts, despite a vast difference in income, she’d carried her weight, raised two kids, and worked full time during the entirety of the marriage. I live and work in Canada, she could have easily raked him over the coals in the divorce if it had gone to court.
Instead, it seemed like she’d done everything she possibly could to not have him subjected to that. This divorce had been ongoing for five years before he hired me, and it was basically him looking a gift horse in the mouth over and over, a constant renegotiation on the contract they’d both signed initially, with him skimping on alimony and then debating on lesser terms. He was basically given an inch and tried to take a mile, dragging it out for so long that per divorce law it had to go to court. I almost suspect he did so as a way to try to drag her through the mud, though he may have genuinely been that delusional.
I consider it a win only because his ex-wife was adamant about only wanting what was somewhat fair, and for it to be over because of the strain it was having on the family. Per the contract he owed her, still, about 50k in back pay, but she was content with 15k, which was less than this guy made in a month. I did regret the ‘win’ though, she seemed like a very nice woman with the patience of a saint, while almost all of his anger towards her seemed to come from wounded ego.”