Man’s best friend
I’ve worked on precisely two divorces. They were both awful. The first was just a terrible abusive situation, sadly too common, and not a good source for stories. The second, though, was a mid-40s, DINK situation.
Upper middle class engineers, nobody was gonna go hungry at the end of it. Of course, we presumed it’d be a quick, painless negotiation. Nobody told us the husband was a raging alcoholic with no social skills.
Nobody told us that the wife was very attached to the dog.
We divided up the house, all possessions, the bank accounts — everything— in under a week, except for possession of the dog. She was convinced he’d put the dog down.
He kept saying it was man’s best friend, not women’s. This case got slated for trial over who got the dog. I mean, that’s downright extraordinary — that a divorce goes to trial at all is weird.
That it goes to trial with no kids is weirder. That it goes to trial where both people are financially stable and well-off is, like, comet-hitting-you unlikely. That it goes to trial solely over the possession of a dog is, so far as I can tell from talking to other attorneys, unheard of.
So, pre-trial conference, and the judge is flabbergasted that any of this is going on. He orders a final attempt at mediation to begin after lunch. The husband sneaks away from his attorney to have a liquid lunch and comes back absolutely trashed.
Starts yelling about how he’s going to go home and kill the dog to deny her it. Tries to jump over the table. Assaults a bailiff. Runs out through an in-session court, with the presiding judge on the bench.
I never did find out how that one ended as my internship ended before the case did. But I’ll always remember it as the moment I decided that I didn’t want to do family law.
Fortunately for me, my current boss doesn’t take those cases whatsoever.
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