A relative and her husband blew $185,000 on lawyers in an unnecessarily contentious divorce.
They'd both been married before, so it was their 2nd divorce each. They had no kids together, good careers, stable finances and had only been married nine years. At the time of the divorce filing, they even made similar salaries!
They had roughly $270k in house equity (on a $670k house), plus about $400k in retirement assets (added together). They both came into the marriage with roughly equal money, and they bought the house together. So why not just split it down the middle and call it a day?!
Unfortunately, they were both bitter about the split up and determined to "hurt" the other person. She sued for alimony and he tried to get 80% of the retirement funds and 95% of the house equity!
He went through 3 different lawyers until he found one who was willing to fight for such a totally unrealistic settlement. She also never had a real chance at alimony in Virginia (no kids and they both made roughly the same income).
He spent $120k on attorneys, and her's got $65k. In the end, they split the assets roughly evenly after the lawyers got their $185k. Instead of each getting $335k, they each got $240-ish.
Moral of the story: Being a jerk gets expensive.
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She is actually lucky that is all she lost. I thought there was a case in California a few years ago were the woman made more than the man for years and still tried to sue for alimony. She ended up owning him instead.
