INSANE: Lawyers stories worst spouse rip off | Vintage Vibes

Is this making you sad? Me too. Happy story time!

My parents divorced when I was around toddler age. My dad hit my mom during a fight and she separated from him. During that time when they were supposed to be working stuff out Dad decides to start dating some lady so my mom goes for the divorce.


So, where's the happy? There were no lawyers involved, my mom didn't ask for a dime of mandatory alimony/palimony, and she had full custody. My dad was a hardworking man and still made time for us kids, coached us, took us out and on small trips. While not wealthy or even always comfortable he provided for us. My parents never bad-mouthed each other, told us they loved each other and us kids. We were very much a family, just one where the parents didn't live together.

They've been friends, spouses and parents for the majority of their lives, when they're hanging out it's like close friends. Sometimes I wish/wonder what life would have been like if they'd stayed together. But I'm glad I grew up with role models who showed me that not every divorce is bad, and you don't have to turn into a vindictive s**t-bag just because it didn't work out.
Thanks mom and dad!

Dad was a real a*****e and mom tried to save him a lot of money during the divorce. They have 3 kids who were 16, 13, and 8. Dad wouldn't sign ANY agreement my moms lawyer produced. It had to be his idea and from his lawyer or it wasn't getting signed. Dads lawyer was incompetent and sends an agreement that states he will pay $2,000 a month in child support until all kids are 18. Mom tried to explain to dad that it needed to be revised to lower every time a child turned 18. Dad called mom a c**t during that negotiation so mom said f**k it and signed the agreement and dad paid the $2,000/month for 10 years when he should've been paying around $1,400/month for 5 years and $700/month for the last 5 years.

TLDR: Dad f****d himself out of thousands each year by calling my mom a c**t.

A woman in my town is a Principal at a local elementary school. She is in her mid 70s (at least). I asked someone why she doesn't retire and they explained that she and her spouse went through a very contentious divorce about 15 years ago and she has to give him a portion of her retirement so she has decided to NEVER retire so he gets nothing ever! Hahahahaha.

Not a lawyer, but when I was a kid my parents got divorced. My mom met a guy on the internet and left my dad for him. My sisters and I were all teenagers and being that my mom had never really been around decided that we all wanted to live with him. We all had to write a letter stating our wishes and it was understood that we would stay with him - my mom didn't even seem to care.

Additionally, my dad had this retirement account from his old job - he wasn't rich at all and had worked his a*s off for everything he'd ever had. When he got hurt on the job he could have sued, but was promised that in exchange for him not suing, they'd keep him around. Instead they canned him and he left with about $100k (I think) in a 401-k type account that he'd been saving for nearly 30 years.

Lastly, my dad had his house. It was a 3 bedroom, 1 bath brick house that was all of about 800 SF. It wasn't much at all, but my dad loved the place. My mom couldn't stand that house and wanted to move for as long as I could remember - that was another contentious subject that led to the divorce. He'd been paying on it forever and when he left his old job, he took out a small chunk and paid it off.

Anyway, their separation is progressing and it's understood we're living with him. She was so in love with this internet guy that she didn't care. He was in school halfway around the country and she was going to move there to be with him; we knew we'd get by just fine. They seemed amicable and it was understood how this would all play out.

The day in court finally comes and instead of what we all assumed, even my dad's lawyer - she goes to the court with all these crazy claims. He was an a*****e alcoholic, he beat us and my mom nightly, he was crazy and no one would be safe in his care. My mom got full custody, she got 50% of his house and 50% of his retirement account. My dad was stunned - that judgement would basically bankrupt him - in order for him to keep the house, he'd essentially have to clean out his retirement account and give her everything.

The night of their divorce I went over to see him. He was almost catatonic - he just stared off in space the entire time and would mumble whenever I asked him a question. I've never seen anyone like that ever. My birthday was 2 days away and I asked if he wanted to do something for my birthday and he just answered with "your mom has full custody. I will if she allows me to see you." I asked if I could drive his old truck to school, since I didn't yet have a car and he just said no, that I needed to call my mom and have her pick me up. So that's what I did.

And the next day in school, the day before my birthday, I'm sitting in our lunchroom when I hear "hey, isn't that your grandpa?" From a buddy of mine. I look over and see my grandpa and a cop making their way across the lunchroom toward me. They told me to grab my stuff and in the office I found my sister there as well. We rode home with them, where we were also met by my little sister and that's where they told us that our dad had k****d himself, shortly after I left the previous night.

To make matters worse, it all happened so quickly that nothing had been finalized. My mom dropped all her paperwork and legally became a widow and got everything - house, retirement and his insurance policy. She also got social security benefits for us, a fact we didn't find out until much later. She basically took all the money and moved across the country with her new man, leaving us to care for ourselves for the most part.

And to this day, when asked about raising us, she'll spin this story of a young widow, doing her best to raise three kids on her own..

I'm not a divorce lawyer, but my father built the house I grew up in with minimal help. He spent two years working on it and did the hardwood floors, staircase, bathrooms, and hung every cabinet by himself. Every piece of trim in the house was run through a lathe with his own two hands. He even did the spackling for all the ceilings and all of the paint work.

Then my mom cheated on him for a year and bought him out of the house. Now my mom and step-dad have a pretty sweet place to live, and I can tell it hurts my dad whenever he has to go by to pick up my sister and stand in the entryway of the house that he built and watch their fat dog scratch up the hardwood that he was so proud of.

Not a lawyer, but I met with a scummy one when I was looking to get a divorce. The first lawyer I met with, who had been recommended by a coworker as an amazing divorce attorney, suggested that, if I wanted full custody, I should make sure people knew the relationship was a*****e. Tell my friends/family, make sure the neighbors heard me screaming/begging him not to hit me, document every bruise even if I wasn't sure it came from him. Thing is, my relationship wasn't a*****e and I'd already told her that multiple times. She never outright said I should fabricate evidence or anything, but she ignored my repeated statements that there was no a***e and kept on with her detailed instructions of how to document any a***e that might happen. I got the distinct impression that she was letting me know how to create an a*****e relationship out of thin-air in order to get custody of my kids.

I ended up not using her as an attorney, for obvious reasons, and in the end my ex and I shared 50/50 physical and legal custody of our children and raised them together despite whatever issues we had with each other. I can't help but wonder, though, how many dads lost a relationship with their kids because of her zealous coaching.

My uncle represented this guy getting a divorce from his wife of 15 years. Super toxic breakup and they split everything 50/50, even the land that the house they lived in sat upon. Well she decides to build a house right behind the other house, mind you this was a lot of land probably 200 yards separating both home sites, so that the back of the houses faced each other. The house gets built and my uncle gets a call from his client asking about the legality of a situation he had gotten himself into. Apparently his ex wife would spend a lot of time in her backyard, so he saw her all the time. What he did was buy a female dog and name it the same name as his ex-wife. Anytime he would let his dog back in from letting her out he would yell "Susan you b***h! Get in here!" He would also yell if she was peeing on the flowers,"Susan you b***h! Quit pissing on the flowers!" or "Susan you b***h! Quit digging in the dirt!" The ex-wife called the cops on him a couple of times, but there was nothing they could do because the dog was registered under the name of Susan, and it was in fact a b***h so there you go.
Edit: Thanks for the gold!

Bad seperation, wife filed a restraining order on the husband (very common, wasn't a terrible guy but not great either). A year into the divorce his mother was dying, he asked his sister to speak with his ex-wife and ask to bring the kids to see her in the hospital before she died. The wife never did, instead she went to the court and said he violated the restraining order by trying to contact her (you can't contact someone through another party).

He admitted it and explained the situation, but was found in breach of the order. His mother died while he was locked up and the wife never brought the kids to see her.

Story from my parents who are lawyers. So throughout the divorce proceedings, there was a car that was a huge point of contention between the husband and wife. After months and months of saying he would never let the wife have the car, the husband concedes in exchange for something great, like one of their summer houses. It turns out he had been driving the car for 3 hours everyday in a big loop around the city, putting thousands and thousands of miles on it basically making it worthless. The amount of planning and spite that went into that was amazing.

I did some consulting work for two divorce attorneys when I was in grad school.

Their client was a career airline pilot. His wife worked part time so there was a huge income disparity. It was an ugly divorce.

During the process but before the final decree, tax time rolled around. The wife's attorney calls my guys and says, "Her accountant just called. If they can just share their W-2's and file jointly, they each stand to save about $8000 over married filing separately."

My guys took that info to the husband. He says, "F**k her. Losing $8000 is going to be way worse for her than it will be for me." Cold as ice, man.

Over here in the Netherlands most legal costs are paid for by the government if your income is below a certain treshold. In practice this means that if one of the spouses in a divorce has little to no income and the other one has a normal income, the one with the normal income will have to pay a lot of the process drags on.

Concidering there are plenty of ways to drag it on I've seen cases approach rediculous amounts of billable hours.
There is a catch to this however. Your lawyer is paid a set amount if he/she is paid by the government. However, should the money you recieve after a divorce or w/e exceed a certain number, you are expected to pay your own lawyer (which is the reason we still keep track of the hours in these cases). So this one woman who thought she was screwing over her ex husband by dragging the divorce over multiple years got a payout of ~€40k by the end of it. Unfortunately for her she had to surrender most of that straight back in lawyer costs. There was a certain sense of justice in there.

Also proves time and again that when there is conflict the only true winners are usually the lawyers.

My dad actually got f****d by his divorce lawyer during my parents' divorce last year.

My dad and my sister have never gotten along, and over the years it got more and more strained. They eventually got into a physical fight which led to a CPS report and him getting slapped with a child a***e record (they labeled it as 'confirmed but isolated', so he's not on the registry and you can only see it with certain background checks).

In this case, my mom was OBVIOUSLY going to get full custody of my sister. My mom also wanted to give my dad the house, and his cars, and his money pit of a boat.

Lawyer decided, because my dad is stubborn as f**k, that he would string ol' dad along. Lawyer spent HOURS with my dad trying to convince him that Dad could get more money and custody from my mom.

They did a divorce mediation (so they wouldn't have to go to court), and lawyer dragged it out for 4 hours. The whole time he was riling my dad up, thinking he could get things like the original down payment on the house, half custody of my sister, my mom's car, etc. At the end of the 4 hours of mediation, Lawyer told my dad he should take the deal that my mom and her lawyer had originally offered in the first place, and Dad signed that.

So he paid about $12,000 in completely unnecessary legal fees.

I'm am accountant not a divorce lawyer. Had a client hide Ziploc bags of ground meat throughout the house (in air vents, the attic, behind water heater etc.) I think it was at least 20-30 bags that took months to find all of them.

Obligatory-not-a-lawyer but my parents are currently going through a divorce. Luckily kids are all in late 20s/30s so no custody battle, but basically my mum is a nutter and is desperately trying to s***w my dad over as much as humanly possible. She told her lawyer that he has SO MANY hidden assets, when in fact he has none. She lied and told the mediator that he has a record collection worth hundreds of thousands, when in fact it's probably worth like £8. She said his guitar collection was worth tens of thousands, whereas second hand value, like maybe £2k. She wants all of his businesses assets. All of them. She wants both houses. Her lawyer repeatedly reminds her that at most she'd get half of everything, but she clearly doesn't listen. Then she demanded back all of our (the kids) Christmas and birthday presents from our childhood, like the violin they bought me when I was 13. It's hers. Obviously. /s. Her lawyer laughed at her and reminded her that's not how divorce works.

They're still in the very early mediation process, so it'll be interesting to see how s**t goes once they actually get started properly. Interestingly, despite her hollering that it's all my dad's fault, she was the one that walked out, and subsequently shacked up with my Dad's brother, WHO'S WIFE HAD DIED 3 WEEKS EARLIER. Yeah, and that's why I'm completely no contact with my d******d of a "mother".

*Not a lawyer*. Wife cheats on her husband during his frequent travels for work. She files for divorce and gets to keep the house. Months elapse and the husband is still rightfully pissed but has no recourse. Then he has an epiphany: "I wonder if she changed the password to the Nest Thermostat?" She did not.

For the next year he continues to mess with the thermostat. In the middle of summer when they're sleeping in HIS bed, he turns the heat on to 90 degrees at 3 a.m. Middle of winter? Time to shut off the heat and hope the pipes freeze. Away on vacation? Turn the air conditioning down to 55 and let it run 24/7 for a nice surprise bill when they get home.

Not a lawyer but my two bosses were married and opened a bike shop together. He was the brains and the backbone since he was a former Olympic mechanic, she just sort of balanced the checkbook and worked a couple days a week. Unfortunately, he had no credit and she did, so when they opened everything was in her name.

All he wanted in the divorce was the bike shop and was willing to buy her half. She wanted the bike shop too, but didn't want to buy him out for his half. Mind you, her father passed away and she was sitting on like $300k in the bank (and also had the audacity to take out student loans for her daughter to go to college).

He lost the bike shop and I think he got a little bit of money for his share. What she didn't expect was that all of the high-paying customers would stop going there. They were all his friends or they only wanted him to work on their bikes (so I don't know why she would have had that notion). So he opened up his own bike shop and all of the "regulars" have become regulars at the new bike shop.

EDIT: I've been seeing a lot of comments asking how he gained the credit to open a new shop. Ever since he moved out of the house he shared with his ex wife, he started putting money away and got a credit card. So over the course of a year+ some months he built credit and was able to open a shop on his own. People have tried to "buy-in" to the business as an investment but he doesn't want anyone else involved since that screwed him over the first time.

EDIT 2: I appreciate everyone's upvotes. If anyone is ever having any bike-related issues, head on over to r/bikewrench. I spend a lot of time there diagnosing and offering fixes for people's bikes. I don't work in a bike shop anymore, I just work on my friends' bikes for fun, and dabble in some frame building for myself. But remember to support your local bike shop. Don't buy bikes from department stores because they're typically dangerous as they aren't built by actual bike mechanics.

A friend of mine in high school worked at a pizza place. One of the delivery drivers was just ridiculously smart when I talked to him. Later I found out that he use to be a nuclear physicist. His wife was also a nuclear physicist, but left him for her lawyer.

He got screwed out of his kids, most of the assets, and had to pay a lot towards alimony/child support. He did the math, and figured out the tips he didn't get taxed on plus his minimum wage delivering pizza was more than keeping his job as a nuclear physicist. Plus he got a little satisfaction not having to pay her as much. The guy was really nice. I always felt bad for him.

She took the cats. He wanted the cats. Looked like courts would give him the cats. She had the cats put down.

Omg finally one I can answer!

There's the typical cleaning out the accounts and running, claiming the children first on taxes so the other party can't, claiming the other party as a dependent so they can't file separately, stuff like that.

Then there was this one case.

My client fled the home with her baby after an incident of domestic violence. In my state, both parents have full rights to the children unless a custody order in place. In other words, whoever has the kid, gets the kid. Police will not intervene where one spouse is withholding a child from the other spouse if there are no orders in place.

Well my client had the child for two weeks at her new place when H showed up demanding the child. She refused. He called the police. The responding officer was a family friend of both, but originally a friend of H. This PO shows up and decides to try to mediate the conflict. The PO tells my client something along the lines of "let him hug his son goodbye and he will leave peacefully." My client was hesitant, but agreed. H took the kid and exclaimed "he's mine now!" And ran to his car with the baby. No supplies, no clothes, nothing. The PO claimed he had no idea what was happening (yeah right). And since no orders were in place, there was nothing my client could do.

While we were trying to track him down, we got an order returning the child to my client's possession. He suddenly contacted my client saying he was at a hotel in the area and if she wanted her son back, she could if she came over and slept with him. We sent the police.

My d**n mother is an alcoholic. We (me and my brother) have lived week in week off with her and my dad who is great. For 10 years we lived in ankle deep garbage and had to wade through the living room. Cue around a year ago. Dad gets a full time university job 500km away, making double anything he ever made in his whole life, and I decide I want to go with him. I set a date, pack my bags, and say goodbye to everyone. I'm set to leave in the winter school holidays. My brother was gonna stay in our home city for a while longer living between our mum and our stepmum (dads SO of 10 years thy we lie and trust). Life seems to be presenting me with a huge opportunity. So, the week that I'm supposed to be leaving comes around and on the morning before I'm scheduled to get on a train, we hear a knock on the door. My dad answers to my mum, accompanied by a man in a suit, with a folder of legal documents. We take them inside and Suprise Suprise they're court orders. Cue a 2-month 50,000 dollar legal battle that makes everyone involved unhappy. Finally, it is decided after hours of forensic psychological evaluation that I should go to this new city with my Dad. The legal battle has destroyed my relationship with my mother, and the money spent on lawyers and barristers and whatnot makes my new lifestyle considerably less luxurious than was planned, and makes it hard to assimilate into my new public school, since it's nearly the end of term and everyone is already over school.

TL;DR my dad gets great new job and I plan to go. Mum ultimately just drags out the process and makes life tough.