I’m Surrounded By Nuts!

I am stunned by the amount of people and the “type” of people that are getting divorced these days….stunned! Recovering Straight Girl and I were the first in a long line of small town divorces but it would almost appear these days to have hit epidemic proportions. I hear of people from every walk of life, every religion and many that have several children and have been married forever! But that’s not what this post is about, it’s about my comical experience with a horrible Amazon-type divorce attorney that I hired….and then fired, several years ago.

Since I happen to know a few of the people getting divorces around town and since many of them know that I’ve “been there, done that” I find that I’m somehow a resource for other women looking for a good lawyer. I’ve had four. This is the story of the one that I DO NOT recommend….unless I’m feeling truly naughty and I don’t like the person that I’m giving a referral to.

Understanding that my previous marriage was over and that I needed to hire an attorney, I went on the advice of my old boss who recommended this particular woman because “she caused me to loose everything”. That’s right, my boss recommended his ex-wife’s attorney, not his own. (By the way, I’m not going to tell you who she is because frankly, I’m afraid of her!)

So I contacted the attorney, set up an appointment and when the day came I drove downtown to the 3 story brick office building that housed “The Firm”. I had been having a pretty bad week and was not in the best mental shape by the time I got into the office and I was ushered into a very small, very private waiting room. It was an odd room but I was told that this attorney had many high-profile clients and “discretion was of the utmost importance”. That of course made me feel pretty special until I then realized that special equaled $$$$$$$$$$.

So I sat in the little room, surrounded by books about divorce and parenting and I waited, and waited, and waited. Every once in a while I could overhear the secretary talking on the phone, then the attorney would come through the intercom and request something from her, then there would be silence until the attorney would request something else. The attorney’s voice was getting increasingly louder and more demanding as I listened until at one point I heard her door fly open and she was actually yelling at her secretary….I mean yelling! She was bitching her out, up one side and down the other and all of a sudden the door of the little room I was sitting in swung open and I know that my eyes popped out of my head as I stared up at this woman of at least 6 foot 6 inches and 250 pounds who was appologizing profusely at having made me wait…..it was a very scary site. And of course I was pissed at having to have waited for over half an hour but there was no way I was going to tell her that, no way! My response was more like “Oh no, that’s okay….I’m sorry to have upset you for waiting….”. The secretary was in tears, seriously, she was sobbing and I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell I was getting into.

The next 2 hours consisted of similar behavior by both of us. Me acting like a broken woman and her mentally and emotionally beating me up. At one point I was crying….and I swear I thought she was going to slap me, I SWEAR IT! I think that if she could have she would have. I kept wondering what the hell I was paying for, no one deserved that kind of ass kicking.

This went on for about an hour. She sat in a comfy chair opposite mine, shoes off with her skirt hiked up over her knees so that she could get her fat cankles tucked under her butt while her black tights screamed to be two sizes larger, lecturing me on a lesson in Narcicism (pointing to my future ex-husbands biggest flaw) she said to me “and I think you’re a Narcicist too.” “What?” I asked, through tears and sobs, “why would you say that?” and she responded “Because you called me. I work with celebrities and people with money and you had to have the biggest attorney in town because you think you’re so special. Guess what? You can’t afford me.”

That was the “epiphany” moment, the moment I knew I was right where I should be because every thread of my being was saying “I’ll show her!” and I really started listening to what she was saying. It was sales pitch, and a damn good one (I get that now). I began to wonder how many other people had come into her office meak as a mouse and had left there feeling truly empowered because God knew, I was one. I would show her, and my future ex-husband would fear for the wrath of this bitch!

The second hour was much different. She caused me to really think about the position that I was in and how to empower myself. She snapped me back into reality and helped build up my self-esteem that had been so torn down. As our meeting came to a close I plunked down the $10,000 retainer fee and I felt better then I had in weeks, and I felt better equipt to deal with the issues at home.

Not long after that I was passed down to a lesser known attorney at the firm and eventually I was passed down to an even lesser known attorney and I began to feel as though no one really gave a shit, they just wanted my money, and they got it. They got almost the entire $10,000 before I fired them and hired another more responsive attorney that finished out my divorce, to my satisfaction.

I will say that that experience taught me a tremendous amount. In all reality my entire divorce did wonders for me, it completely changed my life and it changed it for the better. There’s an old saying that is one of my favorites: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, and I’m living proof of that. That divorce ended up costing me about $31,000 in the end but what I got out of it mentally and emotionally was priceless.