Things Your Divorce Attorney Doesn’t Tell You

Imagine your frustration as you’ve navigated difficult marital dynamics for years, been to counseling, perhaps more than once, and made that key decision to engage a divorce lawyer. Relief, right? Someone in your corner to count on and get you to a fresh, better place?

Well, keep that therapist. Divorce is not easy, and hopefully things go well without hiccups. However, more than 20 years of helping clients, writing three books, one about divorce and two on anger (with hefty divorce chapters), has put me in the purview of people’s frustrations, laments, and wish-they’d-done-it-differently perspectives when it comes to divorce.

With names/details altered, here are some realities lawyers don’t reveal, from how they work (or maybe do not) to how they bill and engage with you. You’ll be all the wiser knowing a few pitfalls of the process, positioning you for greater cooperation, independence and happier times ahead.

I’ll cultivate cases, even from your marriage, if I have to.

Healthcare oaths say to do no harm. It’s unfathomable to believe a lawyer would encourage people to break up a satisfying marriage. It happens, more so if a firm didn’t hit year-end numbers, a lawyer must make partner, or keep earnings high.

Take Juanita, who consulted a law firm to fund a trust with money she inherited. Happily remarried, Juanita found it odd when asked if she had any other troubles, including “bumps” in her marriage. Normally ignoring emails that “checked in,” Juanita gave in to benign frustrations, sharing them. Within hours, the lawyer proposed she book an hour to “protect” her interests.

Juanita ran her regretted reply past a trusted friend, familiar with her own parents’ gray divorce. “That lawyer knows your assets now; it sounds as if he’s grooming you to protect his interests,” her friend said. Juanita fixed the few frustrations before she had plenty more. Her friend’s parents lived with Long Covid, fewer healthcare funds, and one passed amid incredible loneliness.

Divorce is a long process of continuances and retainers that retain you.

Not all lawyers plunder for profit. Densely populated metropolitan areas provide a stream of uncoupling. Yet rural and large areas share another problem.

“Most lawsuits settle, but some settle later than they should,” wrote two Cornell Law School professors regarding protracted litigation. “Time is money. The longer the period that elapses between the filing of a lawsuit and its settlement, the more resources the parties are likely to invest in the litigation process.” The authors go on to report: “Lawyers’ greed might cause delay” because there are financial incentives to postpone settlement.¹ These insights speak to retainers which ensnare many, like Sam.

We handle all the work, deciding when and how we work.

Sam was married 28 years, ten too long, to a perpetually passive-aggressive wife who quit work for early retirement. He paid a $5,000 retainer, easily eaten up. Messages taken without calls returned. And meetings. In the fine print he signed, Sam learned that his retainer paid for weekly discussions even without any action on his case.

Sam felt stuck. Phoebe rode the indecision fence, drawing their case out longer than two lawyers who claimed to communicate without evidence they ever did. His lawyer returned every fifth call (sometimes), never bothering to update him after appearing at case conferences.

Then, a new administration jeopardized Sam’s career. It halted collaborations with outside entities, so Sam took his medical expertise and potentially life-saving research to big Pharma, where the hours would be long, the risk high, and the payoff uncertain. But he had a job, making Phoebe realize how much they stood to gain if they could just get their case behind them.

The estranged spouses met for two long coffee sessions, hammered out how to divide assets, care for teenagers, and put it bluntly to the attorneys: “This is what we want. Please make it legal by month’s end so we can sign and file with the Court. If you cannot, we move on without you and any more payments.”

The ingredients to make this work: Two level, productive heads, a sensibility about money, assertiveness (for sure), civility, and friendliness. They had enough on their minds with big transitions, teenage drama, and stressful headlines each day.

According to the American Bar Association, most lawyer complaints involve case neglect, lack of communication, fee disputes and representation.² Rare is the lawyer promoting frugality for clients.

Divorce Essential Reads

Making The Decision to Divorce

Co-Parenting in a Digital World

These findings summarize this case study and validate what many experience. Lawyers take on more cases than they can often handle. Cases get farmed to junior associates or sit unattended. The longer they remain open, attorneys bill for discovery, this or that motion. Rarely will counsel offer to settle first for fear it signals a lack of adversarial ability or gives up strategic advantage. Some eschew training in collaborative practice.

The family in family law matters not in this zero-sum game.

Nastygrams. Threats. Unfounded accusations. Divorce grounds with no merit whatsoever.

This is the stuff of an I-must-destroy you divorce at the hands of overly aggressive, unscrupulous attorneys. If so, you’re in for a protracted ride that may harm your mental health.³

In It’s Not High-Conflict, It’s Post Separation Abuse, Kaytee Gillis, LCSW writes that abusers weaponize courts to retaliate on victims they can no longer physically harm. Gillis knew of a young lawyer who urged a client to agree to a mutual stay-away order when this woman had done nothing to deserve one. She was the victim deserving of a protective order after she was assaulted. Because the client spoke up, the lawyer corrected the error of her ways.

Gillis reports clients get frustrated when lawyers don’t understand the intricacies of coercive control. Similar frustrations are reported in the divorce chapter of Overcoming Passive Aggression, where judges provide leniency to passive-aggressive clients who distribute hidden anger in these exact ways.

Post-separation abuse is an ongoing, willful pattern of intimidation by a former intimate partner including legal, economic abuse, threats, endangerment to children, isolation, discrediting, harassment and stalking.⁴

States such as Tennessee have an Abusive Civil Action Law⁵ that restricts those who misuse the court system (especially those with whom the litigant has a civil action relationship) to harass, injure or drain a victim’s financial resources.⁶

Other states and court personnel need to institute similar protections.

@ 2025 Loriann Oberlin, MS

Read Also: The Emotional Cost of the Legal Help You Hire