Thursday, August 12, 2010

It's finally over.

So, how does it feel to finally be divorced? 

Imagine, you've suffered through years of increasing distance in your relationship, growing enmity, resulting in downright hostility, and you eventually muster the energy, the inititative to retain an attorney, to finally seek your freedom.

I just finished a tortuous divorce trial that extended over a month.  Now, I didn't try this case every day for a month, but it started a month ago and, with a bit here and a bit there, the trial concluded today.  Even more importantly, this divorce was filed by a former counsel quite some time ago and had not lingered but had been actively litigated from day one.

The opposing party in this divorce practiced Machiavellian parenting.  She was (is) out there.  She feels the children are her property and, if she could, she would keep them under lock and key, away from her husband who had the tamarity to leave her.  The opposing party's mission in life was to make my client's life as miserable as possible.  In that way, her attitude in the divorce was not terribly dissimilar to her attitude in the marriage.

She used the divorce to torture my client every step of the way, and did all that she could to keep the divorce from being final.  She couldn't let him go.  She wouldn't let him go.  She was going to keep him forever.

So we bruisingly battled through each and every possible issue that the opposing party could concoct.  No matter how easily the issue could have been settled, she wouldn't hear of it.  Everything needed to be tried.

Throughout the ordeal I had the distinct impression that this woman was hunting my client.  I can only imagine how trapped like a caged animal he felt.  My firm was the only thing standing between this possessed woman and my client's annihilation.  If she had her way, my client would have been crushed under her heal in eternity.

So, despite his worst fears that it might not ever happen, today my client got his divorce.

Now he is liberated. 

His long nightmare is finally over.  The woman who had her clutches, nails, whatever, dug into him for so many years, no longer has that hold on him. 

Tonight he is popping the champagne, just beginning to sense his independence.  His full blown knowledge of freedom will take a long time to set in.  But for tonight, the first taste is so, so sweet. 

Happy Divorce Day, buddy.

Michael Manely

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