What To Expect In A Divorce by Charles E. Corry, Ph.D.

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Since its inception the Equal Justice Foundation has been pointing out that under current laws a man has to be functionally insane to marry and a drooling idiot to sire a child.

It is widely recognized that roughly half of all marriages now end in divorce and, increasingly, men are simply refusing to marry, a disaster for children and society.

One of the best ways to illustrate the problems is to describe what now happens in family courts. For example, have you heard the joke:

Ex-wife: I made my husband a millionaire.

Friend: What was he before?

Ex-wife: A billionaire.

Why then should any man of means or ambition marry? In their book Venus: The Dark Side, Roy Sheppard and Mary Cleary make it clear what most men can expect in a divorce today. Obviously, not every divorce will involve each and every horror outlined below, but every husband has to expect there is at least a 50/50 chance he will encounter at least one, if not more of the following problems:

• A court order barring him from living in his own home even if he owned or leased it prior to the marriage and her name is not on the title or lease. It is not uncommon for ex-husband's to end up, at best, sleeping on a friend's couch, or living in their cars, while having to continue paying the mortgage on what is now “her” house.

• False allegations of domestic violence are a very good way for her to get the house, the kids, the car, the bank accounts, and anything else she wants. No action will be taken against her for such malicious prosecution or for filing false reports. In fact, public funds will be used to help her prove the charges against her ex and to defend her against any countercharges he might foolishly bring against her.

• Accusations of misdemeanors and more serious shortcomings are simply because he was not the knight in shining armor she wanted him to be. Anything she may have done wrong will be seen as her response to his “unreasonable” and “abusive” behavior.

• When the domestic violence charges against him fail, and he wants joint or complete custody of the children, a common tactic is to accuse him of child or sexual abuse of the children. A very handy reference in such cases is Dean Tong's Elusive Innocence, and that book is better read before rather than after charges are filed.

• A restraining order forbidding him to come within 100 yards of his home or anyplace she might be. And she may stalk him with impunity in order to insure he violates the order. It is claimed that cell phones were invented to allow women to report restraining order violations.

• The restraining order or domestic violence charges will allow her to move her new (or the one he didn't know about) boy toy into the house before her ex has a chance to move out.

• Any personal property her ex leaves at the marital home will be destroyed, sold, or given to the Salvation Army. Whatever she believes her husband holds important or valuable in life are the first things she will dispose of or destroy.

• A ban on all contact with his children because the way he makes her feel undermines her ability to look after them, or some other such psychobabble nonsense.

• Experience is suggesting that in these kinds of divorce there is about a one-in-three chance one or more of her children were not sired by her husband. The restraining orders and keeping the kids away is often an attempt to prevent her ex from getting DNA paternity testing done.

• A letter from his wife, or her attorney, saying that the children no longer wish to see him because he “frightens” them or, more likely, her. Or his wife says the children do not love him any more. In such cases she will do her utmost to alienate them and drive their “father” away, all to often quite successfully. Her efforts will be especially vindictive if she knows, or suspects one or more of the children are not her husband's.

• The purpose of these games is to help her to gain an unfair advantage early in the proceedings, to throw her ex off-balance, to make him deeply and irrationally angry and frightened.

• Expect her to use shock and surprise. Often men react with utter disbelief that anyone could lie so brazenly and behave in such a disgusting way. Yet it happens, and it happens often.

• If she wants to play the victim, she's allowed too. Indeed, she will be encouraged and instructed on how to do so by her attorney, victims advocates, girlfriends, and workers at shelters for “battered” women which are publicly funded, i.e., he is taxed to pay for his own destruction.

• A demand to support her and “her” children for as many years as her lawyers can negotiate with a judge, including their lifetime if she or her attorney can convince the judge any of the children are disabled or handicapped in any way.

• Child support will probably be calculated on her lawyer's and the judge's estimation of what he is “capable” of earning, known as “imputed income,” not on what he actually earns. Rest assured that the imputed income will be considerably greater than actual income, especially after he lost his job and professional licenses because of all the criminal charges she has brought against him.

• If he does not, or more likely cannot pay the draconian amount of court-ordered child support he will go to prison, ofttimes even if DNA evidence conclusively shows he is not the father of his ex-wife's child.

• If one exists, she will claim that she was deceived into signing a pre-nuptial agreement. Lawyers often challenge pre-nups as a matter of course. The husband's lawyer has to defend this and his legal bill goes up. Attorneys thus profit going into and coming out of a marriage and he loses both ways.

• A deliberate demand for significantly more in a settlement than she expects to receive, so that he will negotiate it down to the figure she wanted all along, a Pyrrhic victory.

• Expect her to max out any and all credit cards and withdraw all the money in the bank and any joint accounts.

• She may default on loans, claim to be disabled, or file for bankruptcy. The judge will then likely make the husband pay for them.

• She may claim to have lost a lot of money gambling. The scam is to withdraw the money at a casino, turn it into gambling chips and change it back at a later time.

• Numerous court hearings will likely be required. This is intended to make life as difficult and as expensive as possible for her ex. She wants him to waste his money because, ultimately, she'll get what she wants anyway. so any wasted money hurts him at a time when he has the fewest funds.

One of the first lessons a man in a divorce must learn is to control how he reacts, no matter what happens or is said. Many men in these situations have great difficulty learning when to shut up. She is going to bad mouth her ex, lie, and perjure herself in court, and the judge will do absolutely nothing about it. A man's only defense against these outrages is realizing in advance that they will happen, learning to ignore them as best he can, and providing his attorney with a timeline and documentation of actual events so that at least his attorney knows the truth.

No matter what she says, does or claims, the man must not say or do anything to retaliate. Calling her names and making threats will result in charges of domestic violence and additional restraining orders. At a minimum, such actions will certainly prolong the divorce proceedings and increase the attorney fees. Remember that it is common for legal fees for a husband to exceed $100,000 in a divorce and $500,000 isn't unusual anymore.

If you haven't been through one of these nightmares likely you've read with unbelief this recitation of horrors. But no one “wins” in family court — not mom, not dad, not the children. The only winners in family court are the judges, the lawyers, the psychologists, the social workers, the child support workers, etc., etc. They are the only beneficiaries of the multi-billion dollar family destruction industry.

Surely your darling Cupcake would never do that to you!

But what happens when she enters the change of life, perimenopause, as she will inevitably do between the ages of 35 and 50 (average age, 43) unless she first has a hysterectomy (surgical menopause). There is no known means of predicting how a woman will react when her hormone levels begin to drop. “I'm out of estrogen and I've got a gun!” isn't much of a joke to many men and most divorces occur when women are in their 40's.

For those wishing to explore this topic in more detail I recommend Dr. Stephen Baskerville's excellent book Taken into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage, and the Family.

Realize, as many men have, that these horrors are easily avoided by the simple expedient of not getting married.

Then ask yourself how long our society can survive once families and marriage are completely destroyed?

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| Chapter 2 — Divorce, Twenty-First Century Plague |

| Next — Definitions Of Terms Used In Divorces |

Added June 20, 2008

Last modified 4/20/20