In divorce, as in all things, justice is not always served. The right result doesn’t always happen. Sometimes the bad guys (or gals) win, because the judge got it wrong or the case was poorly presented or just because things didn’t go quite right that day.
And on that day it seems as though the guilty go unpunished and the pillagers have vanquished yet again. On that day it seems as though there is no justice in the world and the nice guys have finished last.
But, 25 years into this family law practice and thousands upon thousands of cases later, I have watched as karma has taken its patient toll on the wrongdoers. I’ve observed the greedy possessors of the monkey’s paw, once rubbed, twice rubbed and piteously, thrice rubbed, beg that the un-earned, undeserved bounty set upon them be lifted from them, and with haste.
It is like, “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” except that instead of his rotting portrait, locked away in a room while he appears unscathed, the spouse whose dark soul has reaped some ill-gotten gain with the court’s blessing on that “judgment day,” starts, on that same day, a slow decline into ignomy, eventually to be reduced to a hideous and pitiable form of their once outwardly flawless self.
There are family law attorneys who view divorce as winner take all, cut all corners, obfuscate the facts and deceive the court as often as possible. They view their jobs as striving to take everything for their client that could possibly be taken. The rightness of it isn’t relevant.
But that is not the right way, indeed is the wrong way to practice. There is a right result and plenty of wrong results. To be in balance, the family needs a right result. That means that both spouses need the same right result. Without that right result, there will not be balance.
The gains of the party who fared better than they should are short lived. Undue bounty today turns to unequalled misery tomorrow.
Karma pays back. With usury interest.
The moral to the story? Seek justice. Nothing more. Nothing less.
For justice is what we all deserve.