Divorce Lawyers Review Divorce Scenes in TV & Movies

A female client as my client was leaving

our conference room at one point

when we still had wooden doors, picked up her shoe

and with a stiletto heel and hucked it

and it actually stuck in the door.

Luckily didn't hit the client.

It was a lot more action in family law

back in the day.

Now it's a little bit toned down.

I'm Julia.

And I'm Laura.

And we're divorce attorneys.

And today we're going to be reviewing movies

and TV shows about divorce.

Here's the scene from the TV show All's Fair.

Grace, you might [chill music]

wanna look away for this next one.

[remote controller beeping]

[Grace gasps] [elevator dings]

For those of you assembled who don't understand

what you're looking at, if your brain can't quite

compute it, let me break it down for you.

This is Mr. Lionel and full fantastic fetish mode,

dressed as a filthy piggy piggy.

My initial thoughts are this happens to me all the time.

[Laura laughs]

Extortion has become a real cause celeb for

the family law realm.

And when you're dealing with people that are high net worth

or familiar celebrities, it's something unfortunately

that we have to deal with a lot.

Whereas the sexual peccadillos of people

who are just normal Joes don't really come

to the surface and they don't have to worry about

this kind of situation happening.

Unfortunately, a pretty common negotiation tactic

in a divorce.

This particular scene was in reference

to Allura talking about how she wasn't afraid

to litigate the prenuptial agreement.

And so what they're using is this evidence as a way

to get the husband to negotiate a more fair settlement

for the wife who you know signed away all of her rights.

So again, I think that it's a really,

in some ways feels unfair in certain circumstances,

but can be a really strategic negotiation tactic.

My eyes bled a little when I got a gander at this piece

of high art, but that's just me.

[chill music]

Mr. Lee, there will be a day when what you're feeling

right now will just be a memory.

You sign the paper in front of you in that day is here now,

but if you choose to keep fighting Grace,

then that feeling is-

Just the tip.

It'll be so much more painful the deeper we go.

[table bangs] Enough! This is sick.

Well let's also keep in mind this evidence in this scene

would not have been admissible in a court of law.

That's why they've kind of taken it outta that realm.

And what they're doing is saying,

we're gonna go public with this.

And so you don't need admissible evidence to give it

to a media source.

It's also not customary to keep this kind

of evidence away from your client.

I don't think either of us would ever

have that surprise tactic.

We would say to our client, we have this picture,

we're going to show it in the conference room

as we're negotiating.

Are you cool with that?

I can imagine certain clients being

very upset that this was coming out

or that we were using this.

On the flip side, there are many times

where a client will want you to be the mouthpiece,

the advocate, and just go, I had no idea.

But I don't think that any good attorney would

do a surprise tactic.

You could see that she was surprised.

That probably wouldn't happen.

We are done.

And the first thing that I'm going to do

is file an official report to the state bar

and to the attorney

general's office. No one's reporting

anything to anyone anywhere.

[Speaker] Lionel. Let's go.

This is unconscionable, un [beep] conscionable.

I'd say 85% of the ones in our firm settle before.

We're really resolution oriented.

As I said, it's very expensive to go to trial.

Sometimes we'll have kind of smaller mini hearings.

They're called request for orders.

We'll go in to get temporary support,

we'll go in to figure out where a child is going to school

or summer camp, you know, temporary custody things,

temporary support things, temporary use of homes.

But the full blown trial on all issues?

That usually takes more than a week or so.

And it is prohibitively expensive,

takes a very long time to work up to.

And most people, again, especially in a 50 50 estate

where you're really looking at community property,

there's not that many complex complicated issues

that you would need to try.

And so most things end up settling.

I think All's Fair is a really artful representation of

what it's like to be a family law attorney,

specifically a divorce attorney.

And it's fantasy, it's fun, it's dramatic.

The outfits are beautiful.

Everybody's having a glass of champagne

after they win a case. And-

I do that.

[both laugh]

They got that from me. No.

That's real. [Julia laughs]

[Laura] This scene is from the movie Marriage Story.

No, you can be an asshole and I can get really pissed off

and I'll call him on being an asshole.

I'm gonna stop you there.

When you do this for real, don't ever say that.

People don't accept mothers who drink too much wine

and yell at their child and call him an asshole.

I get it. I do it too.

We definitely will instruct clients

not to say certain things,

not to write certain things in text messages or emails.

Generally they will have to do

with being unnecessarily volatile,

angry, threatening.

We've seen a big rise in domestic violence allegations,

so we don't wanna see those.

We really try to instruct parties that if they're going

to have that kind of emotion,

which one does when they get divorced, do it with friends,

family members, mental health professionals.

Don't do it aimed at your about to be ex.

And I think Laura, in this particular scene,

Scarlett Johansson, is explaining

that she occasionally calls her husband an asshole, right?

And I think that's not gonna shock a family court judge.

I think where you really need to caution clients

is exactly what you said.

When they start to put things in writing,

when it's really disparaging language that again starts

to border on abuse,

that's when it can be used in a divorce action

and be really detrimental.

We can accept an imperfect dad.

Let's face it, the idea of a good father

was only invented like 30 years ago.

Before that, fathers were expected to be silent

and absent and unreliable [hand smacks]

and selfish.

And we can all say we want them to be different,

but on some basic level we accept them.

Oftentimes when clients first start their divorce process,

it's not immediate litigation, right?

There has to be a very real reason

to immediately file a complaint

for divorce which commences litigation.

Oftentimes it's a process of beginning with negotiation

or even mediation.

And I think really good family law attorneys will often

recommend that because if you can try and negotiate

or mediate, it's gonna save the parties a lot of time

and money and emotional turmoil.

Litigation is expensive.

Prepping them for litigation is expensive.

'Cause you have to put your witness on whether

it's at a deposition or testimony in a courtroom

and you have to make them as credible

and believable in whatever the narrative that you're trying

to convince your judicial officer of.

And so that takes time.

And the dad isn't there.

He didn't even do the fucking.

God is in heaven.

God is the father and God didn't show up.

So you have to be perfect

and Charlie can be a fuck up and it doesn't matter.

You will always be held to a different higher standard

and it's fucked up.

But that is the way it is.

This scene, it's brilliant.

I've always felt that, but it is somewhat incendiary.

Like I didn't get the sense

that the Scarlett Johansson character was feeling

nearly as bad about being a mother

as Nora Fanshaw, Laura Dern's character,

was making her feel.

And I fear sometimes family law attorneys will

stir things up a little bit more.

It's an amazing monologue.

But the only thing in it that I really agree with is

at the end where she says, and that's just how it is.

Because that is something we say to clients all the time.

This is- this is not fair, this is not good.

But that's just how it is.

Now let's move on with how we resolve it.

Yeah, I've never lectured my clients on theology.

No. [both laugh]

But it's so good. [both laugh]

It's very dramatic for a movie.

[Julia laughs]

I know Laura and she actually called me

and said, you're gonna be offended by this character.

It's not you.

It's a conglomeration of a lot

of different family law attorneys that we all discussed.

And so please don't be offended.

She's a little bit more aggressive than you are.

And the other attorneys you may recognize

that are in the movie as you know,

people that we've taken things from as well.

But you may actually be more like the Alan Alda character,

which is who was really settlement oriented

and stuff like that.

And I said, okay, I'll take it

with a grain of salt. [Laura laughs]

This is a scene from 1979's Kramer versus Kramer.

[Judge] Were you a failure at the one most important

personal relationship in your life?

It did not succeed.

Not it Mrs. Kramer, you, were you a failure

at the one most important relationship in your life?

Were you!

The attorney's questioning on cross-examination

of one of the parties is not accurate

because first and foremost, in today's age

and now this movie's from the seventies,

but we have no fault divorce.

And what that means is you don't have

to prove a fault ground for the reason for the divorce,

whether it be alienation of affection or infidelity.

I agree with that.

And do you notice how Dustin Hoffman's kind of shaking his

head like his divorce lawyer's even gone too far here.

And I think that maybe back in the seventies was

something that family law attorneys would employ

to be the bad guy.

That doesn't happen anymore.

One of the most important things about this scene

is we don't, and most of the people who do

what we do, do not see divorce as a failure.

We don't.

We see it as an ending to one type of a relationship

with a family member and then a moving on to a next chapter.

So this continued asking her if it was a failure

and she was a failure.

It's just not something that you would hear these days.

And again that dovetails into the fault

because we do have no fault in most states now.

But I did think it was interesting,

both of them are such great actors

and so when he's shaking his head, that does happen often

where you've got one party kind of saying, Uncle,

this, you've gone too far.

And if I were representing her in addition

to saying irrelevant, which it is,

the judge probably didn't make the right call there,

you would say argumentative.

You're not supposed to beat up on a witness.

That makes zero sense.

And it's not the most realistic portrayal

but I am told things were a little differently in the

70's and '79.

I agree.

And like nobody wants an attorney who's all bent

out of shape over their divorce, right?

Like you don't wanna go to the doctor

and the doctor starts crying and saying you have cancer,

I don't know what to do.

You know, you want [Laura laughs]

an attorney who's dispassionate

and who can strategize and take control of the situation

and make you feel confident that the advice

that they're giving you is the right path forward.

[Laura] Next we have a scene from The Roses.

What is happening?

Eleanor, you cannot bring in the dog.

It's my emotional support animal.

It's a dangerous dog. [dog barks]

Only when it feels unthreatened.

It's a bullshit tactic and you know it.

[file folders flipping]

Isn't this a bit of a weird cliche?

You know, the ferocious divorce life thing?

Well, I can't believe people say that

I'm like the Laura Durn character.

I wanna be like the Allison Janney character.

[both laugh]

Or the dog maybe.

Look I just want the house.

Don't talk.

Oh you're not having the house.

Don't talk.

Okay, well that seems like in our ballpark

so it's- Okay, wait.

My client designed and built that award-winning fucking

house that your sociopathic whore hole of a client

now claims as hers.

Barry! Barry!

Whore hole?

What? I though the lawyers were being mean.

Isn't that- no? It's part of the theater. Please don't talk.

It's very undermining.

Let's be a little bit more British about this.

Polite, courteous, rational.

Yeah, it's not like it's in our blood to pillage, murder

and enslave other cultures to get what we want.

Don't talk. Don't talk.

I think what is accurate about the scene is

that Theo is really emotionally attached to the house.

He designed it.

And it's really common for individuals divorcing

to become really emotionally attached to their home.

It's oftentimes also their largest asset.

What is important for clients to remember is that just

because you are emotionally attached to a home,

maybe you designed it, maybe you raised your kids there.

It doesn't give you a greater right to

that asset in division.

It's a hard thing for a lot of people to accept.

One thing that I do find really interesting is when each

of the family law attorneys keep saying to their client,

don't talk, don't talk. [Julia chuckles]

There is a bit of a dog and pony show that's put on

sometimes and I'll have to take a client out and say,

you just know that he's doing this for his client, right?

Like he, the client needs to see it.

We're doing a performance here,

that's fine, but we'll get down to it.

And sometimes my clients say, well why don't you do that?

And I said, I don't do that.

I mean I just don't, that's not how I roll.

That's not how we do it. It usually works out, it's fine.

But there are times when sometimes your client

is talking too much.

And so that don't talk I found to be a very interesting

line that kept being repeated throughout the scene.

The last generation of family law attorneys,

when I started practicing law, there were a lot of old guys

that did it and there was a lot of yelling

and there was a lot of table banging

and there was a lot of, we don't do that as much anymore.

'Cause again, it's theatrics

and this is a business transaction.

I have had a family law attorney

and I still dunno how he did this.

This was like ninja.

This was a guy that had to be in his seventies at the time

and he was overweight.

He jumped up onto our conference room table this guy.

I thought he was gonna have a heart attack.

I had another, not the lawyer, but the client,

pick up one of the conference room chairs

and throw it against the window.

And a female client, as my client was leaving our conference

room at one point when we still had wooden doors,

picked up her shoe and with a stiletto heel and hucked it

and it actually stuck in the door.

Luckily didn't hit the client.

It- there used to be, there was a lot more action

in family law back in the day.

Now it's a little

bit toned down. [Laura laughs]

[Staff] For those moments, is everything on the record?

Only if you have a court reporter and or a videographer.

And this one, there wasn't.

And my guess is they wouldn't have been behaving

that way if there were.

But there's often a court reporter writing everything down.

And so yeah, it's on the record.

If you start a deposition

and somebody's kind of, you know,

sometimes if they don't have a videographer,

someone will say, please let the record show that

Mr So-and-So is making faces at my client.

Or the record will reflect that so and so slammed the table

because it doesn't- it's not like a script

where it says slams the table.

So you actually have to put it into the record.

Breath smells like an atrophy that's been in piss

all night.

Three, the way he laughs is like a diseased dog's

death rattle.

Four, his bad father.

A fart lover, a complete dead shit, a victim, a loser,

a wanker.

Number ten, Theo, what a cunt.

[Benedict laughs]

[both laugh]

That wasn't the task. Those are things you hate.

I think the scene is very realistic.

I always say there's a fine line between

love and hate and a divorce.

And you see that here.

I remember this one client, he spoke so passionately

and so angrily about his soon to be ex-wife,

but I knew that the minute she said, Move back in,

let's get back together, he would've done it.

And I think that's the case for a lot of people.

Not them.

I feel like they're getting back together.

No way. No?

No. But they had a moment.

They, you can still have a moment

with somebody even if you're not with them anymore.

But haven't you seen clients get back together?

Totally. Just not them.

[Julia laughs]

[Laura] Next up we've got one of my favorite scenes

from Wedding Crashers.

Do you have a band?

[Owen] Yeah. Good or bad?

Who gives a [beep]?

It's a great band, it's a bad band, it's like pizza, baby.

It's good no matter what, there's music in the air.

You get to play and shout. Yeah.

[both singing]

♪ Shout now, jump up and shout now ♪

I think now I've decided everyone says like

who really portrays you the best as a family lawyer?

It's Vince Vaughn. He's so good.

And I've done some mediation as the mediator

and you really do have to think outside of the box,

do this dance to figure out how to get people back

to a place where they're not hating the other person.

I think they do a great job of it in this.

It's funny, but like you see the level of hatred

between these two people.

And when she says, and my best friend

and I say this to each other all the time,

you shut your mouth when you're talking to me.

It shows how irrational,

it shows how people don't make any sense.

And when the two mediators kind of get them to a place

where they're willing to think

and they're kind of look at each other

and they're like, yeah, maybe that's right.

And it's just so funny. It is.

It is thinking outside of the box in favor of resolution.

And I love it.

I love this scene because they're talking about

the frequent flyer miles

and that's ultimately what they're fighting over.

It's often not about the asset

and it's really about control, right?

I've had clients fight.

I remember this one client spent like $10,000 fighting over

sparkly wall art from TJ Maxx, no shade to TJ Maxx,

but the cost benefit analysis just wasn't there.

And I think this is kind of an example of that, right?

Vince Vaughn says, you know, let's get this done.

Let's not spend another year fighting over this.

And it's a perfect example of the emotions tied

to an asset in the divorce.

I think divorce mediation is really common

in a really healthy way to come

to a mutually satisfactory resolution in a divorce.

And a lot of times when clients would come in,

divorce mediation is something that I would recommend

initially if it seemed like both parties were willing

to actively participate.

And what we see here is attorney assisted mediation.

So they've both got attorneys and they've got the mediators.

A lot of times we'll use retired judges as mediators

so they really know what they're doing.

They sat on the bench for a number of years,

now they're retired and they're kind of doing this

as like a side gig.

They're probably making more than they were making when they

were sitting on the bench.

But they know their stuff, they know what a judge would do.

So they can say, if this doesn't settle here today,

you're going downtown.

Guys, the real enemy here is the institution of marriage.

It's not realistic. It's crazy.

I think the institution of marriage can be realistic

if you approach it realistically.

Like what, HelloPrenup would have you do in terms of

educating yourself about the laws in your state

and how you want your marriage to be governed.

Back in the day when people only lived till their thirties

or forties, till death do us part was a lot more realistic

than it is today when we're living to our

nineties and hundreds.

We go through so many different phases and evolutions

in life, which is why I don't think that divorce

is a failure.

And the age of marriage in the United States is now

34 and a half on average.

The average age of a HelloPrenup user is 37, right?

So people are getting married later in life.

They're approaching marriage very differently.

And they're having those important conversations

and communication prior to marriage about

what they want their lives to look like.

[Laura] This is another scene from Marriage Story.

If we start from a place of reasonable

and they start from a place of crazy, when we settle,

we'll be somewhere between reasonable and crazy.

Which is still crazy.

Half of crazy is crazy.

[Speaker] You know what people say.

Criminal lawyers see bad people at their best,

divorce lawyers see good people at their worst.

There was three or four lines from here

that are definitely things that we say.

The thing about criminal law attorneys seeing bad people on

their best behavior and family law attorneys seeing

good people on their worst behavior,

the crazy in the middle thing.

You know, I've got attorneys that will say,

well if you give us a 100 million dollars,

and I'm like a 100 million dollars?

And they basically, they just want, you know, 10 million.

So if you get half of crazy in between, reasonable is still,

it's those kinds of things that are just said

and they probably give family law attorneys a bad name,

but it's not super inaccurate as to how things used to be.

And I think in certain instances you can start

with reasonable and then start

to turn up the heat if you need to.

But if you start with crazy,

oftentimes you're gonna get crazy back, right?

The best negotiation tactic is often the threat

of litigation, not the act of litigation.

Once you've already started that nuclear war,

it's really hard to pull back from.

Here's a scene from the movie Law of Attraction.

Your Honor, I would like to move for continuance.

It's come to our attention that discrepancies exist

concerning the reporting of assets,

namely several valuable works of art.

May I interject, your honor?

You mean paintings, sculpture, that kind of stuff?

Exactly.

A motion for a continuance is when you need more time.

You basically come in and say,

I'm not prepared to go forward today for whatever reason.

So I need a continuance, meaning we kick it out

for 30 to 60 days.

I'd like to move for a continuance.

I have just been retained as Mr. Harrison's counsel

and I haven't had time to fully research

all aspects of the case.

For instance, I have

a receipt here [papers shuffling]

for six 28 day stays at the Piney Woods Rehab Center

for Mrs. Harrison's treatment

of sexual addiction. [paper rustling]

It's not fun.

And we definitely say to our clients,

you must tell us the good, the bad, the ugly.

I wanna know everything because

otherwise we're gonna be surprised.

And it's gonna look like not only did you withhold it from

the court, but you withheld it from me, which is really bad.

So we usually try to make that not occur.

Now I would always try and remind clients,

attorney client privilege means

that whatever they tell their attorney is privileged

information and not discoverable.

A lot of times people don't disclose everything

to their attorney because they're afraid it's gonna come out

in some way that they don't expect.

Privilege is what keeps that information confidential.

[Laura] And this is a scene from the show

Sex and the City.

Mrs. MacDougal is willing to offer her son's collection

of mint condition Silver buffalo coins.

Can we get off the coin collection?

She's not gonna settle for a coin collection.

Well, according to the prenup-

This is ridiculous, Trey gave me that apartment.

[phone ringing]

She gave him her word.

Til death do them apart.

Bunny, if you have something to say to me-

Fine, I shall.

I strongly recommend

we focus- Allen, hush.

That wasn't very realistic.

[both laugh]

I've never seen that happen.

I've seen parents get involved in the negotiation

during a prenup more than I have during a divorce.

And that's oftentimes because they're the ones

that are pushing the prenup.

They're the ones that are trying to protect whatever

inheritance their adult child is going

to receive in the future.

But I have not seen that in a divorce.

And in fact, you know, do I think it's legally possible?

Yes, but I think it's very important for the attorney

to have a direct line of communication with their client.

Now there was one particular instance I could think

of when a client was institutionalized

and so the only way to communicate with her was in some ways

by proxy through her nurse until she got out

and that was a very difficult situation

and not a common one.

Yeah, your proxy is your lawyer.

I mean, Bunny didn't need to be there.

She had no business being there.

Bunny had no business. I guess it was her apartment

though, so maybe that's why.

In which case, he shouldn't have been giving it away.

What was he doing in Scotland and didn't they split up

because he wasn't having sex with her?

Yes. Mm-hmm.

Does Bunny know that? I don't think she does.

Just saying.

Yeah, I don't think Bunny knows

the whole story. [Laura laughs]

I think the depiction of family law attorneys

in film and TV is really dramatic.

It's really fun.

It makes every day look like it's action packed

when that's not reality.

Most of the time divorce is slow moving,

it's just not as entertaining as they make it look on TV.

[Julia laughs]

The divorce rate in the United States remains at about 50%

and knowing that people are getting married later,

entering into prenups more frequently,

I like that at least our country

but I know other ones as well,

are becoming more hip to the process of marriage

and then the end of those marriages, if need be.