Divorce Corp.

50% of US marriages end in a divorce.

Divorce is more than a 50 billion dollar a year industry.

This is why

People get married, they get divorced.

Since I started in 1949, when I passed a wedding,

I'd think to myself, "That's inventory."

The statistics are that more money passes

through family law court than all the other courts combined.

The more you charge, the more people are willing to pay,

because they feel that money equals skill.

You know, we aren't much different from any other

segment of society, in terms of money calling the shots.

I've had cases where they've spent $20 million in fees.

The real standard is how much money can we make

off these people. (laughs) That's the standard.

There's an expression that people can get as much justice

as they can afford and that most people cannot

afford any justice at all.

What's wrong with that? It's a business.

This is a business. This is not social services.

DIVORCE CORP.

People thought we were crazy,

getting married after just three months of dating,

but she had children from another marriage

and I had my son from a previous marriage

and we just thought, you know, this would be a great way

that we could combine our families

and raise all these children together

and we were like the Brady Bunch.

People called us the Byron Bunch. (laughs)

I just couldn't have been happier.

I've got this wonderful new wife and a new family

that we're starting together.

For whatever reason, it just didn't work out.

The biggest single reason for divorce in this country

is marriage.

Each year, about 4 million people get married in the US.

Although some people plan for months,

a basic marriage ceremony can be completed in ten minutes.

All that's really required is proof of age

and a $50 fee for a marriage license,

but getting divorced is far from easy.

Litigation lasted for over a year.

17 months for a 23 month marriage.

We were only married for a year.

We've been going through our divorce for a year and a half now.

I was married only four months

and my divorce has lasted now over six and a half years.

I'll be close to eight years.

Eight years.

Why is divorce so difficult?

Marriage in the US was once considered

a lifetime commitment.

A divorce was something that regular folks just didn't do.

Back then, divorce was considered dirty,

both for the people getting a divorce

and for the lawyers handling it.

There could not be a divorce unless there was fault.

Fault usually was either adultery or cruelty,

which was the word for abuse.

But the feminist movement of the 1960s began

to change the way Americans viewed women in the home

and in the workplace.

Activists considered marriage a low-paying job,

a trap that you couldn't escape.

Because proving fault created such a barrier to divorce,

in 1969 then governor of California, Ronald Reagan,

responded to increasing political pressure

by signing the first no-fault divorce act.

The concept quickly spread to most of the other 49 states.

The divorce revolution, the great increase in divorce

that happened in the 70s, happened in part

because of no-fault.

Although no-fault laws made it easier to file for divorce,

they didn't make it easier to complete a divorce.

Even if your spouse is in total agreement

and wants to end things on a happy note,

you need the approval of a family court,

presided over by a family court judge.

But family courts can be like the wild west,

because certain rights provided by the US Constitution

do not apply in family court.

The Constitution states that you're entitled to a trial

by jury and an attorney if you can't afford one.

All kinds of basic mechanisms that exist

in the criminal and civil courts in this country

don't exist in the family courts.

The family courts call themselves courts of equity,

not courts of law.

Although it's not written anywhere

in our federal or state constitutions,

family courts have given themselves a pass on juries.

Juries keep you keep you honest,

because they're 12 people who are going to make a decision,

based on how they look at things.

The judge is a jury of one.

In a family courtroom, the judge dominates the preceding.

In my world, where there's no jury,

you're the decision maker.

I'm more comfortable with that.

In family court, you don't have the right

to an attorney if you can't afford one.

Litigants have no right to counsel.

The right to an attorney did not apply.

and The Constitution of the United States did not apply.

One would think in a court where there is no jury

and where you're not given the right to an attorney,

our government would simplify the rules

and make it easy to represent yourself.

At a moment's notice, the judge will recite a civil code,

a procedure code, or a family local rule code or whatever.

You'll ask for a clarification and the judge won't give you

the clarification.

It always comes back as, "Well, you should know".

We use terms like "order to show cause",

"notice of motion".

They're not really user-friendly,

except for attorneys, who are familiar with them.

The court is not a friendly environment.

People are there without an attorney, for a judge,

they're an irritant, because they don't know the system,

they don't know the procedure,

they don't know how to do this, they don't know how to do that.

If you are a litigant who is acting

as his or her own attorney in a family court,

you can often turn the judge against you,

just by means of the way you behave,

your lack of familiarity with etiquette of the courtroom,

speaking out of turn.

They don't know what's going on

and there's nobody there to guide them.

When you ask for help within the courthouse,

Oh, I'm sorry,you have to go see the court facilitator over there

take a number and if your number doesn't come up in eight hours,

well, come back again and try over again.

So I called around the law library in Sacramento,

"Well, we can't give you that information."

Wow! What is this? This is like top secret, priest-class stuff.

The rules of the family courts are documented

in the family codes of each state,

but the size and complexity of these codes

is often overwhelming.

This is a civil code from when I entered law school in '46

The family law section in this whole book is right there.

That's it and this is thick paper.

This is the family code 2011.

Thin paper, small print. Look at this.

So why would our government make the family court

so complicated for the average citizen?

People often say a law is so complicated,

lawyers make law so complicated,

and Congress makes law or legislators make law

so complicated and there is some truth to that.

You know, there's the old saying from Charles Dickens

that "The business of the law is to make business for itself".

The more complicated and specialized family law is,

the more you need an attorney.

The lawyers are the legislators. They make the laws.

The more laws and the more complex they are,

the more we have to pay them.

With all this complexity, it seems like you have no choice

but to hire a lawyer, but this isn't some huge legal battle

between two massive corporations, this is divorce.

These lawyers can't cost that much money.

The rate was $600 an hour.

In the Gold Coast, Fairfield County, it's $650 an hour.

I'm not saying I'm worth $700 an hour,

but that's what I charge.

My rate is $950 an hour.

That's for one lawyer.

They had assistants, people filing.

I was being charged for multiple people working at the firm.

They said, "Tell me your hourly rate".

I add it all together and I said to the litigants,

"I want you to know the cost is $27,000 an hour."

I said, "After two hours, we will have spent more

than most people in this courthouse make in a year".

I have to work 25 hours to pay for one hour

of an arrogant attorney's time. 25 to 1.

It comes down to, always, money.

With so much money on the line,

why don't couples force their lawyers

to finish divorces quickly?

It actually has to do with the financial setup of a marriage.

When you file for divorce, money from both parties is looked on

as a shared pool of cash that's available

for either side's attorney to spend.

The first thing that lawyers do is find out exactly

how much money you and your spouse have.

You fill out an income expense declaration, basically,

just to find out how much you're worth.

What your assets are, what you've encumbered.

How much you have in the bank,

how many cars you have.

They want an entire picture of all your financial assets,

because they want to size you up.

Once the lawyers find out how much each side is worth,

they tempt their clients with the prospect

of getting more money through fighting.

It has become about winning and that's both