Answering Deti and Opus

Down below, Deti writes…

I’d be honored to be one of your scumbag friends in the legal profession.

As a scumbag academic, I think we’re both at about the same level of respectability. I’d bet you make a bit more money than I do, though my job is probably easier. Both of us are several strata beneath the average used-car salesman in terms of respectability. I can accept this, and it appears you can too; which is good, because I don’t want to give undue offense.

This is my cue to say that I am not qualified to give legal advice, do not have a law degree of any sort, have never been admitted to practice. Of course, I don’t know Deti personally, but I believe that he is a part of the profession (why would he lie about that?).

My personal interest began when I was a member of a forum called Happy Bachelors, and a casual reader of The Spearhead. I had never been married (though I came close once), and wanted to know just how bad things were. The guys who wrote articles on these sites told such terrible stories, and they seemed to mirror my father’s story. At the time, I was still working my way through a graduate program, at a bank. My hours were long, and my days off were valuable. At one point, around 2010, I bit the bullet. I made the excuse of a dentist’s appointment, wandered on down to the big courthouse downtown, rode the elevator up to the third floor, and sat through a few hours of the so-called “family courts.”

What I ended up seeing was so much worse than anything I had expected, that I left completely nonplussed. Not only could I not write about the things I had seen transpire, I couldn’t even speak or think too deeply about them.

I do take issue at least a little bit with the availability of court testimony. You can’t always look up trial testimony in a routine humdrum divorce on the internet, in fact most of the time you can’t do it. You would have to know one of the lawyers involved and get a copy of the trial transcript, or get it from the court by physically walking to the courthouse and getting the hard file out. Or if online, you have to subscribe to a service. And even then the testimony isn’t always transcribed, even if it is audio recorded or a court reporter takes it down.

Here is the name of a poor fellow who was added to the abstract of a divorce proceeding. I know he wasn’t a police officer or an attorney, because at the end of his name you’d see (LEO) or (ATY) if he were. I have no idea why he was a witness in a divorce trial, and this is a random trial I looked up and found in about ten minutes. To get the screenshot, I went back to the same county that gave me such a wonderful education (mentioned above) in 2010. I don’t live there any longer, but during that time I got fairly familiar with the court viewer. I don’t have any reason to disbelieve Deti if he tells me this is not the norm, but I ain’t lying about it being a possibility. I would be able to read this guy’s testimony if I mailed a letter, with the court case number on it, to the county in question. It would cost me very little (they suggest sending a blank check, inscribed with “not more than twenty dollars” to pay the copy fees).

I guess my point is that banging a married chick carries the potential for a lot of long-term consequences.

Then Brother Opus writes:

I thought Boxer, that no-fault, no-questions-asked divorce was now universal throughout the American states.

My understanding (I hope Deti will correct me if I’m wrong) is that the divorce will be granted regardless of what happens. However (and this is the detail which houses the devil) the amount of easy money that skank-ho princess will receive in the settlement is partly at the judge’s discretion. This makes divorce attorneys a lot of money, as they like to get the couple to air all the dirty laundry they possibly can in the process (while racking up billable hours). In theory, an innocent woman who had to deal with an unstable, violent, drunk of a husband will come out financially much better off, than a skank-ho wimminz, who put a nice man through hell. Of course, the paramour who had a good time with said wimminz will be called by both parties and their counsel, as he will be presented as instigator and witness to her depravity, in turn.