A $20 million divorce once fell apart over a $49 toaster oven. A man once tried to claim a couch because his wife caught him cheating on it. A woman had a tanning bed relocated from the marital home to her hotel room mid-divorce. These are real cases. Real attorneys. Real people who looked across a conference table and decided this was the hill to die on.
Divorce attorneys who spoke with the New York Post say the stranger the demand, the more contentious the split underneath it.
“The most common fights I see are over stupid, inexpensive items,” attorney Paul Talbert said. “Spouses will get into these knock-down, drag-out arguments over old mugs, pots and pans, cheap dining room tables, and couches worth next to nothing.”
Divorce Attorneys Shared the Pettiest Items Couples Have Gone to War Over, Including a $49 Toaster Oven
New York divorce lawyer James Sexton keeps a sign in his conference room that reads “It’s not about the pasta,” borrowed from the Bravo-verse, and apparently the truest thing in his entire practice. “It’s very often not about pasta,” he told the Post. “It’s about the thing under the thing.”
Sarah Jacobs, a New Jersey divorce attorney, watched a yellowed sixth-grade yearbook become the subject of heated legal letters after it went missing during proceedings. A separate client fought over a wooden spoon that had never once been used, on the grounds that it was a family heirloom. Nicole Sodoma’s standout case involved a half-full bottle of dish soap under the kitchen sink. “It’s not about the object,” Sodoma said. “It’s about what it represents, or the outsized importance it takes on when your sense of fairness is being challenged.”
Pets are a category of disaster all their own. Sexton had a client worth $400 million sit across from him and say, without irony, “The dog is the ball.” Elsewhere, a couple spent more time in litigation over a box turtle found on a camping trip than over their horses, valued collectively at more than $1 million. A California attorney described a case where both parties were far more invested in keeping the golden retriever than in figuring out who got the kids.
The control provisions are their own hall of fame. Sexton has seen clauses banning an ex from a restaurant they used to share, blocking them from bringing up their former spouse with a specific cousin, and requiring approval before getting serious with someone new. In one case, Duane Cocker handled, the last unresolved item in an entire divorce was a $40 shelf from Walmart. One spouse wanted to keep it. The other wanted to burn it.
Attorney Katherine Miller calls the underlying force the “chump factor,” the fear of looking like the one who got played. Once that’s in play, the toaster oven becomes a matter of principle, and a $20 million settlement becomes very, very small.
The post Divorce Attorneys Just Revealed the Wildest Settlement Demands Ever, Including a Toaster Oven That Tanked a $20M Divorce appeared first on VICE.
