Divorce Lawyers Review Divorce Scenes in TV & Movies

Vanity Fair

Divorce attorneys Julia Rodgers and Laura A Wasser review divorce scenes from TV and movies including All's Fair, Marriage Story, Wedding Crashers, The Roses, and more.   Director: Jameer Pond Director of Photography: Riccardo Mejia Editor: Lika Kumoi Talent: Julia Rodgers; Laura Wasser Producer: Emebeit Beyene Line Producer: Natasha Soto-Albors Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi Camera Operator: Shay Eberle-Gunst Gaffer: Vishesh Pires Audio Engineer: Gray Thomas Sowers Production Assistant: Fernando Barajas Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin Post Production Coordinator: Stella Shortino Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo Additional Editor: Sam DiVito Assistant Editor: Andy Morell Senior Manager; Creative Development: Hannah Pak Director; Creative Development: Claire Buss Director; Content Production: Lane Williamson Senior Director; Programming &amp; Development: Ella Ruffel Executive Producer: Ruhiya Nuruddin

Transcript

00:00A female client, as my client was leaving our conference room at one point when we still had

00:05wooden doors, picked up her shoe and with a stiletto heel and hucked it and it actually

00:10stuck in the door. Luckily, it didn't hit the client. There was a lot more action in family

00:14law back in the day. Now it's a little bit toned down. I'm Julia. And I'm Laura. And we're divorce

00:19attorneys. And today we're going to be reviewing movies and TV shows about divorce. Here's a scene

00:24from the TV show, All's Fair. Grace, you might want to look away for this next one.

00:35For those of you assembled who don't understand what you're looking at, if your brain can't quite

00:40compute it, let me break it down for you. This is Mr. Lionel in full fantastic fetish mode,

00:47dressed as a filthy piggy piggy. My initial thoughts are this happens to me all the time.

00:54Extortion has become a real cause celeb for the family law realm. And when you're dealing with

01:01people that are high net worth or familiar celebrities, it's something unfortunately that

01:08we have to deal with a lot. Whereas the sexual peccadilloes of people who are just normal Joes

01:15don't really come to the surface and they don't have to worry about this kind of situation happening.

01:22Unfortunately, a pretty common negotiation tactic in a divorce. This particular scene was in reference

01:29to Allura talking about how she wasn't afraid to litigate the prenuptial agreement. And so what

01:34they're using is this evidence is a way to get the husband to negotiate a more fair settlement for the

01:43wife who signed away all of her rights. So again, I think that it's a really, in some ways feels unfair

01:50in certain circumstances, but can be a really strategic negotiation tactic.

01:55My eyes bled a little when I got a gander at this piece of high art, but that's just me.

02:02Mr. Lee, there will be a day when what you're feeling right now will just be a memory.

02:06You signed the paper in front of you and that day is here now. But if you choose to keep fighting,

02:11Grace, then that feeling is just the tip. It'll be so much more painful the deeper we go.

02:19Enough! This is sick.

02:21Well, let's also keep in mind this evidence in the scene would not have been admissible in a court of

02:27law. That's why they've kind of taken it out of that realm. And what they're doing is saying,

02:31we're going to go public with this. And so you don't need admissible evidence to give it to a media

02:37source. It's also not customary to keep this kind of evidence away from your client. I don't think

02:43either of us would ever have that surprise tactic. We would say to our client, we have this picture,

02:49we're going to show it in the conference room as we're negotiating. Are you cool with that?

02:54I can imagine certain clients being very upset that this was coming out or that we were using this.

03:00On the flip side, there are many times where a client will want you to be the mouthpiece,

03:06the advocate, and just go, I had no idea. But I don't think that any good attorney would do a

03:12surprise tactic. You could see that she was surprised. That probably wouldn't happen.

03:17We are done. And the first thing that I'm going to do is file an official report to the state bar

03:23and to the attorney general's office. No one's reporting anything to anyone anywhere.

03:27Lionel, let's go. This is unconscionable, unconscionable.

03:33I'd say 85% of the ones in our firm settled before. We're really resolution oriented. As I said,

03:39it's very expensive to go to trial. Sometimes we'll have kind of smaller mini hearings. They're called

03:45requests for orders. We'll go in to get temporary support. We'll go in to figure out where a child is

03:51going to school or summer camp. You know, temporary custody things, temporary support things, temporary

03:57use of homes. But the full-blown trial on all issues, that usually takes more than a week or so,

04:04and it is prohibitively expensive. It takes a very long time to work up to. And most people,

04:10again, especially in a 50-50 state where you're really looking at community property,

04:16there's not that many complex, complicated issues that you would need to try. And so most things

04:23end up settling. I think All's Fair is a really artful representation of what it's like to be a

04:28family law attorney, specifically a divorce attorney. And it's fantasy. It's fun. It's dramatic.

04:34The outfits are beautiful. Everybody's having a glass of champagne after they win a case.

04:39I do that. They got that from me. That's real.

04:45This scene is from the movie Marriage Story. You know, he can be an asshole. And I can get

04:53really pissed off. And I'll call him on being an asshole. I'm going to stop you there. When you do

04:57this for real, don't ever say that. People don't accept mothers who drink too much wine and yell at

05:02their child and call him an asshole. I get it. I do it too. We definitely will instruct clients not to

05:08say certain things, not to write certain things in text messages or emails. Generally, they will have

05:15to do with being unnecessarily volatile, angry, threatening. We've seen a big rise in domestic

05:24violence allegations, so we don't want to see those. We really try to instruct parties that if

05:29they're going to have that kind of emotion, which one does when they get divorced, do it with friends,

05:35family members, mental health professionals. Don't do it aimed at your about-to-be ex.

05:41And I think, Laura, in this particular scene, Scarlett Johansson is explaining that she occasionally

05:46calls her husband an asshole, right? And I think that's not going to shock a family court judge.

05:51I think where you really need to caution clients is exactly what you said. When they start to put

05:55things in writing, when it's really disparaging language that, again, starts to border on abuse,

06:01that's when it can be used in divorce action and be really detrimental. We can accept an imperfect

06:07dad. Let's face it, the idea of a good father was only invented like 30 years ago. Before that,

06:14fathers were expected to be silent and absent and unreliable and selfish. And we can all say we want

06:21them to be different. But on some basic level, we accept them. Oftentimes when clients first start their

06:27divorce process, it's not immediate litigation, right? There has to be a very real reason to

06:33immediately file a complaint for divorce, which commences litigation. Oftentimes, it's a process

06:38of beginning with negotiation or even mediation. And I think really good family law attorneys will

06:43often recommend that because if you can try and negotiate or mediate, it's going to save the parties

06:48a lot of time and money and emotional turmoil. Litigation is expensive. Prepping them for litigation

06:57is expensive because you have to put your witness on whether it's at a deposition or testimony in a

07:01courtroom. And you have to make them as credible and believable in whatever the narrative that you're

07:07trying to convince your judicial officer of. And so that takes time. And the dad isn't there. He didn't

07:13even do the fucking. God is in heaven. God is the father and God didn't show up. So you have to be

07:22perfect and Charlie can be a fuck up and it doesn't matter. You will always be held to a different,

07:28higher standard. And it's fucked up. But that is the way it is. This scene, it's brilliant. I've always

07:36felt that. But it is somewhat incendiary. Like, I didn't get the sense that the Scarlett Johansson

07:42character was feeling nearly as bad about being a mother as Nora Fanshawe, Laura Dern's character,

07:49always making her feel. And I fear sometimes family law attorneys will stir things up a little bit

07:55more. It's an amazing monologue. But the only thing in it that I really agree with is at the end where

07:59she says, and that's just how it is. Because that is something we say to clients all the time. This is,

08:04this is not fair. This is not good. But that's just how it is. Now let's move on with how we resolve it.

08:09Yeah, I've never lectured my clients on theology. No. But it's so good.

08:14It's very dramatic for a movie. I know Laura, and she actually called me and said,

08:22you're going to be offended by this character. It's not you. It's a conglomeration of a lot of

08:28different family law attorneys that we all discussed. And so please don't be offended.

08:34She's a little bit more aggressive than you are. And the other attorneys you may recognize that are in

08:39the movie as, you know, people that we've taken things from as well. But you may actually be more

08:43like the Alan Alda character, which is who was really settlement oriented and stuff like that.

08:47And I said, okay, I'll take it with a grain of salt. This is a scene from 1979's Kramer vs. Kramer.

08:55Were you a failure at the one most important personal relationship in your life?

09:00It did not succeed. Not it, Mrs. Kramer. You. Were you a failure at the one most important

09:11relationship in your life? Were you?

09:19The attorney's questioning on cross-examination of one of the parties is not accurate because first and

09:25foremost, in today's age, and now this movie's from the 70s, but we have no-fault divorce. And what

09:31that means is you don't have to prove a fault ground for the reason for the divorce, whether it be

09:37alienation of affection or infidelity. I agree with that. And do you notice how

09:44Dustin Hoffman's kind of shaking his head? Like, his divorce lawyer's even gone too far here. And I

09:50think that maybe back in the 70s was something that family law attorneys would employ to be the bad

09:57guy. That doesn't happen anymore. One of the most important things about this scene is we don't,

10:03and most of the people who do what we do, do not see divorce as a failure. We don't. We see it as an

10:10ending to one type of a relationship with a family member and then a moving on to a next chapter. So this

10:16continued asking her if it was a failure and she was a failure, it's just not something that you

10:23would hear these days. And again, that dovetails into the fault because we do have no fault in most

10:29states now. But I did think it was interesting, both of them are such great actors. And so when

10:33he's shaking his head, that does happen often where you've got one party kind of saying, uncle,

10:39you've gone too far. And if I were representing her, in addition to saying irrelevant, which it is,

10:45the judge probably didn't make the right call there, you would say argumentative. You're not

10:49supposed to beat up on a witness. That makes zero sense. And it's not the most realistic portrayal,

10:54but I am told things were a little differently in the 70s, in 79. I agree. And like nobody wants an

11:01attorney who's all bent out of shape over their divorce, right? Like you don't want to go to the

11:05doctor and the doctor starts crying and saying, you have cancer, I don't know what to do. You know,

11:10you want an attorney who's dispassionate and who can strategize and take control of the situation and

11:16make you feel confident that the advice that they're giving you is the right path forward.

11:21Next, we have a scene from the roses. What is happening? Eleanor, you cannot bring in the dog.

11:27It's my emotional support animal. It's a dangerous dog. Only when it feels I'm threatened. It's a

11:32bullshit tactic and you know it. Isn't this a bit of a weird cliche? You know, the ferocious divorce

11:41life thing? Well, I can't believe people say that I'm like the Laura Dern character. I want to

11:46be like the Allison Janney character. Or the dog, maybe. Look, I just want the house. Don't talk.

11:52Oh, you're not having the house. Don't talk. Okay, well, that seems like in our ballpark.

11:56Okay, my client designed and built that award-winning fucking house that your sociopathic

12:04whorehole of a client now claims is hers. Sorry. Whorehole? What? I thought the lawyers

12:09were being mean. Isn't that? No? It's part of the theater. Please don't talk. It's very undermining.

12:14Let's be a little bit more British about this. Polite, courteous, rational. Yeah,

12:17it's not like it's in our blood to pillage, murder, and enslave other cultures to get what we want.

12:21Don't talk. I think what is accurate about this scene is that Theo is really emotionally

12:26attached to the house. He designed it. It's really common for individuals divorcing to become

12:34really emotionally attached to their home. It's oftentimes also their largest asset. What is

12:39important for clients to remember is that just because you are emotionally attached to a home,

12:44maybe you designed it, maybe you raised your kids there, it doesn't give you a greater right to that

12:51asset in division. It's a hard thing for a lot of people to accept. One thing that I do find really

12:56interesting is when each of the family law attorneys keeps saying to their client, don't talk, don't

13:00talk. There is a bit of a dog and pony show that's put on sometimes, and I'll have to take a client out

13:05and say, you just know that he's doing this for his client, right? The client needs to see it. We're

13:11doing a performance here. That's fine, but we'll get down to it. And sometimes my clients say, well,

13:15why don't you do that? And I said, I don't do that. I mean, that's not how I roll. That's not how we do

13:20it. It usually works out. It's fine. But there are times when sometimes your client is talking

13:25too much. And so that don't talk, I found to be a very interesting line that kept being repeated

13:31throughout the scene. The last generation of family law attorneys, when I started practicing law,

13:37there were a lot of old guys that did it. And there was a lot of yelling, and there was a lot of table

13:42banging, and there was a lot of, we don't do that as much anymore. Because again, it's theatrics,

13:46and this is a business transaction. I have had a family law attorney, and I still don't know how

13:52he did this. This was like ninja. This was a guy that had to be in his seventies at the time,

13:56and he was overweight. He jumped up onto our conference room table, this guy. I thought he

14:01was going to have a heart attack. I had another, not the lawyer, but the client, pick up one of the

14:06conference room chairs and throw it against the window. And a female client, as my client was leaving

14:12our conference room at one point, when we still had wooden doors, picked up her shoe, and with a

14:18stiletto heel, and hucked it. And it actually stuck in the door. Luckily, it didn't hit the client.

14:23There used to be, there was a lot more action in family law back in the day. Now it's a little bit

14:27toned down. For those moments, is everything on the record? Only if you have a court reporter and or a

14:35videographer. In this one, there wasn't. And my guess is they wouldn't have been behaving that way if

14:39there were. But there's often a court reporter writing everything down. And so, yeah, it's on

14:44the record. If you start a deposition and somebody's kind of, you know, sometimes if they don't have a

14:49videographer, someone will say, please let the record show that Mr. So-and-so is making faces at

14:55my client. Or the record will reflect that so-and-so slammed the table. Because it doesn't, it's not like

15:01a script where it says, slams the table. So you actually have to put it into the record.

15:05Breath smells like an anchovy that's been in the piss all night. Three, the way he laughs is like

15:09a diseased dog's death rattle. Four, he's a bad father, a fucked lover, a complete dead shit,

15:15a victim, a loser, a wanker. Number 10, Theo, what a cunt.

15:23That wasn't the task. Those are things you hate. I think the scene is very realistic. I always say

15:30there's a fine line between love and hate in a divorce. And you see that here. I remember this

15:35one client. He spoke so passionately and so angrily about his soon-to-be ex-wife.

15:41But I knew that the minute she said, move back in, let's get back together, he would have done it.

15:47And I think that's the case for a lot of people. Not them.

15:51I feel like they're getting back together. No way. No? No. But they had a moment.

15:56You can still have a moment with somebody even if you're not with them anymore.

15:59But haven't you seen clients get back together?

16:00Totally. Just not them.

16:03Next up, we've got one of my favorite scenes from Wedding Crashers.

16:07Did you have a band? Good or bad?

16:10Who gives a s***? It's a great band. It's a bad band. It's like pizza, baby.

16:13It's good. No matter what, there's music in the air.

16:14You get them playing shout in your head a little bit.

16:17Oh, oh, hey. Shout now. Jump up and shout now.

16:21I think now I've decided, everyone says like, who really portrays you the best as a family

16:27watcher? It's Vince Vaughn. He's so good. And I've done some mediation as the mediator.

16:33And you really do have to think outside of the box. Do this dance to figure out how to get people

16:39back to a place where they're not hating the other person. I think they do a great job of it in this.

16:44It's funny. But you see the level of hatred between these two people. And when she says,

16:50and my best friend and I say this to each other all the time, you shut your mouth when you're talking to

16:54me, it shows how irrational, it shows how people don't make any sense. And when the two mediators

17:00kind of get them to a place where they're willing to think and they're kind of look at each other

17:05and they're like, yeah, maybe that's right. And it's just so funny. It is. It is thinking outside

17:09of the box in favor of resolution. And I love it. I love this scene because they're talking about the

17:15frequent flyer miles and that's ultimately what they're fighting over. It's often not about the asset

17:21and it's really about control, right? I've had clients fight. I remember this one client

17:26spent like ten thousand dollars fighting over sparkly wall art from TJ Maxx. No shade to TJ Maxx,

17:34but the cost benefit analysis just wasn't there. And I think this is kind of an example of that,

17:39right? Vince Vaughn says, you know, let's get this done. Let's not spend another year fighting over this.

17:44And it's a perfect example of the emotions tied to an asset in the divorce.

17:48I think divorce mediation is really common and a really healthy way to come to a mutually

17:56satisfactory resolution in a divorce. And a lot of times when clients would come in,

18:01divorce mediation is something that I would recommend initially if it seemed like both parties

18:07were willing to actively participate. And what we see here is attorney assisted mediation. So they've

18:13both got attorneys and they've got the mediators. A lot of times we'll use retired judges as

18:18mediators. So they really know what they're doing. They sat on the bench for a number of years. Now

18:23they were tired and they're kind of doing this as like a side gig. They're probably making more than

18:26they were making when they were sitting on the bench, but they know their stuff. They know what

18:30a judge would do so they can say, if this doesn't settle here today, you're going downtown.

18:36Guys, the real enemy here is the institution of marriage. It's not realistic. It's crazy.

18:42I think the institution of marriage can be realistic if you approach it realistically,

18:47like what Hello Prenup would have you do in terms of educating yourself about the laws in your state

18:53and how you want your marriage to be governed. Back in the day when people only lived till their 30s

18:58or 40s, till death do us part, was a lot more realistic than it is today when we're living to our

19:0490s and 100s. We go through so many different phases and evolutions in life, which is why I don't

19:11think that divorce is a failure. And the age of marriage in the United States is now 34 and a

19:17half on average. The average age of a Hello Prenup user is 37, right? So people are getting buried

19:23later in life. They're approaching marriage very differently and they're having those important

19:28conversations and communication prior to marriage about what they want their lives to look like.

19:34This is another scene from Marriage Story.

19:37If we start from a place of reasonable and they start from a place of crazy,

19:41when we settle, we'll be somewhere between reasonable and crazy.

19:46Which is still crazy.

19:47Half of crazy is crazy.

19:48You know what people say. Criminal lawyers see bad people at their best.

19:51Divorce lawyers see good people at their worst.

19:53There was three or four lines from here that are definitely things that we say. The thing about

19:58criminal law attorneys seeing bad people on their best behavior and family law attorneys seeing

20:04good people on their worst behavior, the crazy in the middle thing.

20:07You know, I've got attorneys that will say, well, if you give us a hundred million dollars,

20:11and I'm like, a hundred million dollars? And they basically, they just want, you know, 10 million.

20:15So if you get half of crazy in between reasonable is still, it's those kinds of things that are just

20:21said. And they probably give family law attorneys a bad name, but it's not super inaccurate as to how things used to be.

20:28And I think in certain instances, you can start with reasonable and then start to turn up the heat

20:34if you need to. But if you start with crazy, oftentimes you're going to get crazy back, right?

20:40The best negotiation tactic is often the threat of litigation, not the act of litigation.

20:47Once you've already started that nuclear war, it's really hard to pull back from.

20:51Here's a scene from the movie Law of Attraction.

20:53Your Honor, I would like to move for a continuance. It's come to our attention

20:57that discrepancies exist concerning the reporting of assets, namely several valuable works of art.

21:01May I interject, Your Honor? You mean, um, paintings, sculpture, that kind of stuff?

21:08Exactly. A motion for a continuance is when you need more time. You basically come in and say,

21:14I'm not prepared to go forward today for whatever reason, so I need a continuance, meaning we kick it

21:20out for 30 to 60 days. I'd like to move for a continuance. I've just been retained as Mr.

21:26Harrison's counsel, and I haven't had time to fully research all aspects of the case. For instance, I have

21:31a receipt here for six 28-day stays at the Piney Woods Rehab Center for Mrs. Harrison's treatment

21:42of sexual addiction. It's not fun, and we definitely say to our clients, you must tell us the good,

21:50the bad, the ugly. I want to know everything, because otherwise we're going to be surprised,

21:53and it's going to look like not only did you withhold it from the court, but you withheld it

21:57from me, which is really bad. So we usually try to make that not occur. And I would always try and

22:03remind clients, attorney-client privilege means that whatever they tell their attorney

22:08is privileged information and not discoverable. A lot of times people don't disclose everything

22:13to their attorney because they're afraid it's going to come out in some way that they don't expect.

22:18Privilege is what keeps that information confidential. And this is a scene from the show Sex and the City.

22:24Mrs. McDougal is willing to offer her son's collection of mint-conditioned silver buffalo coins.

22:30Can we get off the coin collection? She's not going to settle for a coin collection.

22:34Well, according to the prenup... This is ridiculous. Trey gave me that apartment.

22:40She gave him her word till death do them part. Bunny, if you have something to say to me, just...

22:47Fine. I shall. I strongly recommend we focus... Alan, hush.

22:51That wasn't very realistic. I've never seen that happen. I've seen parents get involved in the

22:57negotiation during a prenup more than I have during a divorce. And that's oftentimes because

23:04they're the ones that are pushing the prenup. They're the ones that are trying to protect

23:09whatever inheritance their adult child is going to receive in the future. But I have not seen that in

23:13a divorce. And in fact, you know, do I think it's legally possible? Yes. But I think it's very

23:20important for the attorney to have a direct line of communication with their client. Now there was one

23:26particular instance I could think of when a client was institutionalized. And so the only way to

23:32communicate with her was in some ways by proxy through her nurse until she got out. And that was

23:39a very difficult situation and not a common one. Yeah, your proxy is your lawyer. I mean,

23:45Bunny didn't need to be there. She had no business being there. Bunny had no business. I guess it was

23:49her apartment though, so maybe that's why. In which case, he shouldn't have been given it away. What

23:54was he doing in Scotland? And didn't they split up because he wasn't having sex with her? Yes.

23:59Mm-hmm. Does Bunny know that? I don't think she does. Just saying. Yeah, I don't think Bunny knows the

24:04whole story. I think the depiction of family law attorneys in film and TV is really dramatic.

24:12It's really fun. It makes every day look like it's action-packed when that's not reality. Most of

24:19the time, divorce is slow moving. It's just not as entertaining as they make it look on TV.

24:23The divorce rate in the United States remains at about 50%. And knowing that people are getting

24:30married later, entering into pre-nups more frequently, I like that at least our country,

24:36but I know other ones as well, are becoming more hip to the process of marriage and then the end of

24:43those marriages if need be.

Category

Transcript

Comments

Recommended