How does it feel to know that there are people exploiting your triumphs and your grievances? When you marry, there are fees for the wedding, the invitations, the venue, the planner, etc. While there are many ways that you can skirt around the unfortunate path of spending thousands or millions of dollars on a wedding, there are people who are literally banking on your emotional vulnerability for financial gain. For example, you don’t need the $2,500 horse and carriage but your wedding planner says it’ll make your exit that much more memorable. You don’t need the $10,000 wedding cake with real 14-karat gold shavings, but the baker insists that it’ll be the prettiest wedding cake your guests will ever see. Before you know it, you’ve spent $100,000 that you didn’t have and are going into a marriage with financial strain. But there’s more…
Since you’ve come into the marriage with financial strain, your partner has to work extra hours to replenish your bank account post-wedding. The extra hours are causing stress, tension, and overall unhappiness in the relationship. After three years of sulking in misery, you and your partner are heading to divorce court. Alas! Now you’re forced to hire an attorney and pay court fees for the divorce. Oh yeah, if you have children, be prepared to spend a lot of time and money in court. And if you’re wealthy and have children, be prepared to spend even more time and money in court. It’s all apart of a $50 billion industry built solely off of the promise of your failed marriage.
In an interview on Bloomberg TV about a new documentary that he narrated titled “Divorce Corp,” Dr. Drew Pinsky makes shocking revelations about the industry of divorce: ”Fifty billion dollars a year wasted on divorce. The average uncontested divorce is somewhere around $20,000… The extraordinary thing is that if there is a lot of money, a lot of equity to begin with, it’s extraordinary how the expense of divorce goes up dramatically. And guess who gets all the fees. Guess who sucks up that equity and who then attaches themselves to the alimony as well.”
.
Dr. Pinsky claims the film was created following his colleague’s own experience with divorce that left him feeling uneasy with the process. ”…We’re hoping to raise a conversation about is that there is an industry behind divorce,” Dr. Pinsky explained. ”When you go to get a divorce, you have to go to the court. And you’re not going to a court of justice. You’re going to a court of equity, where your usual Constitutional privileges do not necessarily apply. The judge himself is the executioner, the jury, and he or she can make decisions.” Dr. Pinsky continued: “We tell stories in this documentary where people are put in prison for five years for criticizing a judge on their blog during a divorce. The situation is egregious.”
Dr. Pinsky also revealed a slew of unethical practices in divorce court: ”And there’s a chumminess to the system where the attorneys can actually contribute to the campaigns of the judges they’re appearing before,” he said. ”They can hire the judges to give them symposia. They can hire the judges into their firms after they retire as judges. If this was a medical system, I can’t even imagine the hue and cry over the ethical issues associated with this kind of conduct.” [Side note: Do you remember when Tameka Raymond’s attorney filed an appeal against the adjudication of the children’s primary caretaker, claiming that Usher’s attorney had contributed to the campaign of the judge who presided over Usher’s victorious custody battle?] “And the children themselves are always used like pawns,” Dr. Pinsky said, citing a bizarre case out of Indiana in which a man was sentenced to five years in prison following his remarks about a judge who restricted his rights with his children.
According to Business Insider, 60 percent of second marriages end in divorce; 73 percent of third marriages end in divorce; there’s a divorce every 13 seconds; and there are 46,000 divorces per week. First time newlyweds face a 50 percent chance of being in divorce court.
