Why “I Need a Bulldog” Might Be the Wrong Way to Pick a Divorce Lawyer
Written by: Megan Dell
Almost everyone going through a divorce hears the same advice. Get a bulldog, an aggressive divorce lawyer who will fight for you. It usually comes from a friend or coworker who went through their own divorce years ago.
The advice comes from a good place, and the person who gives it probably cares about you. Your marriage has ended, and your spouse suddenly feels like your enemy. You want to hire someone who won’t let you get pushed around.
Still, you’re not sure whether to follow the advice.
Is an aggressive divorce lawyer a better divorce lawyer?
Many people assume the lawyer who fights hardest gets the best result. We agree that sometimes a hard fight is exactly what a case needs. A lawyer who will not try a case when trial is the right answer is not doing the job.
However, a lawyer encourages you to act on every emotion might be focused on producing revenue for themselves. And because of the emotions involved in family law, revenue can be easy to produce.
Anyone can file a motion every month. They can send opposing counsel letters that read like a declaration of war. They can refuse a two-week extension that most lawyers in town would agree to without a second thought and drag an argument over an incidental issue all the way to a contested temporary hearing.
And your bills will reflect all of it.
What happens when every issue in a divorce is contested?
After a few months of motions and nasty letters, an ordinary divorce turns into a contest of endurance. Neither spouse will give an inch, even over the most basic issues, because any movement at all feels like losing.
Legal fees climb on both sides, often well past anything either spouse planned for when they first sat down with a lawyer. Because let’s be honest: nobody budgets for the fourth motion to compel.
But when deciding attorney’s fees, South Carolina judges look at how a case was litigated. The court considers the reasonableness of each party’s conduct, and a spouse who makes resolution harder should not expect to be rewarded for it. Anderson v. Tolbert, 322 S.C. 543 (Ct. App. 1996).
Fighting over everything can end up hurting the client who paid for it once the judge decides fees. The client is exhausted after providing documents and missing work to attend hearings for a year (or more). Meanwhile, their lawyer collected their money upfront.
Most cases turn on one or two pressure points
A divorce affects every area of your life, and litigation of your divorce case has a lot of moving parts, including financial declarations, discovery deadlines, motion hearings, and mediation timing.
In most cases, only one or two of those will change how the case ends. A good family law attorney spends a great deal of time figuring out which ones they are, then applies pressure there and lets the rest go.
For example, you may believe your spouse is hiding money. Your lawyer can serve pointed discovery requests that build on each other then follow those with subpoenas to multiple banks. Together, they can prove there are assets your spouse didn’t tell you about.
And in a different case, the ‘right’ move might be approaching opposing counsel about settlement early in the case. Ideally, that happens before you or your spouse has spent a year of your child’s college tuition on motions.
How does a divorce lawyer decide when to push?
It depends on who is on the other side. Some people dig in the moment they feel pushed and become perfectly reasonable once they are treated with respect, while others ignore every polite letter until a motion hearing is scheduled and then suddenly want to talk.
Telling those two apart takes experience with how South Carolina family courts handle the issues in your case. Your lawyer also needs a sense of how different personality types are likely to respond to different methods. It helps to know the lawyers involved. In fact, it’s often beneficial when your lawyer has a positive relationship with opposing counsel.
It also takes close attention to what the other side has produced and what they keep delaying. A good lawyer notices what your spouse seems most worried about losing. But very little of that analysis is dramatic, because it happens in your file and in your lawyer’s head.
What to ask a divorce lawyer at your consultation
Instead of asking whether someone is an aggressive divorce lawyer, ask how they decide when to push, and where.
The answer may be some version of “I fight hard for my clients.” If so, ask what fighting would look like in a case like yours. And if you still get a general answer instead of a methodology, keep looking.
Overlitigating makes the rest of the case harder
Once both sides have spent six months fighting over everything, settlement is harder to reach. Your children are often more aware of the conflict than they should be. The financial damage starts compounding, too.
The resentment between the spouses (and sometimes between the lawyers!) does not go away when the final order is signed. It shows up in every exchange afterward, including what may be ten or more years of co-parenting.
Are you facing a divorce in South Carolina? Reach out to us at Dell Family Law. We can talk through the issues in your case and how we would approach them.
