[Cypress Knee]

The Divorce
(This is a true story, except that I have changed some of the names and locations. A debt to society has been paid and I don’t want anybody using social media to resurrect an embarrassing lapse of judgement from thirty years ago.)

As the years roll by it is possible to look back into the past at what were very painful proceedings, and decades later find a laugh in the situation that outweighs the pain.

I spent eight years as an Army officer, then took a long look down the career path chosen for me and decided there wasn’t much future for a history major in the EE field that had been assigned to me. I had made my mark in infantry and special forces units, not the science fields that my branch called for. I submitted my resignation and moved my wife and infant son to a major East Coast city, where her father had a family farm nearby. We settled into a house on the farm not far away from Dad.

I was selling financial services in an area where I had no base, no network, no friends. To say that the start was difficult would be an understatement. When I transitioned to straight commission, it was like “Jiminy Christmas, how am I going to make this work?” I was working 12 to 14 hour days cold calling with an hour and a half commute each way.

A fellow showed up to my office one day. I said, “Hello, what can I do for you?” He said, “You’ve been served!” What? I opened the packet and there was a petition for a divorce.

I was stunned. I tried to call my wife, but no answer. I called my in-laws. My mother-in-law answered and told me, “She just wants out. You are never home and you aren’t making any money. She won’t listen to me, she just wants out.” Then my father-in-law came over and told me, “She’s not going to change her mind, so you need to move on. Let me know when you find someplace else to stay so I can tell her when to move back in here.”

I moved to an apartment, then looked for a lawyer. A friend gave me a name and I set up an appointment. His office was in a little Cape Cod out on the edge of town. The guy was straightforward and said, “There is nothing to this case, just a waiting period and a judge will grant the divorce and award child support and joint custody based on these tables.”

Time went by. The day before my court appearance I saw a classified ad in the newspaper – “Fathers United for Equal Rights”. The ad claimed that if a person was at risk of losing their children or income in a divorce fight they should come to this meeting. I wasn’t sure about my situation, but I went for the educational benefit.

For the first hour of the meeting the two moderators ranted and raved about the unfairness of child custody laws and child support payments and judges who didn’t care and blah blah blah. I was really bored with the whole setup.

Then they went around the room and asked first time attendees for their stories. Whoa, Nelly. Guys claimed to have been falsely accused of assault, rape, child molestation, affairs, drug dealing, prostitution, some had been arrested on (supposedly) false claims, others had eviction orders or restraining orders. Accusations of attempted murder, kidnapping, and a myriad other transgressions filled the air. Then they got to me. “What is your story?” was the query.

“I don’t have a story,” I replied, “my wife just went back to her Mom’s and filed for irreconcilable differences and I am going to court tomorrow to figure out visitation and child support schedules.”

“Wait a minute,” the moderator said, “We need to know more. Where did your wife file for divorce?”

“Harnett County,” I told him.

“And who is her lawyer?” he asked.

I replied, “Jeff Black.”

The room went dead silent. Not a peep.

Then, “Who is your lawyer?”

“Tom Clay” I said.

“Never heard of him. Let me guess, this guy is in his mid-fifties, works out of a frame house in the old city, and his name isn’t even on the front door. His office is in the back of the house. His desk is all cluttered with coke cans and MacDonald’s coffee cups and he has ketchup and mustard stains on his tie and short sleeve shirt.”

Bingo. They nailed Tom to a tee.

“Your guy is a loser in the legal business. He can’t make it any other way other than represent men in divorce cases that they are bound to lose anyway, so his old law school buddies have given him a backroom office to generate some retainer fees from idiots like you. They don't want to be professionally associated with him which is why his name is not on the door.”

They went on. “You are taking a failed city-slicker into the county where the good-old-boy network reigns supreme. And your wife’s attorney is gay and he hates straight men. His over-riding mission in life is to use the favorable laws for the wife in divorce court to personally and professionally destroy the lives of their estranged husbands. He is very, very good at it. Your best bet to survive tomorrow’s hearing is to go outside and lie down in the road and let a truck run over your legs so you will be admitted to the ER tonight and we have some time so that we can figure out a way to get you some quality representation!”

I did not want a truck to run over me. Nonetheless, I was concerned about the ramifications of what I had been told that evening. I spent a restless night pondering my next move.

At sunrise I drove into the county seat and parked in the lot of an up-and-coming law firm that had a bit of a reputation for ruffling feathers in the good-ole-boy network. Shortly a black BMW pulled up and a thirty-ish man stepped out – cufflinks, tie pin, spotless white shirt and great fitting suit. “Hey, I’m Steve,” he said, “What are you doing here at this hour?” We went inside and I told him my story up to that point.

“Well, you have a problem,” he told me, “you already have a lawyer and nobody can step in until you do not have representation. When are you going to see Mr. Clay again?”

“We are meeting at the judge’s office in thirty minutes,” I told him.

“Well, there is only one thing that you can do at this point,” he told me, “if you have any guts then you are going to have to fire Mr. Clay in front of the judge and request a continuance since you have no representation. If you are willing to do that, then come back and we will talk. Can you do it?”

I said “Yes”. He immediately picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Hi Jeff, Steve here. I am going to pick up a new client later this morning but first he has to fire a city guy in front of you in about fifteen minutes. Don’t give him a hard time and I’ll buy you a beer at the Five and Dime this afternoon and we can talk about this.” He looked at me – “Done. I am the best family law attorney in town and he is the second best. Don’t worry, the situation is under control.”

I changed attorneys and things moved along. My wife was aggravated at the delay in proceedings, however there was nothing to do but wait. It was simply going to be “She wants out, here is the visitation schedule, and here is the child support schedule.” At least that what I thought.

One morning my secretary (I had turned around my previous failures to the point that the firm now hired an admin assistant for me) stomped through the doorway and loudly announced to me, “I hope that Steve Promatucci rots and burns in Hell!” A couple of minutes later she strode into my office and exclaimed, “I have to open your mail every day, and even though it is really none of my business, I know that Steve Promatucci is your lawyer in your divorce case and I want you to know that you should fire him immediately! He should be disbarred and thrown in jail forever!”

I knew that Mindy bar-hopped a lot with her girlfriends, and Steve seemed like the type of guy who would go out prowling through the local watering holes. I figured that they had run into each other and had a bad night out on the town. Anyway, I gathered myself and went out to Mindy’s desk. “What is it between you two?” I asked. “I have never seen you so hostile toward anyone.”

“You don’t know?” she practically growled at me.

“Don’t know what?” I responded.

She handed me the morning edition of the city paper. There, on the front page lower fold, was a headshot of Steve. The headline screamed:



"LAWYER ZAPS CAT IN MICROWAVE"