TURN AROUND
DRAPER’S PAPER ROUTE
TURN AROUND
by Adam Carroll Draper
I took that picture of my daughter, Jordan, watching the sunset from the roof of the AC Hotel in Asheville last Monday. They have a gin and tonic with Hendricks gin you might want to try if you are ever up that way. I associate our sunset ritual with Norah Jones singing The Long Day is Over. If it wasn’t a perfect moment, it came pretty dang close.
My wife, Stef, and I spent Memorial Day in Asheville with Jordan and her husband, Mike. They moved to Nashville a couple years ago, so I don’t get to see Jordan as much now, sadly. For those of you who don’t know me well, being Jordan’s dad is the best person I have ever been. I’m good at it because she is the best daughter any dad could ever have. While Jordan made it all so spectacularly worth the effort, being her dad was not easy – not because of her, but because of… stuff. That stuff sucks, and I totally feel for parents these days.
A buddy of mine, who recently separated, called me the other day in a frenzy. His wife was taking the kids and moving to East Egypt in the Land the Time Forgot, and I had to talk him down off the ledge. Don’t get me wrong, I am very glad to help walk people through it (particularly since I had little to no such legal help), but it’s almost like reliving it when I get those calls. I said, “Dude, she’s not going anywhere with them for long if she does, so take a deep breath and chill.” I sent him to a lawyer in his county. He felt a lot better afterwards.
I can sympathize with clients with domestic issues. If anything, the intensity of these cases has gotten worse over nearly thirty years of practice. (Just saying it’s been thirty years seems ethereal or something). Not too long ago, another friend told me he and his wife were splitting. They had some assets, so it was going to be expensive. I sent him to another lawyer. Why? Because he was my friend. He is still my friend, but he is on his third lawyer. I told him an attorney was going to cost him at least forty grand by the time is was all said and done. The last time I checked, his attorney’s fees alone were over eighty grand.
Thomas Hobbs wrote that life in a state of nature is “short, nasty and brutish.” Family Law (divorce, child custody, support, et cetera) has become that way. If any one thing differs about the practice of law now from how it was practiced in 1989, it is that today’s lawyers are far more likely to be short, nasty and brutish to each other. It’s turned into a bare knuckle brawl half the time. (I shouldn’t have to say that I am being facetious, but I guess I do). It used to be that I could argue a case with a lawyer and, no matter how heated it was, we could go have a drink or play golf afterwards. That was somebody’s granddaddy’s way of practicing law.
Now, it seems like everything has gotten nasty because brutish makes money – and only the attempts at resolution have become short. I am sure that I am going to take all kinds of flack for this, but the last time I checked, the truth is an affirmative defense. I can’t tell you the number of times I have heard about cases that seemed very likely to settle until some lawyer started stirring things up over what could happen during leap year on Mars. Why? Well, isn’t it Cage the Elephant that sings, “There ain’t no rest for the wicked, money don’t grow on trees.” Before somebody’s bowels get in an uproar, I am not calling lawyers wicked. Stirring up shit to make money is wicked, however, and I am seeing a lot of that. Just saying!
So if there is any one refrain I have for clients contemplating divorce, I think it is, “Can you afford it?” It is nearly as financially expensive as it is emotionally devastating. Look, sometimes it is unavoidable. You married Jekyll and all that’s left is Hyde. All I’m saying is that youth often lacks the perspective of time. What seems interminable when your kid is two, for instance, will end up having been just a hop, skip and a jump from the day she got married. When I was a kid, there was a sappy song by Malvina Reynolds that always made me want to push the big, plastic button on the car radio to change the station. “Turn around and you’re two; turn around and you’re four; turn around and you’re a young girl going out of my door.”
Now, that song just makes me cry.
Whatever it is that you are going through is not going to last forever. What you say and do might, however. This is just perspective from a veteran of the psychic wars.
If you got something out of this missive, please give it a thumbs up (or some such thing), comment on it, and/or share it. It helps. I really appreciate that you took the time to read this!