Divorce Corp - Part One

Over the weekend, I and one of my Trenches colleagues took a road trip to New Jersey to see Divorce Corp., a movie that promised to be an expose of the 50 billion dollar family law industry.  Its release has caused a firestorm here in the Trenches, and I felt that prior to commenting on it, I should actually view it in its entirety and not judge it on its trailers. In his review, Roger Ebert described this movie as "less a nuanced documentary than a cry of rage."  With that I would agree.

As I have said previously in this blog, the Trenches contain a lot of people who we refer to as high conflict personalities.  This term was coined by Bill Eddy to describe those folks for whom everything is black and white, with no shades of gray.  The difficulty is that when a family dissolves, there are usually plenty of shades of gray and no true black and white.  High conflict people don't understand this, and you are either for them or against them, good or evil.  When these people do not get everything they want, they lash out into an explosion of rage.  Although they may make valid points, these are lost in the cry or rage.  Divorce Corp felt like a bad online review of the family law system by a high conflict individual with enough money to fund a full length documentary.

Wow, that seems a bit harsh.  It's not.  If you read all of the articles that have come out in the wake of the release of this movie, what you will see is that at the beginning of the making of this film, there was a well-respected documentary director.  He obtained interviews with a number of well-respected people in the Trenches.  These people spoke frankly about what was wrong with the family law system, and more importantly, movements and actions taken by people working in the Trenches to change the status quo.  Between the time of the interviews and the editing and release of this film, the producer (Joe Sorge) replaced the director with himself.  The interviews were edited to further Mr. Sorge's obvious political agenda and any reference to mediation or collaborative law, both positive movements in the Trenches, were removed.  The work of people to reform the system, like Mark Baer, was not included.   The editing changed, in many cases completely, what the interviewee stated, all to further Mr. Sorge's purpose.  It is his story, and he makes sure you only hear his side.

The same is true of the stories of the litigants represented in the movie.  In no case were both sides of the case presented.  The only story told was that of the person who was screwed by the system.  As I have said repeatedly in this blog, attorneys only get one side of the story, and that side is always polarized and determined by the emotional state and view of reality of the teller.  There were plenty of hints in the movie that many of these cautionary tales were not as they appeared, that the people interviewed were high conflict personalities.  You had to look for them, but they were there.  As both sides of the cases were not explored, what you are left with is a number of cries of rage inside this one large scream.

You might think all of the above means I hated the movie and completely discounted it as propagandistic garbage.  You would be wrong.  I am saddened that Mr. Sorge determined that he would use this vehicle to further an obvious political agenda (Why can't we be exactly like the Swedes?) rather than begin to fully explore what is wrong and right here in the Trenches.  Had he decided to be more balanced in his approach, I think the film would have more impact and perhaps sparked a move toward real reform of the things that need to be changed.  Instead it feels like a hatchet job on a segment of society that we love to hate - lawyers and judges.  That bias will certainly resonate with a lot of people who have come through the Trenches, but it will help not one whit to encourage that change.

Change in the family law arena has to come from the bottom up and the top down.  It has to be deemed necessary by both the professionals and the parties involved.  Everyone involved has to agree on what those changes will be.  Like it or not, marriage and divorce are both legal concepts that require legal help to create and dissolve.  Because of that fact, lawyers are a necessary part of the equation, so producing a movie that simply antagonizes the professionals involved does not promote real change, only discontent.  What is broken in the Trenches and how that might be fixed is a subject for another day, probably tomorrow - here in the Trenches.