To Live & Divorce in L.A.

Marital breakups are hellish no matter where they take place. But in L.A., the stakes are sky-high, the fallout is brutal, the publicity is nasty and all too often one or both of the spouses can act.

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Santa Monica family law attorney Lynn Soodik was almost in tears herself. Her client, Mrs. X, an established Hollywood actress, had opened up to the court about her troubled marriage and a Lifetime movie's worth of blubbering had ensued. "You could really feel for her," Soodik recalls. "You had all this empathy. And then all of the sudden I looked at her and she winked at me. I thought, 'Oh my God, she's even fooling me!'"

Welcome to divorce, Los Angeles-style.

In a city where so many people make their living creating illusions, everyone seems plenty willing to fall for the biggest illusion of all--that love's going to last forever. But while divorce dynamics in Tinseltown have similarities with disillusioning proceedings of this type elsewhere, there are a number of key factors that, when combined, can make the train ride from L.A. to Splitsville its own peculiar and often harrowing journey.

For starters, the money's usually bigger--a lot bigger. Amy Irving reportedly received $100 million when she divorced Steven Spielberg. Cindy Costner left Kevin with $80 million. And there's the granddaddy of all celeb divorce settlements; the Neil and Marcia Diamond split in 1994, in which she walked away with a reported $150 million. "Los Angeles probably has more substantial asset divorces than anywhere in the country," observes Dennis Wasser, the high-powered attorney who represented Tom Cruise in his divorce from Nicole Kidman, as well as such A-list clients as Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood and Jane Fonda. "There are a lot of very wealthy people here, a lot of whom made a lot of money at a young age."

Mr. Z, a one-time bartender and aspirins screenwriter, is a good example of how workaday L.A. follows the pattern of heavier hitters. Z's wife wanted a house-with-the-picket-fence kind of life and decided she wasn't going to get it from him, so together they filed for a summary divorce. (In California, a couple is eligible for a summary divorce if they are married less than five years and have no assets together.) A few weeks before the divorce was final, Mrs. Z's father read in the newspaper that Mr. Z had just sold his first script for a million dollars. He called his daughter, they raced to court to halt the divorce, and she ended up with enough money to open her own white picket fence outlet store.

Strategic timing plays an especially important role in divorce in Los Angeles, especially where fame is involved. When Jennifer Lopez divorced her first husband, waiter Ojani Noa, in 1998 after a year, he reportedly received $50,000. Four years later, when she ended her second marriage to choreographer Cris Judd after only nine months, she was a superstar and Judd, according to some reports, left with $10 million in his dance bag. "If someone's making 10 or 20 million a picture, and getting back-end participation, and they get divorced, the spouse is entitled to half of that," explains Soodik, who represented Meg Ryan in her divorce from Dennis Quaid. And because California is a community property state, the court automatically divides everything 50-50, unless there's a prenup. "You can be married for a miniscule amount of time," says Soodik, "and be compensated more money than most people earn in their whole life."

In L.A., the division of assets and determination of support often take on a surreal quality. The Hollywood factor heightens the effect. Just recently, Jim Carrey's ex-wife Melissa, requested more money in support to fund, among other things, a personal trainer and Pilates room for their teenage daughter. MGM mogul Kirk Kerkorian pays his ex, Lisa Bonder Kerkorian, over $50,000 in child support monthly for such must-haves as French lessons and equestrian activities, even though DNA tests proved that her daughter isn't his. "When you start horse trading ranches and boats and artwork in the millions, it's another world," says Harvey Levin, the executive producer of the syndicated series "Celebrity Justice" and a former legal columnist for the L.A. Times. "It's like, 'I'll give you the Picasso if you give me the Renoir." The negotiations can be "quite comical," says Soodik, "when somebody is in front of a judge and they're saying, 'I need $300,000 a month and my cook and my dog walker and I need all these things.' And this judge is thinking, 'I earn maybe $100,000 a year and I have a wife and two kids, and you want $300,000 a month?'"

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