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?'"
"I was involved in a case where the couple spent something like $200,000 litigating the issue of, 'What is the value of the use of a private jet?'" recalls Soodik. "The wife said, 'I need to be able to use the private jet,' and the judge thought he was being very smart and diplomatic and he said, 'Okay, anytime you want to travel, your husband will have to buy out all of first class so that you feel that you're in a private jet.' She looked at him and said, 'But your honor, it's not the same. Commercial airlines don't leave when I want to leave.'"
Though take-no-prisoners private detectives, like Anthony Pellicano and Gavin de Becker, are not unique to L.A. divorces, the focus of their prying is different, mostly because California is a no-fault state. "It's not about who slept with whom, because that's irrelevant under no-fault," says Levin. "It's about, how much money do you really have?" A P.I. is more likely to spend his time chasing paper trails than scanning through stolen sex tapes.
The social fallout from a divorce can be much harder-hitting in L.A. than other places. It may be a big city, but it's dominated by one business, so there isn't necessarily room for two exes. The less powerful ex loses big, and one of the losses is often faith in the meaning of friendship. "Even if both people are stars, it still becomes about, 'Who do I want at my dinner party, him or her?'" says Levin. Spouses with no status in the Industry outside their marriage are almost inevitably shut out. "What's really sad is when people call a restaurant or something and say, 'I'm the former Mrs. So and So,' and use the other person's first and last name. It's like, where's your identity?"
Of all the quirks and wrinkles that make divorce in L.A. different from Anywhere Else, U.S.A., the most significant, by far, is the fishbowl factor. In Hollywood, a divorce is not just between you and your lying, cheating, insensitive spouse. It's between you, your lying, cheating, insensitive spouse and "Entertainment Tonight." "The divorces are often more difficult because of the added stress and strain of the publicity," says Wasser. That's why Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, for example, settled privately rather than air their differences in a public courtroom. "That case started to get a little bit ugly," observes Levin, "and then I think everybody realized, 'Wow, look at the road we're going down,' and they made it amicable and private and they served everybody well by doing that. If the client doesn't look good at the end of the divorce, regardless of how good the financial settlement is, the lawyer has failed. It's not just about what happens in court. It's what happens in the court of public opinion."
"People sometimes don't use information that would be helpful to them because they know it's going to be in the public eye," says Soodik. "Say you're the non-Hollywood person and you want to bring something up that's going to hurt your spouse's career. Well, you have to think twice about it because that can affect your support."
Concern with appearances also takes subtler forms. Mr. Y, a regular on his first hit series when his divorce went through, had his show canceled a few years later, and now, though he's hardly worked since, his support payments are still based on his previous TV-star salary. "You can always go in to modify your payment," says Soodik, "but in L.A., you don't want to say, 'I don't think that I'm going to make that kind of money again,' because that's not the Hollywood attitude." Image consciousness is so much a part of life in Los Angeles that this thinking extends beyond strictly "Entertainment Tonight" couples, though it lessens the further you go from the limelight.
Given the legal and PR tightrope they must constantly traverse, it is no wonder the top Los Angeles divorce lawyers make anywhere from $500 to $800 an hour. Those most closely associated with Hollywood divorces take on almost mythological status, with nicknames like the Gunslinger, the Stealth Lawyer and the Darth Vader of Hollywood. "Being the best divorce lawyer in New York is like being the best devil in hell," divorced publishing maven Judith Regan quipped, and though some may believe the same of Los Angeles split-brokers, Levin maintains that, at the very top, the opposite is true. "There are some family law lawyers who will kind of keep the fight going to make more money," he observes, "but when you talk about the lawyers who represent celebrities, it's the opposite. If you bleed a client dry, that person can trash you in Hollywood and it takes about four of those people to ruin your practice."
Perhaps the most surprising thing to note about divorcing in L.A. is the fact that there is such a thing as house calls. "If somebody is seen coming to my office, it can end up in the National Enquirer," says Soodik, "so I more often go to them, which I have to say is fun because you get to see their house." If, however, you are not famous and your home décor is pedestrian, this aspect of L.A. divorce may not apply to you.
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