First Kill All the Lawyers: In Pro Per

Contents

Endorsement

Exegesis

Apologia

Prologue

Part I: The Story

I. Due Process Before the Due Process

II. Amo, Amas, Amat

III. You do WHAT?! COOK?

IV. Whatever Has a Front Has a Back

V. Can I Put my Kunda Weenie in Your Shakti Pot?

VI. Eli ’n Me, Sittin’ In A Tree

VII. The Q-Tip

VIII. The Head Click

IX. So a Lion Goes Into the Jungle; or Why Didn’t She Leave?

X. In Conclusion 7:7:7

Part II: The Legal Stuff

I. Pre-Trial: Summons, Petition, Response and Proof of Service

II. The Contested Divorce, the OSC, Motions, Responses, Declarations and Discovery

III. Mediation and Settlement Agreements

IV. Trial

V. Judgment

VI. Pension Joinder, QDROs, and Really Hard Stuff

VII. Res Ipsa Loquitur

Part III: Self-Care

I. Self-Care

II. Emotional Self-Care

III. Spiritual Self-Care

IV. Psychological Self-Care

V. Physical: Beauty Self-Care

VI. Physical: Exercise Self-Care

VII. Nutritional Self-Care

VIII. Energy Medicine Self-Care

IX. Legal Self-Care

Part IV: The Forms

A: Redacted Documents

B: Index of Updated Family Law Forms, California, 2013

Glossary Of Terms

Recommended Reading List

About the Author

Exegesis

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT BEING your own lawyer instead of hiring one in obtaining a divorce. It is divided into four parts.

Part I

The first part of this book introduces a bit about family law and gives some autobiographical details about my life, since one may wonder how I would get myself into such a pernicious situation—divorcing an attorney after such a short marriage. And how could anyone become so malicious and unkind, especially someone I loved?

I also speak candidly about my reflective interpretation of my short marriage to Eli as a spiritual test of sorts. It was so extreme and bizarre after a life of such high-voltage spiritual experiences that I have come to interpret a great deal of what happened in this light. My earlier good spiritual life comprised exactly seven years; my bad spiritual life comprised another seven years; and the years since have comprised another seven years. It’s not a fact to be overanalyzed; it is merely noted, and could be of interest for further observations around life’s rhythms, archetypes, and metaphysical phenomena.

I don’t think my autobiography will fulfill any expectation of discovery, but, again, it may amuse the reader as my life has certainly amused me. And I make no claims to judgment or perspective: I simply did not see this nastiness coming, nor did anything in my life before or since prepare me for the days in court which awaited me. What I have learned is that I am capable of anything, in both the complimentary and pejorative sense of the phrase. I am both capable and fragile. And in terms of humiliation, since menopause, I have a give-a-shit factor of zero.

Part II

The second part deals with my interpretation of the legal system as I put it to individual use weaving my way through the tangled web of family court in California without a lawyer. As a disclaimer I realize very well what I write does not constitute legal advice. I further acknowledge that what I write is not a recommendation to anyone that they follow the exact format I did. However, this book strongly recommends representing oneself in the act of obtaining a divorce, whether contested or not.

Having worked on this book for approximately five years after I obtained my divorce, many of the laws and statutes have changed in California. This book is not a legal manual or reference manual. I have, however, included redacted copies of my actual pleadings. Blank forms for certain pleadings and motions appear at the end of this book and the reader may also easily access updated forms on state websites as well as in the many excellent books and accompanying software which can be found in today’s marketplace. I have included a recommended reading list at the end of this book.

The myth of needing to retain a lawyer is a terrible one. Lawyers are taught to drum up conflict. They are combatants by nature. Family court is not a war zone. It is designed to help two people negotiate for the welfare of a family system. When you retain an attorney, the attorney takes professional responsibility to act on your behalf—to represent you and your well-being. You are literally handing over your power and authority to act.

Furthermore, attorneys make the bulk of their fees by going to court while it’s often not in your best interest to do so. Standards of professional conduct require any attorney who represents you to complicate your case and make it worse instead of better. Hiring an attorney to represent you in a court of equality is often representative of or can be the antithesis of well-being for you and your family.

It is a shame that most family law attorneys have little or no training in psychology or mediation techniques, so what may have been a rocky end to a marriage can become a literal nightmare due to the hiring of an attorney. In almost every case, things go from bad to worse to dismal to horrifying, just because an expert was hired.

It is my recommendation that this book be used as a coaching and mentoring guide. But at best I also hope it provides amusement and entertainment in a not-so-funny time for most of us. My first goal remains to try and empower people to risk the daunting task of taking on the legal system as their own advocates rather than spending what I consider unnecessary money on a family attorney.

Part III

The third part of this book deals with self-care. This is something I know a bit about. Unfortunately, for women especially, self-care is often last on the priority list for many of us when we are stressed.

During my incredibly stressful divorce I found my feelings of abandonment, rage and betrayal, among other emotions (all legitimate), had to be put on hold while I cared for my basic needs. Much like the instructions on an airplane to put my oxygen mask on first before attending to a child, I was able to accomplish what my inner wisdom finally dictated whether I liked it or not—I slept, I fed myself. The very basics came first. I did not give myself the luxury of falling apart. This would have to wait.

Part IV

Part IV is divided into two sections. Section A is comprised of several redacted filings from my actual case. Section B represents an index of blank forms and documents pertinent to Dissolution of Marriage, whether contested or not, as well as recommendations for what I consider excellent books and software to guide you through the entire process.

Apologia

THIS IS REALLY THREE LITTLE books in one: my brief descent into hell during my marriage to my ex-husband, my legal journey, and a brief primer on self-care. Each subject is worthy of its own book, yet try as I might the book kept writing itself, divided into three distinct yet interwoven parts.

Looking back I see that the legal journey occurred as I espoused advice on self-care. I was meditating and caring for myself and teaching others to do the same all during this time, and it was only during my brief and turbulent marriage that things fell apart. I would have preferred to write this book without mentioning Eli, but the history is apparently necessary since it kept poking its head back into the book, so it remains. Perhaps the symbolism of the seven year thing deserves more than a mere mention—perhaps it also deserves a book of its own.

I apologize for perhaps frustrating you, the reader, if any part of my personal story is incomplete and leaves you unsated. There are no hors d’oeuvres here. No delicacies, or gourmet sampling. Just fast food and lots of it.

Prologue

I BEGAN THE FIRST DRAFT of this book seven years ago. Many legal forms have changed, and I leave it up to the reader to research and find the appropriate forms in what has surely become an easily accessed online forum. Managing your own divorce can be an empowering yet somewhat daunting process. The tedium of forms can become overwhelming, but keeping steady with humor and support and knowing an end is in sight—something I hope this book provides you—might hopefully provide the needed perspective sadly lacking during a trying time. The emotional confusion of this process is something one can only gain insight into a posteriori.

I have done a great deal of changing in these seven years. I am happy to say I am a relatively serene, healthy, thin and reasonably successful woman after the event. Looking back, I cannot even find the woman who survived the shock of her husband walking out on her; the humiliation and mockery from her friends; the physical and psychological deterioration of her child; the abandonment of her family of origin; the loss of her finances and subsequent loss of her home; bankruptcy; the death of her mother; the selling of her jewelry, silver, clothing and furniture to finance a move into a new and much smaller home on the wrong side of town…

Some of the weeks and months of the last seven years and the previous two as my marriage unraveled are lost to me. I believe I will have a sort of amnesia, a fugue meandering of memory, forever. This is fine with me, because some of the waking up of the last few years particularly has been hard. The grief, when it hits, can be overwhelming and dreadful in its intensity. I have found myself in the supermarket flooded with tears more times than I would like to count. Walking the many beautiful trails the wrong side of town has provided me has given me an opportunity to wail as often as driving the freeways of Los Angeles.

Yet I have dropped my story. Having found a way out of the social tendency to proclaim and worship victimization at every turn, I find that in reviewing the pages of this book, I remember relatively little about my divorce from Eli. If not for the documents attached at the end of these chapters, I have no proof that any of it happened. As my dear teacher and friend, Byron Katie, would say, And this is your proof?

I hope I can laugh as much tomorrow as I am laughing today.

KLG

Los Angeles, California

March 2013

Part I

The Story

I

Due Process Before the Due Process

IT IS TRUE THAT MORE than half of all marriages in the United States end in divorce. And it is equally true that we are as unprepared for divorce as we are for death. In fact, we go to great lengths to avoid the inevitable, and in both cases, we are always the loser.

Divorce is the ugliest, most profound grief I have known. It is a guaranteed failure to thrive event, and it is my deep belief that only the most pained, abused, horridly unhappy people rejoice in this life transition. It is worse than death, because it signifies the end of love. There is no idealized loved one, no dead body with which to have closure. Children become split in two and the archetypes of father, mother and child become something to scoff at as what was once called a family dissolves in the pain of single parenthood. Stressed out mothers and fathers try to take on superhuman roles while children rule the roosts, unbearably unhappy, talking tough, yet staying dependent and childish much longer than normal.

I don’t believe in divorce. Funny coming from someone who has been divorced twice.

I don’t believe in abortion. Funny coming from a liberal Democrat who is pro-choice and who has had an abortion.

Divorce, like abortion, leaves a hole in the soul, a grief so profound that there is often no resolution, just a resonant tug of pain, triggered year after year after year.

I dealt with both life transitions the way I deal with everything: humor. Humor and Tylenol. Humor and tears and screams and coffee and writing. And the irony of all of it remains the fact that I wouldn’t want my ex-husband on my land, yet I would have done anything to save the marriage. Anything. And I damn near died trying.

This book is about self-empowerment. It is about facing down the legal system. It is about not giving up control, even when you’re hysterical on a daily basis, tragically menopausal, not presentable in public, a single mother, bereft, literally penniless, and fighting a near-fatal illness. It is about the clear, simple and rather alarming fact that divorce lawyers cannot possibly know about your unique case; and giving them money, unless you are extremely wealthy, is absurd. I would argue that it is absurd to give any attorney money in this highly specialized game of über warfare. Most especially it is true because the family law game represents two people who are equals, and since no crime purportedly has been committed (no matter how convinced you may be that your ex is a criminal) it becomes even more ridiculous to throw money at the very system which is guaranteed to make everything much worse.

Guaranteed to make things so much worse. And more painful. And make you angrier longer. And result in the state having control over your children while having no interest whatsoever in their welfare. Guaranteed to make you suffer so much that the very people you walk past on the street are split in two—a reflection of the warfare in your own mind.

So, empower yourself. If I can do it, you can do it.

Because I say again, and will say it over and over and over: the moment a retainer is handed to a family law attorney, you have lost. No matter how amicable your matter is, you have lost. Your money, your power, your love, your self-respect, and the welfare of you and your children, is lost.

Some readers may have thrown this book across the room or bookstore by now. I do not mean to be as glib and smug as to say that in cases of severe abuse or malfeasance, help is not needed. I, myself, hired an attorney for my first hearing because the man I was divorcing (he was actually divorcing me, under the radar, as he so tactfully put it) had taken our assets without my knowledge and I needed a temporary support order. Soon afterwards—about $15,000 afterward, gobbled up in less than a month—I became aware that family law was a game and that I could and should and would carefully read the hideous forms thrown at me, that nolo.com—where I would find legal forms from a book and accompanying CD—would become my friend, and that anyone could be a lawyer.

You did not have to be particularly bright, but you did have to be able to endure the tedium and drudge of due process. I had to surrender to the fact that because my divorce was to drag on, each little item—including spatulas—fought over and contested by my mentally ill spouse, I would be doing the labor of fact-finding anyway. To pay someone $450–$650 an hour just to file what I had turned up in court, well, it stopped making sense. This was in California, in 2005. Now, in 2013, the cost of a family law attorney is even higher than the rate I was quoted.

Not only did I not have the money, I did not have the time. Who does? But I was well aware that lawyers have clocks on their telephones which aid them in billing in fifteen-minute increments. And, believe me, anything over fifteen minutes will most likely be billed at the hourly rate.

Now for the most amazing fact of all: I