I’m a divorce lawyer — these are the strangest client arguments I’ve mediated
Now that’s a horse of a different color.
A divorce lawyer is serving up the strangest arguments she’s ever witnessed — including a decision over an expensive horse’s semen.
Holly J. Moore, a 43-year-old from Southern California, has dealt with over 2,000 divorces in the 16-plus years she’s been working as a lawyer.
Moore, who charges $600 per hour for her services, has a diverse client roster and has represented NFL stars and even someone in an FBI witness protection program.
In addition to divorces, she helps couples with prenuptial agreements, in which they plan on how they’ll split assets in a divorce before they ever get married.
“I have had some really interesting cases – certainly some that were eye-opening,” said Moore, who also posts about her cases for her 209,000 followers on her Instagram page.
She said her strangest case, involving horse semen for breeding, was for a prenup for a couple whose horse was involved in horse racing.
“They had a really expensive horse and they wanted to protect that horse’s semen,” she said.
“That was definitely a first for me, but I thought it was interesting. Everything has its own little world, so I wasn’t familiar with the world of horse racing – it was fascinating,” she explained.
Another strange divorce included a client who wanted to know the value of all the batteries for electronics they had in the house.
“In another case, I was representing the husband [in a divorce] – we were going through the spreadsheet of everything that was staying in the house and attaching value, such as the couch, two grand dining sets, etc. The wife asked ‘What about all the batteries,” she explained.
“She wanted to know about the batteries in the TV remote and the wall clock, things like that. That was a bit bizarre,” she said.
She said in one of her cases she worked with “someone in the witness protection program” and “the FBI handled everything.”
She’s also represented NFL players who get paid per touchdown and even a professional pinball player who had “hundreds of thousands of sea coral he wanted to protect.”
Moore said a lot of people have a misconception about how divorces work.
“A lot of people think that things are split 50/50 but this is a huge misconception,” she explained.
“[As an example], California is a community property state – this means things acquired during the marriage are split equally, but not things obtained before – there are so many complex nuances with credits, reimbursements and loopholes,” she added.
Another misconception people have is that they no longer have any rights to their shared home if they move out.
She suggested that even if people don’t file a prenup before getting married, drafting one before tying the knot is a good idea.
“People put so much emphasis on the wedding that the actual marriage falls by the wayside and that’s a huge mistake,” she said.
“Nothing good comes easy and every relationship will have highs and lows,” she added.
Moore — who has been married 20 years to her husband Jeff, 46 — said she thinks people give up on their marriage too easily and choose the wrong person.
“The key to a happy marriage really starts with marrying the right person. There are a lot of times when people are divorcing and they are talking about things wrong with the relationship and their partner, that they knew before they got married,” she said.
“Similar core values are hugely important. A lot of marital discord revolves around a difference in world view, different opinions on raising kids, even a difference in work ethics,” she explained.
Moore said divorces all have one thing in common — someone in the relationship isn’t having their needs met.
“We all have four specific human needs: to feel special, to experience variety both in emotions and our practical lives, to have the stability of basic needs like food, clothing and shelter, and to be loved and cared for,” she said.
“If I looked at all the divorces, one or both people were lacking one or more of those basic needs.It manifests in so many different ways such as infidelity, addiction, abuse, but these are symptoms of an underlying problem,” she added.
