I vividly recall my first meeting with Sandra Arsenault,³ my matrimonial lawyer-to-be. She came by referral and was described to me as “tough and intelligent—definitely one of the best divorce lawyers around.” She also had experience in business law, so I was entirely confident she’d be able to handle my complicated file.

I took an immediate liking to Sandra. She left me feeling that if I had to go down this road, she would be a valuable ally along the way.

I made it clear in that first meeting that my intent wasn’t to stick it to Tom: I just wanted a quick and peaceful settlement that would spare me from the many horror stories I’d heard but would still allow me to hold my head up high.

“Amen to that,” she said with a reassuring smile.

I had set the machine in motion. Now I wanted a drink.

After work on a Friday near the end of March, I met up with a couple of close friends at a downtown hotspot.

As always seemed to happen of late in conversations with my friends, the spotlight soon turned to me and my soap-opera story. I didn’t mind telling it, really. Besides allowing me to release some steam, articulating my story gave me insight and perspective. It helped me distill answers to pressing questions and nagging doubts.

Over wine, I told Samuel and Anna all that had happened over the past couple months and how things with Tom had gone, once again, so sour.

“I was sure we could settle things without a fight. He was so willing to sell me his share of the business. Then all of sudden, he does a complete 180 and wants me out.”

There was no question about it: Something in my universe was terribly out of order.

In the days that followed, my antennae were on high alert. The craziness of Tom’s energy was escalating, and his threats were becoming more frequent and more menacing.

“Get out of my company, Karen. It’s mine, and if you don’t get out, you’ll live to regret it” was now a common refrain at the office.

Just a few months earlier, Tom had been entirely amenable to the idea of being bought out of the company. Now, he seemed ready and willing to do anything—anything—to hold on to it.

One day in early April, Tom’s behavior descended to all-new lows. His attack became deeply personal and mercilessly cruel.

After most of the staff had left the office for lunch, Tom came and stood, as he tended to do, in my doorway, filling it with his intimidating presence. I looked up from my work with the customary measure of dread. I’d been conditioned to expect the worst every time he cornered me like this.

“You know what your problem is, Karen?” he said coolly. “You’re a waste of a skirt. We both know I wouldn’t have cheated on you if only you’d been a better lay.

“It’s unbelievable, really. Unbelievable that I wasted eight long and unrewarding years with someone like you.”

When he showed no signs of letting up, I stood up and pushed past him, still suffering his jeers. I ran to the bathroom, where I broke down in uncontrollable sobs. His words still held such power over me: I felt ugly and ashamed.

Without returning to my office, I drove home, shaken up beyond all comprehension.

Camilla was there when I came through the front door, tidying up toys in the family room while Alexandra napped.

“Karen! You poor dear—you look terrible,” she exclaimed.

“So I’ve been told,” I replied, though with little humor.

INTO THE LABYRINTH

The mythology of the ancient Greeks tells of the Labyrinth at Knossos, a fiendishly intricate maze devised by Daedalus to house the insatiable Minotaur.

This notion of an impossibly complex series of corridors inhabited by a beast that devours all who lose their way is a perfect parallel to the current system of matrimonial law.

Once you get in, you get lost, and finding your way out before everything gets devoured—your assets, your dignity, your ability to trust—is all but impossible.

Many stumble into the perilous maze of matrimonial law believing they have no other options at their avail—that “taking the fight to court” is the only path open to them. But soon after they take the terrible leap of faith and hire lawyers, they get hopelessly lost in the labyrinth of the status quo, where bureaucracy bewilders at every turn.

Others get seduced into the labyrinth by the illusion of control, by the belief they’re taking charge of their own destiny. The action comes from the attitude that “I need to take control of this situation!” But the moment you plunge yourself into the system and fetter yourself with a matrimonial lawyer, you run the risk of losing, paradoxically, any semblance of control, becoming little more than a billable pawn in each player’s profit-driven agenda.

My own journey through the traditional divorce process was an exercise in accepting my powerlessness over other people, while my lawyers perfectly exemplified the notion of free will run riot. More often than not, the decisions they made on my behalf (and without my input) were imprudent, even reckless, and they spent my money on motions and counterclaims and valuations and assessments as if my resources were limitless. In fact, they spent and billed until I had nothing left.

Instead of moving you toward resolution (amicable or, much more likely, otherwise), the traditional divorce process mires you deeper and deeper in crisis and moves you closer and closer to financial and emotional destruction.

My own passage through the legal system was fraught with an endless string of defenses against false accusations and malicious affidavits from my husband and his lawyers. Instead of proactively preparing for my future, I found myself stuck helplessly and hopelessly in reactive mode.

Unless you’ve been through it, you simply can’t fathom how destructive and costly the traditional divorce process really is. There are the costs of lost opportunities. The costs of assets whose value the process will often diminish. The costs to you as a human being—the loss of freedom, of dignity, of self-worth. The loss of hope.

And then, of course, there are the extortionate costs of the process itself: the fees for lawyers and assessments and valuations and disbursements and all the rest.

When you pause to consider the system’s fundamental flaws—its lack of a standardized methodology, its reactive nature, and its utter absence of accountability—the outrageous monetary costs associated with traditional divorce come hardly as a surprise.

Things were completely out of hand with Tom, and by now it was clear—even to me—that we simply wouldn’t be able to settle things on our own.

One of my friends, a successful litigator whose familiarity with the perils and the pitfalls of our legal system is intimate, offered me a solemn forewarning: “Just know, Karen, that once you and your lawyer start down that path, there’s no turning back. And any notion that you are in control is simply an illusion.”

At the time, I had no idea how much of an understatement that was.

THE LAWYERS’ BATTLEGROUND

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Sandra announced in her office one Wednesday afternoon.

“The good news is that Tom has finally retained a lawyer with some matrimonial experience.”

“Okay, if that’s the good news, what’s the bad?” I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know, but I had to ask.

“The bad news is it’s Rebecca Hartman.”⁴

“I see,” I said. But I didn’t. The name meant nothing to me, and I told Sandra so. “Tell me, Sandra, why is Rebecca Hartman bad news?”

“Because you’re not going to get that ‘quick-finish, all smiles’ outcome you were hoping for. We’re in for a long and nasty battle. Long and nasty and expensive.”

What Sandra failed to mention—something I didn’t find out about until much, much later—is that she and Ms. Hartman entertained a vile distaste for one another. Now, unbeknownst to me, my battle with Tom provided a convenient arena for Sandra and Rebecca to continue their catfight.

I feel that much of the massive, financially devastating litigation, the countless court appearances, the application after application after application was perpetuated (unconsciously, I hope) to accommodate our lawyers’ personal feud. Looking back at the monumental heap of correspondence Sandra amassed during her tenure as my matrimonial counsel, it’s so obvious that she and Ms. Hartman were fueling the fire while I was pleading desperately to get things resolved.

Many of the lawyers with whom I aligned myself were among the many poor choices that plagued my journey through divorce, making it longer, more painful, and far more expensive than it needed to be.

Something I find interesting (and upsetting) is that in court, opposing lawyers address one another as “my friend.” I came to hate this tradition as it seems to resonate with, “Remember, lawyers, we need to stick together. Unless we work together to perpetuate the madness, someone might catch on to just how ineffectual we actually are.”

THE ATTEMPTED MUTINY

With respect to the business, Tom had been all over the map. He wanted out, he wanted back in, he reneged on his promise to sell, and now he seemed hell-bent on taking it all for himself. His moods and his mind seemed to change with the weather.

In mid-March, his lawyer (who seemed to share Tom’s “win at any cost” approach and his “if you’ve got it, I want it” attitude) initiated efforts to oust me from the business by raising a mutiny among my crew. She rallied the staff and convinced them, one by one, to sign affidavits that they wanted me out of the business—that they’d rather have Tom at the helm, and if one of us had to go, it ought to be me.

Tom was the company’s top producer, a charismatic salesman, so Ms. Hartman’s argument that “the business really needs Tom back” was pretty easy for the staff to swallow.

The truth of the matter was something else altogether. Tom was indeed an effective front man, but I supported him by toiling behind the scenes, providing the vision, planning, and stability that helped hold the business together.

There were a few other things Rebecca Hartman overlooked (or simply chose to ignore): I was president of a private company; I was the board of directors’ only member; and I alone had voting shares. Now I’m no lawyer, but I know enough about business to know the employees of a privately held company simply can’t oust the sole voting shareholder from her presidency. That’s Business Law 101—the very basics.

That didn’t stop Ms. Hartman. She dragged me and Sandra into court with an application to remove me from the business and turn it over to Tom’s care and protection, an unwinnable cause.

Still, I decided to play it safe and hire cocounsel, Dave Laidlaw,⁵ a corporate lawyer who would represent me as the president of the company. (I realize now that my decision to “play it safe” was my intuition getting back into its groove. Obviously, I didn’t trust Sandra enough to let her go it alone with my business on the line.)

We went to court, where Dave promptly proved himself a wise and business-minded lawyer. With a bare minimum of debate, he handily quashed Ms. Hartman’s application by clearly establishing the obvious: that a private company cannot be taken over by its employees.

Tom’s lawyer had led him down a path that led to nowhere but a dead end, a very expensive dead end.

As for me, I had to waste tens of thousands of increasingly precious dollars on lawyers of my own, defending a motion that spoke volumes about the other side’s methodology.

I thanked Dave for his excellent efforts. He was a good lawyer, even though he was forced to operate in a tragically flawed system, and he left me with an observation that later proved an invaluable insight.

He said, “It’s so obvious, Karen: Whatever you have, Tom wants.”

It was the Boston cream pie incident all over again.

I had one more thing to do before I moved on from the matter of this attempted mutiny. I had to round up the boys and slap some wrists.

“The boys” are the fellows from whom Tom and Ms. Hartman collected their fruitless affidavits, a few of the young gentlemen on my staff who back then made up for in youthful energy what they lacked in worldly wisdom.

They were called to the boardroom, and as they arrived one by one, expecting to see Tom but finding me instead, they looked unanimously shocked. And duly alarmed. Not one of them, I imagine, expected the mercy they were about to be shown.

Yet I was committed to taking the high road, and although abiding by my principles cost me dearly in most aspects of my divorce, I walked away at the end of it all with my soul intact.

“I really ought to fire each and every one of you right now,” I said, trying hard not to sound too schoolmarmish. “But I’m not going to. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I’ll assume that each of you was manipulated. What was asked of you was totally unfair. All I ask now is that you learn a very big lesson from this.”

Sighs of relief. Smiles. Apologies. Assurances. And then they all slunk back to their offices, tails between their legs.

(I’m guessing the first thing each of them did was dust off his résumé. And who could blame them? Tom and I had failed miserably at keeping our personal issues out of the office, and morale among the staff had been on skid row for a long time already. Rebecca and Tom’s attempted mutiny must’ve booted it all the way to the doorstep of the morgue. Interestingly, though, a couple of those boys are now shareholders and senior members of the company.)

I remained in the boardroom for a while, savoring a feeling that seemed distantly familiar. For the first time in a long, long while, I felt a rush of something like happiness. For now, at least, the business was mine.

ANOTHER GAFFE, ANOTHER 50 GRAND

I’ve always been drawn to intuitive wisdom.

Dave Laidlaw was a wise soul and good business lawyer with a knack for seeing things in a very straightforward, pragmatic way. He proved to be one of the many positive forces to cross my path during my divorce.

After the court proceedings that swiftly circumvented Tom’s attempted mutiny, I met once more with Dave, seeking his advice on how to proceed. It was clear to both of us that Tom didn’t know what he wanted. But what about me? Did I know what I wanted?

While I remained rigidly uncompromising in my determination to win primary custody of the kids, I was becoming less and less attached to the outcome of the business the more the legal battle dragged on.

Besides The Wealth Management Corporation, Tom and I had amassed a number of significant assets during our decade together: an investment property in Florida, our cottage in the mountains, and a tear-down home on one of the city’s premier properties, with mountain views in one direction and a dazzling cityscape in the other.

This tear-down was one of our two most valuable assets; the other was our business. Both were very high in both innate and potential value.

Together, Dave and I took stock of all our assets and organized them into two groups, yielding a reasonably equitable distribution of our wealth.

Dave and I agreed that if I were to take my pick of the assets, my battle with Tom might never end, what with his tendency to covet anything I’d set my own sights on.

I thought about the rules of sharing my parents imposed upon my siblings and me when we were young: If one person cut up the treat, the other person got to choose the first piece.

With Tom, this seemed like the only viable approach.

It was time to settle things once and for all.

On May 6, we gathered with our lawyers for a day of negotiations.

In preparation for the meeting, I had jotted some rough numbers on a piece of notepaper. I had also divided our various assets under two columns to test the idea of splitting the pie and having Tom choose his half.

My plan was only to use these notes as a point of reference. I certainly hadn’t done the due diligence to know whether or not my numbers were accurate, nor had I considered tax implications or a number of other material factors.

Truth be told, I was more concerned about who would get the business than anything else.

After a mere 10 minutes, Sandra returned from caucusing with Tom and his lawyer. She looked at me excitedly. “Tom wants the company, but he’s going to let you have it.”

I was thrilled, of course, but I was also cautious. I knew the numbers still needed to be crunched and that the process probably wouldn’t be a smooth one. But at least Tom had relented and agreed to let me keep the business.

“At last,” I thought, “the universe is unfolding as it should.”

Despite my delight, this victory was anticlimactic. By this time, I was so ready to lose yet again that winning came with a certain numbness.

In the days and weeks leading up to this moment, I’d been mentally preparing myself to let go of something I loved. And I’d convinced myself that if Tom chose the business, I’d get over the pain and life would go on.

“I’ve built a successful business once,” I would say to myself. “I can certainly do it again. It’s just a business, after all. It’s not my kids. It’s not my health. It’s not my sanity. It’s a thing, and things can be replaced.”

Now, I felt it was safe to set those thoughts aside and start figuring out what I’d have to give Tom in exchange for the business . . . until the unthinkable happened.

For reasons I will never be able to fathom, Sandra provided Tom’s lawyers with a copy of the rough notes I had made regarding a possible distribution of assets.

She called me at home shortly after I got home from the round-table meeting.

“Karen? It’s me, Sandra.”

“Sandra, hi. What is it? Did Tom change his mind about the business?” I felt an overwhelming rush of anxiety.

“No, nothing like that. I just wanted to tell you—I thought I should let you know that Tom’s lawyer has a copy of the notes you made with Dave Laidlaw, your ideas for dividing your assets with Tom.”

I couldn’t contain my sarcasm. “That’s just great, Sandra. How the heck did that happen?”

“They got sent to Rebecca’s office.”

“By whom?”

“Well, by me, actually. I attached them to our offer to help Tom and Rebecca understand how we came up with the numbers. I thought it would help them see we were being fair. That way, they might be more inclined to accept.”

“So what does this mean? They can’t do anything with my rough notes, can they? It just means they know where my mind is at regarding the assets, right?”

“Don’t worry,” said Sandra. “It’s just to help them see where we’re at.”

“But how can it, Sandra? Those numbers aren’t even accurate. They’re just approximations—guideposts for my eyes only.”

“Relax, Karen,” Sandra assured me, “there’s truly not much they can do with those notes.”

The next day brought a series of phone calls between the lawyers, with lots of talk about offers and counteroffers and acceptance. About a week later, I was served notice: Tom was suing for breach of contract, arguing that my asset-dividing doodles constituted a legally binding part of my offer, which his lawyers were willing to accept, but which I certainly wasn’t.

Now I was going to have to prepare for a Trial of Issue, a mini-trial to determine whether or not there had been a contract and, if so, whether or not I had breached it.

I was dumbfounded. Who could possibly win in this ludicrous turn of events? I doubted very much if Tom would, and I knew with absolute certainty it wouldn’t be me.

There was an issue, all right. I didn’t need a trial to see that. The issue was this: My $400-an-hour matrimonial lawyer seemed completely oblivious to the chaos she was causing in my life. In the real world, people are held responsible for the outcomes of their actions, but in this strange world of traditional divorce, logical consequences didn’t seem to exist.

I should have heeded the clues and my intuition much more carefully. And now I was being sued. But that’s not all. Because of her role in the incident that precipitated the suit, Sandra would have to appear as a witness. As such, I was forced to hire yet another lawyer, Jordan Billings,⁶ a litigator who added to my tally another $50,000 in legal bills.

What must I have been thinking? My lawyer had made a monumental blunder that spawned a costly yet wholly unnecessary lawsuit, and I didn’t fire her. Heck, I hardly even scolded her.

But from my perspective at the time, how could I? I was at sea in turbulent waters way, way over my head and holding on for dear life. To fire Sandra would have been to let go of my life preserver, even if it was doing a miserable job of keeping my head above water.

It was everything my friend had warned me about: Once you dive in, you get overwhelmed and disoriented. You get swept away in a tidal wave of total confusion.

“Besides,” Sandra had told me, “every lawyer in town knows about this case, and no one else will touch it.”

Yes, I should have fired Sandra immediately. And I should have demanded justification of her bill—not just hours worked, but value delivered. Of the latter, there was very little that I could discern.

But I had become a codependent of the system, completely lacking in boundaries, caught up in the chaos and convinced I had nowhere else to turn. I felt paralyzed, like someone up to her neck in quicksand, incapable of anything but gasping for air and praying desperately that it would all be over with quickly.

The trial of issue was quick; the verdict was not. After the June trial, I had to spend the entire summer in excruciating limbo until a verdict was handed down on the first day of September.

To my delight, the judge who had presided over the matter handed down a judgment wherein Tom lost on every count and was ordered to pay costs—a paltry $12,000 of a bill that was over four times as much.

Even though the awarded costs were laughable (as is usually the case in matrimonial issues), the verdict represented a transitory moment of redemption for the almighty system until I remembered that there wouldn’t have been a trial in the first place were it not for my lawyer’s actions.

And where were we now? Right back at square one, without a deal.

And without any accountability. By this time, Sandra’s bill was approaching the $100,000 mark. Six stressful months had passed since Tom had reneged on his deal, and we weren’t so much as an inch closer to knowing who would get the company.

There had to be a better way. There simply had to be.

This is the thought that began to bubble to the surface of my mind and haunt me around this time, the thought that morphed, over time, into the impetus for this book and for my conception of Fairway Divorce Solutions.

My quest to bring about changes in the system began quite modestly, with a small handful of letters to Tom. Writing from my heart, I begged for his cooperation in coming to an amicable, reasonable, and mutually agreeable solution to matters that were snowballing rapidly into an avalanche I feared would lay waste to everything in its path.

What was wrong, I reasoned, with seeking a better way, a more efficient way that would keep at least some of our hard-earned assets out of our lawyers’ pockets?

I knew I needed Tom on my side—that we could stop the train wreck only by getting off together. You see, once you’re in the system, you’re stuck there unless both parties agree to get out at the same time.

Sadly, though, all of my letters ended up in Tom’s affidavits, and instead of change I spurred nothing but chastisement and admonition from the system I was holding up to criticism.

SWEETENING THE POT

I wanted so much to hold on, to preserve the business I had once nurtured and helped grow, like a child, into a thriving enterprise.

But all my thoughts had begun to revolve around one seeming inevitability: that the only way to gain complete freedom from Tom would be to liquidate everything. The business, the house, the cottage, the boat—we’d simply sell it all, split the proceeds, and go our separate ways. It would be an easy even-steven.

Though this wasn’t my ideal outcome, it really wouldn’t be the heartbreaker I once imagined it would be. As the divorce process wore on, all of the “things” in my life, including the business, really began to matter less. Keeping my soul intact and my children close to me were what really mattered.

I worked hard to resign myself to this outcome until the twenty-ninth of September. That’s when Tom’s lawyer made a casual remark that resonated through me like “Alleluia!” through a cathedral.

“Listen, Sandra,” Ms. Hartman said to my lawyer, “why don’t you and Karen put together an irresistible offer that includes the tear-down and the cottage? If you ask me, Tom is done with the business.”

Dave Laidlaw had been bang on: Tom didn’t really want the business, he was just yanking at anything I seemed determined to hang on to.

That was it, another turning point in this whirligig of legal chaos. I decided then that I would focus every last ounce of my energy and my passion on helping the business thrive and on making it my own.

The company, though still operational and modestly profitable, was suffering. It was so ironic. Because our legal wrangling consumed so much time and effort, the value of the asset we were fighting over was being compromised. Employee morale was in the toilet, and our clients, quite understandably, were growing restless and dissatisfied.

I knew that in order to rebuild the business, I’d have to show some real leadership. I’d need to bring all the employees together, inspire their trust, and help them really coalesce as a team.

With assurances to all that they could buy into the company if we reached our targets, my team and I launched Operation Phoenix, a two-year plan to resurrect the company, to bring it forth again out of the ashes.

I started by cleaning house. I downsized. I reorganized. I moved the office to a new location. I squeezed a guarantee of 100-percent commitment from every remaining member of the team.

And then I got busy.

THE SHOCKING VIEW FROM THE HIGH ROAD

Taking the high road became a double-edged sword.

At the outset of this legal fiasco, Sandra had cautioned me against playing dirty. “Don’t get sucked into doing anything unethical. Even if Tom and his lawyer start playing dirty,” she said, “don’t crawl into the gutter with them.”

And I listened. I was honest; I was forthcoming; I didn’t lie and I didn’t cheat; I played by the rules.

And I got screwed, big time.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m by no means advocating gutter-level tactics. Despite what it cost me, I will never regret taking the high road. To me, keeping your spirit and your integrity intact is always more admirable and honorable than winning at any cost.

Still, I can’t help but think I wouldn’t have been walked all over if only I’d known then what I know now: that the system is the gutter, where you need to fight tooth-and-nail for fairness and justice, and where those outcomes don’t fall to you naturally just because you play nice.

But I didn’t know then what I know now. So while I trudged along as best I could, I watched miserably as Tom’s lawyer continued to create chaos.

To aggravate the matter—and, I might add, to aggravate the client who was paying her $400 an hour to fulfill her reputation as one of the city’s most capable matrimonial lawyers—Sandra seemed never to find her legs in the courtroom.

In the face of the implausible, often insupportable allegations by Tom’s lawyer, she rarely argued back, and when she did, her objections were weakly articulated and sadly unconvincing.

Perhaps she was underprepared. Or perhaps the intricacies and convolutions of the case baffled her. I simply don’t know.

Whatever the case, I found myself standing by helplessly, going utterly berserk but completely powerless to do anything but ask myself, “Is this really the city’s best?”

During the fall of 2003, Tom and his lawyer had me and Sandra in and out of court almost a dozen times, mostly for the sake of proving that I, as president of The Wealth Management Corporation, was utterly destroying the company in which Tom was still a 50-percent owner.

Rebecca Hartman filed affidavits as if they were postings on a sordid blog, a steady stream of accusations that I was mismanaging the business, eroding its client base, and lining my pockets from the company coffers. Nothing seemed too far-fetched.

For one of our court appearances, the presiding judge was the Honorable Madam Justice C.J. Molyneux.⁷ As was typical, Sandra and I didn’t find out who’d be presiding until shortly before the appearance. And on this particular day, the luck of the draw was definitely against me.

As much as the lawyers shattered any illusions that the legal system can be efficient, Madam Justice Molyneux destroyed any illusions that it is always fair.

I used to think the people appointed to judgeships had to be unbiased, but from the outset, Madam Justice Molyneux showed a thinly veiled distaste for me and my petitions.

This boded well for Tom and Rebecca Hartman in their efforts to prove I was mismanaging the business and compromising its profit potential when in fact the very opposite was true.

Although I had done much to solidify the company’s foundation, revenue was down. Not only had we lost our top-producing salesman, but we were still adjusting to our new brokerage platform and the changes implemented under Operation Phoenix.

Tom’s legal team seized this fact like hyenas on an injured gazelle. They presented a shocking misrepresentation of business facts, and Madam Justice Molyneux readily accepted as truth the web of deceptions they so deftly spun—that I was pulling an annual income of close to a million dollars; that I stole money from the company; that I used my company credit card to fill my closet with shoes and fancy clothes—anything to cast doubt on my ability and my integrity.

“Your Honor,” Ms. Hartman offered in sycophantic tones during one of our days in court, “I’d like to draw your attention to the second page of our brief.

“These numbers show the company’s profits for the three months ending June 30, 2003, versus profits in the same three months in the previous three years. As you’ll see, the profits under Ms. Stewart’s leadership of the company have dwindled away to almost nothing.”

Of course they had! Reorganizing a company is a lot like reorganizing your house. Before it gets tidier, it tends to get a whole lot messier. As well, I was now paying others to replace Tom, and they didn’t come cheap.

I looked pleadingly toward Sandra, hoping desperately for a vehement retort. But all she could offer up was a half-hearted counterattack, a vague argument devoid of the details I really needed the court to hear, which were the facts and numbers Sandra needed to articulate to quash Ms. Hartman’s claims against me, but simply couldn’t.

Madam Justice Molyneux was clearly unmoved. After a scant few moments’ consideration, she looked up from the brief at which she’d been staring all the while Sandra had been speaking. Peering at me icily over the cat’s-eye glasses that sat midway down the bridge of her nose, she said, “Clearly, Ms. Stewart, you’re driving the company into the ground.”

Ms. Hartman jumped in again. “I’d ask Your Honor to consider my client’s application for a cash advance of $50,000. He’d like to make sure he gets fairly paid before there’s nothing left of his business. As well, we’d like to commission a full comparative valuation of the company. After all, my client has a right to know exactly how much his assets are worth, and how much he’s losing because of his wife’s ineptitude.

“The cost of the valuation will be at least $45,000, a cost we feel Ms. Stewart should cover since she’s the one whose mismanagement is compromising the company’s value.”

Madam Justice Molyneux smiled toward Tom. “I’m with you on the advance. Ms. Stewart, have your accountant advance your husband $50,000 lickety-split. And while you’re at it, have him set aside an additional $45,000. The Wealth Management Corporation can foot the bill for the valuation as well. Adjourned.”

I looked toward Sandra, who had already begun tidying up her papers.

Her useless papers! Did she never read them? How could she let this go without impassioned objections? How could she not demand that the court hear the truth?

But then again, nothing I’d experienced in the system so far made a compelling case for the value of truth. Where justice takes a back seat to bureaucracy, equity has its own agenda, and fairness plays favorites, truth is sadly a moot point.

Despite her questionable presence in the courtroom, Sandra was painstaking and meticulous in preparing our documents. She saw to it that every i was dotted, every t crossed, and every important affidavit signed, sealed, and delivered well in advance of the deadline.

Four weeks after she awarded Tom $50,000, Madam Justice Molyneux was back on the bench, and Sandra and I were back before her.

The matter on the day’s docket: an application by Tom to have my salary slashed.

In preparation for the hearing, I spent countless hours and almost $10,000 putting together a lengthy affidavit with Sandra. She assured me she’d filed it four days earlier, well ahead of the 72-hour advance deadline.

I grudgingly stood as the court clerk announced the Honorable Madam Justice Molyneux, and I sat quickly as the judge shuffled into her seat.

She began abruptly. “Ms. Arsenault, no defense today?”

“I’m sorry, Your Honor. I don’t understand.”

“Then I’ll use smaller words. Your response to the plaintiff ’s application. Where is it?”

“I filed it on Monday, Your Honor.”

“In that case, it should be in my hands, which it isn’t.”

“I’m sorry, Your Honor, but I filed it. If you didn’t receive it, we’ll need a continuance.”

“Not likely, Ms. Arsenault.” Waving her arm dismissively at Sandra, Madam Justice Molyneux turned and mumbled something at the clerk, who immediately disappeared through a door at the back of the courtroom.

Two minutes later the door reopened and the clerk returned. She shrugged, empty-handed, at the judge.

“The court hasn’t got your submission, Ms. Arsenault,” Madam Justice Molyneux said abrasively. “So, what next?”

“As I said, Your Honor, we need to request a continuance.”

“No can do, my dear. As well you know, these courtrooms are in high demand. Surely you’ve got a copy somewhere among all those papers of yours?”

“Of course,” Sandra chirped. She pulled our affidavit from her stack of briefs and held it up for the judge to see. “It’s right here.”

“Let’s have it then,” she said impatiently, and then added for the entire courtroom, “Let’s take five, people.”

The clerk took the affidavit from Sandra and passed it to Madam Justice Molyneux, who stood, shot Sandra and me a glowering look, and then retired to the back room.

She left the door slightly ajar, and from where my mother and I were seated, we could see her with my affidavit.

Contained within its 30 pages, along with charts and graphs and easy-to-understand snapshots of the company’s finances, was my desperate plea to the universe that the system see the numbers for what they really were—that I wasn’t mismanaging the company or misappropriating funds, that every transaction was aboveboard, and that the state of The Wealth Management Corporation was improving day by day.

Clinging desperately to one last shred of hope, I watched Madam Justice Molyneux with my affidavit in her back room. I watched her flip through the 30 pages of my heart and soul in a little under three minutes, skimming through the contents as if it were a Dick and Jane book. Then I watched her toss it onto a desk before she breezed back through the doorway. I was stunned beyond all comprehension.

“Ms. Stewart,” she began, “I don’t get it. How can you justify such a huge salary when all you do is squander the company’s meager profits?”

Huge salary? Hardly! While Tom and I had a combined income of close to what they were alleging, mine on its own wasn’t even half that much.

Once again, though, Tom’s lawyer had contorted the truth into a twisted misrepresentation. In 2001, we’d taken a shareholders’ loan, which we used to purchase an expensive cottage. In his application to the court, Tom had included a large percentage of that loan as part and parcel of my annual salary.

“Do you have anything you’d like to say, Ms. Arsenault?”

“Everything’s in our affidavit, Your Honor.”

I was suddenly livid. I thought, “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got, Sandra? Perhaps you could point out the truth: that for every penny I draw from the company, Tom receives exactly the same. That if Her Honor took the time to read our affidavit, she’d see that everything Tom’s lawyer had told the court was pure, unadulterated bullshit.”

But of course I couldn’t say anything. This was, after all, a court of law. Decorum and protocol were far more important than letting the truth be known. While I wanted to stand up and insist on being treated fairly, I was, by this time, scared silent by the system.

“Let’s take another five-minute recess. I need some time to think this over.”

Five minutes. My livelihood was on the line—mine, and my children’s too—and Madam Justice Molyneux was going to spend five minutes formulating a “fair and thoughtful decision.”

I turned angrily toward Sandra. In a caustic whisper, I demanded an explanation. “Why didn’t you say anything? Do you know she didn’t even read the affidavit?”

“Shhh. Calm down, Karen.”

“Don’t shhh me! And don’t tell me to calm down. I’m about to get screwed again, and you just sat by and did nothing.”

“Sometimes, Karen, nothing is the best thing to do. I know how these things go. We can’t afford to piss off the judge. If you push too hard, you’re bound to experience some backlash.”

“What kind of courtroom is this then? I thought the system was only interested in the facts, not in how hard someone pushes. I thought the goal was to get the judge to see the truth of the matter.”

“Yes, Karen, in a perfect world—”

“All rise!”

The court clerk’s bark gave Sandra a reprieve from my wrath.

Meanwhile, Madam Justice Molyneux dealt another blow to my rapidly declining hopes that the system might somehow redeem itself.

“After careful review,” she announced, “I’ve decided the plaintiff makes a convincing case. Ms. Stewart, your salary is completely unreasonable. Effective immediately, I’m limiting your annual income from The Wealth Management Corporation to $72,000.

“If you’ve already exceeded that for the calendar year, you are hereby compelled to repay everything in excess of $72,000 to the company.

“And just so we’re clear, I’m talking pre-tax dollars here. We’re adjourned.”

SLAP! I’d just been hit with an out-of-nowhere open hand right across my belief system.

Were the courts no fairer—and no more predictable—than life in general, where people with power play favorites and good guys finish last?

Rushing past Sandra who stood stacking papers, I fled from the courtroom. When I saw Tom and Ms. Hartman standing at the elevator, I ducked quickly into the stairwell.

I descended one flight, then another, then a third. My heels rang loud on the concrete steps, and my pulse beat loud against my ear-drums.

I soon reached the bottom of the stairwell. A long, dark hallway led to a distant door marked EXIT. Like a lab rat in a maze, I hurried toward the door and swung it open.

The brightness of midday washed over me. And as I squinted against the sun, I wondered if I’d ever find my way out of the legal labyrinth in which I seemed hopelessly trapped.

“Is this actually happening?” I wondered.

It all seemed so impossible, but this was the system as I experienced it.

People assume the system has checks and balances built in, but as I was learning, that’s a dangerous assumption.

At the heart of the system, you see, are people—fallible, biased, imperfect people.

People like the Honorable Madam Justice C.J. Molyneux.

Her decision to slash my salary had had ripple effects that were devastating to my children. For starters, I had to pull Matthew and Sarah out of the private school they’d always attended, creating even more upheaval and instability in their already topsy-turvy lives. I also had to cut back on their extracurricular activities—Sarah’s horseback riding lessons and Matthew’s hockey school. I even had to let Camilla go.

Nor did the repercussions end there. When the court cut my salary, it was “effective immediately.” I had no time to renegotiate my mortgage or pay down my credit line or phase out certain expenditures. All I could do was cut back wherever I could while sinking further and further into debt.

MY LAWYER’S WHITE FLAG

The end of a full year in and out of court was coming up quickly, and still we were spinning our wheels on the slippery slopes of the legal system.

It was then, near the end of 2003, that Sandra came to two weighty realizations: “This case really needs to go to trial,” she offered, and then added,“but I really don’t feel I can continue as your counsel.

“Things between me and Tom’s lawyer are getting too personal and too nasty. Her vendetta against me is holding us back from a resolution. It’s probably in everyone’s best interests for you to retain new counsel.”

In other words, I helped create this mess, but I’d rather not stick around to help set things straight. I wish you luck. And oh, by the way, would you kindly tell me how you plan to settle my bill?

After a year of representation and over $150,000 in billings, Sandra had resolved nothing.

Along with her unceremonious goodbye, Sandra offered me the name of the only lawyer of any reputation who, to her knowledge, might be willing to take up my cause: Robert McWilliams.⁸

“He’s with Peters McDermid McWilliams, a group of powerful lawyers with deep pockets,” said Sandra, who knew full well that the past year had been as draining for me financially as it had been emotionally. “Who knows? Maybe they can carry you until you get your feet back on the ground.”

Robert McWilliams was a well-polished pro, a McGill-trained smooth talker who wore Armani suits and had a reputation for getting things done.

During our first meeting, he announced with irrefutable confidence, “What we need, Karen, is to get you in front of a judge so we can get this unsavory business over with.”

That sounded great to me. My first impression said Robert was just what I needed: a lawyer who was going to really take charge.

Robert promptly got a trial date set for November 2004, nearly another full year of life in limbo down the road, but the best Robert could do given the backlog in the system. Then he got busy running up (and up) yet another bill.

We spoke seldom. During the entire year leading up to the trial, we probably met only 15 times, and never for very long. But he was working hard, he said, behind the scenes, and he always appeared exceptionally well organized.

Most of my interactions were with a junior lawyer Robert had assigned to help out with my case, someone whose attention to detail gave me an added measure of confidence in my new legal team. My only question was, did Robert know the ins and outs of my case as well as his assistant did?

In all, Robert’s pretrial billings added up to a little over $200,000, a baffling sum toward which he expected a sizable payment before the start of the trial.

“$200,000? But how—”

“All the hard work happens long before you get into the courtroom, Karen. The one thing we must not do is walk into that courtroom unprepared. It’s my job to make sure we don’t get caught off guard.”

“I’m sure you know best. But $200,000?”

“Just take a look at this,” he said, plucking up a thick folder from his desktop and thrusting it toward me.

I leafed through the contents: letter after letter from Robert to Rebecca Hartman and back again. Petty bickering. Grandiose positioning. And lots of piss ’n’ vinegar.

This was supposed to impress me?

Robert was a talented litigator by anyone’s standards, but he was equally talented at wooing me. And as with Sandra a year earlier, I was so far down the road with Robert, I simply couldn’t see any other way. So I swallowed my misgivings and borrowed the money to pay my bill. What other choice did I have?

It was no longer a question of how much I’d have left at the end of my divorce; it was a question of how much I’d owe. Everything I’d worked for, everything I’d earned, everything I’d saved was gone, every last cent of it. But so long as I could beg or borrow enough to pay their bills, none of the lawyers really seemed to mind.

As troubling as Robert’s bill was, there was something else that nagged at my intuition in the days that followed. Rattling about in my thoughts was a sentence that caught my eye in one of Rebecca Hartman’s letters to Robert.

“You’ve obviously got better things to do with your time,” she had written, “but maybe you should pay a little more attention to this case.”

Here was yet another sign from the universe—another sign that took far too long to sink in!

Anxiety and dread were the only constants in my life all through the time leading up to the trial.

During that long and uncertain year, The Wealth Management Corporation was subjected to the second of two valuations.

It was part of a process insisted upon by Tom’s lawyer early in the legal proceedings, a process that just happened to devour an additional $45,000 in fees.

The intent of these valuations: to prove beyond any doubt that my mismanagement was destroying the business.

The first valuation had been completed in the summer of 2003. Now, a full year later, it was time for the follow-up—the comparative figures—Tom’s proof positive that I was, as Madam Justice Molyneux had so boldly asserted, “driving the business into the ground.”

The results surprised everyone except me.

As a result of Operation Phoenix and the back-office changeover, the value of the business was up more than 25 percent.

I thought back to my meeting with Tom’s girlfriend—to the box of evidence she’d set before me: her gift of reality.

I’d now received my second gift of reality: an affirmation that my devotion to the business was paying dividends, and that Tom’s allegations of mismanagement were nothing more than the last-gasp protestations of a man consumed by the fear of losing control.

The only twist was this: Because of the spike in the company’s value, I was now going to have to pay more to buy Tom out!

THE “ TRIVIAL” TRIAL

“You’ve obviously got better things to do.”

As if I wasn’t shaky enough in the weeks leading up to the trial, that statement rattled about in my obsessive thoughts like a silver dollar in the dryer.

It might explain why, during those same few weeks, Robert waved off two offers from Tom’s side of the table as “not even worthy of our attention.”

It might also explain why, during our pretrial preparations, he urged me to drop the matter of the costs I was awarded in the Trial of Issue, costs that, several months later, remained unpaid. “Let’s not get distracted by trifling matters like that,” Robert admonished. “I need you to stay focused on the bigger picture.”

That’s how Robert explained it: big-picture thinking, which seemed to be the mantra of all my matrimonial lawyers.

And now that I know the trial’s outcome, I understand “big-picture thinking” for what it really is: a dangerous disregard of the all-important details.

At its excruciating pace, October crept at last to a close, and on the first day of November the property division trial began.

Robert, his junior helper, and I entered the courtroom together. Tom and his new litigator, a gray-flannelled, silver-haired courtroom vet by the name of Aldus Green,⁹ were already seated at one of the tables near the front. I lingered for a moment and then ambled up the aisle behind Robert, who swung his briefcase onto our table and then turned to shake hands with Aldus Green.

“May the best man win,” he said with a breezy laugh as he turned back to his briefcase and unloaded its contents.

“All rise.” This was it, the signal to start. And the beginning of the end. “The Honorable Judge Parker⁹ presiding.”

The courtroom and the judge had been booked for an eight-day trial, though how it could possibly take eight days was well beyond me. I knew from our pretrial preparations that Robert would need about a day and a half to make our case. What could Tom’s team possibly have up their sleeves that would take four times as long?

Robert had prepped me well on protocol and procedure. First, I would take the stand and present my case with the help of Robert’s guiding questions. Then, after Tom’s lawyer had had an opportunity to cross-examine me, Tom’s team would present his case and then my team would cross-examine him. After all that was said and done, we would call our small handful of witnesses: the accounting firm that performed the comparative valuations of the company, and The Wealth Management Corporation’s in-house accountant to help vindicate me from accusations of embezzlement from the company. Finally, Tom’s team would have an opportunity to call their witnesses.

One question that played over and over in my mind was “Why are we here?” I wasn’t a criminal. I’d committed no crime. Yet here I was in a court of law, about to be questioned and cross-examined like a common criminal. In my view (both then and now), divorce didn’t belong in this place!

From the outset, the courtroom took on a carnival atmosphere as the lawyers for both sides jockeyed for position, brandished affidavits, objected loudly, and grandstanded as if a panel of figure-skating judges were rating their performances.

During my first day on the stand, my testimony was punctuated by incessant objections from Tom’s table, and I had real difficulty maintaining a coherent train of thought. Although Robert tried his best to keep things on track, Mr. Green proved awfully adept at derailing the proceedings.

“Ms. Stewart,” Robert prompted with a subtly reassuring smile, “please tell the court what Tom told you on the tenth of December, 2002.”

“He said he wanted out. He said he was done with The Wealth Management Corporation and was ready to move on.”

“And what were your plans for your company after Tom left?”

“Objection,” Mr. Green clamored. “Your company? Please, Mr. McWilliams, it wasn’t her company then, and it isn’t her company now. You set yourself up for disappointment when you get ahead of yourself like that.”

Judge Parker peered down toward Aldus. “You may spare us your theatrics, Mr. Green. Mr. McWilliams, I think we’ll let the court decide whose company it is.”

“Your Honor.” Robert nodded deferentially toward the judge and then turned back to me. “Now please tell the court what happened on March 1, 2003.”

“Nothing happened,” I said. “That was the trigger date for the transfer of Tom’s shares to me. It was all laid out in a Term Sheet a lawyer had drafted for us, but it never happened. Tom reneged on his promise.”

Robert continued his questioning. “What happened next, on the fourth of March?”

“Tom burst into my office and told me he wanted the company for himself. He said the company was his and I’d better get out or else.”

“Objection! Your Honor—please. Didn’t Ms. Stewart take an oath to tell the truth?”

“I think I said enough theatrics, Mr. Green,” the judge replied.

I looked to Robert, wondering why he wasn’t doing anything about these frivolous objections. He nodded reassuringly and put up his hand as if to say, “Patience. Remember: big picture.”

And so, for the rest of the day and the lion’s share of the next, the Carnival of Objections clamored dizzily on.

If only Aldus Green had shared Robert’s big-picture view of the world! His tactic, it turned out, was all about the details. He would stone me to death with pebbles of trickery.

After I’d delivered my testimony regarding the status of the business—my original intention of buying Tom out, his reneging on the deal, Rebecca Hartman’s futile efforts to oust me from my presidency, my commitment to rebuilding the company, Operation Phoenix, and finally the recent valuation that demonstrated my success—he launched into a cross-examination that seemed little more than a stalling tactic designed to try my patience.

And it worked.

For a full day and a half, Aldus Green went line by line through my business credit card statements, demanding that I explain every last expenditure.

Not only was this a monumental waste of everyone’s time and my money, it was an insult to the court system. No wonder the courts are so backlogged that it can take a year, sometimes more, to get before a judge!

“July 27,” Mr. Green probed. “You had an expensive dinner at Bon Appétit. That’s just eight or nine blocks from your home, isn’t it? Are you sure that was a business expense and not a night on the town with your boyfriend?”

I replied coolly. “It’s also just four or five blocks from my office, which is why I often take clients there. Just like I did on July 27.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Positive.”

“And the client was . . . ?”

“Terry Batistella and his wife Brianne.”

“Interesting. But wasn’t July 27 a Sunday?”

“It was a Tuesday. Would you like me to lend you my day-timer so you can keep track?”

“Let’s move on. July 29. …”

Aldus Green’s efforts to reveal some sort of misuse of company funds was failing dismally, but by the end of day three I felt beat-up and exhausted. And we still had most of a week to go. As the cross-examination plodded onward, things became more and more blurry to me. I consider myself financially astute—as president and managing director of a financial service company, I have to be. And I’d been feeling pretty proud of myself because I’d been able to cite, off the top of my head, the exact reason for every expenditure Aldus Green asked me about. For every one of his tedious questions, I had a legitimate and truthful answer.

But all of a sudden, there in the courtroom, I lost focus. Aldus Green was carrying on with restaurant names and dollar amounts, and it all washed over me like a silly tune from an organ-grinder’s music box.

I tried to bring my mind back into focus. “Pardon me,” I said, unsure of where we’d left off.

“Your trip to Los Angeles,” Aldus repeated impatiently. “On April 7, 2004. Your boyfriend Todd had moved there three weeks earlier, had he not? So would you really have the court believe that was a legitimate business expense?”

For the life of me, I couldn’t remember why I had flown to LA. It had to have been for business: My determination to take the high road extended to operations of the company, and I was always careful to keep personal expenses separate from business expenses. But why couldn’t I remember this one?

I looked pleadingly toward Robert, who stepped in quickly and requested a recess.

Judge Parker acquiesced. “Let’s take a 15-minute coffee break,” he announced.

As I was still under cross, I wasn’t allowed to talk to my legal team during our recess. Still, Robert’s junior whispered to me under his breath, “Seems strange to Robert and me that you can remember everything but that one. What’s going on, Karen?”

After expending so much energy to travel the high road, I felt beaten down, like a common criminal. And after all my efforts to be 100 percent honest, my lawyers were suddenly doubting me!

Of course I remembered later that evening why I had been in LA, but far too late to make a difference—the damage had already been done. I’d gone to a professional development conference for certified divorce financial analysts. How on earth could I have forgotten that one?

I called Robert. I needed him to know I was exhausted and doubted whether I could handle another day like this one. I guess, as well, I was expecting him to share some words of strength—to tell me to just hang in there and he’d make sure everything turned out fine. Instead, he handed the phone to his junior, who came up tragically short of the support and encouragement I needed.

What unfolded the next morning was a spectacle of shameless surrender that ended up costing me hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Why? Because Robert, I’m guessing, had better things to do than hand-hold his emotionally drained client.