Our family publicist asked me to write an opinion piece to highlight the fault of the divorce laws as part of my experience in divorcing the Hong Kong celebrity actress, Moon Lee.
This was the story of a celebrity wife that was discovered after a two and a half year secret affair with an under-aged and uneducated adopted son, who also happened to have been an employee of the company she owned. Given the facts, a normal person would expect the divorce to be relatively easy and straightforward. Yet this turned out to be the divorce from hell, taking four years to complete and the expenditure of $1.6 million in attorneys and accounting fees. In addition, based on Moon’s lies regarding lifestyle needs, $13,000 monthly for four years was paid for “temporary maintenance” while the final divorce decree was pending. Despite her own wrongdoings of gigantic proportions, Moon Lee’s greed incited her to ask for millions of dollars in property division and permanent alimony to sustain her for the rest of her life. Yet, after years of bitter litigation and a giant waste of money, all she received was about $70,000 in property division and six months of alimony of $6,000 in order to facilitate her to “leave town”.
This final result represents a resounding and catastrophic defeat for a greedy spouse in the course of divorce. But how can this happen in America?
Let every reader be warned that the American judicial system was and still is not based on fairness in the setting of divorces. Judges and attorneys do not even pretend that the process is fair. Sandwiched between overworked judges with overflowing dockets and greedy attorneys working on hourly charges, divorces can never see daylight. Judges want to postpone hearing dates in order to force parties to settle. Attorneys want to stall and prolong cases because hourly fees earned keep pouring in. On account of these factors, the advent of “no-fault” divorce laws did not alleviate any problems. Lies and acrimony rage and there is really no meaningful penalty for perjury. Attorneys love the incessant fight between parties while judges grant most “Motions” while showing propensity to “continue” the case whenever possible.
For the system to improve, the country needs to develop a flat-fee system of attorney’s fees for divorces, much like the system presently used in China, where Courts demand that the divorce must be completed in six months.
My divorce from Moon Lee was a glaring example of the system gone wild. We had no children born of the marriage and child custody was never a factor. I had retired from surgery, and without earned income and living off family Trust distributions, I spent my time during the marriage on my non-profit foundation dealing with cultural exchange between China and the United States. Not only was our judicial system corrupt and ineffective, it assisted a foreign national in her attempts to rob an American husband.
There is no way to stop spouses from doing bad things to each other. This is human nature. But something should be done to change our judicial system and its handling of divorce matters!
Dennis Law MD
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