Dan D'Ambrosio photo

Attorneys Barbara Aaron and Steven Dembo.

I got divorced in 1988 for less than $500. Even 20 years ago, that was cheap. My soon-to-be-ex-wife, a student at the University of Montana School of Law, enlisted a friend in Legal Services to draft the divorce petition, which I signed without reading, and without stepping into a courtroom.

We had a three-year-old daughter, who we agreed would stay with me in the house she had grown up in to minimize the trauma. But even so, she endured endless bus trips to Helena from Missoula for weekend visits, years of repetitious drives to a wind-blown wide spot in the road for the hand-off, and some disorienting late-night pick-ups on snowy winter nights.

And that's about as good as divorce gets. If my ex-wife and I had decided to fight it out, as too many couples still do in Connecticut, we would have drained what little financial resources we had, and then some, and made our daughter's life a hell along with our own.

In Connecticut, divorces like mine are far from the norm. Instead, many are protracted, bitter and incredibly expensive, with children often caught in the crossfire. But a new trend toward mediated outcomes may calm the marital waters.

John Clapp, a professor in the business school at the University of Connecticut and a divorced father of two boys, analyzed more than 17,000 divorce cases in the state during 2003-2004. He found that nearly half dragged on for more than a year, and that 20 percent were in the system for more than five years.

"The data show that Connecticut divorces are typically drawn out," says Clapp, who also found that when a divorce is granted here, about 40 percent take a year to get a final decree. Nearly a quarter of the unsealed cases involve couples who had been granted a divorce, but were back in court fighting over something related to it.

And you know what they say: Time is money. Divorcing couples in Connecticut regularly rack up bank-busting legal bills that can put the lesser earning party—and there often is an economic imbalance between warring couples—into bankruptcy. Good Connecticut divorce attorneys command $350 to $400 an hour, says Carolyn Kaas, an associate professor at the Quinnipiac University School of Law and co-director of the Center on Dispute Resolution. Some divorce attorneys charge as much as $650 an hour.

"I want to throw up. It sounds greedy, but they're typically handling multimillion-dollar cases," said Kaas of the highest-paid lawyers. "I'm for doing everything in our power to change the way people get divorced."

The most notorious Connecticut divorce case in recent memory is last year's settlement involving the extremely wealthy Peter Tauck of Westport (who made his money in the travel industry), his ex-wife Nancy and their four children.

The trial went on for 86 days and cost the Taucks an estimated $13 million, smashing the previous Connecticut record of 37 days and probably setting a national record.

"After the trial phase ended on June 25, over 40 motions were filed, and the judge told lawyers for both sides: 'I can't write a decision until you all stop filing motions,'" recounted Clapp in an unpublished op-ed piece.

But you don't have to be a Westport millionaire to serve as a poster child for divorce reform in Connecticut. Brian Patterson, an IT security manager for the company that handles United Technology Corporation's computer work, had his own War of the Roses. He lives in a neat and tidy condominium in South Windsor that belies the fact he is financially strapped. His divorce has cost him about $500,000 since 2000.

Patterson looks utterly depleted: the bags are like fleshy pillows under his eyes, and his long, slender fingers are wrapped with prominent sinewy veins. His hands shake with a slight, steady tremor and he clears his throat repeatedly as he talks about his long ordeal.

Despite earning a good salary, Patterson did not have a half million dollars to spend on his divorce. So he mortgaged his condominium, took loans against his retirement funds, used up all his cash, and borrowed $200,000 from his father, who has since died.

"I still owe a tremendous amount of money," says Patterson, "I still owe on this place. I owe my father's estate. I'm living hand-to-mouth on my paycheck."

Patterson married Marianne Stefanov in September 1999, when he was 48. She gave birth to their daughter at the end of January 2000. Within weeks, says Patterson, Stefanov told him she was leaving and taking their daughter. Patterson claims Stefanov saw him merely as a highly educated "sperm donor," and never intended to stay with him. Stefanov declined to discuss the divorce, but Patterson's charge was vigorously denied by her attorney, Barbara Aaron. "I will tell you that's an out-and-out falsehood," she said.

After Stefanov left him, Patterson immediately filed for divorce on the advice of his attorney, hoping to have the best shot of remaining in his daughter's life.

At first, things seemed to go well. There were supervised visits with his daughter in Stefanov's new home in South Windsor, and that progressed to time with the girl at his own house, beginning when she was about seven months old. By 2002, Patterson was set to begin having his daughter on overnight visits.

But there would be no happy ending. Patterson says in March 2002 he noticed welts on his daughter's chest and neck and a blood spot in her eye. When he asked her what happened, he says she cried. That led to three separate investigations of Stefanov by the state Department of Children and Families, all of them coming up "unsubstantiated," meaning no finding of abuse.

Patterson found himself back in divorce court, accused of harassing his ex-wife. The visitation schedule was immediately suspended, he says, and a new custody evaluation was ordered. Patterson claims he "knew where that was going," because the evaluator was hand-picked by his wife's attorney. Aaron denies that charge, pointing out that Patterson's own attorney agreed to the evaluator.

Stefanov was given full custody, based on the high level of conflict with her ex-spouse. Patterson says, with some emotion, that "the entire process in Connecticut is really extremely inbred and corrupt. You get cut out of the picture."

One of the last times Patterson saw his daughter was by accident at a local café where his ex-wife's parents brought her for lunch during a break in a court appearance. "They took a booth diagonally from me and I thought, 'Wait a minute, that's my daughter,'" says Patterson. He says he knew he was not supposed to talk to her or risk the wrath of the judge.

"It was terrible," Patterson says. "She clearly knew who I was, even though she hadn't seen me for a year." As he left the café, he gave her a penny as a poignant remembrance.

Tapped out financially, Patterson has not been in court since February 2006. But he says the fight isn't over. "When I have the funds I'll be going back for my daughter," he says. "I promised her all along that I would never abandon her."

But according to Aaron, Patterson brought the tragedy with his daughter upon himself, because he couldn't stop launching attacks against his ex-wife and instigating DCF investigations. Aaron says a series of the best judges in family court pleaded with Patterson to stop his campaign against Stefanov, which they saw as devastating to his daughter, or they would be left with no choice but to cut off contact.

"Neither I nor [Stefanov] ever had any interest in Mr. Patterson not having contact with this child," says Aaron. "All we wanted was an end to the strife, ugliness and litigation."

Patterson, who has remarried, has not seen his daughter in nearly five years. He is not allowed to contact her in any way. He can only have access to her school records and medical records. She'll be 9 years old in January.

Family court might not be such a battleground if an emerging trend of mediation and collaborative law takes hold. "It's a wonderful development invented by litigators who couldn't stomach it any more, how destructive divorce trials are," says Professor Kaas.

Kaas says that under the rules of collaborative law, each party has a lawyer, but their charge is "solely to settle the case." And if no agreement is reached, the parties have to hire new attorneys to go to court, taking away any incentive for the collaborative lawyers not to settle.

"It's an express agreement for clients who understand it's not good for the children or families to fight this out," says Kaas.

Collaborative law started in California and Minnesota about 10 years ago, but it certainly isn't the norm in Connecticut, where the prevailing strategy remains conflict. That's why the most expensive and sought-after divorce attorneys are commonly referred to as "junkyard dogs."

Aaron, who herself has a combative reputation in 22 years of practice, says in the past five years she has seen a shift in her practice from mostly conflict and litigation to some 70 percent of her cases being settled through collaborative law and mediation.

"When it comes to family law it's a toxic system," says Aaron. "Litigation puts a magnifying glass on everything that's wrong with each person and the marriage. With mediation and collaborative law there's an opportunity to at least start a healing process."

Aaron admits that she still finds herself seduced by the tales of cheating, lying and abuse told by new clients. "It's very difficult when a client comes to you and tells you their story, to not align with them," says Aaron. "Just as in war when we dehumanize the enemy, that's exactly what happens in family law. Both lawyers hear a version of reality, a story from one perspective." ¦

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ddambrosio@hartfordadvocate.com or

editor@hartfordadvocate.comAdvocates for Kids:

Guardians ... Or Thieves? If a Connecticut divorce involving custody turns into a full-scale war, the court appoints an attorney, known as a "guardian ad litem," to give first priority to the welfare of the child.

Steven Dembo, a partner of Barbara Aaron's, works frequently as a guardian ad litem (GAL), and says he tells sparring parents that one or both of them won't like him at the end of the divorce.

"If someone's walking away happy, someone got screwed," says Dembo. "These people are at the worst time of their lives. They want financial security, emotional security, sometimes vengeance. It's almost impossible to satisfy all those."

To do his job, Dembo meets with both parents, with mental health professionals who've seen the children, and with many others.

"You need to speak to daycare and camps, get police reports, DCF records," says Dembo. "You talk to the neighbors, too. It's a conglomeration of everything."

But Old Wethersfield resident Adina Placido, whose divorce from Daniel O'Connor has dragged on for some 14 years, says her GAL, Ira Jacobs, not only helped to bankrupt her, but has done a poor job representing the interests of her son.

Placido recently filed an 11-page, single-spaced complaint against Jacobs, whom she says charged $250 an hour and has cost her and O'Connor more than $46,000 since his appointment in March 2005. O'Connor paid two-thirds of that bill, Placido one-third.

Placido, a Hartford teacher, makes just under $50,000 a year. She says she was already $64,000 in debt from her long-running divorce when Jacobs was appointed by the court, pushing her over the edge to bankruptcy. She still owes him about $6,000.

What bothers Placido most, though, is that she's not sure what Jacobs does, or what qualifies him to do it.

"I've been told he advocates for [my son] but I'm not sure how or what his expertise is," says Placido. "He makes these sort of psychological decisions but he doesn't have a psychology degree, he has a law degree."

Jacobs declined to comment on Placido's case or her allegations, but shortly after I talked to him, he filed an emergency motion in Superior Court alleging that Placido and another person for whom he is acting as a GAL were harassing and intimidating him, affecting his ability to "represent his wards," their children.

In his motion, Jacobs says that the Connecticut Supreme Court has held that GALs are entitled to "absolute immunity" to allow them to function "without the worry of possible later harassment and intimidation from dissatisfied parents." Without immunity, said the court, GALs would become "litigation lightning rods."

Carolyn Kaas of the Quinnipiac University School of Law says GALs often get unfairly blamed for unwelcome outcomes in divorce trials and are regularly pursued by grievances in the aftermath of cases, although most of those grievances are thrown out. Kaas also dismisses objections over the hourly rates for GALs—$250 in the case of Jacobs—saying it's "absolutely imperative" they're paid on par with the attorneys representing the parents. Otherwise, she says, we send the message that the children's interests aren't as important as those of the parents. According to The New York Times, however, appointed children's law guardian Theresa Mari was paid only $75 an hour for her work in the very high-profile Christie Brinkley v. Peter Cook case on Long Island.

Kaas acknowledges that GALs face challenges a law degree doesn't prepare them for. "I'm the first to admit we need more clarity on the role, qualifications and training of GALs," she says.

State Sen. Mary Ann Handley (D-Manchester) wants clarity, too, and plans to focus on GALs in the upcoming legislative session. Among other things, she's troubled by the fact that complaints have to be made to the judge who appointed the GAL in the first place.

"In a conflict between the guardian ad litem and the parents of the child, or even the lawyer for the child, it seems to me there should be a third party, and that party should not be the appointing party," says Handley.

Handley is planning to tread lightly. "We want to make sure children are not being used as a stick to beat the other partner," she says. "It's a very delicate situation, but I am deeply troubled about the lack of oversight of these GALs."

Carolyn Signorelli is Connecticut's chief child protection attorney, and in her role with the Commission on Child Protection she pays for and monitors GALs for children whose parents are indigent. They're paid $40 an hour, the state rate.

Signorelli has consulted with Handley, and says it's probably appropriate for the senator to seek GAL reforms. But she says the bottom line is that parents need to "get their act together and realize they need to put the kids' interests first."

Signorelli concludes, "Divorce is a messy thing. I look at some cases and I think, 'OK, you're going to spend all your money on a divorce battle instead of putting your differences aside and settling it.' Hundreds and hundreds of people just can't do the right thing."

—Daniel D'Ambrosio