“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…” - Robert Frost

Considering another model for Litigation “Lite”

Molly and John

Initial Meeting

Molly was tentative as she approached my door. I was surprised by her appearance. Her white hair was neatly cropped, almost severely so. She wore a crisply ironed Peter Pan collared shirt, a pink cashmere sweater, a navy blue pleated skirt and penny loafers that were in good condition but looked like they were from the 1960’s. She was prim and proper and chose her words carefully.

In her mid-70s, Molly was in the throes of reevaluating her marriage. She was struggling to understand the spoken and unspoken contracts she had made with her husband, and whether, if and why she wanted to stay in her marriage. She was seeing me at the urging of her therapist as she’d been talking to her about divorce for many years, but didn’t really have any idea what the reality of that path would look like for her.

In our first conversation, Molly told me that although she wouldn’t say she loved John, they had two children and forty-five years of married life behind them. He also had Stage Two cancer and despite the anger she felt toward him, she also felt loyalty if not affection. Much as she felt disconnected from John, she didn’t like the idea of living alone, having long drawn out separation and/or divorce negotiations with him while he was sick, and risking the children feeling that she was heartless to divorce their father at this point in his life, when he was gravely ill.

From our Intake Form, I already knew her age, that she had been married for just over forty-five years, and that she and her husband had survived financial difficulties. They had raised their children in a wealthy Boston suburb, and were now living in a modest home in a working-class town. Her husband had received a large inheritance, but now none of it was left.

Why,now, had she sought out my services? She told me she was just on a fact- gathering mission. What would her life look like if she were to pursue a divorce? Could she afford a divorce? Would she be able to keep her house and maintain her lifestyle? Each of those concerns was punctuated by a story about how unhappy she was, how much her husband drank and how controlling he was. She told me that for many years, they’d been living parallel lives--hers focused primarily around the church and his focused primarily around a group of retired friends. Although it was true that she was unhappily married, more than a divorce, she was looking for leverage within their marriage. She wanted to understand their finances and she cra