The purpose of the court system is to move the meat through the machine. If you think it's justice, you're kidding yourself. Justice is an occasional side effect.
My contention is the only person who wins in a divorce are the lawyers.
100%. Every single marriage has a prenup, right? It's either one that's written by the government, yes, and can be changed by the government without anyone's permission.
This wedding season, I saw three planned marriages fall apart really in the prenup negotiation. And that's a record.
A warrior doesn't fight with hate in his heart for the person in front of him. He fights with love in his heart for the people behind him. But the monster sometimes is... and so I have to make sure that the monster in me is also afraid of me.
What if I hurt you? Like I want to protect you from everyone, including me.
Like, so what are you scared of? You must be the monster. But you're not a monster to the people you love.
Hey there, guys. Welcome to part two of our Sons and Daughters conversation with divorce lawyer from New York City, James Sexton. If you caught the first part of this interview, it was fascinating stuff. We're excited to bring him back for a second episode. It's the first time we've done that, two episodes. And here is our conversation now with divorce lawyer James Sexton.
So, I want to ask you a few questions just from a kind of a layperson's perspective about divorce in general and what you've seen, because obviously you're, I think you're the foremost expert at this point, at least on social media, in terms of that.
Friends. How much do friends play a role in setting wrong expectations and muck up the system?
Yeah, I'm throwing all the friends under the bus. I mean, look, there's a couple types of friends, okay? There's the friend who's unhappily married and is going to take out their anger on their person with you taking it out on your person. Okay, so that's like the proxy war.
So that's not a great friend to have around. There's the friend who went through it and is projecting their stuff on your stuff. That's not a great friend to have around. There's the friend who's kind of a yes person. Like whatever it is that you say, they're like, 'Yes, absolutely.' Like that's not a good person to have around.
And by the way, representing celebrities, those are the only people around them. Those are the only people around them. I have a theory that like almost every musician's third album sucks because their first album is raw talent. Yeah. Their second album is raw talent with production values behind it. And their third album is when no one around them said, 'Yeah, no, don't do banjo. No one wants to hear a banjo. Like, what do you mean you're going to play the sitar? No, dude. Shut up and play the hits. What are you talking about?' Like, and the truth is you need people around you who will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.
And so, those are your friends. Like, I will tell you, you need friends when you go through a divorce, but you need a certain type of friends. You need the type of friends that tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Like, look, I can't learn everything I need to know about myself from myself. I can't see my blind spots. That's why they're blind spots. So I need the people around me who love me and see me honestly. And like we said earlier, see my flaws and love me anyway to let when I go and they go, 'You got that out. You feel a little better now? All right, dude. You got to come on, man. You got to see you're doing X, Y, and Z.'
See, but that leads me to my next question though, because I feel like, and you correct me if I'm wrong, I've been wrong once or twice in my life. So today, so you're beating me already. Men and women are very different in terms of those friend groups. That men are much more honest with each other about, listen, if you're screwing up, man, you're screwing up. Yeah. Well, you're missing a gym. So male culture...
is much more built around the idea of like part of our love for each other is taking the piss out of each other. Yes. Like all my buddies will call me and be like, 'Hey loser, you're not going to jiu-jitsu this week?' Like, and that's part of like the fun. I think one of the most fun things about being a man is how like if you listen to me talk to my best friends, you would be like, 'Dude, you hate that guy.' And I'm like, 'Oh, no, no.' Like all we say is awful things to each other. That's like our friendship. Like it's beautiful.
And so I think there is an honesty and a connection to that. Whereas women do gas each other up in like the most toxic possible ways. Like they gas each other up in that like, 'Don't, you should never put up with that.' By the way, something they would totally put up with in their own relationship behind closed doors. But there's this sense of, 'I'm going to work my stuff out with you.' Now again, I think that's actually quite unfair to women. Like I think it's harmful to women and I think women are women's worst enemy. I mean, I think that women are very often making it much more difficult for each other than they need to be.
Like I've said before that I think women have a tremendous amount of power. Women are the gatekeepers of sex. I think we can say that for sure. Like they're much more powerful than men are. 100%. Like they can lead a man around with no problem. Most women will tell you they don't like shaving their legs. Okay, that's an example of something silly, but again, I don't shave my legs, so I shouldn't call it silly, but most women don't enjoy shaving. Knock yourself out. Yeah. More but women don't like shaving their legs. Okay.
Do you really think if all of the women in the world at once said, 'Ladies, we're not shaving our legs anymore,' right? That men would go, 'Well, then we're not having sex with you.' Correct. Yeah. We would be like, 'Okay, whatever.' Like, we would just be like, 'Yeah, great.' We'd just be twirling the hair. Yeah. We'd be like the Rastafarian legs. We don't care. We would just be into it. You know, until there'd be that one. There'd be that one who would go, who would shave it? Wait a minute. Yeah. None of them are shaving their legs now. Yep. Advantage. And she would go, you know, 'I shave my legs. It's just for me. I just like it. I don't know what it, I don't know why all these other women don't. Like I like having my legs shaved.' And she would say like, 'I've got competitive market advantage now.' Facts.
And yet most women when you ask them would say men are responsible for this. Men are responsible for what they feel in terms of that oppression. I get it. Like I don't think men do that. I think men don't say, 'Yeah, women are the reason why I have to do A, B, and C.' I think men actually go like, 'Yeah, the world's that way,' or like my internal compass is that way.
Now, I'm going to get criticism for this, but the other reality is that one woman, because I 100% agree, one woman would say, 'I'm going to shave my legs.' Market advantage. In reality, she actually wouldn't have market advantage. Maybe slightly with some guys, but for the most part, you're not going to steal the attention of every man because men are not that picky. But what she is doing is she's making the other women feel she has market advantage, which then causes chaos between the two of them. So I do understand like, look, how wonderful is it to have a villain? Like villains are amazing. Oh my god, if I could just blame all my weakness and problems and everything in my life on somebody. Yeah.
Like Solzhenitsyn said, 'If only there were evil people insidiously doing evil, and all we had to do is segregate them from the rest of the world.' It's not how it works. Like the line of good and evil runs through the human heart. Yes. We all have evil in us. We all have beauty in us.
So I genuinely believe that if we could in the quote-unquote war, because here's what I'll tell you I'm guilty of. And I don't know if you experienced this, but I know I do. And I like to think I'm a somewhat emotionally intelligent and enlightened person and that I have an emotional vocabulary and I've been in therapy. Like I feel like as men go, I definitely think that I've tried to think about things in a different way and be emotional and not be afraid of that.
And I have to tell you, when a woman starts talking to me about how hard it is to be a woman, I immediately hear it as, 'And it's easy to be a man.' I just immediately find myself going, 'Well, you think it's easy being a man? Like, you think?' And the truth is, like, I don't know why I do that. I don't know why we do that.
Like, because I know when women do that, it upsets me tremendously. Like, when a woman is talking about, you know, if I say like, 'Oh, man, it's like so hard sometimes being a man because you got to this.' And she goes, 'Oh, well, you think it's easy being a woman?' Yeah. My first reaction is, I didn't say that, right? I didn't say that. Like if I came home and I said, 'Man, I had such a hard day.' And you think you had a hard day. It's like my statement about my hard day was not an indictment of how easy your day was. I'm just trying to share with you something I felt. Can't we just do that for each other? But I really believe that the culture and the algorithm combined have really set us against each other.
So that when a woman says to me, 'Do you know how hard it is to be a woman?' Instead of saying, 'I don't because I'm not a woman. Tell me. Tell me. I'd like to know. Help me understand. Help me understand what that's like.' And by the way, a lot of the time when you start explaining it to me, I go, 'Oh yeah, that does actually sound really awful. Like that must be really hard.'
But isn't it more the reality? Tell me why it's hard to be you. Yeah. Don't tell me why it's hard to be a woman. Don't categorize. Right. Because when you're categorizing, what you're trying to do is you're trying to pull from all these other people and say, 'Well, it's a collective difficulty.' Is it?
Well, I have to say it's one of my criticisms of the modern left. Yeah. Because I would have been for many years of my life considered a progressive leftist. Although now that definition has moved so far that like because I acknowledge that, you know, like there's such a thing as biological sex, apparently I'm not on the left. I'm on the right. I don't know how I became alt-right when I was like, you know, at every Rage Against the Machine show.
So one of the things that I learned from that experience is one of the fatal flaws of progressive leftism in its current form is it's, 'You don't know what it's like to be a woman. Well, you don't know what it's like to be a woman of color. Well, you don't know what it's like to be a queer woman of color. Well, you don't know what it's like to be a queer woman of color with a disability. Well, you don't know what it's like to be a queer woman of color with a disability who was raised in a single-parent household. Well, you don't know what it's like to be a...' Do you know where we get at the end of that, folks? Right. Everyone for themselves.
Yes. We get to what was the flawed theory of the right that the left was critical of, which was the idea that no one can understand anyone and it's every man for themselves and that at the end of the day it's rugged individualism. And I have to tell you, like the dream of the left was supposed to be this idea that what connects us is bigger than what separates us.
And the fact that so many people struggle with basic things like income insecurity, wanting their children to be safe, wanting their neighborhood to be safe, wanting to get a good education so we can have an educated democracy that votes for the right reasons as opposed to charismatic stupidity. Like I think these are all worthwhile goals we could all agree on, but we're so busy fighting these culture wars that we're never going to get there because we've come to this weird place. And again, I think it's being amplified by the algorithm that again rewards enragement.
Oh, absolutely. I think there is no better, and I don't want to spend too much time on it, but I'd love to get your thoughts on it. No better example of the fact that we are living in multiple realities at the same time. It's not the multiverse, but it's definitely multi-reality. When you look at like the Lindsay Clancy trial, right, you have an entire group of people, women specifically, mostly liberal white women, sure, who say she was totally justified. She absolutely should. I am Lindsay. And then you have pretty much everyone else who's on the other side who's saying she murdered her three children brutally, right?
And it's not that either side is being disingenuous. I think both sides are in this echo chamber where they're being fed this over and over and they don't understand how the other side can't agree with them.
And if you got to the core, see, this is one of the things that I find so beautiful about what I do for a living. Yeah. Is, you know, there's a line from a Talking Heads song: 'Facts all come with points of view. Facts don't do what I want them to.' Mhm. The facts of what happened in that trial are crystal clear. They're not disputed. No one's disputing what happened. Even her defense, like she's not disputing what happened. What we're disputing is what was the motive and why did it happen.
And I don't think that the women who are supporting her are supporting her. Correct. They don't know her at all. Correct. And they don't even seem to know the facts of the case. What they're talking about is that they either had lived experience of or know someone who did of feeling unseen and unheard while struggling with postpartum issues. Okay, that's a real thing. Absolutely. No one is ever going to say it's not. No credible person would say that that's not a real thing.
But what I love about the legal system is the idea of it is to bring people back to the reality of, you know, you can tell the story in an abstract way. Yeah. But the reality of that story is someone killed three children with exercise bands. Yes. And that requires doing it, then going to the next one, then going to the like when you actually in a courtroom where it doesn't matter what I know, it matters what I can prove. When you walk someone through and where were you and where were they and then what did you do, the fact...
I mean, in one of these cases, one of the kids runs from her. She had to run the kid down, right? So you had the presence of mind like I...
to take it out of something so emotional as that. I had a client who called me a few nights ago. My clients all have my cell phone number. It's one of the perks of representing the ultra-wealthy is you have to give them your cell phone number. And this person called me and they're in the middle of a contentious custody case. They have very emotional things going on, but I pick up my phone. I see that it's them. I say, 'Hello.' And I hear [laughter]. I'm like, 'Okay, hello.' And they're like, 'I just...' It was like Will Ferrell in Anchorman, like where he's like... And I said, and I just, I wasn't angry at them. Yeah. But I said, 'I need to talk to the person who had the presence of mind to take their phone out of their pocket, find my number in their contacts, and press the button. I need to talk to that person right now.' And they went, 'Okay, okay, okay. I'm all right. I'm all right.' I was like, 'I know you are.' Yeah. Now, what happened? Talk to me.
Yeah. I understand there is a part of our brain, the amygdala, that is just all fight-or-flight, emotion. Like I get that. Yeah. We have to stop as a society. Like there was once a time in theory where we praised people's intellect as well as their passion. And I think that we have to get back to that. Yeah. I think we have to get back to saying to people, it's great that you're passionate, but do you know what the f*** you're talking about? Yes. Yes. But again, I think social media robs us of that. I think that was very...
Well, the uninformed opinion has a gigantic microphone. It really does. A gigantic microphone. It does.
It's all emotion-based and it's all based on the, and I think you were alluding to this, the spectrum through which we view ourselves. So it's not even... The sad part is so many people online aren't talking about Lindsay or her children or her husband. They're talking about themselves, which by the way, nothing wrong with. I'm in.
No, I'm in. If you want to talk to me about it, if you want to talk to me, if a woman who's standing outside of that courthouse doing that protest stuff, no, no, I don't want to hear what you think about Lindsay. If you want to tell me about your experience of how you felt unseen, unheard, I'm in. Absolutely. I'm in because you know what? You deserve to feel heard. But tell me your story. Tell me your stuff. Don't work your stuff out on other people.
And that's, but see, that's where we get with divorce. Yes. Because divorce is a whole bunch of proxy battles. Like most people treat their divorce like it's the last argument of the marriage and they've got to win. And it's not. It's not. Like your divorce is not the last argument of your marriage.
And by the way, if there is ever a moment of like closure and reckoning where your spouse goes, 'Oh man, I really screwed up. Like this person was amazing and I screwed the whole thing up,' I promise it's not going to happen on the witness stand. Like it's not going to be like, 'Did you order the code red?' 'You're right. I did.' Like it's not. I promise. I've been wanting to have Perry Mason moments for 25 years and every once in a while I get something close to it. But I've never once had somebody break on the witness stand and go, 'You're right. You're right. I was the worst husband in the world.' Like it doesn't happen. Never. It's a fantasy. It's a fantasy. And by the way, nothing wrong with fantasies. Just don't think they're real. Don't use them as your compass.
Well, let me ask you this. How many people come to you, and you mentioned that you deal with the ultra-wealthy. In theory, you would think those people are more grounded than some of the rest of us. Perhaps they're not. Would you? Well, you would think that they're more experienced with court or they're more experienced with financial...
Lawyers. I mean, they have a lot more lawyers, but the lawyers they have are transactional lawyers and tell them what they want to hear. 100%.
So, how many people show up in divorce court thinking this is an episode of Suits?
They think this is Perry Mason. They think it's going to be completely... My clients, they show up in my office that way. Okay. And I very rapidly disabuse them of that. Which is, by the way, why a lot of them don't hire me. Yeah. Like I do... I get about four calls a day of potential new clients. I do about three consults a week. I'm picky. Okay. Of the three consults a week, I probably take one new case a month. So I'm very picky now.
And what holds you back from the others? What are the good...
Bandwidth, which is I'm very hands-on and people want to hire me and they want me to handle their case. So I'm very careful about, like, my clients have my cell phone number. They can reach me anytime. So I can only have a certain number of clients and I do not want to be one of those firms. There are so many of my colleagues that, like, they are an excellent lawyer and so they hire 15 more lawyers and they do the consult and then hand you off to somebody else.
And at one point I had seven associates and I was like that. People would come in, they'd meet me, they were excited to work with me and I'd hand them off to somebody else. It made me very unhappy. It made the clients very unhappy. It diluted the quality of the product. I don't do that anymore. So my feeling is I'm going to be very picky about what cases I do.
But from the first time they meet me, when they're figuring out if they want to work with me and I'm figuring out if I want to work with them, and by the way, they can afford to work with anyone they want to. Yes. And I can afford to tell them to f*** right off. Yeah. So it's a really great transaction because if we decide to work together, it's because you want me and I want you [clears throat] and I think I can be of service to you and you think that I'm the person to be the tool for the task. So I love that.
I love being at that stage in my career and I'm very blessed to be at that stage. But I try from the beginning to say to someone, there is not going to be a Perry Mason moment. There is not going to be a 'you ordered the code red' moment. Like if you're looking for justice, it is not found at 60 Centre Street. Yeah. Like if you're looking for vindication, it's not found in the courthouse. Right. If you think like this is not the place for this, like the purpose of the court system is to move the meat through the machine. Yes, that's its job. Yes. If you think it's justice, you're kidding yourself. Justice is an occasional side effect of the process.
Like what you should be doing early on is moving through this thing because you're getting divorced for a short time. You're going to be divorced for a long time.
But how rare is justice in a divorce case? Because in most cases this is just two people who have... And listen, obviously you have cases of real abuse and domestic abuse. There's possibly justice there.
Most of the time, most of the time justice is just figuring out what is fair. Look, when you enter into a divorce, there's what you need, there's what you want, and there's what you're entitled to. Yeah. What you need, you're going to have what you need. You're going to have food, shelter. You're going to see your kids. The court has made that pretty clear. What you want, there's almost no limit to what a person could want. What you want is usually informed by what you're entitled to. So my job is to explain what you're entitled to.
You remind me of the Star Wars Han Solo line when he says, 'Imagine what this could be worth.' He says, 'I don't know. I can imagine a lot.' That's what people come into.
Exactly. Right. And I try to say to people, listen, what's possible? There's a whole bunch of things that are possible. Here's the delta of what's practical in reality. Because here's the justice system. The legislature writes laws. Mhm. And then the court system enforces and modifies orders to reflect those laws. Okay.
So a group of people who won a popularity contest wrote these laws and they're being enforced by another group of people who won a popularity contest. And you think that's the solution? You think that's going to solve the problem? Yeah. Like you think the best and brightest people in the world went into politics or the judiciary? Like is that what you think? The best and... like do you think the most talented minds in the world said, 'I think I'm going to become a state senator' or 'I'm going to become a judge?'
Like there is a school of thought that would say, what do you call a lawyer with a 70 IQ? Your Honor. A school of thought, not your school, not mine, of course. All of the judges I appear in front of are the most intelligent people in the history of the world. But the truth is, look, we all know judges have an obligation to move things through. Absolutely. They have an obligation, and by the way...
And their caseloads are insane. A number of...
Insane and unfairly insane. Like I don't think, I know very few judges who aren't trying to do the right thing. They're trying. The problem is they are overworked. They are overloaded. There are too many cases. And by the way, lawyers, we're good at our job. Obfuscate the facts. They have a very small window under the rules of evidence. Rules that are there for a good reason. Like due process is there for a good reason.
Like I say all the time, we have a terrible justice system. It's the absolute worst one except for all of the other ones. Yeah. Around the world. Like right, right. Like it's the best out of all of them. But it has flaws. So I genuinely believe winning a divorce is surviving a divorce and not making the lawyers wealthy and finding a way to again maintain your dignity and to stay focused.
Again, that's what I try to say to my clients from day one. Stay focused on your post-divorce life. Yeah. Like I don't care if your divorce is unpleasant. Yes. You're getting divorced for a short time. You're divorced for a really long time. So I want that to be pleasant.
Yeah, sometimes you're getting divorced for a long time, too. [laughter] I mean, it can feel that way. I've had a few, I have to tell you, COVID made that really challenging. I had a couple that were like six, seven years. Six, seven years is nuts.
Yeah, it's nuts. Well, it was only because of the pandemic. Like the court system went to a standstill for like two years. But yeah, I mean some of them two years.
But some of us, I mean mine was three years. It was like...
Just because the math, I mean the truth is a lot of my clients, like I've represented some very successful entrepreneurs and they come in and they go, 'Yeah, figure out what I have and give her half.' Yeah. And it takes like a year and a half to figure out what they have and how to value it and how to divide it in half in a way that's not... valuation is tricky.
And by the way, like I have to tell clients all the time that coming up with qualified experts to value things is very challenging because I don't know if people realize this, but like for many years the cigarette companies found like expert witnesses who were doctors who would tell you that cigarettes are good for you. Yeah. Like you can get an expert to say damn near anything if you pay them well enough. And trust me, my clients can afford to hire the best experts.
And so I have cases where they've got one highly qualified expert testifying how infant attachment theory means that the child shouldn't be away from the mother for more than one night and the other side has an equally qualified expert who will say the exact opposite. The opposite of a true statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth is a slightly different profound truth.
And so again, that's why I always tell clients, I'm like, look, the truth's at the bottom of a bottomless pit. Our job here is to tell a compelling story and to try to be persuasive about what the outcome is. Outcome, outcome, outcome. If from day one a client can stay focused on what is the outcome I want to accomplish here, they're in a better place.
Yeah, I think that's true. I also think that we've talked about this offline. Look, my contention is the only person who wins in a divorce are the lawyers. 100%. Right. And any honest lawyer will admit that because in my life, like when I was married many, many moons ago, I remember one morning the weather report said it was going to be a beautiful day and it was in fact raining. And I said to my then-wife in the kitchen, I said, 'Boy,' I said, 'You know, isn't it hilarious?' I said, 'They predicted that the weather was going to be gorgeous today and it's raining.' I said, 'I wish I had a job where I could just completely get it wrong and I still got paid.' And she was like, 'Oh, you have that job.' [laughter] And I was like, 'Oh, yeah, you're right. I guess...'
Like because when I win, Mhm, I'm the greatest lawyer in the whole world and when I lose, that judge got it wrong anyway. Pay me anyway. Like that. So the truth is, you're absolutely right. Like the lawyers always win. And the good lawyers, we acknowledge that from minute one. So we say to the client the minute we meet them, 'I would rather put your kids through college than mine. Like let's figure this out if an extra $100,000 or a couple hundred thousand.' And by the way, some clients really get it. Yeah.
I remember about 15 years ago when I had just started representing wealthy people. You know, I had a client say to me, we were in a meeting and we came downstairs to the lobby of the building and the client looked at me and he goes, 'Listen, I'm not going to argue with her over five or 10 million bucks.' And I remember going, 'What? Really?' Because like my goal is someday to argue with people for like five million bucks. It's like that sounds incredible to me. But the truth was if you're worth $800 million, you're like, 'Yeah, I'm not going to argue over a million bucks. A million bucks. A million bucks. All right. It's no big deal.'
So I genuinely think that what you have to try to do with a client. And again, the lawyers don't have a lot of incentive to do this. So we have to do this for each other as people. We have to do this for our friends who are going through divorce. They have to say to them, 'Hey, is the juice worth the squeeze?' Yeah. Like, 'Why are you doing this?' Right? Is this an emotional thing you're trying to work through, or is this a fight worth fighting?
Because I have to tell you something. I have some clients, you spend $50,000 to get $800,000 of additional assets, that's a good ROI. Yeah. Like, find me a broker who'll get me that. I'll sign up with them. Sure. But if you spend $50,000 to get $60,000, this is probably not worth it. Yeah, it's probably not worth it. And a good honest lawyer will say that to you from the beginning.
Yeah, I think that the challenge is finding a good honest lawyer who will say that to you. It is. You mentioned that, you know, some of you do it. There are many who don't. There are many who encourage and push for the worst behavior.
And we have the permission of our own conscience to do that because what we do is we say, 'Well, no, I'm just giving them options. I'm just asking questions. I'm just telling them what their options are.' But you are thinking more rationally than they are at the moment. And that's why I won't let my colleagues off the hook on them. Yeah. Because I will tell you that I have some incredible colleagues.
Like I have a colleague named John Titler who I have a number of cases against. And it's very funny because I'm very public-facing and John is a very private kind of a lawyer and he doesn't do media work. And so when...
People say things to me like, 'Oh, what does it feel like to be like the best divorce lawyer in the world?' My instinct is to say, 'I don't know. You'd have to ask John Titler.' Because I consider him like he's the one that I go, 'Yeah, he's got it.'
We have a number of cases against each other. We're very friendly in real life. We're colleagues and we like each other as human beings, but when we are at each other, it is like T-Rex versus T-Rex. Neither of us is afraid of a courtroom. We are both just hitters. We are like, 'Yeah, let's do this.'
And we go at each other like you'd think we hate each other. And the truth is, no, we absolutely really like each other in real life. The truth is the last three cases I've had with him, we could have made millions of dollars in counsel fees and we settled the case with like three phone calls. Because we just both went, 'You're going to do this, I'm going to do this, you're going to say this, I'm going to say that. Let's just get there.'
Yeah. Let's just get there.
And we just got there. And then we went, all right, let's wrap it up. Let's get it done. And it really was this feeling of like, wow, like when you do it right.
