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Two Divorce Lawyers Look at Marriage
By MARY MARTIN NIEPOLD
Associated Press
NEW YORK -- He's seen some of the best go separate ways. He's helped many of the most powerful make sure the kind of life they've become accustomed to won't slip away. He's Raoul Felder, maybe this country's best known divorce attorney.
Frequently it's the woman he represents (as in the female sides of Mike Tyson, Anthony Quinn and Mick Jagger).
Sometimes, it's high profile husbands, as in Larry Fortensky versus Elizabeth Taylor, and most currently, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani versus Donna Hanover.
In Felder's world, it's up to him to try to make love-gone-sour taste sweet nonetheless. Given more than 30 years of sorting out the ways of fractured love and $500-per-hour fees, Felder has a unique view of what makes good marriages work (he and his own wife, attorney Myrna Felder, have been married for 39 years).
And though he resists talking about his own life, he's a staunch believer in two things for anyone going into marriage: One, get a pre-nuptial agreement, regardless of your economic level. And two, try to maintain a mutually agreed view of what constitutes love, commitment and shared goals.
Every partnership is unique, says Felder, and whether it's a 60-40 or 90-10 partnership, he says its still a partnership. Rarely is it 50-50; it's how the two individuals operate together which determines dynamics, harmonious or otherwise, he says.
Felder has been called a publicity hound, and a look at his office won't contradict that impression. His firm's entrance on the 30th floor at a trendy Madison Avenue address has signage for fictional detectives Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade hugging the front door. Down the hall is the attorney's private office, a large baronial space complete with faux fireplace, works by Picasso and Groz, wing chairs, a sofa, memorabilia -- from ceramic monkeys to tin soldiers -- and a needlepoint pillow stitched with a slogan, "It ain't easy being king."
A natty dresser with hundreds of pairs of velvet slippers, Dunhill suits and custom-made shirts, Felder spends an hour delivering deadpan assessments of the state of divorce (cracking 50 percent of all marriages, according to some statistics, with a quadruple increase between 1970 and 1996) and what it might take to avoid it.
He sounds like his buddy Jackie Mason, the comedian, but he's dead serious about the pitfalls of love he's battled in splitups.
Unsurprisingly, Felder urges a pre-nup, for everybody, not just the rich and powerful. Since serenity and well as money is at stake, retain two lawyers. "If there's just one lawyer, you can say he's not protecting my interest, and you want to avoid that," he says.
"You have to err on the side of making sure the thing is going to stand up, then worry about the delicate interpersonal dynamics later. I've had many cases over the years where the marriage never took place because of the pre-nuptial," he says, explaining that the pre-nup is a great way to find out what you might not have seen in the other person until the discussion of money went to paper.
When it comes to love -- which is after all the reason most people say they're joining -- it's smart if the future husband and wife are on the same page there, too. "I don't know what love is. It may be what you do in the back seat of cars when you're 17 years old. It may be looking for Dulcinea in 'Don Quixote.' There are all kinds of love. Who knows? What is successful for one is not successful for another."
Should marriage be forever? Felder will say only that the idea of divorce wasn't fashionable back in the early 1960s when he married. "And certainly, if you go back one generation.
"My parents in the last years of their marriage -- they lived in a hotel. My mother was in one room, and my father was in another room. That described many marriages in those days. You just didn't get divorced."
Nonetheless, he believes commitment is important in a marriage, but not easy to come by in a world that no longer values loyalty. There are subtle signs of is absence, he says.
"I think the lack of commitment starts in humble things. Like TV. You have a clicker, and you see the president, you don't like him, click. A ballgame you don't like, click, click, click. These simple things resonate in your life. Today people walk out of movies they don't like, and there's no sense of loyalty in business anymore in America.
"Generally in life, you can't fight some monstrous lack of morality in people. It's better to recognize it and move on. Otherwise you tilt at windmills your whole life.
"For me, if you have a core belief, you adhere to that core belief. But I'm old-fashioned. I go down shooting. If I believe in a case, if I dislike somebody, if I'm consistent with the dislike and there's a sensible reason, I don't care if I go down for it."
To build relationships, it's good to encourage your partner's individuality and interests, he says. Too much togetherness is not necessarily a good thing.
"It's like geometry, an angle. You start out with the lines very close to each other, but as you extend it into space, it goes out. I think marriage is like this, too."
"You want (your partner) to absorb new experiences, so new aspects of character and personality emerge."
Arguments happen, but argue creatively to find a common goal in the marriage, he says. "There's one argument, a veiled, 'I hate you, I hate you.' Then it's like Rommel and General Montgomery in the desert. They just pick a piece of sand they're going to fight over. That's just an exercise in hostility. The other thing is you could argue over some intelligent decision. 'Where is the child going to go to college? I believe in this, you believe in that.' This is what should be going on, but much of the time it's not."
If the relationship is no longer working, let it go, he says. "I think, looking back on life, if things don't work out, you move on. I think people should learn in relationships that don't work out, there's no pejorative aspect. You move on. And they do it today. Unfortunately, they do it too much, but they do it."
So what of the marriage that should last "forever?"
"Well, the Thousand Year Reich lasted 12 years, so what's forever? It's a terrible thought, to commit yourself to anything forever, even if it feels good. I wouldn't want to be Cindy Crawford forever. Who wants to do that?"
There's a test Felder recommends to clients who are considering ending a marriage. "A woman will come in and say, 'You know, I don't know whether to leave or not leave. He's not a bad person.' It's very simple. I ask her, 'When he goes on a trip, do you feel better? Or do you feel worse?' Some women will look up and say, 'I feel like a load off my shoulders when he's gone.' Or others will say, 'I feel like a lost sparrow when he's gone.'
"So life gets reduced to very simple terms."
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