The Good Divorce

April 4, 2011
Felder and Victor (Getting Away With Murder) bring something new to the self-help divorce stable: schadenfreude. The authors mull relentlessly over tales from Felder's history as a divorce attorney for the wealthy. "If marriage is bad, there's nothing better than a good divorce," they offer, then proceed to eschew the amicable for the awful, offering countless cautionary tales that illustrate how not to get divorced, what not to do (for the record: anger, blame, and revenge). A third of the book seems to have been penned in order to offer train-wreck levity to those in marriages that have gone beyond the point of no return, oddly offering little advice on how to avoid similar situations. Felder and Victor provide a scoring system to help readers determine whether divorce is their only option, but it's inchoate. The book does contain good advice for conduct during divorce, again set off by a litany of tales showing what not to do. Finally, the authors discuss the legal side, from using a "crime of passion" defense to rules governing the determination of alimony benefits to prenuptial agreements (including how to broach the subject with a future spouse).