What a Divorce Lawyer Learned About Marriage And Divorce

We Asked Divorce Lawyer 19 Tough Questions | Honesty Box - Video By: LADbible Stories

In the LADbible Stories video We Asked Divorce Lawyer 19 Tough Questions, New York divorce attorney James Sexton draws on approximately twenty-five years of experience representing people during the breakdown of their marriages. His answers cover the practical realities of divorce—legal expenses, alimony, prenuptial agreements, custody disputes, infidelity, and who files most often—while also exploring broader questions about love, commitment, compatibility, and why relationships gradually deteriorate.

Sexton speaks primarily from professional experience rather than presenting a formal academic study of marriage. Some of his numerical claims therefore require separate verification, while his larger value lies in the patterns he has observed across many divorce cases. Again and again, he argues that marriages rarely collapse because of one isolated catastrophe. Adultery, financial dishonesty, abandonment, and explosive conflict may become the visible reason a marriage ends, yet these events often emerge after a much longer process of emotional distance, unmet needs, resentment, and neglected connection.

His perspective is unusually balanced for someone whose career centers on marital failure. He recognizes the pain, irrationality, and financial destruction that divorce can produce, while remaining deeply optimistic about love itself. He presents marriage as a relationship between imperfect people who must repeatedly choose attention, honesty, appreciation, realism, and connection. He also argues that when a marriage ends, the spouses still retain responsibilities toward their children, their shared history, and their own future dignity.

The following breakdown organizes his main answers and arguments, explains the reasoning behind them, and preserves the important qualifications he adds throughout the interview.

1. The underlying cause of divorce

Sexton argues that adultery, financial dishonesty, money disputes, and similar major events are usually the visible breaking points rather than the deepest cause of divorce. His central claim is that marriages usually fail through gradual disconnection. Couples stop paying attention to one another, stop making each other feel valued, and slowly become emotionally distant. The dramatic event happens “all at once,” while the underlying deterioration develops through many smaller moments over time.

2. The purpose of a prenuptial agreement

He defines a prenup as a contract created before marriage that establishes the financial rules that will apply if the marriage ends. His argument is that every married couple effectively has a prenup: either the couple writes its own rules, or state law supplies the rules for them. He sees a prenup as a way to preserve control and make decisions while the couple still likes and trusts each other.

He compares a prenup to a seat belt. Wearing one does not necessarily demonstrate distrust of the driver; it acknowledges that circumstances outside either person’s intentions can cause a disaster. He recognizes that proposing one can sound like a lack of faith in the marriage, while arguing that preparation and pessimism are different things.

3. His claim about the divorce rate

Sexton says the American divorce rate is 56% and uses that number to argue that divorce is more likely than marital success. The transcript itself gives no explanation of how he calculated that figure or whether it refers to first marriages, all marriages, remarriages, annual divorce events, or lifetime marital disruption. Within his argument, the number functions mainly as support for his recommendation that couples plan financially for the possibility of divorce.

4. How cheating relates to divorce

Sexton rejects a simple cause-and-effect explanation in which a healthy marriage is suddenly destroyed by an outsider. He describes cheating as part of a chain of relational problems: one spouse feels neglected, the other feels criticized, intimacy declines, resentment increases, and an outside relationship eventually becomes the event that exposes the disconnection.

His position is that cheating can be either a cause, a symptom, or a catalyst. For some people, an affair reveals how distant they have become from their spouse. For others, the new partner becomes a “soft place to land,” giving them enough emotional security to leave the marriage. He estimates from his experience that cheating is involved in approximately 75%–80% of divorces, while admitting that its exact causal role is difficult to determine.

He also invokes the Ten Commandments to emphasize that sexual unfaithfulness has been recognized as a serious human problem for a very long time. His observation is that both adultery and coveting another person’s spouse receive explicit attention, illustrating the longstanding destructive power of infidelity.

5. Why divorce costs vary so dramatically

He says an honest lawyer cannot predict the final cost or duration of a divorce at the beginning because four parties influence the process: the two spouses and their two lawyers. He compares them to the four legs of a table. One unreasonable person can destabilize the entire case.

His practical argument is that legal conflict should remain proportionate to what is at stake. Spending more in attorney fees than the disputed asset is worth creates a financial loss regardless of who technically wins. Disputes involving children are harder to value because parents may consider time with their children priceless. Wealth also changes the calculation: someone with enormous resources may rationally spend tens of thousands of dollars on an issue that another family would resolve informally.

6. Whether alimony is fair

Sexton gives arguments on both sides. He considers alimony fair when one spouse sacrificed education, employment, career development, or earning potential to raise children, manage the household, or support the other spouse’s career. Since those decisions were made within an expected lifelong economic partnership, he argues that the financially stronger spouse may owe rehabilitative support after the partnership ends.

He also emphasizes diminished lifetime earning capacity. A spouse who leaves the workforce during their thirties or forties may never fully catch up in wages, advancement, retirement savings, or professional experience. Alimony can therefore compensate for more than immediate unemployment; it can address a permanent financial disadvantage created by the marital division of labor.

His limiting principle is that support should allow both people to leave with dignity. It should help the dependent spouse rebuild without crippling the paying spouse. He also acknowledges cases where alimony may reward financial irresponsibility, excessive consumption, or someone who contributed little to the marital success. His conclusion is that fairness depends heavily on the particular history of the marriage.

7. How divorce lawyers make money

Sexton says successful divorce lawyers can earn substantial incomes because divorce litigation is expensive and labor-intensive. He reports charging $850 per hour and working very long days, sometimes throughout the week. He also profits from the work billed by attorneys employed by his firm. His answer implicitly reinforces his earlier warning that prolonged conflict and unreasonable behavior can make divorce extraordinarily costly.

8. What makes a marriage happy

He defines a happy marriage as one in which the spouses remain together because they genuinely add value to each other’s lives, rather than because they fear divorce. He says healthy spouses build each other up publicly and privately, notice small things, remain emotionally present, and continue making each other feel seen, valued, loved, and supported.

He argues that people often fall in love quickly through chemistry and excitement, while falling out of love happens slowly through neglect and disconnection. His clearest standard is that happily married people still genuinely like one another. Given a free choice of companionship, they would still choose to spend time together. They also understand each other’s flaws, limitations, and blind spots and continue loving each other as whole, imperfect human beings.

9. Why he rejects the idea of soulmates

Sexton considers the soulmate concept dangerous because it creates the expectation that one perfect person should fulfill every emotional, sexual, practical, social, and parental need. He lists the unrealistic expectation that a spouse should simultaneously be the perfect best friend, lover, roommate, travel partner, and co-parent.

His argument is that a generally strong marriage can begin to seem inadequate when one category feels less than perfect. The soulmate ideal then encourages someone to imagine that a flawless alternative exists elsewhere. Because that imagined person can never be disproven, the search becomes a constantly receding horizon.

He emphasizes that marriage joins two flawed human beings, each capable of admirable and terrible moments. Expecting an angelic, perfectly compatible partner makes ordinary human imperfection feel like evidence that the marriage is wrong. In his view, lasting love requires accepting that people heal and grow within imperfect relationships.

10. How divorce affects children

Sexton argues that divorce itself does not automatically destroy children emotionally. The greater danger is prolonged exposure to intense parental conflict. He supports this with his own experience: his children were young when he divorced, yet they grew into well-adjusted adults because he and his former wife maintained a cooperative co-parenting relationship.

His central recommendation is to separate the former spouse role from the continuing co-parent role. Someone can feel anger toward an ex-husband or ex-wife while still recognizing that this person remains the child’s mother or father. Since children love both parents, attacking the other parent also harms the child.

His “knife fight in a closet” analogy presents divorce conflict as chaotic and indiscriminate: the parents may intend to hurt each other, yet everyone nearby—including the children—gets wounded. His conclusion is that children’s outcomes depend heavily on how the adults manage the separation, conflict, and long-term co-parenting relationship.

11. Why people marry obviously unsuitable partners

Sexton says he often hears clients describe serious warning signs that were present before marriage, such as alcoholism, uncontrolled anger, or other destructive behavior. People marry while expecting the partner to change, then add children while hoping parenthood will finally produce the change.

His argument is that people sometimes ignore repeated evidence because they are invested in a hoped-for future version of the person. Marriage, children, and additional commitments rarely transform a deeply established pattern by themselves.

At the same time, he qualifies his judgment. Divorce lawyers often meet people during their worst moments, so the version appearing in litigation may not represent their complete character. Every person is a mixture of admirable behavior, destructive behavior, and everything between. He therefore distinguishes recognizing genuinely poor choices from reducing someone’s entire identity to their behavior during a divorce.

12. Unusual and unenforceable prenup provisions

He describes clauses involving weight gain, required sexual frequency, facial hair, and financial penalties for infidelity. His most striking example required a wife to forfeit large amounts of monthly alimony for each ten pounds she gained.

His broader point is that people place highly personal behavioral conditions in prenups because the clauses make them feel secure or powerful. Many such provisions provide little practical protection because enforcement requires legally admissible proof and because courts may reject terms involving personal conduct.

His legal principle is that knowledge and proof are different. A spouse may strongly believe infidelity occurred, while a lawyer still needs evidence capable of satisfying a court.

13. Why women file most divorces

Sexton says women file approximately 70% of divorces. He warns against interpreting that statistic as proof that women casually exploit marriage for financial gain or that the filing spouse necessarily caused or originally desired the divorce.

His example involves a husband who leaves the family, stops paying the mortgage, withholds support, and begins another relationship. The wife may then need to file so a court can order temporary support and protect the home, even though the husband’s actions effectively ended the marriage.

His distinction is between legal initiation and relational initiation. The person filing the document may be responding to abandonment, infidelity, financial misconduct, or another spouse’s refusal to take formal responsibility. His conclusion is that the statistic describes who begins the court case, rather than fully explaining who caused, wanted, or morally bears responsibility for the divorce.

14. Divorce among gay and lesbian couples

Sexton says his personal case experience includes both gay male and lesbian divorces. He characterizes lesbian divorces as especially emotional and contentious, while acknowledging that he is generalizing from his own professional experience.

He suggests that differences in children and assets may shape the disputes. Lesbian couples in his practice may be more likely to have children, creating custody and co-parenting conflict. Gay male couples without children may have accumulated more assets, creating larger property disputes.

His larger conclusion is that heartbreak, grief, anger, bargaining, denial, and acceptance operate similarly across sexual orientations. The structure of the dispute may differ, while the human experience of relational loss remains largely the same.

15. Whether men or women cheat more

Sexton says that, in his experience, men cheat more frequently while women conceal it more effectively and may engage in more emotionally substantial affairs. He distinguishes a brief sexual lapse or “dalliance” from an ongoing affair involving deeper emotional investment.

He argues that men and women often react differently to discovering infidelity. He says a husband commonly focuses first on whether sexual contact occurred, while a wife commonly focuses first on whether her husband loves the other woman. He interprets this as a difference between concern over sexual exclusivity and concern over emotional replacement.

He still emphasizes that both sexes cheat and that these observations come from his own experience rather than a universal rule. His claim that women “cheat better” means they are often more effective at hiding the affair, while men are more frequently caught.

16. Who weddings are really for

Sexton rejects the idea that weddings exist mainly for the bride or even solely for the couple. He sees them as communal events for family, friends, and the broader “tribe.” They gather the people who love and support the couple and create memories that may become increasingly precious as people age and die.

He illustrates this through photographs and memories of his deceased mother at his wedding. Although the marriage itself ended, the wedding still gave him some of his most valued images and memories of her.

His argument is that a wedding can retain meaning even when the marriage eventually ends. Its value includes celebrating relationships, gathering loved ones, creating shared memories, and allowing people to experience communal love during life rather than only gathering at funerals.

17. Why love matters

Sexton ends with a deeply personal answer. He describes love as the central human desire: people want to love, to be loved, and to feel worthy of love. He presents those as distinct yet interconnected needs.

Despite spending decades working in divorce, he says his work has made him see love as even more precious. Love is simultaneously wonderful, intoxicating, frightening, confusing, and capable of exposing every dimension of human nature. He personally associates love with God and sees it as both humanity’s origin and its ultimate destination.

The central philosophy tying the transcript together

Nearly every answer returns to the same core idea: relationships rarely collapse because of one isolated event. They deteriorate through accumulated disconnection, unrealistic expectations, unresolved resentment, and failures of attention. Cheating, money disputes, and court filings are often the visible expression of a much longer process.

His constructive message is that marriage survives through small, repeated acts of connection: noticing one another, showing appreciation, accepting imperfection, maintaining realistic expectations, and preserving respect. Once a marriage ends, the same realism should guide the divorce—use legal planning wisely, avoid pointless financial warfare, distinguish an ex-spouse from a co-parent, and protect children from adult hostility.

The final brief passage about embalming and bodily waste appears unrelated to the divorce interview and seems to be an accidental transition into another video or clip.