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Divorce attorneys share the most outlandish requests they've seen

By Danielle Braff

August 29, 2024, 8:40 am CDT

Celebrities: They’re just like us. The biggest contention in the divorce between a former NFL player and a Real Housewife last year?

Access to the master bedroom’s walk-in closet, which was eventually ordered to be split by the hour, Page Six reports. Kim Zolciak-Biermann, one of the stars of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Atlanta, was allowed access weekdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Kroy Biermann, a linebacker who played for the Atlanta Falcons for eight seasons, could grab clothing any time outside those hours.

In July, when Hallmark Channel actors Shantel VanSanten and Victor Webster finalized their divorce settlement following a two-year marriage, E! News reports it included $10,000 per day late fees for dog custody, a dog visitation schedule and the requirement to share the dog’s location.

But you don’t have to be a celebrity to make outlandish divorce requests. Divorce lawyers have seen everything from parakeet-support requests to arguments over who gets to keep the coffee maker.

‘Why are you fighting over Crocs?’

Morghan Richardson, a New York-based partner and co-chair of the matrimonial family law department at Tarter Krinsky & Drogin, always suggests her clients examine the math before making their demands.

“It’s not worth fighting over a sofa when you can buy a new one that your ex has never sat on,” Richardson says. “If people are more aware that they’re having an emotional response, it might help them in processing the whole divorce.”

But her advice is often ignored by clients in the throes of their drama.

A few summers ago, Richardson says, she was on the phone with a client for over an hour because the client wanted her child’s Crocs to stay in her home post-divorce. Crocs, a plastic clog popular with children in the summer, cost about $25-$50 depending on the style and color.

Richardson says they could have purchased 52 pairs in lieu of her time.

“I know people don’t like math, but when you start looking at the costs and doing that math, ‘Why are you fighting over Crocs?’” she asks.

Crocs may seem like small potatoes (or more accurately, large yet relatively inexpensive sandals) compared with the requests that Genelle Johnson, a family law attorney at Divergent Family Law in Appleton, Wisconsin, received over an exotic snake colony. The divorcing couple, Johnson says, owned two or three dozen of these exotic breeds, which apparently—according to the couple—live in colonies and grow attachments with each other.

“‘You can’t split up the tribe,’” Johnson says she was told. So first, she had to determine how to value them, but the value of each snake was hard to determine. Ultimately, Johnson says, one party paid the other an unrealistic valuation to keep the snakes.

She also had to handle a couple arguing over their starving chickens. They owned a hobby farm, where the wife would continue to reside. The wife was unable to afford all the feed for their chickens, who were then unable to lay a high yield of eggs.

Weeks of attorney-generated letters followed, but the chickens were ultimately butchered—and the unhappy couple split the meat. “It was a tremendous waste of resources,” Johnson says.

Who gets the pets?

While arguing over pet custody has become more common, it often becomes exacerbated.

This happened to a couple who disagreed about the cost of parakeet care. Parakeets typically can be purchased for $20-$70, cost about $250 per year to maintain, according to The Spruce Pets, and have a lifetime cost of up to $4,500.

Russel Morgan, principal at the Morgan Legal Group, says the client requested the marital home and a $200,000 per year budget for maintenance, upkeep and support of the parakeet.

The client ended up with the marital home for the parakeet, but the budget for maintenance and upkeep was reduced to $10,000 annually.

In another case, a couple nearly went to trial over the dog’s custody, says Valeska Chacon-Casanova, senior attorney with the Florida Probate & Family Law Firm. But after receiving custody, the wife discovered the dog was in poor health, and no longer wanted her pooch.

Fight to the end?

While divorce demands aren’t uncommon, unreasonable requests from litigants can alienate judges.

Johnson was involved with a two-day trial regarding personal property division when the judge had enough.

“At the end, he entered his order: ‘Husband gets everything wife wants; wife gets everything husband wants; now get the hell out of my courtroom,’” Johnson recalls. She often repeats this story to her clients as a cautionary tale. And then she adds her own advice: “If it’s not going to matter five years from now, we aren’t litigating it.”

It’s often difficult to regulate an emotional response during the divorce proceedings, however.

Richardson says one of her clients requested DNA testing on a pair of used underpants to prove that his wife was having an affair. Richardson began looking into labs to process the underpants and researched whether she could bring underpants across state lines for the procedure before she realized the rabbit-hole she had fallen through. After all, it was a no-fault divorce state, so the case would proceed whether or not the wife was cheating.

“That emotional reaction really drives the contested cases in our system,” she says. “If you could step back from that emotional response, most divorces would be resolved in a predictable manner and range.”