The Divorce Papers: A Novel
Page 15
Woe is me, Mags.
Sophie
* * *
Re: Terrible Discovery
From: Maggie Pfeiffer
To: Sophie Diehl
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 19:10:19
Subject: Re: Terrible Discovery
4/22/99 7:10 PM
Dear Sophie—
Don’t assume the worst. I don’t think anything has happened between them—other than the lunch and the letter. Your mother didn’t proposition him, she only acknowledged an attraction. If she wanted more, she would have done more. (Believe me, she knows how.) And we don’t even know if he responded—though only a dope would have failed to respond in some way.
I’m guessing David wanted, still wants, to keep the letter, though I’m sure he never intended to put it in the docket. Maybe in his subconscious (WASPs have them too, you know), he wanted you to know. It must have made him happy, getting it, and we always want to share our happiness. Who but you is there to share it with? (You know I’m right, crazy as it sounds. I even bet, in the lunatic part of his brain that’s spinning impossible fantasies of weekend trysts in NY at the Carlyle, he hopes you’re happy for him. It’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And isn’t it lovely to know that we still feel that way in our 50s?) It’s unlikely someone else would have gone through the docket. But I don’t think there’s much point delving into that. The real question is what to do with the letter now. DO NOT DESTROY IT. Give it back. Slip it into one of his desk drawers. Now.
Don’t say anything to your mother or David. You wouldn’t mind if it were my mother who was fooling around on her husband. (We’d all be cheering her on.) And while you’ve got this proprietary sense about David, you wouldn’t be upset—only annoyed—if you found out he was flirting with her. The fact that it’s your mother who’s doing this is what’s upsetting you.
You idolize her. You’ve always idolized her. You can still idolize her. (Or, you can finally stop now that you’re almost 30.) Remember the whole point of that speech is that NOTHING real happens.
I don’t mean to trivialize how you’re feeling—I’m sure it was a blow, reading it—but it’s not, as your mother would say, the end of the world. You’ve got your own real thing now. Let your mother and David have this small, safe, titillating fling or whatever it is. I don’t think it’s anything significant. Truly. My guess is that they don’t want to “push it,” as Stoppard says, but they don’t want to give it up entirely either, whatever it is. It’s too exciting. Who knows how we’ll be misbehaving at 50? If that’s the worst thing I do, I’ll forgive myself—and hope my daughter, if she finds out, forgives me too.
Love,
Maggie
TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI
222 CHURCH STREET
NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555
(393) 876-5678
ATTORNEYS AT LAW
April 23, 1999
Bruce Meiklejohn
50 Saint Cloud
New Salem, Narragansett 06555
Dear Bruce,
Don’t worry. We shall do right by your daughter and granddaughter. The young lawyer’s name is Anne Sophie Diehl, known as Sophie to her many friends, myself among them. You may know her dad, by reputation at least. He’s John Diehl, University Professor at Columbia and one of the last great Marxist historians. She’s smart as a whip and on top of the case. Most important, your daughter has great confidence in her.
The best thing you can do at the moment is not rattle chains at the hospital or blackball Daniel Durkheim’s membership in the Plimouth Club but support your daughter and granddaughter. We’re in a strong negotiating position. If we need to call out the cavalry, I’ll let you know.
Yours truly,
David Greaves
TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI
222 CHURCH STREET
NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555
(393) 876-5678
MEMORANDUM
Attorney Work Product
From: Sophie Diehl
To: David Greaves
RE: Matter of Durkheim: Rehabilitation Alimony for Ms. Meiklejohn
Date: April 23, 1999
Attachments:
I spoke briefly on the phone this morning with Maria Meiklejohn, who is back from Hawaii. (Her husband did not change the locks while she was away—or close any more accounts.) I gave her a rundown on the settlement offer, and I’ll forward a copy of it to her with a letter later today.
While she was away, Ms. Meiklejohn thought about her future, specifically her work and career; she came to the conclusion that she ought to go to law school rather than complete the Ph.D. Her thinking went like this: after the divorce, she’ll have to make money (she won’t get alimony forever, and she doesn’t want to live off her father), and the J.D. is the more useful, more remunerative degree. As she put it, “Who’s going to hire a 46-year-old newly minted American studies Ph.D.?” She also thought she’d like practicing law and would be good at it. “I find my divorce mentally stimulating—when it’s not emotionally shattering.” She’d like to go to Mather Law School (and her chances of getting in are very good), but she’d be willing to go to the University of Narragansett. If she gets into Mather, she should go there. Mather is probably the second-best law school in the country (ha!), and the better the school, the greater the job opportunities, particularly for someone her age.
The projected annual tuition for Mather Law (averaged over three years for the academic years 2001–02 through 2003–04) is $30,000; for Narragansett, it’s $14,000. Ms. Meiklejohn thinks Dr. Durkheim should pay the tuition. We could frame the offer to provide both traditional alimony or spousal support for living expenses and rehabilitation alimony or support for tuition at law school. Traditional support would cease with employment at $48,000 a year; rehabilitative support would cease after three (3) years.
I suggested to Ms. Meiklejohn that she might also think about business school and an M.B.A. in public or private management. (The last client of mine who wanted my non-legal advice wanted to know if I could set him up with a drug connection while he was in prison.)
I am finishing up the memo on the value of Dr. Durkheim’s medical degree and the possibility of “reimbursement alimony.” I’ll get it to you before the end of the day. I’ve prepared two versions, excessive and redacted. I’ll send you the redacted and put the longer version in the files.
TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI
222 CHURCH STREET
NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555
(393) 876-5678
MEMORANDUM OF LAW AND FACT
Attorney Work Product
From: Anne Sophie Diehl
To: David Greaves
RE: Matter of Durkheim: The Value of a Medical Degree
Date: April 23, 1999
Attachments:
Memorandum of Law
The issue here is whether a Narragansett court might consider the value of a medical degree in fashioning a divorce settlement under the Equitable Distribution Statute (EDS), Section 830, Title 33, Narragansett Code.
Prior to the divorce revolution of the 1980s, a medical degree was not treated anywhere as an asset or other property interest to be divided or distributed in a divorce, not having any of the usual attributes of property; i.e., it could not be bought, sold, transferred, conveyed, pledged, attached, assigned, or inherited. Further, it had no exchange value on an open market. A court might award the family home to one of the spouses; alternatively, it could order it sold and distribute the proceeds between the parties according to their financial needs and earning abilities. With a medical degree, a court had no such options. Only the degree’s recipient could practice medicine. See In re Marriage of Graham, 194 Colo. 429, 574 P.2d 75 (1978).
Despite this refusal to consider a medical degree as property, traditional courts nonetheless recognized the value of a medical or other professional degree and took it into account in reaching an equitable divorce settlement, most often as a factor in calculating current and f
uture child support and alimony. They also found that a spouse may be entitled to compensation for her contributions to the acquisition of the other’s degree. In re Marriage of Horstmann, 263 N.W.2d 885 (Iowa 1978); Hubbard v. Hubbard, 603 P.2d 747 (Okl. 1979).
In 1982 the New Jersey Supreme Court explicitly introduced the concept of “reimbursement” alimony, to be awarded in those instances when the contributions by one spouse to the education and training of the other were “made with the mutual and shared expectation that both parties to the marriage [would] derive increased income and material benefits” from the educated spouse’s professional practice. Mahoney v. Mahoney, 91 N.J. 488 (1982). Two years later, a lower New Jersey court expanded the concept of “reimbursement alimony” to distinguish it from ordinary alimony, which usually carries an automatic cutoff event, typically death, remarriage, or a designated term of years. In Reiss v. Reiss, a wife who had put her husband through medical school was awarded reimbursement alimony in a sum of $46,706.70, to be paid in monthly installments of $1,500. When, after receiving the first two monthly payments, the wife remarried, the husband sued to terminate the reimbursement alimony. The court denied his claim, pointing out that, unlike true alimony, which is based on the future needs of the recipient and the anticipated ability of the payer to pay, “reimbursement” alimony recognized a past obligation and called for payment in full. 478 A.2d 441 (Ch. 1984).
For the last 14 years, New York has treated a medical degree as a form of garden-variety marital property, no different from a house or Persian rug or ’89 Honda. In 1985 the New York Court of Appeals ruled that the wife was entitled to a 40 percent interest in her husband’s medical license. She had contributed more than 75 percent of the couple’s total income while the husband completed his education and training, and his medical license was the only tangible asset of their nine-year marriage. O’Brien v. O’Brien, 66 N.Y.2d 576 (1985).
Current Narragansett divorce law plainly allows for these new forms of alimony, if not specifically for “reimbursement” alimony with its debt-like features. The Narragansett Supreme Court has consistently given a liberal interpretation to the EDS principle of “equitable distribution.” Most recently, in the Matter of Lemon, the court awarded a lump sum of “compensatory” alimony to a wife “who had relinquished employment opportunities to accommodate the marital relationship, and was in consequence less able than her husband to support herself.” 293 Nar. 966 (1998). Reimbursing a wife for her financial contributions to his education seems a natural next step. As the court wrote in Lemon:
The legislature clearly intended the [EDS] to protect the spouse with less wealth and lower earning capacity and to insure against a patent disparity between the spouses’ standards of living after divorce. Whether we characterize an award as “compensatory” or “rehabilitation” alimony, or as “a distribution of marital property,” the fundamental principle is the same. The division of assets and the distribution of income must recognize the parties’ relative financial needs and earning abilities as well as their contributions to the wealth of the marriage.
Memorandum of Fact
Dr. Daniel Durkheim, the husband of our client Ms. Maria Meiklejohn, had finished his medical education (both the M.D. and the Ph.D.) before he met Ms. Meiklejohn. Because he took the joint M.D./Ph.D. degree, his education was completely paid for. In 1980, when he and Ms. Meiklejohn began living together, Dr. Durkheim was finishing his training, working as a postdoctoral fellow earning $18,000. All of his salary (after taxes) and then some (from Ms. Meiklejohn) went to pay his child support obligation of $15,000 for his son, Tom, from his first marriage. In 1980, Ms. Meiklejohn earned $19,000 and received from her father a gift of $10,000. After their marriage, he gave each of them $10,000 a year.
Dr. Durkheim’s post-degree training (postdoc, internship, and residency) lasted eight years, and until he was appointed an assistant professor in 1987 with a salary of $80,000, he never earned more than $30,000 a year; most if not all went, after taxes, to child support. As an example, in 1987, when he was earning $30,000, Ms. Meiklejohn earned $42,000; in addition, she may be credited with the $20,000 annual gift to the couple from her father. It’s plain that, saddled with child support obligations, Dr. Durkheim could not have pursued the kind of elite, ill-paying postdoctoral training he did without his wife’s financial contributions, but would have had to either go deeply into debt or pursue a different kind of medical practice, one more immediately remunerative but unlikely to lead to the outstanding academic career he has had.
Given (i) the financial support Ms. Meiklejohn provided to her husband during the crucial later years of his training; (ii) her “relinquish[ment] of employment opportunities [in NY] to accommodate the marital relationship,” by moving to New Salem, Matter of Lemon; and (iii) the Narragansett Court’s expansive reading of the EDS, it is worth including “reimbursement” alimony in our counteroffer, both as a legitimate demand and a negotiating tactic.
Narragansett Statutes
Title 33 of the Narragansett Code, Sections 801ff.
Dissolution of Marriage, Annulment, and Legal Separation
Sec. 830. Equitable distribution.
In the division of assets, the distribution of income, the assignment of property, the award of child support, the award of alimony, and all other allocations of resources, the court must recognize the parties’ relative financial needs and earning abilities as well as their contributions to the wealth of the marriage.
Evil Thoughts
* * *
From: Sophie Diehl
To: Maggie Pfeiffer
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 23:54:42
Subject: Evil Thoughts 4/23/99 11:54 PM
Dear Maggie—
I am having evil thoughts. It’s almost midnight and I’m still at work; I just finished up a memo for THE DIVORCE. Never get divorced. The things you fight about are so demeaning. Everything comes down to money. I keep thinking of Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic as someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. He was talking about a divorce lawyer.
I’ve been drafting an email to DG in my head; it oozes artless innocence:
Dear David—
Have you heard anything from my mom? She told me she so enjoyed meeting you. We could do it again sometime when she’s in town.
Yours,
Sophie
I can’t stop myself from thinking about it when it’s late and I’m tired. I find my thoughts turning dark and mean. They are not behaving well. And of course, neither am I.
I haven’t seen or heard from Harry in days. He sent me an email the epitome of short and sweet, with a quote from The Real Thing (Henry on happiness) last Saturday, but since then nothing. No answer at his place. Is he alive?
Love,
Sophie
* * *
Re: Evil Thoughts
From: Maggie Pfeiffer
To: Sophie Diehl
Date: Sat, 24 Apr 1999 10:33:09
Subject: Re: Evil Thoughts
4/24/99 10:33 AM
Dear Sophie—
DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT send an email like that to David. You will regret it. I know you’re hurt and maybe a little jealous too, but you’ll wreck your relationship with him if you go through with it. DO NOT DO IT.
If you need to hash it out with one of the miscreants, hash it out with your mother. (I’m not recommending this; I’m only saying that talking to her is better than going after him.) Of course, if you talk to your mother, you won’t do the damage you’d do if you sent that email to David. She won’t be in the least embarrassed, only annoyed. And she’ll let you have it, with both barrels. (Here I go, channeling Elisabeth Diehl.) She’ll tell you to grow up, mind your own business, and get on with your own life. She’ll say you’re not the only one who’s allowed to behave badly now and again. And she’s right.
Harry left New Salem after closing night on the 19th. He said he had an emergency in NYC
and took off at 4 am right after the set was struck. He looked tired and worn and worried and sad. Something was wrong. I thought you knew.
I am too tired to write another word. I need to go to bed. Matt and I went to a party in NY last night and didn’t get home until 3. Don’t do anything stupid or rash. I’m sorry if I’ve been rough here and hurt your feelings; I haven’t the energy to be more tactful. You’ve got to finish up this divorce. Can’t you read them the riot act and tell them to shape up and get this thing over? It’s not good for you. (It must be truly terrible for them.)
Love,
Maggie
TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI
222 CHURCH STREET
NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555
(393) 876-5678
ATTORNEYS AT LAW
April 26, 1999
Dear Joe,
I am writing to you personally because I want to clear the air. You were right about Fiona’s reprimand. I was wrong. Proctor was wrong. I don’t know that I’d have dug in the way I did if she were a man. We didn’t do anything with Wynch; she was right about that. You saw the letter I wrote. I also spoke to her privately and expressed my personal apologies and regret.
As for your second accusation, I think, as my Welsh granny used to say, you’re over-egging the pudding. This firm is not racist or ethnically discriminatory. As someone who belongs to what you refer to as the WASP ascendency, I don’t know how it feels to be excluded from it, but I’m having serious trouble (and I mean real serious trouble) seeing you as an outsider. You went to Harvard and Harvard Law School; your dad was a federal judge; you made partner here at 33; Harvard Law woos you every other year, and we have to up your share to keep you. Which we do.
Fiona’s got a thing against Sophie, which I don’t understand——but that’s beside the point. I don’t know if she will stay. She’s very angry——and not only at Sophie.