Until the Twelfth of Never - Should Betty Broderick ever be free?

by Bella Stumbo

  But, by the end of June, she at least woke up to the realities of her situation. July 16 was coming up fast. By then, she had also begun keeping a daily diary—which turned out to be the best mirror into her declining mind over the next thirty months.

  Most of her early entries were devoted to her frantic, eleventh-hour search for an attorney to represent her at the divorce hearing. According to her jottings, she spent most of that time on the telephone, sometimes calling as many as half a dozen lawyers in one day. As always, she began with only those on her rapidly diminishing list of those with first-rate reputations. She appealed for help to old friends from Gray, Cary, like Brian Forbes and Karl Zobell. But they couldn't help her. They were too close to Dan. Conflict of interest. Sorry. They recommended other lawyers, who recommended other lawyers.

  But nobody Betty Broderick wanted wanted her. And, by now, no matter what excuses they gave her, it clearly wasn't just their connections with Dan that made some attorneys turn her down: word was now out in San Diego legal circles about what an unmanageable client she was—how she ran cars into houses, had been committed to a mental institution, wouldn't follow legal advice, etc.. One lawyer told Betty flatly that she wouldn't take the case because she had heard Betty wrote in the margins of court files.

  During that period, she tried to lure Dan Jaffe back, to no avail. Once around with the Brodericks was enough for him. She also called Marvin Mitchelson's office in Los Angeles, and tried to reach feminist Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred. Neither returned her call. She even called Melvin Belli and Gerry Spence, two of the best-known attorneys in America. All her diaries record is that Belli's assistant asked, "Can you afford it?"

  But San Diego is a big city with at least seven thousand attorneys in the area. By the end of the summer, she had become a beggar, searching through the suburban San Diego yellow pages, reduced to calling lawyers she would later bitterly dismiss in her diaries as "losers in life, incompetent nobodies." Betty's awe of Dan became her own worst enemy: Dan Broderick would eat these second-stringers alive, she knew.

  "I have been totally railroaded by my husband and Mr. Ashworth," she wrote one relatively obscure attorney who had already turned her down. "They have sold my house—refused to negotiate any settlement—now the divorce is final, and I've been robbed of the four children as well. I desperately need qualified counsel. Please let me know in writing why you are unable to take the case." He never answered.

  On July 16, she still had no attorney. She would later say that she had requested a postponement until she found representation, but was denied. She also claimed that she had never heard of bifurcation. In any case, she wasn't even in court on the day Judge Milton Milkes not only granted Dan Broderick a divorce by default, but also ruled in favor of all his requests, which included:

  —Sole legal and physical custody of the four children.

  —No visitation rights for the mother "until she undertakes an appropriate program of psychiatric therapy."

  —Reiteration of existing restraining orders, preventing the mother from coming within one hundred yards of his house.

  —And, finally, "the issue of dissolution of the parties' marriage shall be bifurcated from the remaining issues in this case with the court retaining jurisdiction to determine all other issues at the time of trial."

  What all that meant, in short, was that Dan Broderick was now a legally divorced man, but he still maintained total control over both the Broderick children and the family finances: Betty could no longer visit her children without his permission, nor did she have a court-ordered support settlement. She was still reliant on Dan's voluntary $9,000 monthly allowance. Not least, because of the bifurcation, there was no division of their community property. That would not happen for another thirty months. In short, Dan was free, even if Betty wasn't.

  She was in shock. How could she be divorced when she hadn't even been in court? When she had no attorney to defend her? And how, for God's sake, could she be denied the right even to visit her children? Where was the proof that she was an unfit mother? Her little fits of property damage? Her dirty words on a telephone machine? Her brain shrieked. What was more immoral—a married man who shacked up openly with his girlfriend in front of children, or a mother who used four-letter words? Why was she the unfit one?

  Men who beat the living daylights out of their wives still got visitation. Crazed mothers who dropped their children out of buildings and broke their bones got visitation. But not Betty Broderick? All because of her three or four nasty, uncreative little words on his answering machine? "Why is a woman not allowed to use those words?" she demanded. "No man would be dragged into court three times a month for saying 'fuckhead.' No judge would've wasted even five minutes on it!"

  She was left reeling. And she would never recover. From that day forward, Betty Broderick was no longer responsible for her own actions. Her rage was too great. Dan Broderick had not only taken her children, and her money, he had now also shamed her utterly. She was branded. Betty Broderick: Unfit Mother.

  And all by default. What was that? And how could he treat her this way, strip her so completely? What had she ever done to deserve it? How could the courts let him? "Whatever happened to shit like due process and equal protection of the laws?" she was still raging years later. "Bifurcation? Ha—I call it bifornication—and now I know what it means: the husband gets to fuck his bimbo at the same time he's fucking his wife!" She had not only been fired by Dan, but by the laws of society, too.

  "I always trusted judges—but how could they possibly be saying that Betty Broderick, of all people, couldn't even have visitation with her children?" she screamed over the jail phone. "Women burn their children with cigarettes, they throw boiling water on them, they let their boyfriends rape them—and they still get visitation! But not Betty Broderick? I was Mary Poppins! I was Mother Fuck of the year, for Christ's sake!"

  What Betty Broderick was learning, as so many women have, is that almost anything under the sun can be accomplished in the domestic courts of America—particularly if one of the parties is a smart, determined professional male with the resources and the will to have it his way, and the other is a housewife without means beyond those supplied by the departing husband, and who still lives under the old-fashioned illusion that, in the end, mothers and children will surely prevail in divorce court.

  That is no longer how it works, not since the no-fault concept came into being in many states two decades ago, effectively eliminating the former, courtly notion that the party breaking up the family—overwhelmingly the male, according to statistics—should literally pay the financial price. No-fault was, and remains, a windfall for husbands who leave their families and, as virtually every study has shown, a disaster for women, who are no longer subject to kinder, gentler treatment in the courts, whether they are fifty years old with five children, or twenty with no kids. Ideally, in this brand-new world, each party gets half of the community property, fifty-fifty, with appropriate child support awarded to the custodial parent, usually the mother. But that, too, can shortchange mothers. Also, whereas the husband was once liable for the children until they were twenty-one, now, in many states, the age has now been reduced to eighteen. College costs are no longer an automatic element of the father's burden.

  No-fault is the direct gift to wives and mothers today of the ambitious innocence of the feminist movement of the sixties and seventies. Back then, activists thought no-fault a fine thing, because, in theory at least, it lent dignity to women as well as men by liberating warring spouses from the traditional mud-slinging of divorce courts. Who cared who was at fault? said feminists. The object was to equalize the sexes in the courtroom, to save the woman from the degradation of begging, of proving either her piety or his perfidy. She no longer needed to gouge him for extra bucks by virtue of his wayward gonads. In theory, the wife would still, as custodian of the family, come out with her fair share.

  Back then, few feminists thought ahead to what exactly mig
ht result if the philandering husband was no longer penalized for abandoning his family. Not much attention was paid to the potential ramifications of an uninhibited new world in which the male no longer had to live in fear of a wrathful judge pointing a disapproving finger at the prodigal—and charging him for it. In the old days of punitive judgments and chivalrous attitudes toward the fairer sex, infidelity invariably carried a price in court. Settlements were often so one-sided in favor of the wife and the traditional family unit, in fact, that many a man wound up living in a one-room apartment with little more than his toothbrush and his dog, while the wife and kids kept the family home, as well as the lion's share of his income.

  But all that became passé.

  Male legislators everywhere happily obliged no-fault activists. Between 1970 and 1980, forty-eight states adopted some form of no-fault divorce law. It has turned out to be punishing for the majority of divorced mothers and their children. Studies during the two decades since suggest that divorces are on the rise in the United States, in part because men no longer have to pay the same severe price. Instead, in most community property states, the wife is no longer even automatically granted title to the family home, at least until the children are of age: now it is routinely sold, the proceeds divided. She moves to cheaper housing, generally with the children. He takes his half and moves into a bachelor condo.

  In addition, thanks to bifurcation, women in many states may receive no property settlement at all for months or years.

  Divorce law reforms, in effect, backfired on women in general. Some statistics now show that divorced men, especially affluent professionals, experience a 70 percent increase in life-style comforts, while ex-wives suffer a 30 percent decline.

  But Betty Broderick had little or no comprehension of any of this at the outset of her divorce. Dan, by contrast, understood all of it. For him, it was an optimum situation; for her it would always be a dawning disaster, too impossible to be real.

  But, after July 16, one reality after another forced its way through the defenses of her mind. She learned, as most women do, by increments. She was no longer Mrs. Daniel T. Broderick III—yet she was more beholden to him than ever before. No more waltzing into his house to take her children away for the day, or a weekend at her house. Not until she had undergone therapy. Not until she had satisfied the demands of Dan, his doctors, and the courts. All men. No mothers. Her brain began to buckle as it never had before. Where was the justice in this? What did any of these assholes know about morning sickness, cesareans, dirty diapers, crying babies at three A.M.? Nothing, is what.

  Plus, she no longer had any control over the money she had worked so hard to help him accumulate. If she misbehaved, if she displeased him, he could reduce her to a bag lady overnight. She was back under Sister Claire Veronica's piano, still as bewildered at her situation as she had been thirty-five years ago.

  "The divorce is now final and he has SOLE custody of the kids. We have NO SETTLEMENT and the way things are going, we never will," she wrote in her diary that week, "because now he has no reason on earth to settle with me."

  Their success was now only his success.

  And Dan Broderick wasted no time in driving these new facts of life home to her. Four days after his divorce court victory, he began laying out his new rules with crisp, implacable efficiency. First he wrote her a brief note, urging their mutual cooperation in providing a peaceful post-divorce transition for their children. On the face of it, it seemed like a reasonable enough letter—but, to Betty, in her still-stunned state, his words were nails pounding into her brain, starting with the first sentence.

  She was no longer "Bets." Now, it was "Dear Elisabeth Anne."

  "You and I are no longer married," he wrote. "It's now up to us to do our best to minimize the trauma our divorce will have on our kids … Bad-mouthing one another to the kids, or even worse, blaming them for the divorce, is destructive. I suggest that each of us encourage the kids to love and respect the other and that we refrain from any derogatory comments to or about one another …"

  But, if she thought that letter cold, she had a lot to learn. Dan had only begun. Two days later, only a week after their divorce, he began a serious crackdown:

  "I am tired of coming home and finding messages full of obscenities on my answering machine," he wrote her. "As I have pointed out to you in the past, every time you call me, you are violating a court order. That doesn't seem to matter to you. Maybe this will: from now on, when you leave a message or call and use any vulgar or obscene language, you will be fined $100 per offensive word. These fines will be withheld from your support checks. Believe me, I'm not doing this to bait you. I just want to deter you from using language in your dealings with me which any normal, civilized person would find extremely objectionable."

  At that point, Betty Broderick lost all capacity for rational conversation. Her outrage was surpassed only by her incredulity. This sonofabitch was richer than God, thanks to her help, and now he was fining her in the same way she had once fined their children for saying "Shut up." Worse, she was helpless as a child. The courts had said so. He could do whatever he pleased to her. He was in complete charge. And now he thought to bludgeon her into submission with his little fines for nothing more than her tongue?

  Uh-huh. Right, Dan.

  Rarely has a man so misjudged a woman. It was always one of the most fascinating aspects of the Broderick affair that these two people who had lived together for 16 years, literally grown up together, could have remained such total emotional strangers.

  Like small brushfires, Betty's sporadic temper fits of the past merged into one blazing, unbroken wall of mental fire. Although Dan and Linda would be the final victims, the first casualty of the incineration was, of course, Betty herself. Never again would she be the same woman. If she had not behaved rationally before, after this summer all reason was borne away forever, ashes in the breeze.

  Fuck him and his imperial edicts, his threats, his power, his courtroom chums. Never again would she dance to Dan Broderick's tune. No more "Yes, dear." No more "Yes, Your Honor." At long last, Betty Broderick's tenacious hope collapsed beneath the weight of the hurt, and the hate. From then on, each time Dan threatened her, she reacted with even greater fury. She began literally stealing the children from his house, seducing them to meet her on street corners. He found her language "offensive"? She left even more vile messages on his machine.

  But, if she was fire, he was ice. In the next years, he became ever more intractable in his refusal to give her an inch. And neither Broderick was ever tempered by concern for the four helpless children caught in the middle. Although Dan would always accuse Betty of putting the children in the middle—blaming them for the divorce, for even sitting at the same dinner table with Linda—he continued to do his part, too. Now, not only were the Broderick children forced to broker their own weekend visits, in time Dan would also punish both Betty and the children by canceling trips to her house if her behavior that week had displeased him. In addition, his daughters later testified, both Dan and Linda had by now also openly begun to refer to Betty as "crazy," "the large one," "the monster," etc.

  Meanwhile, by most accounts, Betty periodically used her children in the same callous way—especially when she thought Dan and Linda were using her as a weekend baby-sitter; then she would also abruptly cancel their visits, saying she had other plans. In time, both Brodericks became such vengeful, selfish people that an outsider can only conclude that no two people ever deserved each other more.

  Less than two months after the divorce, on September 9, Dan sent her another letter that made all the earlier ones sound like valentines;

  "Dear Elisabeth Anne," he wrote, in a four-point memorandum. "In light of recent events, the following is going to occur:

  "1. During our telephone conversation on … September 4, 1986, just before I hung up on you, you used a disgusting and unseemly word to refer to Linda. Pursuant to my letter of July 23, 1986, that will cost you $100. I
t will be withheld from the next check I send you."

  From there, he reminded her that, on September 7, she had also "used an obscenity to refer to Linda" in a message to Kim. "That will cost you $100." In a third offense, she had entered his house and taken photographs of his property. "From now on, each and every time you set foot across the property line of 1041 Cypress Avenue," he wrote, "I will withhold $250 from the check I send you each month. Each time you step across the threshold into the house, I will withhold $500."

  And, lastly, he reminded her that "I have been awarded sole legal and physical custody of the kids. You have been denied visitation privileges until you undertake an appropriate program of psychiatric therapy." Even so, he accused, in early September she had enticed Danny and Rhett to sneak out of his house and meet her on a nearby street corner. "You then drove them to your house. This is totally unacceptable." What's more, he knew that she had "tried to pull the same thing" on other occasions.

  "I am not opposed to your seeing the kids occasionally," he wrote, "if arrangements are made IN ADVANCE so I know when they are leaving and when they are coming back, and if, while you are with them, you refrain from statements designed to pit them against me or make them feel guilty for not being obnoxious to Linda. From now on, each and every time you spend time with the boys without clearing it with me in advance, $1,000 will be withheld from the check I voluntarily send you every month. Incidentally, if you want to arrange to see the kids, you should talk to them and have them call me … Please do not try to call me directly. There is too much animosity for that to be productive. Sincerely Yours, Daniel T. Broderick III."

  Not long after, he left on a European vacation with Linda.