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

by Bella Stumbo

  That was her official line. What she never would admit was that she also didn't want any pin-striped stranger standing between her and her former husband, the father of her children, the man who had promised to love her until the twelfth of never.

  At long last, Dan would have to talk to her. She would have him cornered on a witness stand. He would finally have to publicly explain how he had left her, the perfect wife and mother, for the office cunt, and why. He would have to explain, on the record, why he had the mother of his children jailed, why Rhett's ears were dirty, how many times he had gotten drunk, how many piano recitals he had missed. She didn't care about money. She wanted to talk. She wanted Dan Broderick to say he was sorry. She wanted him to stand up in the middle of the trial, admit the error of his ways, and come back home where he belonged.

  That Christmas, the children shuttled back and forth between the two houses. For the first time in four years, Dan and Betty Broderick didn't engage in a punishing standoff over money for ski trips because, for the first time in four years, Betty was too preoccupied preparing her case to bicker over the small stuff.

  Chapter 25

  Divorce Trial

  She stared into her closet that Christmas, pulling out all her frumpy, boring matron's suits. She studied herself closely in the mirror for the first time in months. Sometimes it shocked even her, how much she had changed in two years. Her complexion was splotchy, her face webbed with fine lines of strain and exhaustion, her jowls drooped with weight. She looked years older than she was. She could not look good for this, her first close encounter with her former husband in years.

  The most she could hope for was an air of self-assurance. For that, she pulled out all her four-inch pumps. She wore her big shoes to court every day.

  She spent the holiday season at her kitchen table, poring over her stacks of legal documents from years past, stealing snatches from arguments Tricia Smith had made two years earlier, sorting through receipts, and, beyond all else, thinking of all the questions she would finally be able to ask him, all the answers he would have to give. She jotted her case down on her yellow legal pads. "Where were you when baby died?" she wrote at the top of one list.

  Friends begged her to come to her senses. What was she doing, walking into that courtroom alone, with $1 million in Epsteins and her children at stake? Hire a lawyer, they urged. Any lawyer was better than none.

  No. She was through with that rat race. She was sick of it all, plus she had to hurry, before he married the office girl.

  She arrived in the courtroom of Judge William J. Howatt, Jr., on December 27 accompanied only by her friend Ronnie Brown.

  In his first order of business, Dan's attorney, Barry, asked that the Broderick divorce case remain closed to the public for the sake of the Broderick children. Betty objected, "on principle," as she had for years, but lost. Howatt did agree, however, that Ronnie Brown could remain, for moral support.

  And so, up went the heavy brown paper, covering the small window pane on the courtroom door so passersby could not even see who was sitting inside. A large sign was posted. CLOSED.

  Betty asked if the missing divorce file had yet been located. No, it had not been found. However, Howatt told her, the court had reconstructed a partial file, with the help of Mr. Barry's records. She had not been asked to provide her own input.

  Trial commenced.

  Barry's opening statement was a brief summary of the issues to be resolved: property settlement, child custody, and spousal support. However, he alerted Howatt, "a problem of major proportions" would involve a substantial amount in Epstein credits, as well as sizable deductions for cash advances made to Betty in past years. He thought spousal support might entail significant argument, too.

  Howatt then asked Betty if she would like to make an opening statement now, or wait until she began her case.

  "Isn't this the beginning of the case?" she asked, confused. "I can make an opening statement ... I don't have one prepared but I can make it." It was a question. He didn't reply.

  So she stood, and, in her best "Welcome to the Francis Parker Mothers Club" fashion, told the judge, in part:

  "I'm happy to be here, finally, to get some resolution of this case … I'm trying to get back some semblance of normalcy in a life that's been under siege for six years … We have millions of dollars' worth of property, none of which has my name on it. In most cases I have no knowledge of what it's worth, what we paid for it, what the debts are. I have no idea about the property. I have lists that Mr. Broderick has submitted. My support—I would just like to be able to go on living ... I hope that we can settle something. Thank you."

  The trial lasted eight days. It was lamb to the slaughter from the git-go. Dan Broderick and Gerald Barry danced together with the easy grace of Fred and Ginger. They were smooth, practiced, professional, and poised. Their goals were clear, their preparation exhaustive, their demeanor subdued and mature. They were good lawyers.

  It was a testament to Betty Broderick's extraordinary tenacity, instinctive intelligence, and chameleon personality that she was able to pull herself together enough to perform in divorce court as well as she did. It was a measure of her madness that she even tried. It also speaks volumes about the judicial system that this woman who had been jailed, committed to a mental institution, and now was clearly walking the ragged edge, was even allowed to proceed in her own behalf.

  Like a candle in the wind, she was, at one minute bright, even brilliant, in her thoughts; in the next moment, her intelligence flickered dimly, illuminating nothing except her own pathetic decline.

  Throughout the proceedings, she shrugged, apologized, and played her same old game. She was still Miss Goody-Two-Shoes, cute and coy, trusting to the end, as she had all her life, that things would work out, once she had charmed the men in charge with her own innocence.

  Thus, she accepted Dan's financial figures almost without question—and trusted in Judge William J. Howatt, Jr., to see that justice was done. After all these years, Betty had learned nothing. This judge did not come to her rescue, any more than the others had. Only rarely would he even tip her on how properly to frame a question to escape Barry's unrelenting objections. He accepted evidence that she didn't even know she may have had a right to protest. Nor would he give her lessons in Epsteins.

  Unfortunately for her, none of the three men in this courtroom was sympathetic to her ingratiating ways. Nor did it help that she was so incongruously packaged—wide-eyed helplessness, confusion, and a little-girl voice, wrapped in the hulking 5'10" body of an Amazon who dwarfed most of the men around her, former husband included. It was just another one of God's bad tricks that, given her personality, Betty Broderick wasn't born a petite 5'2" china doll.

  What Dan and Gerald Barry wanted, basically, was to deny Betty Broderick almost everything she wanted. In specific, they asked the court to agree that Dan had accumulated nearly $1 million in Epstein credits, half of it payable by Betty—and they wanted the judge to value Dan's law practice, not at its current 1988 worth, but at its value at the time of separation in 1985, four years earlier. They wanted a property settlement based on their figures, which showed that, sadly, Dan Broderick had suffered significant losses on nearly every investment he had ever made during the course of his marriage to Betty. Not least, they wanted the judge to reduce her monthly support from $16,000 to $9,000, at most—and that for no more than a year. After that, Dan wanted to pay her $5,000 monthly for a limited time, perhaps two more years, followed by nothing at all, since, by then, Betty should have found a job and, as Barry put it, become "a contributing member of society."

  And, finally, they wanted Dan to retain custody of the two boys on grounds that the rage Betty felt over the divorce had rendered her an unfit mother.

  Betty's goals were just as clear as Dan's. She wanted the same $4 million package she and Tricia Smith had sought nearly two years earlier: $25,000 a month for ten years, plus $1 million in cash. Neat and clean. She didn't want to
haggle over the value of pianos, boats, Corvettes, Colorado condominiums, or any other items of community property.

  She also wanted the three minor children. It was not she who was the unfit parent, she said, but Dan. He was not only a controlling, insensitive, neglectful father, he was also an alcoholic who wouldn't face his problem. He had cruelly harassed and manipulated her into her indiscrete rages by using the children against her—and then punished her for it. He had been lying and cheating her ever since he met Linda in 1983, and his brother Larry had been helping him shuffle assets out of her reach. He had deliberately delayed the divorce settlement in order to accumulate even more Epstein credits. He had been buying time. He wanted to leave his wife and family, "but he didn't want to pay the price for it."

  Barry's case came first. For the next day and a half, Barry marched Dan systematically through the Broderick family finances and custody issues.

  The financial figures Barry presented were roughly the same as those in Dan's September settlement offer—except now Betty's share had shrunk even further. Most of his losing investments, Dan said, were connected to his Colorado ventures with his brother Larry. He blamed the decline on the collapse of oil prices in the early eighties, which had caused real estate in Colorado, "an energy state," to collapse. "I don't like it. I'm sure that Bets doesn't like it. I know my brother doesn't like it. But that's it."

  To cite just one example, a Denver office building Dan partially owned had lost about $60,000 during the last few years, he said. He was charging Betty Epstein credits for half that loss. Other properties in Colorado—lots in Dillon, the Keystone condo—would also cost her in losses. Even the property in Telluride, now one of America's most fashionable ski resorts, was worth only about $700 per acre—half its earlier value—according to information provided to Dan by his brother.

  Howatt accepted this secondhand appraisal from brother Larry without question—although, later on, he would not permit Betty to introduce even a letter from her accountant on grounds it was hearsay unless the witness was present and sworn.

  According to Dan, among his few investments to actually appreciate in value since he left Betty was the Warner Springs unit near San Diego, bought in 1984. He estimated that, although Warner's had a remaining debt of $8,000, its equity was around $16,000. He proposed that Warner's "go to Bets … because she uses it and seems to enjoy it." He, meantime, wanted to keep title to all the disastrous Colorado investments with his brother Larry.

  In effect, Dan testified that his only real wealth was in his law practice. And he intended to give her half of that—based on its 1985 value. The actual value of Dan Broderick's law practice as of December, 1988, would never even be introduced into this trial, because Betty never pressed for it.

  But an expert appraiser called by Barry was firm in his testimony that, as of the date of separation, Dan's law practice was worth only $1,495,000.

  There would be few terms more significant in this entire trial than "date of separation." Gerald Barry referred to it in every other breath—for what it meant was that, although Epstein credits on debts Dan was paying continued to accrue right up the present, the value of the community property assets was frozen "at the date of separation" four years earlier.

  When it was Betty's turn to examine the appraiser, after first excusing herself one more time for her ignorance, she actually got to the heart of the matter quickly. How had he arrived at his numbers? she asked. Where had he gotten his information on the number of cases settled before and after the separation?

  From Mr. Broderick and Mr. Barry, said the appraiser. They were the sole source of his working data.

  And why hadn't he valued the practice to the present? Betty asked.

  Because, he said, neither Mr. Barry nor Mr. Broderick had asked him to do so.

  But then, as would be her maddening wont throughout the trial, Betty simply dropped the line of questioning and sat down. The witness was excused.

  Cash advances came next. Dan wanted reimbursement for every dollar he had given her, above and beyond court-ordered payments, since he left—including the $140,000 down payment he had made on her del Cielo house. Which brought that total to about $210,000, atop the nearly $500,000 in Epsteins.

  Not until years later would Betty even think to wonder why she had to reimburse Dan for the down payment he made on her Calle del Cielo house, when he didn't have to repay her equally for the down payment on his Cypress house, since they weren't even divorced at the time of either house purchase. Enter again the magic phrase—"at the time of separation." Although both houses had been bought prior to their divorce, from the day Dan moved out, it was all his money, not hers.

  Concerning Betty's monthly support, Dan thought her itemized expenses were outrageous. No man, whatever his income, should be asked to pay his ex-wife $16,000 a month, much less $25,000, he protested. "It seems unbelievably high to me. I can pay it. I can pay it at least right now. [But] when I consider how many people live on so much less than that and that this is just for one person—one able-bodied, intelligent, well-educated person—it seems to me that it's an awfully large amount of money for me to have to pay every month."

  Besides, he pointed out, since he left Betty, he had already paid her a whopping amount of money: $192,638 in voluntary monthly support alone; then, in response to the court-ordered $16,000 in 1986, another $402,500; for a total of nearly $600,000 in support alone over a four-year period. Adding in the cash advances, plus distributions from various sales of their assets, such as the Fairbanks Ranch lots, the total he had paid her so far was well over a million dollars—$1,083,387, to be exact (minus, of course, $24,000 in court-ordered fines and Dan's attorney fees).

  As for Betty's claimed monthly expenses, Dan thought them ludicrous— $1,000 for a gardener? He thought $300 was plenty. Her food and household supply budget of $850 "should be more like $500"—it didn't cost him that much, he said, to feed himself and four children for a month. Her $200 monthly phone bill should be reduced to $50—his monthly average, with three children, he said, was only $51. As for her $2,000 clothing budget, Dan said he spent only $586 a month on himself and four children. Thus, $500 for her was more than fair. Not least, he also thought her $4,500 monthly mortgage was unreasonable, too. He didn't see why a single woman alone needed such a large, expensive house. She should move to more modest accommodations.

  Turning to his own resources, he agreed that, even at the time of separation in 1985, his annual income had been $1,332,444. But, by the time he was finished with overhead and taxes, he argued, the amount wasn't nearly so grand. In reality, his net monthly income was only about $65,000, he said. From that, he paid himself $36,000 every month—but, after taxes, that actually amounted to only about $22,600. Simple arithmetic, of course, says that would have been nearly impossible, since Betty's monthly support alone came to $16,000. And Dan eventually conceded that, sometimes, whenever his checking account ran low, he would "take a bonus from the corporation." It was a shell game.

  Even so, by the time Barry was through, a casual listener might have wondered how poor Dan Broderick scraped by. Moreover, Dan added, he expected to have to tighten his financial belt even more severely very soon. Not only because he was now sending a daughter to college, but also because "I'm getting married on April 22. I'll be starting a new family. I anticipate there will be additional expenses in connection with that."

  Barry then turned to the custody issue. Dan wanted the two boys, but not seventeen-year-old Lee. That was clear from the outset, although he didn't state it so baldly. Instead, he told the judge, sounding saddened, Lee "has no use for me … she does not value my advice. She basically thinks I'm a worthless, ignorant individual who has no concept of what's good for her or what's not. The last time I saw her was about three weeks ago, when she came over for money and I wouldn't give it to her. Her mother and sister tell me that she uses the money I give to her for drugs. She walked out of my house. This was in early December, and she used a few
four-letter words, called me an asshole, and got into her mother's car. And as she was leaving, she threw a glass at my car …

  "Lee is in deep trouble and she needs help," he continued. "But … she has a strong enough will that she will resist help until she gets it herself. No one has custody of Lee …" Nor did he think Lee was even close to being willing to obey his rules. And, he finished, pointedly, "She will not come to my house if she is going to use drugs, and if she does not come home at a decent hour, and be disruptive and cause problems for my sons. That's not going to happen."

  His two sons were a different matter. He wanted full custody—"for their benefit." He agreed both boys had initial adjustment problems, being separated from their mother. But now, Dan thought, both were "normal and doing well."

  And so was he, as a single dad. He saw them off to the school bus each morning, he said. He was home "99 percent of the time" to help them with their schoolwork, play basketball, visit ice cream parlors, watch TV, play checkers or video games. In between, the housekeeper was always there to supervise and prepare meals. If they were "with their mom on the weekend," he said, "Bets" would pick them up, usually on Friday evenings, and then return them home on Sunday evenings.

  It sounded almost like an Alan Alda movie. In this picture there were no unpleasantries, no children threatening suicide, or running away. No hidden telephones in closets, no children acting as go-betweens in visitation because their parents didn't speak—and certainly there were no pretty young girlfriends in the mix. Instead, in this wishful picture, everything was neat, clean, and civil. The real mom might have been a sepia photograph sitting on the mantle, forever lovely and young and cherished, dead, perhaps, from childbirth or some tragic accident or sad disease, long before her time. Forever "Bets."