>>>>Good lawyers are worth their weight in gold.
Yes they are.
My only extended exposure was during a contested divorce decades ago.
The cheap poseur friend-of-a-friend bloviating Irish lawyer caused a lot of unneeded anguish over many months including (I discovered after his replacement) the failure to even file some fundamental court documents.
His replacement was an ultra-expensive younger female war machine whom I began to call Dragon Lady. I was so confident in her strategy that I hired her and immediately went on a sailboat vacation for three weeks in the Carribbean (no phones, computers, or faxes).
Meanwhile she went into immediate (and pricey) action by getting subpoena on everything and everyone including my own employer’s company officers. On return she had about three feet of documents, more than one dozen witnesses, and several very threatening hole cards. Also wifey’s (creepy) attorneys were begging for a meeting.
I guess it’s tough to run an $8,000 divorce lawyer bill in 4 weeks, but she did, and it was very noisey in addition to being worth every single penny.
My wife’s lawyers settled at that meeting very much in my favor, after almost a year dishing out the BS. It could have gone much worse for them, and Dragon Lady had the case all laid out on the conference table in minute detail.
Always get the best lawyer you can possibly find, even one you think is “too expensive”.
It concerned myself and another person, and we owned a house together that we lived in.
It dragged out for a year, with her trying to force me to sell the house and split what little money it would net us.
Part of her motivation was that I wanted to keep the house.
I ended up buying her out for a fair price to both of us.
When the lawyers and the two of us set down together, I remember the last conversation she had with her lawyer.
She said, Can’t we get a better deal?
He looked at her and said, His lawyer is a lot more expensive than I am.
Cost me about 5% of what I eventually gained from the house.
Getting the best lawyer at what ever price necessary is usually a winning situation.
I like your story, very entertaining!