Nasty, Nasty, Nasty : High-Profile Divorce Wars Are Symbols of What Has Become a Tough Era for Relationships

“Because when I watch you eat, when I watch you sleep, when I look at you lately, I just want to smash your face in.” Barbara Rose, explaining to her husband Oliver why she wants to divorce him, in the film “The War of the Roses.” It’s said that war is hell. But a divorce war is even worse.

At least, that’s what Hollywood is saying this Christmas with the opening today of two black comedies about the ugliest of ugly marital split-ups--those that deteriorate from sheer psychological trauma to actual physical tragedy. Just as “Fatal Attraction” put the spotlight on adultery, so these two movies expose divorce.

In “She-Devil,” middle-class housefrau Roseanne Barr gets revenge by ruining everything that’s dear to husband Ed Begley Jr. after he leaves her for his rich and beautiful girlfriend Meryl Streep.

In the slightly more realistic “The War of the Roses,” a $25,000 Morgan classic car, $35,000 worth of Staffordshire porcelain and a $60,000 chandelier also are victimized when Michael Douglas and wife Kathleen Turner fight for possession of their home. Even Douglas’ lawyer, played by Danny DeVito, didn’t anticipate the results when he said: “A civilized divorce is a contradiction in terms.”

Nowhere is that truer than in Los Angeles, home to the big-bucks break-up, where nasty divorces among the rich and famous are increasingly becoming the rule rather than the exception. “The problem is you have a cumbersome, costly and elaborate legal system attempting to work out problems that it was never designed to solve,” explains attorney Hillel Chodos, who handled the so-called “reeking havoc” divorce between Giorgio perfume creators and store owners Fred and Gale Hayman.

“People who are getting divorced usually come to the lawyer to solve problems that no one is qualified to solve. The legal system can divvy up the money somehow, but it can’t make up for the fact that somebody promised to love your client and stopped doing it. So a lot of the fighting over money or children is really fighting over something else.”

And what’s happening here seems to be afflicting the rest of the country as well.

“I talk to lawyers in Houston and Chicago and New York and divorces are getting nastier all over,” says prominent Century City divorce lawyer Stuart Walzer. “It’s a spiritual crisis. The whole damn society is suffering from greed and a fixation on material things. That makes this a very tough era for relationships.”

It’s no wonder that divorces during the ‘80s--known popularly as the “Decade of Greed”--escalated into a Porthault and Picasso feeding frenzy for separating spouses and their lawyers. The boom in real estate values transformed even the average home into a big-ticket item. Baby boomers competed in a consuming contest where the couple with the most stuff wins. The women’s movement taught wives to fight for their rights down to the last Certificate of Deposit. No-fault proceedings moved the emphasis in divorces from adultery to assets.

So when USC psychologist and divorce expert Constance Ahrons studied the relationships between divorced spouses over five years during the mid-’80s, she found nasty vs. nice uncouplings were roughly 50-50.

Things seem to be going downhill from there for the people with the most at stake. Indeed, 1989 may go down in history as The Year of the Celebrity Split. Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. Sean Penn and Madonna. Bruce Springsteen and Julianne Phillips. And just this week, James Woods and Sarah Owen announced their legal separation after five months of marriage.

Sure, some couples managed to separate amicably--Steven Spielberg and Amy Irving were seen having dinner together a few days before they called it quits--but many others go through this most wrenching of life experiences with the legal and emotional equivalent of a wrecking ball.

So what determines which divorces will be nasty and which will be nice? Dollars, a desire for revenge and sometimes even the divorce lawyers themselves.

California’s 20-year-old no-fault divorce law was supposed to divide up community property more or less evenly. But exactly what constitutes community property--ahh, there’s the rub. The Byzantine legal system becomes bloodied when well-off couples have to negotiate tangibles, such as corporate divestitures, Platinum Triangle real estate and Laker season tickets as well as intangibles, such as the value to place on the loss of celebrity status for the soon-to-be-ex of a major star who suddenly finds he/she can’t get a great table at Morton’s anymore.

“Oliver, there’s no winning in this. There’s only degrees of losing . “ Divorce attorney Gavin D’Amato advising his client in “The War of the Roses.”

“Yeah,” responds Oliver Rose, “but I got more square footage.”

It could be said that Spielberg could afford a pleasant parting because he gave Irving what is believed to be one of Hollywood’s biggest divorce settlements, surpassing the $81-million award that one-time Beverly Hills resident Mohammed al Fassi was ordered to give to wife Dena in 1983, but falling short of the estimated $112 million that producer Norman Lear handed wife Frances Lear--enough to start her own magazine.

“Hey, when you have the kind of money Spielberg does, how tough is it?” notes L.A. superlawyer Howard Weitzman, who represented boxing champ Mike Tyson in his acrimonious divorce from actress Robin Givens. “It’s simply, ‘Listen, honey, I’m leaving you now and giving you $93 million, is that OK?’ ”

The Tyson-Givens decision wasn’t nearly so easy. Weitzman still exults over what he calls his TKO against Givens. “We made her look bad in the press and she caved in. The truth is, she could have gotten a lot of money”--maybe as much as $10 million, he says. Weitzman estimates she received about a fourth of that amount. In fact, Tyson and Givens are still exchanging punches over property six months after their divorce.

Think that’s bad? Then how about actress Goldie Hawn and her ex Bill Hudson; even though they’ve got families with other people, they’re fighting it out in the media over such thorny issues as child visitation rights and signatures for loans on Malibu real estate.

Meanwhile, recent published reports say Kim Basinger’s husband of eight years, makeup artist Ron Britton, is threatening to take their divorce case to trial--where he says he will tell tales about some of the high-profile men who’ve been romantically linked with his wife--if Basinger does not give him a multimillion dollar settlement.

And though the couple, who filed for divorce a year ago, were able to resolve the house issue painlessly (Basinger let Britton keep the $700,000 manse), they can’t seem to agree on who should get custody of their 10 dogs, assorted stray cats and half-dozen birds.

Then, there’s the tug-of-war over the million-dollar-plus home of actors Harry Hamlin (“L.A. Law”) and Laura Johnson (“Heartbeat”). Just like the characters in “The War of the Roses,” neither Hamlin nor Johnson will move out. So, according to legal circles, they’ve split up the domicile complete with two demilitarized zones.

Still, Hamlin’s publicist, Annette Wolf, claims everything is “extremely amicable--to the extent there’s a Christmas tree in the house.” Of course, she also declared in August that her client’s marriage “couldn’t be more solid”; a day later, Hamlin filed for divorce.

“You’d better get yourself a damn good lawyer . “ Oliver Rose to his wife in “The War of the Roses.”

“Best your money can buy,” Barbara Rose replies.

Gale Hayman, for one, maintains she tried not to mix assets with acrimony when her 20-year marriage to Fred Hayman ended in 1983. Still, it degenerated into a legal siege that didn’t end until 1987 when Avon Products Inc. paid $185 million to buy the Beverly Hills company Giorgio Inc., which they ran jointly even after their divorce was final.

Now Gale has her own cosmetics company, and Fred has his “Fred Hayman” store on Rodeo Drive. Avon now owns the Giorgio name and perfume but gone is the Beverly Hills boutique Giorgio, a casualty of the divorce.

“I had no intentions of it getting nasty. I anticipated no problems whatsoever,” maintains Gale, whose divorce is now the subject of a just published book, “Reeking Havoc,” by Women’s Wear Daily writer Steve Ginsburg. “It doesn’t have to be nasty if people are fair. But being unfair creates nastiness and results in a nasty divorce.”

The sticking point became the business that both of them started when Fred Hayman was the maitre d’ at Romanoff’s restaurant and Gale was a cocktail waitress. “I was fighting for my life. I was fighting for my career,” she claims. “And the stalemate that ensued was a surprise to me.”

In Hayman’s view, men like her husband aren’t emotionally prepared to deal with a settlement where “women stand up for what they believe is morally and economically right. They’re not being manipulated as easily anymore. They’re more informed and more self-confident than years ago. And I guess that ultimately means a messier divorce.”

Prominent divorce lawyer Paul Gutman agrees that women are becoming more assertive in pursuing their share of community property. “Unfortunately, that’s often mischaracterized as over-aggressiveness,” he says. “But if a woman is truly assertive in her divorce, then that’s to be commended.”

While Fred Hayman doesn’t comment on any aspect of the divorce, Gale Hayman can look back and realize that at issue weren’t the usual material possessions which couples have difficulty splitting; Gale claims she left “everything” in their sumptuous home to Fred because “the style of the house was more his than mine. I just moved my clothes out.”

However, as real estate prices soar, especially in Southern California, the concept of two divorcing spouses living under the same roof isn’t rare or even bizarre. Downtown divorce attorney Pat Phillips, who represents many prominent L.A. professionals, “always” advises her clients to remain in the family residence unless there’s a “physically dangerous situation. But, then, I’m not in the position of representing clients wielding knives.”

Phillips’ so-called “house strategy” is derived from normal human nature, she says: the emotion of envy, pure and simple. “Any time one client stays in the lovely home with all the amenities and the other moves into a bare apartment, I can guarantee that before too long the client in the apartment is going to be madder than hell.”

Dividing up possessions can’t help but become petty. Gutman recalls one couple who were able to settle the disposition of their multimillion-dollar house with no problem only to come to a standstill over a collection of junk. “These were plates about 10 degrees beneath Hummel copies,” Gutman sniffs. “The house went beautifully but the plates caused real anguish. I don’t even remember how it all turned out. I only remember the process.”

In Los Angeles, as in the rest of the country, the nastiest divorces often occur when one spouse goes after the other’s business as community property. According to local legal circles, one of the worst examples of this is being played out right now in Glendale Superior Court by feminist attorney Gloria Allred and her businessman husband, William.

Although the couple divorced in 1987, Gloria is seeking half of her ex-husband’s share in his aerospace company, Donallco Inc., while William is seeking half of his ex-wife’s holdings in her law firm, Allred, Maroko, Goldberg & Ribakoff.

Gloria, who usually courts media attention for her flamboyant cases, has sought to keep the personal drama as low-key as possible, quietly slipping into court without the usual trail of TV cameras. (Her ex-husband can’t appear at all; he is serving a five-year sentence in a federal prison in Texas after being convicted in 1987 of conspiring to defraud the government by selling bogus aircraft parts to the Air Force.)

Still the tension is almost tangible. The reason, according to legal observers, is that the case is pitting two of L.A.’s pit bull divorce lawyers against each other: Arlene Colman-Schwimmer who is representing William Allred vs. Paul Gutman for Gloria.

“What do you call 500 divorce lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? An excellent start.” Divorce attorney Gavin D’Amato to a prospective client.

Divorce lawyers themselves are the first to admit that they should ensure that divorces don’t get nasty. The trouble is some can’t do it. And others simply won’t.

Attorney Stuart Walzer blames this on the growing competition among divorce attorneys, especially in Southern California where a dozen top-drawer specialists are in constant demand by the affluent despite hourly rates as high as $500. Thousands more are hungry for any case at all. “The reality is that clients can leave at the drop of the hat and find another attorney and this makes the lawyers very nervous,” explains Walzer. “And then the clients can sue for malpractice, and this makes the lawyers crazy.”

The result is that high-priced lawyers go for the jugular in divorce cases--not just because their clients want them to, but because they’re good at it. For them, keeping a divorce from deteriorating into a “Full Metal Jacket”-like affair is about as difficult as keeping an attack dog on a leash. “Most lawyers are so eager to win and be hotshots that they get carried away with their own zeal. They want desperately to win and look good and talk about their million-dollar clients,” says Walzer, sighing.

“And here I am doing the very same thing.”

To show just how bad things can get, Walzer and Gutman went at it in the divorce case, settled in July, of Elizabeth Niklas and high-profile Beverly Hills restaurateur Kurt Niklas, part-owner of The Bistro and the Bistro Garden. The lawyers hurled charges back and forth in a case legal sources describe as one of the messiest in L.A. history.

Maybe that’s why some prominent attorneys are refusing to handle divorce cases anymore except in special circumstances. Howard Weitzman, who describes himself as a “utility lawyer,” admits he “hates” divorce cases and tries to pass them to other lawyers. And Hillel Chodos says he’s all but given them up unless a close friend needs his help.

“It’s just too strenuous. People call you up in the middle of the night, saying, ‘Do you know what he did? Can you imagine what she said?’ C’mon, give me a break,” he complains. “And then there are all those lawyers in the divorce field who are consciously milking their cases. But people should have better sense than that.

“What I never understand is why buy your lawyer a Mercedes when you can buy your wife a Mercedes? And in the process, keep her your friend?”

Even now, Gale Hayman shudders when she looks back on what her divorce cost her and her ex-husband. It got to the point where she was interviewing two lawyers a day for two weeks just to hear that no one could dispose of her case before 1992. “Because it was very lucrative for them to do that,” she explains. “It was like an annuity--a nice big fat monthly check from Fred and Gale.”

Finally, she sought help from Chodos, who told her he could conclude negotiations in just three months. She jumped at the chance. “My common sense told me there’d be nothing left of the business. There’d be nothing left of Fred. There’d be nothing left of me in five years. And the lawyers would be very wealthy. The whole key is finding the right lawyer who you can communicate with and does what you want . And then, of course, being clear what you want.”

“When a man who makes $450 an hour wants to tell you something for free, you’d better listen . “ Divorce attorney Gavin D’Amato to a prospective client in “The War of the Roses.”

Chodos recalls the time an old friend decided to divorce his wife of 20 years. “I had handled a lot of litigation for him and he was the toughest guy that ever lived. He loved to litigate. It was his hobby. And he could afford to hire lawyers up the wazoo.”

The friend told Chodos, “Here’s my offer. If they don’t take it, I’m going to take it to the end of the world.” Chodos was horrified.

“I said, ‘Take my advice. I’m your friend for 15 years. Don’t take it to the end of the world. You’ve got so much money you can’t spend it in your life anyway. Give a little extra. What difference can it make?’ So I arm-wrestled him down. And he’s gone out and made 50 times that amount since. The point is he was able to go on with his life in two weeks instead of four years. And he still thanks me.”

Chodos waits a beat before delivering the story’s punchline.

“But I think in all the years he was the only client who took my advice.”