Smart, accomplished people often make expensive emotional decisions during divorce — even when they understand the financial math. The reason is not intelligence. It is trauma, the need to be heard, and unconscious patterns that follow them out of the marriage and into the litigation.
By Arusyak Abrahamyan, Family Law Attorney | Bay Area Law Group
After more than a decade litigating family law in the Bay Area, I’ve represented clients across a wide spectrum, including high-asset divorce and business owner cases — tech founders and CEOs, physicians, lawyers, stay-at-home parents, and people who built careers from nothing into something extraordinary. What they share, more often than not, is exceptional intelligence.
And yet — intelligence rarely determines how a divorce goes.
Why Doesn’t Intelligence Protect You From Costly Divorce Decisions?
Most of my clients are brilliant people. Living and working in a region anchored by companies like Google, Apple, Meta, and LinkedIn, and research institutions like UCSF and Stanford, I’m surrounded by some of the sharpest minds in the world. But I’ve watched these same individuals make decisions in divorce that seem to defy everything they know about logic, risk, and cost-benefit analysis.
That’s because trauma operates underneath intellect, not alongside it.
In high-conflict divorces — particularly those involving domestic violence — I almost always recommend individual therapy early in the process. Not because my clients aren’t capable of handling difficulty, but because intense emotional states reliably distort judgment. Settlement negotiations, depositions, even email responses look different when someone is operating from a trauma response rather than clear-headed analysis.
Why Do People Spend So Much Money “Just to Be Heard” in a Divorce?
Being recognized and heard is a fundamental human need. My five-year-old makes this obvious — she becomes genuinely frustrated when she feels dismissed, whether about her feelings or her reasoning. Adults in divorce are not so different; we’ve just learned to disguise the need.
I’ve sat across from clients and explained, as plainly as I could, that a particular email response would damage their case. That certain facts don’t belong in a pleading. That escalating the conflict would cost them — in dollars, in time, in outcomes. And regularly, the need to be heard outweighs all of that. Clients ask me to send the angry reply. They want the record to reflect everything their spouse did.
I understand the impulse. But I also know what it costs.
What I’ve come to believe: therapy before divorce becomes adversarial is one of the most valuable — and underused — tools available. Family law attorneys are ethically required to advocate zealously for their clients. But zealous representation and escalation are not the same thing. The volume of conflict does not determine its outcome. If anything, it creates chaos that benefits no one except the billing clock.
Do Marriage Patterns Follow You Into Divorce?
Divorce doesn’t change people — it reveals them under pressure.
The spouse who avoided hard conversations during the marriage will be the party who misses discovery deadlines and refuses to engage in settlement discussions. The spouse who was careless with finances during the marriage will be the one whose financial disclosures are incomplete. The one who was domineering at home will be domineering in litigation.
People can perform differently for a while. But divorce is a long process — sometimes a very long one — and it’s difficult to sustain a performance under sustained stress. Patterns surface.
This is why I tell clients early: don’t expect the fish to climb a tree. Don’t build your strategy around the hope that the person who showed you who they were for ten years will suddenly become someone different because the stakes are high. They won’t. And if your strategy depends on that happening, you’ll be disappointed — and the disappointment will cost you.
Understanding your spouse’s patterns, rather than fighting them, is often the faster and cheaper path through.
If you’re navigating a high-conflict divorce in the Bay Area and want counsel that’s both strategically grounded and genuinely honest about what litigation involves, I’d be glad to talk.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do intelligent people make poor financial decisions during divorce?
Trauma operates underneath intellect, not alongside it. Even highly analytical people — executives, physicians, attorneys — make decisions during divorce that contradict their own judgment because intense emotional states reliably distort reasoning. Divorce is not a logic problem; it is a grief process that happens inside a legal proceeding.
Why do divorce cases get so expensive even when both parties are reasonable?
A significant portion of divorce litigation costs are driven by the human need to feel heard and recognized rather than by strategic necessity. Clients often pursue costly filings, contested hearings, and escalated correspondence not to win outcomes, but to have their experience acknowledged. Therapy early in the process is one of the most effective cost-reduction tools available.
Will my spouse behave differently during divorce than they did during the marriage?
In most cases, no. Divorce reveals people under pressure — it does not change them. The spouse who avoided difficult conversations during the marriage will typically miss discovery deadlines and resist settlement discussions. Building a divorce strategy around the expectation that your spouse will behave differently is a common and costly mistake.
Should I go to therapy during my divorce?
Yes — and the earlier, the better. Individual therapy started before divorce becomes adversarial is one of the most underused tools in high-conflict family law cases. It improves decision-making quality, reduces the impulse toward escalation, and often lowers overall legal costs by keeping clients in a clearer emotional state during negotiations and depositions.
