America's top divorce lawyers

Rob Walker
Town & Country Monthly Page 119, 1998 Hearst Corporation. All rights reserved.
Further reproduction prohibited.

The biggest names among America's divorce attorneys won't come right out and say it, but theirs has become an indisputably glamorous profession. And why not? These well-paid lawyers have front-and-center seats at some of the most notorious high-stakes, contentious confrontations you could possibly imagine. We've all heard the stories: the fabled settlement that gave Patricia Kluge an estimated $85 million a year from ex-husband John's fortune; Donald Trump's shrewd prenup with Marla. The list goes on.

The fact is, big-money divorces (even the uncontested ones) involving industry captains and celebrities have taken on an almost mythological flavor--whether the actual participants want the attention or not. And like myths, they're thick with characters who seem less like people than like archetypes. The best lawyers are invariably possessed of egos as substantial as their practices (one reason the following lineup will no doubt spark howls of contention). No wonder this roundup of some of the most powerful, successful, talented or simply famous divorce lawyers in the land reads like a casting call for some larger-than-life production--which is precisely what today's megadivorces have become.

In New York City, the Mount Olympus of high-asset split-ups, Robert Stephan Cohen, 58, relishes the role of "Your Worst Nightmare." In fact, that's how Cohen says he was once described to the vacationing, soon-to-be-ex-husband of one of his clients, "The guy came back to New York and settled immediately," Cohen exults. His biggest win? A $200 million settlement on behalf of a client he won't name--that's cash, after taxes. Cohen's role in assorted Perelman, Trump and Kravis dramas ("His firm litigates everything" grumbles one competitor) suggests he's not your man if you prefer the warm and fuzzy type. (Morrison Cohen Singer & Weinstein; 212-735-8600.)

Cohen's fellow Manhattanite Eleanor Alter, 59, plays "The Doyenne," not just liked but respected by the boys of the bar, partly because she's a charmer but also because she lands major clients. This is one lady who's not intimidated by the very male world she inhabits: her custody work for Mia Farrow was such a resounding victory that the court ended up forcing Woody Allen to pay the tab. And though Alter is best known for representing the likes of Christie Brinkley and Nancy Richardson, more than half her clientele is male. (Kasowitz, Bcnson, Torres & Friedman; 212-506-1760.)

A bit to the north you'll find "The Brahmin.," 72-year-old Bostonian Monroe Inker, who says his clientele is 80 percent female ("which is the harder job," he maintains). A fixture among top end matrimonial lawyers for decades, his most celebrated coup in recent years was his representation of Barbara Lee against then-husband Thomas Lee, a leveraged-buyout titan. Inker got maximum leverage himself from an explosion of publicity around Mr. Lee's dalliance with a Philadelphia stockbroker; the 1995 settlement was sealed, but Forbes estimated that this particular buyout cost Lee about $200 million (rumored to be half his net worth). If true, that's quite a feat: fifty-fifty splits of such a large asset pie are rare indeed in equitable-distribution states. (White, Inker, Aronson; 617-367-7700.)

"Strictly Politic," Washington, D.C.'s Sanford Ain values his race-guy reputation too much to represent those bent on destroying their spouses. Even in the case of client Herbert Haft's spectacularly divorce, Ain, 50, attempted to keep the show-down as "dignified and respectable" as possible, (And he kept Haft's payout in the $40-$60 million range, not bad considering his client held onto full control of the family's billion-dollar real estate business.) But even race guys have their limits: when painstaking behind-the-scenes negotiations crumbled in a more recent case, he said of his opponents, "I'm gonna take them to court, and I'm gonna beat the daylights out of them. That's how it works." (Sherman, Meehan, Curtin & Ain; 202-530-3300.)

Ratchet Ain's approach up by a factor of, say, ten, and you have Bernard Rinella, a 61-year-old Chicagoan clearly unafraid of being known as a "Contact Sportsman." The self-described"paternity scourge of the NBA" has played rough in some of the biggest breakups in the history, of sports (Wrigley) and Chicago (Pritzker). Back in the 1980s, he delivered the news to the press that client Harriet Irsay wanted half of the Indianapolis Colts, the franchise owned by her then-husband, Robert, Rinella now freely admits that it was just a scare tactic to bring about a quicker, juicier settlement (reportedly in the $20 million range). "We use whatever's available to us," he bellows. (Rinella and Rinella, Ltd.; 312-236-5454.)

Down in Texas, where big fortunes beget big fights, Donn Fullenweider is "The Big Gun." The 62-year-old Houstonian has figured in cases that turned not just nasty but deadly. There was, for example, the 1979 T. Cullen Davis divorce, during which accusations surfaced that the magnate was trying to have the judge in his case murdered--charges of which he was later acquitted. "My argument was that since he had such a famous divorce lawyer, he had nothing to worry about" Fullenweider says dryly. "That proved to be true, because he won the case" (Read: Davis paid only about $3 million of the amount his estranged wife had sought.) More recently, Fullenweider convinced a jury to award $1.2 million in damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress to client Mary Maher Laub--on top of her multimillion-dollar divorce settlement--in retaliation for misrepresentations made to her by her then-husband during their marriage. A fierce litigator, Fullenweider says his real skill is hearing out his clients' troubles. He reckons if he hadn't gone into matrimonial law he would have been "a shrink." (Fullenweider & Associates; 713-624-4100.)

Fullenweider isn't the lone star in Texas. Dallasite Ike Vanden Eykel, 48, has built a reputation as "The Hired Gun"--about 20 percent of iris work consists of cases in which he's been called in when settlement talks have unraveled."I don't get the powder-puff cases," as he puts it. One client--who took to calling the march toward trial "going to Baghdad" in a Gulf War reference--was so pleased with Vanden Eykel's work he threw in a Mercedes 600 SL convertible on top of his fees. Vanden Eykel added custom plates that read "Baghdad." (Koons, Fuller & Vanden Eykel; 214-871-2727.)

Farther west, in Los Angeles, a city bloated with public figures, discretion turns out to be the watchword. Daniel J. Jaffe, 60, who goes so far as to call himself"The Stealth Lawyer," insists that his talent for keeping his business out of the gossip columns is as attractive to clients as his skill in crafting, attacking or defending prenuptial agreements. Recently, for example, he helped bulletproof a prenup for a moneyed globetrotter who splits his time among Switzerland, the U.K., New York and California. Not surprisingly, Jaffe won't name this client, but others have included the wife of former Senator Alan Cranston; his firm represented Nicole Brown Simpson in her divorce from O.J. (Jaffe & Clemens; 310-550-7477.)

In Beverly Hills, 57-year-old Stephen Kolodny also has a reputation for secrecy. But he tends to get called in on the spats that seem headed to litigation--call him "The Stealth Bomber." He's represented the mother of Steve Garvey's out-of-wedlock child, and Denver developer John Dick, who swapped his prominent place in the city's social circles for European digs during his rancorous multiyear divorce from wife Elisabeth. Jaffe recalls a prenup squabble both he and Kolodny were involved in that ended with the groom-to-be declaring the agreement a "setup" and bolting from a party on the eve of the wedding. "It's a really fun practice," Jaffe says with a sly chuckle. (Kolodny & Anteau; 310-271-5533.)

What about "The Mouthpiece That Roared"? Suffice it to say that if there were a mythological beast that grew stronger with each enemy attack, it would be called The Felder. Many lawyers with whom we spoke insisted that Raoul Felder--perhaps the county's best-known divorce attorney--spends a lot more time on talk shows than in courtrooms. "This business is noted for jealousy," retorts the infamous Felder, 62, assuring an inquirer that his practice--with clients including the exes of Anthony Quinn and Elizabeth Taylor--is the biggest around. As for his rivals, he declares dismissively: "They all get this Napoleon complex" (Raoul Lionel Felder; 212-832-3939.)

BRIEFLY NOTED. There's Manhattanite Norman M. Sheresky, late 60s, who's won big cases for plenty of fellow attorneys--as well as for their exes. Last summer, for example, he made waves in New York by winning 50 percent of the value of a partnership in Cravath, Swaine & Moore for a client who was divorcing a top attorney in that prestigious firm (212-838-3433). In Boston, David Lee, 50, is a low-key attorney who's more interested in grasping complicated financial issues than in knowing the right gossip columnists--and he's respected for it. "If I had a family member in Boston who needed this kind of help" says D.C. attorney Ain, "I'd say David Lee is the only guy to go to" (617-266-6262). Courtly Atlantan George Stern, 60, has become a brand-name divorce lawyer in the South, representing the likes of actress Halle Berry and a cross section of well-heeled Georgians (404-256-0100). The president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML), Mike McCurley of Dallas, enjoys Texas-size notoriety. He was a personal-injury and labor lawyer before his own divorce in the mid '70s, during which he concluded,"There really were no topnotch divorce lawyers to be had" Nowadays most of his clients--e.g., Martina Navratilova--manage to retain major fortunes built in business and sports (214-744-4620). Power duo Melvyn B. Frumkes, 68, and Marsha Elser handle many of the biggest breakups in Miami (in separate practices). His clients have included baseball star Jose Canseco; she was the first female president of the AAML (Frumkes, 305-371-5600; Elser, 305-577-0090). Detroit's John F. Schaefer, 54, counts two ex-Mrs. Iacoccas and a host of prominent midwesterners among his clientele (248-642-6655). In Chicago, 55-year-old Donald C. Schiller has been a top matrimonial attorney for years, heading up the country's largest divorce firm. He tends to be directly involved only in cases with at least $10 million in assets; Crain's Chicago Business once named him the Windy City's best matrimonial lawyer (312-641-5560). And San Franciscan Lawrence Stotter, a celebrated scrapper at age 68, continues to pull down the lion's share of high-profile work in the City by the Bay. Clients have included novelist Pat Conroy's ex-wife, for whom he won a chunk of book and movie royalties (415-928-5050).