There’s a real reason why celebrity couples break up at the same time. According to Laura Wasser, one of Los Angeles‘ top divorce lawyers who represented Jennifer Garner and Gwen Stefani, the timing is on purpose. She explained the strategy to Bloomberg Business:
“I’ll tell my clients, ‘I have someone else, I can’t say who, but you should really wait and file [for separation] at the same time,'” Wasser said, because this divides the media attention.
That is pretty incredible. No wonder Wasser is one of LA’s top attorneys. Wasser shared with Bloomberg Business a few other strategies used by Hollywood divorce attorneys:
1) The best time to file a divorce petition is before a holiday weekend, when news outlets aren’t paying close attention.
2) According to Wasser, the county clerk’s office at the Los Angeles Superior Court tends to tip off tabloids when a celebrity shows up in a filing. A spokesperson for the court denied this report. Wasser says she likes to file her cases in branch offices like Santa Barbara, where she said clerks leak fewer documents.
3) Stars are told to tell their spouses they’re filing for divorce before they put in the papers. If they don’t, then they will most likely hear the bad news from the press. ”The turnaround is so fast,” Wasser said. “I have to tell my clients, ‘Okay, the courier is filing it today. Okay, he’s in line to file. Okay, it’s filed. It will be on TMZ within an hour.’” It is incredibly sad something so personal can become so public so fast.
4) Celebrities are advised to negotiate an agreement before they file documents. Not all the terms of those agreements make it into the official papers. “I think we worked on it a good year—no, a year and a half—before it came out on TMZ,” Melanie Griffith said of her 2014 divorce with Antonio Banderas. “And when we did file it, there were some personal things that were agreed upon by Antonio and myself that we had removed from the official papers so they wouldn’t get out.”
5) Celebrity divorce cases are often decided by private judges, sometimes in Wasser’s office. This keeps what happens during the case out of the press.
6) Now that award season is over, expect more celebrity divorces to be announced this March. According to the report, Wasser is currently working on about forty-five cases, some divorce. Wasser explains, divorce attorneys are more sought out in January and February, after the holidays. Separations are announced after the Oscars, when clients no longer have to worry about walking the red carpet alone.
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