Millennials Are Now Getting Their Parents to Handle Their Divorces

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Lisa,* a mother of two in Montgomery County, initially didn’t want to involve her parents in her divorce. It’s easy to see why. “My husband was seeing prostitutes, and not for run-of-the-mill stuff,” the 42-year-old explains. “It was stuff I had to Google.” But ultimately, she needed them. Her parents loaned her $175,000 to cover legal costs and other expenses, such as renting a new place to live. They helped her build her case—including enlisting her dad to photocopy ads she’d discovered for 30 different prostitutes who had been with her husband. “That saved me like $2,000 in attorneys’ fees, doing the copies ourselves,” she says. As Lisa logged her husband’s philandering—which she tracked for more than a year by keeping tabs on his internet use, phone records, and ATM withdrawals—she e-mailed the chronicles to her mother for safekeeping: “My mom knows everything.” One other way her parents were involved: They both accompanied her to meet with her attorney.

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In some cases, parents have a financial stake and want to be kept apprised of the legal strategy. In others, they get involved purely to offer support and guidance. Among clients in their twenties, thirties, and even early forties, attorneys say they’re observing a changing dynamic, with adult children depending on, and confiding in, their parents more than prior generations did. “Years ago, you would virtually never see a parent with a client,” says Sandy Ain, name partner at Ain & Bank, who has practiced family law for 40 years. “In the last ten years, it’s become considerably more prevalent.” In fact, Ain says he missed this reporter’s first call because he was on the phone with a concerned father.

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However, parental support can easily veer into parental control. Joseph Condo, a principal at Offit Kurman, recently represented a young woman splitting from a wealthy husband. He says things were going well for their side: “The husband was putting a lot of money on the table that wasn’t required, ostensibly because he felt bad about the breakup of the marriage.” The woman could have walked away. But then, Condo says, her parents convinced her to demand substantially more. Condo, who no longer represents the client, predicts they’ll cost their daughter both emotionally and financially.

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