An Unending Spiral: The Price Bitter of Divorce
 An Analysis of the Documentary “Divorce Corp” by Stephen Sorge

It is an almost desperate cry, a warning perhaps the last call before a
definitive catastrophe. It is a terrible vision of a reality that,
unfortunately, many are condemned to experience. This is the purpose served
by the documentary Divorce Corp, directed by Joseph Sorge. The divorce business is the topic of this bluntness yet
realistic full-length film, populated by a series of postmodern characters
who are afflicted by a series of circumstances they were unprepared to
face.

Divorce Corp addresses the theme of how the divorce process occurs in the
United States. The problem has deep roots.American law has set family
courts, or courts that have jurisdiction in matters of family separation.
Born in the 1950’s, in an era of economic splendor and social well-being,
their goal was to preserve the right to divorce in extreme circumstances.
Over the decades however, these courts have slowly yet surely degenerated.

At that time, the rate at which marriages broke down was insignificant.
Divorce was seen more as a social crime than a legal process for obtaining
the dissolution of marriage.

Law-makers, judges, psychologists, and religious authorities came up with
the idea of finding a system for simplifying the procedure, for rendering
it less traumatic.

In this way, simply juridical systems were created to terminate the
conjugal bond in a friendly and sincere way. In the United States however,
between the years of 1969 and 1980, the divorce rate has tripled. The Code
of Marriage Law has gone from around 20 pages to become a compendium of
more than 2,000 pages full of articles. What is more, every state has
developed further interpretations on the matter. The result has been an
exponential jump in the price of a divorce process. Family courts have
caved in beforethe arrival of new and aggressive procedural tactics.
Powerful lawyers, sensing the change, entered into the business, giving
rise to a new and veritable industry.

The documentary talks about money, lots of money. In the United States
alone it is estimated that every year, divorce cases move around 50 billions of dollars. At a time when about half of the
country’s marriages end in breakup, divorce is the third highest cause for
a household’s failure. Without a doubt it is a large business. In many big
cities, divorce cases number more than other civil cases. To top everything
off, due to the participation of every kind of expert, each of whom charges
a heavy fee, the process for divorce often paradoxically lasts longer than
the marriage which gave rise to it.

Examinations performed by psychologists, mutual investigations of the
spouses’ belongings and behavior, complex consultations, and many other
things can consume enormous resources. Consider for example, the long and
exhaustive documents that will determine which of the spouses is better
suited to take care of children. There are further meetings that cost
thousands of dollars and need to be repeated many times. Obviously, the
professionals who are summoned for these cases require a high percentage as
their compensation. “Great sums of money, which could have been used to
educate one’s children, are burned and wasted this way,” explains the
President of New Jersey’s family court, Thomas Zampino.

The documentary explains how a family court functions. Incredibly, 95% of
couples that present themselves to a court are not in conflict or
disagreement. It is the system itself, based on the victory of one spouse
over the other, which puts them in opposition to fight over their rights,
the care of children, and the maintenance of goods. In the mosaic of
testimonies during the process, people of every economic and social
condition make their appearance. The battle in a family court is like
Armageddon, the biblical end of the world affirms a family judge with
decades of experience in the field. As the documentary explains quite well,
“in criminal courts we see evil people showing their worst side, while in
family courts we observe good natured people on their worst behavior.”

The documentary shows husbands who end up in prison because they could not
pay to maintain their ex-wives who, according to law, must be assured the
same economic conditions they enjoyed before their divorce. Then there is
the paradox of second wives who are forced to work in order to sustain
their husbands’ former wives. There are also draconian orders issued by
judges, deciding what kind of clothes the children should wear, and what
type of vacations they must necessarily enjoy, regardless of the fact that
the divorced parents do not have enough money.

Alongside these absurd decisions, the documentary displays judges,
psychologists, and millionaire lawyers each called to participate in
divorce cases living in their mansions in Malibu and Bel Air. In
comparison, we see people suffocated by their own debts, young husbands who
can no longer smile after losing everything. These are people of every age
that wander, seeking an answer; children taken hostage by one of the two
parties, hoping to obtain more sustenance; private investigators that work
for one of the two spouses with the sole goal of spying on the lifestyle of
the other, in order to gain more indemnities.

On one hand, the documentary is a journey among the luxurious mansions of
Los Angeles and Boston, properties owned by the judges and lawyers. It is a
portrait of the corruption of these people who work for a common objective:
prolonging the time it takes for a case to proceed. In contrast,

the documentary shows the journey of desperation experienced by many
destroyed families, men and women who suffer from a situation that
makes them victims and forces them to throw away their money on these
unbearable proceedings

.

Divorce Corp
‘s strength is in offering solutions. It intends to expose the system in
order to improve it. Ultimately, to seek the common good and common sense,
it would be enough to avoid having the decisions concerning child custody
made by a judge. The majority of cases could be resolved by a common
agreement between the spouses, without needing the intervention of family
courts. To this end, the documentary asks for the start of a collaborative
justice system, based on mediation and mutual agreement. Divorce Corp is more than a simple documentary. It’s director,
Stephen Sorge, promotes a movement towards the reformation of certain
inefficient and unjust institutions that deliver society a remedy that is
often worse than its disease. Sorge is an entrepreneur in the field of
biotechnology, which has become a victim of the American legal system. With
him, we are transformed from mere spectators into people who are directly
involved with changing the status quo.

In essence, Divorce Corp is a hymn to marriage’s lost values. As often happens in
North America’s most popular TV series, it sincerely wants to return to the
lost family, a family that has been subordinated to the interests of an
industry that destroys not only its values, but also its individual
members. Divorce Corp can be understood as an audiovisual tool of
“negative theology.” By demonstrating the negative, and often tragic,
aspects of the state which the American family is currently found in, it
inherently exalts the obviously missing yet positive aspects of marriage.

The documentary is a general call for anyone beginning a divorce process to
be attentive, and a warning sign to other countries who are closely
following the American model. It describes the perversion of a good yet
inhuman system, since it is based on ignorance of what the family is. It is
finally a vision of how personal interests, money, and greed, work
frantically together to destroy the family, the last refuge of peace and
goodness. Because, as the great British writer G. K. Chesterton affirmed,
“Whoever destroys the family, doesn’t know what he is doing, because he
doesn’t know what he is destroying.”

Information about the Documentary:

Divorce Corp

Year: 2014

Genre: Documentary

Director: Joseph Sorge

Production: Joseph Sorge / Philip Sternberg

Candor Entertainment

www.divorcecorp.com