To ensure that both parties can fight a fair fight (USA practises the adversarial system, see The Broken System), the moneyed spouse, typically the one with far superior earnings and assets, is required to pay for the other’s attorney fees.

This is based upon the theory that the richer will buy the most expensive counsel, spend the most money. That’s a fair assumption with very rich people, and its laudable to level the field of war, if war it must be.

With middle income families, and an “OK moneyed spouse”  however, that’s rarely true. The amounts at stake are so large people are loathe to spend all their hard earned money. Therefore,  the system tilts the other way. The moneyed spouse spends as little as one can. The non moneyed spouse has little reason not to spend, and the attorney may not dissuade. In theory the court should insist on justified expenses, but oversight is very difficult, and expenses hard to challenge unless the Judge is about to cite the attorney as unethical.

If a large income or asset that result in a substantial shift in respective assets. then the non moneyed spouse may find that the costs will be deducted from the award. Not having thought about the cost decisions, such surprise will lead to some askance of ones attorney, but its all too late by then.

It has been often said that in such situations a decision can take much longer to reach in Court, precisely because of the nonsensical bias the system has constructed, and the lack of proper advice the non moneyed spouse receives.