After 40 years of marriage, Jane enjoyed the life she had built with her husband, Tom. She had two grown children who were healthy and happy. She had four grandchildren that she saw regularly. And although she wished her marriage to Tom could be more passionate, it was peaceful and loving.

Then she found out that Tom had been maintaining another apartment near their home—for a girlfriend.

Rocked, betrayed, and furious, Jane confided in her best friend, who told her to lawyer up and throw Tom out of their home. She knew just who Jane should retain as her divorce attorney, Victoria Claire Fitz, whose name seemed to pop up in every high-profile divorce. “The S.O.B. deserves to meet up with someone like her,” the friend said. “He won’t know what hit him.”

Jane liked the sound of that. Tom would never expect her to come after him with the big guns—just like she never dreamed he’d be supporting a mistress. She made an appointment with Victoria Fitz.

Tom came home from his girlfriend’s apartment when he was served with divorce papers. He couldn’t believe Jane would act so rashly without talking to him first. All because of the girlfriend he had had for years? Jane should have known he was seeing someone on the side. If their marriage was not technically sexless, it sure felt that way. But hadn’t he always been there for her, for the children, for his family?

He googled Victoria Claire Fitz and saw that she was billed as the top divorce attorney for the super-rich. What was Jane thinking? They weren’t super-rich. Yes, they were financially comfortable. But not economically comfortable enough to spend years of their lives litigating in court.

The attorney who had done Tom’s will for the family referred him to a divorce attorney who reviewed the papers Tom had received and told him that his wife had filed an emergency application in court requesting that he be kept out of the marital home. A court conference in two weeks would decide what happened next. The lawyer said he thought that Jane’s application for exclusive occupancy was weak, but it was important for Tom to fight it since he would be behind the eight ball for the rest of the divorce if they were able to remove him from home.

Hearing this, Tom called Jane, whose phone went right to voice mail. He texted her. She replied that she was going away for the next two weeks to their daughter’s place in San Diego, and she did not want to speak to him.

At the court conference, the court heard oral arguments from the lawyers about whether Tom should be allowed to stay in the house, and then it denied Jane’s application. The court also suggested that since Tom and Jane had been together for decades, they try to work this out so they wouldn’t spend the next several years and a big chunk of their retirement accounts on lawyers.

Jane was demoralized. She didn’t want to have to see Tom every day, and she didn’t want to move out of her home of 40 years or live with her daughter for an extended period of time. She felt stuck.

A week or so after the court date, Jane got the first invoice from her counsel. She was stunned to see how much it cost. The retainer was mostly depleted and she was no farther along in her divorce. She could’ve taken her grandkids to Europe for what she’d already spent. All she wanted was to be divorced from Tom and live her life in peace. Was that asking for too much?

She called up her attorney and asked how long the divorce was going to take. When Victoria told her years, her heart pounded and she felt victimized all over again. “I’m going to have to think about this,” she told her lawyer.

The judge’s words about trying to settle matters outside of court rang in her ears. It took her a few weeks of venting to calm down, but with her daughter’s help, she started looking into mediation. For as angry as she was at Tom, she realized that the last thing she wanted was to go broke getting caught in a cat and mouse game where the only winners seemed to be the lawyers.

Jane ordinarily wouldn’t have thought of choosing a $1,000 per hour attorney, but it’s hard to make intelligent long-term decisions after a trauma like discovering that your spouse has a secret life. In the heat of the moment, especially when betrayal is in the picture, most people are inclined to fight fire with fire and go for shock-and-awe tactics aimed at punishing the other person as much as getting what they need to have the best post-divorce life. Divorce budgets balloon as proceedings stretch out, consuming vast amounts of time, energy, and money. And as Jane saw from the beginning, high-priced drama doesn’t guarantee results.

She was lucky to realize that early.

The take-away for you? Before firing off “missiles” and calling in an expensive, big-dog firm to sic on the other person, try diplomacy if you can. Try mediation. Try negotiation. Use only as much force as necessary to achieve your divorce goals. If you are looking for revenge, expert for-hire lawyers, like the "Victoria Claire Fitz's" of the world, will be happy to serve you as long as you can bankroll their overhead. But you’ll probably be better off with a lawyer whose goal is not to stun the other side into submission with expensive power plays, but simply to help you win the war—which is to move you on to a better place in your life.