The Divorce From Hell

Leonora LaPeter Anton: CLEARWATER — Terry Power's face tightened as he listened to his wife's attorney tick off their assets on the final day of his divorce trial. He sat in a leather chair at a glass-covered table inside a paneled judicial chamber and he thought not for the first time that her voice annoyed him.

He let his gaze drift briefly to the right beyond the judge, to the view of spindly palm trees swaying slightly in front of the glistening Intracoastal Waterway. How stunning it was out there. How stifling in here.

The Jet Ski . . . his wife's attorney said.

"Sold to pay attorney fees," Terry interjected.

The IRA account?

"Distributed to pay property taxes on the marital property."

The Raymond James investment account?

"Gone."

Terry's wife, Murielle, petite with blond highlights, stared at him as if he were an insect, then looked down at her hands. After five years in divorce court, they were like old prizefighters in their respective corners.

In February 2008, when Murielle Marie Helene Fournier vs. Terrance Paul Power was but a single document inside a purple file at the Pinellas County Courthouse, when Terry had his own business and made $250,000 a year, he thought of divorce court as a place where grievances were smoothed over and order restored. Now as he represented himself in his own divorce trial because he couldn't afford an attorney, his case having grown to 28 volumes and costing about $400,000 (much of it still unpaid), he viewed the system of marital justice as a journey down the rabbit hole.