Do you break families?
I? No! I fix problems for some families.
And how is Piqué’s performance?
I have represented Gerard in his negotiation with Shakira.
What’s up?
Both have shown great intelligence.
Yeah?
They have made a great effort for the benefit of their children, so that they were not the protagonists.
Songs apart.
Songs aside, it has required a seven-month negotiation.
A lot of money on the table?
Money has not been the conflict here.
But so many months…
The agreement was complex and required preparatory meetings. And the decisive meeting before the signing lasted thirteen hours.
What is the objective of negotiating so much?
Better a bad agreement than a good sentence.
Why’s that?
I repeat it to my clients: once you have signed your divorce agreement, I advise you to put it in a drawer… and talk!
Definitely.
I admired a judge who, when ratifying a divorce agreement by mutual agreement, said: “I congratulate you, your children deserve it.”
And be friends with your ex-partner?
No, no, that’s utopian.
Do we get divorced a lot?
The first ten years, little; then she shoots herself. Sometimes there is a second child to avoid it, and that only accelerates the divorce.
I know cases.
And the crisis of 50 is also very real…
It’s true. What is his advice?
The couple is communitas vita et amore: without that… A bad decision is better than an eternal doubt. Family lawyers collect your tensions… and they also affect us.
And how do you manage that?
I travel to Val d’Aran or to the Himalayas and the East to Buddhist monasteries: there I disconnect and return renewed.
Why are you a family lawyer?
Maybe because as a child my father and mother, together, took me to school and then picked me up, and so did my brothers.
How many years have you been practicing?
Half a century, in June! There was no divorce law in Spain when I started. With the best: Paco Vega Sala, recently deceased.
I interviewed him, a nonagenarian: he told me that a client shot the couple in front of him.
And her lawyer too! He killed them both, in Paco’s office. She then pointed it at Paco, pulled the trigger and the gun misfired.
Terrible…
That guy wanted me as his lawyer first and I couldn’t catch him… I got away with it!
In what period of the year are the most divorce lawsuits filed?
Summer vacation over.
What general advice would you give here?
Let everyone sign marriage chapters before getting married.
What’s that?
Some clauses of a break-up agreement.
How unromantic.
Better to foresee, for example: that if there is a breakup, no one will claim a pension from the other.
What if one of the two parents has custody of the children?
Regarding minors, it is prohibited to provide anything in these clauses. Only if there is a breakup.
Whose children are they, the State?
From their parents, but the prosecutor defends their interests as minors: it will be up to them to approve or not what was agreed upon by their parents.
Are we treating our children well?
I repeat it to my clients: give your children peace of mind, so that they feel that your separation is not their concern.
Is shared custody the norm today?
It is fine if it is agreed upon by the parties. If not, the judge analyzes and decides.
Do you see it as reasonable for the children to stay in the apartment and the parents to rotate?
It’s called a nest house: it always fails!
Because?
A parent comes and reproaches the other that the refrigerator is empty, or that there is a lack of detergent or there are unwashed clothes, or whose clothing is that lying there?, or why do I see that strange photo on the dresser… ?
You are also handling the divorce from Arantxa Sánchez Vicario.
Yes, and for today we depend on what a Miami judge rules.
Do you forget your divorced client once there has already been a court ruling?
There may always be some possibility of modifying the sentence. On the other hand, today I am already divorcing clients who are children of couples that I myself divorced years ago.
Say goodbye with a constructive idea.
The best of our lives is what we still have to live.
