Divorce Lawyers and Judges Share the Most Satisfying Courtroom Karma They’ve Seen

A post shared to r/AskReddit in July 2026 asks divorce lawyers for the most satisfying example of a spouse getting karma in court. The post drew about 12,000 upvotes and about 2,800 comments at the time of publication.

The poster asks about spouses who made the divorce process a nightmare for everyone involved.

One reply came from someone who heard a custody story from a judge. "Not a lawyer, but a judge I met in law school had a pretty funny divorce story to share," they wrote.

The commenter said both parents of two young children wanted the other to take full custody. Each believed that doing so would help them avoid paying alimony. The judge then told the couple, "'Well, since neither of you want your kids, I'll take the boy.'"

A court clerk who knew the judge announced that she would take the girl. The offer made the parents realize "they did not actually want to lose their children." After a half-hour recess, they had a full custody agreement. "The judge was pretty proud about his little ruse but poor kids," the commenter wrote.

One commenter described questions about a witness's knowledge of her stepson's friends. "My husbands [sic] ex was asked about the names of her son’s friends. She couldn’t name a single kid." The commenter, who is the stepmother, said she was called to the stand. She was asked the same question and "rattled off several names for each kid."

The ex's lawyer kept standing to object, and the judge answered, "I don’t care!" "It was glorious," the commenter wrote.

A reply from a lawyer addressed what clients want from court. "I'm a lawyer and with so many cases one party feels like a victim and wants to get closure," a commenter wrote. "And I try to help everyone get past that because there's no closure."

The commenter said "dragging it out for revenge just costs money." The funniest outcome is when one spouse refuses a deal and takes the case to court "and finds out how good the deal was." A friend from law school asked her ex only to help with diapers and supplies. He got angry that she asked so often, "so he took her to court and had to pay A LOT."

One commenter described a sister's custody case after years of abuse. "My sister married a total [...] He had a big temper and hated being told no," they wrote. The commenter said the sister filed for divorce after more than a decade of abuse. She had been a stay-at-home mother, and her husband earned a good living in tech sales.

The judge opened by saying the state defaults to 50/50 custody unless a parent is unfit, the commenter said. The husband tried "a hundred different ways to prove my sister wasn't a good parent," according to the commenter. The commenter said he lied about her drinking and her care of the children. Her lawyer had documentation to answer every claim.

The judge then asked, "What are your children's shoe sizes? Who is their pediatrician? What are their favorite subjects in school?" The husband stumbled, and the mother answered that their daughter's favorite subject was photography.

The husband became furious and used an expletive toward her in the courtroom. The judge awarded the sister "80% custody and a hefty child support and alimony." He later filed to reduce payments by claiming he was unemployed. His own mother then gave the court documentation that he was "making more than a quarter million dollars / yr." The sister has since finished her DNP, and the children are doing well.

The Daily Dot was unable to independently verify the events described in this thread. The details above reflect the commenters' accounts as shared on r/AskReddit. The commenters' identities, usernames and the courts involved have not been confirmed.