across the street. With a pool and a hot tub in the backyard, this was suburbia at its best.
But before long, Yves and Marie’s marriage went sour. Greg and Jerome were rousted out of bed by doors slamming or Yves yelling at their mother. They would climb to the top of the stairs outside the master bedroom, trying to figure out what the ruckus was about. It scared them and made them cry to hear their parents fight.
Yves filed papers to dissolve the union on September 2, 1981, when Bertrand was two and Greg almost eight.
A month later Yves filed papers asking the court to stop Marie from selling their community property and to award him custody of the boys. Upon returning from Europe, he claimed, he discovered that Marie had sold their 1973 Volkswagen and a “very expensive gun” without his consent. Given his wife’s “emotional state,” he was worried that she’d run off with the boys to their house in Monte Carlo.
“I feel I am qualified to make the statement, as I am a medical doctor,” he wrote. He also asked the court to restrain Marie’s “personal conduct,” so she would not be allowed to “contact, molest, attack, strike, threaten, sexually assault, batter, telephone or otherwise disturb” his peace.
Marie filed her own set of divorce papers on October 1, asking for the same restraint on Yves’s conduct.
Each parent gave a dramatically different version of the events that contributed to the split. But one thing was obvious to any neutral party: Even though Yves moved back into the house for a time, the high drama reflected in four years of divorce filings must have created an emotionally volatile environment for Greg and his brothers, one in which money was always an issue. Each parent went through several attorneys.
In Marie’s initial filing, she asked the court to award her custody of the boys, along with $1,500 in child support and $4,000 in alimony, monthly. She asked that Yves, who wasn’t living at home at the time, be forced to stay at least one hundred yards away from her.
“In the past, respondent has on many occasions beat me with a closed fist, and police reports have been made,” Marie’s signed petition stated. “After he beat me up, respondent sent me to a doctor for treatment, and I had black-and-blue marks all over. I am afraid of him, and he has stated he will break my teeth and mouth and will make me an ugly person.”
Years later Marie would testify that Yves never hit her. Yves also denied hitting her, saying those allegations were “a fabricated maneuver” by her attorney and that Marie may have signed the divorce papers without reading them carefully. California bar association records show that Marie’s attorney, Saul Nadel, had one disciplinary action against him—his law license was temporarily suspended in 1990—but the charges remain confidential. He died in 1998.
Although the boys don’t remember ever seeing Yves hit their mother, they said Marie told them she’d been scared of his behavior and recounted stories of him throwing over chairs and breaking down a locked door she was hiding behind.
The judge granted a mutual restraining order to Marie and Yves, but less than a month later, Marie complained that her husband had already violated it.
“[Yves] is annoying me, and he has removed various wires from my car so that I could not use the car,” her filing read. “I called on my neighbors for help, and they replaced the removed wires so that I could take my son to the doctor.” She said Yves had not paid “sufficient monies” for the family’s living expenses, such as the boys’ tuition and other necessary household bills.
Yves and his attorney responded by asking the court to order Marie to undergo a mental examination. The judge approved the request.
Marie “has been treated for a substantial period of time by certain psychiatrists for mental conditions,” Yves’s attorney wrote, saying Yves told him Marie “suffers from substantial delusions and other mental diseases.” Her emotional state, he wrote, was relevant because it related to her ability to hold a job and care for the boys properly. He said Marie, who had been employed at a local hospital, “terminated said employment due to an alleged mental condition.”
Marie’s attorney responded by filing a petition to subpoena two years of Yves’s personal and business tax records. Yves’s attorney followed up with a proposal for a family living arrangement, complete with photos and a floor plan, giving Yves the master suite upstairs and Marie the smaller downstairs bedroom. The couple wouldn’t eat meals at the same time, and Yves would buy his own food, do his own laundry and cooking, and take out the trash. Marie would pay for a new phone for herself and the boys.
On February 12, 1982, the American Savings and Loan Association filed a legal notice that Yves and Marie had defaulted on their mortgage and that their house could be sold if they didn’t pay up within three months. A few weeks later, Marie’s attorney wrote the judge to complain that Yves had evicted her from the master bedroom and relegated her to the “maid’s room” downstairs. She, too, submitted photos and a floor plan, asking for exclusive use of the house.
The judge ruled that Yves should move into the downstairs bedroom. If Yves violated any part of the order, the judge warned, he’d have to leave the house. Yves was ordered to pay $500 in alimony and $900 for child support each month, and the children would no longer attend private school. Yves was also ordered to pay Marie’s $2,750 in attorneys’ fees. When Yves failed to pay those fees, her attorney had to get a court order to garnishee Yves’s bank account.
On August 29, Yves asked the court to free him from having to pay the mortgage on the family home and to force Marie to consult with him on the boys’ education. He said he couldn’t pay child support or alimony as ordered because his practice was $206,900 in debt and the family home was in foreclosure. He said he’d fallen, breaking one arm and the other wrist, which had prevented him from working for several months.
Meanwhile, Marie and the boys had to move in with a woman she worked with at a nearby hospital. For a time, the four of them had to share one bunk bed.
Marie’s attorney renewed the judgment against Yves on September 28 to try to collect the rest of his fees. The next day Yves tried to modify his alimony and support order and asked for joint custody of the boys, with the right to be consulted on their education and religious training. He also complained that since his bank account was garnisheed, he could no longer access his own safety deposit box, which contained documents he needed to drive and operate his medical practice in Monaco.
In November the judge ruled that a sheriff’s deputy could watch Yves remove his citizenship papers from the box, but no stock certificates, automobile pink slips, insurance policies, or personal property with “tangible value.”
On March 15, 1983, Yves filed papers contending that his income had fallen to zero. Two weeks later, he sought sole custody of the boys, saying Marie was trying to take them back to France to live with her mother without telling him. He claimed Marie either prevented him from visiting the boys or harassed him so much she made visits virtually impossible. She had even yelled threats at him at his office in front of patients and staff, saying she would “do anything she can to ‘hurt’ me.”
A few weeks later, the judge ordered a new child visitation schedule for Yves, telling Marie she needed to give Yves any new phone numbers or addresses. He prohibited both parents from making derogatory remarks about the other in front of the children. Marie couldn’t take them to France until the summer break, he said, and she had to bring them back in time for the fall term.
After that order, the divorce dispute shifted to how community property and assets from Yves’s medical practices should be divided.
In October Yves complained
