Divorce, Texas Style - Business column - The Dallas Morning News
By Cheryl Hall
Business Columnist
The first thing Ike Vanden Eykel does early each morning at his home office in Plano is check out the Dow Jones industrial average, followed by the value of the dollar against the euro. Mr. Vanden Eykel isn't an investment banker, stockbroker or private equities guy. He's a divorce attorney to the super rich, and his high-dollar practice depends on knowing the latest economic fluctuations.
When it comes to divorce Texas style, Ike Vanden Eykel is the reigning king.
Most of the cases he handles these days involve households with assets "north of a billion dollars," says the 58-year-old managing partner of Koons, Fuller, Vanden Eykel & Robertson PC.
The majority of the firm's 800 cases this year will involve people with multimillion-dollar estates.
Such divorces are really intricate business deals with complex property settlements, Mr. Vanden Eykel said over breakfast recently.
"We're taking cases where, in the first interview, we have to exhibit a proficiency in tax, corporate, securities, oil and gas, retirement, probate, guardianship and all sorts of other types of law," he says.
"You can't just go in and say, 'Who's going to pay for the Suburban?' The new Suburban we're dealing with is used by the nanny."
Koons Fuller is the largest family law practice in the Southwest and doesn't disclose revenue. Mr. Vanden Eykel will only say that this year's revenue is expected to be "in excess" of $10 million, no doubt a conservative estimate.
This father of three whose second marriage has lasted 28 years fell into family law by accident.
After earning his law degree from Baylor University in 1973, Mr. Vanden Eykel joined a Dallas law firm that took a few family law cases.
When the firm landed a huge divorce case in 1976, "They said, 'Ike, you're the guy,' " Mr. Vanden Eykel recalls.
"I ended up trying that case before a jury and won against a tough veteran attorney. "He came into prominence in the 1980s as a champion of fathers' rights.
In 1990, Mr. Vanden Eykel joined Bill Koons, then the leading matrimonial lawyer in the state, with the offbeat idea of building a divorce practice—which wasn't considered a legitimate specialty back then.
It is now.
"Divorce is like dealing with radioactive material," says Mr. Vanden Eykel. "You can't dabble in it."
Where the money is
Mr. Vanden Eykel charges $700 an hour -- more than any other divorce attorney in Texas.
Other family lawyers nudge him to hike "the Ike rate" so they can raise theirs, too. Apparently, nobody has the guts to charge more than he does.
Had he been on the meter, I would have been eating a $1,400 meal.
Mr. Vanden Eykel goes where the money is. He has offices in the Galleria in Far North Dallas and on the cusp of Highland Park.
His realm is about to get a little larger.
By the end of the year, Mr. Vanden Eykel will open an office in Southlake with three family law attorneys.
"Southlake is a natural springboard for Tarrant and Denton counties," he says. "It's perfect." Mr. Vanden Eykel plans to spend half his time there.
This will bring the firm to 20 attorneys, making it the fourth-largest family law firm in the country. The three ahead of it—one in Los Angeles and two in Chicago—have about 25 each.
Business is booming because many baby boomers are rich and get divorced with more frequency than previous generations, Mr. Vanden Eykel says.
"This is a whole new world from post-World War II," he says. "People back then typically had a home and a little bit of retirement, and that was it.
"Nowadays we have an entire segment of society with total financial independence. We're into a second, even third generation where a two-income family is not unique."
Rebecca Tillery, a newly minted attorney from Southern Methodist University, turned down a better-paying job with a larger firm in Austin to join Mr. Vanden Eykel. Her friends thought she was nuts.
The 26-year-old has a bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Texas in Austin, studied international finance for six months in Vienna and worked as a financial analyst, thinking she'd get into business law.
Ms. Tillery figures she has.
"I was analyzing financial statements at Koons Fuller from Day One," says Ms. Tillery, who clerked at the firm for two summers. "Our clients are CEOs and CFOs of Fortune 500 companies. My background helps me evaluate the property that they have."
Her e-mail address is rtillery—which Mr. Vanden Eykel loves to point out is pronounced artillery.
"It works with Ike's mentality of family law," she says. "You really try to settle in a friendly manner. But if you can't, you bring out the big guns and artillery."
She's thinking about getting license plates to that effect. After all, she's working for a guy whose Mercedes SL55 plates say "SIR IKE."
Mr. Vanden Eykel's high-profile clients are strictly no-profile cases.
"One agent told me when he hired me to represent one of the best-known sports figures in this town: 'I'm hiring you because you don't hold press conferences.'
"The strangest case I ever dealt with involved a Mafia family," he says. "If I told you any more, I would have to kill you."
Unwanted attention
But two cases grabbed headlines anyway.
Twenty years ago, he represented Linda Edelman in a divorce and custody battle that was so bizarre that it led to a 1993 TV movie, Dead Before Dawn.
Mr. Vanden Eykel helped set up an FBI sting that nailed her estranged husband, Dallas developer Robert Edelman, for trying to hire a hit man so that she wouldn't get custody of their two children.
And in 1989, Mr. Vanden Eykel landed $61 million in property for Josephine Cauble in her nasty divorce from Rex Cauble, a former millionaire rancher and convicted drug dealer.
Dave Patterson, a certified financial planner, was willing to go public about Mr. Vanden Eykel's handling of his 1997 divorce case.
At the time, Mr. Patterson owned a manufacturing wholesale distribution company.
"The opposing side [i.e., his ex] went after ownership of the company. Frankly, it got ugly," Mr. Patterson says.
"We went through mediation, and they finally threw in the towel. Ike saved me significantly large sums of money."
A need to know
But as well known as Mr. Vanden Eykel is in the legal profession, most people don't know about him until they need him.
"I have a very high-net-worth clientele, and whenever they need family law help, I recommend him immediately without blinking," Mr. Patterson says.
Just how much Koons Fuller makes on its billion-dollar divorce cases depends on the level of acrimony, Mr. Vanden Eykel says. "But typically a case of that magnitude is going to be in the millions."
The teams he assembles are sometimes huge, with psychologists, forensic accountants, research associates, tax lawyers, trust lawyers and outside experts.
Mr. Vanden Eykel is a big believer in alternative dispute resolution, warning clients that they don't want to take their cases to court.
For those who insist on taking their chances with a jury, he suggests that they rent the movie Braveheart and pay particular attention to the last five minutes of carnage.
And he's amused by the kinds of issues that derail negotiations.
"They will spend millions fighting over hundreds and draw the line over the littlest things," he says.
One example: "A hubby spent a $1,000 on a bottle of cognac and then complained vehemently that the wife was spending far too much on piano lessons for the children."
Another: "A hubby flew aboard a private jet for a weekend getaway with 'his assistant' from work and then immediately lodged a complaint that the expenses for the family car were 'out of control' and needed to be looked at very carefully."
And one of his favorites: "One of my clients was really, really unhappy with something his wife did. I witnessed him get on the phone and issue a consequence that meant more to her than anything. He said, 'Delores, from now on you're just gonna have to fly commercial.'
"He hung up and said, 'Well, that ruins her life.' "
Apparently it would have. She changed her tune immediately.
"It is a different world," Mr. Vanden Eykel says.
