When celebrities divorce, they generate a lot of paperwork, from court documents to tabloid stories, writes Jessica Garrison in Los Angeles
Los Angeles does not have a professional football team but does have celebrity divorce watching. Lately, that's becoming quite a rough sport.
So employees of Los Angeles Civil Court were reminded this week, when Britney Spears filed for divorce from her husband of two years, Kevin Federline, followed a day later by Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillipe.
The same day Federline, or K-Fed as he is known, was asking for custody of the two children he has with Spears.
Federline and the pop princess have been widely reported to have an "iron-clad" prenuptial agreement. Could he be angling for a better negotiating position? But at least Spears appeared to be prepared.
Witherspoon filed for divorce from Phillipe one day after the filing of Spears's papers caused a minor sensation in Los Angeles Superior Court. If she entered into her marriage without a contingency plan seven years ago, she and Flags of Our Fathers star Phillipe might - gasp - have to split their millions 50-50.
But the real victims in all this could be the harassed filing clerks in the Los Angeles civil courthouse. They've been so overwhelmed by reporters from the tabloids that they've appealed to the court's public information office for help in making documents available - out of concern that, otherwise, regular people will have trouble conducting their business.
"There are more and more Internet celebrity sites, so it's a constant demand and a much more constant pressure, which causes reporters to become ever more aggressive," says court spokesman Allan Parachini.
This is apparent, Parachini says, "by how often they [ the reporters] come in here, how desperate they are to get what they need, and, well, the degree of celebrity that is required to attain big-story status is getting lower and lower. The proliferation of media attention creates much more demand for content."
But, by any standards, the Spears-Federline split is big. And the tabloids went crazy. The entertainment news site TMZ posted a steady stream of court papers, and the rest of the media eagerly followed suit. By Thursday, it was hard to find anyone on the street who did not have an opinion on the divorce.
But, behind the froth swirling around many celebrity divorces, lawyers say, there is big money.
"Forget about the celebrity aspect," says Norman Oberstein, who handled one of talk show host Johnny Carson's divorces, among others. "You take anyone that has a business that may be worth hundreds of millions of dollars . . . you're talking about a very sophisticated break-up of a business." That's why so many celebrities - and other rich people - have prenuptial agreements.
"While the people themselves may not be sophisticated, the choices of divorce lawyers would indicate they have top-notch prenups," says Andrew Eichner, a Chicago divorce lawyer.
Spears, for example, is represented by Laura Wasser, who has represented Jessica Simpson and Angelina Jolie. Federline has retained Mark Kaplan, who, in turn, has retained a spokesman.
By coincidence, the high-profile divorces have been assigned to Court Commissioner Scott Gordon, who might find himself the centre of attention at cocktail parties.
Of course, many celebrities hire private judges to oversee their divorces, even those who rarely appear at the courthouse.
One exception: Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. A court employee said they were spotted on a few occasions sitting under the fluorescent lights in the long halls of the courthouse waiting to go before a judge.
Photographs of such a tableau could have been worth thousands. But no one noticed them.