June 28, 2026

Twice-Divorced Divorce Lawyer

Here is another article from The Wall Street Journal series “The Cost of Divorce”. It initially appeared in the April 23, 2026 edition of The Wall Street Journal and was written by Rachel Wolfe.

As a reminder, this article, like all in the WSJ series, does not constitute legal advice and to the extent it reports about the law, may not accurately the law or even the legal procedure in Connecticut.

What a Twice-Divorced Divorce Attorney Has Learned About Ending a Marriage

Dana Eberle got married and divorced. Then she married and divorced again. It has sharpened her perspective about what her clients need.

When Dana Eberle sat down to draft the paperwork for her most recent divorce, she didn’t have to worry about opposing counsel. 

A family law attorney, Eberle represented herself in the split and filed the court documents for herself and her husband, who was unrepresented. Her goal wasn’t to win, but to help ensure her disabled ex received a settlement that wouldn’t jeopardize his benefits. 

“The last thing I wanted was for him to feel like he needed to get a lawyer to protect himself from me,” Eberle, 56, says. 

That isn’t advice she would normally give a client. But as a divorce lawyer who has been divorced twice, her own experiences give her an uncommon edge. 

Eberle has turned her own marital history into one of her primary credentials. “Having gone through two divorces herself,” her law firm’s webpage bio reads, “Dana feels she brings a special nuance to her family law cases.”

Eberle’s firm, CLLB Law, is based in New Albany, the seat of the Indiana riverfront county where she has lived almost her entire life. With a dimpled smile and a halo of salt-and-pepper curls, she looks like the type of person you want to talk to when your life is a mess.

To clients who apologize for crying or for asking questions that veer into their personal lives, Eberle tells them, “This is an emotional process and I’m here to get you through it.” Her office is never without a box of Kleenex. 

It’s a perspective she wished she had 18 years ago, before she had a law degree, during a divorce and custody battle with her first husband over their then four- and 10-year-old sons.

Eberle hired the same law firm her parents used for their wills. Instead of feeling like her concerns were being heard, “I got lectured about why I shouldn’t pick that fight or I should just let that go.” 

Nearly two decades later, Eberle says she and her ex still don’t speak, even when attending events for their children. He didn’t respond to a request to speak for this article.

That chilly outcome is what Eberle now works to prevent for her clients. She traces much of the friction back to the early years after her divorce, when she and her ex couldn’t even communicate about the kids’ needs and the court-mandated custody schedule was so convoluted that her oldest son asked for a dry-erase calendar to hang in his room. When Eberle asked what a preteen needed a calendar for, he told her, “I want to keep track of when I’m here and when I’m at Dad’s.”

“I was like, ‘OK, that’s not cool,’ ” Eberle says.

She and her ex eventually switched to a one-week on, one-week off model. Eberle now uses the memory as a cautionary tale for clients who insist on complicated schedules because they can’t imagine going days without seeing their children.

“I’m like, ‘I get it, I didn’t want to either, let me tell you my story,’” Eberle says. She tells them that, at first, the thought of not seeing her kids every day was “just devastating.” But after a few years, she started happily scheduling all her fun social plans for when she knew the kids were going to be with their dad.

“I tell them from two different perspectives—one from my own personal experience and two because I do this every day—that you’re not hurting anyone but the kids by fighting for the thing that’s best for you,” Eberle says. 

During that first divorce, she moved back in with her parents to save money. She and her sons shared her childhood bedroom, sleeping in three twin beds lined up side-by-side. 

She had entered college with dreams of becoming a lawyer, but had set aside that vision to marry her high-school sweetheart and raise children. She worked at a scrapbooking store in the mall to supplement her husband’s income. After her divorce, she went to Indiana University Southeast to sit for an aptitude test. The advisor dropped the results onto the desk and looked at her. “You’re going to law school,” he said.

“I told him I’d be 43 by the time I graduated,” she recalled. A friend gave her the nudge she needed: “You’re going to be 43 either way. Do you want to be 43 with a law degree or without one?”

Her first client was a woman seeking a divorce. Her second was a college friend’s husband facing a custody dispute over children from a previous relationship.  

“I was like, ‘I’m going to do whatever people bring me because I need the money,’” Eberle says. 

By month two, her client roster was nearing two dozen.

“It didn’t take me very long to figure out that I was good at this,” she said. Just as she was starting law school, Eberle married again.

When that marriage ended in 2023, the process bore no resemblance to her first split. This time, there were no children involved, and they parted as friends.

That ex, 66-year-old Perry Peay says not getting his own attorney was an easy choice, since he thinks Eberle is the best family law attorney in the area. “I recommend her to anybody because she is damn good at what she does,” said Peay. 

They now send each other their Wordle scores every morning. If one of them doesn’t share their result by lunchtime, the other calls to make sure they’re OK.

It is the “nice and smooth” model she now holds up as a goal for her clients.

That’s not always possible. She points to a father of twins she has represented for a decade. Early in the case, the court had cut him off from his daughters based on false allegations of abuse. 

“He was sitting in my office sobbing his eyes out,” she says. She prepared for battle. Eberle eventually won her client 50/50 parenting time, and later, primary custody. When the case finally settled in mediation, the father asked if he could give her a hug. 

“Sometimes, if I get really, really worked up on behalf of a client, I have to remind myself it’s not your life, it’s not your divorce, it’s not your kids,” she said. “But if you don’t care, you shouldn’t be doing this job.” 

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