Domains and Divorce: Until Registrars do us part

Forget about wedding oaths: they exist in order to be broken. People are not computers that obey to strict code commands, without ever changing their behavior, opinions and preferences. People get married and quite often, they get divorced.

A lot of married people are domain owners, or a lot of domain owners are married people. Or something along these lines; sometimes one spouse is pursuing domaining as a hobby or business, sometimes both spouses do – as a couple. More often, one spouse is unaware of the other spouse’s entrepreneurial quests into the exciting domain universe and only discovers this per the request of Smith, Jones & Abernathy, Esq. – or whatever law firm handles their divorce proceedings.

I speak from experience. It’s fair to say, that while my first domain name was verbalized by me, it was my then lovely wife who tagged the “.com” to it and prompted me to register it. Eleven years later, I’ve been divorced for some time and the domain is orphaned in the hands of the Registrar. Ah, the memories. Not!

I was one of the lucky ones. When I started registering domains with the aim of reselling them, my obvious choice was to go with the cheapest and newest kids on the block: GoDaddy.com – at $12 a pop – a steep discount from Network Solutions’ $35 per registration.

Back then, GoDaddy’s homepage did not feature Danica Patrick and did not have Superbowl clips full of double entendre about her “beaver“. For if it had any such frolicking content, I would be in deep trouble – simply because my less-than-domain-savvy wife of that time, perceived all the credit card charges from “GoDaddy” as subscriptions to pornography. Ironic, isn’t it? Eight years later, Bob Parsons strives to bring domains to every American home by pimping all-American softcore beauties, but it was my former wife who discovered GoDaddy’s untapped pornography potential in 2000. Kudos to you, hon!

Going through a divorce is devastating, especially if it’s one-sided. When one is committed to the marriage and yet, somehow, the other decides to go their merry way. Under the pressure of these days, one can make desperate decisions that would not have made otherwise. Emotionally and financially, every divorce is a test for the person who – in disbelief – remembers the words they uttered at the wedding ceremony: Until death do us part.

A great guy I’ve known for the past 6 years, is going through an apparently bitter divorce, that has been sucking his physical and mental energy faster than an iPhone drains its batteries. He’s been paying ungodly amounts of cash as preliminary financial support. And deep down inside, I am certain he loves his wife – this is the hardest part of it all.

I exchanged a few words with him yesterday and our conversation sparked this very post, because I do not wish anyone to make the same hasty, desperate moves that I did when I was in the same situation. And trust me, they were plenty of them! At that point in time when one becomes desolate and uncertain about their upcoming financial obligations, when legal fees rise their ugly head in the not-too-distant horizon – that’s when one thinks that the best action would be to liquidate the most valuable assets first.

In all actuality, it’s a grave mistake to do this.

So I sold LLL .com’s for less than $1k, several actually, flipping them for a couple of hundred bucks in profit. And I watched my LL .net’s go for $1.5k – they sell for at least ten times that, today. And I sold dozens of 3-Char .com’s at a buck or two above reg fee; I could buy a new car today just by selling them at today’s $200 minimum. Eventually, after the divorce process was over, I had sold my very own domain to recover some of the divorce fees. I needed a new identity as well, to emotionally distance myself from my former spouse who had tagged the “.com” to the words of my choice.

Still, I consider myself lucky.

Ever since my divorce four years ago, I was able to focus onto my targets and goals, without fear of interference and without dreading any lack of support. I was lucky, because my ex never considered my domains to be worth anything and laughed at my practice of going through expiration lists of thousands of domains, one by one. Those “worthless” domains paid off my home and car loans and allowed me to pull myself out of a sticky financial and emotional situation. I was lucky, because I was able to prove myself – to succeed alone and unsupported – much like a gladiator relies on his own two feet and his own sword.

Life is hard when two people divorce; life can be considerably harder when one makes hasty decisions, selling off assets in panic in order to secure their position during a divorce. Us, domain owners, should be cool-headed and manage our assets, always planning for a better future – while always preparing for the worst.