One of my friends was in quite a short marriage, they lived in his house which she had bought the kitchen for (at the time his ex wife was still on the deeds as he said he had no money to buy her out!!!), they rented out her house but just 'spent' the rent on their lifestyle, two new cards both on finance. When they met he was really skint and out of work, so SHE took out a loan in her name to give HIM the money as he could not get a loan. When he finally bought the previous ex wife out he remortgaged to do it and then they consolidated their car loans, the loan she took out for him, and credit cards and added them on to the mortgage. .
A year later he was having an affair and wanted her to move out of his house (He'd had it for about 15 years before they met, they had no kids and she earned more than him, so not an unreasonable request). He offered her £15k to take into account the parts of the loans etc that were for him.
She got a solicitor that someone had recommended as a 'rotweiler' in Blackburn. All she ended up with was a huge solicitors bill. She was so focussed on getting 'half' of everything that she could not even see that there was NOTHING of value to get half of. About £10k equity in the house once the remortgage, cars, loan and credit cards had been taken off. So she got £5k and had to pay her legal fees from that.
To this day I cannot understand the ethics of a solicitor who would take on a case and run up fees, when they could have got a calculator out at the start and said 'well I can fight this for you but you'll probably end up with a lot less than the £15k he has offered, so I advise you to take that'.