In a great many marriages, one person handles the money. They know the passwords, they know what is in the accounts, and they are the name on most of it. When that marriage ends, the other person is left with a problem that feels like a locked door: you need a lawyer, and the money you would use to hire one is on the other side of it.

That problem has an answer in South Carolina, and it is written into the divorce statute. The Family Court may order one party to pay a reasonable amount to the other for attorney fees, expert fees, investigation fees, costs, and suit money — and it may do so pendente lite, meaning while the case is pending, not only at the end.

That single word is the reason this is not a hopeless position. You do not have to fund an entire divorce out of pocket and hope to be reimbursed in two years.

What the statute actually authorizes

The language matters, so here it is in substance. After considering the financial resources and marital fault of both parties, the court may order one party to pay a reasonable amount to the other for attorney fees, expert fees, investigation fees, costs, and suit money incurred in maintaining an action for divorce, as well as in actions for separate maintenance and support. That includes sums for services rendered and costs incurred both before the case started and after judgment, temporarily and permanently.

Notice two things. The word is may, not must — a fee award is discretionary, and nothing about asking for one makes it happen. And the statute reaches more than lawyer time. Expert fees and investigation fees are named, which matters if your case needs a business valued or an account traced.

Two separate questions

South Carolina courts treat a fee request as two questions, decided one after the other, and understanding the split tells you what your lawyer is building toward.

First: should there be an award at all? Our Supreme Court has said that in determining whether an attorney's fee should be awarded, the court considers the party's ability to pay his or her own attorney's fee, the beneficial results obtained by the attorney, the parties' respective financial conditions, and the effect of the attorney's fee on each party's standard of living.

Read that list as a person rather than a lawyer and you can see what it is driving at. Can you pay your own way? Did your lawyer accomplish something? How do the two of you compare financially? And what does the bill do to how each of you lives? A spouse with no income and no access to accounts is speaking directly to three of those four.

Second: if so, how much? That is a different list. The court considers the nature, extent, and difficulty of the case, the time necessarily devoted to it, the professional standing of counsel, the contingency of compensation, the beneficial results obtained, and customary legal fees for similar services.

Beneficial results appears on both lists, which is not an accident. It is the thread running through the whole doctrine: courts are considerably more receptive to paying for work that accomplished something than to paying for a war (and most divorce cases never reach trial in the first place).

The honest limits

I would rather you hear this from me than discover it in month three.

A temporary fee award is usually a contribution toward your fees, not a blank check for the case. It is a discretionary decision by a judge who is looking at both parties' finances, and the number is frequently smaller than the number you need.

It also takes time. A fee request is heard at a hearing, and the hearing happens after a case is filed and scheduled. Nobody hands you a retainer the week you decide to leave.

And the doctrine cuts both ways. If your case is run badly — if you drive up costs, refuse reasonable settlement, or litigate things that did not need litigating — the same factors that could have produced an award for you can produce one against you. Every experienced family lawyer in this state has watched that happen to somebody.

What people get wrong about "his money"

There is a belief that does real damage here, and it is worth correcting directly. People assume that because an account is in a spouse's name, it is that spouse's property and the other one has no claim on it.

South Carolina law does not work that way. The statute defines marital property as property acquired by the parties during the marriage and owned as of the date of filing, regardless of how legal title is held. The exceptions are narrower than most people expect: chiefly property acquired before the marriage, inheritances, gifts from someone other than your spouse, and whatever a valid written agreement carves out. A gift from your spouse is not an exception — the statute says interspousal gifts are marital property.

Whose name is on the account is not the question. When it was acquired is. That does not mean you can help yourself to an account tomorrow — that is its own set of problems — but it does mean the money one spouse thinks of as theirs is frequently, as a legal matter, not theirs alone. That changes the conversation with a lawyer considerably.

What to do before you have any money

The most useful work in this situation costs nothing and can start today.

1. Gather documents while you still can. The last three years of tax returns and W-2s, recent pay stubs, and the most recent statement for every account you know about. Access to these tends to get harder, not easier.
2. Write down what you know: employers, account institutions, approximate balances, real estate, vehicles, the business if there is one.
3. Do not empty an account to fund a retainer before talking to a lawyer about it. That single move has damaged more cases than almost anything else at this stage.
4. Ask the lawyer you consult how fees work in plain terms — what a retainer covers, how you will be billed, and whether a fee request is realistic in a case like yours.

That last one is a fair question and you should ask it out loud in the first meeting. A lawyer who will not answer it plainly is telling you something.

What this means for you

Not having access to money is a reason to talk to a lawyer sooner, not a reason to wait. Waiting is what the spouse who controls the accounts is counting on, and every month you spend being reasonable about it is a month of decisions being made without you.

You are not asking for charity, and you are not asking a judge for a favor. You are asking for access to marital resources so that a case about marital resources can be fought on something closer to even terms. South Carolina law contemplates exactly that. Whether the court grants it in your case is up to the court — but you cannot be awarded something nobody asked for.

This article is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. An award of attorney's fees is discretionary and depends heavily on the facts of the individual case.