The divorce of a prominent Charleston attorney and his wife is rekindling harsh memories stemming from a nearly 20-year-old political battle after the wife chose one of her husband's foes to represent her in the case.

Celeste Howe's attorney is former Circuit Judge and former state Sen. Larry Richter, who in 1988 accused Gedney M. Howe III of stymieing his reappointment to the bench.

Gedney Howe and his Charleston attorney J. Graham Sturgis Jr. declined to comment on Richter's involvement in the case.

Richter says he did not take the case to exact revenge against Howe and that his only interest is in winning Celeste Howe's case. "She has my loyalty," he said.

The roots of the old rift between Richter and Gedney Howe are in dispute. Howe has said that the former friends had a disagreement over a land deal around 1980. He has also said that he did not like the way Richter treated some lawyers in his courtroom. "Once he put that robe on in public, he became absolutely impossible and a different person," Howe said of Richter in 1988.

Richter says the relationship went sour after he declined to support Howe's efforts to adopt a young boy. "I just didn't think it was appropriate. I didn't think a 40-year-old man living in a home with his mother should be adopting a little boy. I didn't think his lifestyle fit the model of what I think an adoptive single parent should be." The adoption did not go through.

After that, Richter says Howe mounted a campaign to block his Senate confirmation for a second term as circuit judge for Charleston and Berkeley counties. The 1988 hearings sparked a firestorm among the state's legal corps, which divided into pro- and anti-Richter camps.

Former Charleston Deputy Solicitor Steve Schmutz, who testified on behalf of Richter's opponent in the judgeship, remembered the hearings was nasty. But he said that the people who testified were only speaking their minds and he disagrees that Howe orchestrated the opposition.

Howe made repeated barbs at Richter during the confirmation hearings, saying Richter belittled lawyers in his courtroom. Howe was also accused of coaching others who testified against Richter, including a law school student who had done work for him at the time. The student, Tara Anderson, testified that Richter and another lawyer had offered her cocaine at a party. The allegation never was proven, and Richter denied the charge.

Richter said in a recent interview that the best measure of Anderson's credibility is that last year she was sentenced to more than five years in federal prison for her role in a drug- trafficking plot.

Richter says he was turned off by the bitterness of the hearings and eventually decided not to seek a second term. He went on to win election to the state Senate in 1992, and later launched a successful law practice, where he has made a name battling video poker and other deep-pocketed industries. Richter ran unsuccessfully for S.C. attorney general in 2002, losing in the Republican primary to Henry McMaster.

Howe, whose family name is synonymous with Charleston's legal community, has had similar success as a litigator. He's earned millions of dollars taking on high-profile clients, including state- owned utility Santee Cooper and one of the state lawmakers indicted in the "Operation Lost Trust" Statehouse vote-selling probe of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

A bronze bust of Gedney Howe's father, a legend in the Charleston legal community, stands in front of the Charleston County Judicial Center. Howe also is well-known in Charleston historic preservation circles for his ownership and decades-long restoration of the Calhoun Mansion on Meeting Street. Howe sold the property in 2004 for $6.5 million. Court records in the divorce case estimate Howe's estate is worth nearly $34 million.

Columbia attorney Jay Bender said he has known Howe and Richter for decades and remembers the drama of the 1988 Senate hearings. "I couldn't imagine that the two would ever become friends again after that."

Bender said no ethics rules prevent Richter from taking a case involving Howe just because the two were once political foes. He said the main issue is that Richter represent his client's best interest and set aside any personal feeling he may have toward her husband.

Richter said he does not specialize in domestic cases so he has teamed with Columbia attorney and family law expert James McLaren.

Sturgis, Gedney Howe's attorney, declined to discuss specifics of the case, but he said both sides are working cooperatively to reach an agreement that's in the best interests of everybody involved.

The case has been through a round of mediation and both sides say they hope to work toward a settlement, which would spell out child custody and visitation issues, financial support and the division of property.

Howe argues in court filings that a 1992 prenuptial agreement signed by the couple spells out how some of these matters are to be handled. But Richter says that agreement is void because Celeste Howe did not receive independent legal advice before she signed the document. He also argues that the agreement is unconscionable because it effectively cuts his client out of the wealth and property acquired during the marriage.

According to court records, the couple met in late 1990 when Gedney Howe helped Celeste Craddock find a lawyer to represent her in a divorce from a previous husband. The Howes married on Nov. 6, 1992. Court filings tell the story of a high society couple moving among Charleston's elite, traveling, entertaining and doting on their three children, now ages, 8, 13 and 16. But the filings also indicate that the outward appearances of domestic tranquility masked growing unhappiness in the couple's marriage. Court filings say that Celeste Howe struggled with a misdiagnosed mental illness and growing resentment about being financially dependent on her husband.

Gedney Howe filed for divorce on July 10, 2006, while Celeste Howe was undergoing substance-abuse treatment out of state, court records say. Gedney Howe said in a written statement that "Celeste is a good and loving mother who is devoted to the children, as I am."

Celeste Howe alleges in court filings that her husband placed the couple's children in unsafe conditions by allowing them to shoot a BB gun and handle farm equipment on the family's Berkeley County farm. She also alleges that the children were at risk because they sometimes were under the supervision of the farm's caretaker, George Washington White, who was arrested by Berkeley County sheriff's deputies in July 2006 in connection with the seizure of about 1,000 fully grown marijuana plants near Jamestown.

While some of the plants were located on the family farm, Celeste Howe says in court filings that she does not have evidence that her husband had any knowledge of the plants.

When mediation would resume remains unclear.

Credit: The Post and Courier

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