Today I’d like to share a client’s story. She will remain anonymous, but the story is important all the same.
In this particular situation, the client’s husband was being particularly difficult to work with. He was refusing financial support and child support and refused to disclose accurate financial information since he was self-employed.
Stories like these are important because they highlight why you need a lawyer that will fight for you and help make sure that you get what you deserve!
Show Transcript
You know, today I’d like to share with you a story. It’s a client story. My client shall remain nameless and anonymous. But the story is really, really interesting anyway.
So this is a story about alimony and a spouse, in this particular case, a husband, that was being really prickly, if you will, or very difficult. So my client was a wife and mother. And she was having incredible difficulty through the divorce process with her husband.
Her husband refused to provide her with the financial support that she needed. The children were residing with her most of the time, he refused to provide her with any financial support for the kids. The kids were older, teenagers, so they ate a lot. It costs quite a bit to support those children. There was even a family pet, a dog, involved, and it was my client’s dog before the marriage, and the husband refused to let my client see the dog or spend any time with the dog. And to pile on top of that, her husband was self-employed and refused to disclose accurate financial information.
And so, while we tried, we were unable to negotiate a settlement in this case. And we really had to go with the last resort, which was a trial in a courtroom in front of a judge.
And so we had the trial. And I remember the judge, in this case, addressing the husband directly and saying, sir, if this is the best kind of parent you can be, you are clearly not the better parent in this case.
I was so happy and glad that the judge, in this case, felt confident enough and secure enough to deliver that kind of message to this husband that was just making things more difficult than they needed to be. So to fast forward, my client got alimony for the entire duration that they were married, and she got the child support that she was entitled to. She got the majority of time sharing with all of the children. When the children were going to be spending time at her residence, the husband was supposed to bring the dog, and the dog was going to spend time with my client at her house.
And because the husband was not transparent with his financial information, the judge imputed him or tagged him with the level of income that I argued was reasonable to assign to him or to assess to him. And so, at the end of the day, my client got a great result.
I’d like to say we won that trial, or my client won that trial. And I can remember the feeling after that trial and getting the judge’s decision. And I was so elated and happy for my client that all of the work, the hard work, the preparation, the dedication to detail, letting my competitive spirit come out and doing everything and then going one step beyond when I felt like I had done everything to make sure that my client had the best possible chance of getting an outstanding result. I just felt so self-fulfilled.
And I remember feeling like I changed the world in a positive way on that day with my efforts. That’s one of the reasons I practice law. It’s one of the reasons I’m a divorce attorney is to make a positive impact in the world, one family at a time. Helping people to resolve divorces as best as possible and as amicably as possible, and when that can’t happen, taking their family into the courtroom and arguing before the judge to get a great result for my client.
