Lemons to lemonade

Holy fucking shit

I am in the middle a divorce trial several years in the making and just had the absolute shit knocked out of my case by my own client. I am now scrabbling to undo the damage, assuming that my cient wants me to. More to come

Today will go down in history - both my personal history and that of the Court.

To fully understand what has happened I need to educate you a little bit about divorce law in this state. In a divorce case a person must prove one of 13 fault grounds, the most common is adultery and habitual cruel and inhuman treatment (abuse – mental and physical). You can also get a divorce under irreconcilable differences. This requires BOTH spouses to agree to a divorce. This is NOT a no fault divorce. This state does not have such a thing.

This morning was a long awaited divorce. We filed under adultery and irreconcilable differences in February of 2007. The wife files for habitual cruel and inhuman treatment. It was a two year old marriage. My client was sued shortly after by his wifes ex-husband for what is called "alienation of affection" i.e. destroying his marriage. This was the case I settled last week by paying $1,700.00. I have done my best to settle this divorce to get my client as much visitation as possible – more than the normal court ordered schedule. The wife will not budge.

Today gets off to a good start. The wife is called by me as an adverse witness as my first witness (my favorite tactic) and get her to admit that she has slept with many men during the course of her two year marriage. Slam dunk on adultery, my client will get his divorce and she will have to pay all court costs and maybe my clients attorneys fees. She has to admit he is a good parent when she is caught in some lies. Seems she forgot about all the damn transcripts of prior hearings and all the god forsaken depositions. In fact she gets caught in a ton of lies. She has no proof of habitual cruel and inhuman treatment. I feel great.

Next my client takes the stand and I walk him through his testimony and he does good. She may have to pay a shit load of money as her share of martial debt, I even have the judge thinking my clients legal fees in the other suit is a martial debt. Then it happens. I am not even sure of the exact question I asked but my client states "I do not want a divorce". I am dumbfounded. The judges head snaps up and he looks dead at me. Fuck he heard it too. I attempt to get my client to say he wants a divorce. Nope, not gonna happen. That simple statement acts as forgiveness of his wife’s adultery. Now it gets tricky as to what is going to happen.

I rest my case and the other attorney puts on several witnesses of no real import. He is then about to call his last witness – his own client. I ask the Judge for a sidebar because of what I think is about to happen. I point out that my client cannot be granted a divorce on adultery anymore, the Judge agrees. I point out that unless the other attorney is about to just knock it out to the park he cannot meet his burden under habitual cruel and inhuman treatment. Judge agrees. I ask for a break to discuss settlement. That is when I posted the 1st part of the blog while doing crash legal research on making sure i can do what I am about to suggest.

I am in a panic about what to do to get this divorce or how to settle this.
Now the wife is a bitch and thinks she will win. She will not even consider a settlement. I talk with my client and his family. This is the 1st chance I get after his little bombshell. Seems he was wanting to say that he did not want a divorce because he thinks his child needs both parents and that would be best, but that since the wife will not reconcile he is willing to get a divorce. I can fix that, but do we want to. He will not get the full custody he wants and I cannot force the wife to settle for anything short of him paying everything and every other weekend visits.

I propose to my client that we roll the dice – she cannot prove grounds, the judges dismisses the divorce and we force her to negotiate. That is what we did.

No divorce, The udge orders that they share custody. Mom has primary from August 1 until May 1 at 5pm. My client has from May 1 at 5 until July 31. He has to pay child support during her time and she has to pay on his time. They each get every other weekend and off Wednesday when they do not have primary custody. In 21-22 days my client has his child. I expect mom will be asking to settle around June.

Hell I impress myself sometimes.

unreal (Friday)

As I blogged Wednesday a Judge on a temporary basis awarded baby momma and baby daddy true joint physical and legal custody for a week at a time. My secretary has not even had a chance to transcribe the written Order I dictated yet and there is already trouble.

Seems babby momma want the kid back in the old daycare, the same one that helped her play hide the baby. My client is adamant that the kid stay in the new daycare. So there we are - argueing over nothing.

This is why our state courts doesn’t favor joint physical and legal custody and require the Court to give one parent superior rights.

My day (Thursday)

Well I had my little trial. Baby daddy has to pay $12,535.60 in back support and $2,225.00 in attorneys fees plus his regular $360 a month payment. In order to play off all of that he has to pay on average of $860 per month or $200 a week. If he misses a single payment he goes to jail, does not pass go and I get to charge more money to draft the arrest order. Hooray me. Boo deadbeat.

Then in honor of the mortgage crisis I foreclosed on 5 houses. Boo me. Hooray my wallet.

My week thus far (Wednesday)

By way of explaining things since I get called out for using jargon - A "temporary" anything hearing is a hearing designed to put in place certain rules until a full trial can be had. We are given no more than 15 minutes per side to present evidence. It is a lot of fun - lots of surprises. They are used in divorce and custody cases.

Monday - I started off the week with several temporary custody matters. It was a long day and I even completely settled a divorce but we have to wait the 60 days to finalize. As we leave my client who had insisted on joint physical and legal custody with the child living with him every Thursday-Sunday told me he really did not care about who had custody, or where the kid lived - he just didn't want to pay child support. Great end to the day.

Tuesday - I had depositions set for 1:30 in a case, about 930 the other attorney called and asked where I was. I explained I was noticed for depositions at 130. he said he had two set for the morning. I try to get along in pre-trial stuff so I said I would be there in a minute. I get out there about 6pm last night. Just in time to prep for today's hearing in Water Valley at 9am. The Valley is a 1 1/2 hour drive. I also had to prepare for depositions if an other matter set for 3 today.

Today - Argued the temporary custody case I wrote about on Friday. It is clear the girl is attempting to manipulate things, rather than truly being a suicide threat she is a poor, poor pitiful me, no one loves me so I will eat dirt kinda girl. But her journal is pretty explosive stuff. I have her in tears with less than 6 minutes of questions. Her attorney is did his best and couldn't’t stop it. The outcome shocked both myself and the other attorney. This Judge ordered a true joint physical and legal custody order pending trial. Each parent has this 2 year old from 6 pm Friday until 6 pm the following Friday. This is unheard of from this Judge - he would refuse to sign off on this type of Order if the parties agreed to it, now here he is ORDERING it. He did make it clear that this would not be the final custody arrangement.

The other attorney and I went to lunch and talked about it. We decided it is either a) close to what they were doing prior to Feb.; b) my client made a much worse impression than either of us thought or c) to try and force them to work something out.

I settled the other suit with my client paying whooping $1,700.00. This lawsuit has been going on for 2 years and they had been asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I now get to prep for tomorrows trial

Tomorrow - I have a trial that is 2nd back up, which means the two trials ahead of us have to settle for us to have a trial. If I do not prepare we will go to trial - that is just Murphy's law. If I prepare and am ready it will be reset for few months down the road and I get to prep all over again.