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.