I’ve been working towards the circle of relatives law for greater than 20 years in the Washington, D.C. area, and one of the craziest instances I ever encountered concerned a woman who alleged that her husband — my consumer — turned into emotionally abusive and stalking her online if you want to get a protection order, one that in the long run were given him kicked out of the residence for two weeks. During that point, we filed for divorce whilst she orchestrated a pass out and took extra than seventy five-percentage of what was within the residence, leaving it in a horrible situation. My purchaser agreed to pay aid and stay away from her, after which moved lower back in.
She modified her thoughts about the custody settlement almost right now and requested the courtroom to revise it. In her counter-criticism for divorce, she alleged that my purchaser was having an affair — which became now not genuine, and changed into in no way proven and that he had confined her get entry to cash, even taking finances from her account without her know-how. In discovery, we discovered that she becomes the only one who’d been having an affair for a while and that she had masses of cash from various assets, together with the price range she took from her personal bank account while claiming her husband had withdrawn them. My consumer had to fight to get a shared custody agenda with the kids — first at a temporary hearing, then at a complete three-day custody trial. The children had their personal attorney endorse for shared custody (as recommended per the custody evaluators). Yet, mom refused to go together with this.
Less than six months after the custody trial, she filed for contempt in opposition to her husband, even though she became the one that turned into honestly in contempt. Ultimately, after a complete-day hearing on that, her contempt petition was denied, and they changed into ordered to pay her husband greater than $12,000 in prison prices. Then we had the property trial, where she desired lifetime alimony and more than 1/2 the marital assets, even though she had squandered an extensive component of their finances on useless prison costs and insisted on only operating part-time.
The decision gave her no sympathy and denied any alimony and, in fact, permit her husband to keep greater than half of the property because she agreed with us that the wife had dissipated the marital budget. In rejecting the lawyer’s fees request an extra of $300,000, the judge discovered them to be absolutely unreasonable. Of course, this lady appealed the very last judgments, and in the long run, we reached a settlement to keep away from further litigation.
This is a superb instance of how one man or woman can take noticeably unreasonable positions, make unfounded allegations, and the other character will find the electricity to hold combating for what is fair, and additionally understand whilst to reach an agreement to avoid limitless entanglements. I assume my patron, without a doubt, benefited from having a divorce coach to assist him in coping with the emotional turmoil at some point of the process, and he changed into fortunate to have an awesome assist community of circle of relatives and friends willing to testify and help as wished.
Ultimately, we can in no way be capable of trade someone else’s perspective, which shapes their truth (even though anyone else sees it otherwise). Those who can receive that attention on their management and move on are a long way higher off. Sooner or later, the kids will understand who dragged the combat out and who ended the craziness to reduce their publicity to battle.