Past Cases

Anatomy of a Contested Case

My client was the mother of four, living in her Arlington Heights, IL home with her husband of 16 years. The husband was in the construction business and was verbally abusive to my client and the children and was a classic bully constantly berating the children and making idle threats towards my client and the children. 

My client had made and cancelled two previous appointments. She always had second thoughts when she thought of her four children growing up without a father. 

However, the last straw for my client occurred on a cold night in mid-November. She was attempting to go out to the grocery store in Arlington Heights so that the children could have milk for their breakfast. The husband, who suspected the wife of having a boyfriend, grabbed the keys out of her hand and told her that she could not leave the house. My client then took a bicycle up to the nearest grocery store in Arlington Heights and returned to her home frozen but with a new resolve to end this abusive relationship once and for all. She retained our office as her attorney the next day.

We initiated this case with Emergency Order of Protection against the husband filed in the Third Municipal Courthouse in Rolling Meadows.My client needed to have him removed from the marital home in Arlington Heights. Our office was able to prepare a compelling argument for Removal from the Arlington Heights home in the Petition for the Order of Protection based upon a number of incidents that had occurred in the prior six months with the bicycle incident as the final incident. The judge granted the Order of Protection. The husband refused to leave the home until he was served. The Special Sheriff’s Deputy contacted the Arlington Heights Police Department for assistance and the husband was removed without incident.

This was a case where every issue was contested from the personal property in the house to the actual closing on the former marital home in Arlington Heights. 

The husband attempted to manipulate the issue of child support by pointing out that construction is a seasonal business. We were able to counter this argument by subpoenaing the records from the husband’s employer which indicated that he had worked approximately 49 out of the 52 weeks of the year for the past four years. 

Just prior to the sale of the former marital home in Arlington Heights, the husband was permitted, pursuant to a Motion proposed by his attorney, to remove certain personal items from the house. This became a major problem for the parties due to the fact that the husband decided to not only to remove his own personal property but the personal property of his wife and children which he placed for collection with the garbage collector. It was quite a sight on garbage day when my client and her four children were scrambling through the piles of garbage that had been set out by her husband to try to collect their personal property. I then went before the judge on an Emergency Motion to remedy this situation and the judge assessed damages against the husband.

The closing on the home in Arlington Heights was accomplished only by continued threats to bring the deed transferring the home before the judge for the judge’s signature. Once the closing on the home in Arlington Heights took place, the case then proceeded along in an orderly fashion and, despite of the objections of the husband, my client was granted a Dissolution of Marriage, sole custody of her children and was awarded a disproportionate amount of the marital property along with the correct amount of child support based upon the husband’s past earnings rather than the manipulated earnings that he tried to present to the court.

We don’t have much but we can fight about what little we do have

I also had a case involving a young couple in Schaumburg who were a typical dual income/no children couple. They owned a condominium in Schaumburg and had limited financial assets. However, this did not stop these people from generating a tremendous amount of attorney’s fees due to the fact that they could not agree upon the disposition of the marital property including the condominium in Schaumburg.

I represented the wife who worked a full-time job and was going to school at night working towards her masters degree.

The husband initially had been a Certified Public Accountant for a large accounting firm. He suddenly quit the firm and began selling cars. This seemed to coincide with his addiction to narcotics. 

Shortly after the change in careers, the wife came to me advising that she could no longer live with her husband. He was never violent with her but he had depleted the parties’ savings.  She was afraid that her husband would somehow try to attach the remaining funds to support his narcotics habit. The wife was afraid that they would lose their condominium in Schaumburg due to the fact that the husband was not only using narcotics but was attempting to deal narcotics out of the condominium. She feared a drug forfeiture by the police.

The final straw came when the husband was arrested for grand theft in the stealing of an automobile from his employer. He had requested my clientput up the bail from the small inheritance she received from her grandmother. When my client refused her husband, the husband then turned to his mother who put up the bail money. The husband was released from jail and immediately returned to the condominium in Schaumburg where he proceeded grab my client out of bed, tried to forcefully remove her engagement ring, threw her forcefully out of the condominium and locked her out. My client called the Schaumburg Police Department who tried to ameliorate the situation by having my client stay with her parents in Mount Prospect.

I was then advised of the situation and we filed a Petition for an Order of Protection along with a Petition Requesting Exclusive Use and Possession of the Condominium in Schaumburg for the wife. This was a bitterly contested hearing that took over three weeks. Finally, the court ordered the husband out of the marital residence. When the wife returned to the marital residence, she found that the husband had removed all of the personal property other than the parties’ bedroom set and large screen television.

With the assistance of the Schaumburg Police Department and the Schiller Park Police Department (where the husband’s mother lived), we were able to obtain most of the personal property. As to the dissipation of personal property, the presiding judge in the matter came up with a very unusual solution. It should be noted that most judges do not want to get involved in the personal property aspects of the divorce process. Judges just find it very hard to try to equitably apportion who gets the toaster and who gets the lamp. The solution was that the judge stated that we would put all of the personal property on a list. We would then flip a coin with the wife calling heads or tails. If the wife won the coin flip then she would get to choose any item on the personal property list. The husband would then get the next two picks and then the parties would alternate. This worked out fine and within two hours we had distributed all of the personal property of the parties. 

Finally, we were able to sell the unit and my client was awarded a disproportionate amount of the equity in the property based upon the dissipation by the husband of the parties’ savings.

The Millionaire Next Door

This case involves a couple in their late sixties who had been married for 42 years. These people had lived in Mount Prospect for over 35 years. They had three children who, at the time of the commencement of the divorce were 40, 38 and 36. The couple had seven grandchildren ranging in ages from 4 years old to 17 years old. The husband had decided, after retiring from his job as a mid level manager with a large Fortune 500 company to become employed at the local Home Depot. It was at this Home Depot that he had fallen in love with a younger female co-worker. This young lady had three children of her own and lived in a two bedroom apartment on the northeast side of Mount Prospect. 

The wife had become suspicious because of the fact that her husband’s regularly scheduled payments from treasury bonds that he had purchased over the years were not being made.  When she inquired of the Treasury Department she was advised that over $100,000.00 of the bonds had been redeemed by her husband over the past six months.

The wife hired our office to immediately obtain an injunction to protect the assets of the parties. The wife, was not willing to give up her marriage of 42 years and she requested that we file a Petition for Legal Separation. A legal separation is a seldom used aspect of family practice. It is usually utilized by those people who are in need of continuing health insurance due to either pre-existing conditions or lack of funds or, have religious or personal convictions about being divorced. 

We were able to obtain an injunction to restrain the husband from dissipating marital and non-marital assets. However, once the court order was obtained, it needed to be delivered to the various financial institutions that held the assets of the parties.

Unfortunately for the husband, the injunction required the husband to live on his social security and pension. This caused a great rift between the husband and his 32 year old paramour who had become accustomed to an extremely high standard of living during the previous six months due to the husband’s dissipation of marital assets. 

This case involved not only the dissipation of marital assets, but also the definition of what was marital, non-marital and the differences between legal separation and the actual divorce. Finally, the husband filed a Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.

Our office was able to subpoena the records of the various financial institutions, including but not limited to the Treasury Department, to determine the amount of the dissipation by the husband. Once we were able to obtain these records (which took several months), we were able to present a cohesive pre-trial statement to the court which allowed this couple from Mount Prospect to obtain a divorce approximately 1½ years after the initial phone call to our office.

To the best of my knowledge, the wife still resides in the former marital home in Mount Prospect. The husband is now living in a two bedroom apartment with his girlfriend and her three children.