Past Cases

New Mexico On My Mind

I recently had a case where my client, who was married and had a small child, retained me in early December for the purpose of divorcing his wife. His wife was pregnant with another man’s child. He also sought to prevent his wife from removing the child to the State of New Mexico where his wife was planning to move to join his mother-in-law who had recently moved there. Unfortunately, my client’s wife was able to leave the State prior to being served with the summons and attempted to initiate a divorce proceeding in the State of New Mexico.

Under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (UCCJA), the home state of a child for purposes of determining subject matter jurisdiction is the state where the child resided for the previous six month. The court of another state can exercise emergency jurisdiction if there is evidence that there was domestic violence or abuse to the child or children involved and that the spouse removing the child from the previous jurisdiction is in fear of the spouse’s life or the child’s life or both.

In this particular case, my client provided our office a number of legal documents from a previous dissolution case, filed by his wife in downstate Illinois. Additionally, there were two attempts at previous Orders of Protection alleging sexual abuse of the child which had been heard by courts in downstate Illinois and which had been dismissed after a full hearing where both my client and his spouse were able to testify.

My client initiated the Dissolution action in Illinois. He was not able to serve his wife prior to her leaving with the child to New Mexico. She initiated proceedings in New Mexico and my client was served with the New Mexico Dissolution Petition.

We then initiated the procedure necessary to have the child brought back to the State of Illinois and have the matter litigated in Illinois and to dismiss the New Mexico dissolution proceeding. With the assistance of the Cook County Judge we were able to convince the New Mexico Judge that 1) there had been previous allegations of domestic violence and sexual abuse of the child by the wife which had been previously heard in Illinois courts and dismissed after full hearings; 2) that any evidence of domestic violence and sexual abuse of the child that occurred in Illinois took place in Illinois and therefore all witnesses and relevant evidence to the same were present in Illinois; and 3) that the Illinois Court could formulate orders to protect the wife and child if necessary by virtue of an Order of Protection until such time as there was a full hearing on this case. At that point the case in New Mexico was dismissed and it was determined that all proceedings should take place in Cook County, Illinois.

This necessitated the spouse obtaining an attorney in Illinois. As a result of the allegations that there had been sexual abuse against the minor child, the judge in Cook County appointed a Child’s Representative.

The case proceeded through the court system. The wife continued to stay with the minor child in New Mexico. With the exception of hiring an attorney in Illinois, the wife refused to acknowledge any contact with the state and refused to return to Illinois with the minor child. At that point, the Child’s Representative recommended a resolution of the case by granting custody to the wife during the school year and with the husband during summer break. She also was aware that the parties, pursuant to the long distances between New Mexico and Illinois and the relative lack of substantial income would have to expend most of their money on transporting the child between New Mexico and Illinois. As a result thereof, she recommended to the court that there be a reservation of child support.

However, events were about to change which, in my opinion, would directly benefit the child and cause the mother to lose custody of her child.

As I mentioned earlier, the mother was pregnant by another man. This other man, Chris from Central Illinois went out to New Mexico to visit his newly born daughter. While there he took a number of pictures and returned home to central Illinois to show his mother who was, very excited to see pictures of her new granddaughter. One of the curious things about the pictures was a man seen frequently holding the baby and being around my client’s child who seemed to be avoiding the camera or bowing his head so that his face could not be photographed. This piqued the interest of Chris’ mother, who, had previously worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the Profiling Department.

In September of 2006, less than one month after hearing the child’s representative’s recommendation, Chris’mother decided to take a trip to New Mexico to visit her granddaughter. She contacted my client’s mother-in-law, who lived in New Mexico, who explained to the Central Illinois grandmother that either her son starts paying child support or the only way she would be permitted to see her granddaughter was if she came out to New Mexico and “kissed her ass”. The Central Illinois grandmother then decided that she would act on her instincts and called upon her former FBI co-workers and gave them the name of the man who seemed to be trying to hide his face in the pictures. It was revealed that this was a man convicted of deviate sexual assault on children.

At that point, Chris, who had an affair with my client’s wife, which caused the divorce, now became my client’s staunchest ally. This young man came into testify in an Order of Protection hearing we initiated in October 2006 that resulted in the minor child being brought back to the State of Illinois and awarded to my client until such time as the trial.

Additionally, his description of conditions in New Mexico relating to the minor child, the mother and the convicted sex offender so influenced the child’s representative that she now recommended to the court that custody be with my client.

That is how the case was resolved. In marriage the three little words that best describe most weddings is “I Love You”. In divorce the words best associated with a Dissolution of Marriage are “Kiss My Ass!”

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.