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.