Case Studies

When John phoned me, things were not going well for him. It seems that he had brought his house before he was married, but now his wife was claiming that he had to sell it because she owned a large part of it. During their marriage, John had paid off the mortgage using the money he was earning fromhis business, a small retail shop. And now his wife and her attorney wanted him to sell his home to pay her the part she was claiming was hers.

First and foremost, we needed a strategy to allow John to keep his house. I contacted his wife’s attorney and negotiated a creative way to payoff off the amount owed to her. Because John didn’t have enough cash to pay her, he took out a home equity loan and was able to keep his home. We also got his wife to relinquish any claim she had to his business.

My client Bill operated a series a restaurants. His wife was entitled to share in the business and so she tried to get the highest valuation possible. Her expert came back with a valuation that was so high, Bill would not be able to pay it without selling the business and handing over the proceeds.

We worked on getting the valuation into a more reasonable level. At trial, I was able to get her expert to agree on a much lower valuation, which finally became the price we used to start the negotiation process. We agreed to accept a much more reasonable valuation and Bill was able to keep his restaurants.

Louise phoned me after she was served with divorce papers by her husband. She called her husband and he told her that he was no longer in love and that she wasn’t going to get one cent from him. At the time, Louisehad no money in her name and no job opportunities. I immediately filed thepapers with the court and got a hearing for Louise to get spousal support from her husband. Despite her husband’s protests, we were able to get her a monthly check in an amount that allowed her to go back to school to get that degree she always wanted.