Posted By TheAttorney on May 26, 2010
I had a family law hearing today on a motion to enforce a judgment that was 21-years old. I filed the motion almost two years ago.
When my client first retained me, she could only afford a small deposit, but because it was pretty clear that there would be money at the end from which I would be paid, I agreed to work on her case without asking for any more money until the case was finished.
During the two years that I handled her case, I missed two hearings. I hate when that happens. It didn’t hurt the case, though. Just prolonged it by about 3 months. What actually hurt the case was my client’s misrepresentations. (That’s how you say it in law. You never say someone is lying. You say he/she is misrepresenting the facts.)
My client represented that since the time that the judgment had been filed 21-years previously, she hadn’t been paid spousal support, child support, and hadn’t received certain stocks and an interest in a pension plan. Based on what she told me, it sounded like the case was worth about $250,000.00 once it was all totaled up.
In family law, I am not permitted to a contingency, although I can agree to wait until the end to get paid. This is because attorneys are not supposed to have an interest adverse to their client, or something like that. Based on her allegations, and based on the research I did showing that the other side had a lot of money, I agreed to take the case and be paid at the end.
This was a hard-fought case. The other side actually went through three attorneys, which made it harder on me because I had to bring each new attorney up to speed.
I filed the first set of documents with the court almost two years ago, but on the day of the hearing, the other party’s first attorney told me that my client wasn’t entitled to spousal support because she actually got married about 7 years after she divorced his client. He also mentioned that he believed my client and the children lived with his client for several years after the judgment was obtained.
This would mean that my client was entitled to a lot less spousal support and a lot less child support than she alleged that she was owed.
I decided that we should dismiss the action before going into court to prevent my client from possibly getting an adverse ruling. I decided that we’d better do some discovery and find out why her ex-husband would be saying that. My client averred that her ex-husband was a liar. (She’s not a lawyer, so she gets to say “liar.”)
We re-filed the motion as something else and while we were waiting for the hearing date, I held a deposition and conducted some discovery. The opposing party and his attorney provided me with a marriage license showing that my client had become married about 7 years after she divorced the other party.
I expected he would be unable to lie in a deposition about whether or not my client and their children lived with him, but he said adamantly that they did. He didn’t waver.
My client finally admitted to me some time later that she did get married 7 years later, stating that she didn’t really feel like she was married because they never finalized it. The license was issued, and they went through a ceremony, but she said they never filed the license. She said she had “changed her mind.” (Except that they lived together after that.) (And except that when he died, she was listed on his death certificate as his spouse.) Sigh.
Because of the discovery we did, we found the pension plan that he refused to disclose to us. My client had tried for two years to get him to tell her where the money was, and to give her share to her. I found it after sending subpoenas out. I was about to bring the pension plan into the case as a party when the people who managed it informed me that he had moved the money “somewhere else.”
I immediately filed an ex parte asking the court to order him to tell us where the money was, which the court did. At the same time, I obtained an order preventing the other party from being able to take any money out of the account or from moving it.
In the meantime, while we were doing discovery and holding depositions and filing ex partes, the ex-husband obtained a new attorney. The new attorney had to be educated and we had a couple of meetings to discuss problems with my case. He told me that my client lived with his client, the dad, for several years after the divorce, and that the kids lived with dad, too. He also provided me with tax returns that showed that his client and my client filed joint tax returns for several years after they were divorced. My client said she didn’t live with him but he did force her to sign the tax returns. I believed her.
I told my client that she would have to provide proof of her address for the years that the husband claimed that she lived with him. I had several meetings with her. Each time she came in, she brought evidence of where she lived, but none of the evidence covered the time period that the ex-husband claimed she and the kids lived with him.
There were several things not making sense about her case. It was as if there was a black hole. I have to believe my client, but I told her that we couldn’t go to court without evidence, especially because of the tax returns. Plus, the ex-husband said he had a roommate who would testify that while he lived with the ex-husband, my client and the kids lived there.
It was also during this time that one of the hearings went off calendar because I was late for court and forgot to call ahead of time to ask the clerk to put the hearing on second call. I immediately re-filed the case, but the opposing party thought he won and happily fired his attorney and went back to life as usual, ignoring the fact that he owed my client something.
After we immediately served him with the new documents, for which the hearing was set about a month and a half out, he retained a new attorney who became my favorite one of all. I love experienced family law attorneys.
In the meantime, my client’s youngest daughter came out from wherever she had been living. She brought with her a diary from 10 to 20 years ago in which she had made entries on various dates talking about with whom she was living, and where. It turns out that the kids did in fact live with their dad for several years, off and on. She also wrote in her diary that her mom moved in with her dad as well. She and her mom, my client, lived with him for several years.
So at this point we know that my client misrepresented the truth about being married, and misrepresented the truth about with whom she and the children lived for at least some of the time. This is important because generally, if a spouse remarries, spousal support terminates. And if the children are living with the party who is paying child support, child support should also terminate.
The third new attorney and I met at the first hearing on which he was attorney of record and discussed the strengths and weaknesses of my client’s case. We agreed to continue it so that I could gather up more proof, and that is when I missed another hearing. My paralegal mis-calendared the hearing for two days after it was actually supposed to occur, so the judge took it off calendar again because we weren’t in court.
The good thing is that the new attorney on the case is one of those experienced types who is very courteous. He knew that I would have to refile, and that it was inevitable that it would go back on calendar, so he signed a stipulation putting it back on calendar. We were in court all morning on today’s date.
We spent most of the morning working out the details of the case. I informed him that I was no longer seeking $250,000 on behalf of my client because it wouldn’t be right based on the new facts. We actually ended up settling on $50,000.00.
Now for the fun stuff.
When I met with my client a few weeks ago to go over the case in preparation of this hearing today, she brought her 29-year old daughter with her. At that time, I told my client that my fees were over $17,000.00, but that I would reduce them when it came time to pay the bill. I told her that I knew she didn’t have much money and that this money she was expecting would really help her. She and her daughter were really appreciative.
Today, after the attorney and I agreed that the case should settle for $50,000.00, I went to discuss the settlement with my client, who had her three adult children with her. After I told her how much I thought we should settle for, she asked how much I was going to ask for in attorney’s fees, and all of a sudden she and her daughters turned on me with a vengeance.
The daughter who was present a few weeks previously said that she wrote it down when I said I would reduce my fees, as if I was about to try to back out of the deal. She almost snarled at me. I said I remembered that I said that, and I said, “Please don’t do this.”
She then said, viciously, “You handled this case really badly because you missed two hearings.” She turned to her mother and said, “Don’t sign the settlement agreement unless she agrees to reduce her fees.”
Her mother, my client, looked at me and said, “You did miss two hearings.” It was as if this was all planned.
I was stunned. I said, “Before you begin accusing me of malpractice, you need to understand that the outcome of the case must have been negatively impacted. The outcome today is the same as it would have been if I hadn’t missed any hearings.”
The daughter said, “My mom should have gotten more money than this. What’s she supposed to live on for the rest of her life?”
I said, “Your mom lied to me about a lot of things. We filed several different declarations that contradict the evidence. We can’t put her on the stand. That attorney will tear her to pieces. We have to take what they are offering or we have to go to trial.” Actually, I got them to give an extra $5,000.00 more than they were offering.
Believe it or not, she said, “That’s not important. We don’t need to focus on that.”
I was stunned, but I put that aside. I went and talked to the other attorney and told him that basically, my client wanted attorney’s fees. He said, “There’s no way the judge is going to give your client attorney’s fees. My client is on disability. He doesn’t get much money. She should take this deal. The stock lost $150,000.00 worth of value. The appraisal you had done on the stock was based on the value from a year and a half ago. She won’t get as much as she’s getting if we don’t settle this today.”
He was right. She was getting the child support that she didn’t receive for the time when the daughter was living with her, and she was getting spousal support for up to the time that she remarried, minus the two years she moved back in with the opposing party. She was also getting one-half of the value of the community property interest in the pension plan. She wasn’t getting any stock because I found out today that they had already divided it up and spent it before they signed the final judgment 21 years earlier. (Something else she lied about.)
Basically, she was getting only that to which she was entitled, and she was upset with me. And now she and her daughters were trying to accuse me of botching the case so that they could scare me into reducing my fees. It was really ugly to watch. I reminded them that I had already offered to reduce my fees.
But I also reminded them again that if she hadn’t lied to me, I wouldn’t have spent so much time on the case. Again they tried to brush that aside. I gave up. I believe they had this planned. They figured out a way to pretend I had done something wrong in order to get me to reduce my fees. What boggles my mind is if they really felt I did something so wrong, why didn’t they fire me?
I have had this happen before. I hate clients sometimes. If you don’t get all the money up front, then when it comes time to pay at the end, they try to find something you did wrong so that they can use that as an excuse to not pay.
I ask, why would you continue to use me if I was doing such a bad job? If an attorney is screwing up so bad that it is hurting your case, why wouldn’t you get another attorney?
My client doesn’t realize how much I helped her. They are ignorant. That first time when we were supposed to go to trial we got lucky when the first attorney told me, before we went in, the evidence he had. He was going to tell the court that she had been married. I was smart enough to take the matter off calendar so that we could figure out what he was going to say.
I found the pension plan. I filed an ex parte when it went missing. I put a lien on his house and a lien on the pension plan so that he couldn’t touch either one of them. I sent subpoenas out, trying to amass as much evidence as possible. And most of this turned out to be moot because she lied to me on most of these issues.
And now here she was, with her daughters, trying to tell me that because I missed two hearings, I should take less fees, even though I had already said I would take less fees, and even though I hadn’t screwed her case up.
When they asked how much I would reduce them to, I said $10,000.00. They said okay. What’s interesting is that they didn’t ask to see the bill. What if the final bill was only $10,000.00? At that time, I thought that the final bill was up to about $18,000.00.
And what was funny was that up until that moment, I had been telling the Captain that I wanted to only charge her $5,000.00 for the work I had done because I felt bad for her because she didn’t have much money, although she does own a house that is paid off and worth about $500,000.00. The Captain was furious that I was thinking about reducing my fees. He said, “She has a house. We don’t.”
When they turned nasty like that, I suddenly didn’t feel so generous, which is why I said $10,000.00. I suppose I could have said, “Screw you. I quit.” and then I could have walked out and left her to start over, but I didn’t want to deal with a complaint to the state bar.
And besides, now I will have $10,000.00 instead of $5,000.00.
But something else that was funny: We thought her final bill was about $18,000.00. When I went back to the office after that hearing, I asked the Captain to provide to me a final bill so that I could send it to her with a letter that I was writing.
The bill had a huge error in it. There was a time that I forgot to stop the clock when I was drafting subpoenas. Instead of reflecting 17 hours for drafting subpoenas, it should have reflected 2 hours. That’s a lot of money.
In the end, we only lost about $3,000.00.
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