Not a Good Life

When I asked her what her monthly mortgage is, she said this:
"$8,000 a month, but we haven't paid for months, who knows when they're going to foreclose?"
It took a conscious effort to contain my involuntary response. An $8,000 a month mortgage? Are you kidding me?
That's some default.

Here's the deal now...
She's got a child in private school and a brilliant husband who happens to have many college degrees, one includes law.
He is quite successful and conniving, yet he is pleading  near poverty.
For some reason all of his business shut down just two months before the divorce.
Allegedly, all he is making now is 35k a year, so he says he can barely afford child support...
let alone the spousal support he agreed to when he could afford the 8k a month mortgage.
He wants spousal support eliminated.

They divorced five months ago but still live together because their mansion is in on the market,
and no one wants it.
After all, what's another multi-million house in a tanking economy?
Both live there together.... in their own rooms or suites or whatever...
divorced but co-habiting in the behind-closed-doors, mysterious way rich people do in their own private worlds.
My job was to find his hidden assets.
Which I couldn't  do.
I looked under every rock I could legally overturn.
I've got maybe 100 pages of data.
Nada.
Meaning, nothing helpful to my client's case.
Certainly.... there could be off shore accounts.  But I can't find them.
And alot of those off shore accounts, after the market crash, had their funds frozen or seized by banks/governments going under.

Either  he is a great pretender.... hider...
or he, like so many, invested heavily in the stock market,  lost it all.
She said,  he claims that's what happened.
He said they got all their money in the market.
And lost it.
However, I read alot about him on the net.
He made major bucks as a high-powered attorney.
Based on the toys in their house....
from the high priced prestige cars to tennis court...pool... to the  50k wine collection...
it all lingers there, waiting to  be repossessed.

I first heard her story in Starbucks.
I will be ending it at the post office today with a package, a case file, for her attorney.
In the course of this investigation, I may not have found more money, evidence of fraud...
however, we did find, since he had everything in his name...
that he got all the cell bills and records and saw the number for every call she made.
He put a keystroke monitor on the computer he bought her and is still is his name for the warranty.
He owned the cars in which the gps was placed.
He was on her like white on rice... and because he was an attorney he tracked/stalked her, legally.

So maybe I didn't find any more money my client could go after, post divorce because he lied pre-divorce, which could constitute fraud.
I  did find a way to convince my client to finally leave her ex- husband and their 8k a month, soon-to-be-foreclosed-on house.... and move on.


My client is from a family of wealth, the family is paying my client's  $350. an hour attorney bill.
My client's ex-husband  is an attorney, so it costs him nothing financially to destroy her with motion after motion, hearing after hearing, arbitrations are endless.

I said her family's money would be best spent now that they are divorced building a new life...
getting a apartment or house to rent while she gets a job or a business going and gets back on her feet.This War of The Roses stuff, living together post-divorce, is nuts in my opinion.
Yet for so many, it's the only option.
It's hard enough to support one relatively happy household.... let alone two miserable ones while going under. I told her that her boat was sinking and it was time to abandon ship.

She'll be leaving her divorced husband next week.
It'll be up to the son, age 16, to decide who to stay with.
It is not a good life for her...  or her son anymore... she said, over the phone last night.
I agreed, hung up... and went to bed grateful I was not sleeping in her world.