Where have I been?

It has been almost two weeks since I last visited these pages, now often a part of my nighttime ritual.  You may well ask, where have you been?

I have been doing that rarest of rare things in family law, a jury trial.  Our trial was conducted In Fulton County Superior Court (http://www.allfamilylaw.com/CM/Custom/Fulton-County-Judges.asp) over three days: Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday last week.  The jury came back with its verdict at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday night. 

It was a divorce case.  Twenty-six year marriage.  Three grown kids.  My client is a medical doctor.  Very nice guy.  The opposing party is an attorney.  She hasn't practiced since the second year of their marriage.  The significant issue was alimony.

Opposing Counsel wanted to play it up for the jury.  His case was full of drama complete with heroes and villains (my client was cast as the villain).  Opposing Counsel's problem is that he had no facts to back up his theme.  And his client, as I told the jury is a very nice lady, didn't have the best of stories nor the best of presentation.  So, Opposing Counsel had no facts and his client had no presentation.

The Opposing side wanted the jury to award them 3.2 million.  The jury awarded them less than one-sixth of that.  We were prepared to offer them more than what the jury eventually awarded had Opposing Counsel's demand not been so extreme.

What is the moral to the story?  If Opposing Counsel had ever taken the task of settlement seriously rather than be consumed by slaying the dragons of his imagination, he could have helped his client far more.  Opposing Counsel wanted so desperately to play the hero.  At the end of our tale, that was not the role he wound up playing.

Michael Manely
http://www.allfamilylaw.com/PracticeAreas/Divorce.asp

"What do you think I owe you?"

When a marriage ends at one party's request, it is often hard to perceive how the party who wants to leave has any claim to the future work of the party who gets left. 

Tonight's topic: alimony.

And alimony in that particular situation, where the party seeking alimony is the one who has left yet still wants to continue a relationship with her ex spouse.  She wants that kind of relationship where she has no responsibilities but he will continue to support her.  It seems the height of cynicism. 

"I don't want to live with you anymore.  I don't want to share meals with you anymore.  I don't want to have Christmas with you anymore.  Oh, but I still want you to take care of me." 

I don't think that position works.  I don't think you can sell that position.  I think there is no market for that position.

If you want out, fine.  But don't expect others to keep picking up your tab.  It doesn't tend to work that way.

Put yourself in the juror's shoes, a relatively randomly chosen group of 12 regular folks, folks you might pass  in the grocery store.  Not your grocery store, but some other grocery store somewhere in your county.  You're going to tell those jurors, those strangers, that you just want the allowance without the chores.  You want the cake, you just don't want to have to bake it.  You want the reward without the work.  I can't think of a more spoiled meme. 

And the jury never buys it.

Sure, you can think of circumstances where this scenario would work: spousal abuse, habitual adultery (on the non-leaving party's part), incurable alcohol addiction.  But that doesn't happen often.  That is not the norm.  There's a reason why that's called the exception.  And it is the exception that proves the rule.  The rest of the time, the leaving party just wants out, wants to move on, wants to see other people, wants to have her own life. 

She's more than entitled to have her own life.  She just has to fund it.

But the jury will tell her that.  Lord knows her attorney won't.  There's too much money to be made until the verdict.

Michael Manely