…continued from the last post, “Wow!”.
When we last left our heroine, she was looking over some divorce papers that an attorney was trying to push through, claiming his client’s health was fading fast.

So the first thing I did was call around the courthouse to ascertain that there was a judge available to sign the paperwork if everything checked out correctly. The presiding judge, who happens to also be my family law reference judge (I think very highly of him, and have blogged about him before), was around, and his clerk relayed a message to him that I may be needing him shortly for an emergency divorce. Then I reviewed the paperwork. The guy’s a schoolteacher…he was married to this woman for 6 years and they separated over 6 months ago so the statutory waiting period is over, that means he’s divorced as soon as the papers are signed…there are two cars at stake, he’s keeping his and letting her have hers…no kids which makes everything easier…there’s a house as part of the marital assets. Uh-oh. The attorney did not have the mandatory legal description of the real property in his Judgment. I called back down to the default clerk and explained this to her. She put the attorney on the phone. The attorney said, “I have a copy of his deed with me right now, can we attach it?” I said, “Unfortunately, you can’t attach exhibits to the judgment because later on anyone can remove the attachment and attach something else and change the things being disputed.” “My client’s really sick, he’s in the hospital right now and he’s stopped drinking water, and the doctors have him maxed out on morphine, so I’m thinking it’s not going to be much longer,” the attorney said pleadingly. I told him, “I’m going to check with the presiding judge and see if he’ll let you fill all the information into the Judgment by hand. Meet me outside his courtroom.” And then it was a massive running around and shuffling of paperwork and fixing all the deficiencies by hand, the judge approved some creative editing of the paperwork and initialed some changes, I made the copies and did all physical processing right there in that judge’s courtroom. “Thank you so much, I really appreciate you doing this. It’s a sad story,” the attorney said.

“So does he want this done so that the wife can’t inherit all his stuff as his widow?” I asked, file stamping and conforming and filling out blanks, stuffing envelopes on this case.

“Yeah,” the attorney said. The soon-to-be-divorced guy found out about a year ago that his wife was stealing money from him by syphoning money out of his accounts and depositing it into her own secret account. In the 6 years they were married, she’d stolen about a quarter million dollars. When he realized this, he thought about employing legal means of getting the money back from her, but then opted to just let it go and be divorced. They had a prenuptial agreement, so once they’re divorced she can’t take anything else from him. Two months after he had confronted the wife about this, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Two weeks after the diagnosis, she up and left him. (This made me think that she was going to leave him anyway, but knowing that she’d signed the prenup and would get nothing if they divorce, she ensured herself a tidy sum by stashing away a nest egg at his expense.) So this poor man, in his 50s, went through all the doctor visits and chemo treatments on his own. He was off on disability from his teaching. The lung cancer actually went into remission and he was the great success story, when 2 Fridays ago, while he was gambling and hanging out in Las Vegas, he developed a headache. Upon his return, he went to the doctor to have the headache checked out. The cause of the headache was a brain tumor; the lung cancer had, unbeknownst to anyone, metastasized into his brain. Now, less than 2 weeks later, he was on his deathbed in the hospital. The attorney paused in his story at some point, getting more emotional than he’d wanted to reveal. I looked down at the documents, checking them over one last time, pretending not to see.

I handed the attorney the finalized papers. “Thank you so much for doing this, I’m going to the hospital to see him right now,” he said. I asked, “Is he going to be lucid enough to understand when you tell him the news?” His attorney said, “I don’t know, I hope so. Just to give him that peace of mind before he goes. He understood everything when I was there yesterday.” I looked at the file. Some of the final documents were signed by the petitioner on December 18, which was the “yesterday” the attorney referred to. The signature was weak and shaky, the name slightly off the signature line.

After the attorney left, I went back into the presiding judge’s chambers to thank him for doing this. “You’re a good person, Cindy,” the judge said. “In most other counties, he would not have gotten the kind of personalized attention he got today.” “You mean the attorney, or the client?” I asked. The judge said, “Both. That attorney went out of his way for his client.” He sure did. I found out today from the default clerk that the attorney had been in every day to check the paperwork, after reassuring his client he will do his best to push the divorce through.

Because of the prenuptial agreement, the woman should only get her car through the divorce. The house and the rest of his assets should be part of the man’s estate, to go to his family or wherever he has willed it. She should inherit nothing, unless they want to argue the death certificate date vs. the divorce date in probate court. But I don’t think she’ll do anything; she knows she stole from him and got more than she should ever deserve. If she had been a good person, honored her pledge and vows as his wife, she would’ve been by his side through everything and when he passes, she’d have everything, all his savings, his house, his retirement. But now, she’s got her stupid $250K and hopefully, a conscience that keeps her up at nights.