I had an attorney for 3 yrs. Frustrated, I found someone else. It has been a year. In this years time, the new atty had other obligations in Raleigh for general assembly and neglected to tell me that he was unavailable but 2 days a week. My case was continued several times due to the fact that he was unavailable. Now I undertand the courts are not happy with my side because of the. Then, I had a forensic accountant assigned to my case who was taken off. This was because my ex agreed to produce all info to cut the expense of the FA. SInce then, he has not done so, had drug this on for years. Now I had been told my my new atty that he has someone who can do the business evaluation. I was lead to believe she was also a FA. She is a CPA who did a bare minimum evaluation, did not check into his income, personal spending, and who knows what else. I had brought this up several times during the evaluation asking if certain things were looked into. Her response was it was not part of her eval or she didn’t have time. My eval came in incredibly low. I have show it to my first atty and he is mortified at the numbers. The current attys paralegal said that she could tell it was low and she was shocked at how low the numbers were and that it didn’t seem that she investigated much either. My atty told me to do an "oral report’ which cost a fraction of the “real” report. I told him I did not want to do this and I wanted the full indepth report. He would not do this. He told me that if we were not happy with it, we can have her do the more full report. Now that all is done, I understand that the courts will NOT grant this and will go by this report that is not thorough nor complete. This is not what I agreed to. I agreed to a FA and a full report. My old atty is looking over my papers and he feels that this may be to big of a mess to fix. I am 4yrs in, my ex is trying to stop alimony (which I have what is in leiu of alimony-per court order), reduce child support and have this done before we can even get our ED finished. Doesn’t the law state that ED has to be determined before you can change/modify/stop alimony or childsupport. I am in a world of a mess! This accountant came back hundreds of thousands of dollars short on my end. I am scared to death and filled with tremendous anxiety. I have since let my atty go who created this disaser and have no atty as of yet. Because do not have an atty, my ex decided that he is not going to pay his child support. This is another issue I have had. He pays me directly…if he feels like it. Can you give me any advice at all? Can I not contest the report that was done since it was not done correctly? I also was told by my atty’s paralegal that the “chart scale” the accountant uses is incorrect. They found this out when she was doing a case before mine. Do I have any hope at all?
I can’t answer questions about the evaluation or its validity without an in-depth understanding of all the facts and circumstances of the case, which is beyond the scope of this forum. You can file a contempt motion for the child support.
My ex and I are 4 yrs into a messy divorce. We are divorced, he is remarried, and still no ED. I was told today in court that the judge
feels this has taken far too long. I had atty 1, not happy with how slow it was progressing, so I hred atty2. This was a disaster. He never told me he was unavailable most of the time and after 8 mos of constant fees and his unavaliablity to be in court (postponed so many times that the judges are even mad), I went back to atty#1. Went to court, was told it has been too long and now we are ordered a hearing in January. I had to hire a FA with atty 2 and she did not do a proper report. My atty convinced me to do an oral report and lied to me that if I was unhappy with it, I could request a full report. I argued with my atty that I did not want an oral report, but he would not listen,argued with me about it, and I figured that I would just ask for the full report once I get the oral Turns out the oral report did not go to the last year of marriage (2 businesses owned together) and the report is incomplete. The courts will not listen to my side at all on this. They feel that 4 yrs is too long and I had better be ready in 9 weeks, my ex refuses to produce documents needed for ED concerning the business, and I am stuck. I feel the courts have treated me very unfairly. My ex has contempt charges throughtout the 4 yrs and they don’t seem to care now. Since rehiring my old atty, he does not seem to be able to get the court to understand that this is not enough time to prepare and the court doesn’t want to hear it. I was married for 6 1/2 yrs, I am getting PSS and child support was awarded but now my ex is admitting that he lied by $175,000 per year. The amount is actually higher. Now I feel like the court has rewarded my ex for going against court orders and going to make me sette for much lower than I deserve. I have another accountant hired to look at what the firs accountant has done. My ex went against court orders, borrowed all he equity against our business, built a personal home with my share and his and nothing seems to happen.
My question is as follows: Is this normal to not give appropriate time to get my information together, not make him produce documents in a timely manner ( we requested documents and he turned them in 5 min before court yesterday, which leaves me no time to go thru his documents) and do I have any recourse? I feel the court is treating me very unfairly. I feel like I need to hire and atty to explain to me what my current atty should be. Very frustrated!
You are right, this has gotten very messy for you. You ex will have 30 days to respond to requests to produce documents in discovery, and if he does not you can seek the court’s assistance and ask that he be compelled to produce the requested documents. I don’t know if he complied with that rule or not by providing you the documents five minutes before court. It would depend on when the discovery request was made. If the full ED trial is on the calendar for January you will need to file any new discovery requests fast as there is a minimum period of 30 days for a response time. I still feel you should consider filing contempt against him for child support if there is an order in place for that already. I know you are saying that you don’t feel the court is considering his contempt charges, but it will always help to have this documented since you never know what issues might arise in the future. I’m not terribly surprised that a judge is ordering the trial for ED since the divorce has been done for four years. That is a long time and in the interest of judicial efficiency, the judge feels your hearing will need to be conducted in a timely manner at this point. Also, if you have evidence of him lying about assets, then you should absolutely use this in the trial. Good luck to you.