His Story/Her Story

Follow

His Story:

I was exasperated by the legal system and the frustrating injustices that exist in family law matters because of a perfectly imperfect legal system.  Fighting an uphill battle in a he-said/she-said argument, I had no choice but to present to the court the most irrefutable, objective evidence available to demonstrate that my ex-wife and her new boyfriend were living together.  Cohabitating.  Our Property Settlement Agreement provided that her monthly alimony payments would terminate once she remarried or was living (“cohabitating”) with someone.  Of course, knowing that this was entirely my burden to prove, she vehemently denied that her unemployed, bankrupt-with-no-home boyfriend was living with her.  Not wanting to force my child to testify, and unable to afford a private investigator 24/7 for six consecutive months, my attorney took a novel approach to prove one simple truth, namely, that the boyfriend was living with my ex for days … for weeks … for months, all the while depositing my monthly alimony payments into her bank account with a smile.  Proving this would be the first step in diminishing her credibility, and fulfilling some of the criteria the Court would look to in determining cohabitation.  So, abandoning the costly and time-consuming private investigator approach, an inherently uncomfortable and intrusive process, we subpoenaed the mobile cell phone records of the boyfriend to show where his phone was located almost every minute of every day… for months.  This technique proved itself to be not only cost-effective, but also demonstrated once and for all that you can try to lie, cheat and deceive, but in the end, the truth lies in the objective data.             

–        Anonymous Ex-Husband, who successfully used the techniques described herein, resulting in the termination of over $250,000 worth of future alimony payments.

Her Story:

My divorce was finally over.  After 1 1/2 years of litigating my right to receive alimony (which had to be pried out of my ex-husband’s figurative cold, dead hands), I was finally moving on with my life.  Not six months later, my ex accused me of living with a new boyfriend I was dating.  He threatened to stop paying alimony because I was “cohabitating” in his words, in violation of our settlement agreement.  Shortly following his accusations, he filed a petition with the court to terminate my alimony.  I didn’t want to go back to court, but no matter what I said to him, he didn’t believe me that my boyfriend and I weren’t living together.  Instead of taking the passive approach, letting him run -up legal costs and expenses, I fast-forwarded the discovery process by proactively giving him the data that I knew would put an end to the discussion:  proof that I was sleeping at home most nights, and my boyfriend was sleeping at his home on most nights.  Some may say that I was foolish in helping my ex, and that I should have let him waste his money on investigators, legal costs, attorneys fees, etc.  However, my motivations were two-fold:  (1)  I didn’t want to have my new life interrupted again with litigation; and (2)  I didn’t want to take the chance that the court would reduce or terminate my alimony for any reason.  In a mediation setting, I was able to produce documentation that was irrefutable, and we were able to resolve the dispute quickly and efficiently.  

–  Ex-Wife, who used cell tower location data to defend allegations that she was cohabitating