It’s not unusual for separating couples to fight over custody, dispute marital assets, or claim alimony during or after a divorce. It’s par for the course. As family law attorneys, we know better than to underestimate the capacity of some divorcees to take their separation into a strange direction. That doesn’t mean we’d gladly take on strange lawsuits such as these.
A woman who sued her attorney for failing to inform her that filing for divorce means separating from her husband...
...reminds us of this line from William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
It must be the fact that dissolving a marriage can be bloody (not literally) and — in exceptional instances — deadly funny.
Clearly, it’s not always the case that pricking results in bleeding nor does poisoning always mean death (but it can mean hospitalization and a personal injury lawsuit).
So, does filing for divorce not mean separating from thine own spouse? Sorry to disappoint those of you with wild legal fancies, but it most certainly does. A British woman challenged that simple notion when she filed suit against her divorce attorneys whom she accused of professional negligence — because they did not tell her that divorce meant terminating her marriage.
Apparently, she was aiming for a judicial separation, which is like divorce except the partners can’t get married to others. We know it’s a head-scratcher, but it’s a thing.
Unmoved by her claim that the lawyers failed to take into account her Roman Catholic background, the judge dismissed her lawsuit.
A divorced man sues parents for throwing away his unmentionables
Anyone who has been through a divorce knows that parting with your precious assets can be as painful as separating from your spouse. A Michigan man must have felt hurt when he returned to his parents’ home after divorcing his wife. You won’t believe what made him so heartbroken. Or maybe you will.
In October 2016, said Chicago man moved back to his parents’ house where he lived for 10 months. Having healed from his divorce wounds, he decided to move out to Indiana. In November 2017, his thoughtful parents came to visit his new home to bring him some of his stuff.
To his shock, he discovered that his folks destroyed his entire porn collection. While some men might be enraged or saddened at having to lose a car or a house, others apparently get devastated by their destroyed baseball cards, video games, and adult entertainment collection. Different strokes for different divorced folks.
In his lawsuit, the adult content enthusiast sought over $80,000 in damages for snuffing out his $28,000 worth of stash. That’s because according to him, those films were produced by studios that had dissolved decades ago.
A man sued shrink for sinking his marriage
In 2002, Pennsylvanian Clyde Crady Swisher III sued the psychologist Andrea Veletri, who treated his ex-wife Marylynne Pitz before and during their marriage. In the course of treating Ms. Pitz, Ms. Veletri consistently encouraged her to commit to the marriage instead of, say, encouraging her to download Tinder and leave the husband.
The embittered Swisher was also distressed that Ms. Veletri supported Ms. Pitz’s decision to reconcile with him (after she had already filed for divorce) via counseling. The reconciliation attempts also failed.
Someone definitely failed at something in this case and we think it’s not Ms. Veletri who did.
It could be that Ms. Pitz simply did not wish to be married to Mr. Swisher anymore. What’s arguably ridiculous is that Mr. Swisher essentially sued Ms. Veletri for being unable to solve their marital problems.
If you live in Washington state, family law attorneys Buckingham, LaGrandeur, & Williams can make your dissolution of marriage fast and decidedly dull. Trust us, that’s the ideal way to do it.