Wild Ideas

[craesz]

Interesting day....

Background: Husband and Wife are divorcing... They have two kids. LONG ago a trust was created ("allegedly" according to Wife once the Husband's attorney said there was no community property because the trust owned everything). So Wife's attorney sues Husband in his capacity as Trustee to try and get rid of the trust (not a bad move considering what the attorney's options might have been). Unfortunately for Wife and Wife's attorney, both with full knowledge of trust claims to property, Wife sold a bunch of property allegedly owned by the trust and then had the buyers write checks payable to the Wife's attorney who deposited them in her firm's bank account. I was hired to represent the Husband, after he got sued as Trustee, only as a Trustee, he already has a divorce attorney for the rest. It seems to me (and the law allows) that selling off the assets of a trust so one can benefit themselves might create several causes of action. A counterclaim was filed to solve that situation. Hopefully. This is all presently pending in the 211th before Judge Shipman.

In association with the claims filed for Husband Trustee, a motion to sever the trust claims from the divorce claims was filed so they could be dealt with prior to the divorce issues by another court of competent jurisdiction. All the attorneys initially went before the judge a long time ago because the conduct of depositions of the parties involved in the matter - the buyers, the seller (Wife) and the one that deposited the funds (Wife's attorney) - were needed. Wife's attorney didn't like that at all so a hearing (very hard to get in this court, by the way) was held, of sorts, and the judge decided that the trust issue really should be decided first. At that time, his position seemed to be that, If the trust existed, then the trust issues should go to the other court and he would then wait for a resolution of those trust claims before he would split whatever community property existed in accordance with the Family Code. (Made complete sense. Still does.) As a result, the judge would not allow depositions of everyone involved. He ordered the deposition of Wife but ONLY on the subject of the existence of the trust. In the interim the entire, unsevered matter was set for trial. My client wanted a jury to decide the issues of the trust (pending the ruling of the judge) so I made the proper request and paid the proper fee. That trial was set for October 19, 2009. The limited deposition was taken, pursuant to the court's order, on June 9, 2009. When a hearing was attempted to be set on the existence of the trust matter prior to October 19, 2009, there was no time available for that hearing.

This seemed to fly in the face of the prior position of the judge, so I informed all the attorneys that I would be meeting early in the morning with Judge Shipman to try to obtain the necessary hearing date to resolve the issue as previously directed. Wife's attorney appeared and Husband's divorce attorney showed. Much discussion was held that swam all over the legal map, but the outcome was that EVERYTHING would be heard on October 19, 2009. This was surprising to me given the prior position of the judge.

This created quite a problem as, in the event the trust claims were to go forward (as I believed they should), then there would be no time to complete the depositions [which had been attempted since November 2008 on numerous occasions with Wife's attorney's actions preventing same each and every time] prior to trial if a ruling on the trust issue was the first thing to happen and then, I presume, followed immediately by the trial of the matter. Since this radically changed the manner in which the legal issues would be handled, full notices for deposition were forwarded again to all the players. Wife's attorney didn't like that again so we had another hearing. This time, the court ordered those depositions to occur on specific dates and times, with the agreement of all the parties. A deposition in the divorce was to have been "illuminating" potentially resolving the entire issue. That was to occur on August 8, 2009. To prevent unnecessary costs to the client, the outcome of the August deposition was waited upon. It apparently was not as illuminating as it needed to be. Nothing was resolved as a result so the court ordered deposition notices were sent. Again, Wife's attorney didn't like them. At least two of them. Hers and her client's because there might be documents that she felt shouldn't be seen.

A hearing on another motion for protection by Wife's attorney was set for this morning (Wait a minute.... what about when I was trying to resolve the trust issue and there were no settings between June and October 19, 2009????????). Wow. The courtroom was full of people. Criminal pleas were first... Stacks of documents were in boxes for some ongoing matter where the courtroom was being used by a visiting judge to decide some form of class action issue. We were then directed to a vacant courtroom.

Once the judge appeared, we had no court reporter. As a result of the prior manner in which direction was given and then modified, it was my opinion that a court reporter needed to be present. None was available until 10:30 a.m. Without addressing the court reporter issue Wife's attorney began discussing all the recent motions filed by herself and her attorney and the long ago filed (either at the time of the counterclaim or prior to it) motions by myself and Husband's attorney. She made issue of the fact that all those motions should be ruled upon by the court prior to the beginning of the jury trial. (That's odd.... I think I've heard this somewhere before...) The discussion, again, devolved into a hypothetical one regarding a variety of issues none of which had anything to do with the motion Wife's attorney had filed and set for today. Out of this maelstrom of discussion, the direction now to be taken is that all the prior motions should be heard first (What?!?!!? What happened to the last time we discussed this??? We've now come full circle), the Husband's attorney's trial setting has vanished, instead, on the date of the presently set trial will be the several pretrial motions and on that date we are to have many jury trial documents prepared and filed despite the fact that that will cost all the parties time, money and expenses that may be entirely unnecessary.

I feel like I need red slippers..... or at least a look behind that curtain. I wonder how it is that people feel like the legal system fails them?