Wins

After nearly three decades of marriage, husband (GMSR’s client) obtained dissolution. Wife, a former successful international banking and finance lawyer at a major law firm, claimed that during the marriage, husband, also a successful lawyer, hid marital assets worth millions of dollars. After a lengthy trial, the judge found that both spouses had management and control of the marital assets during the marriage, that wife was the primary earner during the latter part of the marriage, and that even if husband had sole control of assets, he adequately accounted for what assets there were. Wife did not prove any of her numerous claims of financial chicanery. The trial judge required wife, as a sanction, to reimburse husband for $250,000 of his attorney fees because she frustrated the express public policy in favor of settlement and cooperation in family law litigation. On appeal, wife claimed a slew of procedural and substantive errors, including improper accounting, undeniable fiduciary breach, mistaken calculations, failure to afford a credit for the husband’s occupancy of the family home and an abuse of discretion in leveling the $250,000 sanction. In an unpublished opinion, the Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Eight, adopted GMSR’s arguments and affirmed the judgment for husband in full rejecting all of wife’s arguments.