My ex has been taking me to court for over 4 years to get my joint custody taken away. Her father worked for the courts for 25 years so she hasn’t had to get a lawyer and it’s obviously harassment but they still allow it. What can I do?
This question comes up a lot (in slightly different forms, but the core question, i.e., “At what point will the courts say ‘enough’ to my ex’s incessant litigating (typically over child custody and/or parent-time)?” remains the same).
Because I am a divorce and family lawyer in the state of Utah, I will answer your question in the context of the law and rules governing the state of Utah.
There are many approaches that one can take in response to an ex-spouse or coparent who litigates incessantly and for no good reason. One thing that I didn’t know about as an attorney until late in my career was a motion to have your ex-spouse found to be and then treated as a vexatious litigant under Rule 83 of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure. Here is an excerpt from that rule:
(1) The court may find a person to be a “vexatious litigant” if the person, with or without legal representation, including an attorney acting pro se, does any of the following:
(A) In the immediately preceding seven years, the person has filed at least five claims for relief, other than small claims actions, that have been finally determined against the person, and the person does not have within that time at least two claims, other than small claims actions, that have been finally determined in that person’s favor.
(B) After a claim for relief or an issue of fact or law in the claim has been finally determined, the person two or more additional times re-litigates or attempts to re-litigate the claim, the issue of fact or law, or the validity of the determination against the same party in whose favor the claim or issue was determined.
(C) In any action, the person three or more times does any one or any combination of the following:
(i) files unmeritorious pleadings or other papers,
(ii) files pleadings or other papers that contain redundant, immaterial, impertinent or scandalous matter,
(iii) conducts unnecessary discovery or discovery that is not proportional to what is at stake in the litigation, or
(iv) engages in tactics that are frivolous or solely for the purpose of harassment or delay.
(D) The person purports to represent or to use the procedures of a court other than a court of the United States, a court created by the Constitution of the United States or by Congress under the authority of the Constitution of the United States, a tribal court recognized by the United States, a court created by a state or territory of the United States, or a court created by a foreign nation recognized by the United States.
*****
(b) Vexatious litigant orders. The court may, on its own motion or on the motion of any party, enter an order requiring a vexatious litigant to:
(1) furnish security to assure payment of the moving party’s reasonable expenses, costs and, if authorized, attorney fees incurred in a pending action;
(2) obtain legal counsel before proceeding in a pending action;
(3) obtain legal counsel before filing any future claim for relief;
(4) abide by a prefiling order requiring the vexatious litigant to obtain leave of the court before filing any paper, pleading, or motion in a pending action;
(5) abide by a prefiling order requiring the vexatious litigant to obtain leave of the court before filing any future claim for relief in any court; or
(6) take any other action reasonably necessary to curb the vexatious litigant’s abusive conduct.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
My husband cheated on me and we’re getting a divorce. He begged me not to take his children away, but I want him to suffer. How can I make sure that he won’t gain custody or even visitation rights?
Surely you jest. Right?
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
How difficult is it to get a divorce from a spouse who disappeared +10 years back? No note, no trace, no explanation. If you urgently need to remarry, what processes would one need to prepare for?
I can’t speak for all jurisdictions, but in Utah (where I practice divorce law), the answer to your question would be:
It does not matter whether you can find your spouse to serve him/her in person with a summons and complaint for divorce. Why?
Because the law anticipated situations where a potential defendant in a lawsuit might try to hide and avoid service of process in the hope that “If you can’t serve me with the summons and complaint, then you can’t sue me!” How?
By making provision for serving someone who is hiding or avoiding service:
Utah Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 4(b)(5)(A) and (B):
(A) If the identity or whereabouts of the person to be served are unknown and cannot be ascertained through reasonable diligence, if service upon all of the individual parties is impracticable under the circumstances, or if there is good cause to believe that the person to be served is avoiding service, the party seeking service may file a motion to allow service by some other means. An affidavit or declaration supporting the motion must set forth the efforts made to identify, locate, and serve the party, or the circumstances that make it impracticable to serve all of the individual parties.
(B) If the motion is granted, the court will order service of the complaint and summons by means reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances, to apprise the named parties of the action. The court’s order must specify the content of the process to be served and the event upon which service is complete. Unless service is by publication, a copy of the court’s order must be served with the process specified by the court.
This means that you could obtain leave from the court to serve your spouse by a certified mailing of the summons and complaint to your spouse’s last known address, or by a having a copy of the summons and complaint delivered by FedEx or UPS to your spouse’s last known address, or by emailing a copy of the summons and complaint to your spouse’s last known e-mail address, or by sending an instant message or text message to your spouse notifying him/her that a divorce action has been filed in court against him/her and directing him/her to obtain and review a copy that is in file with the court, or (although this happens a lot less), publishing the summons in a newspaper of general circulation in the county in which publication is required.
4. After your hiding/disappeared spouse has been served by one of the alternate means provided in Rule 4(d), if your spouse does not file a responsive pleading within the time given to do so, then you can apply for entry of your spouse’s default and request entry of default judgment against your absentee spouse.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
What will the court do if I do not pick up a letter my ex-husband sent that needs to be signed by me from the courts about his back court ordered alimony of $20,000.00 that he is in default already and has been ordered by the courts several times?
This is a question you need to ask of a local divorce attorney in your jurisdiction.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
The judge finalized our divorce a month ago. My ex-husband decided to move out without any notice and then he turned off all utilities service. Can he legally do that without saying anything?
It depends upon 1) the rules and statutes that apply in your jurisdiction; and 2) the provisions in your decree of divorce (and related orders, if in your jurisdiction divorces end with multiple orders, as opposed to all of the orders in one “Decree of Divorce” document).
For example, in the jurisdiction where I practice divorce and family law (Utah), there is no law that specifically prevents a divorced spouse from canceling the accounts for the household utilities.* Indeed, if, in a divorce proceeding, the house is awarded to one of the spouses and the other spouse must now move out, many such divorced spouses have good reason for canceling the accounts for the household utilities, and that is to ensure they are no longer billed and held liable for utilities for a house in which they no longer reside.
If the provisions in your decree of divorce (and related orders, if in your jurisdiction divorces end with multiple orders, as opposed to all of the orders in one “Decree of Divorce” document) prohibit one’s ex-spouse from canceling or otherwise interfering with the other’s utilities, then the affected ex-spouse could move the court to hold the offending ex-spouse in contempt of court and seek to have the offending ex-spouse sanctioned for contempt.
Now clearly there are usually better ways of handling the situation than secretly closing the accounts notifying the ex-spouse after the fact or not telling the other spouse at all and letting him/her discover it on his/her own, but just because it’s ill-mannered does not make illegal. And if there is no provision in the decree of divorce or related orders that don’t expressly prohibit you and your ex from canceling the utilities that are presumably in your joint names (because you presumably open the accounts when you were married to each other), there may be nothing (and their likely is nothing) that you could do through the courts to punish your ex-spouse for his/her actions.
———————————
*If a divorced couple has minor children, it might be possible to argue that cutting off the utilities to the house could constitute child abuse under Utah Code § 76-5-109. If the couple has a disabled child, one might argue that canceling the utilities account(s) is abuse or neglect of a disabled child. § 76-5-110 (Abuse or neglect of a child with a disability). I don’t know if one could argue that canceling the utilities to the house could be construed as “criminal mischief” as defined in Utah Code § 76-6-106(2)(b)(i)(A) or (B) or (ii).
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
Is it easier to get a divorce if you and your spouse have no debts, no shared property, and no children?
Typically, generally, usually, yes. In the overwhelming majority of cases.
You identified three of the top four reasons, in my opinion, that divorces are acrimonious and bitterly fought over protracted and ruinously expensive periods of time (the fourth big reason is alimony). The fewer the reasons to fight, the faster, less expensively, less physically and emotionally burdensome, and easier the divorce process is.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
Yes, there is no law (I know of in any jurisdiction of which I am aware, but check in your jurisdiction to be sure) against a divorced couple resuming a romantic relationship or from remarrying.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
Why do people get married only to divorce a few years later? Doesn’t really sound like love to me.
With the exception of those divorces that take place shortly after a marriage due to abuse, mental illness, fraud, and those kinds of things OR a divorce for which there are common law or statutory grounds (adultery, impotency of the respondent at the time of marriage, willful desertion, willful neglect, habitual drunkenness of the respondent, conviction of the respondent for a felony, irreconcilable differences of the marriage, incurable insanity), a divorce after a just a few years of marriage between two otherwise normal people is usually due (in no particular order) to:
realizing the marriage was a mistake, that it’s a genuinely good idea and mutually beneficial to both spouses to end the marriage and a bad idea to spend any more time or effort trying to salvage it; or
selfishness and/or fear or shame; something that renders one to feel unworthy or unwilling to commit to the success of the marriage and family
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
What will the court do if I do not pick up a letter my ex husband sent that needs to be signed by me from the courts about his back court ordered alimony of 20,000.00 that he is in default already and has been ordered by the courts several times?
This is a question you need to ask of a local divorce attorney in your jurisdiction.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
Yes, there is no law (I know of in any jurisdiction of which I am aware, but check in your jurisdiction to be sure) against a divorced couple resuming a romantic relationship or from remarrying.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
I work for a divorce attorney, but I am not pro divorce. I understand that if there were no divorces I would be “out of a job”, but that still does not mean I have to like divorce. That being said, I think that divorce attorneys offer a valuable service, especially to those who have a vengeful or, for lack of a better term, “crazy” ex-spouse.
I have seen firsthand the tactics many unscrupulous divorce attorneys and their clients will use to prolong divorce proceedings, or to get extra money that the law does not guarantee to them. I have seen the damage that is the result of lawyers and their clients treating divorce like a zero-sum game.
If your ex-spouse is treating you maliciously and/or unjustly (and I mean “unjust” in the sense of breaking the law in their treatment of you), then you owe it to yourself and your family to consult with and hire a good attorney. Hire an attorney who is both skilled and moral. Hire a lawyer who will do his/her best to help you and the other party comply with the law and resolve issues equitably and in a timely manner.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
Pending divorce spouse has moved out and stopped paying bills. Should I report to my attorney or just wait until we go to court?
Report this to your attorney immediately. There are many things—and at least two specific things—that you and your attorney can do in response in an effort to protect you and your family.
And the sooner you inform your attorney, the faster your attorney can respond and the more your attorney can do to ensure that your attorney’s actions provide you the greatest benefit and the greatest protection.
You want to ensure that bills and other important family expenses are being paid for your and your children’s well-being, to prevent losing your home to foreclosure or eviction, ensuring that you have heat and water and electricity, to ensure that the car is not repossessed, etc.
You want to ensure that bills and other obligations are paid in full and on time to protect your credit rating, which will be even more important to you after the decree of divorce is entered and you are newly single and will need to rely upon your credit alone.
If there are already temporary orders (also known as orders pendente lite) in place that order your spouse to pay some or all of certain family expenses, bills, and obligations, you and your attorney can file a motion with the court to enforce these orders and too hold your spouse in contempt for failing to pay them and to compel your spouse to pay them. If such orders are not yet in place,, you and your attorney can file a motion to obtain them for the purpose of ensuring that family expenses continue to be paid during the pendency off your divorce action.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
If you find an attorney who knows a sure-fire, fail-safe way to defend an ex-spouse or an ex-boyfriend/ex-girlfriend against “false accusations,” that attorney is likely a multimillionaire because possessing such a skill/power would be superhuman/miraculous.
False accusations exist because they often work. They often work because judges are not infallible and undeceivable.
False allegations calculated to exploit a judge’s compassion, pity, vanity, fears, self-interest, and biases are easy to “prove” or at least hard to persuade a judge to reject, even if the judge is skeptical of the merits of the allegations. Such as? Allegations of domestic violence, spouse abuse, child abuse, and stalking. No judge wants to respond to such allegations by denying “relief” in response to such allegations on the grounds that the applicant has failed to carry her (it’s almost always a woman; that may not be politically correct, but it’s true) burden of proof, only to have the respondent put her in the hospital or morgue later, so judges knowingly and deliberately err on the side of caution, taking a “better safe than sorry” approach. That way, they don’t end up in the news and taking flak for “failing” hapless victims. Sure, recklessly issued restraining and protective orders ruin the lives of innocent guys, but so what? That doesn’t make the news and the judge doesn’t have to worry about losing his/her job over it.
If an ex uses illness to stop working, can she get more alimony?
Can being debilitated by illness be a reason for a spouse receiving alimony or more alimony than he/she would have received in the absence of the debilitating illness? Of course.
Merely being ill does not mean one will receive or receive more alimony than would have been received in the absence of the illness. Plenty of people have health troubles but hold full-time employment. One’s illness(es) must render one unable to support himself/herself, either fully or partially, before illness will result in more alimony being awarded, and even then, only if the spouse who would be paying alimony has the ability to pay the alimony and still meet his/her living expenses as closely to the standard living/lifestyle to which the parties were accustomed during the marriage.
And merely being able to prove “I am sick” or “I have X disease” won’t presumptively entitle you to alimony or “condition”-related alimony. The disease has to be debilitating despite your best efforts.
If you believe that you can fake an illness to get alimony or more alimony, that’s extremely difficult in today’s world. Amazing ways to verify or refute one’s claims to being disabled have been invented and are only getting more accurate.
How do I console a father who has lost custody of his child?
“He’s [the father who lost custody] permanently damaged.” That’s what someone else wrote in response to your question. It’s true. Time lost between a parent and child is never found. These kinds of wounds can heal, but rarely will they heal fully or not leave scars.
There is still not just some consolation, but much consolation to be found, however.
First, all of us suffer injustices in life yet the overwhelming majority of us still have far more reasons to be happy than miserable. So does Dad. That’s not a Pollyanna view of life, it’s a fact. And a fact one must not let grief blind Dad to.
If one focuses on the negative to the exclusion of the good and positive, then all one will see is the negative and miss out on most or even all of the good. Parents who are alienated from their children have an obligation to themselves not to dwell on it. Feel the pain, of course. Don’t deny it. It’s inevitable and it’s necessary to let the pain run its proper course before you can start to recover.
But don’t let the pain drown you. Don’t let the pain and the bitterness deprive you of all the other good things life has in store for you. That’s what your alienating ex-spouse is hoping for. At the very least don’t give your alienating ex-spouse the satisfaction. Your kids need to see you can rise above this so that they believe they can rise above adversity too.
Second and more importantly (and this is the truth, even if it’s new to you or you think it’s silly; regardless, you have nothing to lose by exploring whether there really is consolation to be found here), by suffering and dying for you (and for your children), Jesus Christ has the power not only to right all wrongs in the next life, but has the power to comfort you and help you heal in this life now as well.
If an ex uses illness to stop working, can she get more alimony?
Can being debilitated by illness be a reason for a spouse receiving alimony or more alimony than he/she would have received in the absence of the debilitating illness? Of course.
Merely being ill does not mean one will receive or receive more alimony than would have been received in the absence of the illness. Plenty of people have health troubles but hold full-time employment. One’s illness(es) must render one unable to support himself/herself, either fully or partially, before illness will result in more alimony being awarded, and even then, only if the spouse who would be paying alimony has the ability to pay the alimony and still meet his/her living expenses as closely to the standard living/lifestyle to which the parties were accustomed during the marriage.
And merely being able to prove “I am sick” or “I have X disease” won’t presumptively entitle you to alimony or “condition”-related alimony. The disease has to be debilitating despite your best efforts.
If you believe that you can fake an illness to get alimony or more alimony, that’s extremely difficult in today’s world. Amazing ways to verify or refute one’s claims to being disabled have been invented and are only getting more accurate.
I was divorced and lied to during my divorce and I am disabled can I take my ex back to court for spousal support?
Can you try? Yes. Will you succeed? Probably not. Unless you can prove (not persuade, but demonstrate by objectively, independently verifiable proof) that your ex-husband defrauded the court, you’re likely stuck with the decree and court orders you’ve got. This is extremely difficult in its own right. This is also extremely expensive and most people don’t have that kind of money.
I was divorced and lied to during my divorce and I am disabled can I take my ex back to court for spousal support?
Can you try? Yes.
Will you succeed? Probably not.
Unless you can prove (not persuade, but demonstrate by objectively, independently verifiable proof) that your ex-husband defrauded the court, you’re likely stuck with the decree and court orders you’ve got. This is extremely difficult in its own right. This is also extremely expensive and most people don’t have that kind of money.
My ex allows our children to watch TikTok. Is this grounds for seeking full custody?
I forbade my child from watching TikTok because I worry it lowers IQ.
However, my ex-spouse allows them to use it at their house. Is this child endangerment grounds for a lawsuit for full custody?
In my professional opinion (and remember, I’m not your attorney, I’m just sharing my opinion, so if you want to know what the law in your jurisdiction is and how it applies, consult a local attorney), no. Now if you could prove the child is watching pornographic TikTok videos or heinously violent TikTok videos while in the other parent’s care and custody or other videos that are so clearly inappropriate and harmful to child as to shock the conscience and cause a reasonable person to conclude that the child is clearly being seriously harmed as a result, then you may have grounds for asking a court to intervene and to take steps to protect the child, but that probably does not constitute sufficient not grounds for seeking sole legal and/or physical custody of the child.
What is a motion to bifurcate a divorce in Utah, and why should I care to know?
By Brian N. Godfrey, Legal Assistant
A motion to bifurcate to dissolve your marriage means that the court declares your marriage ended, but all the other remaining issues of your divorce action, such as child custody and division of marital assets and responsibility for marital debt remain to be resolved either by settlement or trial, if it comes to that.
Why would anyone want to dissolve the marriage first and leave the other issues to be resolved later? I’ll tell you why based upon my personal experience and the experience of others we’ve helped obtain a bifurcation.
I got a bifurcation in my divorce. My ex filed for divorce against me and I countersued her for divorce, so we both wanted to be divorced from each other, and the court knew that. In my motion to bifurcate I informed that court that my wife and I were separated a while and that I was ready to move on with my life as a single person again, without having any legal burdens and responsibilities of being married to a woman who didn’t want to be married to me either. People in that situation may want to start dating or maybe even have met someone new and want to get re-married. Luckily, my bifurcation was granted because my ex agreed with it. It’s hard to imagine how a bifurcation could harm anyone. Even if my ex-wife hadn’t wanted a bifurcation or didn’t care one way or the other, it was a relief to me. I’ve seen the same thing in the lives of our clients in the law office where I work.
A surprising number of people argue that a bifurcated divorce would “slow down the divorce case” although this is a patently ridiculous argument to make. “Why on earth would someone want to have a bifurcation and not just finish the entire thing all at once?” they say. I can think of many situations. In my own experience, getting out of my marriage was a real accomplishment that helped me know my divorce was moving forward, not stalling! It was a big and meaningful first step that encouraged me to continue efforts to finalize the rest of my divorce.
There is one good reason for opposing a bifurcation, but even that can be worked around. If you or your spouse receive medical or health insurance benefits due to your status as a spouse. Dissolving the marriage by bifurcation would strip you of your status as a spouse which would cause you to lose your insurance coverage. But unless you are someone who is hard to cover or cannot get affordable insurance on your own, bifurcation doesn’t mean you can never get replacement insurance. We’ve even worked around the insurance issue by having the party who requested the bifurcation offer to pay for his or her spouse’s new insurance coverage for a few months until new coverage is in place.
Claiming that a bifurcation will inevitably slow a divorce case down or unavoidably puts it at serious risk of slowing down or never being completed is bunk. And it’s obvious why: because if either spouse were to try to abandon the divorce case after bifurcation then the other spouse could pipe up to the court and complain and get the case moving. And if both you and your spouse were to try to abandon your divorce case after bifurcation the court can get the case moving.
So unless you know of a truly good reason against bifurcation that I don’t, it is impossible to convince me that a bifurcation that dissolves your marriage up front is “harmful” to anyone or “slows down the process” because for me, it did just the opposite.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277