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How To Lose Your Ohio Divorce Case

Articles usually focus on how to win your divorce case or how an attorney can help you win.  I have written many of those articles, too.  This article takes a different approach by discussing how to lose your Ohio divorce case.  While the topic is meant to be somewhat humorous, these are some very real ways someone can undermine their divorce case.  This article does not mean any disrespect for the emotional pain that often accompanies the divorce process.  Instead, the article examines the importance of properly addressing one’s own emotional pain so that one can have a better outcome.  The key word throughout the article is “repeatedly.”  An occasional lapse in judgment can often be overcome.  Repeated lapses in judgment sometimes cannot be overcome.

1.  Abandon Your Children

You should leave your children with your spouse and rarely see them.  Do not call your children, either.  Make sure you miss their choir concerts, band concerts, school plays, soccer games baseball games softball games, football games, and birthdays.  When you do have your children, you should go out with your friends and have other people watch your children.  When you are home with your children, you should sleep or spend a lot of time on your cell phone or playing video games.  If you are playing video games, do not play video games with your children.

2.  Repeatedly Give Up

After your attorney files motions for you and prepares for hearing, make sure you tell your spouse that you are really willing to settle for much less than what your attorney is asking for.  Give in on these points at the hearing, too.  Make sure your testimony is the first time your attorney learns about your willingness to give in.

When you are in a face-to-face negotiation with your spouse and the attorneys, do not give your attorney the chance to reject a bad offer from your spouse.  Immediately accept this offer and watch your attorney try to squirm out of this predicament. 

3.  Hire the cheapest attorney you can find.

Do not look for an experienced attorney.  Look for the one that will start for the lowest price and the lowest hourly rate.  Hopefully, this attorney will not even know the bad offer is bad and you can finish your case quickly while your spouse gets more than he or she should have gotten.

4.  Stop paying your lawyer

Never pay your attorney in a timely fashion.  Ignore your attorney’s requests to cover costs such as depositions, filing fees, and private investigator fees. 

5.  Call your lawyer just to complain

Email your attorney at 8:00 p.m. and then call your attorney at 8:00 a.m. the next morning to complain that your attorney did not answer your email.  Use this opportunity to randomly complain about your spouse, the court and how unfair this process is to you.  Make sure you do not give any facts in an organized fashion.  In doing so, it is really important that you mix recent events with ancient history and speculation about the future, and make it all sound like it happened yesterday.  If your attorney begins to suspect that these events did all happen yesterday and starts asking questions, ignore the questions and keep talking.  Do this at least once per week.  Several times per week, send emails notifying your attorney of your every passing thought.  If your attorney calls you to follow up on these conversations and emails in order to catch you while you are calmer and in a better position to answer your attorney’s questions, ignore your attorney’s call.  In other words, only communicate with your attorney when you are angry or emotionally distraught. 

6.  Do Not Bring In the Information Requested By Your Lawyer

Do not look for the documents your attorney requested.  Make your attorney blindly subpoena years worth of documents consisting of reams of papers.  When your attorney requests your help in looking through the papers, claim that you cannot possibly remember any of this information, even if one of the biggest items is staring at you on the first page.  When your attorney asks for a time frame to look for the issues, make sure you give the wrong year.  For example, if you received a large check one month after Indianapolis won the Superbowl, make sure you never mention that fact in describing when you got the check.  Just say you got the check a long time ago.  You could also say you got the check in 2003.  Either of these answers will keep your attorney far away from the spring of 2007 (Indianapolis beat Chicago in the Superbowl in 2007).  Call your attorney often to see if your attorney found the information.  Get into a long conversation about how upset that issue makes you feel, without revealing any important information that would help your attorney.

If you do help your attorney in the process, make sure you miss plenty of items.  A good way to do this is to wait until thirty minutes prior to your appointment with your attorney and just try to wing it.  Never bounce any of the information off of other people who might be able to help.  For example, if your deceased father gave you that check, do not ask your mother when the check may have been issued.  Do not show your mother the records and ask if that could be the check.   

7. Do not help your attorney in hearings.

Your attorney may give you a legal pad and pen to take notes and suggest questions. Write down nothing. If you must write something, make sure it makes no sense. An example is to simply write down “that didn’t happen.” When your attorney asks you what did not happen, tell him you do not remember. If your attorney asks you questions while you are sitting next to him at the table, give the shortest answer possible. If the other side says something that is clearly wrong, do not tell your attorney.

Conclusion

If you follow the advice in this article, you can ensure that you have the worst possible results in your divorce case.  Your attorney will be as unprepared as he or she could possibly be.  The opposition will be looking forward to their day in court.

Attorney Daniel Gigiano

Attorney Daniel Gigiano was admitted to the practice of law in Illinois in 1993.  In 1999, he was admitted to practice in Ohio.  In 2000, he took his experience to a private practice in Wadsworth, Medina County, Ohio, and devotes a substantial portion of his practice to family law.  Attorney Gigiano has maintained a practice in Wadsworth since that time.  In his practice, he is committed to using best practices in order to avoid the problems set forth in this article.  Attorney Gigiano takes pride in helping his clients through difficult times and does his best to balance the need to counsel his clients through tough moments while finding the appropriate times to gather information that may assist his clients’ cases.  He can be reached at 330-336-3330.