When I arrived for the divorce hearing, I found my attorney Donald Rice in a conference room with my ex and his attorney Jeffrey Shaw. Rice sat me down outside the conference room and told me that if I agreed to accept $100 a week in maintenance that in return my ex was willing to offer an immediate settlement. Rice assured me that at the next hearing in October, my ex would turn over $50,000 cash from his retirement account.
Wow, I thought did I have a great divorce attorney or what?
Although my ex grossed approximately $100,000 a year, I agreed to the $100 a week in maintenance because I thought I was receiving my settlement and would be back home in Michigan within a month. I made the mistake of trusting my attorney.
During the hearing, I noticed that neither attorney put on the record this agreed upon property settlement offer.
A few weeks after this hearing, I received my ex's 401k statement in the mail from his company, Dunkin Donuts. Enclosed in the statement was information reminding employees that their 401k accounts would remain frozen from August through January, as the company transferred their accounts to another investment company.
When I contacted Attorney Rice about this, he did not question it. He simply asked me, "How did you find out?"
In other words, my ex and attorneys Shaw and Rice knew at the September hearing that my ex could not make any type of settlement via his 401k until after January 2008. I had been tricked into believing I was immediately receiving a settlement in order to get me to accept $100 a week in maintenance instead of the $400 a week I was entitled to.
Of course, I wanted to fire Attorney Donald Rice and hire another attorney, but here was the problem: I had no access to the marital assets. I could not afford to pay for an attorney. You see, my ex was paying Attorney Rice's fees. So in essence, Rice was working for my ex.
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