Single Jeopardy Read Free Page A

Settlement Agreement was quite simple: she owned the house we lived in before the marriage, so she kept it afterwards. There were no kids involved. In a community property state like California, the courts can treat appreciation in real estate value during the marriage as a joint asset, so we decided to forgo that argument and in exchange I’d keep clear title to my old back-yard Chris Craft.
    As any married man knows, there are times when the absolute truth just doesn’t apply. One instance is the classic situation of when the wife turns around in front of you and asks if the dress she’s wearing makes her look fat. The problem is that in most other cases a little fabrication can usually come back and bite you in the ass.
    Before having that old wood Chris Craft lifted by crane off the truck and dropped into our yard, I may have mentioned to my wife that even if she doesn’t particularly like boats, this one will be worth at least fifty thousand when I’m finished fixing it up, so it’s really a good investment, considering the fact that I got it for only eight thousand.
    That came back to bite me when her lawyer was making up our ‘simple’ property settlement agreement. In order for me to keep the boat for myself, he took that ‘future value’ into consideration, and in order to keep the boat and not look like a liar, I had to give up my entire interest in the appreciation of the house while we were married. The matter of alimony was settled by my promising to give her fifty percent of the net profits from my law practice for two years. This provision was added just before my suspension took effect and was another reason she was pissed off. Now she might have to wait several years before I started earning money again as an attorney – and then it would be a slow curve to build up a new practice. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
    I never handled a divorce case past the property settlement agreement stage... a decision made out of fear. Several years ago an associate in my former law firm asked me to fill in for him late one evening. A divorcing couple had worked out the division of their property and wanted to come to the office after work hours, to have it finalized on paper. They were both deputy sheriffs. Everything went fine until we got to the stereo, which she claimed was supposed to belong solely to her. The husband immediately jumped up and declared “over my dead body!” to which she replied“ that can be arranged!” At that time they both made gestures towards their respective holsters. This type of experience was not exactly what I expected when starting law school. I managed to calm them both down before the office became the OK Corral and haven’t handled a domestic relations case since then.
    But enough of what should only be minimally interesting to Dr. Phil, because another problem needing urgent solving just popped up. With our divorce coming to a close, I knew the back yard would no longer be available as a place to dock my boat for too much longer. Gary Koontz, schmuck at law, snidely relayed the eviction notice to me. This meant that a slip in some Marina must be gotten, because they frown on live-aboard boaters in the public park - which brings me to the reason why I’m now looking down at my law school alumni directory and trying to get up the nerve to call Melvin Braunstein – one of the most disliked persons in our old law school class… the other was Koontz.
    Some people are born with traits that become more pronounced as they get older. Melvin Braunstein was a putz all the way through high school and college and seventeen years ago he achieved the uppermost level of putzdom… he became an attorney.
    When my wife and I first started dating she was a naïve legal receptionist. The first time she heard me refer to another attorney as a schmuck, she was shocked... not by the word, but by the denigration of a professional attorney! I tried to explain that if a schmuck goes to