Or it may cost a bundle.  A jury just awarded a 1st wife $500,000 who sued Alford Patterson’s 2nd wife for “alienation of affection and criminal conversation”.  The alienation of affection is pretty obvious.  The “criminal conversation” I assume refers to the adultery:

The suit states that the Pattersons reared two children and “acquired substantial property and wealth” during their marriage from the mobile home park they owned off U.S. Highway 401 Business in Raeford. It alleges that Basurto met Alford Patterson in 2005 when the Pattersons were selling their business – Basurto’s brother bought part of it – and that they had a not-so-secret affair for several months.

Laura Patterson said in the suit that she was so humiliated that she moved out of her Raeford house to a mobile home in Holden Beach that she and her husband own.

A jury deliberated for 30 minutes Friday before ruling in her favor.

This would have been a good case for my mother to pursue given similar facts but she was too busy suing my father to even think about suing his 2nd wife.

So I guess the moral of the story is that if you are going to steal someone’s spouse, you better be very careful/secretive or have a good attorney.

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned – William Congreve

Suzette Howes owes my sister and me $1.8 million plus interest as per the judgment shown here.

And the government has information about her credit, customs, social security, medicare and tax records.  Why does Suzette’s right to privacy trump our legal claim?  In order to protect her privacy, could not a disinterested third party be engaged to review the government’s records and provide information that would help locate her whereabouts and her assets?

Back in the 1980s, I attended a seminar for accountants that was about making yourself “judgment proof”.  The entire seminar was about how to keep your assets from being seized by creditors. Why is it OK to teach people how to stiff others on their legal obligations? If someone taught a seminar on how to mentally abuse your spouse and get away with it, would that be OK?  Isn’t denying someone their right to monies owed to them a potential form of abuse?  If my mother had lived to be 94 years old like her mother did, the monies owed to her from this judgment would have been used to pay for her support.  Denying her those monies would have resulted in a tortuous decline in her standard of living.  Isn’t that a form of mental abuse?

Even though mom did not make it to 94 years of age, her being deprived of the maintenance and support due her certainly diminished her quality of life and may have hastened her death.

Why is it OK to avoid your obligations?  Doesn’t Fred Goldman deserve every penny he can retrieve from O.J. Simpson’s assets?  isn’t it true that when people are legally able to avoid obligations that they are capable of paying, someone still has to pay.  If I don’t pay my creditors, don’t you pay a higher interest rate on your purchases or your loan as a result?  If so, why not let the government help in any way they can with their records in order to further the public good of seeing that legally determined obligations get satisfied by the debtor?

Think about it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbHdDAPqcs8

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