Bay Area Divorce Lawyer Blog
As a new family law attorney my very first litigation matter involved a client whose spouse’s attorney was the (now disgraced) Mary Nolan. It was a horrific experience for me and I ultimately told my client that he needed to retain a different kind of attorney – the quintessential ‘shark’ litigator, if he was going to survive this divorce with Ms. Nolan on the other side. The great benefit that I derived from this experience is that I learned very early how ugly divorce could be, that the traditional process did not work for me or for the clients. I knew there had to be a better way.
A six-count indictment on September 18, 2012 charged Mary Nolan with tax evasion and unlawfully intercepting communications. Recently, Ms. Nolan pled not guilty to charges that she hired a private investigator, who was a central character in Contra Costa County’s “dirty DUI” scandal, to illegally install listening devices inside the car of a client’s ex-husband.
Mr. David Dutcher, from Contra Costa County, challenged a custody ruling he claims was based on a DUI charge that occurred after his ex-wife paid a blonde woman to trick into drunk driving. Mr. Dutcher said he was arrested and pulled over for drunken driving in 2008 shortly after he was propositioned by two young women to come home with them and ‘continue things in the hot tub’.
Mr Dutcher was on a second date with a woman he had met on Match.com, when she started chugging shots of hard alcohol and kissing him on the lips.
A second blonde showed up and they both flashed their breasts, before asking him to join them at home in the hot tub.
But just after leaving the restaurant, Mr Dutcher was pulled over for drunken driving with a blood alcohol content of 0.12 per cent, above the legal limit of 0.08 percent. Shortly after his conviction, his ex-wife’s lawyer, Ms. Nolan, filed a motion in court seeking to reduce his time with the children (and increase his ex-wife’s child support). Ms. Nolan claimed to have inadvertently learned of Dutcher’s drunken-driving episode and wanted to make the court aware of his run-in with the law. A judge then reduced the amount of time he could spend with his children because of his arrest. Mr. Dutcher has argued that his ex-wife orchestrated his arrest to gain advantage in the divorce case.
In another complaint filed in Contra Costa County Superior Court, Declan Woods of Clayton alleges that Mary Nolan was looking for an advantage for her client, Woods’ estranged wife. and hired Butler to set up Woods to be arrested for drunken driving.
Not surprisingly, in my case with Ms. Nolan, her trumped up allegations of domestic violence were very detrimental to my client and their five children who were only permitted to see each other through supervised visitation. This was a family of relatively modest means whose assets were quickly depleted by Ms. Nolan’s fee churning antics. And although the wife surely did not recognize it at the time and maybe still doesn’t, Ms. Nolan’s conduct was also detrimental to her since it resulted in an unnecessarily emotionally and financially burdensome process. And nor did her attorney encourage a positive and supportive co-parenting relationship, the touchstone of a good divorce.
But I was inspired to find a new and better way to help couples divorce and and trained in Collaborative Law and Mediation so that I could escape “the machine” and help couples divorce with their personal and economic dignity intact. To learn more about how to end your marriage with your personal and economic dignity intact, contact the Law and Mediation Office of Lorna Jaynes.