OUTCOME: Avoided judgment entry against client; negotiated stipulation of settlement and payment plan; eliminated large portion of amount owing.
I represented the Defendant debtor, who had retained me to help with a number of her other personal matters. The creditor, FIA Card Services, alleged a balance of almost $24,000 on a card used by the D...efendant, and had filed in Superior Court for a judgment for this balance. Defendant and her husband were in the process of securing a loan on a home, and a judgment against her would have been detrimental to those proceedings. After requesting and receiving verification of the debt from the creditor, I opened negotiations with their corporate counsel to see if we could reach any settlement agreement that would avoid a judgment being entered. I was able to negotiate the total balance owed down to only $15,000.00, and subsequently established a 48-month payment plan that the Defendant could reasonably repay.
Family
F.S. v. L.P. (Client approved, anonymized)
Jul 01, 2015
OUTCOME: Prevented potential kidnapping of child; Client's name now on child's birth certificate; Favorable parenting time schedule implemented.
I represented the Plaintiff in this matter, who contacted me regarding the possible imminent kidnapping of his infant daughter to Brazil by the Defendant. Defendant was the child’s mother and a Brazili...an national with work-related VISA. Plaintiff was the child’s biological father, and lived out-of-state. The parties were unmarried, lived separately, and the Plaintiff’s name was not listed on the child’s birth certificate. The parties had, prior to the incident, been engaging in an informal parenting time schedule that was largely dictated by the whims of the Defendant, which the Plaintiff found frustrating and unmanageable. Following a significant disagreement between the parties prior to my engagement, the Defendant made a highly credible threat that she intended leave the country with the child within the next 24 hours to prevent the Plaintiff from pursuing his rightful parenting time. Defendant then stopped responding to any telephonic or e-mail contact. The Plaintiff immediately contacted me regarding the circumstances and his concerns that the Defendant might be flying out of the country within a matter of hours.
To prevent the child’s removal from the country, I prepared an Order to Show Cause on his behalf which we immediately filed with the Superior Court for an injunctive Order restricting the travel of the Defendant and further ordering the relinquishment of both her passport and that of the parties’ child. The matter was heard later that day, and the Order was granted. This Order was then furnished to the TSA and airport management at Newark, JFK, and LaGuardia International Airports respectively. These efforts were coordinated with local law enforcement, who were asked to do a welfare check of the Defendant’s address in order to ascertain the child’s location. Within a few hours, the child was located in the care of a third party who had been responsible for the child’s well-being while the Defendant was at work.
The Defendant was brought before the Superior Court and per the terms of the Order surrendered her travel documents into the Court’s custody until the resolution of the matter. A motion was made to the Court to conduct a paternity test for the purposes of adding the Plaintiff’s name as the father to the child’s birth certificate. A fixed, court-ordered parenting time schedule was requested to ensure that the Plaintiff would be able to enjoy parenting time with his daughter at his home out-of-state. Rather than drag my client through the costly process of litigating the entire matter through trial, I instead worked over the following weeks to produce a reasonable settlement agreement that addressed all of his concerns. The Defendant expressed a desire to take the parties’ child to Brazil for periodic visits with her side of the family, and the Plaintiff ultimately decided he had no objection to this premise. However, in light of the prior threat made by the Defendant, the parties agreed that she would be made to post a reasonable bond to ensure her return from abroad, and that such travel would only be permitted after the child’s birth certificate had been corrected.
This case began as urgent attempt to prevent a kidnapping and ultimately resolved in an outstandingly positive manner. As a result, my client now enjoys the regular and routine parenting time he dearly desired at his out-of-state residence, rather than being permitted to see his child at the Defendant’s whims. His name is now properly on the child’s birth certificate, protecting his parental rights against any future problems.
