Sample of Cases Involving Post-Judgment Enforcement and Modification Issues
David Wilkinson has significant experience in dealing with post-judgment matters including actions involving enforcing orders and judgments and actions involving modifying orders and judgments. Through the years, David handled these cases by using various methods including negotiation and litigation. Below is a small sample of the actions handled by David Wilkinson over the past two decades involving post-decree enforcement and modification issues.
David represented a business attorney that was served a post-judgment motion by his ex-wife to set aside several agreements between the attorney and the parties’ judgment that incorporated a Marital Settlement (Separation) Agreement. The ex-wife alleged that the attorney coerced her into signing the marital agreement, that the marital settlement agreement was not fair to her, that several subsequent agreements were also not fair to the ex-wife, and she sought significant monetary sanctions against the attorney/client. In reality, each of the parties’ agreements was extremely fair to both sides and although the ex-wife had an aggressive and unreasonable attorney, David was able to defend each of the ex-wife’s claims. The court found in favor of David’s client on all issues.
David has handled many cases involving collection of past-due support. In one case, he represented an ex-wife who was owed a significant amount of spousal support arrears from the ex-husband. The ex-husband decided that because he lived out of the country, in South America, that he did not need to pay on his support obligation. The firm filed an action against the ex-husband seeking enforcement of the orders and sanctions. When the ex-husband came back into the United States, David and his team tracked down and served the man with the pleadings. Ultimately, the ex-husband ended up paying the amount owed.
In another case, David represented a father in a post-divorce issue because the parties could not agree to what school their daughter would attend. After much discovery and information-gathering, David requested the court take testimony of the parties. At trial, the court found that David’s client, the father, was thinking about the child’s best interests in wanting the child to attend the school in his neighborhood.
David represented a mother in one particular divorce case. During the case, the husband/father wanted a significant amount of custody and continued to file motion after motion seeking more custody. David was able to secure an extremely favorable custody order for the mother, which was in the best interests of both the mother and the child. After the divorce decree was entered, the father filed another motion seeking an increase in his visitation percentage and a decrease in his child support obligation. After significant preparation and at a hearing on the husband’s motion, the court decreased the father’s time with the child and increased his child support obligation.
In another post-judgment case, David represented an ex-wife that wished to increase the amount of spousal support her ex-husband paid her on a monthly basis. The ex-wife argued that the court should increase the amount because her income did not increase over the years after the entry of judgment as expected, and her health was slowly failing to the point that her healthcare expenses had slowly increased. After significant pre-trial motions and discovery, the court at trial ordered an increase in spousal support to the ex-wife.
In a child support collection matter involving a past-due child support amount in the many tens of thousands, the father failed to pay support for many years. Approximately 10 years after the order was initially entered, and after the father failed to make any payments, the father was likely going to receive an inheritance from his father who had passed away. David moved quickly to file a motion to determine the exact amount owed by the father, and an emergency (ex parte) hearing to request the court issue an injunction that disallowed the trustee of the deceased person’s trust from distributing any money to the father as an inheritance. The mother was paid in full, including principal, interest and sanctions, before the father received any money as an inheritance.
We handle many cases in Middlesex County (courthouses are in Woburn and Lowell) and Norfolk County (Canton), as well as Essex County in Salem. We also handle matters in Bristol County, including the New Bedford, Fall River and Taunton courthouses. We also serve all courts in Plymouth County including the Family and Probate Courthouses in Plymouth and Brockton. We have offices conveniently located in Needham, Boston, Hingham and New Bedford.