Kevin R. Johnson, Attorney

A wife retained me as her third attorney in her divorce, after two other law firms had gathered and indexed several large boxes of documents but had made little progress against her husband’s successful efforts to hide and obscure his income.  I discovered that the husband had recently filed years of back tax returns, and  I then went on the offensive, demanding fresh information from him, his employer and the IRS.  The court accepted my numbers for his income.  The result, after five hours of negotiation on the day of trial, was an agreed judgment scheduling substantial maintenance (alimony)payments to the wife over 10 years.

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A father came to me after the mother of his two young children essentially abducted them.  After asking to take the children with her to another state for a summer vacation, she had announced that she was going to stay there and live with the children.  Fortunately, the father had retained me quickly enough that we could still establish jurisdiction here in Illinois.  I obtained a court order for the immediate return of the children.  The father then took that court order to the other state and showed itto the law-enforcement and court people.  A judge there issued a brief order requiring the mother to turnover the children, and law-enforcement officers accompanied the father to the mother’s house to retrieve them.  They escorted the father’s car to the Interstate highway and he drove the children home to Illinois.  The court here awarded the father the custody of the children.

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A wife came to me, after her divorce had been started, and after her previous attorneys had charged her thousands of dollars while simply obtaining a series of continuances.  There had been very little progress in months.  There were substantial assets, but their true nature was obscured by sketchy record keeping, a tangled web of bank accounts,  the use of cash withdrawals and payments, unwritten business arrangements, and questionable money and asset transfers.  The husband had so far failed to participate in the divorce, but the divorce petition did not ask for specific items, so it could not serve as basis for a default judgment.  Once hired, I immediately rewrote the divorce petition, filed and served it on the husband, and basically forced him to begin responding.  He then hired an attorney.  I then sought the turnover and ‘discovery’ of all of the husband’s financial documents.  I took his sworn testimony in an hours-long deposition.  My team compared the bank statements obtained from the husband with those we obtained directly from the banks.  We found that the versions provided by the husband had been altered –cut and pasted — to hide some sizable transfers and withdrawals.  Husband appeared to be hiding his cash flow, along with the ownership of several assets.  As the day of trial approached, and we finalized our preparations, we were in a position to negotiate from strength.  Husband had originally claimed he was too poor to pay anything substantial to wife.  Our trial binders, full of exhibits, were assembled and ready.  In a pretrial conference, the judge noted the false bank statements, and indicated that she couldn’t believe anything the husband said.  On the 1st day of trial, the husband  offered, and the wife accepted, settlement offer that immediately gave the wife over $1 million in cash and real estate.

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 A husband came to me for help in a divorce case.  He was a very active and involved father, and he wanted equal parenting time with his two teenage children, with each parent paying the children’s expenses while on that parent’s time.  The wife, represented by attorneys, asked for an award of monthly child-support payments.  The attorneys had a conference with the judge, and both sides made their arguments.  The judge made several recommendations, including that neither parent should pay child support.  The case was settled with a written agreement that gave  each parent 50% of the parenting time, with a schedule for holidays and special occasions, and ordered no child-support payments to or from either parent.

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 A wife came to me for help.  Her husband had fled to another state with his young son.  Wife had already hired another attorney, who had filed a case in a different county but had made little progress.  After being hired as the wife’s new attorney, I filed a new case in Cook County and obtained a court order for the child’s return.  The wife (my client) was awarded custody of the boy, and we reached a written agreement on how parenting-time should be shared, and how the husband should pay child support.

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A father came to me for help after the mother of his child died, and after the child’s grandmother had taken control of the child, and filed a petition for custody. Also, the grandmother was actively preventing the father from visiting the child.  Along with her custody petition in family court, the grandmother had gone to guardianship court and asked to be appointed as the child’s guardian.  First, I obtained an order dismissing the guardianship case.  I then asked the family court to reconsider its decision regarding the grandmother’s ‘standing’ in the case, and the Court ruled that the grandmother had no  right to seek custody at all.She was not allowed to stay in the case.  At the conclusion of our six-month court battle,the child was handed over to the father, who was granted sole custody.

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 A woman came to me with a request:  She wanted to collect child support from the father of her  child,but the man was claiming to have no income (and thus no ability to pay child support).  After careful preparation and the use of court procedures, I was able to show the judge that the amount of money flowing through the man’s household greatly exceeded his claims.  The judge finally entered a judgment against the man for over $10,000 in past child support, along with an ongoing requirement to pay several hundred dollars per month in current child support.

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 A mother came to me with a problem:  Over the years, she and the father of her child had made informal agreements for summer parenting time.  The father lived in another state, and the child would spend several weeks of each summer there with him.  There had never been a court case, and there were no court orders, but the child had always been returned on time for the new school year.  Not this time.  The summer was ending, but the child was not returned.  Father made excuses for the delay.  Mother became more and more frantic.  She repeatedly requested the child’s return, and even traveled to that other state to ask the police for help.  They told her they would not help her, since there was no court case, and no court orders.  While ignoring the mother’s attempts to obtain her child, the father enrolled her in school in that other state.  Fortunately, when the mother hired me, there was still time to invoke the ‘UCCJEA’ (the interstate custody law) and ask a Chicago judge to order the return of the child.  We prepared a detailed petition for custody, giving the history of the child’s residence and care,and asking for the immediate return of the child.  Within ten days of my starting work, the father was ordered by a Chicago judge to return the child, and the father drove the daughter back and turned her over to the mother.  The child resumed her life with mother, and was enrolled in school.  By then, father had hired an attorney.  We worked out an agreement for the father to have parenting time with the child, but on a specific schedule, under a court order.  We also obtained an order requiring the father to make child-support payments to the mother. 

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A father came to me after his ex-wife asked the court for permission to move to another state with the couple’s teenage daughters and her new husband.  Although the wife had offered several reasons why the move would be good for the children, and she had taken the children on a tour of their “new” area,the father knew that such a move would cause his parenting time to be severely restricted.  We filed a court response and expressed strong objections to the move.  During a court appearance, the judge expressed strong doubt that the move would be approved.  The wife then withdrew her petition to remove the children.

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