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Todd D. Rakoff, Alex Whiting, and Kyle Virgien

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Family Property Dispute Facilitation

The Case of the Encumbered Employee

The Case of the Section 8 Housing Vouchers

Todd D. Rakoff, Paul Radvany, and Rebecca Goldberg

(206) 547-1486

Case Studies in Family Law, Divorce & Child Custody

General custody, a stalking spouse.

The father, a high tech computer expert, had taken it upon himself to bug the entire house, including the phones and home computer. At the same time, the mother discovered hard core pornography on the home computer, a click away from the children’s Disney games. The computer was forensically downloaded by a computer consultant and a private investigator was hired to de-bug the home. With all of the evidence of the father’s dysfunctional behavior, a parenting plan was reached in mediation in which he agreed to go for a deviancy evaluation and went from supervised visitation to weekend visits over the course of many months.

Non-Parental Custody

Grandparents sought custody of their teenage daughter’s child after she abandoned the child. The child’s father refused to have any relationship with the child. We successfully established paternity on the out-of-state father and obtained a parenting plan granting the grandparents custody of the child.

International Custody

Threats to remove the child from the country.

The mother had married an Afghani national, who was a professional working in the United States. The mother was rightly concerned about having the father take their daughter out of the country. Our experienced family law team negotiated a parenting plan with many safeguards and had immigration flag the child to prevent a kidnapping situation.

Return of A Child

The father removed the child from the State of Washington to a country that was not a signatory to the Hague Convention. We filed a motion for contempt against the father. The court granted our motion and ordered the father to jail pending the return of the child.

Substance Abuse

The mother and father followed a parenting plan based on equal custody for several years. When the child hit adolescence, he became addicted to drugs and alcohol and stopped attending school. The mother was in denial regarding the extent of the child’s addiction. We successfully helped the father obtain a parenting plan changing child custody so that he could ensure the child successfully completed in-patient treatment.

The mother suffered from severe alcoholism warranting monthly in-patient treatment. The father was a high-level executive in a large local corporation who struggled to help the mother with her alcoholism during the entire relationship. Our office helped the father obtain a parenting plan limiting the mother’s visitation to supervised visits, subject to intermittent alcohol testing.

Mental Health Allegations

Professional family.

A stay-at-home mom married to a health care professional prided herself on her abilities as a wife and mother. The father was a demanding perfectionist. During the divorce, the father turned the mother’s homemaking abilities against her, and accused her of having an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCD). Based on the mother’s alleged OCD, the father tried to get custody of the children. We brought in psychological experts and our client, the mother was awarded custody at trial.

Wrongful Sex Abuse

A father was accused of sexually abusing his children. After much litigation, including mental health evaluations of both parents, it was discovered that the mother had made false accusations. The psychologists determined that the mother’s abuse history had caused her to be “hyper-vigilant” about possible sex abuse. My client, the father, received forty percent residential time with his children.

Domestic Violence Issues

Mother as victim.

A mother had been the victim of ongoing psychological abuse by the father, who had drug and alcohol problems. After psychological evaluations of both parties, the father was ordered into anger management, while the mother went into a domestic violence shelter. A parenting plan was ultimately reached by agreement wherein the father had supervised visitation. Our client, the mother, went back to school with the proceeds of the financial settlement and is doing well parenting her daughter alone.

Father Wrongfully Accused

A mother strategically accused a father of domestic violence and obtained a Domestic Violence Protection Order against the father to gain a leg up on the divorce process by legally restricting his visitation. We hired a professional parenting evaluator who performed psychological testing on both parents and determined that the mother’s allegations were unfounded. Ultimately, we negotiated the dismissal of the Protection Order and obtained a parenting plan providing the father equal residential time.

Division of Marital Assets

Valuing a family owned business.

A husband and wife owned a successful business and were in deep disagreement about the value of the business and how to split their assets. Working with financial professionals and business lawyers, our family law team was able to mediate a settlement in which both parties received substantial assets as well as a piece of ongoing business.

Long-Term Marriage with Complex Financial Assets

The husband and wife had a 30 year marriage and owned a privately held Pacific Northwest business. Working with a team of financial professionals, we successfully traced the community and separate property interests in the estate, valued the business and considered various tax ramifications and advantages to successfully reach a settlement where the wife received one-half of the assets, spousal maintenance and established children’s trusts.

Dissolution of Long-Term Marriage with Lifetime Spousal Maintenance Award at Trial

A fifty-year marriage where the husband had been the primary breadwinner and the wife was the secondary breadwinner. The wife accused the husband of squandering several million dollars in a Swiss bank account. Our firm represented the husband in tracing separate property and community property interests in their estate. At trial, our firm successfully defended the husband against the wife’s claims of hiding assets. The husband was awarded one half of the wife’s retirement income as spousal maintenance and his share of the family home.

Amicable “Short-term” Marriage with No Children

The husband and wife were married for 3 years. The primary assets included the wife’s pension, the couple’s vehicles, the husband’s recording business, and their home. We represented the wife in a low-cost settlement where she walked away with the pension in full, the home and one of the vehicles.

If you have further questions concerning these issues or other issues involved in your Seattle or Bellevue-Redmond divorce, or want to arrange a confidential consultation, please contact us today. We have offices in Seattle and Bellevue-Redmond and can meet with you in one or both of those locations as needed. We look forward to meeting you and helping you achieve the divorce solutions you seek.