Real Estate Agent · Pensacola, FL · Member since 2015 · 28 posts · 7 votes
Completely sane ex wife closed account with around 8k in rental funds and our current tenants 1st and last month and kept and spent ALL without consulting me. I'm praying I might have some legal recourse now that our divorce is final to recoup at least my portion(since I'm legally on the title/deed) and we agreed to split all our assets down the middle. Since we both technically had rights to the money may I sue for my half? If so I'd love a referral of a NWI or Chicagoland attorney. House is located in Hammond, In. Thanks BP
If the dispute is over the Indiana house, you likely need to file in Indiana, and therefore need an Indiana-licensed attorney.
Keep in mind I don't know your situation at all. Just suggesting you don't spend time searching for a Chicago attorney who is only licensed in Illinois. Good luck!
If you are seeking to enforce a divorce decree, you need to file an action in the state where the divorce decree was entered, regardless of where the property is located.
If you are talking about a civil action to recover the funds, then Indiana is likely the appropriate venue.
Without knowing the details of the divorce decree or the property/bank account/tenancy, I cannot say which is more appropriate. Your lawyer will be able to assist you in this decision. Good luck!
Aren't the funds from this something that should have come up in the divorce and had been listed in the assets to divide?
I know at least for me I had planned for the worst, but tried to keep a somewhat friendly relationship and dialog with my ex. (I think this helped in the end), though it seemed as if the lawyers wanted to create conflict and try to stir things up. I'd go talk to a lawyer and see what your options are. It looks like you may have kids, so I'd also take time to consider how your decision may effect you, your kids, and what may be left of your relationship with your ex. (less conflict is better in my opinion, particularly taking into account if you have kids, they are inevitably going to be in your life one way or another pretty much forever).
for me, my ex had been spending like mad, the good side of this for me was, though I was left with a lot of debt, this made it easy for me to buy her out on a lot of things. In the end, I never had to move or sell my house, I kept most of the rental property (for some reason she didn't think they were worth much or didn't want to deal with them), and was used to living on almost nothing, so once it was all over, it was like all of a sudden having a large amount in extra cash each month because it wasn't being spent immediately upon hitting the bank account.
as a result of maintaining a level headed relationship with my ex however, we didn't need to liquidate or sell the business we still have (as our lawyers were trying to convince us to do)...
hopefully in the end things will become very good for you also.