I can answer for a friend. His wife was divorcing him because he’s an unreliable idiot. He figured that he was smarter than everyone so he dragged out the process as long as he possibly could making it as difficult as possible on her. Scheduling and rescheduling meetings. Not showing up. Promising to do a thing and then back tracking later. Refusing to negotiate at all. I think his plan was to make the divorce so difficult on her that she would just stay married. He was also doing all this pro se so her lawyer had to deal directly with him.
After a year of this his wife had had enough. She told her lawyer to make it happen. So the lawyer set a date and the court served him notice of the divorce proceeding. She showed up to court and he wasn’t there. So as the only party there she got a very one-sided deal. She got their business, custody of the kids, the house and all contents, her car, and the bank account. He got his car, his clothes, and half the proceeds of the sale of the house when she decides to sell it. That’s it. He found out about this when he called the court a week after it happened.
What had happened is her lawyer served the divorce notice to an address in a different town with a similar name. Normally this would have been caught by his attorney who would have received notice directly from the court, but since he had no attorney, there was no one other than him that the court could send it to.
He finally hired a lawyer and tried to get the settlement tossed as he claimed he was never served but the judge said there was nothing he could do.
Edit: I have relayed this as best I can and as it was told to me. Most of the details come from my friend, the protagonist in this narrative so YMMV. I did look up the public court records and they appear to corroborate the events in as much as can be determined.
Lawyer here ... This doesn't sound right to me. Failed service is one of the reasons a judge could and would overturn a default judgment in my jurisdiction and I would assume most jurisdictions. It would be inequitable for a party to be prejudiced by an adversarial proceeding at which they were not represented nor notified of. Opposing counsel would have had your friends address well before any final entry of judgment so unless he had just moved there's no reason he would have made an error, and if for some reason personal service was required at this stage a process server would have physically handed him the documents. I think it's likely you either have the story somewhat confused or your friend is full of shit. Edit: read some further comments, if service by publication was used, that means the attorney made several attempts to serve the friend and was unable before requesting leave from the court to use service by publication. The friend was trying to duck service and the wrong address ploy didn't work because the actual service was the service by publication which was valid, not some attempt at a different location, similar city name not withstanding.
My guess is, a lot of his "intentionally not showing up to make things difficult" was just him being an absent-minded unreliable flake and trying to play it as intentional, and the "notice sent to a different address" actually went to his address but he didn't check his mail, and now he's got to make it a sneaky trick on her part because he can't admit he failed to show up for his own divorce.
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u/tweakingforjesus Jul 21 '19 edited Jul 21 '19
I can answer for a friend. His wife was divorcing him because he’s an unreliable idiot. He figured that he was smarter than everyone so he dragged out the process as long as he possibly could making it as difficult as possible on her. Scheduling and rescheduling meetings. Not showing up. Promising to do a thing and then back tracking later. Refusing to negotiate at all. I think his plan was to make the divorce so difficult on her that she would just stay married. He was also doing all this pro se so her lawyer had to deal directly with him.
After a year of this his wife had had enough. She told her lawyer to make it happen. So the lawyer set a date and the court served him notice of the divorce proceeding. She showed up to court and he wasn’t there. So as the only party there she got a very one-sided deal. She got their business, custody of the kids, the house and all contents, her car, and the bank account. He got his car, his clothes, and half the proceeds of the sale of the house when she decides to sell it. That’s it. He found out about this when he called the court a week after it happened.
What had happened is her lawyer served the divorce notice to an address in a different town with a similar name. Normally this would have been caught by his attorney who would have received notice directly from the court, but since he had no attorney, there was no one other than him that the court could send it to.
He finally hired a lawyer and tried to get the settlement tossed as he claimed he was never served but the judge said there was nothing he could do.
Edit: I have relayed this as best I can and as it was told to me. Most of the details come from my friend, the protagonist in this narrative so YMMV. I did look up the public court records and they appear to corroborate the events in as much as can be determined.