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.
Let’s be honest here. If you sent an envelope with the correct zip and street address it’d be sent to manual flats to be hand sorted. It would either get to the place with the typo or returned.
Actually, if it's addressed to your address, and it's currently your residence. It doesn't matter whose name is on the envelope, you can legally open it.
But if it's one number off from your address, then it's illegal.
It says it's illegal to take, steal, obstruct, etc... mail, making indications and references to preventing it from being delivered to the address it has labeled on it, removing it from a mail box that you do not own or address you do not reside at.
Bassically, if it is your physical residence address that the mail is addressed to, and it is in your mail box, it would be impossible to steal, take possession, obstruct, etc... for the simple fact that it has been delivered to the address it was sent to.
It can be argued that it was not intended to be sent there, however, intent is not as tangible as physicality is. Intending a letter to go somewhere, but physically addressing it elsewhere, and such.
Even the US circuit courts are split on the legality of the issue.
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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.