Dealing with a Problematic Soon-to-Be Ex: A Conversation with NLG Family Law Attorney Sterling Lovelady
Seth is still away so we’re going to be inviting various people from NLG Family Law to sit in with Pete and take on some other questions about divorce. In today’s episode, attorney Sterling Lovelady joins Pete to talk about dealing with a problematic ex. The first subject they tackle is the challenging decision about whether to leave your alcoholic spouse or not when they’re in a time of need. Should you feel responsible? How do you navigate through those feelings?
The second topic they tackle focuses on situations where you might be tied into other legal proceedings with the person you’re trying to divorce. Maybe it’s a situation with the IRS and you jointly owe back taxes. Or perhaps you owned a business together and it’s dealing with a lawsuit. How do you handle that?
The third topic is a tough one, and luckily one that’s infrequent. Still, it does happen. What do you do if your soon-to-be ex doesn’t want custody of the kids? How do you handle it? It’s a tough situation made all the more difficult because of the kids whose lives will be affected.
We talk through a listener question which asks both about some legal term clarification involving piercing the attorney-client privilege as well as about challenging venue for your case. We also take some time to learn more about Sterling and what he does for fun. Hint: check out the links below to find out!
Links & Notes
Got a question you want to ask on the show? Click here!
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Pete Wright:
Welcome to the show, everybody. I'm Pete Wright and we are still in the middle of our fantastic summer of fun here at The Toaster. Seth is having so much fun, in fact, that he didn't even show up today, but that's okay because we have the first in our series of incredible stand-ins with us to talk about the challenges of the problematic ex. Sterling Lovelady, welcome to The Toaster.
Sterling Lovelady:
Thanks for having me on, guys.
Pete Wright:
I love that you're here and I love the conversations we're going to take on today. I love the topics we're going to take on today because these are all around dealing with the problematic ex that has issues around the post-divorce process, and so we have three, I think these are three effectively listener questions, but we bundled them today for you to take on. Plus, we have one brand new and timely listener question that is going to be in our surprise round. I know how much you're looking forward to that, the surprise round. So let's start with this, "My spouse is an addict or alcoholic. Is it wrong to leave them in their time of need? And more specifically, how does the court view this? How do you handle this?"
Sterling Lovelady:
Anytime someone asks me a question, "Is it wrong?", it's just difficult for me because morally I have to check where are they, right? What is wrong to them? But in the big picture, I always go through the questions of, well, how long has this been going on? What caused this? If it's alcohol, did they have a problem with alcohol or drugs when you married them? Have they been to rehab? Have they done anything to try to fix the problem? And at the end of the day, if the answer to that is yes, if all of these questions are, "Yes, he's been struggling with it, he said he was going to quit," or, "She said she was going to quit and it just keeps happening over and over and I want out," well, then usually I tell them, "Look, you've done everything you can do."
Alternatively, if they say no, "He picked it up overnight. The last six months, he's been doing drugs," and I say, "Well, have you asked them to get help?" And at the end of the day, if they don't want to be involved in the situation, if they want out, if it's not what they signed up for, then I tell them, "Look, if there's no kids involved, it really doesn't matter. If you want to leave, you leave. No one's going to ask why."
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah. So Sterling, so you are an associate attorney at NLG with Seth. How often do you find you run into these kinds of questions with your clients, with clients at the firm?
Sterling Lovelady:
It's much more often than you would expect it. Substance abuse problems, alcohol problems, all of these issues generally lead to a really difficult marriage and oftentimes lead to divorce, so whatever we're looking at, what's the cause? And we generally don't care what the cause is, if someone wants to get divorced, that's their decision but the underlying causes almost always comes out at some point and drugs and alcohol and that sort of issue is much more common than you would think. I would say it's just as common as infidelity and so alcohol problems, drug problems oftentimes lead people to our office.
Pete Wright:
Man, this is so challenging. First of all, because you said, "More often than I would think," and my answer to that is I don't know how often I would even think that that is a problem, but I wonder if I sort of put myself in the shoes of a client coming and dealing with these issues, what are the kinds of things that they're facing? I can imagine coming in and being incredibly nervous even to share all this with my attorney for sake of maybe judgment or whatever the fears are of going in and being kind of vulnerable in the divorce process. How do you handle that as their attorney?
Sterling Lovelady:
See, you may be the exception. I don't find most people are timid or afraid to share these types of things with us. If anything, they want to share more than I want to hear. They're coming in, "And he does this," "And she does that," and I'm like, "Relax. Okay, well, even if your spouse has a problem, let's say your spouse is abusing alcohol, how is that affecting your life? Let's hear about that part. How is that affecting your kids?" So people are very willing to share because generally they want to point a finger and tell you why the other person is the problem.
Pete Wright:
Everything that I've learned about this, I've either learned directly from Seth or from Hollywood, and what I know from Hollywood is somebody's always hiding something from their attorney, so that's where all of my questions come from. Really, if they haven't been answered by Seth, I'm a Hollywood attorney.
Let's talk a little bit about this second question, which I think is potentially more complicated, "My ex is in the middle of a separate legal battle and I am now jointly being sued or /investigated. How does this impact divorce proceedings?" Maybe we need to set the stage by giving us an example.
Sterling Lovelady:
Yeah, the most common example we're going to have in this, really, the most two common examples, number one, "The IRS is, my spouse has been doing the taxes for the last 10 years or hasn't done any taxes and now they're coming after us for $100,000. What do I do? I had no idea." And the second example is, "Well, my spouse owns a business and the business is being sued. Am I responsible?"
So going to the first scenario, the IRS, that generally, yes, both people are going to be on the hook. If this is a jointly filed tax return, the IRS doesn't care who filed it. If you signed off on it, you're responsible. There is some exceptions for an innocent spouse that you can potentially claim with the IRS, but generally, they're coming after the money for anybody they can get to pay it and that's a really unfortunate situation and a lot of times in a divorce case, one person will say, "Okay, I'll pay it." Well, what if you don't?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, what if you don't?
Sterling Lovelady:
What if you don't? Well, the IRS doesn't care what your marital settlement agreement says. They coming after both of you because this is a joint liability. This is money that you owe them whatever you agreed to and who was going to pay it. They don't really care. Could you go after your spouse later if you end up paying some of it? Sure. But that's a messy road and you really don't want to go down that road.
But the second situation I see often also, which is they own a business and the business is being sued. They think this is a really valuable business and they've done some bad dealings, well, now a slip and fall, or whatever you can imagine, they're coming after the business. Now this business that may have potentially been worth a lot of money, has a huge potential liability hanging over its head and how do we value the business? Because the spouse that's keeping the business is going to say, "Well, the business is done and I'm not going to have any more money. They're going to sue me for everything I got. I'm going to have to close it down," when all the other spouse has seen is income and assets and everything that has grown over the years. But that could change in a second.
Pete Wright:
I mean, that's a the horrible context, so what is the impact directly on the divorce proceedings of that sort of a thing? I imagine those are completely separate issues? Divorce can happen separate from this other case?
Sterling Lovelady:
It certainly can. So if you're in the middle of a divorce and your business is being sued and that business is a marital asset, well, it's really difficult to put a value on that at that point, so if you have a million-dollar value on your business, but you got a million-dollar liability hanging out there for a lawsuit, well then the spouse who's taking the business is going to say it's worth zero when that may or may not come to fruition at any point, so that is most likely going to put the litigation on hold.
For something like bad IRS debt or old debt that's not been paid, generally you're going to put conditions on that. If one person says, "I'll take care of the debt, I'll pay it." Well, then if they kept the home, you're going to say, "Look, in two years, if you haven't paid that debt, the house is going to be sold and then money's going to be used to pay the debt," so we try to put securities around bad debts that haven't been paid. But specifically, in the sense of a lawsuit, if it's pending and you have no idea what the outcome is, it could very well have a profound impact on the value of the assets
Pete Wright:
And the timeliness of your divorce.
Sterling Lovelady:
That's correct, yeah, and listen, there's no doubt in my mind that if the wife owns the business, the husband is going to say, "Well, it's her fault. We wouldn't be being sued if she didn't do X." Well, that may be true, but it doesn't change the fact that there's this liability potentially hanging out there, so that becomes very difficult and that's where I tell people, "Look, this just got very expensive 'cause we have no idea what's gonna happen."
Pete Wright:
To what degree is your family law attorney? So let's say you have this couple, you're helping the husband. To what degree are you going to be involved as the family law, the divorce attorney with any other legal proceedings? Are you ever involved in navigating that or do you hand it off to somebody else?
Sterling Lovelady:
No, I'm more than happy to stay out of that. I'll tell people, "We practice family law and that's it." If you-
Pete Wright:
There's a line.
Sterling Lovelady:
... If you get a DUI, you're going to have to call a criminal attorney. If you're getting sued civilly by your business, you're going to have to call a civil attorney who's going to have to help you. The only part I would play in that is consulting with the other lawyers. We're talking about what the possible outcome could be and how we can use that in our negotiations or in divorce proceedings. Otherwise, I stay out of it.
Pete Wright:
Okay. All right. Good. It's good to understand the line. Here's one, here's a heartbreaker for you, "My spouse doesn't want custody of the kids at all and if they, the kids, know that, it will break their hearts. Can my ex-spouse really just abandon them like that?"
Sterling Lovelady:
Yeah, it's even more sad when you say it.
Pete Wright:
I know.
Sterling Lovelady:
I mean, I read it and I hear it. Man, that's brutal. So I will tell you, that's really rare. What I see more often is even if they're not good parents or haven't been involved in the past, when the time comes for a divorce, they're dad of the year or mom of the year. All of a sudden, they want to be the parent in charge. But if you have a situation where a person truly says, "I don't want anything to do with these kids," and I've seen it, and it's really terrible, but what happens is I tell my client, "Look, if they don't want time with the kids, you certainly don't want your kids spending time with that person because it's not going to be fruitful. They're not going to be raised by someone who wants to be there," so in that event, all you can hope for is that that person has enough income and ability to support those children financially if they can't support them emotionally.
Pete Wright:
Is there another side to that where you have ...? One of the things we've talked about on the show often is just the arduousness of the divorce process. Have you ever run into a situation where a parent is so fed up or exhausted by the process that they just stop fighting for split custody or anything like that just because they want to get out of the process? What does that do to the kids?
Sterling Lovelady:
For sure, yeah, and that's a totally different scenario in my mind from one person who just doesn't want time with the kids versus, "Look, I'm just going to pick my battles. I can't afford to do this. The longer this goes, the worse it is for the kids," and I've had people in that situation and that's really unfortunate. Sometimes they have to look at, "What's this going to cost me versus what's going to be the benefit to my family?" So certainly, if you get someone who says, "Look, if I can just get 30% of the time with my kids, I'll take it, and I'll just make the most out of that time." Does it have an impact on the kids? Yes, and people say, "Well, what do I tell my kids?" Well, you really shouldn't get them involved, and later down the road, if they want to know why you didn't more spend more time with them when they're adults, you maybe have that conversation with them when they're an adult. But until then, you just make the most that you can out of the time you have with them.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah. I got to imagine there's so much trauma that just gets packed into that little red wagon of grief that you both as a parent have to drag around keeping quiet when you know there is probably a truth that is eventually going to impact your kids. That's got to be just so hard to walk out of the divorce process carrying all that with you.
Sterling Lovelady:
Yeah, it is true. But a lot of people get caught up on numbers, "I want 50% of the time." Well, in our world, 50% of the time is 182 overnights, 'kay? We want to talk about quality time here. I know dads who spend 30% of the time much more effectively than dads who spend 50% of the time. It's all about the quality time 'cause a lot of times we may even get to the point where we say it's 60/40, dad gets 40% of the time. Let's say, listen, let's think about this. How many overnights is that, really? What's the difference? What's the difference between you having a Tuesday night every night during the school year versus having an extra week in the summer? Which would you rather have?
So really, if it gets to that point, and look, I tell them, "Look, the only people that are going to win if we go to fight this to the bitter end is the lawyers." I tell a lot of my clients that, "Look, if you want to fight, maybe you get what you want, maybe you don't. Either way, I'm going to get paid," and so I really try to help people come up with creative solutions and help them see what the outcome is really going to be and not just look at the numbers.
Pete Wright:
Just to step back the term "abandon" or "abandonment," does that have a specific legal meaning? It's tossed out here, but it seems like one of those words that might mean something specific in your world.
Sterling Lovelady:
It really only has a specific meaning if we're talking about the potential of terminating someone's parental rights, so if you're seeking to terminate someone's parental rights, potentially you could allege that they've abandoned the child and it's just a legal determination. But in a family law setting, if a parent has been totally abandoned, let's say they leave and they haven't seen the kids for two or three years, well, certainly, you're going to allege that they've abandoned the children. But legally, the court is not going to look at that and say, "Well, you can never see your kids again. They're going to say, "Okay, you've been gone for two years. You've abandoned them potentially. But if you want to come back into their life, well, how do we get there? What steps do we need to put in place to make sure that that's a smooth transition?"
Pete Wright:
So the court in this situation, weirdly, is biased toward reconciliation.
Sterling Lovelady:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that's completely fair, and across all spectrum. So we have two adopted kids and it took three years to get the adoption done when the biological parents never came forward, never showed up, never spent a dime, never spent a second with the kids. After three years, the court said, "Okay, I guess they're not coming back." I mean, that's really how extreme it is. I even have parents who say, "Oh, he hasn't seen his kid in three weeks, six weeks." Well, okay. Well, why? Even if he chose not to, if he comes forward and wants to see his kids, that's going to happen. Florida's going to give you, going to give the parents every chance they want to spend time with their kids, and that's just the truth. And you can fight for it and it may not be the perfect outcome you want, but you are going to get time with your kids if you want it.
Pete Wright:
Thank you for this collection of answers around these problematic exes. I want to transition. Part of the reason we have you on the show and the reason we're doing this Summer of Fun series is to introduce you to the people who listen to this show, to introduce all of the attorneys at NLG Divorce & Family Law to the audience of the show, and because I happen to know that you are more than a family law attorney, I want to hear a little bit about what you're doing for fun because you've got a lot going on and I think it's all very, very cool. What is Sterling like at home?
Sterling Lovelady:
Yeah, no, I appreciate it 'cause you said "fun" and "summer," but nothing we've talked about so far has really been that fun.
Pete Wright:
No, it's not fun. No, I buried the lead.
Sterling Lovelady:
No, I'm glad we got to... Yeah, we got to the fun part, and Seth's not here, so I can say whatever I want.
Pete Wright:
Please do.
Sterling Lovelady:
Yeah, yeah. So who am I? So I do practice family law, but before that, I'm a dad and a husband. But I have two boys that we adopted. They're both biological brothers and a beautiful wife who, I married way up, I'm not really sure why she married me, but here I am. I think maybe at one point she thought I was going to be an NFL player, but she's stuck with me now 'cause before we got married, I spent time at Florida State. I was very fortunate to be on a really good team. We won a national championship there, and so that's my story, that's my claim to fame, playing the National Championship, and now I just work like everyone else.
Pete Wright:
But you got to talk about cars, man.
Sterling Lovelady:
Yeah, no, I have to. So my hobby, what do I do when I'm not with my wife and my kids? Yeah, I build cars. So I was a kid, I grew up around racetracks. I mean, I literally saw my grandpa who worked on cars. He cut two cars in half. One was wrecked in the front, one was wrecked in the back, so he took the good halves, put them together. I mean, that's just the kind of thing we did growing up. My parents never had a new car. The two cars I can recall were both totaled and my dad fixed them and drove them, so I was always wrenching, always with my dad in the garage. They took me to the racetrack and that's just what we did.
And so naturally, I just loved it, so as I grew up, I inherited all these tools and these car, I have a '68 Chevelle that I inherited from my dad. That was his and high school. So that's a whole nother story, but that's just what I do. That's what I love. I get out the garage and I totally forget about all these terrible things that we were talking about earlier and it really just refreshes me and helps me keep going.
Pete Wright:
What do you do with the cars? Are you a full Dominic Toretto Fast & the Furious family and then you go race and steal safes out of mobsters' homes?
Sterling Lovelady:
So I'm like the first half of what you said about Toretto, just the building cars part. So yeah, I have this '68 Chevelle, which has sort of propelled me into this craze of building cars, so it's a 1968, so it came with this, it probably a straight six-some-hundred horsepower motor, and then my dad parked it in the woods. For 30 years, it just sat there abandoned. Well, there you go, there's your "abandoned." That's what it means to me, so then I brought it back-
Pete Wright:
That's what it means to be abandoned now.
Sterling Lovelady:
... Right, so then I bring it back out of the woods and the next three years, every single weekend, every waking hour I rebuild it. So then I take a straight six out of a Toyota Supra, put it into this '68 Chevy Chevelle, and it created this iconic car that a lot of people think of it as Fast & Furious type car and the internet just went crazy over it and so it's absolutely controversial. You shouldn't do it. It makes no sense. But I love it.
Pete Wright:
It's Frankenstein, man. It's Frankenstein. You made Frankenstein.
Sterling Lovelady:
It is. It is. Yeah, but it's what I love to do. I love to work on them just as much as I like to drive them. I don't do much racing. It's just dangerous, it's expensive. I'd rather spend the time with my kids and God forbid I get hurt. I just can't justify doing it. But I love watching racing and just being around it.
Pete Wright:
But that's what you do when you go out. You live a long healthy life, and then on your very last day, you think, "I'm going to take a couple of runs around the track."
Sterling Lovelady:
Oh, for sure.
Pete Wright:
Just throw it all to the wind.
Sterling Lovelady:
For sure. And once my kids are of that age, I grew up racing go-karts on a round track, and I definitely want my kids to do it, but at some point, I recall I was getting ready to go to college and I had scholarship offers and my mom was like, "Is this what you really want to do? You really need to focus on sports. It's going to get you where you want to be. You're going to get killed out there on these dirt bikes and go-karts and all this." So I really focused on that and I was very fortunate to have parents who corrected my behavior along the way.
Pete Wright:
That's awesome. Go Mom and Dad. All right. Well, it's great, just great to get to know you. I'm such a fan of the kind of stuff that you do in your garage. As much as I am of you as an attorney, the garage stuff is fantastic. So just before we get to the Ride the Dragon listener question, where do people find your stuff on the internet?
Sterling Lovelady:
Yeah, so my Instagram for all my car builds is @sterling_builds and that's TikTok and Instagram.
Pete Wright:
Sure. All right, all right, so check that out. Link will be in the show notes. All right, Sterling, here we go. This question came in very, very recently to the show and it's hot. Here we go. "Been listening to a lot of news about current legal cases in the media and these two terms came up and I wonder if you guys could give me context on if they are ever at play in divorce. Quote, 'Pierce the attorney-client privilege' is one. When is that ever violated? And two, is there ever any sense to challenge the venue in a divorce case?" So pierce the attorney-client privilege?
Sterling Lovelady:
Yeah, that's a new one for me. This seems to be kind of blending a couple of different terms. "Piercing" is generally something we refer to when we're talking about a corporation and getting access to it. We call it "piercing the corporate veil," as in we can get on the inside and get the information we need. So in that sense, if you were to pierce the attorney-client privilege, the only way I know of to do that is basically for the client to waive it.
So the attorney-client privilege is one of the greatest privileges we have as lawyers and it's really interesting and I tell people this is the example. This is an example they gave you in law school. If you come to me and you say, "I murdered someone yesterday," I can't tell anyone. I can't go out and tell the news media that you told me you murdered someone. But if you say, "I'm planning on murdering someone tomorrow," I have to go out. I can't aid you in the future commission of a crime. So if you tell me of a future crime you're going to commit, that's where you run into these issues of that's really not privileged. Really, if you're going to do that, don't tell me because it's not privileged, so if you in that sense potentially, but if it's anything related to anything in the past, I can't imagine something that really would pierce that and would require me to reveal it.
Pete Wright:
Is there ever a situation you can think of in family law where someone would put themselves in a position that would cause you to violate that privilege?
Sterling Lovelady:
No, not really. I mean, we get the spiel from the mediators, which is the best example I can think of is they say, "Look, everything you talk about today is confidential." Unless you tell me about child abuse or elder abuse, those are some exceptions to confidentiality in the process, and if someone tells me, "Look, I've got my son tied up in the basement," well, I'm going to go report it. That's not confidential, it's not attorney-client privileged, so to that extent, even if I... But that's extreme. I mean, you have to be really, really bad. I mean, if again, anything in the past, probably attorney-client privileged, anything in the future or ongoing crimes, that's where you run into the issue of potentially not privileged.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Second part of that question, "Is there ever any sense to challenge the venue?", or there are other words to that, but specifically written here, "to challenge the venue in a divorce case?"
Sterling Lovelady:
Yeah, potentially. So there's two ideas here when we talk about venues, so we have jurisdiction, which is generally the entire state. Does the state of Florida have jurisdiction? Then when we look at venue, we're talking about which court within the state is the appropriate court to file this action in. So for example, if you live in Tampa, live in Hillsborough County, you last lived together as a married couple in Hillsborough County, and then your husband moves to Brevard County, well, you can file in Hillsborough County, or you can go and file in Brevard County because you can file where you last lived or where the defendant resides. But if you file it in Escambia County up in the panhandle, well, that's not a appropriate venue, so the opposing party could object to the venue and ask for it to be transferred to the appropriate venue. So this is pretty rare. I'd say we see it once or twice a year where it's legitimate objection to a venue.
Pete Wright:
What are the reasons that would go into causing me to want to change the venue of my divorce case?
Sterling Lovelady:
Well, generally, we see it only being a problem whenever, let's say you were, again, married in Tampa and lived in Tampa, then the wife moves to Pensacola and the husband moves to Miami. Well, technically, you can't file in Pensacola because you can only file in the last place you resided as a married couple or where the defendant or the respondent resides, so you basically have to come, you have to play ball in their court or in the court where you were last married, if that helps, so you can't just move to a county that you liked and file.
Pete Wright:
And then file there.
Sterling Lovelady:
And then, right, the theory is you can't drag the other person into litigation where you want them to be and so you can go play on their turf if that's where they've moved or in the last place that you were married. And generally, we only see this come up in that scenario where both parties left town and went somewhere else or if somebody is venue shopping, so there are certain venues in Florida where you could potentially get away with some things that you can't in others. It's very rare, but sometimes you see that.
Pete Wright:
Okay, you dropped it, so I have to ask, what are some things that you might get away with?
Sterling Lovelady:
Right, right, so there are some counties that have a little bit lighter rules on what you have to file. For example, there are some counties where you can get away without filing a financial affidavit. Now they would probably not admit that, but you could file it and kind of slide under the radar. Sometimes people who are very wealthy have a lot of assets don't want to disclose publicly all their assets and they might file it in a different county, and usually that's agreed upon, but again, you can't go shop for whatever venue you like, or if you know a judge in another county. You know can't just go file it wherever you want.
Pete Wright:
Okay. All right, that makes sense. Well, thank you. That's the whole question. Look at that. You didn't even know what that question was. You hit it out of the park, Sterling.
Sterling Lovelady:
Easy, easy.
Pete Wright:
Well, this has been great. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to sit down and talk with me and thank you for hanging out on the show again, @sterling_builds to catch up with all of his fun time stuff and see the monstrosity that he has created in his garage. Thank you, Sterling. Thanks so much for hanging out in this fine Summer of Fun and introducing the world of what you do as a dad, as a tinkerer in the garage, and as an attorney. Learn more about Sterling, @sterling_builds on TikTok and Insta, which I think is how I'm supposed to say it. You can also learn more about sterling at nlgfamilylaw.com. On behalf of Sterling Lovelady, I'm Pete Wright, and I will be back next week right here on How to Split A Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Outro:
Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce & Family Law with offices in Tampa, Florida. While we may be discussing family law topics, How to Split a Toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of NLG Divorce & Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
