Divorcee gets her dues, thanks to proactive litigation

The attorneys at de Broglio Inc have excelled by obtaining a R2 million divorce settlement for a client, after she had initially been offered only a fifth of that amount by her former spouse’s legal counsel while represented by other attorneys.

In 2006, Jennifer Smith* and her businessman husband split up, and she found herself unemployed, with no maintenance and without the financial means to engage attorneys in order to negotiate on an equal footing with her spouse’s lawyers.

De Broglio’s crack legal team kicked into gear, obtaining an interim Rule 43 ruling to cover her costs while awaiting the outcome of the court case. Her husband’s attorneys had previously offered her a R400 000 settlement, while represented bt other attorneys, an amount she was uncertain about accepting.

“We could have advised her to just take the money,” explains Michael de Broglio, “which is a course of action a client is often inclined to take, and she was clearly thinking about as the other attorneys were pushing her this way, perhaps since a divorce can be so traumatic and emotional that they just want it over and done with.”

“But we decided instead to embark on a course of proactive, aggressive litigation to discover all of her spouse’s assets, to ensure that she received what she was entitled to and would harbour no regrets.”

Jennifer and her husband were married out of community of property, but with accrual. Luckily, there was no haggling over their two children to further complicate matters, as one is a major and the other lives with his father by the parents’ mutual agreement.

Thanks to the determined efforts of the divorce lawyers at de Broglio Inc, the extent of the husband’s estate was established and the matter went to court. In August 2008, after the matter had been contested for two years, Jennifer was awarded a R1.8 million cash settlement, as well as an Audi A3, R20 000 towards her legal costs, and an insurance policy that was ceded to her.

By all accounts, this was considered an extremely good settlement under the circumstances, and was the maximum amount that she could have been awarded. Through dogged hard work and perseverance, the de Broglio attorneys managed to obtain more than five times the amount Jennifer had initially been offered.

“That, in our view, is the difference between a plain attorney and a legal representative,” says De Broglio. “An attorney can merely stand there and talk the talk, whereas we as legal representatives are committed to walking the walk too. We go the extra mile to act in our clients’ best interests.”

*Names have been changed to protect client confidentiality.