bank when john and kathy got a divorce in this case they struck a deal and the deal with him written it's part of the judgment the deal related to some investment property that they had acquired during the marriage that was a professional building and that professional building was on shemale so you'll hear references to show mail throughout the the record but the important thing about it was that john who was a lawyer could get the property but there were certain conditions the first condition was that he had to provide an annual accounting second condition is that there was a deadline that accounting was from gross income as well as expenses and this deadline was february fifteenth it wasn't april fifteenth it wasn't a suggested deadline it wasn't anything that was unclear and the purpose behind it was to figure out how much money would be left over in order to assess child support the child support would be twenty five percent until the middle son graduated from high school then it would be twenty percent of that net income and that makes sense because it was an income producing property it would have been clued in child support calculate what was a concession by the mother was that kathy said you can apply the net income from this building this business towards college expenses and then once we know how much that is the remainder would be then used to determine that child john didn't do it february fifteenth world by and he provided no account beyond that he didn't provide accounting became an annual ritual and in the record you'll see letters from john to kathy to john same john it's you know it's april two thousand and six or it's april two thousand and seven or i still haven't gotten that accounting and what john eventually did either through out the during the trial or at one point he would send a schedule e from his tax return and say here's the account the schedule we're a big part when we went to the trial court we actually had a transfer this well a couple of examples if and one example would be this is of oppression or of oppression thirty six years if he was representing someone in the state who had to provide an accounting he wouldn't tell them it's fine just to provide them with the schedule e from investment prop he would say you got to show all the income but detail or document the expenses and why it's important here is that one of the expenses that he listed was a management fee that he never had clean before that he paid to himself it was clearly him carving out income calling it an expense and giving it to himself and by way of example on that is two thousand and tax return he didn't claim it as income so he was able to take a management fee of seven thousand five hundred eighty seven dollars on a schedule e claimant not saying to whom he paid it and then not show it as income on his tax returns if he saw his tax return it would be reflected as income to him it's reflected only as an expense so she'd have no way of knowing to whom it is and he said that's all you get i mean he eventually admitted that's what he did and he did it in a letter he said the reason i did this i need additional money to pay back the loan i had to incur to pay your lawyer for the last go round so at times he would admit that he was taking this and  that a lawyer practicing for twenty five to thirty six years had no idea what an accounting was that you're not talking about you know what well that's what i what we have people do sometimes and in a lot of time divorce cases you show your income then you show your expenses and if it's an unusual expense you show you provide a receipt for instance if there's some we pair work that has to be done just so you know he's not determine college expenses well no there was child support in there too and as a result either by deferring putting or off or not providing information she didn't get the child support she should have gotten the time and which is supposed to go to the child she really old relationship in the corps trust but verify that's all we want is verification and he gave her less than he knew he should have in a reasonable person looking at that would say well he would know better than that how is she supposed to tell levy who was in private practice at the time and filed it i believe in two thousand and eight but up until that time he was able to avoid paying anything towards support by just stonewalling it and say here's here if this is good can a reasonable person say that's good enough knowing that he knows what he knows he knows what an accounting means over there's nothing right in writing about and a lot of them would get scholarships and grants and loans that were a nice package and much of it you can see in some of the exhibits was because the listed my client as the home parent so when they do their fafsa form they would get a lot of financial aid but my client didn't get an accounting should know how much the husband was paying from the income because he never told her for you know for child support so should know that either it was basically i'm telling you this is what it is and this whole accounting thing is not that big a deal but it is a big deal and we have a problem with the court's decision on it because the court basically concluded that the schedule e was enough and that february fifteenth wasn't the deadline and things that normal reasonable people looking at people on the street would say will order which would know what an accounting means i mean i lawyer for advice on accounting how can we give that advice other people he won't take it himself if it's stunning to think that he came in and he said things that he did in writing and expected that it would be looked upon as not in violation of yes we never know for sure especially in these cases because you know there's always a measure of follow up but there was some late this discovery that there was some but there was discovered there's compliance there's provide the provision of some tax returns so there was documentation provided and from that we calculated that i think we provided some tables on it but even at the time to say that  the february fifteenth wasn't clear it's boggles the mind i mean he would even say he sent a letter saying i submit that your demand for intimate information is inappropriate that's one of the exhibits i resent your meddling in my business have you haven't you done enough already to damage my life my assets are my business she had this annual baking routine to do what he should have done because the judge said it was so or because it was right or because he struck a deal she should have to have big every year to do it and then he would say i'm going to give i'll send you a schedule e when i do my taxes there is no other accounting cap well that's like saying in this state there is no other account you created you actually have to get the bills but what does he give to his accountant i mean he has to have something and always to show it show us what you've got so we can trust you because we don't trust you without it and that's unfortunately one of the things that happen in divorce cases you know she would he would tell her that he doesn't have time for this banter and she would ask for it i strongly resent your intrusion into my business means correspondence after  corresponds year after year and this is money that was to be used for his children as child support i'm you know i just thought for a moment truck i know people don't want to pay child support of they can help but i know they resent the ex for that and that happens correct we sure made the allegation but there was a problem proof because the testimony came from him that you know after thirty six years in practice he was making seventy six thousand dollars so while  salary in his income so i mean she waited a long time to come back for an increase in support and she waited a long time to put up with a long time before she felt contempt but we think the court decision was against the manifest way the evidence that in any reasonable person looking at this would say this guy didn't follow the court or real clearly he surely missed the day i mean that's almost in the category of a no brainer almost i don't know how you could say the fifteenth this is the fifteenth and if it's not on the fifteenth it's not on time and when it comes to the actual production of it the information he gave isn't really enough to see if he's telling you the truth it's not enough it's just his representation a piece of paper for instance seventy hundred bucks he pays him self as a management fee don't say to me pays it so you look at it and say well i want more information he says don't meddle in my business and he doesn't show it as income on his tax return because he doesn't give you the tax and so she doesn't know that at the time he just gives her the schedule so she has no way of knowing it and it's money that he's able to carve out not pay child support on because he says that's what on the campuses and that's not i mean  he did there's no he traded the property income stopped from there and basically the child support request was denied basically the request for contempt because he didn't follow the court or it was rejected and that's what we're saying is that this gives the manifest way the  we did find that there was a change in the net after he charged a management fee and there was some he said there was some disaster or water disaster the damage to property that affected it he said there were some other things in the economy that that doctors weren't going that was like a doctor community thank you please the court first of all i think it's important to point out that john paid every dollar of child support he was ordered to pay john paid every dollar of net income from this rental property towards the boy's college put three boys through college we can college washington university  substantial amounts of money were paid out mr parent camp asked the question would any reasonable person believe this is a satisfactory accounting after all the man's a lawyer well judge sweet was a lawyer for many years and he's been a judge for a number of years and he's a reasonable man and he found that this was perfectly satisfactory as an accounting and the reason he found out is because here's what the agreement says that they wrote up husband shall also provide to wife an annual accounting of all gross income and expenses for his rental property period there's no date in there mr farron campus trying to work in it did the first due date of the child support as the date for the account that it that's it now we write these things up all the time if we want to put in he has to give an accounting he has to provide copies that i i don't agree with that i think if you're going to file a schedule he and submitted to the internal revenue service that would take care of my question of level of trust if he were crazy enough to live here i had the income had all the expenses and had the net income and that's all it was required there was not required to be a c p a reports of a meeting you know standardize accounting standards and so forth it was give me a report of the the court finds that john provided kathleen with schedule leave his tax return until the time of the sale of the proffering carol stream kathleen urges the court to interpret the agreement to mean that he should have received she should have received additional or other documents there is checkbook that he used strictly for this rental building and at the end of the year he would take the check book he would sit down and he would prepare the schedule e and he provided the schedule e to his ex wife i don't know i don't think so i think it was just the schedule these but the judge or the testimony we did this for two days the judge or the testimony what her complaints were what john said he did and how he did it he looked at the exhibits and looked at what they had agreed to and said a schedule e that listed the gross income expenses and net income was fully complied with what they'd agreed to and that was it you know and as i say mr farron can't use those as his exhibits a trial to show what the incomes were and were not as far as john's income from his law firm the undisputed testimony was that there were five shareholders or five partners they voted on and we presented a trial to income history we presented a trial proof that there had been no bonuses declared since two thousand and six all of that evidence was in there all of that evidence was undisputed and based upon that the judge found i mean john was working at the same law firm doing the same thing he showed where his income had gone up and then gone down he was not in control of his income and based upon that judge suite found there's been no substantial change that would warrant an increase in the child support which  tax returns reams of schedule ease reams of bank records and we had a box of bank records like this that ultimately were not used but i can't tell you honestly if the checkbook was actually caught and i know there was substantial testimony about it when the management fee was paid it was he was charging it himself it was but there was nothing that prohibited that he's sure that you know he was the manager and so you know what the story was because we touched on it this was a medical community where all the doctors had little offices there and when john bought the building it was rented out to a couple of doctors the hospital built a big medical building four blocks away and encouraged all their doctors move there so when john sold it the market had tailed off but again as judge sweet found this building was awarded to john and john could do whatever he wanted with it he did use the net income and there were six seven or eight years that there was net income that came out of this that went straight to the college and there was never a net income because these were expensive private schools there was never a net income beyond the college that would have been included for child support and you can't look at the income from the building for child support because they had a separate agreement that it would be used for college and then only after college if there was access so mr farron camps argument that we should look at the gross receipts of the gross revenues of the building is completely contradicted by the agreement these people reached the agreement they reached was then they should have put it in you know the agreement that we're not going to go with i r s net revenue we're only going to allow you to deduct this business they didn't say that and what judge suite was required to do was look at the agreement that these people r determine if there was compliance with that agreement and he looked at it and said there was and i don't think there's any way to say based on the evidence in the testimony that was not disputed as to how this was handled that that was against the manifest weight of the evidence where you can't make a payment of excess unless you do the accounting before then so it in a way it begs the question is it really didn't say have it by the fifteenth you don't know what it is until the accounting stand in the accounting has to be done so the payment could be made by february fifteenth so it would be unusual to say that the accounting is due after you have to pay the money the second part and there's some reference to that that john is paying all these  for college the reason that the kids were getting most their college paid this is a thirty seven it looks like but it's my exhibit fifteen is that my client  filed because for income on the fafsa they got a lot of aid as a matter of fact the boys who went to wheaton in wash you were had almost full ride so it wasn't as though there was a lot of massive money coming out from the guy and he  in it does say that he's entitled to a credit for college expenses but how does she know how much a credit is it if mr westra doesn't have to wages at eighty eight thousand four hundred forty but he doesn't show any other and it is clear that the testimony was that he paid himself and the exhibits say he paid himself one exhibit i think i mentioned earlier said that he did it because he had to still he still had to take a loan out to pay her lawyer fees and so i mean he was pretty bold and in saying this i think it surreptitious of a twenty three with a forty five on the record things are i've already addressed management fees frankly i need additional income to pay back the loan i had to incur to pay your lawyer because still only for the last go round  so i mean he admitted sometimes reasonable judges and make a decision it's against the manifest where the evidence and that's why we have a poll of course if we said every judge was reasonable at all times there would be no appellate review but there is in there is review and i think this case is one in which is pretty clear that mr lester ignored the order and he didn't care and he got by with that for a number of years so that we believe that the decision of judge sweet