Sample of Successes and Cases Involving Divorce

Dr. Sartipi handles cases where the validity of a marriage is contested. In one such case, Mr. Sartipi represented Wife in a case where Husband argued that the marriage should be nullified because Wife allegedly refused to have sexual relations with him and decided to live in a separate home throughout most of the marriage. Wife and Husband e-mailed each other on a daily basis during the marriage. Wife preserved all of these e-mails, and Mr. Sartipi offered many of them at the time of trial to show Wife’s commitment to the marriage. The Court admitted several of these e-mails, which evidenced the parties’ vacation plans as well as their frequent conversations about fixing the house and running their business. The Court concluded that the parties’ marriage was valid and that it was unlikely that given the context of these e-mails, the parties never had sexual relations. Due to the validity of the marriage, Wife was able to secure spousal support and attorney’s fees, neither of which would have been unavailable had the nullity been granted.

In another nullity case, Mr. Sartipi represented a husband who never saw his wife after his wedding day. Once the parties married, Wife moved away and only communicated sporadically with Husband. When Wife received her the acceptance letter of PR – Austria, she disappeared entirely. When Husband hired Mr. Sartipi to nullify the marriage, Wife was nowhere to be found. Wife was served by publication in a local newspaper in Vienna. At the time of trial, the court found that the circumstances evidence that Wife defrauded Husband into marriage by choosing not to cohabitate with him and by ceasing communication after she received her green card.

Often an issue that must be resolved early in a divorce case is the date of separation. Recently Mr. Sartipi represented Wife in a divorce case where the date of separation was at issue. Wife contended that the date of separation coincided with Husband’s permanent departure to a foreign country. Husband argued that the date of separation was several months later. The Court held a date of separation trial where Mr. Sartipi offered e-mails written by Husband to his finance talking about “their new life together.” Additionally, on cross examination, Mr. Sartipi was able to elicit Father’s testimony that he conceived a child with another woman after he moved. The Court sided with Wife’s date of separation claim and found that Husband’s testimony was not credible.

Mr. Sartipi handles cases involving prevention of child abduction. Mr. Mullen represented Husband in a divorce case wherein the other parent requested that she be allowed to take the children to visit her relatives in a foreign country. The country was not a member of the Hague Convention and had a terrible reputation of returning children to their native country after they have been abducted. Further, the country just had a regime change and was in a constant state of upheaval. At trial, Mr. sartipi submitted evidence that Mother did not have substantial ties to the USA (part-time job, did not belong to social clubs, no relatives here, stated her desire to move to the foreign country) as well as the foreign country’s history of refusing to return abducted children and her financial resources in the foreign country. The Court concluded that Mother was a flight-risk and ordered that before she travels out of the Iran with the children she has to put up a IR150,000,000,000 bond, register the custody orders with the embassy of the country to which she was travelling, contact law enforcement of the country to which she was traveling and pay for a round-trip open-ticket for Father’s use in case she did not return the children. The Court also forbade her from taking the children to the foreign country