Friday, July 21, 2017

"This man went to jail rather than pay his ex-wife $10 million in epic divorce battle"

“There’s no way that in a divorce case I should end up in jail.”
Blatherwick v. Blatherwick is not an ordinary divorce case.

Ordered to pay $10 million to his wife of 40 years, the businessman disputed, ignored, chiseled and whittled virtually every court order and spousal payment over six years of his epic divorce battle. He just isn’t paying.

Last July, Justice Leonard Ricchetti sat in silence in his Brampton courtroom for a moment before sentencing Brian to six months in jail for ignoring his orders. “This is the only remedy that’s left,” Ricchetti finally said, sounding as dismayed as anyone by what was happening. As officers stepped in to arrest Brian, everyone waited for a last-second resolution.

“Everybody said this is just the way businessmen do business,” his former wife, Barbara Blatherwick, 64, recalled recently. “He’s going to wait until the last minute, he’s going to stand, he’s going to hear the jingling of the handcuffs and he’s going to pull a cheque out of his pocket. Nobody saw Brian going to jail. I was absolutely floored.”

A six-month jail term after stiffing his wife is only one remarkable part of Blatherwick v. Blatherwick.

Their high-stakes divorce has the salacious — a string of young girlfriends, duplicitous private eyes, a secret second family, staggering legal fees and offshore bank accounts. More striking still is the fraternity of enablers — a coterie of business partners — that banded together to shield a rich businessman’s money from his wife.

Brian even has a name for this subterfuge: The brotherhood of trust.
(Link to more)

6 comments:

Leland said...

6 months in jail for $10,000,000

I think they are going to have to do better than that.

ricpic said...

Notice the way it's a given that the ex-wife is perfectly fine with her ex-husband being thrown in jail. Reverse the sexes and that would be a scandal, A SCANDAL!

edutcher said...

Shades of Debtors' Prison.

Amartel said...

Sounds like he was a crap husband what with the serial cheating and all. And who knows, maybe she was an equally crap wife, maybe not, but that was the deal they both made.
The moral: don't sign a contract you don't intend to live up to. Duh. And don't blame the judge or get mad at the law; people who don't honor their contracts have to pay.

The Dude said...

It is good to have role models. Go on with your bad self, Mr. Blatherwhatever.

Amartel said...

I had a case once where a developer was being sued. I represented one of the adjacent landowners. Anyway, this developer guy was an eccentric dude who felt the need to freak out the plaintiff's attorney. (It was a stupid, opportunistic case.) The man showed up for his depo wearing fishnet tights and high heels, full make up, and a top hat. This was in the 90s, before such a get-up was supposed to be taken seriously, like: that's totally normal and I can't notice it. He was also super-aggressive throughout the depo and ran through a variety pack of personalities. I think maybe he/his company had some other issues and he just didn't give a wet fart. The presentation was very entertaining from the non-combatant's perspective.