Won’t Someone Please Think Of The Upper-Class Earners?!

I’m a lawyer. My client was a moderately autistic guy who worked as a cashier. He was disabled and his low-paying job was a result of his disability. He was smart enough that, if his autism didn’t impact him so much, he’d probably be doing something more financially rewarding for a living. 

As it was, after interacting with him for a few weeks, it became unfortunately clear why he could only hold onto minimum-wage jobs, and the psychologist we hired to assess him for court purposes agreed.

[Client]’s wife was a medical doctor. They had two children together, one of whom was severely autistic. With her income, she was supporting the whole family financially.

They got divorced. [Client]’s wife got the children in the divorce agreement because [Client] notably lacked life-maintenance skills, and the courts were not impressed with his inability to maintain personal grooming standards, among other issues.

About all we could do was apply for spousal support. Fortunately, we were in a state that did not specify that recipients of spousal support must be female. [Client] met all of the qualifications to receive the support. So, we applied to the court.

Apparently, the judge thought that it was evil to take money from a woman who made $250,000 a year to help support her ex-spouse who only made — and likely could only ever make — about $27,000 per year, especially as she had to care for both of the children. The judge was practically clutching his pearls and spitting in rage.

The judge spent nearly an hour complaining about it and calling my client a pathetic weasel, insulting his manliness and integrity, calling him a sleazeball, and worse. Then, the judge tore into me for supporting my client through this process — also known as doing my g**d*** job.

Finally, the judge admitted that we had filed all of the paperwork properly, and he had no choice but to grant us our request to take this doctor’s hard-earned money.

My client was so traumatized that he engaged in a self-stimulation spiral and would only communicate with me by quoting Law & Order and other legal dramas for the next couple of hours before I could get him calmed down.

The judge remembered my name and was always hostile to me whenever I came before him after that. I eventually changed districts.

I’m still proud of what I accomplished.