117. Justice Was Served
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When I got divorced, my party animal wife of 18 years had started another affair, this time with her therapist. So my lawyer and I laid a trap for them.
Just in case you don’t know, intimate relations between a therapist and patient are very frowned upon by the regulatory bodies. And I was more than a little annoyed after putting her through rehab ($25k, which I didn’t have to do) only to have her fall back into her old behavior.
Shortly before the divorce was finalized, I filed a complaint with the state body licensing health professions. Knowing they were in some peril because of their unprofessional relationship (I had already gotten him fired from a major teaching hospital), she had backed off her exorbitant demands.
I paid her a very modest settlement, kept the house, got custody of the three tweenage kids, plus got child support. Her lawyer naturally included a clause in the divorce where I had to agree to not say anything negative about her lover and their relationship.
But the lawyer messed up and never asked if I had already filed charges and thus didn’t require me to rescind them. Her lawyer had assumed I was just bad-mouthing them to neighbors and friends, and it never occurred to the lawyer that we were doing much more.
When the Board of Health Professions responded to my complaint shortly after the divorce was finalized, I told them that it would take a subpoena to get me to testify (a subpoena trumps an agreement in a divorce settlement). They were happy to oblige.
They stripped his license and placed him on a register of sanctioned health professionals. He never worked again. They were broke for a handful of years, and she divorced him when the money ran out (in the interim, his mother had died, leaving a fair-sized estate, so it took longer than I expected).
Oh, and the frosting on the cake was that his wife and I traded notes (notably hotel receipts from the time of their affair) that helped each of us in our respective divorces. Justice was served.
