My Husband Divorced Me At 78, Taking Our $4.5 Million House: “You’ll Never See The Grandkids Again.” He Laughed, I Left. A Month Later, An Unknown Number Called Me: “Ma’am, There’s Been An Urgent Situation Involving Your Husband…”

I sat and watched and thought about how different this was from the original proceeding, where Gerald Marsh had done his earnest, insufficient best and Harold’s team had run the table.

Franklin Tate’s defense was that Harold had formed the LLC for legitimate estate planning purposes unrelated to the divorce and that the January emails were being taken out of context. He produced a letter from an estate planning attorney, not Harold’s divorce attorney, suggesting that the restructuring had been recommended for tax purposes.

The judge, the Honorable Andrea Marsh, no relation to Gerald, had been reading as the testimony proceeded. She was in her mid-50s, methodical in the way that bench veterans often are, and she asked questions with the precision of someone who had already identified the relevant inconsistencies.

She asked Franklin Tate, “If the LLC had been formed for estate-planning purposes, why had Harold’s communications about it focused on ensuring the property was outside the marital estate prior to filing?”

Tate answered that this was a misreading of the communication.

The judge asked him to clarify what reading he believed was correct.

Tate explained.

The judge asked a follow-up.