She drained their marital assets while they were together, then asked for a divorce on the grounds that she no longer loved him once she had transferred away all his premarital assets.
That was utterly outrageous!
There was only one word for that move: ruthless!
Su Bai listened quietly until Wang Li finished. "Your description has given me a general understanding of the case."
"Our firm can take it, but you still need to ask your childhood friend whether he wants to retain us. Only then can we proceed with the remaining arrangements."
"I understand, Lawyer Su. I'll talk to him as soon as I get back."
After seeing off Wang Li and Wang Zizhong and his wife, Su Bai hefted the black bag and said to Li Xuezhen, "Hold off on distributing advertisements for now. Organize the information on the civil case Wang Li mentioned. I'm heading out for a bit."
"Of course, Lawyer Su."
Li Xuezhen tidied the desk, picked up the notebook she had been taking notes in, and nodded earnestly.
Su Bai left the law firm and went to the bank to deposit the 120,000 yuan into his account.
One hundred and twenty thousand.
With his previous balance, that brought his total to a little over 150,000.
The firm's debt crisis had been averted for the time being. Seeing his bank balance put Su Bai in a much better mood.
For now, this money was enough to cover the expenses of gradually developing the firm.
He returned to the firm.
Li Xuezhen had already organized the information Wang Li had provided.
"Lawyer Su, I've finished organizing Wang Li's materials."
"Lawyer Su, can I ask you something? Are there really women like Wang Li's childhood friend's wife? If we take this case, how should we fight it? I think we should hit the other side as hard as possible!"
"Someone like that is just awful!"
Su Bai took the materials Li Xuezhen handed him, skimmed through them, and set them on the desk after confirming there were no issues.
He looked up at Li Xuezhen.
Li Xuezhen grew a little nervous. "Lawyer Su, did I say something wrong?"
Su Bai tapped the desk with his fingertips, finding her reaction rather amusing.
She was just like a student afraid of being punished by a teacher.
"Ahem."
Su Bai cleared his throat.
"This brings us to your second lesson here at the firm. Do you remember the first?"
The first lesson? The second?
Li Xuezhen hesitated, uncertain. "Was the first lesson about navigating social relationships?"
Su Bai nodded in satisfaction.
Good.
She remembered it pretty well.
"That's right. Your answer is correct. The first lesson was about navigating social relationships. Do you know what the second is?"
Li Xuezhen shook her head and answered honestly, "No."
"Then remember this. The second lesson is that when dealing with clients, you're being paid to do a job. Once you take a case, don't get too emotionally invested. Whether the story about Wang Li's friend's wife is true or not, as long as they retain our firm, all we need to do is give our client our full support."
"As for anything else, unless it's relevant to the case, it has nothing to do with our firm. Understand?"
"Yes, Lawyer Su. I understand!"
Li Xuezhen nodded solemnly.
Being a lawyer, in plain terms, meant taking someone's money to solve their problems. Helping clients win their lawsuits was a lawyer's most basic duty. There was no need to complicate things.
Getting emotionally invested was absolutely out of the question.
That afternoon, around five or six.
Dusk was approaching.
Su Bai received a call from Wang Li, who said he had spoken with his childhood friend. They wanted White Jun Law Firm to represent him in the case and would be coming over shortly to discuss it in detail.
Su Bai told Li Xuezhen to get ready.
Li Xuezhen was excited about the new case too. The previous one had been a criminal case, and she had learned quite a lot from it. This one was a civil case.
And it involved matrimonial law, a particularly sought-after specialty.
She also wanted to know exactly what had happened to Wang Li's childhood friend.
Soon, Wang Li arrived at White Jun Law Firm with his childhood friend. Compared with Wang Li, Su Bai thought this friend looked even more like someone who had just come out of a detention center.
He seemed utterly drained. Clearly, this marriage had hurt him deeply.
"Come in and have a seat."
Su Bai welcomed them warmly, then asked Li Xuezhen to pour two cups of tea to perk them up.
Sitting on the sofa, Wang Li briefly introduced his childhood friend, whose name was Zhang Tongwei.
As the person directly involved, Zhang Tongwei gave a more detailed account than Wang Li had, and his information was more useful for assessing the case.
Su Bai listened carefully as Zhang Tongwei described the relevant details, occasionally interjecting with key questions.
An hour and a half later, Su Bai finally understood the full story.
They had been married for three years and had no children, so there were no child-support obligations.
They had almost no marital assets left. In fact, they had accumulated a considerable amount of joint debt.
As for Zhang Tongwei's premarital assets-three apartments-two had become marital property.
This puzzled Su Bai. Under marriage law, both spouses' premarital assets were protected.
Even if Zhang Tongwei sold the apartments, the proceeds would still count as premarital assets. Any appreciation in their value would likewise remain premarital property.
How had Zhang Tongwei's wife managed to turn them into marital property?
"How did those two apartments become marital property?"
At the mention of this, Zhang Tongwei wanted to slap himself twice!
"My wife was angry with me at the time, and nothing I did could soothe her. Eventually, I ran out of ideas and asked her what it would take to make her stop being angry.
"She told me to write her a letter of guarantee that included provisions for gifting her the properties. All I wanted was to appease her, so I wrote it exactly as she asked. I never imagined-I never imagined it could actually be used as evidence when dividing our assets in a divorce!"
"And that's not all. We're still married, and she keeps borrowing money to buy household goods. She says the more debt, the better, because as long as I refuse to divorce her, it's joint debt."
Wasn't that clearly a deliberate attempt to create marital debt?
But because she was buying household goods, it would be difficult to establish that she was deliberately manufacturing marital debt.
It was plain
to see that Zhang Tongwei's wife was ruthless!
Suddenly, something seemed to occur to Su Bai. "Does your wife have any lawyer friends?"
Zhang Tongwei frowned slightly. "Lawyer friends...?"
"No, she doesn't. But there's a well-known female matrimonial lawyer here in Southern Capital who explains how marital assets are divided through short videos.
"My wife watches her videos all the time. She used to tell me that if we ever divorced, she'd hire that lawyer and make sure I walked away with nothing."
"We had only just gotten married back then, so I didn't give it much thought. Now that you've brought it up, Lawyer Su, I remember!"
"Lawyer Su, how did you know?"
A flicker of surprise crossed Zhang Tongwei's eyes.
The corners of Su Bai's mouth lifted slightly. From Zhang Tongwei's account, wasn't this clearly an attempt to exploit the law to strip the husband of everything he owned?
How could an ordinary woman have so many tricks up her sleeve? Someone was obviously advising her behind the scenes-and that someone was a lawyer specializing in marriage and family law!
Please keep reading, sob sob. Thank you so much!
(End of chapter)
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