Divorce lawyers in Pasadena know that whatever happens online is guaranteed not to stay online. In fact, online discrepancies are just the things attorneys are searching for in modern divorce cases. Pictures posted on Facebook, telling Twitter posts, and blogs posted by exes can blow a divorce case wide open. This is a cold, hard truth that Dorothy McGurk found out firsthand.
McGurk, a former legal secretary from New York, claimed that she was disabled and she was awarded $850 a month for life in a divorce settlement three years ago. McGurk convinced the court that a 1997 car accident left her too injured to work. She was also awarded the couple's home in Staten Island. Her ex-husband, Brian McGurk, went back to court last month after he stumbled upon a blog in which Dorothy claimed she had been dancing "everyday for three years." A big proponent of the belly dancing movement, she blogged frequently about her love for the exercise form.
"Today I decided to dedicate myself more to my dance," she wrote. "Even though I dance everyday, it's not enough. It won't be enough until I dance for you all, until you feel my euphoria." In another post, she wrote "Today as I danced myself silly, I lifted my head and elongated my neck as I swirled around and then it happened I got really high."
Not exactly the words of a disabled woman, right? Richmond County Supreme Court Judge Catherine DiDomenico didn't think so, either. Judge DiDomenico stripped McGurk of her monthly settlement and ordered her to pay husband $5,000 plus lawyers' fees and interest. McGurk was also ordered to move out of her house. Brian was awarded 60 percent of the home's value because Dorothy "worked only two years of this 11-year marriage," the judge wrote in her decision.