I opened my laptop, the small one I’d bought myself three years ago to video-call the grandchildren, and I began to research. I found the name of a firm in Hartford, Brennan and Associates, that specialized in high-asset divorce litigation with a focus on financial misconduct. I found that Connecticut law allowed for post-judgment motions if fraud could be demonstrated in the original proceedings. I found that LLC transfers made within two years of a divorce filing could be scrutinized if the intent to defraud could be shown.
I wrote all of this down in my yellow legal pad in my careful, even handwriting. Then I called Brennan and Associates and made an appointment for the following Tuesday.
I told Ruth that evening over dinner. She set down her fork and looked at me with an expression I recognized, the same one she’d given me at 17 when I told her I was going to try out for the school play despite being terrified of audiences.
“You’re going to fight him,” she said.
It wasn’t a question.
“I’m going to find out the truth first,” I said. “And then I’m going to fight him.”
The drive to Hartford took just over an hour from Ruth’s house. I wore my Goodwill coat, charcoal gray, bought years ago for a faculty dinner Harold had dragged me to, because I believed in showing up to serious meetings as seriously as they deserved. I had my legal pad, a folder of every document from my original divorce proceedings, and the receipt from the Greenwich restaurant I had kept folded inside my wallet for months.
Brennan and Associates occupied the fourth floor of a building near the state capital. The attorney who met with me was not Mr. Brennan himself, but a woman named Clare Nguyen, mid-40s, efficient, with the kind of stillness that I associated with people who spent their days in rooms where a great deal depended on staying calm.
She shook my hand and did not speak to me the way some younger people speak to women my age, with that slight elevation of volume and simplification of vocabulary.
She simply asked me to start from the beginning.
I did.
I talked for almost ninety minutes. She took notes. She did not interrupt except to ask precise, useful questions — exact dates, dollar amounts, names of entities. When I finished, she sat back and looked at what she had written.
“The LLC formation date,” she said. “Do you know it?”
“I know it was registered in Delaware,” I said. “I don’t know the exact date.”
“That’s the first thing we need.” She said, “If it was formed after Harold made the decision to divorce, and there are ways to establish that, you have grounds for a fraud claim that could reopen the settlement entirely.”
“What would that require?” I asked.
“A subpoena for his financial records, the LLC’s formation documents, and his attorney-client communications to the extent they reveal intent.” She paused. “This is not a fast process, Mrs. Caldwell. And Harold will fight it.”
“I know,” I said. “He has resources.”
“So do we,” she said simply.
I retained Clare Nguyen that afternoon. It cost me $8,000 upfront, nearly a third of what I had readily accessible, and I paid it without hesitation.
Some expenditures are not expenses.
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