Shana Velez

 I represented a dad whose then-wife got him to sign a co-petition, separation agreement, and parenting plan, all in English without translating any of it.  He is a monolingual Spanish-speaker.  His then-wife also wanted to relocate to California before finalizing their dissolution, because she did not have stable housing for her and their 3 minor children.  After a temporary orders hearing where OC tried to use my client’s undocumented immigration status against him (which the court did not buy), the court ordered that they were to have 50/50, week on/week off, so for the first time in approximately 6 months, he had meaningful time with his children – this was right before the holidays so he was able to spend holidays with his children.

I represented a victim of years of domestic violence.  Her ex-husband did not allow her to work outside the home so she had little to no marketable skills and serious health issues.  The parties were in their 60s, so retired.  Although OP was only getting approximately $1400/month in social security retirement benefits, the Court ordered that he had to pay a nominal amount of spousal maintenance, partially because of the severe DV my client suffered.  This case also involved a home and land in Mexico, which we were able to have appraised and although OC tried to use a tax bill from Mexico to value the home (which would have been substantially lower than the appraised value), the Court used the value of our Mexican appraiser.  This also contributed to the Court awarding my client spousal maintenance because that property was awarded to OP.

I represented an undocumented client whose US Citizen husband abused her for decades, much of which was financial abuse by threatening to leave her in the streets with nothing.  He claimed that they were not married at the beginning of the case.  However, after showing they had held themselves out as married to multiple government agencies and businesses, he eventually admitted that they were married.  As a result of establishing a common law marriage, my client is now entitled to an equitable portion of his business that was valued between $4 million and $6 million, in addition to real properties worth over $3 million.