Mother Seeks $2 Million for Ex-Husband’s 20-Year Evasion of Child Support

The day a judge ordered James S. Lawn to make $50-a-week child support payments was the day he disappeared. That was in 1964.

And that left his former wife, Patricia, to raise their four daughters alone, barely making ends meet and sometimes straying onto welfare rolls, according to her attorney, Patricia Herzog of Newport Beach.

When Lawn finally was found, living under an assumed name, the $21,000 in unpaid support that the attorney managed to recoup from him didn’t seem like enough.

“It kept eating at me,” Herzog said. “We got this much, but it was a poor substitute for what she (Lawn’s ex-wife) had and for what these children had to go through while growing up. She was on and off welfare. She was stuck.”

For Herzog, the next logical step was a novel lawsuit for $2 million. Patricia Spellis, formerly Patricia Lawn, contended in that lawsuit that her ex-husband committed fraud and inflicted emotional distress on his abandoned family.

The claim was thrown out of Superior Court before trial, but Herzog appealed, and the case now is awaiting decision by the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana.

Lawn’s attorney argued in legal papers filed in the case that there is no precedent for his former wife’s claims. Herzog’s legal position “is not supported by any single case in any United States jurisdiction,” he said.

But Herzog, who has learned the difficulties of single parenthood first hand after her own 1958 divorce, is unfazed.

“The daughters all were deprived of their father’s care and concern, and parental guidance and love and affection and companionship, not to mention the monetary support,” Herzog said. “The things that he did went beyond failure to comply with a court order.”

Lawn’s attorney, Mario W. Mainero Jr. of Santa Ana, insists that nothing his client did in ducking his family for 20 years could possibly amount to the sort of outrageous conduct implied by Herzog’s claims.

“Although it is a sad fact, it is also true that spouses owing child support intentionally disappear all the time. Although this may be illegal, or immoral . . . it is not necessarily outrageous conduct,” Mainero argued before the appellate court.

Lawn disappeared Oct. 1, 1964, according to Herzog, the day he was ordered by an Orange County judge to pay $12.50 a week to support each of his daughters, Ruth, 11; Renee, 8; Rhonda, 3, and Robyn, 2.

Spellis returned to a small town near Toledo, Ohio, home for her family and Lawn’s. Lawn never paid one penny, and despite repeated inquiries of his family and authorities, he was not found.

Six years ago, Spellis heard a rumor that Lawn was living under the assumed surname of Martin near San Francisco. In 1983, Spellis told “a policeman friend” about her ex-husband, according to Herzog. He made a computer-assisted search and came up with a likely suspect in Santa Rosa.

Pension Funds Seized

Spellis then contacted Herzog at the suggestion of another lawyer.

The $21,000 was seized from a pension fund to which the ex-husband had contributed.

That normally would have been the end of the case, if not for Herzog’s new theory of liability.

Arguing a novel legal position can be exhilarating, Herzog said.

Her best known legal battle was a 1982 divorce case, in which she represented a woman who claimed a half interest in her husband’s medical degree. She argued all the way to the California Supreme Court that her client was entitled to half of her ex-husband’s future earnings because the medical degree, earned during their marriage, was community property.

Before the Supreme Court could rule, however, the Legislature stepped in and passed a bill making the cost of a professional education community property in California. The value of a professional degree, however, is measured under that law in terms of how much it cost to acquire it rather than how much it enables one to earn.

“I did kind of open up this issue in California,” Herzog said. “That’s the fun of law. The law can be a real bore if all you can do is shuffle papers and do what everybody else does.

“The icing on the cake comes along when you can get an issue that has never been decided before and really sink your teeth into it. That’s fun.”

False Name Called Key

Legally, according to Herzog, the key to the fraud allegation against Lawn--and the factor that sets the Spellis case apart from typical litigation over nonpayment of child support--is the fact that a false name was used in an effort to avoid financial obligations.

Lawn’s concealment makes him liable for fraud, Herzog maintained.

But Mainero countered that Lawn concealed nothing because he was under no legal duty to speak out. He also has argued that Spellis’ failure to investigate word of her ex-husband’s whereabouts should bar her lawsuit.

“Twenty years have passed from the time he failed to pay to the time she filed the complaint,” Mainero said. “He has already paid the support. She wants something beyond that, that’s not been recognized by any court in this country.”

Herzog said she got lots of advice from fellow attorneys before filing the lawsuit.