New year, same Mary
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Happy New Year.
While most people are working hard on their New Year’s resolutions to better themselves, infamous Woodlands divorce lawyer Mary Van Orman is up to her same old tricks.
In the high dollar Harris County divorce case between Sherry and Marek Menger, Van Orman pulled a fast one to get a last-minute court order that involves lots of money.
Right before Christmas, Van Orman filed an emergency motion to get a big pay day for Marek Menger, but the judge in the case was Lisa Millard and she wasn’t there to sign it.
So, who helped with the Mary’s last-minute Christmas gift?
Judge John Schmude did, just days before he left the bench.
Schmude had never heard a single argument in the nearly three-year-old divorce and didn’t know the history or that the divorce judgment was on appeal. It was one of his last acts as a sitting judge, and that’s why it’s raising eyebrows.
We looked. Schmude has received $2,000 in campaign donations from Mary Van Orman & Associates, half of that in his most recent failed bid to stay on the bench.
Newly elected Judge Sonya Heath has only been presiding over this case for a short while, so she may not know what we do about all the crazy things that have happened in the Van Orman saga.
The divorce should have been a done deal nearly a year ago when the final divorce decree was signed. Except Van Orman kept trying to get a new trial, claiming her client was cheated because she wasn’t in court the day the deal was signed.
Remember she claimed she was stuck at a hearing in Judge Gilbert’s court in Montgomery County. Except she wasn’t.
Dolcefino Consulting checked with Judge Gilbert’s court and confirmed there was no hearing in Gilbert’s court that day.
What’s the punishment for using one court to con another?
And how many judges signed last minute orders on their way out the door that new judges will have to clean up?
“These cases in family court shouldn’t go on forever. Judge Heath should take a real serious look at what happened over the Christmas holidays in the Menger case. It smells,” says Wayne Dolcefino, President of Dolcefino Consulting. “We get hired all the time to investigate family injustice, and it’s hard to avoid running into stories about Ms. Van Orman’s courtroom conduct.”
She barely avoided jail in 2018 for her unprofessional conduct against another divorce lawyer.
Stay tuned. The Mary show promises more hits in 2019.
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