Lawyer Once High-hitting Success Now Being Bled to Death by Recession and Ex-wife

In his heyday, David McLauchlan made upwards to $500,000 yearly, working for Lord Bissell Brook, but after 34 years, his marriage ended and Bissell fired him. In tackling a mortgage of over $900,000 on a Chicago townhouse worth a third less, and in struggling to run his own private business, which has cost him over $100,000, McLauchlan was expected to pay his ex-wife over $14,000 a month in alimony, despite the fact that she has $700,000 in assets, and David has $1.5 million in debt.

He’s had to dip into his retirement fund to make ends meet, taking out $800,000, and is estimated to exhaust it in four months. He has paid to put one of his daughters through college and to support his other daughter who is mentally disabled.

He has had a gleam of light after he appealed the alimony payment, which he and his lawyer, Howard London of Beermann Swerdlove, had sought to drop entirely as being unnecessary, so that it now matches his earnings of 2008 not including as income, as it had, the money he tapped out of his retirement fund.

Said his lawyer, “This case is a perfect illustration of what happens when divorce meets recession meets downsizing.”