Maryland residents may be familiar with the recent divorce proceedings of the former team owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Frank McCourt, and his wife, Jamie McCourt, who was also a co-owner of the team. Jamie McCourt is now seeking to set aside her settlement of $131 million dollars based on the allegation that the asset division to which she agreed was based on fraudulent information she received regarding the value of the couple's assets, particularly the value of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team.

The former team owner's wife is now attempting to subpoena the key players involved in the sale of the Dodger's baseball team to the New York divorce court located in Manhattan. One of these key players, a company involved in the sale of the Dodgers, is trying to block these subpoenas from being issued by arguing that they are overly broad.

According to the request that she filed earlier in which she seeks to set aside the agreement, she claims that in an attempt to convince her to settle, she was lead to believe that the total value of she and her husband's combined assets were less than $300 million. Later, the Dodgers team alone was sold for $1.7 billion. She is claiming that she was fraudulently induced to settle the divorce proceedings.

Maryland residents involved in high asset divorces can learn from this case. It is essential in any high asset divorce for each party to obtain their own individual and independent financial valuations of all jointly held assets, property and liabilities in order to properly address the sticky issues of asset division in a divorce.

Source: Businessweek.com, "Blackstone Seeks to Block Subpoenas in McCourt Divorce," David McLaughlin, Nov. 7, 2012