Philly artist says her husband ruined her life and her lawyer made it worse | Stu Bykofsky

In 1985, after 23 years of marriage, Sandra and Edward Milner divorced.

A settlement was reached, but Sandra says Edward devoted himself to undermining the agreement that initially provided her with $2,000 monthly alimony and child support for a minor. They also had two older children, and Edward was still responsible for their education and expenses including school uniforms, eyeglasses, dental care, and summer camp.

As Sandra tells it, Edward, an ob-gyn, spent the next three decades trying to escape his obligations as a spouse and a father. Any expenditure of more than $50 for the children required his approval, which basically made Sandra a serf to his whims.

I’m not just going by Sandra’s say-so. She produced a raft of documents showing she spent an unholy amount of time in court battling her husband, whose medical practice was in New Jersey, where they lived. He died in 2016.

Every time the children needed something, “it meant having to take him to court,” Sandra says. With his $200,000 income, her ex could afford to hire lawyers.

“When you’re young and in love, you don’t see the other person for who he is,” says Sandra. “I did not know he was a cruel person.”

Over the years, their financial agreement was rewritten a couple of times, heading to a judicial climax in 2006. She hired lawyer Richard Klein to represent her and “to protect my only stable income, my alimony,” and what she had gained in previous court appearances, such as being a beneficiary to a life insurance policy, says Sandra.

Klein failed to do his job, says Sandra, an artist who lives in her studio in Old City. She lost her case and filed an appeal. She then filed a complaint with the New Jersey Supreme Court Office of Attorney Ethics against Klein, who had a 44-year career.

“When Klein stripped me of my income, he knew he would prevent me from hiring another attorney. He would make me destitute. He knew that,” says Sandra, 78, who lives on Social Security and whatever of her artwork she can sell. She earned a master’s degree from Tyler School of Art in 1984. Her three grown children are unable to help her financially, she says.

After a hearing on her complaint, the ethics office in June 2018 found Klein guilty of lying under oath in connection with his false claim that he was on the faculty of Rutgers Law School.

Sandra got some satisfaction in February when the New Jersey Supreme Court took the extreme action of disbarring Klein for life. I was unable to reach Klein — who consented to his disbarment — for comment. His attorney, Ron Graziano, declined to comment. Messages left with two of her children were not returned.

Klein’s disbarment did nothing to make Sandra financially whole. “I have no assets of any kind,” she says. “I do not have money to live. I do not have money to die.”

With Klein disbarred, Sandra does have one avenue for redress: She intends to file a claim with the New Jersey Lawyers’ Fund for Client Protection, established by members of the bar to reimburse clients who were fleeced by New Jersey lawyers.

Given Klein’s disbarment, this looks like an open-and-shut case, but Sandra can recover only the money she paid to Klein.

Refunding the money she paid to a crooked lawyer is the least that honest lawyers can do to help Sandra climb out of her financial hole.