Alycia A. Fitz: Case Successes

<< Back to Alycia Fitz's profile

Family Law

Alycia has obtained residential custody for her client away from a functioning alcoholic father who drank primarily in the home with no outside witnesses to back up the mother’s and sons’ claims. Alycia worked with her client to gather evidence to support facts asserted by her client - such as the date and time of alcohol purchases shown through a Dominick’s Fresh Values card records. Also, knowing the boys both loved their father and feared retribution from him, Alycia worked with her client’s sons to build their confidence for the hearing. The boys successfully told the judge what they saw, what scared and concerned them, and what they wanted – in their own words. The judge awarded her client residential custody and child support.

Department of Children and Family Services
Alycia was also successful in returning her client’s teenage daughter from the custody of the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). A hospital social worker reported to DCFS that the girl, who was sleepy and highly medicated, claimed past abuse by her step-father. DCFS gained protective custody by alleging a threat of current and extensive abuse against the daughter and her half-siblings. Through her analysis and investigation, Alycia found a discrepancy between the social worker’s notes in the medical records and the hotline report rendered by DCFS. Alycia further found a gap in communications between the initial DCFS investigator, who concluded that no abuse occurred, and a subsequent case worker who after 50 days acted based on the inaccurate DCFS hotline report. Alycia’s forceful arguments and thorough preparation including the drafting of a detailed written motion and the uncovering of multiple witnesses resulted in great success. Her actions convinced the prosecutor’s supervisor to become involved and conduct her own investigation. The supervisor concluded that DCFS was wrong and had the daughter returned weeks before the scheduled custody hearing.

Alycia has obtained $550.00 per month in maintenance for a client whose income during most of the 20-year marriage was greater than her husband’s, but at the time of the divorce was several thousand dollars less.

Attorney Fitz recovered outstanding maintenance payments from a spouse that had disappeared for years. Alycia located the spouse in Indiana then worked with local authorities to serve him with notice of contempt proceedings and caused him to appear and answer to the court in Illinois. When the spouse requested time to hire an attorney, Attorney Fitz persuaded the court to institute payments of $2000.00 per month toward the outstanding amount during the interim and to have those payments garnished from his paycheck. Due to Attorney Fitz’s arguments and evidence presented at the hearing, the court found the spouse in contempt, awarded over $78,000 in back maintenance, awarded over $14,000.00 in interest, increased the garnished payments to $3000.00 per month, entered a judgment toward attorney fees and costs, ordered the spouse to submit his income tax returns annually, and required the spouse to make a full year of timely payments if he wants to avoid jail time for his contempt.

Obtained college expense contributions from a father whose paternity was not established until after the child turned 18 and who claimed an inability to pay. Structured a payment plan that required direct payments toward tuition during school and monthly payments extending beyond school toward current and retroactive non-tuition college expenses. Successfully argued for monthly payments based on the estimated total that would be incurred through completion of the degree program and the court’s findings on what the father could pay each month.

Attorney Fitz recovered visitation time for a non-custodial father who had admitted to the court that he had smoked marijuana in the past. The father had an informal visitation arrangement with his child’s mother for over two years. He enjoyed overnight time with the child and even babysat for the mother when she needed extra help. Both parents used illegal drugs in the past but trusted the other to not use in the presence of their child. After a fight between the parents, she denied him his time on Christmas Day and would not let him even see the child afterward. Faced with this breakdown in the relationship, the father filed a case to formally establish his parental rights as a father before retaining Attorney Fitz. At the first court date, the mother’s attorney accused him of using illegal drugs to which the father admitted he had in the past but did not bring up the mother’s past usage. He was ordered to take hair follicle drug tests regularly and faced defending the mother’s demands for supervised visitation. Once hired, Attorney Fitz filed a petition to immediately set visitation time during the litigation and advising the court of the father’s side of the story. Attorney Fitz appeared at hearing with witnesses, evidence, and case law showing that the father posed no threat to the child’s well being and that the mother’s past acts of allowing the father to have unsupervised visitations discredited her current claims. The mother’s attorney, unprepared and surprised by what she faced, practically begged the court to continue the hearing so that she could bring in more witnesses. Instead, the mother backed off on her position, set up an unsupervised visitation schedule with the father, and instructed her attorney to work out the details with Attorney Fitz.

Attorney Fitz obtained custody for a father whose wife left the state with their son without his knowledge or consent. Her client’s wife packed up the family’s truck, grabbed their son, left the state, and called her husband from the road. She told him that the mother always gets custody and that he could see his son the next summer. She filed for divorce in Kentucky claiming to have been a resident for six months and that their son was also a resident. Attorney Fitz filed for divorce and an emergency order for protection in Illinois. As a result of her arguments and testimony, the Illinois judge contacted the Kentucky judge and they decided to give the Illinois courts jurisdiction to hear arguments on which state had jurisdiction over custody and the divorce, thereby forcing the wife to return to Illinois and saving her client the time and expense of traveling to Kentucky. At the hearing, Attorney Fitz presented documents and witnesses establishing her and their son’s residence in Illinois. She showed that their son had attended school in Illinois within the last six months, that the wife had purchased furniture for delivery to the family home in Illinois, that the wife had obtained medical treatment in Illinois, and that the wife and son maintained their possessions and slept in the family home during that time. The Court held that Illinois had jurisdiction, awarded custody to the father due in large part to the wife’s misconduct, and ordered the wife to immediately return the child to his father’s care. Due in large part to the court proceedings, the wife agreed to give the husband residential custody in the divorce.

Civil Litigation

On the commercial side, Alycia successfully appealed a judge’s decision that prevented five piano dealers from going after key agents of a sixth dealer for violations of retail advertising regulations. The defendant piano company had filed for bankruptcy, but the plaintiffs and litigation team gathered evidence that would allow them to pierce the corporate veil to add individual players as defendants. Alycia prepared legal memoranda that balanced the complex factual background, litigation history, and relevant law with a straightforward explanation of how the judge abused her discretion. The Appellate Court agreed, giving the plaintiffs more litigation options and a stronger position for settlement.