Hi all,

I could really use your help/advice! (This is also posted on r/legaladvice but haven’t had any hits yet)

Background of the divorce case:

I'll do my best to make this as brief as possible, but so much has happened: My best friend's wife attempted suicide on December 13th, 2018. She was in a mental health decline for around 2 years, right after she stopped breast feeding their now 3 and half year old girl. During the mental health decline, both he and his daughter suffered a never-ending onslaught of verbal, emotional, and physical abuse and neglect. Because of her 2 prior psych ward stays a few months prior to the attempt, he was forced (and willing) to file for divorce in order to prevent child protective services from taking his girl away.

Since she became pregnant, she stopped working, which was fine because his salary allowed for her to be a stay at home mom. The goal was for her to return to work after the initial baby care was finished, but that obviously didn't happen. She forced him to move back to her family (San Diego) so they could take care of her kid as she was now incapable, while he took lower and lower and lower paying jobs (he's a hardware design engineer and now makes 1/3 of what he used to).

Long story short, her ability to care at all for her child wilted to nothing fast, which meant they hired help and eventually put her in daycare and then preschool (mind you only the most expensive preschool in San Diego county sufficed for her). She made sure to keep my best friend busy at work, evenings, and weekends (she refused to touch her child once he was home), so he wouldn't find out that all of her medical appointments (which were multiple times per week ranging from psychologists to hypnotists and massage therapists) were out of network, so she would cash in the 50% reimbursements without his knowledge because she was unhappy with her reduced allowance budget since moving.

She would dangle suicide in front of my best friend and tell him she needed "a nose job because she was so ugly", "more money because she was bored at home", etc etc to prevent her from offing herself. She forced him to buy a house last April/May in the area she wanted. Their old house hadn't sold yet, so her mother gifted them money put a downpayment on the house.

My poor best friend endured the abuse to try to save his little girl from getting hurt further and losing her mom forever. He did absolutely everything he possibly could to give her what his wife needed to get better. Turns out, the entirety of her depression was most likely fake and the suicide attempt was carefully planned so that she wouldn't actually die, but cover up the fact that she got pregnant from an affair.

The divorce case so far:

He was able to obtain emergency temporary full legal and physical custody of his kid. CPS came for a visit, interviewed him and observed the home. Somehow, the F*CKING CPS closed the case as inconclusive because his wife didn't return the case workers phone calls - not even kidding. After mounds of data and evidence proving that his wife didn't want to be a mother and that she hated her kid (she mentioned this in many texts - 13 pages worth), her abuse of alcohol and addiction to oxy and constant mixing of alcohol with oxy, klonopin, and Xanax, and physical and verbal abuse and neglect, somehow the courts decided that she gets supervised 18% custody, but with the goal of getting unsupervised 50/50 within the year.

My best friend not only has to pay her the max spousal support, but also max child support and back pay for the time since the divorce filing, oh, and of course her attorney fees in full. This will come out to be a little over 1/3 of his gross income monthly. She refuses to get a job and the courts won't force her to. They originally agreed to settle, but only if he signed a stipulation that the mother's "gift" would be repaid in full. She was actually dealing in bad faith as she had already submitted a document saying she wanted something entirely different than what was agreed upon in the original settlement draft. But of course, the stipulation still stands.

Now, because support payments take precedence over anything, he has been unable to pay the mortgage until the house sells. And of course, they've already had two offers on the house, but the wife's f*cktard of a lawyer takes days to response and refuses to sell it. I am of the opinion he is trying to bankrupt my best friend to further force him to pick up a second job, spend less time with his daughter and use it against him in court to push for 50/50 faster.

Anyways, help please! He's already missed the last mortgage payment and if the house forecloses, apparently the stipulation no longer holds, however, his lawyer told him today that if he is unable to pay for everything and the house forecloses, he can go to prison. Is this true? Is there a better solution? Any advice would be AMAZING!!!!! THANK YOU IN ADVANCE!

(Edited to make it easier to read :) )