Abbas Hadjian

Roughly 20 years ago, a woman from Abbas Hadjian’s native Iran visited his office and asked him to be her new divorce attorney although, at the time, he was mostly taking on business transactional work.

He agreed to take on the woman as a client, who Hadjian said was unhappy with the $1,000 a month in spousal support her ex-husband was paying.

Hadjian said he managed to convince the court to raise the monthly payment to $3,000 per month to align more with the ex-husband’s salary as an engineer.

“I had asked for $3,000 in attorney fees and costs of appearance, but the Court gave me $12,000.00 to discover additional facts supporting respondent’s misappropriation of community funds he had sent to his parents in Iran,” he said. “The following week, the respondent changed attorney and the new, more experienced, settled on very generous terms.”

Since that experience, Hadjian has become a Certified Family Law Specialist and wrote a book in Farsi titled “Divorce in California” to help other Iranians and Iranian Americans going through divorce.

Before that, he had originally earned his law degree in Iran in 1965, but started practicing in California in 1988.

One recent dissolution case he chose to highlight was not because of its complexity, “but more to depict the exorbitant consequence of thumbing nose at the court in a family law proceeding.”

The respondent in the case refused to respond to court orders to produce documents and meet other requirements and misappropriated community funds to build a high rise in Tehran. Hadjian said the respondent sold the property and pocketed $7 million.

Hadjian wrote: “Due to absence of respondent’s cooperation and participation in the discovery: a. all information for property and support must be collected form from third parties; b. Financial data supporting Marital Standard of Living must be established on forensic work; c. Google Earth was used to locate the exact location of the property in Iran; d. The historical windows of Google Earth was used to create a visual timeline of the events, corresponding [with] the misappropriation of community funds in California with construction of the Iranian property, from breaking ground to completion and sale of the building.”

As a result, the court sanctioned the respondent by ruling that on sale of the property all

went to the petitioner along with the transfer of the family residence to the petitioner.

Hadjian is a fellow of the American Academy of Marimonial Lawyesr (AAML), and Internatioan Academy of Family Lawyers (IAFL), an expert in Iranian Law and Documents. He is also a Neutral with the Alternative Resolutions Centers (ARC) and was previously chair of the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Family Law Section from 2022-23.