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Ignoring divorce proceedings can have serious financial and legal consequences. In Hollis v. Hollis (2025), a mother in Annapolis, failed to comply with reasonable discovery requests during litigation. As a result, the court denied her monetary awards and ordered her to pay $6,600 in attorney’s fees to the father. The appellate court upheld this ruling, emphasizing that courts consider financial capabilities and justified legal expenses when awarding fees. This case highlights that failing to participate in legal proceedings can lead to unnecessary penalties.
In the past, we’ve talked about the need to actively participate in divorce proceedings, regardless of how difficult or costly such participation might be. Almost without exception, there is a substantial drawback to simply “ignoring” the divorce litigation, even though some spouses are tempted to just ignore proceedings when they occur. The reasons as to why spouses choose to ignore, disengage, or inadequately partake in divorce proceedings are quite varied. In some instances, spouses lack the means to procure counsel, while at other times spouses might mistakenly suppose that a “default” judgment won’t have any negative ramifications. The truth, as we will discuss, is that spouses should always actively participate whenever they are named in divorce litigation, because there is essentially no potential upside to ignoring proceedings.
In the case of Hollis v. Hollis (2025), the mother ended up suffering negative repercussions as a result of her failure to adequately participate. Let’s examine the facts and outcome of this important case in detail.
Facts of the Case
The case comes out of Annapolis. The couple had one child, the father worked in the Navy and the mother was an analyst at an IT company. During the divorce litigation, the father served the wife with multiple discovery requests; these requests were correctly filed, and were “reasonable” in the sense that the mother was easily able to comply. The mother repeatedly failed to deliver on multiple discovery requests, and in response the father asked for attorney’s fees, and that the mother be denied any sort of lump sum monetary award or monthly maintenance payments. The trial court concurred with the father’s position that the mother’s failures were unreasonable, and consequently the mother was ordered to pay the father’s attorney’s fees, and also didn’t receive any monetary award. The mother then appealed that decision.
Ruling & Discussion
The mother lost the appeal, and was ultimately compelled to pay $6,600 in attorney’s fees (for the father). In its opinion, the appellate division emphasized the fact that the court has broad discretion to grant attorney’s fees, and looks at a variety of factors when making this type of determination. The two primary concerns, when making a determination on attorney’s fee, is the financial capabilities of both parties, and how justified the fees incurred were during the course of the litigation. In this case, it was clear that the father made reasonable discovery requests, and the mother simply ignored those requests altogether; the requests didn’t place the mother in a difficult position, or require her to do anything overly burdensome. Consequently, the father was obviously justified in incurring more legal costs as he attempted to pursue the requests and move the case forward.
In addition to ignoring the discovery requests, the mother also failed to substantiate certain aspects of her case, and so she unnecessarily “dragged on” the litigation in an unacceptable fashion. Again, the appellate division regarded this as a relevant in its decision making process.
As we pointed out, ignoring any aspect of litigation is almost never a good idea. At the very best, ignoring proceedings might end up not causing any serious harm, but the key point is that basically nothing good can really derive from this strategy. Action is always best over inaction, and this case is just one piece of evidence to demonstrate that fact.
Contact the Murphy Law Firm for More Resources
If readers wish to know more about dealing with uncooperative spouses, tips to facilitate settlement agreements, enforcement issues with settlement agreements, or any other related matter, contact one of the family law attorneys at the Murphy Law Firm today by calling 240-219-5243.
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