A criminal restitution order carries a lien with real priority and the government enforces it with tools that a divorce litigant does not have.

So the practical reality was that a very large part of the estate I had just been awarded fifty-two per cent of was going to be consumed before anybody reached my number.

The estate was mostly one illiquid thing.

It was equity in a private company with two hundred-odd employees, which cannot be sold in a piece, which cannot be sold quickly, and which at that particular moment had an active fraud, a resigned auditor and a reduced credit line.

Judge Ferraro’s decision did not order the company sold, and if she had, everything would have been much worse for everybody.