Rod Firoozye

Law Offices of Rod Firoozye -- San Jose

Rod Firoozye started out in business law in the mid-1990s and now applies relevant principles to the big-dollar divorces he handles at his three-lawyer boutique for Silicon Valley clients. Before becoming a certified family law specialist, Firoozye dealt with complex litigation cases against large corporations like Microsoft Corp. and EarthLink.

In 2004, he began focusing more on family law matters and using his business experience and his own personal background in resolving family cases.

Firoozye's family brought him to the U.S. from Iran in 1984 when he was 14. "I speak Farsi, and I do work among the Persian community here, but I don't necessarily emphasize that part of my practice. There was one case, though..." He went on to describe a contentious dissolution dispute between his Iranian client, a wealthy technology executive, and his wife, who spent over two million dollars battling him, then wanted him to pay her attorney fees.

"Even though normally my client would be ordered to pay his wife's fees, I got the court to sanction her for her lies, so he did not have to pay her anything," he said. "Some crazy nasty stuff happens in Silicon Valley."

Although California is a no-fault divorce state, Firoozye said that there is a workaround. "Cheating is off the table, but there's a way to get some information in if one party breaches his or her fiduciary duty to the other, say if the husband secretly spends money on other women and we can prove it."

An issue in some divorces involving high-networth couples is the task of business valuation, essential to calculating a fair distribution of assets. Firoozye has dealt with numerous cases in these matters and, along with a certified public accountant, plans to present a seminar on the process at an April meeting in Napa County of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, of which he's a fellow.

He said that during the pandemic, some businesses have suffered losses that owners in divorce proceedings used to undervalue their worth.

In one case, he was asked by a colleague representing the wife to assist when the husband, the owner of a janitorial business, contended that it had become worthless due to a diminished client base. "We argued that this was merely a blip in a successful concern," Firoozye said. "We were able to settle the case to avoid a multipleday trial and significant costs. Marriage of Gerst, 17FL000119 (S. Clara Co. Super. Ct., filed Jan. 10, 2017).

"These cases can be fun. I enjoy helping people, and that's my bottom line," Firoozye said.

- John Roemer