It’s hard to be Susan Stanford, ex-wife of epic swindler Allen Stanford. Not only can she not do a Google search on Sir Allen and NOT see this picture (my favorite picture ever, by the way), she had what might have been the worst divorce lawyer in history. How bad? Screwed her out of $200m in cash, that is how bad. So Susan is doing the only sensible thing and is suing her old lawyer for that amount, plus.

“If the plaintiff had been made aware of the substantial sum offered as settlement in her divorce proceedings, she would have readily accepted,’’ Susan Stanford’s current attorney, Michael P. Mallia, said in the complaint. By the time his client learned of the offer, “the substantial community property assets at issue in her divorce proceedings” had been seized or frozen,’’ he said.

Susan Stanford filed for divorce in November 2007, more than a year before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seized the financier’s assets on accusations he ran a $7 billion scheme involving the sale of certificates of deposit through his Antiguan bank. When the divorce was filed, Stanford was considered a billionaire and ranked 205th on Forbes’ 2008 list of richest Americans.

So originally, the deal was that Allen would pay her a hundred grand a month – which, you know, should be enough right there for most people – plus the mortgage, insurance, and housekeeping expenses on her giant house and on their daughter’s giant condo. Pretty sweet deal, huh? Wish I could divorce a billionaire.

But if you look at that settlement, that’s a lot of different payments, and Allen Stanford is clearly not good at math, so he came up with something easier: take the $200m up front and just GTFO with your alimony and things. He tells his lawyer who tells her lawyer who…loses the Post-It note she wrote it down on, and fails to tell Susan about it until Allen has no assets to speak of and would surely bounce a $200m check. Heck, I’d be mad too.

It’s not so much that I would have to live like a pauper on a hundred grand a month, even though that number is just barely six figures and my God how am I supposed to eat on that meager sum, as it is that rarely in life does anyone have an opportunity to claim two hundred million dollars at one time. I mean, maybe if you are playing real-money Monopoly with Ted Turner and he lands on your hotel-covered Park Place and then snake eyes his next roll and hits Boardwalk, maybe you have a chance at that kind of cash. But other than that, it just does not happen. So yeah, I’m with her, I’d sue my stupid lawyer into the projects if she shafted me for 200 mil.

(h/t Dealbreaker)