'Prince Harming': Self Help Author Sues Ex-Boyfriend
A self-help guru is about to become much more widely known, but for all the wrong reasons. Karen Salmansohn, the author of How to Make Your Man Behave in 21 Days or Less Using the Secrets of Successful Dog Trainers, is suing her ex-boyfriend because he just didn't. Behave that is, or even follow up on his alleged promise to support her and the baby she says he fathered through fertility treatments.
The New York Post reports the misbehaving defendant of Salmansohn's suit, Mitchell Leff, allegedly enthusiastically "pursued" the author, wished to start a family with her and promised to support her during her pregnancy and after their baby was born. But, within 24 hours of Salmansohn becoming pregnant, Leff had a change of "heart" and decided he no longer wanted to father a second family.
Salmansohn told the Post there were "no red flags" to alert her to Leff's potential to change quickly from prince back into frog. One flag she must have missed was that Leff told Salmansohn he was "almost" divorced. Non-existent red flag number two, Leff proposed after a courtship of a few weeks. Indeed, there was just no indication that this was not a loyal, upstanding guy. Unseen red flag number three, the supposedly successful "laundromat king" actually earned much of his money by being a bookie for the last 30 years. But our intrepid expert missed that one as well.
As to the suit, the plaintiff is seeking to hold Leff to the promises he made to pay for medical expenses and everything needed to prepare the Salmansohn's home for a baby as well as allegedly promising to support her in excess of the $150,000 she typically made during a year while she was pregnant and taking care of the baby. If paternity can be proven, Salmansohn should have no difficulty securing support for her child.
What she probably can't recover for in court, however, is the damage Leff did to the self-help "expert's" image as someone who might actually be in a position to offer advice. After all, would you buy a book entitled the Prince Harming Syndrome from the gal who got taken by one after writing it?
Related Resources:
- Self-help author impregnated and dumped by her own Prince Harming (New York Post)
- Paternity: May an unmarried mother legally force the father of her baby to support the child? (FindLaw)
- Child Support (FindLaw)
- John Edwards News: Frances Quinn and the Duties of Unmarried Fathers (FindLaw's Celebrity Justice)
- Child Support Basics (provided by the Murphy Law Group)
- Unmarried Couples and the Law (provided by the Law Offices of Scott David Stewart)