I NOTICED THERE WERE PHONE NUMBERS ON THERE ALL FROM THE PHILIPPINES, AND THAT DIDN’T MAKE SENSE.

For a man with many secrets, on the witness stand Brian could be absurdly forthcoming. Court learned Brian lied to Canada’s Citizenship and Immigration in an application to bring Vanessa to Canada as his spouse — he declared he had never been married. In an application to bring Desiree here, he declared his wife was dead.

Brian would say one thing on the stand in the morning and then deny it after lunch. Asked at one point by Cox if he is a liar and a cheat, Brian agreed: “I concede that.” Cox and Barbara were dumbfounded. “I’ve never had a concession like that,” Cox said afterwards. It led to a judicial finding of fact in 2012 that Brian is a liar and a cheat.

It wasn’t that Brian paid nothing to Barbara. There was a $425,000 advance on an equalization payment ordered by the court early on, $79,000 in retroactive spousal support and some on-again, off-again monthly payments. Barbara was awarded their house, and an office that was split between her and their three children, which she sold to pay her legal bills.

But as the proceedings wore on, Barbara would soon feel she was drowning. Brian made a voluntary disclosure to Revenue Canada that he had been underpaying his taxes — in his crusade for where he wanted his money to end up, his wife lost even to the tax agency. Brian then claimed his new $830,000 tax debt pushed him into the red. He hired a bankruptcy lawyer, paid him $5,000 as retainer, and filed his bankruptcy claim in London, Ont.

Leung, meanwhile, hired a lawyer on behalf of Seasons Hong Kong and sued one of Brian’s Canadian companies over ownership of a building where Seasons operated in Canada. Conveniently, it was the same building given to Barbara by the court.

As these actions were launched in different cities in Ontario, Brian stopped paying Barbara her courtordered spousal support, knowing she had no other source of income. Then he applied to formally reduce his support payments to zero. Cox said it was all a strategy to wear Barbara down financially and emotionally, and extended her $120,000 from his own line of credit to keep her in the game.

In 2014, Judge E. Ria Tzimas agreed to roll all the court actions into one. Tzimas called Brian’s bankruptcy “highly suspicious” and perhaps “an abuse of process.” She raised the possibility the Seasons lawsuit was “staged” and described Brian’s divorce strategy as “acrimonious resistance.” It was a victory for Barbara. She now had only one war to wage.

By this point, Brian and Barbara, between them, had paid more than $2 million in legal fees and disbursements and their divorce had not yet made it to trial.

For most of the divorce, Brian was represented by Stuart Law, a family and commercial lawyer with SimpsonWigle, based in Burlington, Ont. Law had earlier represented Brian in his fight against Funrise. Brian testified he paid his lawyer a monthly fee, much of it wired from his Discovery Bay account that was frozen by the court and through his other offshore companies. Some of it even came from the brotherhood.

By the time their actual divorce trial began, on Feb. 2, 2015, Brian was suddenly unrepresented in court. He had split with Law, but still had people on the payroll. Brian’s expert witness on business valuation testified the midpoint value of Brian’s registered share ownership was approximately $3 million, and his equity holdings less than $2 million. Judge Ricchetti slammed the expert’s independence and objectivity.

Brian also paid a trustee in bankruptcy, who placed the value of all of his offshore operations at just $1. Cox described this as “ludicrous.” When confronted about the bizarrely low value on a large company, Brian’s trustee explained it was placed at $1 because “the value of the asset is unknown.”

Ricchetti’s 220-page judgment on Blatherwick v. Blatherwick was released on April 27, 2015. Enormously detailed, Ricchetti cut through as much as he could — the matrimonial issues, the corporate labyrinth, Brian’s bankruptcy, the side suits, the lies, the brotherhood.

“What is Mr. Blatherwick’s income? What was the value of his corporate interests?” Ricchetti asks in his judgment. “Four and a half years of litigation, over $2 million in legal and expert fees, and the answer to these two questions are not capable of precise determination.” Three things hid the truth, Ricchetti said: The brotherhood of trust, Brian’s lies and obstruction, and the foreign jurisdictions of Brian’s assets.

Brian’s testimony was a “charade,” Ricchetti said. “I reject the entirety of Mr. Blatherwick’s evidence. It is neither credible nor reliable.” As for Barbara, “Her memory was clear. She recalled details of events. She was not seriously challenged in her evidence.”

Ricchetti awarded Barbara $10.6 million in spousal support, equalization payment and proceeds from a life insurance policy Brian was ordered to cash in.

“A divorce is hereby granted.”

Formally ending the Blatherwicks’ marriage after more than four decades did not, however, end Blatherwick v. Blatherwick. Despite the freezing of Brian’s assets in 2010, Ricchetti and Cox noticed money flowed from Brian’s offshore corporations to his lawyer without the court’s permission.

After the divorce judgment, Ricchetti took the unusual step of agreeing to hear an application by Barbara to cite Stuart Law, Brian’s former lawyer, and his firm, SimpsonWigle, in contempt of court. More than $800,000 was paid to Brian’s and Seasons’ lawyers from the frozen accounts. The allegations of contempt would never be tested in court. After losing a motion to have the contempt motion dismissed, Law and SimpsonWigle settled it out of court with a payment to Barbara of an undisclosed sum. Law declined to discuss the Blatherwick case or his contempt proceedings. Cox and Barbara also declined to discuss the settlement.

While imprisoned at Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton, Ont., Brian received an unexpected visit. Three of his business partners travelled from Hong Kong and the United States to see him. This was the core of the brotherhood of trust, face-to-face for the first time since Brian’s passport was seized in 2014 for failing to make spousal support payments.

When he came from his cell to meet them, Brian assumed the brotherhood had come to settle his affairs and help get him out. They hadn’t. “I asked, well, are you guys going to cash in the life insurance? ‘Nope.’ Are you going to change the directorship? ‘Nope.’ So why are you here then? ‘We wanted to come and see you,’” he said of the jailhouse visit. “I don’t know what they came in to do, to tell you the honest truth.”

This past May, with Brian out of jail, the estranged couple were again in court. In the empty public gallery they sat as far apart as the seats allowed. In a repeat of a year ago, Brian was again asked by Ricchetti if he had satisfied his court orders and again Brian had not.

Found to still be in contempt of court, Ricchetti gave him time to make amends before sentencing him a second time. During a court break, Brian overheard a lawyer for Seasons asking to meet privately with Barbara’s lawyer. Brian threw up his hands in apparent dismay. “They’re trying to cut me out,” he muttered. The brotherhood seems broken.

Barbara, meanwhile, frets about the sisterhood. “I know this is an absurd situation. And I would hate to think that any other woman would have to go through this,” she said. On paper, Blatherwick v. Blatherwick is a triumph for her. The reality, she said, is despite the enormous judgment she is back working in a retail store, like she was in the early years of her marriage, earning a little more than minimum wage.

“I have a 200-page court document that says I have an entitlement to a settlement, but until Brian is willing to write a cheque, I have nothing. I haven’t won anything. I’ve lost more. I’ve lost everything.”

Brian hasn’t written that cheque. He insists he can’t. If he is to be believed, there is irony in why: He has no hope of complying without help from the brotherhood of trust. And the brotherhood hiding his money seems to want to keep it or, at least, seems content to have him out of the picture.

Brian is running out of time.

On Aug. 4, he is to appear before Ricchetti again. Brian is bracing for a return to jail.

“They are worried,” Brian said of his partners. “They are worried that Barb’s going to go overseas, go overseas for the money. So they’re huddling up.”