Call it the Valentine’s Day Peace Treaty.
Former Chicago Board of Trade Chairman Patrick Arbor was released Thursday morning from Cook County Jail after reaching a financial settlement with his ex-wife in their epic divorce battle.
The 82-year-old Arbor had spent the past nine months in jail on a civil contempt of court charge stemming from his decision to flee to Europe in 2012 rather than comply with court orders requiring him to make payments to ex-wife Antoinette Vigilante.
“I’m delighted to be out,” Arbor told a reporter outside the jail as he loaded four boxloads of belongings — mostly books — inside a waiting car.
“You see all these books. I’ve donated three times this many books to the jail library,” said Arbor, who was held in isolation at the jail as a safety precaution and spent most of his time reading.
Asked if he was satisfied with the terms of the settlement, Arbor said: “Of course.”
Just hours earlier, Circuit Judge Myron Mackoff signed an agreed order ending the litigation between Arbor and his ex-wife and lifting the “body attachment” arrest warrant under which he was held.
Terms of the settlement were not made public.
Asked outside court if she was happy with the settlement, Vigilante said, “I’m not happy, I’m ecstatic.”
Vigilante said she relieved to put a painful chapter in her life behind her.
Like Arbor, she declined to say who in the end won their battle of wills.
“There are no winners in this case,” she said.
As to the coincidence of Arbor’s release coming on Valentine’s Day, her lawyer Stan Sneeringer said it was exactly that — entirely coincidental.
The long-running effort to reach a settlement was supposed to be wrapped up Wednesday, but ran into a last-minute glitch, lawyers said.
But Vigilante did offer an opinion on whether it was ironic to settle the case on Valentine’s Day: “I think it’s both fitting and ironic.”
Arbor was arrested in Boston in May while attempting to board a flight to Rome, then extradited to Chicago. Arbor had returned to the U.S. to attend his grandson’s college graduation.
Vigilante previously obtained an $18 million divorce judgment against Arbor , but she told the Sun-Times late last year that she was prepared to settle for “far less.”
Arbor, once a major player in Chicago business and politics, moved most of his assets offshore and took up residence in Lugano, Switzerland, to avoid paying his wife.
After his arrest, Arbor contended in court that he couldn’t pay Vigilante because he had lost most of his money in the collapse of a Portuguese bank and because his remaining funds were tied up in a Lichtenstein trust that he could not access while in custody.
In court Thursday, Mackoff said he was “taking the parties’ word that the terms of their settlement are not unconscionable,” a reference to the legal standard by which he was required to judge the agreement.
Given the hard-fought nature of the case, he said he was sure that it wasn’t.
Mackoff thanked the lawyers in the case.
“It’s a very difficult case, and I’m glad to see it resolved,” the judge said.
Vigilante was represented in the divorce case by Sneeringer and Larry Byrne. Arbor was represented by Howard Rosenfeld and Shaska Dice.
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