## Facts

- Loretta Ray hired attorney Ronald E. Griesheimer to represent her in divorce proceedings against George Ray.
- At the time of the June 1971 divorce, Loretta and George had four minor children.
- The divorce decree required George to maintain all four children as primary beneficiaries on his life-insurance policies.
- George had a $10,000 employer life-insurance policy; after the divorce he remarried, named his second wife as beneficiary, and she received the proceeds when he died in 1976.
- The children sued Griesheimer, alleging he negligently failed to secure compliance with the decree’s life-insurance provision (including failing to notify the employer/insurer or advise Loretta to do so), causing the children to lose the policy proceeds.
- The children pleaded legal malpractice and, alternatively, claimed they were intended third-party beneficiaries of the attorney-client contract between Loretta and Griesheimer.

## Issues

1. Whether an attorney representing a parent in a divorce owes a malpractice duty to the parent’s children absent an attorney-client relationship.
2. Whether the children stated a claim as intended third-party beneficiaries of the attorney-client contract based on the divorce decree’s life-insurance provision.

## Decision

- The appellate court affirmed dismissal for failure to state a cause of action.
- No malpractice claim lay because the children were not Griesheimer’s clients and the complaint did not establish any attorney-client relationship with them.
- The third-party beneficiary theory failed because the attorney-client relationship was not alleged to have been formed primarily and directly to benefit the children; any benefit to them was incidental to representation of the mother in the divorce.

## Legal Principles

- Legal malpractice liability generally requires an attorney-client relationship or an equivalent undertaking establishing a duty to the plaintiff.
- A nonparty may enforce a contract only if the contract was made for that person’s direct benefit; incidental beneficiaries have no claim.
- A nonclient may sue an attorney only when the primary purpose and intent of the attorney-client relationship itself was to benefit or influence the nonclient; otherwise the attorney owes no duty to the nonclient.

## Conclusion

The court held that the children could not recover from their mother’s divorce attorney for alleged negligence in connection with a life-insurance provision because they lacked privity and were not direct, intended beneficiaries of the attorney-client contract; the complaint therefore failed to state a claim.


Pelham v. Griesheimer, 93 Ill. App. 3d 751, 417 N.E.2d 882 (Ill. App. Ct. 1981)