May 11, 2010: The Heat is on Wade's wife

Dwyane Wade's wife briefly taken into custody.

by Jeffrey Cottrill

It's generally not a good idea to mess with court judges, even in a divorce. Those people mean business. The estranged wife of NBA superstar Dwyane Wade found this out the hard way this week, as a Chicago judge ordered her to be taken into custody for missing a hearing.

Cook County Circuit Judge Marya Nega ordered the arrest yesterday, after Siohvaughn Wade failed to show up at a hearing in her rocky divorce from the Miami Heat shooting guard. Mrs. Wade turned herself in to Chicago authorities today; she was out of the courthouse about an hour later, after posting $10,000 bail.

Mrs. Wade's divorce lawyer, Marsha Fisher, told the court that she was having trouble getting in touch with her client. "When things don't go according to Mrs. Wade's way, all of a sudden, the phone's turned off," Judge Nega replied, as quoted by the Associated Press. She added: "Maybe it's time for the kids to go live with Dad for a month or two."

Judge Nega claimed that Mrs. Wade had been repeatedly disobeying court orders throughout the case. According to the judge, Mrs. Wade had ignored an order to allow the couple's two sons, eight-year-old Zaire and nearly three-year-old Zion, to speak with Wade daily. In addition, Mrs. Wade had not brought the children to their school to be picked up by their aunt the week before.

Fisher attempted to take partial responsibility for Mrs. Wade's absence; she said that her client had learned that the divorce lawyer had been in a car accident and therefore must have assumed that the hearing was postponed. "The fact that you had a car accident does not excuse Mrs. Wade not being here," Judge Nega answered, according to AP.

Dwyane Wade's divorce lawyer, James Pritikin, had intended to request that Wade receive physical custody of the two sons in the hearing. Pritikin said that Mrs. Wade had been constantly sabotaging all of his client's attempts to communicate with the children.

Last week, Mrs. Wade filed a lawsuit against her husband, claiming that Wade's current relationship with actor Gabrielle Union was causing emotional distress to the children and that the pair had even engaged in erotic foreplay in the boys' presence. Wade called these accusations "baseless and meritless [sic]", according to AP, and Pritikin has asked Judge Nega to order a psychiatric evaluation for Mrs. Wade and to request a criminal investigation into her behavior.

It's not the first lawsuit triggered by this lengthy, contentious divorce case; in February of last year, Wade sued his wife over her accusations that he'd given her herpes and abandoned their children.

The Wades were high-school sweethearts before they married. Wade submitted a divorce filing in 2007.

Dwyane Wade, 28, signed with the Miami Heat in 2003 and led the team to their first championship in 2006. A six-time NBA all-star, he was chosen as the MVP for the NBA Finals in 2006 and the All-Star Game MVP this past February. Sports Illustrated chose him as Sportsman of the Year for 2006, and he was the league's scoring champion last year.

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