When Atlanta attorney Claud “Tex” McIver shot his wife, Diane, to death in 2016, she was worth $12 million.

But McIver—who in 2014 had lost his equity partnership at Atlanta’s Fisher & Phillips at a cost of more than half his income—was so financially-strapped that he mortgaged his beloved ranch near Lake Oconee to his wife and, without her money, “wouldn’t even have one dollar,” Fulton County Chief Senior Assistant District Attorney Seleta Griffin told jurors as prosecutors opened their murder case against McIver.