The managing partner and the chief financial officer of Atlanta's Fisher & Phillips testified Tuesday that Claud “Tex” McIver was stripped of his status as an equity partner in 2013 and that, beginning Jan. 1, 2014, became an income partner at greatly reduced pay.

For the first seven years of the employment lawyer's marriage to Diane McIver—president of Atlanta advertising firm U.S. Enterprises—Tex McIver's annual earnings averaged more than $570,000 a year, Fisher Phillips CFO Jim Nations testified Tuesday at McIver's murder trial. But in 2013, McIver's earnings plummeted by nearly $140,000 to $435,603, Nations said. By the end of 2014, McIver's first year as an income partner, his annual pay dropped again—to $350,000, Nations said. And, as an income partner, McIver was no longer eligible to draw a percentage of the law firm's total annual profits, he said.

That would not be McIver's only pay cut, according to Nations and Fisher Phillips managing partner Roger Quillen, who testified Tuesday afternoon. McIver worked at Fisher Phillips for 44 years until he retired under duress after he shot his wife to death in what he and his attorneys have claimed was a tragic accident. Fisher Phillips is a midsize law firm specializing in labor employment law, primarily defending employers against workers' claims.

Nations said McIver's earnings dropped yet again—to $275,000—for the fiscal year that ended only four days after Diane McIver's Sept. 26, 2016, death.