[1][2] Martin Biscailuz was married to Ida Rose Warren, and while living in the Boyle Heights district in 1883 they had a son, Eugene, who became Los Angeles County sheriff from 1932 to 1958.
[8] In November 1882, at the age of about 21, Biscailuz was admitted by Judge Ygnacio Sepulveda to practice in his division of the Superior Court after having "proved satisfactory testimonials of good moral character, and having undergone a strict examination,"[9] and two years later he was nominated in a Democratic Party convention to run in the 2nd Ward for the Los Angeles Common Council.
About 1890, he received the largest legal fee ever paid in Los Angeles County up to that time, variously reported as $36,000 or $40,000, in connection with the "Oxarat estate" case.
[17] The Times reported shortly before Biscailuz's death that: As administrator of an estate of one of his former clients[,] he became possessed of a fortune of $15,000 or $20,000 about twelve years ago, but he could not stand prosperity.
Friends and family forsook him on account of his intemperate habits, and when his money was gone he resorted to pilfering and committing forgery for small sums, in order to eke out a miserable existence.
[14]By 1895, he had been committed at least once to the Southern California State Asylum for the Insane and Inebriates, and in May of that year he was on trial in the forgery of a document in the name of Judge Walter Van Dyke.
Biscailuz was acquitted, with Judge Smith remarking that "it was a free country, and if any man chose to drink himself into temporary insanity, he could hardly be prevented by the courts from doing so at will.
[13] He was sent to jail for the last time in October 1898 for "obtaining money from laboring men by fraudulently representing himself as an officer of the city street department, and as such, able to procure work for them for a financial consideration."