As we have said before, the 2014 amendments to the alimony statute allegedly made it easier to terminate alimony if the recipient of the alimony was cohabiting. The statute now provides that alimony may be terminated or...more
Prior to the current coronavirus pandemic and resulting shelter in place orders, in many counties, there was already serious backlogs. What that means is that trial dates were hard to come by and even motions were scheduled...more
There has been much news coverage about how China’s divorce filings spiked after their periods of quarantine and lock down ended including in articles and Bloomberg, the Daily Mail and many other publications. In fact, in...more
An all too familiar, if not overused, term to describe all thing Covid 19/Corona virus is “unprecedented.” In an attempt to avoid politics, whether any of this was foreseeable or not, there is no dispute of the absolute...more
It is not unusual for deferred compensation (eg. stock options, restricted shares, RSU, REUs, and a whole host of others) to be addressed in marital settlement agreements, either as assets divided in equitable distribution,...more
As we all experience a “new normal,” at least for the next several weeks, if not longer, parents who are divorced or separated and are sharing custody and parenting time of their children during the coronavirus pandemic must...more
I received an email earlier this week containing guidelines for parents who are sharing custody and parenting time of their children during the Coronavirus Pandemic which was prepared by the American Academy of Matrimonial...more
Yesterday, I blogged on the S.W. v. G.M. case in a post entitled More from the Appellate Division on Lifestyle, Foulas and the Concept of Income Equalization. In that blog, I noted that the S.W. court also addressed the...more
A few weeks ago, I authored a post on this blog entitled Debunking the Myth That the Percentage Used in the So-Called “Alimony Rule of Thumb” Should Go Down as the Payer’s Income Goes Up. That post reiterated that the Court’s...more
It has been said over and over again that there are no formula’s to determine alimony. As I have blogged in the past, other than one legal malpractice referencing the formula or “rule of thumb”, virtually every time the...more
For many divorce attorneys, the busy season starts after the first of the year. For the last several years, I have posted on the phenomenon of the New Year’s Resolution Divorce. For whatever reason, this post has struck a...more
An issues that frequently arises is the treatment of an inheritance received by a spouse during the marriage. The basic rule is that any property received via gift or inheritance during the marriage is exempt from equitable...more
For decades, when a custodial parent wanted to move out of state, it would not be unusual to hear that if the court or other party won’t let me leave New Jersey, she will just move to Cape May, or some other point far away...more
For the second time in about a month, the Appellate Division has reversed improvidently granted discovery when there hadn’t been a showing of a change of circumstance. As noted by Eliana Baer on this blog on August 12, 2019...more
In one of the earliest posts I did on this blog going back ten years or more, I posited that you can only really settle when the time is right and when both parties are ready. In fact, I felt then as I feel now, that you can...more
I have written many times over the years regarding parent coordination, both during and after the end of the Supreme Court pilot program. A parent coordinator is a person, sometimes a mental health professional and sometimes...more
We often deal with cases in which one or both spouses own a business. In many of those cases, a spouse received their interest in a business prior to the marriage, either from a family member, or otherwise. With regard to...more
The issue of the division of deferred compensation in divorce – more particularly, unvested deferred compensation, is often one that is hotly disputed. This is in part because there is not a lot of case law on the issue. ...more
We have all seen cases where one of the parties is unreasonable if not out of control. I am not talking about taking a hard of aggressive legal position. I am not talking about taking an aggressive if not unreasonable...more
There has been a lot of talk about the lack of preparedness for last week’s snow storm that left many people stranded in traffic for hours trying to get home. While many have argued, perhaps rightly, that the storm turned...more
Several years ago I did a post on this blog of the same name and then updated it some time later. The list then, as re-compiled below, are things to do if you really don’t want to settle your case. As I said before,...more
Most clients hire their lawyers for the lawyers expertise and experience. There is an expectation that the lawyer will guide the client through the process, given them the strategic options, and counsel them regarding...more
It is not unusual for parties to address their children’s college education in their Marital Settlement Agreements. If children are college age or close, parties may actually specifically determine the percentages that they...more
As I wrote in December, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enacted at the end of last year, changed the taxability of alimony starting in 2019. Specifically, while alimony is currently income to the recipient and deductible from the...more
There is an old adage in litigation “know your judge.” Essentially what that means is that you should find out as much as you can about the judge you are appearing in front of both so you can try to understand what the...more