New York Divorce Report - New York's Divorce and Family Law Blog

In January, I wrote about the Taubs, who put up a wall and divided their home in two during the divorce.

Well, the jury spoke and denied Mrs. Taub her divorce.  (You can request a jury trial on the issue of grounds in New York). 

As detailed in Daily News:

In a divorce battle that has gotten more and more bizarre, Chana Taub asked a Brooklyn Supreme Court panel to dissolve her 21-year marriage to Simon Taub. Both listened in stunned silence Tuesday as the jury said they could not separate. . .

But in keeping them married, the six-member jury rejected Chana's stated grounds for divorce, that Simon had subjected her to "cruel and inhuman treatment."

The wacky case began two years ago, when Chana said she wanted out of the marriage and Simon refused.

Although most divorce cases are decided by judges, Chana Taub sought a jury trial because she said she thought she would get a fairer hearing. 

The real-life "War of the Roses" got so nasty Simon Taub built a wall dividing the Hasidic Jewish couple's Borough Park brownstone to keep them apart. 

During the 10-day trial, Chana Taub testified that she needed more than a wall to protect her against his abusive streak. She said he has attacked her with everything from a telephone to a treadmill during their hellish 21-year marriage. Their four children testified against him.

Tuesday's astonishing jury decision came after just five hours of deliberations, leaving the warring couple speechless, albeit temporarily. ...
Simon Taub's lawyer Abe Konstam called the case, "a colossal waste of judicial time."

He said the case would have easily been settled if New York allowed married couples to split based on irreconcilable differences, like most states.

Yesterday, Chana Taub made a new allegation that her husband punched her in the eye.   when they  returned to their divided house after the jury's decision Tuesday evening.

"He was yelling, 'I'm going to break down the wall. I'm going to get rid of her. I'm going to get the whole house,'" said Chana Taub, sporting a bloodshot right eye.

She claimed her husband got rough when she tried to serve him with a restraining order.

But Simon Taub denied the fresh allegations of abuse, insisting they were a continuation of a smear campaign his wife began during the trial. . .

He raced to Brooklyn Family Court yesterday to get his own order of protection - while his wife was in the same courthouse trying to get a judge to look at her shiner.

But yesterday, Simon Taub said he was ready to "negotiate" and  that the lawyers should work it out.

If New York did not force divorcing parties to prove grounds, but instead allowed for a no-fault divorce, cases like this, where the parties are in a "dead" marriage, but are compelled to remain married, would not occur.

While this jury probably gave the parties what they really deserved (being stuck to each other), the result is a terrible waste of judicial resources and time. The parties wasted precious Court trial time and now are further burdening the Family Court with their suspect petitions seeking orders of protection.

All this could have been avoided if New York recognized irreconcilable differences as a basis for divorce.

One product of women earning as much as or even more than men is that more wives are paying alimony (maintenance in New York) to their ex-husbands. Forbes Magazine reports that another by-product is that as men set their sights on women's earnings, women have become more protective of those dollars.

In fact, according to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, 44% of attorneys included in a recent survey said they've seen an increase in women asking for prenuptial agreements over the last five years, where in previous decades, prenuptial agreements were almost always sought by men.

A lot of women are indignant now that the shoe is increasingly on the other foot, says Carol Ann Wilson, a certified financial divorce practitioner in Boulder, Colo. "There's this sense of, 'What's yours is ours, but what's mine is mine,'" Wilson says. "My first response to that is, 'All these years we have been looking for equality; well, this is what it looks like.' I think women get angrier about having to pay than men do.

Just as some women object to men's request for spousal support, some men are particularly uncomfortable seeking it. Either they find it emasculating to ask, or they find the idea of receiving an allowance from their ex-wives humiliating, according to divorce attorneys.

As a practical reality, I have not seen  many cases where the husband seeks spousal support, though there really should not be a “legal” bar to their being granted support.  After all, the law is supposed to applied in a gender neutral manner.

However, because of systematic basis, the law has not always been applied in a gender neutral manner.  Indeed, until recently, how many men won custody of their children?  It was the conventional wisdom that there really  had to be something  wrong with a mother for her to have lost a custody fight. . 

Moreover, there may be a social stigma to a man seeking support from his wife.  Indeed, Forbes confirms that “Some men avoid the embarrassment by seeking a bigger bite of the marital assets instead of asking for alimony. Not only do lump-sum payments save them the humiliation of accepting monthly support, but they also reduce the ex-husband's taxes, since spousal support payments are taxed, while assets are not.”

When a couple is filing for divorce, but the divorce decree has not been finalized yet, they can still file a joint tax return. Once the divorce goes through, an ex-spouse can file the return as a head of household, if he or she has paid for over half the maintenance of the house and has a dependent living at their home for over half the year.

When two parents are divorced, only one of them can claim the $3300 dependency exemption for each child on their tax returns for 2006. The parent claiming the dependency exemption is also allowed a $1,000-per-child tax credit for children younger than 17 as long as their income is not above a certain figure.

Usually, it is the person named as the custodial parent in the child custody portion of the divorce decree that is allowed to claim the child as a dependent. If the divorce decree does not name a custodial parent, then the parent with whom the child has lived with the longest throughout the year is the custodial parent.

A non-custodial parent, however, can claim the exemption as long as the custodial parent signs a waiver promising not to claim the exemption.

If a non-custodial parent claims the exemption first and without the custodial parent’s permission, he or she could be given the exemption temporarily. However, once the custodial parent files the exemption and the IRS notices that a child’s social security number has been entered by two different taxpayers, then the tie-breaker rule would apply. This rule says that if two parents claim that a child is their dependent, the parent that the child lived with the longest during the year would get to claim the exemption. If the child had spent the same amount of time with both parents, then the parent that had the higher adjusted gross income would get the exemption. The parent who “wrongly” claimed the exemption would have to repay the tax, plus penalties and interest.

Regardless of who the custodial parent is, if the non-custodial parent pays for any of the child’s medical bills, these costs can be a deduction. Child-care credit for work-related expenses can be claimed for children younger than 13.

The spouse who pays alimony/spousal support can also receive a tax deduction for these payments, even if they aren’t itemized—along as the payment amounts are stated in the divorce agreement and made in cash. The spouse who receives the alimony must pay taxes on them. For child support, however, there is no deduction for paying them and no taxes paid by the recipient parent.
Assets transferred from one spouse to another during a divorce are not taxed. However, there will be a capital gains tax before the transfer and afterwards.