It is always a pleasure to share good news.
I was selected by the New York Enterprise Report as one of the Best Attorneys for Growing Businesses in the category of Professional Services. I am honored to have won this award.
I have been, and will continue to be, dedicated to professionally serving the needs of my clients.
In a fascinating study, divorce was found to be contagious. According to a study at the Framington Heart Study, a person whose friend or sibling gets a divorce is more likely to get divorced
As detailed in the study , the researchers found that:
Divorce is the dissolution of a social tie, but it is also possible that attitudes about divorce flow across social ties . . . We find that divorce can spread between friends, siblings, and coworkers, and there are clusters of divorcees that extend two degrees of separation in the network. We also find that popular people are less likely to get divorced, divorcees have denser social networks, and they are much more likely to remarry other divorcees.
The "contagious" nature of divorce is unlikely to be caused by shared environmental factors because friends who live far away are just as influential as those who live close by. But, having children mitigates the susceptibility to being influenced by peers who get divorced
The study concludes that attending to the health of one’s friends’ marriages serves to support and enhance the durability of one’s own relationship, and that divorce should be understood as a collective phenomenon that extends far beyond those directly affected.
In view of news reports of the hopeful passage by the New York legislature of a “no fault” divorce law, I have been repeatedly asked, “what is no fault divorce” and “why is this no fault divorce so important.
A no fault divorce essentially allows a couple to dissolve a marriage without assigning fault; typically the parties would only have to allege that the marriage has irretrievably broken down and there is no likelihood of reconciliation.
The present law in New York, (the only state that does not have provision for a no fault divorce) requires one of the parties to allege that the other has committed marital fault –adultery, cruel and inhuman treatment, abandonment (actual or constructive) or imprisonment for a term of three years or more. The only non fault ground requires the parties to live separate and apart for at least one year pursuant to a separation agreement or judgment of separation.
Requiring a litigant to allege grounds for a divorce requires an assignment of blame. Even in the most amicable of divorces one of the parties has to accuse the other for causing the break up of the marriage. In a high conflict divorce, accusations of fault only fuel the fire.
In cases where grounds do not exist, the necessity of pleading fault requires a party to perjure him or herself by making sworn statements he or she knows to be false simply to obtain the divorce.
In the most contentious divorces, grounds can be used as a weapon. An all to common scenario is where one spouse, in this example the wife, wants a divorce simply because the relationship has, for no particular reason soured, but where the husband is not guilty of marital fault (i.e., there has been no abandonment, cruel and inhuman treatment or adultery). In the absence of the husband consenting to the divorce, the wife has to prove her grounds at trial Knowing that the wife would be unable to prove grounds, the husband could contest the grounds for divorce to legally extort other concessions from the wife. In this scenario, the husband would make it clear that grounds would not be an issue if he got, for instance, a sum of money or sum asset that was in dispute.
This legalized extortion is a common occurrence under the existing fault based law.
The other problem is cost. Grounds trials force litigants to needlessly incur legal fees, tapping into the very pool of marital funds that could be used to support the parties’ post divorce lives.
Moreover, grounds trials waste time and judicial resources.
There is no benefit to locking people into dead marriages. If the defendant prevails at a grounds trial and the divorce is denied, the parties do not resume a life of marital bliss. To the contrary, the parties are probably even bitterer towards each other, having hurled accusations at each other at a trial; the marriage is over in every way but legally.
The enactment of no fault divorce will not open the floodgates to divorce litigation. Couples who are unhappy in their marriage have and always will find away out of their marriages. No fault divorce will simply make the process more civil.
In a highly unusual move, a judge ordered a mother jailed for interfering with husband’s visitation with his children.
In Lauren R. v Ted R. Justice Robert Ross ordered to the mother to report to jail for repeatedly violating the terms of the court orders regarding the father’s parenting time. The mother’s imprisonment coincides with the father’s scheduled visitation with the children.
The Court’s opinion details instance after instance of the mothers deliberate and willful attempts to alienate the children from the father, including false reports of child abuse, bad-mouthing the father in the presence of the children, and deliberately scheduling theater tickets, family events and social activities for the girls during the father’s visitation.
The New York Post reported that as a result of the mother’s efforts the children now hate their father. "They tell me I'm strictly their biological father," Ted Rubin, the father said, "and their stepfather is their real father."
In the past, courts have ordered a change of custody when one parent interferes with the other’s parental rights. In this case, the mother apparently succeeded in destroying the father- daughter relationship. In doing so the mother violated repeated court orders regarding visitation. The mother has to be penalized in a way that she is forced to learn that Court orders have teeth and can be enforced. Jail time for her contempt of court may be the only punishment she understands.
On the other hand, the mother’s imprisonment is not going to endear the father to his daughters. It seems inevitable that the girls will continue to blame the father for putting the mother in jail.
There seems to be a trend among couples in long term marriage, with grown or emancipated children, getting divorced. In fact, there are reports that rate of divorce is increasing the fastest among this segment of the population. Al and Tipper Gore’s surprise announcement last week that they were ending their 40 year marriage is further evidence of that trend.
The appearance of this trend begs the inevitable question why are couples, who have been together for so long divorcing. As detailed in this online debate, there are many possible explanations.
I think, however, Deidre Bair, in her New York Times op-ed piece, The Forty Year Itch ,has it right:
“People change and forget to tell each other,” Lillian Hellman said. Marriage is a process; some couples grow together and some drift apart. For the couples that drift apart, there comes a point, where no matter how comfortably situated they are, how lovely their home and successful their children, they divorce because they cannot go on living in the same old rut with the same old person.
With children grown and out of the house, unencumbered by the costs of maintaining a household or the expense of raising children and then financing their education, couples may want to take control of their lives. Ms. Bar, from her interviews with men and women who divorced, and ended long term marriages, found that:
Women had grown tired of taking care of house, husband and grown children; men were tired of working to support wives who they felt did not appreciate them and children who did not respect them. Women and men alike wanted time to find out who they were.
Given that people are living longer, it makes some sense that some couples, after being “responsible” for their entirety of their married and working lives, desire some “me” time for their retirement during their golden years. Not surprisingly, a common theme from Mrs. Bar’s interviews was, “It’s my time and if I don’t take it now, I never will.”
Daniel E. Clement is a divorce and family law attorney who has been practicing since 1986 and blogging at the...
More
View My LinkedIn Profile
Follow me on Twitter
Married in NY Fan Page