Interim or Pendente Lite Attorneys' Fees: A Court Offers a Primer

Posted on May 20, 2008 by Daniel Clement
When an action for a divorce is commenced, it is often the case that most of the marital assets available for the payment of legal fees are possessed or controlled by one of the spouses, usually the husband. In order to ensure that the parties will have equal access to skilled legal representation, the Domestic Relations Law authorizes awards of interim counsel fees to the nonmonied spouse during the course of the litigation. Because of the importance of such awards to the fundamental fairness of the proceedings, we hold that an application for interim counsel fees by the nonmonied spouse in a divorce action should not be denied — or deferred until after the trial, which functions as a denial — without good cause, articulated by the court in a written decision.
So reads the first paragraph of the Appellate Division decision in Prichep v. Prichep, which offers a primer on interim awards of counsel fees in divorces.

In Prichep, a wife with an annual income of only $4,000, sought an interim award of attorney’s fees from her husband, a cardio-vascular surgeon, with an annual income in excess of $400,000.00.  By the time of this application, she had already owed her attorneys more that $159,000.

As the court explained, an award of interim counsel fees ensures that the non-monied spouse will be able to litigate the action, and do so on equal footing with the monied spouse. This award may be:

appropriate to prevent the more affluent spouse from wearing down or financially punishing the opposition by recalcitrance, or by prolonging the litigation'" If the playing field were not leveled by an award of interim counsel fees, "a wealthy husband could obtain the services of highly paid (and presumably seasoned and superior) matrimonial counsel, while the indigent wife, essentially, would be relegated to counsel willing to take her case on a poverty basis.


The Court was sensitive to the disparity in the Pricheps’ financial resources. The wife had incurred large legal bills that she would never be able to pay without exhausting all, or most, of her resources. The husband, on the other hand, was able to pay his legal fees without any substantial impact upon his lifestyle.

The Appellate Division recognized that deferring the award of attorneys’ fees until the final resolution of the case, could compromise the non-monied spouse's ability to adequately litigate. How long can an attorney be expected to work without being paid? Absent an ability to pay, certain theories of prosecuting or defending a case have to be abandoned, giving the wealthy spouse an unfair advantage.

Indeed, until this court’s ruling, Mrs. Prichep’s attorneys had to decide whether it was better to: 1) withdraw because their client could not pay their bills, 2)continue to represent their non-paying client, run up a large bill, and gamble that the court would grant them their fees at the conclusion of the litigation; or 3) simply to work for free. Mr. Prechep’s attorneys, on the other hand, would, in all probability, be regularly paid in full.

Fortunately, the Court realized, this just would not be fair
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Mom's Allergy to Dad's Cat Does Not Prevent Visitation in Dad's Home

Posted on May 5, 2008 by Daniel Clement

Imagine a mother seeking to prevent children of the marriage from having visitation with their father in his home simply because he has a cat, particularly when there was no claim that the cat was vicious or endangered the children.

In Mandel v. Mandel, decided by a Nassau County court last week, a mother claimed that the children’s exposure to the cat in their father’s home posed a serious health risk to her and, as result, sought to limit the father’s visitation.

In the case, the mother claimed that she had to be hospitalized because she had severe allergic reaction to the cat. The father testified that, in order to protect the mother from exposure to the cat, the children would change their clothes either at the father’s home before returning to the mother’s home or immediately after returning to the mother’s home in her garage. The father also testified that the children were exposed to other dogs and cats in the homes of their friends.

The Court found that there was no precedent for excluding the children from the father’s home because the cat presented no risk to the children. The Court urged the children to continue take reasonable precautions to limit the mother’s exposure to the cat following the visitation their father.

I suspect that there was really something more going on in the case then whether the children should be around the father’s cat. In its decision, the court alluded to the fact, that the cat did not become an issue to the mother’s health until the father stopped paying the mortgage on the former marital residence now occupied mother and children.

But, like my mom always said, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” Because the father may have done something that the mother did not like, the mother had the knee jerk reaction of attempting to restrict the father’s access to the children to gain some advantage.

What should give the mother some concern is that this decision is an interim decision and there will soon be a trial. If the court felt that this mother was using the issue of the cat and visitation to obtain advantage over the father, the mother’s strategy will have backfired. If, for instance, as a result of this application, the court felt the mother and was manipulative or lacked credibility, the result, at trial, could be devastating.

Hopefully, an amicable settlement is imminent.
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