New York No Fault Divorce

Part I: New York's Brand New No-Fault Divorce Law

Part II: How to Freeze Your Spouse's Assets: New York's New Law of Automatic Restraining Orders, or the "Serve and Freeze" Law

New York State has become the last state to end fault divorces, whereby, in order to get divorced, you had to allege that the fault of the breakdown in the marriage was due to the conduct of the other person. The grounds for divorce in New York before No Fault law took effect included: cruel and inhuman treatment, adultery, imprisonment, and abandonment. You need no longer allege or even prove any of these "faults." This was easily a way to turn a divorce into a nasty, drawn out and bitter one: for example, one way you could have tortured your soon-to-be-ex-spouse was to request a "jury trial" on say, adultery, to force him or her to produce witnesses to defend your allegations of adultery, or cruel and inhuman treatment. These grounds trials, proving fault, and witness location, witness preparation, private investigator tailing, and the concomitant $ 100,000.00 in lawyers' fees for a trial are soon to be a thing of the past. There will soon be no reason for the divorce other than alleging that you have not gotten along rather well for the last 6 months. It makes marriage much more akin to a disposable thing. And as one New York Supreme Court Justice said once, "Of course there are grounds in most every case", and he continued "if you've been married for a week, believe me, you have grounds." Well, at least now you cannot be forced to prove why you have grounds.

But you still need a top NY divorce lawyer and here is why. This New York No Fault divorce law simply means you need not prove fault, but what happens to the other issues in a divorce, such as the children, the house, the co-op, the condo, the business, the dog? Yes, people will still keep fighting over them. If your wife wants to keep you from seeing the kids, or wants to relocate, or you want to move with your mistress to Paris with the kids, or you want to keep that strong 'relationship' with your house or business -- as in keeping them-- then get a divorce lawyer experienced in dealing with these issues. They do not go away simply because you filed those new avant-garde No Fault divorce papers you downloaded off the internet. You still may need a good divorce lawyer, even if he is wearing his new No-Fault suit in court: You owe it to your kids (to negotiate sharing their time fairly, so they don't grow up hating you or calling their babysitter "mommy"); to the house, to the business, to all those months you paid the mortgage, and to all those months you may be paying for future maintenance (formerly alimony) or child support, as one of you will still need to cut child support checks each month.

Also, keep in mind that New York has adopted an amendment to Section 236(b)(2)(b) of the New York State Domestic Relations Law, effective September 1, 2009, which provides that, upon the service of the Summons and 'Automatic Restraining Order' upon your spouse, he or she is bound by law not to transfer money or remove money in any bank accounts, whether that account is solely in one spouse's name or jointly in both names. This is the gist of what we at our law firm have Christened the "Serve and Freeze" law and it is there to prevent your husband or wife who has just been served with divorce papers to immediately run to the bank and withdraw the $500,000.00 that both of you saved during the marriage. Before this law went into effect, the lawyer had to file papers in Court seeking such a restraint on monies. Now, it's automatic. In one case Mr. Diefenbach handled for a matrimonial lawyer (and before this law took effect) the wife raided the joint HELOC account and withdrew $130,000.00 from the joint account and placed that money in her separate account --husband was unable to get a dollar of it. Mr. Diefenbach filed an Emergency Order to Show Cause to get the money back into the joint account. It worked: the Judge ordered that all of the money be put back in. And Diefenbach won that argument. Getting back to the "Serve and Freeze" law, as Mr. Diefenbach calls it. Attorneys who wish to use it must make sure that the 'Notice of Automatic Orders (D.R.L. 236)' (call us, we will email you a copy) must be attached to the Summons in order for this law to be binding upon the spouse just served with the divorce papers. Hence, a rundown of why you still need us in this brave new world of disposable marriages:

Your children need to live with one of you, but if you want significant time with them rather than every other weekend, you will still need us. The Judge assigned to your divorce case acts like a "referee", meaning, he is not there to teach either of you how to make that happen.
Child support monthly amounts can be negotiated by a divorce lawyer for combined income over 80K, meaning, if you don't want to pay 17 % child support on $ 1 Million income, you need us.
Business valuation, license valuation, and other marital assets do not get calculated and distributed without negotating, which is where lawyers come in.
Obtaining orders of protection, visitation issues, child support and arrears, domestic violence issues, Parental Alienation Syndrome and other issues in a divorce should be handled by a professional attorney.
Our staff is able to offer you the best possible expertise and insight.
Our offices at 55 Broad Street are connected to high-speed fiber optics bandwidth and are in the New York Information Technology Center building, known as the city's "hottest-wired" building. In other words, try not to hire a New York child custody or New York divorce lawyer whose fax line and phone line are one and the same.