No. The mere fact of initiating a matrimonial action by service of a Summons upon your spouse does not require your spouse to vacate the home. If that were the case, all divorces would involve a race to the courthouse steps to see who could
file first. The law in New York is that your spouse can only be excluded from the marital home where it can be demonstrated to the Court that there has been extreme physical violence, in which case for the safety of the victim spouse,
the Court will exclude the aggressor spouse from the home.

No. This is a common misconception. What leads to this confusion is that parties can be separated by either a Judgment of Legal Separation or a written Separation Agreement. In either instance, after one year of being separated, either party can commence an action for divorce against the other party with your grounds for divorce being the fact that you have been separated for one
year. In most cases, clients get divorced immediately and there is no requirement that you must first be separated for one year.

No. In New York, we have what is called the Equitable Distribution Law. Under our divorce laws, marital assets are divided on an equitable basis, without regard to which party's conduct caused the divorce. This often times causes the innocent spouse to feel cheated and upset but this is the state of the law in New York.

In 1990, New York enacted the Child Support Standards Act. In order to have consistency with respect to the amounts of child support awarded in each case, the courts how follow these guidelines wherein child support consists of a percentage of the non custodial parent's gross income minus the deduction for FICA only.

The percentage differs, depending upon the number of children, namely:

17% for one child, 25%1 for two children, 29% for three children, 31% for
four children and a minimum of 35% for five or more children.

Yes. Child support is always subject to modification, either upwardly or downwardly, based upon an appropriate change in circumstances following the granting of a child support order. Often times increases are granted when the payor spouse has enjoyed a substantial increase in income and the current
amount of child support being paid is now insufficient to meet the reasonable needs of the children. Conversely, if the payor spouse is laid off or loses his or her employment, through no fault of their own, they will be entitled to a reduction in child support based upon their earnings at that time, which often times consists of unemployment insurance benefits. In all cases, the non custodial parent must at
least pay the minimum amount of support which is $25.00 per month.

Under New York State's Equitable Distribution Law, the court is required to review the various statutory factors listed in Section 236 B(5) of the Equitable Distribution Law. While the law does not mandate an equal distribution of the
assets, practically speaking, that is often times the result, unless there are exceptional circumstances which would justify the court in deviating and awarding more than half of the assets to one of the spouses. This normally only occurs in short term, childless marriages.

Probably not. While the court is empowered to distribute the marital assets, there are certain assets that are precluded from the marital estate which are referred to as "separate property". These assets typically include a gift or inheritance directly to one spouse from their family, a personal injury settlement or assets
that a party owned prior to the marriage. In this case, as long as the funds were given to one spouse only and as long as that spouse can trace that the gifted funds went towards the downpayment on the home, then the spouse who received the gift should be awarded those funds as part of the settlement or as extra proceeds
from the sale of the home.

No. In such a case, the courts would distribute the remaining assets as if the liquidated bank account was still in effect and was awarded to the party who blew the funds in Las Vegas. If there are not sufficient other assets to offset the wastefully dissipated funds, then the court will make a distributive award to the injured spouse in an amount equal to one half of the dissipated funds so that they will be compensated and made whole.

While ten people will probably give you ten different answers, my feeling is that it does not really matter what terminology is used. What is important to me is how much time do you get to spend with your children. Many people operate under the misconception that joint custody means that you have the children 50% of the time. It does not. What joint custody is, in my opinion, is a tool which allows attorneys to settle custody disputes with a term that both parties can walk away happy with and feeling that they did not abandon custody of their children.

Conversely, there are cases where once a spouse is given sole custody of the children but the other spouse, in addition to his or her visitation rights, has other rights such as equal access to school, medical and other records of the children, the right to be in attendance at all the children's extracurricular activities, school functions, parent/teacher conferences and the like, which in effect give that parent the same rights as they would have as a joint custodian.

Finally, it is important to note that in New York, courts cannot award joint custody. It can only be done by agreement between the parties.

There is no set age at which children can decide. The wishes of the children are but one factor for the court to consider in making a custody award. However, from a practical matter, once children reach the age of approximately 14 years,
most courts consider the children old enough, mature enough and intelligent enough to decide where they wish to reside.

Moreover, in litigated custody cases, the children will be represented by a court appointed law guardian, who is an attorney appointed to represent the child and
to advocate the wishes of the child. In situations where the child expresses a desire to reside with one parent, the child's law guardian is often times very instrumental in making the child's wishes known to the court, as well as to the litigants, which often times accelerated a settlement of the case.

Each spouse retains their own attorney under terms agreed upon between the attorney and the client. However, in situations where there is a gross disparity in the income of the parties, then the non monied spouse has the right to submit an
application to the court requesting an award of counsel fees from the monied spouse.

However, in situations where the parties, incomes are relatively even, or in situations where both parties are receiving a significant amount of liquid funds as part of the divorce settlement, then in those cases, each party will normally
pay their own counsel fees.

You are required to pay child support until your child reaches the age of 21. However, support may terminate sooner if your child becomes emancipated by any of the following events:

1. death of the child;
2. marriage of the child;
3. the child obtains employment and is capable of being self sufficient;
4. the child joins the military service;
5. the child leaves the home of the custodial parent.