The Appellate Division recently published a decision, Amzler v. Amzler, making it precedent setting on the use of the new alimony statute in a case of a payor’s early retirement, where parties entered into an alimony agreement prior to its enactment in September 2014. While 2014 may feel like years ago because it was,
Over the last several weeks, via emails, attending webinars and otherwise, I have frequently heard that the coronavirus may create significant estate planning opportunities. In fact, while writing this post, I Googled “coronavirus and estate planning opportunities” and got 544 million results in .46 seconds. While I am sure that not all of the results
In a recent published (precedential) decision, Gormley v. Gormley, the Appellate Division cleared up confusion between two prior cases that dealt with the impact of a determination of disability by the Social Security Administration upon support.
In Gormley, the parties were divorcing. The Wife in this matter had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis
As we have said before, the 2014 amendments to the alimony statute allegedly made it easier to terminate alimony if the recipient of the alimony was cohabiting. The statute now provides that alimony may be terminated or suspended if cohabitation was proven. The statute made clear that the parties didn’t even have to live together
An all too familiar, if not overused, term to describe all thing Covid 19/Corona virus is “unprecedented.” In an attempt to avoid politics, whether any of this was foreseeable or not, there is no dispute of the absolute financial devastation that the world wide pandemic as created. The stock market has cratered, many people are
It is not unusual for deferred compensation (eg. stock options, restricted shares, RSU, REUs, and a whole host of others) to be addressed in marital settlement agreements, either as assets divided in equitable distribution, for purposes of computing income for support, or both. Often the language is complicated and in some agreements it is incomprehensible.
Yesterday, I blogged on the S.W. v. G.M. case in a post entitled More from the Appellate Division on Lifestyle, Foulas and the Concept of Income Equalization. In that blog, I noted that the S.W. court also addressed the issue of life insurance to secure alimony.
It is not necessary to get into the facts
A few weeks ago, I authored a post on this blog entitled Debunking the Myth That the Percentage Used in the So-Called “Alimony Rule of Thumb” Should Go Down as the Payer’s Income Goes Up. That post reiterated that the Court’s cannot use formulas, but that they are often used and that people have
It has been said over and over again that there are no formula’s to determine alimony. As I have blogged in the past, other than one legal malpractice referencing the formula or “rule of thumb”, virtually every time the Appellate Division gets a case where a formula was used, the case is reversed
A recent unpublished (non-precedential) decision, Steffens v. Steffens, suggests that the answer to the above question is “no.”
In Steffens, the Wife sought to set aside a prenuptial agreement, arguing that it was unconscionable, in large part because the alimony payments she was to receive under the agreement would not allow her to maintain