Six years, nine months and 7 days following the enactment of New Jersey’s amended alimony statute’s cohabitation provision on September 10, 2014 (N.J.S.A. 2A:32-23n) the New Jersey Appellate Division provided long awaited and much needed guidance on what a movant must now present to the trial court to demonstrate a prima facie case of cohabitation
Two Months of Overnights May Not Definitively Mean Cohabitation, But It Should At Least Get You Discovery
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
No Prima Facie Showing of Cohabitation = No Right to Discovery to Try to Prove It
For the second time in about a month, the Appellate Division has reversed improvidently granted discovery when there hadn’t been a showing of a change of circumstance. As noted by Eliana Baer on this blog on August 12, 2019 (about a case she and I were involved in) in a post entitled Appellate Division Rules:
Appellate Division Issues New Decision on Cohabitation
In the midst of our ongoing quest for guidance as to how and when to apply the 2014 cohabitation statute, comes the Appellate Division’s recent unpublished (not precedential) decision in J.S. v. J.M. While the decision does not reveal much in the way of noteworthy substance beyond what we have already seen in other post-statute
Appellate Division Denies Cohabitation Claim Under Alimony Statute
While we await guidance from the Appellate Division on how to interpret that portion of the amended alimony statute’s cohabitation provision, N.J.S.A. 2A:32-23n, indicating that alimony may be “suspended or terminated” in the event of a payee former spouse’s cohabitation, and whether the pre-statute “economic benefits” test remains alive and well, we are seeing newer
Settling Your Case Comes With Great Power and Great Responsibility
Amicably settling your divorce matter is almost always better than taking your chances at a trial before a trial judge who knows almost nothing about your life. Not only can settling save you substantial time and expense as compared to continued litigation, but also it provides you with the opportunity to end the case on
Appellate Division Finds Payor Spouse Fails to Fulfill Initial Burden of Proof on Cohabitation Claim
As regular readers of this blog may know, cohabitation has been a hot topic of discussion in recent months with several new cases addressing the subject within and beyond the context of the amended alimony law. With new case law to consume, one question remains constant – how does a payor spouse fulfill his or
Cohabitation Under the Amended Alimony Statute – Are We There Yet?
Suffice it to say, the issue of cohabitation under the amended alimony statute has been a hot topic of late in New Jersey family law. With several recent notable seminars on the topic, and two recently issued Appellate Division decisions (one published and the other unpublished) addressing when the amended law applies, practitioners
APPELLATE DIVISION FINDS THAT COHABITATION MATTER CANNOT BE REOPENED BASED SOLELY ON CHANGE IN ALIMONY LAW
While the Appellate Division has yet to address the substantive application and meaning of the cohabitation provisions of the amended alimony law, it has now determined twice when the law may apply.
In October, I wrote about how the Appellate Division in Spangenberg v. Kolakowsi, a reported (precedential) decision, held that the cohabitation
APPELLATE DIVISION HOLDS AMENDED ALIMONY LAW DOES NOT APPLY TO POST-JUDGMENT ORDERS FINALIZED BEFORE LAW’S EFFECTIVE DATE
With New Jersey’s amended alimony statute becoming effective on September 10, 2014, many questions have arisen as to how the statute will apply and the meaning of many of the new terms contained therein. The Appellate Division’s newly reported (precedential) decision in Spangenberg v. Kolakowski provides some insight from the judiciary that we have been