I’ve spoken before about religious issues in divorces.  They can be contentious. What about religious issues regarding children in divorces (or when a child is born to unwed parents)?  Parents from different religions or even different religious traditions within the same religion often agree upon how the children will be raised.  But what happens when they do or can not? That is the topic of a recent case out of Connecticut.  Adam and Lori Breiner divorced in 2017.  In the divorce agreement, they were to raise their now teenage children in the “Orthodox Jewish traditi ..read more

I’ve written before about NJ law around cohabitation and ending alimony.  Basically, if a recipient of alimony enters into a relationship that looks like marriage but isn’t formalized into a marriage — cohabitation — alimony can be terminated.  The court laid out factors it would look at in a case called Konzelman v. Konzelman, 158 N.J. 185 (1999).  When the state legislature updated the alimony statute in 2014 (visit this link for the factors), these factors were largely added to the statute.  Divorces prior to the statute change are governed by Konzelman, and those after ..read more

ChatGPT is all the rage these days. Ask it a question and it gives you an answer. But use it at your own risk, as some New York attorneys recently discovered. If you are unfamiliar, ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence that is largely free to use. It is still a work in progress. Many people are using ChatGPT in place of a Google or Bing search. Two lawyers in New York’s Federal Southern District Court filed a brief with the court. The brief turned out to have citations to six non-existent cases. Six. The judge (or his clerk) actually looked up those cases and lo and behold, not real. The cour ..read more

Most marriages in the U.S. are “for love.” meaning that the couple has chosen each other to marry. Presumably, they met, dated, fell in love, and then decided to marry.  In contrast, many cultures have arranged marriages where the parents of the children think their kids would be compatible as spouses.  Sometimes the children have a choice, sometimes they do their parents bidding.  Does how you met matter should that marriage end in divorce? Not really.  The four main areas of divorce — property division, alimony, parenting and child support — all still apply.  There m ..read more

The Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates recently to counter the higher inflation the economy has seen over the past few years.  How does this impact divorcing couples?  The impact that most comes to mind is refinancing the marital home. One of the options couples have when divorcing is to “sell” the marital home to one of the spouses.  When that happens, usually title is transferred to the receiving (“buying”) spouse who also refinances the mortgage into their name.  That clears responsibility for the home or the mortgage from the “selling” spouse.  Many ho ..read more

*in some cases and now statewide The New Jersey Courts issued Directive 18-20 and updated in July 2021 and further updated in December 2022. While some counties or judges had been granting divorces without a personal appearance by the parties or their lawyers — also known as a hearing on the papers — it had not been done statewide. The COVID-19/coronavirus pandemic has caused the courts to be largely closed since mid-March 2020. This will lead to a huge backlog of cases in all divisions of the court system. There may also be divorcing spouses who are at greater health risk for a court appearan ..read more

I’ve written extensively about how the law looks as pets — basically as property. The NJ Supreme Court had another opportunity to revisit this concept. The outcome: pets are still property. The case is Samolyk v. Berthe III. Defendant’s dog fell into a body of water and the owner yelled for help to rescue the dog. Plaintiff, a neighbor of the defendant, jumped into the water to help successfully rescue the dog but plaintiff was injured in the process. The Samolyks sued under the rescue doctrine, which (as quoted from Ruiz v. Mero) “provides a source of recovery to one who is injured while unde ..read more

It’s no secret that the COVID pandemic has delayed all kinds of trials in NJ state courts. The courts were generally closed for the last two years and several counties either remain closed or are still holding trials via Zoom. In addition to COVID, the courts have a significant shortage of judges. At the recent NJ State Bar Association Annual meeting (where my friend and colleague Jeralyn Lawrence was installed as State Bar President — congrats!), Chief Justice Stuart Rabner detailed how bad things are at the state courts. In a word, bad. There are 75 judicial vacancies in the state court syst ..read more

You would like to think that the judge assigned to your divorce in NJ Family Part Court is an expert in divorce and family law. That is not always assured. The Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct recently charged a judge temporarily assigned to the family part with violating court rules and bearing on the judiciary’s integrity by admitting to litigants he did not know family law and complaining about his assignment to the family part. I am not here to pick on this judge, though he certainly could have handled his assignment better. Most judges are competent, but may not be expert in their p ..read more

2021 was a challenging year for most people, no doubt. Perhaps not surprisingly, 2021 was probably the busiest year for me in mediating divorces. Those folks found the articles I have on my blog helpful. The ten most-read articles on my divorce mediation blog are below: NEW: No Court Appearance for NJ Divorces* Derek Jeter and Hannah Davis Engaged…Is there a Prenup? Can you get un-divorced? Can a Court Force a Divorce Spouse to Work Overtime? NJ Divorce During COVID Mayim Bialik on Moving on After Divorce What To Do After Your Divorce Is Granted By The Court Conflict Quote – Alan Watts Divorc ..read more