The Alphabet Soup of Divorce

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Sandy Durst

As a lawyer I find one of my most important responsibilities involves educating clients on all phases of the divorce process. As they saying goes, “knowledge is power” and I want my clients to be empowered during their divorce. Part of what makes the divorce process confusing is the all to frequent use of the unique language used by lawyers and judges. Often, this language sounds like alphabet soup. What follows is a brief description of some commonly used acronyms.

ADR Alternate Dispute Resolution. While many divorces are resolved through traditional litigation and negotiation, other cases are resolved using alternative methods such as mediation, arbitration, or collaborative divorce.
CIS Case Information Statement: this is a multi-page financial disclosure statement that serves as one of the most important documents in your divorce case.
CMC Case Management Conference: This is a conference between the attorneys and the judge assigned to your case for the purposes of setting a schedule for discovery and other important tasks for your case such as the ESP.
CMO Case Management Order: this is the court order the results from the case management conference
ESP Early Settlement Panel: this is a very important event in your case. You and your attorney will prepare a memorandum which outlines your settlement position. Your spouse will do the same and you will exchange your respective memos. You and your attorney along with your spouse and their attorney will then appear before panel of two attorneys will review the positions and offer a non-binding settlement recommendation.
FJOD Final Judgment of Divorce: this is the court order that officially dissolves the marriage and grants you a divorce.
QDRO Qualified Domestic Relations Order: This is a court order that is needed in order to divide certain types of retirement accounts.

If you hear these or other terms that are confusing to you, it behooves you to ask questions so that you can fully understand and participate in your divorce.

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How to best manage your legal fees during a divorce

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Sandy Durst

MANAGING AND MINIMIZING YOUR LEGAL FEES

At Lynch, Osborne, Gilmore & Durst it is our desire to provide you with the highest possible quality of legal services at a reasonable cost.

There are several things which you can do to assist us in controlling your legal fees.

STRIVE TO LIMIT THE USE OF YOUR ATTORNEY̓S TIME TO LEGAL ISSUES

In family law matters, it is inevitable that our advice and services to clients will extend beyond pure legal issue, and will involve financial, child related and even behavioral issues. However, our skills, training and experience are as lawyers and not as financial planners, child psychologists or counselors. Very often clients will want to discuss issues with us which can be discussed much less expensively and with a person of much higher expertise and experience, such as a financial planner or counselor. If you have questions relating to such issues we would be happy to recommend another professional to you, but to have extensive discussions of them with us is unnecessarily expensive and does not give you the best professional advise since they are often beyond our areas of expertise.

ALLOW US TO DELEGATE THE WORK YOUR CASE TO STAFF MEMBER

PARAPROFESSIONAL OR ASSOCIATE ATTORNEYS

Very often components of the work which we are doing for you can be delegated to other staff members. The delegation of the work to staff members will result in a substantial savings to you in legal fees. Through our experience we know which cases can be delegated without a diminution in the quality of the service which you will receive. If you will trust us to delegate some of the work and cooperate with our staff members, you will see a substantial savings in your legal fees. On the other hand, some clients always want to “see the doctor and not the nurse”, if that is your preference, we will accommodate you but your are very often utilizing the attorneys time which is not necessary and which will be billed at a much higher rate then a staff person or associate attorney.

 ORGANIZE AND LIMIT PHONE CALLS

Organize and limit to your telephone calls for persons who have not worked with attorneys on prior matters, it sometimes comes as shock to learn that they will be billed for each telephone conversation. The billing rate is usually in excess of the actual time spent on the call. The reason why the billed time may exceed the actual time spent on the telephone call is because we are often required to review the file prior to the call, prepare a memo of the call for the file or otherwise take some action subsequent to the call.

ASSIST US IN GATHERING AND PREPARING DATA

     There will be a great deal of financial information, records, employment verification and similar materials which we will need from you. Some clients are very cooperative in obtaining and organizing the materials which they give to us. Other clients do not want to be bother or give us materials in a “shopping bag” leaving us the task of sorting and indexing all of the material. We are certainly willing to provide that assistance and service to you, but it is not an effective or economical use of legal time and corresponding your legal fees, if you will work on your own and/or with our paralegals to gather and organize the financial information for presentation to the responsible attorney, the review and analysis time by the attorney will be reduced and correspondingly your fees will be minimized.

THINK BEFORE YOU ACT OR REACT

In many cases a significant amount of legal time is utilized addressing or responding to an impulsive, angry or illconceived action or reaction by the client. It is inevitable that you will have emotional reaction to various things which may occur in the process of your divorce. However, we urge you to think before you act and do not create confrontational situations which may require expensive legal intervention. Examples of such conduct range from an act of domestic violence committed in anger or frustration, failure to comply with court orders or agreements of support and alimony because of anger over an unrelated issue, failure to return or pick up the children at a regularly visitation time, etc. You can very quickly save several hundred if not several thousand dollars in legal expenses responding to such hasty or illconceived act.

 REVIEW TOUR BILLS AS THEY ARE RECEIVED

We will, without exception, bill you on a monthly basis for the work which has been performed in the preceding month. Each attorney personally reviews his or her own billing and we take extreme caution to avoid or correct any errors which may occur on the billing. However, errors do occur. Our desire is for you to review and contact us and correct any questions or errors with regard to each months billing before bills are sent out. By doing so any charges which are misdirected to your account can be corrected and at the conclusion of the case there will be no dispute or question concerning the billings

 

PAY YOUR BILLS PROMPTLY

The fee agreement which you have entered into with us imposes a service charge on unpaid billings. The service charges significantly increase your total billing. To avoid those additional charges pay your bills promptly and in accordance with the fee agreement.

If you have any questions concerning the fee agreement which you have entered into with us or any billing which you have received from us, please do not hesitate to contact us. In addition to being persons who charged for our services, we are, also customers or consumers of services. We to have received bills from vender or professionals and know difficulties and hard feelings which can result when it is perceived that there is an error in the billing and/or it is felt that the billing is excessive. We want to do everything within our power and control.

We try very hard to make ourselves accessible to the clients and to return every telephone call on the day on which it is received. We have voice mail systems on which you can leave messages for us. We often retrieve our calls from the voice mail when we are out of the office in court, during the evenings or even over the weekends and will return your calls if possible. Therefore, we do not want to discourage you from maintaining communication with us.

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Keep the non-custodial parent in the loop if you want them to pay for college.

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Sandy Durst

In a recently decided but unreported decision, the Appellate Court emphasized that the quality of the relationship of a parent and child is an important factor when deciding if a parent should have an obligation to contribute towards college expenses. As the following clip from the New Jersey Law Journal explains, a non-custodial parent may subsequently be relieved of a previously agreed to obligation to contribute towards a child’s college expenses if he or she has not been involved in the college selection process and has been denied a relationship with the child.  This case is just one more reason to maintain a strong parenting relationship post-divorce

FAMILY LAW — CHILD SUPPORT
20-2-7216 Agos v. Camuso, App. Div. (per curiam) (13 pp.) Following a hearing pursuant to Newburgh v. Arrigo, in this post-divorce dispute over payment of college costs, Judge DeBello relieved the father, defendant, of the obligation to pay his 60 percent share for the 2010-11 school year on evidence of a lack of communication regarding the son’s college choice. The mother, plaintiff, appeals, arguing that defendant should have been compelled to fulfill his obligation to pay 60 percent of the son’s college costs as set forth in the marital settlement agreement. Plaintiff also argues that the judge erred in conditioning the payment of future tuition on the establishment of meaningful communication. The appellate panel rejects plaintiff’s arguments and affirms, finding the judge’s factual determinations to have been properly supported by evidence in the record and the decision to have constituted a proper use of the judge’s discretion. The judge appropriately considered the Newburgh factors in determining that enforcement of the marital settlement agreement as it applied to the payment of college expenses would not be fair and just in the circumstances presented.

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Divorce & Back to School Isssues

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Sandy Durst

If you are going through a divorce or have recently been divorced you may find that the upcoming back to school season presents a host of new issues that must be delicately addressed in order to minimize the impact on the children.  If you and your former spouse share joint legal custody each of you are entitled to be involved in your child’s education.  Each parent should be authorized to receive all school notices, calendars, report cards directly , sports schedules and the like directly from the school.  Implementing this may take teh cooperation of each parent. 

As the school year progresses, plan ahead to schedule when each of you will attend parent-teacher conferences.  Many schools hold conferences over the course of several nights so you do not need to attend with your former spouse if you choose not to.  I often see parents who share parenting time create unnecessary conflict over homework.  This particlulary arises when one parent has weekend parenting time and spends the entire time “having fun” and not attending to homework or expecting that the other parent will see that it gets done.  Being a parent requires attention to issues such as homework and ignoring it only serves to hurt the child in the long run.

You will want to define and implement a schedule for all school holidays and vacations. This is especially important when both parents work.  As with most parenting time issues, planning in advance and the ability to be flexible are teh keys to succesfully resolving vacation parenting time.

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THE DIVORCE PROCESS- Part 2

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Sandy Durst

By Partner T. Sandberg Durst

Sandy Durst, Esq., is a partner with the Princeton firm of Lynch, Osborne, Gilmore & Durst, and LLC where he heads the Family Law Department.   Individuals facing a divorce benefit from the combination of legal skill, common sense and compassion that Sandy brings to each and every matter.  Each case is given the personalized attention it deserves.

As in any litigation, attorneys for a matrimonial client must follow the New Jersey statutes on Divorce, the Rules governing the Courts of the State of New Jersey and the Rules of Evidence. In order to obtain any meaningful discovery with regard to assets, liabilities and income, time is needed between the initial filing of the complaint and the date for a trial. After complying with the statute in determining the cause of action for divorce, and once a divorce complaint has been filed, the client has committed to beginning the process. Once the complaint is filed the cause of action can be set aside and the real work begins.

Obtaining the appropriate financial information through the  preparation and exchange of Case Information Statements and Interrogatories is a critical step in the divorce process. A Case Information Statement (CIS)  is a financial statement which sets forth 1) income; 2) deductions from income such as federal, state and social security taxes; 3) monthly expenses for shelter (i.e. rent or mortgage payments, homeowners or renter’s insurance, utilities), automobile expenses (i.e. car loan payments, gasoline, utilities, maintenance) and personal expenses (i.e. food, clothing, non-reimbursed medical, etc.); 4) assets and their values and; 5) debts and their balances. The CIS is a “living” document which will need be updated and supplemented as more information becomes available.

Interrogatories are written questions that must be answered by your spouse under oath with regard to any financial issues in the divorce case. Many times requests are made within the interrogatories to attach documents such as bank or brokerage statements, financial statements from a business, appraisals of property, tax returns and experts reports. In order to make a fair and reasonable settlement, all of the facts and finances must be disclosed.

Once the required financial information is disclosed through the Case Information Statement and Interrogatories, a decision must be made as to whether depositions should be taken. Depositions are questions asked of your spouse, he or she will be placed under oath and a court reporter transcribes everything that is said. Since they are taken under oath deposition transcripts may be used in court as a statement by a party. Depositions of parties or of experts may be taken as a matter of course as to all issues except for those relating to the cause of action for divorce. Experts are often needed to give their opinion of the value of an asset. Experts are used to value real estate, pension plans and businesses and to make custody/parenting time recalculations. A client must work with their attorney to obtain the best expert possible in their particular case because an expert’s opinion of the value of an asset will need to stand up to cross examination at a divorce trial. It takes time and money to obtain an expert’s report in any particular area, and this should be discussed with the client as soon as possible in every divorce case.

After discovery is completed, it may be helpful for the parties to sit down together with their attorneys at a four-way conference. A four-way conference is a meeting among the two parties and two attorneys usually at one of the attorney’s offices. This is an informal meeting for the purpose of addressing and discussing the issues involved in the case with the goal of moving closer to a settlement. Many times questions may be answered that are not obvious from responses on a Case Information Statement or Interrogatories. If a four-way conference is not appropriate or if the conference fails to end in a settlement, the next step is the Early Settlement Panel.

The Early Settlement Panel consists of two attorneys whose practice is largely dedicated to matrimonial law. The panelists are provided with a Memorandum of the issues involved in the case, as well as with a Case Information Statement and any other financial information the attorney for each party deems appropriate by each side. The panel meets with the two attorneys to determine the issues and their arguments. At that point, the attorneys leave the room and the panelists review the information submitted to them along with the positions of both sides and come up with a non-binding recommendation. This recommendation is relayed by the panelists to the two attorneys and their clients. If this process leads to a settlement, the divorce may be placed on the record that day. If this process does not lead to a settlement, a mediation date, an Intense settlement conference dates for the trial will be scheduled.

The divorce process takes about one year. If the parties are able to assist in the process, and if the attorneys work through the discovery process and obtain all of the information needed to come up with a proposed settlement, the case should settle without the need of a trial. If, on the other hand, there are issues of fact which must be determined by a court, or if there is a question of fraud or incorrect financial information, a trial will be necessary.

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