Fault Divorce, A Nostalgic Retrospective

You know, I’m going to miss fault divorces. My clients won’t, because they cost too much and for the most part they were attempts to deprive someone of the fruits ($$$) of the marital pie. But I sure have had some fun trying fault issues, sometimes in front of juries. I remember my last jury trial, when I put the alleged paramour on the stand in hopes of proving adultery so my nice client could get a piece of her hubby’s engineering practice. When I asked the penultimate question however, the lass stated, “No, we didn’t. He tried, but we didn’t have sex.” Next up was Mr. “Can’t Perform,” who proudly exclaimed to the jury when asked if he had sex with this harlot, “I sure did!” Oops. What could be more fun?
How about the time Justice Joseph Harris, may he rest in peace, allowed a jury divorce to proceed even though I had withdrawn my client’s answer and consented to the divorce. That one made the front pages of the Times Union. These morality plays will become the stuff of legend, like the long ago jury trial that ended with one question on cross examination by my legendary former partner Frank Warner inquiring about the athletic skills of a plaintiff who had complained of compulsory heinous sexual acts at the behest of her physician husband. I believe the trial justice’s words were, “Gentlemen, I do not care how long it takes, but we are not leaving chambers until this is settled, because this jury has heard enough in my courtroom.”
Now all that has gone by the wayside, at least since Columbus Day, when we inaugurated the six months of irretrievable breakdown into the New York Domestic Relations Law lexicon. Now the floodgates are open. Why? Beats me. I never thought I would see no fault divorce in New York in my lifetime, thanks to the concerted efforts of the Catholic Church and the National Organization for Women, among others. But here it is, the ultimate Get Out of Marriage Free Card, or at least without having to prove all those nasty fault things, like cruel and inhuman treatment or abandonment for a year or more, or some other stuff. Gone are the shackles of Hesson and Brady , as we used to say. If you get into this stuff it gets pretty strange, or as the late Dr. Hunter Thompson wrote, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” The bill memo has this little ditty as the justification for the new law, that it is intended to “grant full recognition and respect to valid marriages of same sex couples to obtain relief under New York State Laws and New York Courts.” The memo states that the term “husband and wife” is specifically not intended to preclude access to relief by same sex couples with valid marriages performed outside of the state. Say what? That is like saying I root for the Toronto Blue Jays because Christine O’Donnell is a witch. Makes no sense, eh?
In any event it is the dawning of a new day, together with temporary maintenance guidelines, presumptions of mandatory legal fees (yeah!) and new standards for modification of child support agreements, like three years have passed or your income has changed by 15%. Whose hasn’t? More about that stuff at another time.
I know you are doing your Christmas shopping and all, but for me the highlight of the season is the Office of Court Administration Budget, which comes out about this time every year. Last year’s was a 557 page extravaganza with an eye popping bottom line of $2,709,301,640 or to the cognoscenti, $2.7 Bil. Sure it has a lot of silly stuff like the Candidate Fitness Program and other useless “initiatives” to drain the last drops of blood from our bankrupt state. Want to know how we stack up with other states? Our most populous state, California, runs its court system on $1.76 billion, just a tad shy of one Billion less than the Empire State. But then again, they have to service 90% more people than we do, not including illegal aliens. How about Texas, with 5 million more citizens than we have? $217 million, but they do not have the Übermann OCA overseeing everything from robe dry cleaning to marital counseling for judges. New Jersey has a similar system to ours, but their budget is only $656 million. So why do we cost more? It certainly isn’t used to fund raises for Supreme Court Justices. Maybe it is Jonathan Lippman’s $23 million bedroom on the corner of Lodge and Pine Streets in Albany. That’s the $900 per square foot “secure residential space for the Court of Appeals Judges while in Albany” that is mentioned on the last page of last year’s OCA budget.
By the way, want to know who earned the most bucks in the New York Judicial System? Topping out at $181,486 is the Honorable Lawrence K. Marks, an “Acting” Supreme Court Justice and the Administrative Director of OCA (Office of Confused Adults, as I call them) and I’m guessing that doesn’t include the limo. By the way, the Chief of Operations of OCA, a lawyer, earns more than the Supreme Court Justices, acting and otherwise, by about 10k. But enough of that.
Did you see all the new statistics on divorces? Makes me laugh. For example, if you live in a Red (Conservative) State, you are 27% more likely to get a divorce than in a Blue State like New York. Darn. Or if you have a daughter your chances of divorce are 5% higher than if you have a son. And have you noticed that divorce is now quite de rigueur? After all, Reba McIntyre now has a hit song called, “The Day She Got Divorced,” which to me is a rip off of the great George Jones tune, “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” Here’s my favorite riff from Ms. McIntyre: “Left her kids with the girl next door, Parked her car at the county court, Round and round 'bout the child support he'll never pay.” Walt Whitman, eat your heart out. Or how about Nora Efron’s latest: I Feel Nothing about her problems with her husband. There was a time when a divorce lawyer was the pariah of the legal profession, bottom feeding on the misery of others. Now, what would they do without us for entertainment? After all, if you’ve been married for more than a year, can’t you cobble together at least 6 months worth of irretrievable breakdowns?