In order to help their family thrive, many grandparents financially support their adult children and grandchildren. For example, let’s think about a couple that lives in Manhattan with an income of $350,000 – $400,000 a year. In many places, that would be a decent amount of money. If someone’s living on the Upper West Side, Upper East Side, or SoHo, it’s not nearly enough. In these situations, grandparents often give their children very large sums of money on a routine basis as well as make direct payments towards expenses like the grandchildren’s private school tuition and high-end camp experiences. 

I wrote an article called “Good Samaritan Divorce,” which talks about how the Good Samaritan often gets “punished” in some way. For your convenience, you can read the article here.

What does this have to do with matrimonial law? There are standards and statutes in matrimonial law, and grandparents’ consistent and unwavering financial support can affect the support payments. The general support standards are set forth in “The Child Support Standards Act” and “The Notice of Guideline Maintenance” – advisory guideline statutes for child support and spousal support (aka maintenance and alimony). 

The golden rule is maintaining the standard of living.

At the outset of a divorce case, both sides are required to accurately complete, legally acknowledge, and file with the courts a comprehensive document called a Statement of Net Worth, which sets forth the standard of living. 

The standard of living analysis is the most critical and guiding factor in negotiating support and arriving at a final agreed upon amount. The system wants children’s material lives to remain intact. The system wants the lower income earning spouse to have a window of time when they are getting support from their higher earner ex to give them a cushion and bridge towards being more self-supporting. 

I’ve had many cases where grandparents steadily gave money to their children’s family throughout the marriage to subsidize housing, car payments, parking, vacations, and tuition – like a weekly or monthly allowance, but for adults.

If the couple divorces, the idea of imputation comes into play.

Imputation: The assignment of a value to something by inference from the value of the products or processes to which it contributes.

Let’s say it was the husband’s father that helped support the family, the wife is going to want to come after that additional money, even though it doesn’t show in the husband’s W-2 or tax returns – that’s the inference.

Some grandparents feel like imputation codifies an agreement that would have happened anyway. Other grandparents react differently and chafe at the idea of being required to do anything. They also don’t want to be passengers on the roller coaster of their child’s divorce. 

In many instances, grandparents enter into promissory notes with their child for some or all of the funds they give – thereby making their child their debtor. They are trying to ensure that the monies are legally recorded as debts and not gifts or supplemental income. This is done to shield both the grandparent and their child in the event of a divorce. Both the grandparent and child should, however, consult with a qualified attorney when navigating this strategy. 

Understanding imputations and standard of living analyses takes a skilled matrimonial attorney – and the more experience they have, the better. Contact me at The Law & Mediation Office of Cheryl Stein to schedule a consultation.

Cheryl Stein, Esq.
The Law and Mediation Offices of Cheryl Stein
745 Fifth Avenue, Suite 500
New York, NY 10151
Phone: (646) 884-2324
E-mail: cheryl@cherylsteinesq.com

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The wife will say she doesn’t care about child support so long as it means he will be out of her life. This is a perfect example of a client making overly dramatic, large-brushstroke statements in the beginning. This quickly changes when the numbers get crunched.

For example, one client initially told me she would accept significantly less in basic child support than the Child Support Standards Act dictates. She would also agree for her husband to contribute a lot less than his pro-rata share towards add-ons such as the children’s:

•uncovered medical expenses;
•child care; and
•extra-curricular activities.

Her hope was to make the settlement offer so attractive to him that he would agree to sign. In exchange, he would relinquish custody to her and she would get him out of her life as far and as fast as possible. He was not particularly a bad guy, and the parties even had a fairly decent rapport; she just did not like living in the “neither here nor there” in-between zone of divorce. She wanted resolution and closure to move on.

Over the next few days, she began doing her homework, crunching numbers and calculating how much she would need towards her children’s child care alone in subsequent years, and realized there was no way in the world she could shoulder it alone. She looked at her daughter’s smile at dinner one night, and all she saw were big, disproportionate buck teeth. She realized her kid would need braces, and that she would need help paying for that as well. With that, my client landed back on planet earth and out of the window flew her ideas about proposals that were unrealistic for her.

Knee-jerk emails often flood my inbox in the wee hours of the night when the kids are sleeping and clients don’t have the day’s activities to distract them—the anxieties surrounding their divorce and future envelop them. By the morning, they see the light and have often come up with their own solution. When a client is going through a catastrophe, they are overly sensitive to everything in the moment. My replies have to be carefully calibrated to help diffuse the immediate stressor.

I often tell my mediation clients that I am the facilitator: They have to reach their own agreement; ultimately, they both have to live with it. During the divorce, these couples are still quite familiar with the other person’s lifestyle. They are oftentimes the most equipped to come up with their own solutions.

I similarly remind my litigation clients that the agreement has to be palatable to them. They will usually be living with the consequences for many years to come. They need to prudently weigh and consider the agreement and not sign in haste and desperation.

Contact me today with questions or comments.

Cheryl Stein, Esq.
The Law and Mediation Offices of Cheryl Stein
Offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn
Phone: (646) 884-2324
E-mail: cheryl@cherylsteinesq.com

The post How to Avoid Knee-Jerk Responses appeared first on Cheryl Stein, Esq..