Tag Archive for: Divorce

The Nurse with a Purse and Sugar Daddy Dynamic

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The idea of a “sugar daddy” is very common and well-known: A “sugar daddy” is an older man who marries a younger woman and takes care of her. There is a similar, but lesser-known dynamic when the older marrying spouse is a woman. This dynamic has been referred to as the “nurse with a purse.” In both cases, it’s equally important for the older spouse to obtain a Prenuptial Agreement.

Often, the woman in the “nurse with a purse” situation is in her 50s or older, highly capable, financially comfortable, healthy and has been married before; she is typically either widowed or divorced. Many — although by no means all — women who are in these circumstances come from traditional or religious backgrounds that particularly value marriage. They may feel like outcasts in their communities and immediate social circles when they are single. When they finally meet a suitor for marriage, their overwhelming relief often makes them walk on tippy toes, feeling they have little leverage to impose the contingency of signing a prenuptial agreement on the marriage. They are afraid of offending and warding off their prospective husband. They may also be more idealistic and resistant to believe that divorce can happen.

In this situation, when the woman remarries, she pays the bills and household expenses. After say — an eight-to-ten-year marriage — that ends in divorce, she often ends up completely depleted financially because the man is not well or is, for some other reason, monetarily dependent on her. The woman often has to assume more of a caretaking role. In such marriages, the woman may get very little from the relationship in terms of actual emotional support, friendship, and household help; literally, the only thing she may get is a man by her side and the status of being married. Several of my clients have fallen into this category and described these exact sentiments to me.

When the woman and her husband end up in divorce, it can have devastating financial consequences. The woman may have her own children she is trying to put through college and is carefully allocating her resources. There is an adage: “As long as you are young and healthy you can generate more money.” However, these women — who are often in their 50s and 60s — cannot generate more money that quickly. They are at the end of their working years. It is very debilitating to them to see that much money wiped out at the time of the divorce in equitable distribution and maintenance payments, as well as litigation expenses.

It is more common for sugar daddies to assert themselves pre-marriage and demand that a prenuptial agreement be signed, while women have a harder time finding their voice on this point and asserting themselves.

If you are remarrying and want to protect your assets both during your marriage and in case of divorce, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

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

New York Is a Melting Pot: Know the Culture You’re Working With – Part 2

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“Home is where the heart is” is a lovely, flowery, figurative expression that surely makes sense and resonates. However, on a very fundamental level, home is made of bricks and mortar. It is the basic foundation of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, where we can cohabitate and be physically protected from the external elements.   

Nearly all emphasize strong family connections, and many exhibit multi-generational homes with pooled resources and shared responsibilities, spanning two to three living generations under one roof or within close proximity.    

Such living arrangements cast a widespread shadow over a couple’s marriage and divorce. 

There is the meddlesome in-laws scenario, where a couple cannot evolve into their own matured, intimate, and trusting entity, because there is the incessant, intrusive third wheel of one or both of their parents sticking their noses in. Such parental behavior is often enabled by the adult child, who has great difficulty cutting the umbilical cord; it debilitates grown, married children and prevents them from being able to think for themselves and make their own decisions, together with their spouse, without constantly conferring with their parents and getting their parents’ approval.  

A client from a tight-knit Russian-Jewish background dreaded and delayed going home every night, because he did not want to be coming home to his mother-in-law’s constant badgering. He could not get his wife to divorce her mother, so he finally ended up divorcing his wife, whom he liked. 

Another culturally embedded younger couple was on the verge of divorce, largely due to the wife’s mother’s intrusiveness. With the help of a skilled family therapist, the couple moved to a different area, an approximate 1.5 to 2-hour drive from the maternal grandmother, and they were able to develop as their own marital entity and work things out. 

An additional influencing factor is the way larger family structures share and pool resources. Monies and resources received by an adult child can then be imputed to that adult child or otherwise accounted for to compute their basic child support obligation and statutory add-on expenses:

•As for basic child support, if a divorcing parent is living rent-free at their parent’s house and receiving many other paid benefits from their parents, a judge may decide to impute some/all of the monetary value of those resources to the divorcing parent for child support calculations; it is within judicial discretion, and there is supporting case law for this position.

•If funds for the children’s religious private schools are paid for by a set of grandparents year after year, a judge may impute that money to the divorcing parent and take it for granted that those funds will be forthcoming and accessible to them moving forward. 

•Childcare is an add-on that is allocated pro rata, pursuant to Domestic Relations Law Section 240 and the Family Court Act section 413–the applicable statutes. In the subject homes, a grandparent or aunt living under the same roof as the divorcing parent or nearby is often the built-in babysitter, negating the need for childcare. A parent can then say, rather than paying their pro rata share towards add-ons, they will use their mother as their babysitter/nanny. This is a sound and sensible position a party may take.     

The sale of the house/marital residence is typically zoomed into full focus at the time of divorce, and much attention needs to be paid to the details. Most commonly, when divorcing parties jointly own a marital residence, they agree that the primary residential parent (still, traditionally, the mother) shall be able to reside in the residence, together with the children, until the youngest child is 18 years old, at which time the residence may be sold and the net proceeds of the sale appropriately allocated between the then divorced parties (this may be many years post-divorce). 

Muslim clients have relayed that this simply does not work for them; that their (often ivy-league educated, high-income-earning professional and well able to support themselves) adult children live with them until they are married, often well into adulthood. They are not willing to sell the house when the youngest child turns 18. This is not exclusive to Muslims; other religious and traditional groups have similar protocols. 

Critical details such as these permeate and interlace themselves throughout the divorce negotiations. The right balance must be struck for the specific clients at the table; not some generic notion of what the “Apple-Pie” American family looks like. The parties’ culture may put limitations on their options when negotiating a divorce settlement. 

These clients do a balancing act and straddle the world of their immediate nuclear religion and culture and American culture. When servicing them, attorneys and mediators should be flexible enough to dance their dance and maintain proper footing and balance, while always using the law as a backbone and basic foundation.

Feel free to contact me with any questions.

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

New York Is a Melting Pot: Know the Culture You’re Working With

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In New York, there are enclaves of different traditional communities, including a strong Indian, Jewish, Muslim, Chinese and other Asian presence. There is also an amalgam of different religions, as people often have some sort of religious outline to their traditional backgrounds. Family law attorneys and mediators must be sensitive in their approach when handling divorce for those with specific cultural or religious guidelines.

During the initial intake stages, it is important to check the client’s temperature to learn their tolerance level. What are their views on divorce? What are the views of their nuclear community, which they are intrinsically a part of? Does divorce contradict the religious beliefs they otherwise subscribe to? Is divorce still highly stigmatized in their community? Can they go through with the divorce right now? If they can’t, there is a reason they came to you in the first place—what needs to be addressed?

Some cultures and religions are anti- or highly resistant to divorce. A client may reveal that they are Muslim and attend mosque, or that they are deeply involved with their church, are close with their pastor and their church community, and feel divorce is against their religion.

It might be that divorce is the right solution, but it’s not the right time. They’re afraid of how they’ll be perceived in their community, and their religion tells them they should stay married. For these clients, family therapy, protracted and therapeutic mediation, a postnuptial agreement or a separation agreement may be better solutions in the here and now. These clients may eventually be able to follow through with the divorce, but the process of getting there and the clients resolving their inner conflict about it may need to run its course.

If the clients are Jewish, will their family or rabbi pressure them to exclusively submit to the Beis Din, and not initiate an action in civil court or withdraw any action previously submitted? These clients may receive a Hazmana from the Beis Din followed by warnings that they will be excommunicated from the community if they do not appear and submit to the Beis Din.

Perhaps a Jewish client signed a Halachic Prenuptial or Postnuptial Agreement with a binding Arbitration Clause, and they reveal to you that they did not understand and/or believe in it when they signed it or at the present time and question its enforceability.

In fact, a common trend now is for Jewish teenagers and young adults to get married shortly after completing religious seminary, when they are very young, and both husband and wife are still religious, having been exposed to similar influences until that point. Over time, one spouse leaves the religious lifestyle and no longer believes in its dictates, a process often referred to as “leaving the fold.” When this happens, divorce is almost always inevitable and imminent.   

As an attorney or mediator, it is also important to be aware that often people within specific religions and cultures are strongly networked and tend to live in the same area, typically attending the same mosque, church or synagogue. If a client comes to an attorney or mediator for a divorce and has a positive experience, they will tell others. Within a few years, a family law practitioner may find him/herself divorcing many couples within the same tight-knit community. This heightens the need for attorney-client privilege, as clients come in stating, “I want you to do for me exactly what you did for my neighbor,” as if it is a made-to-order cake, and then try to discuss their neighbor’s case and draw comparables. Often they think they know the details of the other person’s situation and further assume that their situation is very similar, when there are, in fact, critical differences. The attorney/mediator must be hyper vigilant not to be lured in by these statements and discuss the details of their other clients, which would breach attorney-client privilege.

As someone working in community services, practitioners cannot just operate from an intellectual/academic standpoint, where they defer to the statutory textbooks or mainstream everyone. It is not a one-size-fits-all approach—family law attorneys and mediators need to become aware of the culture of the clients they are serving.

I feel thankful to have the honor and privilege of working with many traditional and religious communities and to serve my client’s individual needs and sensitivities. Please feel free to contact me with any questions.

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

There’s No Such Thing as a Gentlemen’s Agreement…and Then Some!

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Often when couples first begin talking about divorce, they come up with their own agreement: “I’ll take this, and you’ll take that…I’ll be responsible for this, and you’ll be responsible for that.” Sometimes, they recruit a mutual friend to play makeshift mediator, and then somewhat live under the terms of the agreement they contrive. However, this agreement is unenforceable, as it is usually either a gentleman’s agreement or one written, but not signed, notarized, and acknowledged in the manner required by the courts to deem an agreement enforceable. Ironically, divorcing parties are often “stuck on” this initial “home-baked” agreement. Fast forward a bit to one of the parties becoming disgruntled enough to commence a litigation action. Within the litigation context, they often keep referring to that initial agreement, which bears no weight.

An analogous situation can occur in mediation. Mediators typically have each party sign a waiver stating that anything said in mediation is private, confidential, and cannot be used in litigation. The parties often strike agreements on various issues and start planning their future and making arrangements based on their agreements. If mediation falls apart and litigation begins, what the parties agreed to during mediation is meaningless. Nevertheless, the parties are often so stuck on what happened in mediation, where they were an active participant, able to get many concessions they were satisfied with, that four years later they are still reminiscing about it with nostalgia. It wasn’t successful—why be fixated on something that didn’t work.

In one extreme example of a mediation case gone sour and turning into a bitter litigation battle, the husband broke into the mediator’s office at night to steal the records from his case, which he thought would highlight the concessions his wife agreed to make during mediation. Besides being a criminal act and downright meshuga, to what end? What was to be gained? The deals struck in mediation stayed there and are bootless.

When divorcing parties start to live under the terms of the agreement before it’s actually drafted, it can be like a house of cards that falls apart. It is important that adequate protections are in place and that things happen in a sequential order.

A good practice is to have “interim agreements” or “stipulations.” In litigation, parties typically enter into stipulations along the way as they settle and resolve select issues and can then move forward to tackle the outstanding issues. For example, there may be a custody trial or settlement with a parenting agreement executed, on the heels of which follow the financial aspects of the case. It is wise to engage in a similar practice in mediation. The parties should each have consulting attorneys, and valid interim agreements can be entered into as the mediation progresses.

In almost every case, there are the pressing, time-sensitive or “elephant in the room” issues that need to be tackled first, which often include but are not limited to:

•Custody, visitation, and parenting issues.

•Interim support plan.

•One spouse moving out of the marital residence.

•Closing joint accounts and devising a plan to pay off marital debt.

•Deciding whether to file tax returns jointly or separately and who claims the children as dependents.

•Removing one spouse’s name from investments they know nothing about and feel they may need immediate protection from.

With the guidance of consulting attorneys, valid agreements can be entered into, settling each of the situations the parties are most concerned about along the way.

Often, when parties resolve the matters they are most anxious about, the rest falls into place more easily.

Whether parties choose to litigate or mediate, it is important to consult with an experienced attorney at the very beginning, when they start thinking about divorce or discussing it with a spouse, to ensure they are adequately protected.

Feel free to contact me with any questions.

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

How to Avoid Knee-Jerk Responses

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Quite often during a divorce when the wife wants sole custody of the children, she will go so far as to completely mitigate what the father does. Sometimes, women who exert this behavior are stuck in their situation—mired in bitterness and the feeling that somehow they’ve been wronged. To her, the husband does nothing. When I ask more detailed questions and parse out the facts, I’ll find out that he does things like make the kids’ breakfast every morning and take them to school. That is not called doing nothing!

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

How to Get What You Want in a Divorce

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From the outset, I discuss with my clients what their bottom line is and what they are willing to negotiate on. Typically, in the beginning, the client wants everything but the kitchen sink. Over time, however, the way that bottom line ends up morphing is astounding, especially as the urgency to get relief from the situation envelops the client. Of course, the goal in litigation is to get the other side’s bottom line to morph towards you as much as possible. In mediation, it’s to get the clients to meet somewhere in the happy middle.

One of my clients wanted his wife to have a certain amount of life insurance, with him being the trustee. She agreed, with the stipulation that she be the trustee of his life insurance. He didn’t want that and realized it wasn’t important enough to him to delay the process. So, he chose to “pick his battles” and took this out of the negotiation altogether (even though that was originally his ideal end situation).

Another client wanted her husband to pay towards multiple extracurricular activities for their very young child, especially as he could more than well afford it. His position was that he would pay towards only one extracurricular activity that he thought most appropriate to enhance the child’s development at any given time. He was very obstinate on this point and would not budge. They had a joint custody arrangement, where ALL decisions relating to the child were to be made jointly, and both parents were very involved. She ultimately decided that if she allocated and budgeted her money carefully enough and cut down personal spendings in other areas, she could come up with the money to pay for the child to be enrolled in multiple extracurricular activities at a time, as was really important to her. We proposed that she would be responsible for all extracurricular activities above the one he agreed to pay for, but that she would also NOT need his consent. He resisted at first because it meant relinquishing some of his control and decision making. Ultimately, he begrudgingly acquiesced, and the parties signed off on it.

Those can be categorized as more “small ticket items.” Sometimes, divorcing parties start to feel such an overpowering desire for immediate relief and resolution, they start bending on “big ticket items.” For example, they may start offering to accept significantly less in basic child support than they are entitled to pursuant to the statute; or to pay a lot more (if they are the non-custodial parent to pay basic child support). It is critical that the parties are anchored, thinking it through clearly, and not “selling their shirts,” so to speak, for the immediate gratification of a speedy divorce.

As clients go home and crunch their own numbers, they seem to start analyzing their lives more. They think about their lifestyle and what they want in the short and long-term future—different things end up being important than what was initially thought.

In terms of negotiation tools, what people think is going to be important to the other party often isn’t. This is most poignant during mediations when each side fills out a separate intake form where they convey their desired results and bottom lines. I’ve had a wife say in mediation, “I know him; I know what’s important to him.” As the mediator, I knew that, in fact, it was something else that was important to him—something the wife would not have thought of—and vice versa.

Sometimes, during litigation, the other party’s responses to a settlement proposal focus on something that is such minutia to my client, we would laugh about it. That’s an important piece when bartering—each party can receive “his/her minutiae” and everyone can be happy.

Often when clients think through their situation, they calm down on their own. What once was a problem becomes a non-issue. So rather than throw fuel into the fire, let things simmer on their own. Be willing to morph your bottom line, and focus on what’s really important to you in your divorce negotiations.

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