Tag Archive for: Sexual Harassment

Empowerment Is the Best Deal

/in , /by

In our last post, we discussed the fallout that happens when a husband is accused of sexual harassment in the workplace. I had another interesting situation where my unmarried client was having an affair — for 15 years — with a married man from work without knowing he was married because he hid it well while living a double life. 

He represented himself to be single from the get-go and the work romance got serious. He even presented fabricated divorce papers to my client to prove his alleged divorce. My client, blissfully ignorant to divorce-decree fraud, believed him. She admits to noticing red flags along the way, but she ignored them because of the “divorce papers” she saw. 

The 15-year lie came to an end when my client discovered this man’s deception and immediately broke off the affair. She was worried because she enjoyed a very high position in her company and was unsure whether her supervisors would want to know or would prefer to stay in the dark about the unethical behavior within their matrix. However, she also didn’t want this to happen to anyone else. 

My client had read about this exact scenario and none of the stories ended well. She had to go through the expense of hiring an employment law attorney to make sure that she was protected once she came out about the affair and deception to her employer. 

The man was also in a very leading position within the company. There were younger women under his watch, who were less sophisticated than my client, and she wanted to make sure he didn’t victimize them. 

This story is important because events at the workplace, like sexual harassment, have ramifications in the setting of divorce. If the perpetrator is fired, the equation for child and spousal support will be impacted. That’s why it’s important to contact an attorney as soon as you sense a “Me, Too” situation developing in your marriage. 

Speaking up early will allow you the time to divorce accordingly and to make sure you get the best deal for yourself. This speaks to the perpetrator’s wife — once she learned about her husband’s indiscretions and double life, she needed to lawyer-up. 

There was a whole web of attorneys involved to represent both women — my client who was having the affair and the perpetrator’s wife, including matrimonial, employment, ethics, and social media attorneys, to contain the damage. 

The two women got to know each other, felt a connection in being blind-sided and duped by the same person, and worked to mutually help each other. 

It is often disheartening to the spouses of perpetrators that they fell in love with someone like that. They start to see themselves as victims as well and join in on the “Me, Too” chorus. 

My client worked hard to help herself and the perpetrator’s wife out of the unseemly situation, and in so doing, she also protected other potential “Me, Too” victims.

That’s why there’s an empowering and strengthening stage that I do with my clients as we lay the groundwork and advance their case. Inner peace and enlightenment aside, getting a good deal is the ultimate source of empowerment. 

Feel free to contact me with any questions. 

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

“Me, Too” Divorces: A Case Study

/in , , /by

Whenever we hear about a case of sexual harassment in the news, there is often a divorce happening in the background. The divorce part is just not the centerpiece of the story. I’ve had several situations where the wife’s husband was accused of sexual harassment at the office, and it became a major consideration in our strategy. 

For example, I had a case where the husband was a charming, easy-to-love guy. The wife was successful in her own right, and he pulled out all the stops for her. She ended up relocating for him — and a few years later he was asked to resign from his job due to multiple sexual harassment claims.

He ended up going from a high salary to $30,000 a year scraping together various consulting gigs. The wife went from being the less-monied spouse to being the monied spouse. When the marriage broke down, having a financially ruined husband became an urgent problem. His reputation had been tarnished within his industry so much that it was unlikely he would ever get another high-paying position. 

My client abhorred the idea of paying support to someone whose career came crashing down because of his own actions. Despite what was morally right, it appeared that the black and white letter of the law was on the husband’s side. According to the statutory maintenance guideline calculations, my client would have had to pay a sizable maintenance to him. The wayward husband’s attorney requested this relief to shake up my client and put her on the defense; he picked up on my client’s (understandable) particular revulsion to paying support — and liked to bring it up to unnerve her. He requested the relief in his pleadings, audaciously filed a motion for support, and sent barrages of correspondences on the subject. 

Despite the guidelines, I advised my client that the judge would not rule in the husband’s favor.

That’s because judges look at the “whole package” and exercise several factors afforded to them to deviate from the statute as they deem fit towards a fair and judicious outcome. I expected the judge would be sympathetic to my client because her story was so indicative of the moral character of the husband. Ultimately, we prevailed, obtaining a judgment that freed my client and that she felt great peace about. 

One of the judges I’ve admired in my career always emphasized the importance of providing a “whole picture” to the judge. The relevant laws allow for a degree of discretion to the judges, which makes it possible to do things like bypass spousal support guidelines in the interest of fairness. In this case, the whole picture showed a cloud of bad behavior that obscured the one issue that seemed in the husband’s favor. 

As ludicrous as it might sound for a wife in this instance to have to pay her husband support, it’s not so simple, for example, the courts typically prefer that a former spouse pay support than that the befallen spouse become a ward on the state. Further, as mentioned, the statutory notice of guideline maintenance, in its most literal form, favors the husband, and seeking maintenance is also often used as a strategic scare and intimidation tactic of the husband’s legal counsel to get the wife to settle on other terms, such as equitable distribution.  

Join me next time when I discuss another “Me, Too” divorce, and feel free to send me your story to cheryl@cherylsteinesq.com.

Until next time…… 

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