Governor Paterson Signs New York No-Fault Divorce Bill
New York has passed a no-fault divorce law, which will enable couples to divorce without assigning blame to either member of the failed couple, according to Bloomberg.
The law will, in the eyes of its supporters, cut down on long, painful divorce battles played out in courts, costing the participants a lot of money and heartache.
The no-fault divorce bill was passed on July 1, and after that it went to Governor David Paterson’s office. He signed the bill recently.
The new measure will go into effect in 60 days. Divorces that are filed at that point or after will be the ones impacted by the new bill.
“There is a human cost and a financial cost,” said Robert Ross, the supervising judge of the matrimonial division in Nassau County, New York. “It’s hard to know what impact a new law will have, but we do know that a grounds trial, and the expense and delay associated with it, is not a good thing.”
Before the new no-fault divorce bill takes effect, New York divorce laws were the only in the nation to require fault. If two spouses were in disagreement about the terms of the divorce, they could only dissolve their marriage by proving that the other was guilty of something like adultery, cruelty or abandonment.
With such limited options, some couples resorted to trials that battled over who was to blame for a failed marriage, and which sometimes saw couples put together false claims in order to meet the requirements of the law.
It is these kinds of court dispute that the new law will attempt to prevent and avoid.
“Fault allegations and fault trials add significantly to the cost, delay and trauma of matrimonial litigation and are, in many cases, used by litigants to achieve a tactical advantage in matrimonial litigation,” said a study that was presented to a top judge in 2006.
The study was commissioned by the state to study matrimonial law in New York.
A trial stemming from the concerns of the report could last weeks, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and involve children and friends. And while the eventuality of a fault trial is not common, when it does occur it can get, in the words of matrimonial lawyer Ronnie Gouz, “horrible.”
“They are never pleasant,” said Judge Ross. “You are putting two people in the position of pointing the finger at each other and having to defend the finger pointed at them.” He cited the strangeness of some fault cases, in which the court has had to hear from girlfriends and boyfriends, or those who people claim are boyfriends or girlfriends. “Having to sit and listen to these tings can sometimes be an overwhelming experience,” he said.
Another factor in the fault divorce has been the threat of publicizing personal information via a trial. A court trial is often something people are willing to negotiate in order to keep information from getting to the public.
The no-fault divorce eliminates this negotiating tactic.
