A Common Sense, Practical Guide to Divorce Workbook: New York Edition

By Lenard Marlow

The simple message of this book is that divorcing husbands and wives should not allow divorce lawyers to send them off on a fool’s errand that will take what is already a tragedy in their lives and turn it into a nightmare. That is when they are persuaded to employ the law as a weapon in a legal tug of war the object of which is simply to get as much as you can and to give as little as you have to. Rather, they should look to the law as a common framework that they can turn to in their effort to conclude an agreement and thereby get on with their lives. There is a name for this. It is called divorce mediation and it doesn’t take forever or cost a king’s ransom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669823254

Lenard Marlow

A graduate of Colgate University and Columbia Law School, Lenard Marlow has spent most of his professional life working with divorcing husbands and wives, first as a divorce lawyer (he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers) and then, for more than thirty-five years, as a divorce mediator (he is a Past President of the New York State Council on Divorce Mediation). In addition to lecturing and putting on trainings throughout the United States, Europe and South America on the subject, he has written many books about divorce mediation, including The Two Roads To Divorce; Metaphors For Mediators, and Divorce Mediation: The Conflict Between Getting It Right and Getting It Done.

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Rev. date: 05/12/2022

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 The Order of Business

Chapter 2 Your Children

Chapter 3 Your Marital Residence

Chapter 4 The Answers to Your Questions Given by The Law

Chapter 5 Spousal Support

Chapter 6 Child Support

Chapter 7 The Division of Liquid and Non-liquid Property

Chapter 8 Multi-Dimensional Problems (Untangling the Gordian Knot)

Chapter 9 Retirement Benefits

Chapter 10 Private School and College Education Expenses

Chapter 11 Life Insurance

Chapter 12 Miscellaneous Considerations Debts, Income Taxes, Pets and Personal Property

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Chapter 1

THE ORDER OF BUSINESS

Two other books in this series of books (A Common Sense, Practical Guide To Divorce and Divorce: Accepting Imperfect Solutions to Imperfect Problems) addressed the object of the agreement that the two of you will conclude in mediation. More important, they contrasted the difference in turning to an adversarial divorce proceeding (and that includes a collaborative family law proceeding) in an effort to conclude that agreement and turning to divorce mediation by saying that, in the former, a divorce lawyer will view the law as a weapon that is to be used in a legal tug of war, the object of which is simply to get as much as you can and to give as little as you have to, whereas a divorce mediator will view the law as a common framework that the two of you can look to in your effort to conclude an agreement.

The purpose of this Workbook is different. It is to address what will be the substance of the agreement that the two of you will conclude. Before we get to that, however, I want to indicate the order in which the various provisions in your agreement will be taken up.

In that regard, it is natural to assume that a divorce lawyer and a divorce mediator will take up those provisions in the same order. Thus, if a divorce mediator will start out with a discussion of your children, and with whom they will reside, a divorce lawyer will do the same. That is not the case, however. While a divorce mediator will always start out with a discussion of your children, except in passing, it will be the last thing that two divorce lawyers will address in any detail. Rather, they will start out talking about money. After all, for a divorce lawyer, money is the name of the game—to get as much as you can and to give as little as you have to. If that is the case, why would divorce lawyers start out anywhere else? There is another reason for this. Divorce lawyers tend to avoid what they consider to be touchy, feely things, and that includes children. Besides, what qualifies a divorce lawyer to express an opinion as to what is best for your children? Nothing.

Isn’t money an important issue for a divorce mediator as well? Of course it is. In its own way it is as important as it is for a divorce lawyer. After all, money makes the world go round—pays the bills. But it can also be divisive and therefore a source of contention. And a divorce mediator doesn’t want to start out on a divisive note. Rather, he (or she) wants to start out on what will hopefully be a note of commonality—an area of common ground that the two of you can stand on and that he can then build on. For most couples, that area of common ground is their children.

There is another reason why a divorce mediator will start out talking about your children. As I said, he doesn’t know either of you very well at this point. On the contrary, you are total strangers to him, and he wants to get to know you better—as I will put it, to learn his running room. He certainly wants to know those areas of commonality that may still exist between you. To be sure, the fact of your divorce has necessarily put its finger on things that divide you. Hopefully, there will still be things that hold you together. As I said, for most couples, their children will be one of them.

There is yet another reason. Money is abstract, and you are therefore going to think and talk about it by invoking abstractions. Divorce lawyers have encouraged divorcing husbands and wives to think and talk about it in those terms —in terms of what is fair and equitable? Children, on the other hand, are not abstract. They are concrete. Thus, in talking about them, you will be less inclined to talk about what is fair and equitable than you will be about what they need and what is practical, which is very concrete. You can lay down a yardstick to determine what they need and what is practical. However, there is no yardstick that can tell you what is fair and equitable. Rather, like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder.

That is why a divorce mediator will take up children first and money (the division of your property) later while divorce lawyers will take up money first and children last. When you get to the issue of your retirement benefits, unless you are already retired, you are not going to talk about what you need today. They represent tomorrow dollars (money that you have put away for the future) not today dollars. However, just the opposite will be the case when you talk about child support and maintenance. You will be talking about what you need today.

There is one final reason. A divorce mediator is not just trying to help the two of you conclude an agreement. He is also trying to help you solve a problem that the two of you have, namely, how each of you (and your children) are going to be able to manage financially going forward—following your divorce. A divorce lawyer would not even understand what a divorce mediator means or is referring to when he talks about a problem that the two of you have. The only problem that he sees or recognizes is his own client’s problem. Moreover, he could not care less where that will leave his client’s husband or wife. In fact, as hard as this may be to understand, it would be unethical, and a dereliction of his duty to you, if he did.

A divorce mediator’s objection to this is not just that it is irresponsible, which it is. As A Common Sense, Practical Guide to Divorce hopefully made clear, it is that it doesn’t work. Contrary to what a divorce lawyer may believe, it is not possible to solve the problem for one of you alone. It is certainly not possible to solve it for one of you at the other’s expense. Unless it works on some level for both of you, it will be of no value to either of you. Rather, it will just be the battlefield on which you will wage your future wars. That is the sad legacy that our adversarial legal system has bequeathed to divorcing husbands and wives.

That is why, if you have infant children (children who still require support), a divorce mediator will always start with your children. He cannot address the problems that the two of you are faced with as a result of your decision to divorce in any other way. The first thing that he needs to know is with whom your children will be and when. (They will be with both of you, but not at the same time.) The next thing that he needs to know is where they will be, which is why the next thing that he will address is what will happen to your principal residence. (Will one of you continue to live there, will it be sold?, etc.) Following that, he will address the question of what each of you (and your children) will need in order to provide for yourselves on a reasonable basis, and how you will divide your earned (and unearned) incomes to meet those needs. In that regard, he will help you build what he refers to as a house of support. The first floor will obviously be today. But unlike other things that you will discuss and that will be included in your agreement, such as the division of your retirement benefits and other assets (savings, etc.), there will be a second and perhaps a third floor as well. In other words, the first floor will only address how you will divide your earned and unearned income today, not tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. That is another big difference between how a divorce lawyer and a divorce mediators will approach your problem. For a divorce lawyer who is engaged in a legal tug of war, concluding an agreement, any agreement, will take so long and costs so much that he will have no interest in gilding the lily by addressing tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. For a divorce mediator, that is not gilding the lily. Rather, it is part of addressing the problem that your divorce has left the two of you with.

Chapter 2

YOUR CHILDREN

As I noted, divorce lawyers do not generally