PERSPECTIVE IN DIVORCE COURT: ONE CLIENT'S STORY
I was in Court a few days ago representing a woman whose teenaged son left her home to go live with his father. Several months after the son moved in with his father, the father filed petitions in Court to change the legal custodial arrangement and end his child support payments.
My client was very upset that her son moved out, and to this day does not understand what happened to lead her son to leave. She apparently loves her son very much and wants to understand what went wrong and repair her relationship with him. She did not want to litigate the case in Court and go through the acrimony of a trial with her ex-husband.
Now, it turns out that she had a way to force the dismissal of her ex-husband’s case and move the matter out of Court and into the hands of a professional mediator. It was a strategy that I identified and developed for her and for which there was no possible defense her ex-husband could use to keep his case in Court.
When we arrived in Court and I presented my argument to the Court, the Court was incredulous. So was my adversary. The legal argument was a winner and I fairly easily won my motion to dismiss the case. But the Court and my adversary were apparently both dumbfounded by my client’s decision to win her case on legal grounds and get out of the Courthouse. Why? Because, in their eyes and from their vantage point, it was not ‘practical.’ Why not? Well, in their eyes, even though my client won the battle, she would lose the war because the father would come back and refile at a later date. When he did so, he would surely prevail. So, according to the very ‘practical’ judge and my adversary, this successful plan of mine only delayed the inevitable, which made no sense at all to them.
To my client, however, that was exactly the point of dismissing the case. It was to get the case out of Court and to a mediator. She wanted the delay, and wanted it very much. Not for its own sake, but to get a chance to deal with her son and her ex-husband in a non-confrontational and helpful setting. From her perspective, this was the practical thing to do.
What is the moral of this story? Divorce law cases are all about perspective and point of view. What seems rational and reasonable to one side appears to be obstinate and confrontational to the other. If you know and accept this, you can use this information to help get through a complicated divorce easier and with less cost in terms of time, money, and energy.
For more information about divorce in New York, please visit my website at www.GabayLawFirm.com
