Bronx High Net Worth Divorce Lawyers
While all divorce cases are inherently complicated, a divorce is especially complicated when the case involves large amounts of assets. When the parties have significant money or property, one of the parties may be motivated to hide assets or try to undervalue them in order to gain an advantage. When this happens, our team of Bronx high net worth divorce lawyers can help you make sure that you receive a divorce judgment that fairly represents your assets and your rights under the law.
Division of property
In a high net worth divorce in the Bronx, it’s important to carefully build your case in order to receive a fair distribution of the assets. It’s up to the court to divide marital property equitably. Usually, that means giving each party close to half of the marital assets.
However, the division of property in a divorce isn’t always strictly equal. If one of the parties is at fault in the marriage for adultery or cruel and inhumane treatment, the court may award an unequal distribution of property. A unique property distribution may also be appropriate in cases where a party has unique needs that make an unequal division of assets just and equitable.
Receiving a fair distribution of property
To receive a fair distribution of property, it’s important to carefully build your case. You must determine what assets are marital. Unless the parties have a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement, the assets that either party earns during the marriage are marital assets and subject to distribution during the divorce. It doesn’t matter if one of the parties works and the other party contributes to maintaining the home, everything earned during the marriage is typically marital property unless an exception applies.
Your Bronx high net worth divorce attorney can work with you to identify and value marital assets. You may work to subpoena records, documents and titles to prove that assets exist. It may be necessary to conduct depositions of relatives or other individuals in order to identify assets that the other party may try to hide. If the other party tries to hide assets, you need to bring evidence to the court of what they’re trying to do. When you gather records of these assets, your attorney can help you go about gathering evidence in a way that’s admissible in court.
Placing a value on an asset
It’s up to you to prove the value of an item to the court. If you have real estate, you may need to have it appraised. In high net worth divorce cases, it’s important to review the appraiser’s work carefully because the other side may have a financial expert of their own. Placing a value on the assets is the first step to begin working on how to divide them. An attorney can help you find the right appraiser and work towards admitting an appraisal and other financial records in court.
Maintenance and Spousal support
In a high-asset divorce case, spousal maintenance can be a controversial issue. Determining an appropriate spousal support award depends in part on having an accurate picture of the incomes of the parties. You must also look at each party’s ability to work.
Arriving at an appropriate spousal maintenance and support award in a bronx high asset divorce case means inquiring into each party’s true income. You may need to subpoena employment records. If one of the parties owns a business, you may need to have a forensic accountant place a fair value on the business. Getting to the bottom of spousal maintenance means looking at the health of the parties, their needs and what it’s honestly and fairly going to take to help the lower-earning spouse become self sufficient.
Child support
Knowing the true incomes of the parties is also critical to making an accurate determination of child support. It’s true that child support is based on a formula. However, the formula only creates an accurate result when you have the right figures to use in the formula. It’s important to carefully review any child support calculation for errors and inaccuracies.
How can an attorney help?
A high net worth divorce attorney in the Bronx can help you ensure that your divorce case is handled fairly and correctly. A divorce judgment is hard to undo, so it’s important to get it right the first time. Your experienced lawyer can help guide your case through the courts so that you can receive justice and a fair disposition of your case as quickly as possible.
As skilled and experienced family attorneys, we have experience handling high net worth cases in the Bronx and throughout New York. High asset cases are uniquely challenging. Our clients often have many different special things to consider as they advocate for the best possible outcome in court. We help each client aggressively pursue their best interests under New York law with professional, competent and understanding services
Valuing Assets
High net worth cases often create unique challenges in that the parties often disagree as to the value of marital assets. The parties might have an expensive home that leaves a lot of room for debate about the home’s worth. One party might own a business that needs a value in order to determine a fair division of assets. The parties might have unique collections of personal property that have significant value. Determining the proper value of these assets is important for both division of property and alimony.
Our team works with our clients in order to accurately value these assets. The party that wants the court to value the asset at a certain amount has the burden of proving the asset’s worth. We work with expert appraisers and accountants in order to prepare evidence about the value of assets.
Identifying Assets
In addition to placing a value on assets, your bronx high net worth attorney can help you identify assets that the other side might be trying to hide. Parties often transfer titles and even financial accounts to friends and family members in an effort to hide them from their spouse during a divorce. The courts take this behavior seriously.
We have ways to identify assets that might be hidden. We demand personal and business records. We can use forensic accountants to identify income. In some cases, we team with private investigators. Once we know what assets exist in the case, we can work to value them fairly.
Mediation: Alternative Dispute Resolution
You might think that because a bronx divorce case is a high net worth case, it’s automatically going to end up going to trial. That isn’t necessarily the case. The truth is that most divorce cases settle before trial even in cases where the parties have significant assets.
To help settle the case, you might consider using an alternative dispute resolution service like mediation. In mediation, you work with a trained professional who helps you narrow the issues and negotiate with the other party. You don’t have to enter into a settlement unless you’re happy with it. This can be an effective tool to help you reach a resolution to your case. However, it’s not appropriate or advantageous in every case, so it’s important to work with us in order to determine the best plan in your case.
Prenuptial Agreements
Not all of our bronx high net worth law cases are divorce actions. We often meet clients who want assistance preparing a prenuptial agreement, also known as a premarital agreement. A prenuptial agreement can help the parties define how current assets and potential future assets might be divisible in the event of a divorce. You can use a prenuptial agreement in order to define what counts as separate property. The parties can also make an agreement about spousal support in the event of a divorce.
It’s important to work with a bronx high net worth attorney in order to make sure that your prenuptial agreement is valid. Both parties need to make a full disclosure of their assets. You need separate attorneys, and each of you must sign the agreement of your own free will. A prenuptial agreement can never decide child custody or a child’s right to support.
Postnuptial Agreement
A postnuptial agreement is a lot like a prenuptial agreement. However, a postnuptial agreement occurs after the parties are already married. The agreement can address property divisions and spousal support. It must be fair to both parties, and each spouse should have their own attorney in order for the court to uphold the agreement.
Child Support
Child support and alimony are two separate issues. The courts usually use a mathematical formula to determine child support. However, the courts have more discretion in high-income cases. In these cases, properly determining the income of the parties can be critical to arriving at a fair amount. In addition, it’s important to clearly ask the court to fashion the order you want as it relates to health insurance coverage and educational expenses for the minor child.
Alimony/Spousal Maintenance
If you are entitled to alimony or obligated to pay, your bronx high net worth lawyer can help. Attorneys will work to make certain that you’re not paying too much if you are the one who has to pay. On the other side of the coin, your lawyer can help you make sure your ex-spouse is not concealing income and assets and preventing you from receiving the correct amount of alimony in the event of a divorce.
If you have already been receiving alimony and your ex-spouse stops paying for some reason, your lawyer can file motions with the court to hold your ex in contempt of court as well as file paperwork to ensure you are given regular alimony payments. This could mean asking the court to get the payments taken from your ex’s paychecks automatically through wage garnishment, or it could mean getting them thrown into jail to learn the importance of obeying an order of the court.
If you’re paying alimony, your attorney’s job is to help you keep your payments down and help you end them as soon as possible. An attorney works to reveal any secrets your ex may be concealing, such as a new marriage that wasn’t reported to the court, or even a spouse who has the capacity to earn a good living but refuses to do so in order to continue getting your payments.
Why Work With Us
When you work with our team of experienced bronx high net worth attorneys, we’re prepared to put our experience to work in order to ensure that you receive the best possible outcome in your case. Our work is detail oriented but also narrowly tailored to be cost-effective and efficient. If you’re facing a legal matter in the bronx or anywhere in New York, we invite you to contact us.
Can I sue the other woman for destroying my marriage?
Wanting to blame someone else for the end of a marriage is a common feeling. This is especially true if cheating or adultery is the primary cause of the relationship falling apart. There are some legal grounds for filing a lawsuit against another person in this situation, but only a few states still have these laws. You must file for divorce in a state that has the applicable law in order to bring a legal suit against the third party you deem at fault.
The first legal means of suing another person is to accuse them of criminal conversation. Despite the name, this has nothing to do with a real criminal activity. Since the lawsuit is filed in civil court and not in criminal court, the defendant will not face any criminal charges or punishments, even if they lose the suit. They will have to pay damages depending on the circumstances of the case and the suit.
Winning a criminal conversation suit has to do primarily with proving a sexual relationship between your spouse and the third party. This proof must be solid and legally obtained. Most people will use a private investigator for this purpose. They must obtain proof of actual sexual relations. Simply proving the spouse was close friends or affectionate with the other person is not enough. It is also not possible to sue a business or certain activities that would indicate sexual conduct. For example, you cannot sue a gentleman’s club or use a visit to such a club as grounds for criminal conversation.
There are a few other technicalities that will need to be true as well. The relations must have happened during the marriage and not after separation, and you must be legally married at the time. You could not sue your spouse for relations he or she had while you were dating prior to the marriage, for example. You must also bring the suit within the statute of limitations for that particular state. The statute of limitations begins on the date the sexual acts you can prove took place.
Alienation of Affection
The second grounds for suing another person for ending the marriage is for alienation of affection. This is a broader charge because you don’t have to prove adultery or sexual relations of any kind. Any action that could reasonably be considered disruptive to the marriage could be grounds for alienation of affection.
That said, there are still some things you would need to prove about your marriage for this charge to be successful. First, you must show that you and your spouse had a loving marriage and that there was genuine affection prior to the alleged alienation. It stands to reason that somewhat cannot be guilty of alienation of affection if there was no affection in the first place. You must also prove that whatever the other person did directly caused damage to the marriage and a loss of affection and that you suffered some sort of damage yourself as a result. This damage could be financial, physical or emotional. Sometimes proving a direct cause and effect is tricky, and it is something to discuss with an attorney after examining all of the available evidence.
One important point about alienation of affection is that it does not have to involve an extramarital affair or lover. Anyone who could reasonably influence your spouse’s feelings about the marriage could be guilty. This includes therapists, clergy who provided marital advice and even other family members.
Damages Awarded
If you are able to make a case for either of the above grounds, then you would be awarded applicable damages in the lawsuit. This can include monetary amounts for loss of support and companionship, mental anguish, loss of consortium, humiliation and physical injury among others. These costs can be difficult to calculate, so the awarded damages are generally based on a person’s ability to argue their case.
Some jurisdictions have caps on the damages that can be awarded in such a lawsuit. These caps vary by jurisdiction. Other jurisdictions allow extra money to be gained via punitive damages. Punitive damages are more difficult obtain and prove, and they are awarded as an extra punishment to the defendant for exceptional wrongdoing. If the other person acted maliciously or with an overt attempt to harm you, then they could be charged punitive damages.
While these kinds of lawsuits are rare, they do occur in the jurisdictions where they are allowed. It is always important to make a strong case when bridging such a lawsuit and be able to provide evidence to support all claims. An attorney may be able to help with preparing and presenting such a lawsuit in court.
Sources:
https://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=19936
https://www.divorcenet.com/resources/can-i-sue-other-woman-destroying-my-marriage.html
Call Us