Divorce lawyers regularly file “affirmations” in support of motions. Certifying the accuracy of the contents of a divorcing spouse’s “Statement of Net Worth” is also part of the ordinary course of being a divorce lawyer. The responsibility, from an ethical standpoint, that the divorce lawyer takes on when he or she performs these tasks is immense and fraught with peril.

That brings us to the decision of Judge William A. Viscovich in A.K. v. K.Y. (Sup. Ct., Queens County August 2026). In A.K., the plaintiff-wife filed a motion seeking, inter alia, an award of pendente lite maintenance. Seems simple enough, at first blush.

Allow me to direct your attention to the opening portion of the decision, which reads as follows:

Here, this Court finds itself with two individuals who represented to the federal government on their 2024 joint tax returns that they collectively made $30,707.00. Yet, on the plaintiff-wife’s statement of net worth she claims that her monthly expenses are approximately $7,500. The defendant-husband on his statement of net worth claims his monthly expenses are approximately $21,002.36…

Some of this may be the result of both of them claiming the same expenses, but even if that were the case across the board, their monthly expenses would still be $14,256.38 or $171,075.56 annually on a joint income, as previously stated of $30,707.00, before taxes. Enough said. (emphasis added).

The wife’s motion, as described by the court, was to “award her maintenance on the purported actual financial situation of the parties rather than that which she herself reported to the Internal Revenue Service. In other words, she wants this court to make sure that she receives her share of unreported income.”

The court did not decide the motion on the papers; rather, the Court would “only consider” the wife’s position “after a hearing at which one might expect both her and perhaps her husband to testify under penalty of perjury as to the vast discrepancy between their reported income and their expenses.” Well settled law provides that “a party to litigation may not take a position contrary to a position taken in an income tax return.” (citation omitted).

To illustrate how important the A.K. decision is to read, look no further than this statement in the decision: “The court also hopes that this decision will act as a guide going forward as to how parties and their attorneys should expect this court to handle” what is described as the “lack of accountability of individuals in matrimonial matters not limited to the instant parties.”

At the outset, I must applaud the court’s candid assessment of the common refrain that the best remedy to address a dispute over pendente lite support is a “speedy trial.” The decision makes short work of that singsong:

Unfortunately, ‘speedy trials’ in matrimonial cases, particularly in highly populated areas such as New York City are basically a legal fiction…In fact, it is often the case that a pendente lite order, particularly if issued only upon papers, without the ability to judge the credibility of the parties which a hearing provides, can often result in an order so beneficial to one side or the other that there is no incentive to settle the matter: thus, prolonging the proceedings further than necessary.

Finding that the “lack of credibility regarding the submissions of the parties” forced the court to find the papers “insufficient,” the court directed a “Mahoney Buntzman Hearing” to “establish affirmatively the truth of the matter they have alleged to this Court in their papers.”

Prior to the “conclusion” of the decision, there is an entire section under the heading “ETHICAL OBLIGATIONS” (emphasis in original) where the court begins its discussion by referring to the “serious nature of the anticipated hearing” and its belief in the importance of placing “the parties and counsels on notice of the following provisions of law and ethical guidelines.”

While this article will not go through the entire discussion about Rule 3.3 of the Rules of Professional Conduct in the decision, it will flag (with as giant a red flag as I can waive) the following from the decision:

While not the Court’s first preferred course of action, it feels obliged to also state rule 100.3(D)(2) as follows: “a judge who receives information indicating a substantial likelihood that a lawyer has committed a substantial violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct shall take appropriate action”…

Rather than warn, this Court is pleading with attorneys to ensure they commit themselves to full compliance with the ethics rules such that it does not place this Court in a situation where it may be forced to take such action.

If, as a divorce lawyer, that doesn’t send a chill up your spine, then I would suggest you are not paying enough attention to how serious it is when we “certify” or “affirm” the accuracy and truth of information provided to us by our clients.

One of the greatest challenges we face as divorce lawyers is being able to detect when the information we receive from our clients is something less than 100% accurate and true. In my view, that detection skill is and will always be a work in progress.

I wish I could say that I, like The Who, “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” but the reality is that no matter how hard we try to dot our i’s and cross our t’s, there will be times when we learn that in fact, we have not been given all of the relevant information by our clients. How we respond to that is the hard part, and as the decision notes “Sometimes doing the right thing may result in the loss of a client.”

I am often struck by the reaction I get from a client when I admittedly belabor the importance of credibility: some clients respond by echoing my sentiment with total agreement. Others, however, respond with some version of discontent as if I have made an accusation. It is the latter category that presents a potential, ethical minefield for divorce lawyers. To quote the decision, while we as attorneys “must zealously represent” our clients, we “need not forfeit ethics to do so.”

"Ethics and Matrimonial Law: Russian Roulette 2.0," by Alan R. Feigenbaum published in the New York Law Journal on October 29, 2026. Reprinted with permission.