Defining your Marital Lifestyle in Divorce Post-Pandemic: Longing for (or Moving on from) the Life that Once Was
In one of its hallmark songs, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band AC/DC proclaimed, “money talks.” For better or for worse, those two words find a way of ringing true in many facets of life, and contested divorce litigation is no exception. Yet during the year-long, or perhaps longer now, pandemic, if you find yourself in the middle of a divorce proceeding you might be questioning whether or not money talks anymore or has instead been tucked away until a time when normal life resumes.
The subject of your lifestyle during a marriage is bound to come up in divorce when you are quarreling over issues of child support and/or spousal support. For example, in the child support arena, when considering whether or not to award support above New York’s statutory cap for combined parental income, the law in New York considers the standard of living that a child would have enjoyed had the family unit not dissolved.
Then there is spousal support, which your lawyer will tell you, if being up front can be an ocean of uncertainty. You may have heard that New York, some years ago, established formulas for determining spousal support. But in high-net-worth cases, with incomes above and beyond the statutory cap for spousal support, those formulas can quickly give way to a focus on many factors including, you guessed it, the marital lifestyle (a fancy way of describing how you and your family lived economically during your marriage).
What do we mean by living, or lifestyle? What type of residence do you have and in what neighborhood? Do your children attend public or private schools? Does your family vacation, and if so, how many times per year and at what cost? Where do you dine out, and how frequently? At which stores do you buy clothing for you and your children? Do you belong to a gym or other private club, and if so, is it “high end”? Or, maybe you have a personal trainer at home?
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