NY Divorce Consultants Fighting the corrupt New York Divorce Industry!

Mutually Exclusive – The US Constitution and New York Divorce Courts

As pro se one of the first questions that I asked during my divorce debacle was about the relevancy of the US Constitution to my divorce proceeding. The fifth and fourteenth amendments of the constitution prevents individuals from being deprived of life, liberty, or property without "due process of law." Due process extends to all persons. Then we have the first amendment that guarantees freedom of religion and freedom of expression.

So given these facts.... (not all these things happened to me, btw)

How is it that New York matrimony courts enforce kosher dietary laws and other religious observations?

How can it be that a court can rule that religious practices must be upheld?

How can our government force a parent to represent themselves in a custody trial against a team of well-financed lawyers? (Of course the parent who was forced to represent themselves lost complete access to the their children).

How can litigants who can't afford representation at $350 an hour be FORCED to trial by the court and then lose ALL of their property against a well-financed legal team?

Why are petty criminals offered court assistance when they are defending minor punishments while the rich-poor are left to fend for themselves as they face the loss of their children and all property in New York matrimony courts?

How can a court make a ruling on assets without having any idea of what assets actually exist as they do regularly in New York matrimony courts?

How can a judge allow a seasoned divorce attorney to abuse the legal system, lie during trial and violate major ethical standards of conduct against a pro se litigant slapped with a preclusion order?

As an ordinary citizen of New York who has lost all property to the court, without affordable recourse, I am shocked that New York divorce outcomes have not been challenged by the ACLU or other civil liberties protection groups. It is easy to find cases such as I mention, however, they primarily exist in upper-middle-class communities because the Supreme Court of NY matrimony part is off-limits to the poor. If you can't pay the cost of attorney retainer, typically $10-15,000 in the metro NYC area, then you are forced to duke it yourselves, and many do, and end up in family court or in the ultra-shady fixed price divorce industry. The other option for the poor is to try to proceed pro se, but this is guaranteed failure simply because of an unchecked, corrupt court system that favors insiders over justice. No matter how good of a job you may do as pro se you can't win in a court that does not follow due process and denies your rights to attorney solely based on your economic status.

Many rulings of custody and property division issued in New York matrimony courts defy any sense of logic in relation to the US Constitution, especially in regard to the concept of Substantive Due Process as defined in the 14th amendment. However, we, the citizens of New York blindly accept this situation. We allow our politicians to ignore rampant violations of our civil liberties and we spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year funding a corrupt court that carries out these injustices. We argue about meaningless fault statutes without fixing the problem of a rampant divorce industry that is in desperate need of regulation and outside oversight.

One major catalyst to change this state of affairs can be to challenge the constitutionality of the practices of the Supreme Court of New York matrimony part as related to the first and fifth and fourteenth amendments of the US Constitution, certainly with regard to Substantive Due Process. Look at cases where children were barred from seeing or speaking to a parent and the parent was pro se. Look at cases where litigants lose greater than 100% of their assets and were pro se. There are thousands of cases to choose from.

How can it be justified under the US constitution that a court rips children from parents who can't afford legal representation as happens frequently in New York divorces?

How can it be justified under the US constitution that a court can deprive you of all o your property without legal representation and due process of discovery?

How can it be justified that divorce attorneys can bill beyond the assets of a party? Is it really that hard to divide custody time and property? Most States have ended this ludicrous practice long ago and decide on cold fact or simple arithmetic. As New York debates even more complicated methods for computing maintenance in the divorce reform act of 2010 it is clear that the only driver for increased complexity is the divorce industry. Certainly a more complicated formula for spousal maintenance, that is not even mandated into law but recommended, is not going to help anything. The New York State legislature is paralyzed by the divorce industry and the end result of citizens is no longer tolerable.

While attorneys have babbling, apologetic answers for these outcomes, no one is questioning the basic common sense of the end-result decisions. We can debate process until time ends but the utter obscene outcomes that the NY Supreme Court Matrimony Part inflicts on its citizens defies common sense. This is a specific goal of the concept of substantive due process and hopefully one day an actual lawyer with money will work on behalf of the citizens of New York to instill some real change.

I have posed these questions to lawyers and I can say that it is so outside of the box for most of them that they are mostly speechless or rambling. Few, and certainly not I, understand constitutional law and to the best of my knowledge the constitutionality of New York divorce court outcomes has not been challenged in federal courts. Few can afford this and most of us want to move on and pick up the pieces after the courts deprived us everything, however, I hope that in my rants the Internet will bring a person who could possibly make such a fight happen.

New York State Government’s Broken Logic on Divorce Laws

In speaking with Senator Oppenheimer's office I continually hear the ludicrous argument that the New York Matrimony court system can't be changed. Somehow a system that requires participants to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to exit a simple contract, bankrupts families and devastates the emotional lives of children and families is defensible by Senator Oppenheimer and the New York State legislature. A system that creates verdicts that strips parental rights of law abiding citizens, has eschewed the constitution and is so clearly corrupt is indefensible. There are no logical constructs that one can use to defend the status quo of New York because in the end you are justifying a system that is completely broken.

You can't argue that our current system is good for children. We place the outcome of our ludicrous custody laws in the hands of unlicensed custody evaluators who have no standards of reporting, no employment standards and no judicial or governmental oversight. Custody reports are a 'free-for-all' for lawyers and evaluators, and since the lawyers choose the evaluators in conjunction with a judge there is massive chance for collusion. The system of custody evaluation is completely skewed to the rich. Poor people can't afford law guardians or the $250/hour that a typical evaluation costs and there is no public assistance for such evaluations. The system is entirely set-up against common sense outcomes with many conflicts of interest. Appealing custody evaluations is ridiculously expensive and since each report is a creation unto itself with no standard of court instructions, reporting or peer review process you are really rolling the dice with a new evaluation - not to mention out of $15,000 or thereabouts.

You can't argue that our current system is a divorce deterrent. Divorce is a part of the human condition. A large section of Jewish Law deals with divorce which clearly proves that this has been part of our society for at least 2000 years. People will always divorce regardless of religious doctrine, state laws or community standards. It's a fact of life, deal with it. New York had over 52,000 divorces in 2008 (NY Department of Health Divorce Statistics) so clearly if our broken laws are a deterrent, they suck at it.

You can't argue that our current system is fair. Outcomes in New York Supreme Court are largely determined by who can outspend the other. Courts encourage this and, in fact, order it. Courts demand that family members help the less fortunate and if you are truly broke against a monied party (legally or illegally), forget it, you are done. Judges have absolutely no incentive to discourage this behavior and for unknown reasons they encourage it. The system is not fair

The only logical conclusion that I can derive is that this is a system completely set-up and controlled by the divorce industry. The system works against the tax payers it is supposed to serve and creates the high costs that have led to legislative paralysis. There are billions of dollars spent every year with no outside oversight of any piece of the divorce industry from judges to lawyers to 'experts'. In democracy one branch of government is supposed to check the other, however, when the legislative branch is unwilling to check the judicial branch and there are beaucoup bucks available with no regulation the party never stops. What this means for ordinary people is that once you are in the system you can't get out, you are trapped. Your only remedies lay within the system (i.e. appeals) and the system has set itself up against you. The current system creates massively complex and expensive processes that may be fine for reviewing commercial cases but are utterly ridiculous for family matters. A system that is entirely subjective in the beginning attempts to become entirely objective in the appeals process and the results are often disastrous.

The first step in fixing the system is in evaluating it's true costs and this is impossible today. Hence, the first step to fixing this problem is laws that require divorce professionals to report their billings as part of court record. The legislature should now how much each divorce costs the participants in legal fees, custody evaluations, financial evaluations and ancillary fees. We need a serious effort to enact laws that require such reporting because it is currently unavailable for any source.

The next step is to make custody evaluators register with NY State. Evaluators should be randomly assigned to cases by computer. New York State needs to adapt a standard of custody evaluations and mandate its usage so that there can be some objective review of the process. A peer review board must be set-up to review recommendations before they are submitted to the court. There should be public assistance available to parents in jeopardy of losing all access to their children. There should be laws that remove this extreme remedy except for the most extreme cases.

The next step is to update the Statement of Networth standards and require third party verification and make lying a crime. Even a verification process that costs thousands of dollars would be well worth it considering the ridiculous costs involved in legal discovery. The process is so arcane it is ridiculous. There is no computer entry of numbers, no cross-checking with easily available records like a credit report and zero use of technology in general. New York has applied civil case procedures to families and the results are disastrous for litigant with ridiculous amounts of lying and omissions. It is logically impossible fora judge to make an equitable decision with the current statements that are totally unverified.

No one reads this blog and I realize that it sounds like a rant but there are good, workable ideas in the rant.