Admission – No hope for divorce reform in New York

18May/110

Admission – No hope for divorce reform in New York

So after years of this blog and numerous other activities designed around seeing real changes in contested NY Divorce Law I am basically calling it quits. I think that NY divorce could be changed easily with ethics enforcement of attorneys, accountability for lies in statement of net worth and basic civil rights protections to guarantee due process for pro se litigants, however, there's just way too much money for anyone to really give a shit. So long as NY Divorces are heard in courts staffed by elected officials with no effective supervisory bodies the situation will stand forever.

The NY Legislature is hopeless in their efforts to change NY Divorce as shown in the NY Divorce Reform Law that created more problems than it solved by adding spousal maintenance for life and stronger protection for lawyers to get paid. With billions in the NY Divorce industry and Supreme Court Judge positions gifted to loyalists there is no hope that a Judge in Supreme Court in NY will ever make an unbiased decision that is in the interest of children or logic. Children and logic didn't get a Judge elected and it won't get him or her a good job when they're done with the job.

The Attorney Grievance Committee, 2nd part, 9th District is asleep at the wheel and is a complete waste of tax payer money. In 2009 after spending nearly 50million they prosecuted about 64 lawyers out of 14,000 they supervise and over 2000 complaints. The majority of complaints go directly into the garbage bin and of the few they keep around they have no investigative standards and they operate in secrecy. Unless your lawyer steals your retainer and never works, steals your escrow money or commits a regular felony he or she is statistically guaranteed to never face a disciplinary hearing for anything they do. With less than .05% of attorneys disciplined in a year the efforts of the grievance committee are simply a rounding error. Attorney discipline is non-existent in NY.

Judicial ethics enforcement is even worse since we have no idea how lame they are - they don't publish statistics on what they do. And again, unless a Judge commits a blatant felony there is no chance that they will ever be called to task for ethical behavior. Even if they are called in the proceedings are secret and the punishments opaque.

So in a system awash with money and bereft of any standards and enforcement of professional ethical behavior you can imagine what ensues. You could replace the word Divorce in Divorce Industry with any professional trade and with the same recipe - unlimited billings with cut-throat court punishments to enforce the fees and zero professional supervision will lead to fraud. Unfortunately, fraud is human nature when there's large sums of money at play.

My closing advice is to those who are getting divorced from an unreasonable person in NY is don't do it. If you are married to an unreasonable person who will force you to court and you have children divorce will change nothing. The old axiom 'it's cheaper to keep her' is 100% true. The worst day in a miserable non-violent marriage is better than the best day in Supreme Court in divorce and that day in court will cost your family a minimum of $10,000 a day and a life time of agony for your family. If you are stuck in the process I feel for you but you are truly fucked. No one cares about what is happening to you in the system, the system will steal everything it can from you and could even remove your kids. You have my sympathy but that's all you're getting. New York State is down with divorce lawyers and has given them a license to steal, don't expect anything less, the attorney's know you are alone and they are untouchable in New York.

Best of luck to you all.