NY Divorce Consultants Fighting the corrupt New York Divorce Industry!

New York outsources accountability for the divorce industry and the results are disastrous for families

Lately I've been thinking a lot about regulation of the divorce industry, the legal industry in particular. It's interesting to look on the New York State Attorney General Web Page to see which industries have escaped government regulation. Well you guessed it, Attorneys are one of the groups that is lucky enough to escape government regulation. But what does a government or citizen do when a self-regulated industry becomes abusive? Where do you turn when the government has washed it's hands from regulating an industry and the industry is accountable to no one but its own opaque committees and procedures? It's an interesting question for New Yorkers and it is the root cause of the problems of the matrimony system in New York.

Let's look at a typical case in New York. Assume you have paid $190,000 to an attorney and you are now divorced. You are in a tenuous financial situation, your child support is running out, savings are dwindling and that $190,000 seems incredibly wasted. An emergency arises critical to the children's well being and you call the attorney for advice. Three letters, one meeting, 1 hour in court (a one block walk for the lawyer) - a $10,000 bill. What's your recourse? Are these reasonable fees to do mundane work?

No attorney will look you in the eye and justify this except to say that it is just the way it is. But there have never been truer words. Lawyers in New York can charge whatever they want to for divorce and courts will strictly order payment of their fees. Of course most lawyers will remind you that they never get most of their fees but in many cases their fees are so far beyond reason that they should never have been allowed in the first place. In New York we let matrimony attorneys and related professionals to pillage the assets of a family on meritless litigation and fruitless procedure. We allow this to happen by not regulating the divorce industry and allowing judges to be the muscle of this abusive industry.

We have outsourced regulation of attorneys to the Bar Association of New York and they have given us double secret offices with secret committees that communicate in cryptic, non-informative form letter and refuse to answer any direct questions about a case. It all sounds crazy but that's what it is. As citizens we have no recourse against the legal industry. Appeals for matrimony matters, which in many cases were decided in sham, circus-like 'trial' proceedings with absurd verdicts, are held to the same standard as Citibank would face appealing a lawsuit from New York State. It is an impossible process for people of modest means and a desire to move on in life.

It is sad though because there is no will to change things. The New York Legislature passes pathetic divorce reform legislation that seems custom tailored to the divorce industry, the Attorney General gives the fraudulent divorce industry a complete regulatory pass, there is no civil rights protection for those denied due process or fair trial and lose all their property or their children, there are no standards or regulations for custody or financial evaluators and divorce in New York is a free-for-all where a tight-knit industry has unfettered access to a families assets and well being.

Andrew Cuomo doesn't care about divorce reform, it's not in his patch. Let's hope that Cuomo will get tough against the divorce industry and end the stranglehold that they have on New York families.