How to Handle Post-Divorce Legal Issues

Even after the divorce decree is finalized, some families have disputes over its execution that need to be settled in Court. As an attorney who has spent many years practicing Family Law, I must stress the importance of consulting an attorney, even post-divorce, if legal conflicts within the family arise.

Another important thing to do when legal conflicts arise is to take your divorce decree outside of its safe place and carefully read it over. Any legal argument you will use in Court will start from there. The New York Supreme Court recently ruled in a case that exemplies this. In this particular case, a father was financially supporting his child by providing for her apartment. The father fell behind on his child support payments. When he was taken to Court for his delinquency, he argued that the financial support he provided outside of his set amount of child support should satisfy his obligations. The Court ruled that his financial support of the apartment was a voluntary payment that the Father had chosen to make and therefore could not be used to satisfy the child support obligation that both parties had agreed to in their divorce decree. The primary reason the Court ruled this way can be found inside the parties divorce stipulation. The stipulation included a "Voluntary Payments" clause that stated that any outside payments made to either party could not be used to satisfy the amount of child support they had agreed on.

Cases like these often generate unnecessary legal fees and hostility for all parties. Furthermore, they can be easily avoided by consulting a Family Law attorney any time you have a question about the specifics of your divorce decree. In this particular case, the "Voluntary Payments" clause prevented the father from applying any outside financial support to his child support payments, but he might not have been aware of the legal implications of such a clause. You should expect your attorney to provided a detailed review and explaination of your entire divorce stipulation. Additionally, I strongly advise all of my clients to keep records and hard copy receipts of each and every payment made to the other party. It is always helpful to have an organized and detailed paper trail in case a legal dispute arises.