Readers of this Oneida County family law blog may not know that New York follows equitable division laws when it comes to separating the property of married people during their divorces. Equitable division is not the same thing as equal division, which implies that the parties leaving the marriage will receive the same amount of money and property when their divorce is finalized. Rather, equitable division requires a careful balancing of ownership, need and fairness to ensure that both parties exit their relationship with sufficient resources to thrive.
Consider, for example, a couple that enters a marriage with relatively equal sums of money and property. Consider further that one of the marital partners forwent employment for several decades in order to focus on the maintenance of the couple’s children and household while the other earns the income on which the family lives. When the couple decides to divorce twenty years after its union, some schools of thought may suggest that the working spouse should take whatever he or she earned during the marriage; equitable division principles would help the non-working spouse out by recognizing the contributions he or she made despite not earning money.
At the law firm of Callnen, Foley & Hobika, we are willing and happy to work with you when your otherwise simple property division
becomes something quite complex. Even couples who have few assets between them can run into complications when they begin to balance the equitable principles employed by the courts.
Our firm represents individuals of diverse backgrounds through the Mohawk Valley region. We are prepared to meet with new divorce clients to discuss property division, child custody, child support and alimony matters. To learn more about our attorneys and our family law practice, please visit us online.