Divorce Is Challenging. Choose An Attorney Who Will Support Your Goals.
No one said divorce would be easy. But if it is coming your way, you deserve to know how to protect yourself. The strength and reassurance that your lawyer brings to the table can help you take each necessary step with your interests at the forefront.
At the Law Offices of Alexandria Lipton, servicing New York City and the surrounding Hudson River Valley Counties in New York State, you will find family law professionals who understand your individual concerns. With over 15 years of Family Law experience herself, practicing in Supreme and Family Courts throughout New York City and State, Alexandria brings a wealth of legal knowledge, but more importantly, a wealth of experience. Her experience is your advantage.
Prioritizing What’s Most Important In Your Divorce
Depending on your unique life circumstances and goals for your future, you may wish to focus on one or more of the following:
- Completing your low-conflict divorce quickly and cost-effectively
- Keeping favorite possessions
- Retaining ownership of the marital home (or getting a fair portion of equity value)
- Retaining equity in a business
- Finding or recovering hidden funds
- Distributing marital debt fairly
- Proving separate property claims or separate debt claims
- Proving financial dissipation of marital assets
- Determining if you have co-mingled your money with your spouse’s
- Preventing complications over inherited property
- Avoiding disruptions to a business or professional practice
- Getting your fair share of retirement and investments accounts
- Being the parent with primary custody or final decisionmaking
- Addressing a relocation application or absconding parent
- Addressing concerns over parental alienation/interference or other custody or parenting concerns
You may also need immediate relief if you are in need of spousal support, counsel fees, custody Orders, Orders to prevent the dissipation of assets and the like. If so, we are always prepared to file an Emergency Motion on your behalf. These motions are frequently filed in one or more of the following circumstances:
- You need child support payments to start immediately
- You need spousal support payments to start immediately
- You need to stop your spouse from liquidating accounts and hiding assets
- You need to get your spouse out of the marital home for you or your child’s safety
- You have been removed from the marital home
- Your spouse is trying to leave, or has left, the jurisdiction with your child
- Your spouse is interfering in your relationship with your child. (ie-preventing parenting time, behaving inappropriately in front of child, disparaging the other parent in front of the child, making the child choose between parents, etc)
- You are engaged in an abusive relationship requiring a Temporary Order of Protection
- You need an order of custody or parenting time to reduce or eliminate tension and stabilize the coparenting situation
- You need the Court to award counsel fees to retain counsel and proceed in your case
- You need a determination that your spouse is the “monied” spouse
- Note: “Punishing your spouse” is not on the list. You will be better off if you proceed in a calm, reasonable way and we will always approach our cases with strategy and goals in mind, not retribution. Our work seeks to solve your legal problems so that you can move onto the next chapter of life.
How Is Property Divided In New York?
Family law courts in our state expect divorces to result in the equitable distribution of assets and debts. This does not mean a 50/50 distribution of assets and debts. New York is not a community property State (see California), it is an Equitable Distribution State. This means that if the parties seeking to divorce are unable to come to reasonable agreements regarding the division of their assets, a Court will look at a variety of factors and considerations pursuant to the law, to determine how to divide marital assets and debts in a “fair” and “equitable” way. The Court aims to account for each parties’ contributions toward the assets and debt, their efforts in maintaining or reducing assets and debt, their separate property contributions to acquire the assets, and other considerations to arrive at an equitable number. If you have been married for 25 or more years, what is equitable will often be closer to a 50/50 split, but if you have not had a long term marriage then you will be faced with the question of property division and that can be a very complex question under New York law.
At the Law Offices of Alexandria Lipton we encourage all clients, where reasonably possible, to pursue the negotiation of an agreement in lieu of litigation. We seek to reduce your costs, mitigate your damage, protect your most important interests, and help you to the other side of the process. We believe that in almost all cases, settlement is the best way to achieve these goals. To that end we encourage and participate in mediation, negotiation, and selective issue resolutions. But if settlement is not possible or precluded by the circumstances of the case, then we are always prepared to fully litigate a case and all of our attorneys are seasoned Family Law litigators in addition to excellent negotiators. We regularly file emergency motions requesting immediate legal relief, engage in limited hearings on Orders of Protection, Custody, Child Support, and Equitable Distribution, and conduct full trials in Supreme and Family Courts throughout New York.
How I Can Help You Protect Your Interests On Your Road To Divorce
Ultimately, we want what you want—to get you divorced. We want you to be proactive in protecting your interests, rather than reactive to forces out of your control. The Law Offices of Alexandria Lipton is a firm that wants to support you through the process so that you can make the best decisions for yourself, your family, and your wallet. We understand that these decisions are complex and consequential, and that divorce is a maze of law and facts which often come together in frustrating and unexpected ways. We make it our mission to be there for you: explaining, discussing, planning, and executing.
