Video – Attorney Bill Leininger Answers If Divorce Mediation Requires Court Appearances

Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media

You go through the process and obviously you’ve reached an agreement. Will there be any court appearances to finalize the agreement? Do they have to appear in court to finalize that agreement?

Bill Leininger – Divorce Mediation Attorney – Richmond County, NY

Great question. In New York, the current state of the law is as follows. If you file a case as a contested divorce, in other words, you serve the spouse with a summons complaint, and you get that notice in the court saying, hey, we’re having a preliminary conference before Judge so-and-so, then that’s on a track that’s an in-court procedure, okay?

Now, you’re going to have to have what we call an inquest, generally speaking, before the judge. And the judge, believe it or not, has veto power.

We had a judge who’s now the czar of all the divorce judges in the state of New York, and he practiced in Brooklyn for many years and in Staten Island for a number of years. And he always was very involved. He might say, counsel approach, and he’d lean over and say, I can live with the child support, but there’s got to be a car for the kid. It doesn’t have to be a brand-new car, but it’s got to be a fairly new car. Why? Because he’s upstate New York and I don’t want this kid having no way to drive home or to go to the emergency room or something of that nature. Now do many judges, some judges don’t care.

Now in our practice, I got kind of disgusted with some procedures that were going on in state of New York. In the downstate area where I practice in New York, in New York, that would be Staten Island, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, there’s tremendous delays. People think that you sign the marital settlement agreement before the notary, congratulations, we can start dividing up things, you can list the house for sale, but what about the divorce? When am I getting divorced?

Now, if you’ve done it as an uncontested divorce, which most of my clients do, in other words, we start the divorce mediation without any divorce actions being in effect, then in most cases, you can arrange it so you don’t have to have an in-court appearance.

We have, we’ve been able to locate a particular court in New York State, a part of the Supreme Court, that doesn’t have the delay. In downstate New York County, which is Manhattan and Brooklyn and Staten Island, et cetera, you file the papers as an uncontested divorce.

The bad news is the clerk will tell you it could be three to six months before the judge signs it. Our experience has been.. it’s six to 13 months. It sits in a cardboard box waiting to be gotten to, and I find that offensive.

So, I’ve been able to locate a court in New York State that I guess you want to say treats litigants with respect. The average for us in getting the divorce signed by the judge ranges between 30 and 60 days. The average is about 35 to 40 days.