NJ Law Blogs

How to Get a Spouse to Pay Counsel Fees Pursuant to the case of Williams v. Williams, 59 N.J. 229 (1971), an award of counsel fees in a New Jersey divorce action is within the discretion of the court. The Williams case stands for the proposition that the court must look at the requesting pa...

Does Voluntary Retirement Lower Child Support Payments? New Jersey case law provides a test for determining whether voluntary retirement constitutes a change in circumstances that would justify a reduction in child support. In the 2007 case of Lissner v. Marburger, 394 N.J.Super. 393 the Co...

Custody Neutral Assessment Program The Custody Neutral Assessment Program was developed by the Ocean County Family Law Committee together with the Ocean County Bar Association and the Superior Court of New Jersey, Chancery Division, Family Part, Ocean County. A custody neutral assessment is an as...

Collaborative Divorce in New Jersey This blog post is the first in a series of three posts that will explain the basic contours of the collaborative divorce process in New Jersey. A good place to start a blog post series on collaborative divorce is to enumerate the pros and cons of the collaborat...

Arbitration is an Alternative Means of Settling Legal Disputes Couples in New Jersey can choose to end their marriage in or outside of court, through several different methods.  Although it is recommended that spouses attempt friendly, cooperative methods such as collaborative divorce, some...

Arbitration vs. Mediation Going through a divorce is a stressful and expensive process for most couples, especially if they choose to resolve the terms of their divorce through a court trial.  In New Jersey, spouses have the option of working out a divorce agreement on their own, without in...

Retirement Does Not Automatically Reduce Alimony Payments The state has an interest in the payment of alimony. Alimony is designed to provide a former spouse with a way to support themselves after a divorce, which prevents that former spouse from becoming a financial burden on the state. The form...

Who Can Claim the IRS Dependency Exemption? The IRS dependency exemption is a tax benefit usually enjoyed by the custodial parent. However, there are instances where the non-custodial parent can use the dependency exemption. The dependency exemption, like other issues to be settled in a New Je...

Emancipation Under New Jersey Law Emancipation occurs when a child is legally released from both the control and the support of his or her parent(s).  This means that the parent can no longer make decisions for the child and the child is no longer entitled to financial support from the pare...

Does the Child Determine Which Parent to Live With? If you are getting a divorce in New Jersey, and child custody will be an issue in that divorce, a court may, or may not, choose to interview your child to help the court determine the best custody arrangement for your child. In New Jersey as in ...

The Tax Implications of Giving and Receiving Alimony Alimony is the payment of funds from one ex-spouse to another, either to maintain the receiving party in a standard of living comparable to that enjoyed during the marriage, or to compensate the receiving spouse for special contributions ...

Marital vs. Separate Property With respect to the division of marital property, New Jersey is an ‘equitable distribution' state. The touchstone of equitable distribution is fairness to the parties, not equality of distribution. Thus, in a New Jersey divorce action, the marital property is not nec...

Length of the Divorce Process A divorce is like a snowflake, in that each are unlike any other of their kind. The number of unique factors in each divorce proceeding means that there is no hard and fast answer to the question of how long any particular divorce proceeding will take. Nevertheless, ...

Modifiable Alimony vs. Non-Modifiable If you find yourself in a position either to pay or to receive alimony in a proposed New Jersey divorce settlement, you'll want to understand the difference between a modifiable scheme of payments and a non-modifiable one. Alimony Payment Scheme In very basic...