Divorce Law and Family Law Matters

We handle Divorce and Family Law Cases.

Most often here in Steuben County your exposure to the legal system is family court or criminal court.

Attorney Rosell directs most of his efforts toward representation in Family Court and Divorce Court. We have one office and a staff of many as our resource for getting your work done in a professional and timely manner. Attorney Rosell is always available by phone for a quick question or a longer sit down office conference in Hornell. It could be your case may be resolved inexpensively and quickly.

Divorce

However, beginning with a word of caution, if you or your spouse contests any aspect of the separation that the Judge and/or attorneys might consider reasonable, your case could go on for an extended period of time and cost money well beyond any retainer you may have paid for Attorney Rosell to even begin your case. Litigation costs each party a great deal of time and money. I often relay to the client that if both parties are reasonable the fee will be reasonable.

There are abundant internet resources available to help you determine in a general sense what you will be “entitled” to in the Divorce. In most instances, you’re entitled to a portion of all assets you and your spouse have acquired during your marriage together. Generally, there are marital and non-marital assets that the two of you need to agree on in dividing up your assets “equitably”. The term is equitable distribution which does not necessarily mean equal but in most instances is equal distribution.

“Hard” assets which you can see and feel, including cash accounts, are most easily distributed and should be considered first in making a proposed plan for distribution to each party. There are other assets like defined pension benefits which cannot even begin to be explained here except to say you are entitled to the marital portion of your spouse’s accumulated benefit; not always half if they were employed before the marriage. In most instances, half the house or half the car value are easily divided. Remember most assets have a mortgage or lien attached to them which must be accounted for before we divide the equity of the item between the parties. So to say you want half of a $40,000 home which has a $30,000 mortgage against it, you are not getting $20,000. At best, you might be entitled to $5,000 which then might be offset by some other asset that you want to keep.

There are support calculators and now even a temporary maintenance calculator out there to show you “what it’s worth”. You should take great caution in using any of these calculators beyond the official New York State Office of Court Administration which can be found on the OCA website itself.

Divorce Costs

The divorce process does not have to be expensive or time consuming but it does have to be a reasonable process where both parties are interested in coming to a resolution. If either party is interested in making the other party experience frustration and consume large portions of attorney’s fees in litigating a “side issue” there is little chance of avoiding great expenses to both parties.

On the other hand, with two reasonable adults, the process can take as little as a month from the beginning meeting with you to the Court issuing a Divorce Decree without an appearance.

In most cases, our office can represent only one of the parties but can complete the work required for both parties in a divorce. The distribution of that fee is up to the parties but to avoid a conflict the office can only represent one of you. This is not strictly speaking a “mediation” process but something the attorney could reduce to writing after the two parties have come to a final conclusion as to who gets what. The filing fees to New York State alone are approximately $340 depending on the manner of filing.

This introduction is only meant and can only be a precursor and any information should not be considered to be case specific or legal advice that you can rely on in every case across the board.