By JODI SOKOLOWSKI
Buffalo Law Journal

After two state Assembly bills encouraging "no-fault" divorce failed to move out of committee, lawyers decided to get together to see if more support can be garnered for the issue.

The New York City Bar Association and New York State Judicial Institute co-sponsored an Oct. 11 forum on the need to pass legislation permitting no-fault divorce, which removes the requirement that blame be assigned to one spouse.

Speakers including Buffalo lawyer Patrick O'Reilly stressed how the change in the law would significantly reduce costs, court delays and trauma to children and families.

"The general consensus is that no-fault (divorce) is long overdue," said O'Reilly, a partner at Lipsitz Green Scime Cambria LLP and chair of the firm's matrimonial department.

O'Reilly said the no-fault option is needed especially by unsatisfied spouses whose partners won't agree to a divorce and in cases where there aren't concrete grounds for one. The main grounds allowable in New York are cruel and inhuman treatment, adultery, abandonment and imprisonment.

"A woman married for 37 years was in a loveless marriage. Did the coldness rise to cruelty?" O'Reilly said in an interview, citing an actual case that he believes highlights gray areas not addressed by the state's current laws.

If a no-fault divorce were available to that client, the attorneys' fees would have been halved, and the couple wouldn't have had "the level of acrimony" they did, he said.

When children are involved, the dissolution of a marriage can escalate to mudslinging in front of the children, O'Reilly added.

"It's amazing how many of those complaints in hardball litigation get left on the kitchen counter so kids can find them. (Then) children are witnesses at trial; it's terrible," he said.

While attorneys, former judges, legislators and psychologists at the forum stressed the importance of allowing no-fault divorce, two bills in the state Assembly that would permit it are sitting in judiciary committee.

Assemblywoman Helene Weinstein, D-Brooklyn, is sponsoring A-3027, a bill that would add "irreconcilable differences" as a ground for divorce under the Domestic Relations Law.

That's what no-fault advocates are pushing for. However, the bill is not moving because Weinstein also wants a provision added that would force a spouse with greater finances to pay attorneys' fees for a spouse lacking adequate resources.

"Weinstein thinks (the current bill) is bad for women, (that) they'll lose a bargaining chip. Unless she changes her position, she's our road block," said Barbara Handschu, an attorney at The Law Office of Barbara Handschu and former president of the National Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

An Assembly press-office spokeswoman said that Weinstein is supportive of passing the no-fault bill, but doesn't want it to "stand alone."

"She wants to take care of the economic issues that most often affect women after divorce," said Sisa Moyo.

The bill, which would have to be reintroduced in 2009, has slim chance of passing because there isn't a Senate companion.

Weinstein's other bill, A-6418, has a better chance of passing because it reduces the divorce waiting period from one year to three months if the parties have lived apart pursuant to a written separation agreement.

"But it has to be a signed and notarized separation agreement," Handschu noted. "If one person says, ‘I don't want a divorce,' your only choice is to move to another state.

"It's nuts to have to go to another state to get a divorce," she said.