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Over on New Jersey Family Legal Blog, I saw a post that editor Eric Solotoff, a family law attorney at Fox Rothschild wrote that struck my interest. Upon reading the post, Madoff Mess Hits Divorce Court, I knew I had to sit down with Eric for a podcast, to discuss what all this means in respect to forensic accounting.     For context, Justice Saralee Evans in Manhattan recently decided on a case regarding a divorcing spouse who attempted to revise his agreement with his wife. First, some background for our readers who may not be that familiar with the case: After thirty years of marriage, a husband and his ex-wife spent nearly two years debating the value of their home in Scarsdale, The husband’s law partnership, and their Manhattan apartment. The two agreed on at least one thing: an account they opened during their marriage with Bernard Madoff Investment Securities LLC was worth $5.4 million. As part of a 2006 equitable distribution agreement, the husband claimed he paid his wife some $2.7 million, which represented what he thought was his ex-wife’s fair share of their investments with Madoff. But after Madoff’s arrest in December 2008, the husband attempted to redo the agreement, claiming it was based on a “material, mutual mistake” and resulted in a windfall for his ex-wife. After the husband learned that he and his wife had “been tricked by a sophisticated fraudster,” he sought to reform the divorce agreement. The husband claimed the agreement did not accomplish […]

I recently sat down and did a podcast with Leonard Florescue, a family law attorney at Blank Rome LLP, who advises clients primarily in complex matrimonial matters. We discussed the role parenting plans play in the divorce process.   Among the most important aspects of family law are custody and parenting plan issues. The family law practitioner is expected to take great care to work with his or her clients to create a viable parenting plan, which is an agreement between parents, who are either divorcing or who have never married. In the simplest terms, a parenting plan establishes who will spend time with the children and when and under what circumstances. The parenting plan also determines who makes the major decisions about education, medical care and other important issues. A good parenting plan is necessary in promoting harmony and alleviating stressful situations for both parents and children. There can be serious repercussions when parents have either a poorly though-out parenting plan or no plan at all. In an organizational or government hierarchy, there’s a single person or group with the most power and authority, and each subsequent level represents a lesser authority. Parents must create a “hierarchy” of their own. Time sharing is often a very stressful topic for parents. When outlining shared parenting schedules, parents must try their best to avoid potential areas of stress. It’s also advisable for parents to create a formula for the events they are anticipating for the first years of the parenting plan’s […]