Manage Your Divorce Expectations

Article taken from The New York Times

Our routines may have stalled during Covid, but the desire to divorce certainly hasn’t. Here, some of the pandemic-age challenges to consider.

When the New York divorce courts reopened in June after a nearly three-month closure, the lawyer Nancy Chemtob said she began waking up at 3 a.m. to handle all of the clients who wanted out of their marriages. And the calls and texts didn’t let up between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, traditionally a slow period in the divorce business, as people would hang on for year-end bonuses or the last family vacation before filing.

“There was nothing to wait for anymore,” said Ms. Chemtob, who represented the designer Mary-Kate Olsen in her pandemic divorce from the French banker Olivier Sarkozy.

The coronavirus crisis has inspired what seems to be a surge of divorces in the United States, a pattern also seen in China, Britain and Sweden. There are the expected reasons, such as increased domestic pressures and upended routines that may have once masked marriage problems. And there are the less obvious ones, like the bread-winning spouse who toyed with the idea of divorce now moving forward because it makes financial sense. (He or she has suffered a loss in income, and so the settlement will be less.)

Jennifer Monroe

Legal Assistant – Real Estate

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