Effective July 19, 1980, New York joined the ranks of many other states and became an equitable distribution state. The new law, known as the "Equitable Distribution Law", is actually an amendment to S236 of the Domestic Relations Law and, among other things, changes the concept of property and distribution of property upon dissolution of a marriage. Much of the new law was patterned after the Equitable Distribution Law enacted many years earlier in New Jersey. Prior to the enactment of the new law, New York was a "title" state and property in the name of a spouse ( the title spouse) remained that spouse's property after the marriage was dissolved. The nontitled spouse was rarely awarded any part of the property in the other party's name upon the dissolution of marriage. This was true even though the property was acquired during the marriage. There were exceptions in cases of fraud but it was often very difficult to prove and often fraud was not actually involved in the acquisition of property. (see Fischer v. Wirth, 38 AD2d 611 -3rdDept. 1971). One can readily see that prior to the equitable distribution law, harsh results could ensue upon the dissolution of a marriage which a court was powerless to correct, absent fraud.

The new law, hereinafter referred to as EDL, made many other significant changes to existing law. One of those changes was to gender-neutralize those statutes within the Domestic Relations Law (DRL) and the Family Court Act (FCA) and those statutes outside of the Domestic Relation Law and the Family Court Act that created certain imposed obligations on one party to a marriage over the other party or imposed obligations on only one of the parties. The words "wife" and "husband" were replaced by "parent".