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DIVISION OF PROPERTY IN LONG-TERM MARRIAGE
© 1994 National Legal Research Group, Inc.
NEW YORK: Mattwell v. Mattwell, ___ A.D.2d ___, 600 N.Y.S.2d 98 (1993).
In dissolution of parties' long-term marriage, wife should not be awarded a greater share of marital property merely because she had been a long-term economic success and husband had been a relative economic failure.
In the equitable distribution proceedings at the end of the parties' long-term marriage, the trial court awarded the husband only $250 per month as his share of the wife's pension payment of $1,600 per month. The husband appealed.
The New York appeals court held that the trial court had failed to distribute the pension in accordance with the theories which underlie the state equitable distribution law. The parties had been married for over 40 years, and their marriage should be viewed as an economic partnership, the court observed.
In this particular partnership, it noted, one party the wife achieved long-term economic success by dint of her steady employment, whereas the other party the husband was a relative economic failure, by virtue of his having engaged in an unprofitable business venture. "In a partnership, however, just as the good economic judgment of one partner is a common benefit, the bad economic judgment of another partner must be considered a common liability," the court said. 600 N.Y.S.2d 100.
With these principles in mind, the court held that the husband's award should be increased to $400 per month, which represented 25% of the wife's monthly pension benefit. An award of less than 50% was warranted primarily because the husband dissipated and secreted assets, the court explained.
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