On Sept. 25, 2019, New York’s Chief Judge Janet DiFiore promulgated proposed amendments to our state’s constitution that “would eliminate New York’s complex maze of 11 separate trial courts and replace it with a simple three-level structure to make the courts easier to navigate, increase operational efficiency and reduce costs to litigants …” New York State Unified Court System, Press Release, Sept. 25, 2019. Slightly more than a month and a half later, headlines for articles began to appear on Twitter, which read, among others: “Coalition’s family law plan ‘will hurt children and families’: lawyers”; “‘Safety must come first in family law’: Legal groups reject merger plan”; and, “Editorial: Difficult path ahead for family law court system but change must come.” Surprisingly, these were not headlines in the New York press, or even in our national media. Instead, these headlines can be found in the Australian publications: the Sydney Morning Herald of Nov. 1 and 11, 2019, and Melbourne’s The Age of Nov. 11, 2019.

Oftentimes, it is instructive for lawyers practicing divorce law in New York to look to developments in sister states here in the United States and in foreign nations. For example, California adopted “no-fault divorce” some 40 years before New York enacted its own no fault law with the support of then Chief Judge Judith Kaye in 2010, and Australia likewise entered its own no fault divorce era in 1975, while Ireland held a referendum in May 2019 where a majority of that nation’s voters supported the enactment of no fault divorce based on a four-year separation period. Thus, different jurisdictions address the same vexing issues of family and divorce law in their own fashion based on parallel perceptions of what is in the public interest based on changing mores and societal needs.