New York’s passage of a no-fault divorce law nearly two years ago also heralded a new era for matrimonial practitioners, due to the change in calculating and awarding temporary alimony (pendente lite) and a change in the law allowing for a “rebuttable presumption that counsel fees shall be awarded to the less monied spouse” (DRL 237 et seq.)
The purpose of the reform to the pendente lite law was to streamline temporary spousal support (by calculating support based on a formula taking into account the parties’ income). In practice, however, the less-monied spouse – typically and historically, the stay-at-home wife – has had to overcome awards of meager – by comparison – temporary counsel fees, which are often not enough to allow her to meaningfully continue to litigate the action.
