A recent article in the Huffington Post bore the tag line: “The Role Grandparents Play in Divorce.” Coincidentally, within days, there appeared a decision by the Appellate Division, First Department (2013 NY Slip Op 00023), affirming Justice Deborah Kaplan’s recent decision in Nederlander v. Nederlander, NY County Clerk’s Index No. 350510/2007. Nederlander provides unintentional insight into the judiciary’s view of the role that families should not be playing in the divorces of their children, particularly where the impact of the family’s manipulative behavior has far-reaching, potentially devastating financial and lifestyle effects on grandchildren and the soon-to-be former daughter-in-law or son-in-law.
The husband and defendant in this case is a scion of the storied Nederlander family, theatrical producers and theatre owners throughout the United States. The Appellate Division cited a record that included tales of “loans” to the husband from his father totaling over $6.5 million in 2010, some three years into the divorce action; the lack of the husband’s repayment of those loans; and, “substantial and ongoing financial aid provided to defendant by his father [as] either a gift, imputable as income…or a benefit provided to defendant by his father’s company, also imputable as income….” Based upon these factual findings, the court reasoned that the husband had the financial wherewithal to be required by the court to pay off (or refinance) one-half of the outstanding mortgage balances on the marital residence, where the mortgages had matured during the course of the still uncompleted divorce proceedings.
