Princeton Family Law Blog

In this New Jersey Family Law Blog, we often discuss how property division is handled in divorce. However, we have not really written about what divorce or a broken engagement means for the item that started it all: the engagement ring. This tricky issue comes to mind after it was reported late last month that a New York City man is suing his former fiancée, a New Jersey woman, to force her to return the $10,000 engagement ring he gave her.

According to The Asbury Park Press, the man gave the woman the ring in May 2012 when they became engaged. By the next month, the engagement was called off, but the woman did not return the ring.

One of the most complicated parts of the legal divorce process is dividing marital assets and debts. New Jersey law provides that marital property must be divided equitably. Equitable distribution means that debts and assets must be divided fairly, but not necessarily equally. Of course, deciding what is fair is a pretty subjective matter.

Credit card debt is one liability that can be quite difficult to divide fairly. This is, in part, because it may be the case that a credit card is only in one spouse's name but both spouses have charged items to the account. On the contrary, a card might be in both spouses' names, but only one spouse uses the account. Further complicating matters are situations where one spouse was a co-signer, or one spouse uses a credit card for business purposes.

When parents in New Jersey divorce or breakup, the custody of their children often becomes a difficult issue. This is even more complicated if grandparents who were helping to raise the children now want legal custody. Grandparents generally cannot obtain custody of children in New Jersey unless the parental rights of the child's natural parents have been terminated.

The parental rights of a biological parent can typically only be terminated if the parent is unfit. However, judges have a fair amount of discretion in child custody cases, and as such it is important for parents and grandparents to seek legal advice when entering into such a dispute. For example, in a recent child custody case that took place in another state, paternal grandparents were awarded custody of their young granddaughter by a court that ruled they were more fit to raise the girl than her natural mother, in part because the mother was not in the U.S. legally. An appeals court has now reversed that decision, stating that a person's immigration status does not affect his or her fitness as a parent.

Under New Jersey law, both parents are legally required to contribute to a child's financial support. Child support orders are generally calculated with a formula that accounts for each parent's income, the percentage of time the child spends at each parent's home and the child's expenses. It is very important that child support orders are appropriate so that the child will receive an adequate amount of support and so that the paying parent can afford to keep up with the order. When parents fail to pay court-ordered child support, they can face serious criminal repercussions.

In a recent case in the Midwest that has garnered a lot of media attention, a man was charged with failing to pay child support after police saw photos of him posing with a pile of cash on Facebook. While this man has not responded to the charges yet, and it is not known whether the cash in the photos was his own, this case illustrates that states are serious about collecting child support.