A Nassau County divorce sanctions lawyer can help you if the other party has refused to comply with existing orders or if an interrogatory or document production request has not been honored. If depositions are skipped and your attorney's fees are mounting, you may have grounds to pursue sanctions.
A Nassau County divorce sanctions lawyer may be able to help you put together the evidence illustrating that the other party has refused to comply. A Nassau County divorce sanctions attorney is critical for showing to the court that the other side has refused to take necessary action and allow you to file a motion to compel if the non-compliance persists. It can be very overwhelming to find yourself in this situation when you are hoping that the other side will come forward and do what they were supposed to do to begin with.
This can only add to the anxiety and frustration you are experiencing in your divorce case but your willingness to take prompt action is vital. Sanctions essentially are penalties for bad behavior exhibited by your spouse's attorney or by your spouse directly. State law governs when sanctions can be assessed in your case and they can only be imposed by a family law judge.
Sanctions may come in the form of monetary damages if one party acts in a way that unreasonably delays the case's settlement. For example, if you have been waiting for production of documents so that your attorney can move forward with the rest of discovery, and this has cost you ample time and attorney’s fees while your lawyer has been trying to track down this material, you could receive sanctions against the other party.
A person who is sanctioned in family court in New York may be compelled to pay the attorney's fees of the soon to be ex-spouse, denied an equitable share of the assets of the marriage or even fined a large amount of money depending on the circumstances of your case. A divorce sanctions attorney in Nassau County can tell you more about what to expect. Family law courts across New York request the parties cooperate with one another to resolve divorces.
This is even more important when the couple has children. The length and the nature of a spouse's uncooperative behavior will be looked at carefully by a judge when he or she has been asked to assess sanctions. If the other party is refusing to comply with an order, clogging up the court system with unnecessary motions and complaints, or trying to hide assets that must be disclosed over the course of a divorce case, sanctions can total into the thousands of dollars. There are a number of different types of penalties that may be assessed for unacceptable conduct. In some of these cases, the court will base the amount of the penalty on the additional amount in attorney's fees that the other side had to incur directly because of the bad behavior. In other situations, a judge would punish a spouse who hides assets by negating his or her customary right to a split of those assets.
If a court imposes sanctions on the other spouse, make sure that you have met all of your own individual legal obligations before moving forward with these claims on your own, otherwise you could find yourself facing sanctions or have your sanction request unheard or not taken seriously by the judge. You deserve to have a lawyer who has been practicing in this field for a long period of time and maintains a commitment to doing right by his or her clients.