Friday, October 29, 1993
Domestic Relations Law
DISTRIBUTION OF A LAW PARTNERSHIP
Leonard G. Florescue
THE RECENT DECISION by Justice Saxe in Anonymous v. Anonymous, (New York Law Journal, Sept. 24, 1993, p.22, col. 1; Sup. Ct. N.Y. Co.) dealt with a number of areas of common concern. The husband was a partner in a large New York City law firm before entering the marriage and continued in that capacity throughout. The wife, too, was highly educated but had not been employed outside the home, having devoted herself to parenting the couple's two young children. During the marriage, the husband's income increased to $1.5 million annually from some $330,000. The assets, both marital and separate, exceeded $8 million at the time of the divorce.
The family resided in a 2,300-square-foot duplex. The penthouse floor was purchased by the husband two years before marriage. After marriage, using marital funds, the apartment directly below was purchased, the two apartments were combined, and about $100,000 was spent during the conversion. There was also a country home valued at $1.7 million and almost $1 million in an escrow account following the sale of some undeveloped property. The parties' lifestyle was consistent with their assets and income.
The areas of primary interest for us are the distribution of the apartment, certain retirement vehicles and, today's topic, the husband's law partnership. The partnership agreement provided that a partner could not withdraw before age 60 and still receive his full benefits except under circumstances that had not occurred in the case at bar. Retirement was mandatory at age 70.
Since the husband was a partner before marriage, one of the issues confronting the court was the percentage of the current value that was marital property. Initially, the court noted that only "limited information was provided by the firm concerning [its] financial status" and the parties had to rely on the agreement to value the partnership.
Disclosure of Agreement
Since the earliest days of Equitable Distribution Law there has been a lot of litigation as to the appropriate extent of disclosure from a partnership when a minority partner is divorced, e.g, Cherno, 118 Misc2d 950 (Sup. Ct. Nassau Co. 1983). A number of decisions have held that disclosure into the firm's full assets is inappropriate in that situation, Rosenberg, 510 NYS2d 659 (2d Dept. 1987) lv den. 70 NY2d 60, holding that the agreement is the only thing of relevance since the party-partner cannot get anything more out of the firm than the agreement allows, and it makes no sense to have the non-partner spouse's economic interest in the firm greater than the partner's.
In the case of a true minority partner, this writer agrees with the view expressed by Justice Balletta in Cherno that the non-partner spouse would have to show, essentially, that the agreement was a sham. However, in Amodio, 70 NY2d 5, the Court of Appeals implied that, irrespective of the actual minority position of the party, the agreement was only evidence and that full disclosure was available to show the value without the agreement. Although, even after Amodio some appellate courts have continued to adhere to the agreement-only test, e.g. Dignan, 549 NYS2d 539 (4th Dept. 1989), there is not infrequent motion practice over the scope of disclosure in this situation.
Simultaneously, the rule should be different when the partner in question is in a position to avoid the agreement's terms as they apply to him. A dominant partner, controlling perhaps 40 percent of a firm's billings can make the deal whatever he chooses it to be. In those cases, especially where the agreement is of relatively recent vintage, it should be much less persuasive evidence.
What is not stated in Anonymous is whether the absence of partnership information is a result of a determination that the husband's interest was small enough to invoke the Rosenberg rule, or whether it was simply refused and, if so, whether the court had ruled on the issue.
Valuation Issue
Turning back to the valuation issue, there was no dispute as to the increase in the husband's capital account during marriage, nor was there any as to the value of his withdrawal/retirement rights at the time of marriage. The problems, as usual, revolved around the withdrawal/retirement values at divorce. Both parties' experts relied on an affidavit of the firm's chief financial officer that if the defendant had withdrawn as of the date of commencement, he would have received 40 payments of $61,000 each over 10 years, totalling about $2.5 million.
The wife's expert testified that the marital portion of the capital account was simply the difference over the time of marriage. The husband's expert argued that it should be discounted for time value, since the husband could not reach the money for another 22 years. To do so makes some superficial sense, since money that cannot be reached for many years certainly does not have the same value today as an unfettered account of the same amount. The problem with determining if a time discount is appropriate in Anonymous is that we do not know how the capital account grew over the term of the marriage and how it will grow in the future. Did the account simply grow through investments by the firm's money managers? Or did the partner-party make additional capital contributions? What will happen in the future?
If the account is simply the equivalent of a very long-term certificate of deposit, then, arguably, all of the growth is passive and the husband's under Price (511 NYS2d 219 [N.Y. 1986]). If the increase was the result of additional capital contributions from marital income (i.e., the account bore no interest), then all of the increase is marital, presumably. If the latter is the case, one can reasonably expect further post-commencement capital contributions to occur. In that circumstance, it seems that the fairest way to deal with the account's equitable distribution, would be to do a de facto qualified domestic relations order. Segregate whatever percentage of the contributions the court determines to be the appropriate equitable distribution for the non-partner spouse and allow it to grow by the same rate of return as the entire capital account accrued post-tax. (If the fund could be distributed now, the non-partner would be responsible for the taxes due on the interest-income.) Upon the partner's eventual retirement he would owe that "grown sum" to the ex-spouse.
It must be conceded that discounting to present value and directing an immediate distribution is a plausible (and seemingly equivalent) alternative; however, the difference in practice is not insignificant. If the discounted sum is significant, and paid over today, the non-partner spouse gets the immediate enjoyment of the money while the partner does not, and that violates the Rosenberg rule. See also decisions like Chirls, 566 NYS2d 931 (2d Dept. 1991) holding that it is error to give the current assets directly to one spouse while awarding the other a mathematically equivalent amount that will not be received for a number of years. This is especially significant if the employee spouse does not live long enough to enjoy the money himself.
Deferred Enjoyment
The point here is not so much that there is an optimum way to divide this type of asset, but that the particular nature of a "deferred enjoyment asset" is a factor to be considered in its distribution. Generally, unfortunately, we cannot determine those critical facts, and it is dangerous to draw overly broad conclusions from decisions like Anonymous.
In Anonymous, itself, the husband's expert sought to further discount the capital account by a "risk" factor, while the wife's expert did not discount for that at all. The court accepted that second view. In the context of the huge amount of assets in Anonymous, the current distribution was relatively de minimis, and the concerns just raised are, perhaps, of a lesser significance.
The distribution of the retirement/death benefit in Anonymous, was also most intriguing. The wife's expert valued the withdrawal benefits assuming that the husband had died on the date of commencement. He then discounted the stream to present value and subtracted the original value of the benefit as of the date of marriage. This is the amount that the court ultimately adopted. The valuation adopted by the husband's expert also initially discounted the income stream but used a discount rate about 10 percent higher, which, of course, will result in a much lower present value. I am not privy to the testimony in court, nor am I capable of arguing the relative merits of the two discount rates chosen by the appraisers.
However, it was a second discount apparently taken by the husband's expert that is intriguing. After determining a current value for the payment stream, he then discounted again at the same rate to account for the 22-year waiting period before the husband could begin receiving the money. Having done so, he arrived at a total value of $60,000 for a partnership in one of the city's great law firms.
There is an analogy here in the story of a house construction project. If it takes 10 workers 30 days to build a house, how many workers could build a house in one second? It is possible to compute a mathematically correct answer to that question, but it is errant nonsense in the real world, since a house cannot be built in one second. Similarly, while the mathematics of the husband's calculation are defensible, and I intend no comment on the propriety of that expert's testimony or its use by the husband, the conclusion that a partnership in such a firm is worth only $60,000 is a jarring one. It seems possible that the judge felt that the $60,000 figure was so far off that he proceeded in his determination just as if the husband had put in no evidence on the valuation issue.
Having said that, there is a germ of logic in the husband's valuation and a germ of illogic in the wife's, since she ignored the fact that the husband had not, in fact, died. While Justice Saxe correctly noted that the use of the death benefit provision has been approved even though the party has not died (Harmon), the result arrived at still seems to be a windfall to the wife. Since the husband did not really die on the date of commencement, the income stream really did not commence then either. Thus, to determine the current value of that stream of money starting from today is to arrive at a conclusion just as contrary to fact (albeit mathematically reasonable) as the computation of the number of laborers needed to build a "one-second" house. The current value, therefore, at least as it really is to the partner-husband, is far less than the calculated figure. To that extent, the husband's expert was not far off base when he discounted because of the 22-year waiting period until the husband could surely begin collecting.
Justice Saxe accurately noted that the Harmon court had rejected the argument that Mr. Harmon had not died, since he had also not retired (and some valuation had to be used). However, the Appellate Division seems to have missed another possibility that would penalize neither party. Whoever is still alive has a statistically computed life expectancy. While that is a statistic and, therefore, not directly applicable to individuals, as the Court of Appeals noted in O'Brien, we cannot always mathematically determine damages with precision. Life expectancy is, also, considerably more certain than accounting projections as to reasonable interest factors spread over 10 or more years.
Accordingly, why do we not simply assume that the partner, in this sort of situation, will die precisely at the date determined by his life expectancy. If we compute the income stream backward from there, we will arrive at a result that will be at least as logically fair and equitably fair as what our case law has been reaching: determinations under which current "real" assets are traded off, dollar-for-dollar, against mathematical calculations of assets that may never materialize to the spouse who "owns" the calculated asset.
Leonard G. Florescue is of counsel to Tenzer, Greenblatt, Fallon & Kaplan in New York City.
10/29/93 NYLJ 3, (col. 1)
9/23/93 N.Y.L.J. 1, (col. 6)
New York Law Journal
Volume 210, Number 59
Copyright 1993 by the New York Law Publishing Company
Thursday, September 23, 1993
PARTNERSHIP IN FIRM VALUED AT $2 MILLION
CRAVATH LAWYER ORDERED TO SHARE ASSETS EQUALLY
By Matthew Goldstein
A 16-YEAR partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, who earned more than $1.5 million in salary last year, will have to split nearly $2 million in partnership assets with his former wife, New York Supreme Court Justice David B. Saxe ruled this week.
Justice Saxe, in Anonymous v. Anonymous, Part 18, found that the defendant husband's financial interest in the law firm's partnership assets constituted marital property and was subject to equitable distribution.
The couple, married for nearly a dozen years, were divorced on March 5, 1993, following a 12-day trial. The identities of the parties, who have two young children, were concealed by the court.
The decision will be published Friday.
The defendant, 49, became partner at Cravath in 1977. There are approximately 75 active partners in Cravath's New York office.
"It bears repeating here that a marriage is an economic partnership, and the compensation of the one who is employed is, in that sense, earned by the married couple as a team," said Justice Saxe, in rejecting the defendant's claim that his former wife was not entitled to any portion of his partnership assets.
The court found that since the couple's 1981 wedding, the husband's financial stake in the law firm's capital assets and his withdrawal/retirement benefits had risen from $406,869 to $2,461,720. Of that $2.4 million figure, the court determined that $1,950,150 constituted marital property and should be split evenly between the parties.
"The means by which a spouse contributes to the underlying value of the earning spouse's interest in a law firm need not be direct participation in the firm's activities," said Justice Saxe, in the 34-page decision handed down Monday.
$7.6 Million Estate
Overall, the court valued the couple's total marital estate at $7.6 million and divided it up 51 percent to 49 percent in favor of the plaintiff wife.
Under the state's Domestic Relations Law, any asset acquired by a couple after they are married is subject to equitable distribution in a divorce proceeding. However, a spouse is generally entitled to keep any separate property that he or she brought into the marriage.
The court rejected the husband's claim that the present value of his withdrawal/retirement benefits from Cravath was worth only $60,624 compared with the $1.7 million figure submitted by his wife.
The defendant had argued unsuccessfully that the lower value was a more accurate reflection of his financial interest in the firm, since he was not entitled to a full payout on his retirement benefits before age 60, or unless he died, became disabled, or left the firm to join a charitable organization or work for the government.
The terms for paying out a partner's retirements benefits were part of a 1992 partnership agreement drawn up by the firm.
In his decision, Justice Saxe provided an exhaustive description of the couple's lavish real estate holdings and lifestyle. In dividing up the properties, the court awarded the husband possession of the couple's $1 million Park Avenue penthouse apartment, while the wife may keep their $1.7 million summer home in Quogue, L.I.
Justice Saxe awarded the wife sole custody of the couple's two children after determining that the husband had an "explosive temper" and lacked "any parenting skills."
The husband was ordered to pay his former wife $8,650 in monthly maintenance grants and approximately $5,000 a month in child support.
The court also ordered the defendant to reimburse his wife for $15,000 in accountant's fees associated with the litigation. The court is considering the wife's request that the defendant pay her legal expenses, estimated at about $300,000.
The wife was represented by Raoul L. Felder and Ken B. Goldstein. The defendant was represented by Peter E. Bronstein and Donna S. Levin of Bronstein, Van Veen & Bronstein, P.C.
9/23/93 NYLJ 1, (col. 6)
END OF DOCUMENT
Domestic Relations Law
DISTRIBUTION OF A LAW PARTNERSHIP
Leonard G. Florescue
THE RECENT DECISION by Justice Saxe in Anonymous v. Anonymous, (New York Law Journal, Sept. 24, 1993, p.22, col. 1; Sup. Ct. N.Y. Co.) dealt with a number of areas of common concern. The husband was a partner in a large New York City law firm before entering the marriage and continued in that capacity throughout. The wife, too, was highly educated but had not been employed outside the home, having devoted herself to parenting the couple's two young children. During the marriage, the husband's income increased to $1.5 million annually from some $330,000. The assets, both marital and separate, exceeded $8 million at the time of the divorce.
The family resided in a 2,300-square-foot duplex. The penthouse floor was purchased by the husband two years before marriage. After marriage, using marital funds, the apartment directly below was purchased, the two apartments were combined, and about $100,000 was spent during the conversion. There was also a country home valued at $1.7 million and almost $1 million in an escrow account following the sale of some undeveloped property. The parties' lifestyle was consistent with their assets and income.
The areas of primary interest for us are the distribution of the apartment, certain retirement vehicles and, today's topic, the husband's law partnership. The partnership agreement provided that a partner could not withdraw before age 60 and still receive his full benefits except under circumstances that had not occurred in the case at bar. Retirement was mandatory at age 70.
Since the husband was a partner before marriage, one of the issues confronting the court was the percentage of the current value that was marital property. Initially, the court noted that only "limited information was provided by the firm concerning [its] financial status" and the parties had to rely on the agreement to value the partnership.
Disclosure of Agreement
Since the earliest days of Equitable Distribution Law there has been a lot of litigation as to the appropriate extent of disclosure from a partnership when a minority partner is divorced, e.g, Cherno, 118 Misc2d 950 (Sup. Ct. Nassau Co. 1983). A number of decisions have held that disclosure into the firm's full assets is inappropriate in that situation, Rosenberg, 510 NYS2d 659 (2d Dept. 1987) lv den. 70 NY2d 60, holding that the agreement is the only thing of relevance since the party-partner cannot get anything more out of the firm than the agreement allows, and it makes no sense to have the non-partner spouse's economic interest in the firm greater than the partner's.
In the case of a true minority partner, this writer agrees with the view expressed by Justice Balletta in Cherno that the non-partner spouse would have to show, essentially, that the agreement was a sham. However, in Amodio, 70 NY2d 5, the Court of Appeals implied that, irrespective of the actual minority position of the party, the agreement was only evidence and that full disclosure was available to show the value without the agreement. Although, even after Amodio some appellate courts have continued to adhere to the agreement-only test, e.g. Dignan, 549 NYS2d 539 (4th Dept. 1989), there is not infrequent motion practice over the scope of disclosure in this situation.
Simultaneously, the rule should be different when the partner in question is in a position to avoid the agreement's terms as they apply to him. A dominant partner, controlling perhaps 40 percent of a firm's billings can make the deal whatever he chooses it to be. In those cases, especially where the agreement is of relatively recent vintage, it should be much less persuasive evidence.
What is not stated in Anonymous is whether the absence of partnership information is a result of a determination that the husband's interest was small enough to invoke the Rosenberg rule, or whether it was simply refused and, if so, whether the court had ruled on the issue.
Valuation Issue
Turning back to the valuation issue, there was no dispute as to the increase in the husband's capital account during marriage, nor was there any as to the value of his withdrawal/retirement rights at the time of marriage. The problems, as usual, revolved around the withdrawal/retirement values at divorce. Both parties' experts relied on an affidavit of the firm's chief financial officer that if the defendant had withdrawn as of the date of commencement, he would have received 40 payments of $61,000 each over 10 years, totalling about $2.5 million.
The wife's expert testified that the marital portion of the capital account was simply the difference over the time of marriage. The husband's expert argued that it should be discounted for time value, since the husband could not reach the money for another 22 years. To do so makes some superficial sense, since money that cannot be reached for many years certainly does not have the same value today as an unfettered account of the same amount. The problem with determining if a time discount is appropriate in Anonymous is that we do not know how the capital account grew over the term of the marriage and how it will grow in the future. Did the account simply grow through investments by the firm's money managers? Or did the partner-party make additional capital contributions? What will happen in the future?
If the account is simply the equivalent of a very long-term certificate of deposit, then, arguably, all of the growth is passive and the husband's under Price (511 NYS2d 219 [N.Y. 1986]). If the increase was the result of additional capital contributions from marital income (i.e., the account bore no interest), then all of the increase is marital, presumably. If the latter is the case, one can reasonably expect further post-commencement capital contributions to occur. In that circumstance, it seems that the fairest way to deal with the account's equitable distribution, would be to do a de facto qualified domestic relations order. Segregate whatever percentage of the contributions the court determines to be the appropriate equitable distribution for the non-partner spouse and allow it to grow by the same rate of return as the entire capital account accrued post-tax. (If the fund could be distributed now, the non-partner would be responsible for the taxes due on the interest-income.) Upon the partner's eventual retirement he would owe that "grown sum" to the ex-spouse.
It must be conceded that discounting to present value and directing an immediate distribution is a plausible (and seemingly equivalent) alternative; however, the difference in practice is not insignificant. If the discounted sum is significant, and paid over today, the non-partner spouse gets the immediate enjoyment of the money while the partner does not, and that violates the Rosenberg rule. See also decisions like Chirls, 566 NYS2d 931 (2d Dept. 1991) holding that it is error to give the current assets directly to one spouse while awarding the other a mathematically equivalent amount that will not be received for a number of years. This is especially significant if the employee spouse does not live long enough to enjoy the money himself.
Deferred Enjoyment
The point here is not so much that there is an optimum way to divide this type of asset, but that the particular nature of a "deferred enjoyment asset" is a factor to be considered in its distribution. Generally, unfortunately, we cannot determine those critical facts, and it is dangerous to draw overly broad conclusions from decisions like Anonymous.
In Anonymous, itself, the husband's expert sought to further discount the capital account by a "risk" factor, while the wife's expert did not discount for that at all. The court accepted that second view. In the context of the huge amount of assets in Anonymous, the current distribution was relatively de minimis, and the concerns just raised are, perhaps, of a lesser significance.
The distribution of the retirement/death benefit in Anonymous, was also most intriguing. The wife's expert valued the withdrawal benefits assuming that the husband had died on the date of commencement. He then discounted the stream to present value and subtracted the original value of the benefit as of the date of marriage. This is the amount that the court ultimately adopted. The valuation adopted by the husband's expert also initially discounted the income stream but used a discount rate about 10 percent higher, which, of course, will result in a much lower present value. I am not privy to the testimony in court, nor am I capable of arguing the relative merits of the two discount rates chosen by the appraisers.
However, it was a second discount apparently taken by the husband's expert that is intriguing. After determining a current value for the payment stream, he then discounted again at the same rate to account for the 22-year waiting period before the husband could begin receiving the money. Having done so, he arrived at a total value of $60,000 for a partnership in one of the city's great law firms.
There is an analogy here in the story of a house construction project. If it takes 10 workers 30 days to build a house, how many workers could build a house in one second? It is possible to compute a mathematically correct answer to that question, but it is errant nonsense in the real world, since a house cannot be built in one second. Similarly, while the mathematics of the husband's calculation are defensible, and I intend no comment on the propriety of that expert's testimony or its use by the husband, the conclusion that a partnership in such a firm is worth only $60,000 is a jarring one. It seems possible that the judge felt that the $60,000 figure was so far off that he proceeded in his determination just as if the husband had put in no evidence on the valuation issue.
Having said that, there is a germ of logic in the husband's valuation and a germ of illogic in the wife's, since she ignored the fact that the husband had not, in fact, died. While Justice Saxe correctly noted that the use of the death benefit provision has been approved even though the party has not died (Harmon), the result arrived at still seems to be a windfall to the wife. Since the husband did not really die on the date of commencement, the income stream really did not commence then either. Thus, to determine the current value of that stream of money starting from today is to arrive at a conclusion just as contrary to fact (albeit mathematically reasonable) as the computation of the number of laborers needed to build a "one-second" house. The current value, therefore, at least as it really is to the partner-husband, is far less than the calculated figure. To that extent, the husband's expert was not far off base when he discounted because of the 22-year waiting period until the husband could surely begin collecting.
Justice Saxe accurately noted that the Harmon court had rejected the argument that Mr. Harmon had not died, since he had also not retired (and some valuation had to be used). However, the Appellate Division seems to have missed another possibility that would penalize neither party. Whoever is still alive has a statistically computed life expectancy. While that is a statistic and, therefore, not directly applicable to individuals, as the Court of Appeals noted in O'Brien, we cannot always mathematically determine damages with precision. Life expectancy is, also, considerably more certain than accounting projections as to reasonable interest factors spread over 10 or more years.
Accordingly, why do we not simply assume that the partner, in this sort of situation, will die precisely at the date determined by his life expectancy. If we compute the income stream backward from there, we will arrive at a result that will be at least as logically fair and equitably fair as what our case law has been reaching: determinations under which current "real" assets are traded off, dollar-for-dollar, against mathematical calculations of assets that may never materialize to the spouse who "owns" the calculated asset.
Leonard G. Florescue is of counsel to Tenzer, Greenblatt, Fallon & Kaplan in New York City.
10/29/93 NYLJ 3, (col. 1)
9/23/93 N.Y.L.J. 1, (col. 6)
New York Law Journal
Volume 210, Number 59
Copyright 1993 by the New York Law Publishing Company
Thursday, September 23, 1993
PARTNERSHIP IN FIRM VALUED AT $2 MILLION
CRAVATH LAWYER ORDERED TO SHARE ASSETS EQUALLY
By Matthew Goldstein
A 16-YEAR partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, who earned more than $1.5 million in salary last year, will have to split nearly $2 million in partnership assets with his former wife, New York Supreme Court Justice David B. Saxe ruled this week.
Justice Saxe, in Anonymous v. Anonymous, Part 18, found that the defendant husband's financial interest in the law firm's partnership assets constituted marital property and was subject to equitable distribution.
The couple, married for nearly a dozen years, were divorced on March 5, 1993, following a 12-day trial. The identities of the parties, who have two young children, were concealed by the court.
The decision will be published Friday.
The defendant, 49, became partner at Cravath in 1977. There are approximately 75 active partners in Cravath's New York office.
"It bears repeating here that a marriage is an economic partnership, and the compensation of the one who is employed is, in that sense, earned by the married couple as a team," said Justice Saxe, in rejecting the defendant's claim that his former wife was not entitled to any portion of his partnership assets.
The court found that since the couple's 1981 wedding, the husband's financial stake in the law firm's capital assets and his withdrawal/retirement benefits had risen from $406,869 to $2,461,720. Of that $2.4 million figure, the court determined that $1,950,150 constituted marital property and should be split evenly between the parties.
"The means by which a spouse contributes to the underlying value of the earning spouse's interest in a law firm need not be direct participation in the firm's activities," said Justice Saxe, in the 34-page decision handed down Monday.
$7.6 Million Estate
Overall, the court valued the couple's total marital estate at $7.6 million and divided it up 51 percent to 49 percent in favor of the plaintiff wife.
Under the state's Domestic Relations Law, any asset acquired by a couple after they are married is subject to equitable distribution in a divorce proceeding. However, a spouse is generally entitled to keep any separate property that he or she brought into the marriage.
The court rejected the husband's claim that the present value of his withdrawal/retirement benefits from Cravath was worth only $60,624 compared with the $1.7 million figure submitted by his wife.
The defendant had argued unsuccessfully that the lower value was a more accurate reflection of his financial interest in the firm, since he was not entitled to a full payout on his retirement benefits before age 60, or unless he died, became disabled, or left the firm to join a charitable organization or work for the government.
The terms for paying out a partner's retirements benefits were part of a 1992 partnership agreement drawn up by the firm.
In his decision, Justice Saxe provided an exhaustive description of the couple's lavish real estate holdings and lifestyle. In dividing up the properties, the court awarded the husband possession of the couple's $1 million Park Avenue penthouse apartment, while the wife may keep their $1.7 million summer home in Quogue, L.I.
Justice Saxe awarded the wife sole custody of the couple's two children after determining that the husband had an "explosive temper" and lacked "any parenting skills."
The husband was ordered to pay his former wife $8,650 in monthly maintenance grants and approximately $5,000 a month in child support.
The court also ordered the defendant to reimburse his wife for $15,000 in accountant's fees associated with the litigation. The court is considering the wife's request that the defendant pay her legal expenses, estimated at about $300,000.
The wife was represented by Raoul L. Felder and Ken B. Goldstein. The defendant was represented by Peter E. Bronstein and Donna S. Levin of Bronstein, Van Veen & Bronstein, P.C.
9/23/93 NYLJ 1, (col. 6)
END OF DOCUMENT