Another Way to Go
I was watching the news this week as the McGreevey divorce splashed across the screen again. This case will be fodder for the gossip columnists for years. An angry wife, humiliated that her husband, the governor of New Jersey, was having an affair….with a man. Dina Matos, ex-wife of Thomas McGreevey, dropped fraud charges stemming from her belief that she was marrying a heterosexual man who knew that in fact he was not. The charge was dropped in the wake of the judge’s recent ruling dissolving their marriage.
We’ve all glanced at the papers, seen the television reports, and wondered how anyone would feel if the whole of their lives and persona were open to the public, and how we would feel with them if that were the case.
But I am a lawyer, and I was struck by how much of this could have been avoided if both parties agreed to mediate or collaborate rather than raise all the acrimony kicked up by a full-fledged court battle.
One of the pillars of many family law practices today – including our own – is mediation and collaborative divorce. All the elements in any litigated divorce can be part of the mediation or collaborative process: child support, custody and visitation, alimony, and equitable distribution.
The McGreevey matter seemed to hinge as much on the issue of Dina Matos’ loss of social standing and the humiliation that ensued from Mr. McGreevey’s public explication of his sexual orientation as on anything truly legal in scope. Both husband and wife received intrusive media scrutiny, and paid lawyers many thousands of dollars for the privilege.
The job of any family lawyer includes separating emotions from the facts of each divorce action. Had Ms. Matos and Mr. McGreevey decided to go the mediation or collaborative divorce route, much of the public sturm and drang could have been avoided.
Hopefully that’s the last we’ll read or see about this tawdry case, and both former partners and their small daughter and can move off the front page and go on with their lives.
