Our practice really focuses on complex asset cases and complex custody cases.

In complex asset cases you very often have a marital estate that is comprised of real estate, bank accounts and a business. Business can be a standard business, an auto dealership, or a professional practice like a doctor or a lawyer. In those kind of practices and businesses have to be valued for equitable distribution and we work with a forensic accountant.

In doing that we also have to arrive at the lifestyle that the family led while they were together. We look at bank accounts, checking accounts, credit card records, often we have to back into income by looking at how the people spent their money. We help people try to understand what it’s going to cost them to live after their divorce.

Very often people come into see me and they know they could buy anything they wanted but have no idea what it cost. And for the first time they start to under- -- they look at their own expenses, they look at their credit card records, they look at their checking accounts or their spouses’ checking accounts and being to understand the cost of that marital lifestyle.

When we do that we sometimes find that the case will benefit from resolution outside of the courts, and we do a lot of things with alternate dispute resolution. We sometimes rent a judge by hiring another lawyer and, in fact, we serve in that capacity ourselves to arbitrate or mediate a solution. And that is usually very helpful to clients.

The reason it’s helpful is because you go to the office of the person who is doing the arbitration or the mediation and you get a whole day of that person’s time. So the counsel fees are well spent, they’re focused as opposed to going into court where you may wait for four hours to get 15 minutes of a judge’s time.

The other thing is that the people who do this kind of work are experts, they’ve been doing family law for virtually their whole career where sometimes a judge has never done family law during the marr- -- during his or her career. And is then put into a court with little or no experience.

So we are in a position to know our audience. We know who the judges are, we know who the mediators are, the arbitrators are, and we also know the latest trends in the law.

We try to help people come up with effective and efficient solutions that take into consideration the tax consequences of what they do. Whether if it’s by way of a payout, a lump sum in lieu of alimony or a long-term alimony payout. We often work with financial planners who help to create financial vehicles that will assist people in keeping the parties’ money within the marriage.

The law sees a marriage as a partnership and both spouses, the spouse who goes out and works day to day and the spouse who takes care of the kids and stays at home are both full partners from the perspective of the law in that marriage. They both have a claim to the assets of the marriage.

Very often people come into my office and they don’t know that. Assets are in one person’s name, that doesn’t matter. As long as an asset is acquired during the marriage and it’s not by way of a gift or an inheritance or -- it belongs to the marriage. It belongs to both parties no matter whose name it’s in.

And both parties have an entitlement to that asset. Not always a fifty-fifty entitlement, depends on a whole host of factors, including the length of the marriage, the needs of the parties, the kind of asset it is. Is it an asset that is going to be subject to tax when it is distributed or not subject to tax.

Those are all the kinds of things that we consider and we have the resources both in the office and outside of the office to help our clients come to solutions which are the best solutions that they can get.