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Date: 08-20-2024
Case Style:
Case Number:
Judge: Moukawsher
Court: Superior Court, Stamford-Norwalk County, Connecticut
Plaintiff's Attorney:
Defendant's Attorney:
Description: Stamford- Norwalk, Connecticut family law lawyer represented the Plaintiff and Defendant in a divorce.
The parties were married in 2007 and have four minor children born issue of the marriage. The plaintiff commenced this action for dissolution on June 3, 2020.
By way of a memorandum of decision filed on November 9, 2022, following a trial at which both parties and the children's guardian ad litem testified, the court, Moukawsher, J., rendered judgment dissolving the parties' marriage. The court ordered that the parties would share joint legal and physical custody of the children and that they would have a parenting schedule that gave each of them parenting time on both the weekdays and the weekends. The court reasoned that its schedule, which was different than the schedules proposed by the parties, would prevent the defendant from being a ''weekend dad,'' as the plaintiff had essentially proposed, and that it would require fewer transitions from one household to the other, which the court found was better for the children than the multiple transitions proposed by the defendant. The court awarded decision-making authority over the children's extracurricular activities to one party for spring/fall and to the other for summer/winter with the seasons rotated on an annual basis, despite the plaintiff's request that the parties be required to agree upon all extracurricular activities.
In issuing its financial orders, the court found that the defendant had learned during the pendency of the dissolution proceedings that he would be terminated from his then employment with Sunriver Capital Management on November 30, 2022, and, upon the termination of his employment, the defendant was to redeem in cash the entirety of his interest in the Sunriver Fund, which consisted primarily of bonuses paid as carried interest. The court awarded the entirety of the defendant's interest to him, observing that ''it is the money that [the defendant] periodically takes as a capital gain to create the annual income that he is to share with [the plaintiff]'' and that ''[h]e will keep this money- even though he must take it out of [the] Sunriver [Fund]-so [that] she can keep getting a portion of it.''
Despite the defendant's impending unemployment, the court attributed to him an earning capacity of $1.5 million per year, one half of which would likely be taxed as capital gains, leaving him $915,000 per year in after-tax income. The court found that, during the pendency of the dissolution action, the defendant had taken out a mortgage on the marital residence to purchase the plaintiff a $1.4 million home outright. The court ordered that the plaintiff, who stayed home with the parties' four children, would keep the new house and that the defendant would retain the marital residence, along with the debt associated therewith. The court awarded the plaintiff $6000 per month in child support[2] until the parties' youngest children turn eighteen years old and $3230.77 per week in alimony until November, 2031. In issuing this alimony order, the court rejected several of the expenses the plaintiff listed on her financial affidavit.
Outcome: Affirmed
Plaintiff's Experts:
Defendant's Experts:
Comments: