By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MIDTOWN EAST — A bill headed to the State Assembly could give New Yorkers the right — already possessed by citizens of all 49 other states — to divorce by mutual consent, but not everyone is happy with the prospect — especially Manhattan's top lawyers.
“This is wrong,” said Raoul Lionel Felder, 70, a prominent divorce lawyer whose celebrity clients, including former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Liza Minelli and Robin Givens, have earned him press monikers including “Captain Divorce” (Vanity Fair) and “the Duke of Divorce” (US Magazine).
The bill, which passed the State Senate Tuesday by a vote of 39-29, would remove New York’s requirement that couples legally separate for a full year or demonstrate that one party is guilty of adultery, abandonment, or cruel or inhuman treatment.
Felder argued that the bill would likely bring in more business for divorce lawyers, but that it is “morally deficient” because if passed, it will make marriage easier to get out of “than a subscription to the book of the month club.”
Other New Yorkers, however, responded to the news with enthusiasm.
“It’s about time,” said Mark Rosenfeld, a general practice lawyer from the Upper West Side who called aspects of the state’s current matrimonial law requiring proof of wrongdoing such as infidelity “archaic.”
“It’s been shown really that people who are taking that route will in effect perjure themselves in court by making allegations that aren’t true.”
Myra Sanoguet, a 45-year-old legal secretary from Rockland County, said she supports the bill because she has seen couples who “just sort of created these stories just to get a divorce right away… This will make it a clean break.”
However, Felder argued that the legislation could increase the prevalence of two types of divorce he finds particularly troubling: young people who rush to split up out of lack of willingness to invest more time in making the marriage work, and wealthy men who “throw the woman under the bus.”
Michael Brown, a 43-year-old Brooklyn electrician who has been happily married for 21 years, said he believes “people should try all they can to stay married.”
Nonetheless, he echoed Sanoguet and Rosenfeld’s support of the bill.
“It’s easy to get married,” he said. “They make that pretty easy, so it should be easy to get divorced as well.”
