Don’t let the wrong state get between you and your assets; Rose Law Group Family Law Attorney, Audra Petrolle, speaks to ‘home state’ control

Where couples start “living apart together,” for instance, can make a big difference if they divorce. State laws can also affect trusts and other financial transactions

Gwyneth Paltrow’s “living apart together” arrangement with her husband, Brad Falchuk, generated curiosity, but lawyers say the strategy comes with risks.
/Credit…Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Paul Sullivan | The New York Times | Feb. 21, 2020

Gwyneth Paltrow, the actress who created the successful lifestyle brand Goop, said last summer that she and her new husband, Brad Falchuk, were living apart, on purpose. Although recently married, they had opted to maintain separate homes.

The practice, known as living apart together, dates at least to the 18th century, both among avant-garde artists bucking conformity and working people needing to sacrifice cohabitation for economic necessity.

In a recent interview in Harper’s Bazaar, Ms. Paltrow said they now live under the same roof. But the curiosity generated by her embrace of the practice gave lawyers and wealth advisers an opportunity to point to its risks. If a couple, wealthy or not, live in different legal jurisdictions, there can be a battle over which municipality’s or state’s laws prevail if they decide to divorce.

“The implications on a couple that is married and wants to dissolve the marriage, that’s where you’re seeing the ramifications of this,” said Michael Stutman, a founding partner of the law firm Stutman Stutman & Lichtenstein. He has represented clients in a living apart together arrangement who filed papers in the county or state that would grant them more favorable treatment in a divorce.

“Multi state residency can certainly lead to forum shopping so there is always a risk of exposure for multi-state couples where one state’s laws are more favorable to the other in terms of property and maintenance, but where issues related to the children are involved, the children’s home state should control.” 

~Audra Petrolle

READ ON:

Share this!

Additional Articles

News Categories

Get Our Twice Weekly Newsletter!

* indicates required

Rose Law Group pc values “outrageous client service.” We pride ourselves on hyper-responsiveness to our clients’ needs and an extraordinary record of success in achieving our clients’ goals. We know we get results and our list of outstanding clients speaks to the quality of our work.

February 2020
M T W T F S S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
242526272829