Much of my work as an attorney involves carefully drafting legal documents (Wills, Trusts, Contracts, Operating Agreements, Settlements, etc.), that accurately reflect my client’s wishes. With the ubiquity of low-cost legal forms available on the internet, I’m sometimes asked why people should hire me (or any attorney per se). A recent child support case from the First Department provides a ready answer: because words have meanings, and those meanings have legal consequences!
In the recent case of Lacy v. Lacy, 114 A.D.3d 500, 980 N.Y.S.2d 92 (2014), a father sued his ex-wife to seek termination of his child support obligation for their son. Although the ex-wife was originally the custodial parent of the son, to whom the father was required to pay child support, in 2011 the son moved in with his father and apparently spent most of his residential time with his father. In fact, as the Court pointed out, the son even went so far as to list his father’s address as his (the son’s) home address when he applied for a New York drivers’ license. According to the Court, “pursuant to the parties' divorce settlement agreement, which requires plaintiff to pay defendant child support until the children become emancipated and defines emancipation as including having a ‘[p]ermanent residence away from the residence of the Wife,’ plaintiff was properly relieved of his child support obligations.” Lacy v. Lacy, 980 N.Y.S.2d 92, 93 (2014).
It is unclear from the record whether the ex-wife thought that “permanent residence away from the residence of the Wife” meant that the child lived on his own – and also away from the father’s residence – but that might have been her original idea. Nevertheless, the trial court (as affirmed by the Appellate Division), strictly applied the plain meaning of the terms of the parties’ original divorce agreement: once the child no longer resided permanently and primarily with the mother, the child was legally “emancipated” and the father was relieved of his child support obligation to her. I have no idea whether the parties’ original divorce settlement agreement was drafted by, or reviewed by, an attorney, but that isn’t unlikely. There was nothing legally wrong with the language of the emancipation provision, although it may have been not quite what the wife had intended. In which case, the lesson that we can take away from the poor Ms. Lacy is that words have consequences; and if you don’t quite understand the meaning of something in a legal document, you should hire an attorney for help (or, if your attorney is the one drafting the document, ask him or her for clarification).
