Long Island Contested Divorce: The First Court Appearance

The preliminary conference in a Long Island divorce court is an opportunity for your divorce attorneys to identify any issues that are already resolved (such as child support, occupancy of the house, maintance, custody of the children), to schedule actions that you, or your spouse, or the divorce attorneys,  need to take to resolve the remaining issues, and to discuss settling the entire divorce.

For example, the exchange of financial materials (discovery) is scheduled, an independent attorney is often appointed by the Court on behalf of the children and the attorney for the children for the contested divorce if there are issues as to child custody and visitation, and the Court takes care of scheduling any other issues.

Many contested divorce judges take the opportunity to address both of you formally in court. This is not ordinarily an opportunity to discuss the merits of your divorce case and those merits will not be addressed.

On any given morning any given divorce judge will have a number of preliminary conferences and other conferences scheduled. Most are scheduled for 9:30 in the morning. Accordingly, there is a fair amount of waiting involved in and around the divorce court. Most conferences are, in fact, handled by the divorce judge’s Law Secretary, an attorney who works for the court system as an assistant to the judge. Most conferences are held in the judge’s chambers and are not open to you or your spouse — just your divorce attorneys.

Go back to Long Island Contested Divorce: How It Works to see the full list of topics about contested divorce.