In Two Separate Cases, Appellate Division Orders that Marital Coverture Fraction Should Be Utilized to Fairly Divide a Spouse’s Defined Benefit Pension (Brian G. Paul).

In two separate Appellate Division cases in 2002, Brian G. Paul argued that the Husband’s proposed method of limiting their ex-wife’s portion of the husbands’ pensions to their values several years earlier at the time of the divorce was unfair and inequitable. Our attorneys argued that the Husband’s method would unfairly pay the wives, many years later at the time of the Husband’s eventual retirement, in the value of past dollars calculated at the time of the divorce. The firm successfully convinced the Appellate Division that a “marital coverture fraction” should be applied to the monthly pension payment at the time it was actually received. The coverture fraction is a fraction in which the numerator is the number of years of employment that took place during the marriage, while the denominator is the total number of years of employment that it took to earn the pension. The Appellate Division agreed with our attorneys that the coverture fraction more equitably recognizes the efforts of a non-working spouse during the marriage, while at the same time protecting the post-divorce efforts of the working spouse.