Woman wins first no fault divorce

01/27/2012

A Long Island woman in her 70s is understood to have been granted the state’s first contested ‘no fault’ divorce.

The New York Post reports that 79-year-old Gloria Sorrentino wanted to end her 56-year marriage to Sebastian Sorrentino on the grounds that it was “irretrievably broken”. However, her husband didn’t want to end the marriage and argued that she was being pressured to break up with him by two of their four children.

A judge recently ruled in favor of Mrs Sorrentino and applied the state’s no fault divorce law, which was only introduced a year ago. He noted that Mrs Sorrentino alleged that they slept separately, never ate together, didn’t spend their holidays together and had no mutual friends.

The judge wrote, “The plaintiff testified that she has no hope for the marriage ... and that her only wish is for a divorce so that she can have one-half of her marital assets and leave them to her four children before her demise,” according to court papers quoted in the New York Post. It is reported that Mr Sorrentino argued that he did not want to lose everything he had worked hard for.

According to the New York Law Journal, the ruling is groundbreaking in that it is probably the first time no fault has been applied in the case of a contested split.