It's good for you.
"Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it."
The Buddha said that. I'm fairly confident he didn't speak English, however, so there may be room for interpretation. In fact, he may have said something more along the lines of, "Your work is silly, and stop it, so you can discover that I ordered
large
french fries. You bastards."
Mm. Hot, tasty french fries.
This quote (the real one, not the fast-food version) encapsulates nicely the craft of acting, as well as the art of living. We begin with an openness to discovery, be it in developing a story or approaching a script for the first time, and throughout the process we strive to give ourselves over to it entirely. Both aspects are challenging, at least for those of us not born with some supernatural talent for finding and believing. (Equating belief with abandoning oneself to life and/or a play is probably an entirely other 'blog entry.) There's the need we feel to be perceived as experienced and knowledgeable, which blocks most possibilities for discovery. There's just plain assumption and bias, and the little "truths" we live with from day to day as people that help us get by, but may have nothing to do with the world of the play. There's just being plain acute enough to perceive discoveries, and open enough to accept them from others. You get through all that, and then there's the part of your heart.
Damn it. This stupid
has me making inappropriate, obvious rhymes.
It's not a stupid play, however. It's a very intelligent
and
visceral play. Ideas and feelings clash with one another in fascinating ways, and on the whole it is posing some of the more fascinating "unanswerable" questions of human existence and behavior. Why can't we shake the yoke of needing to please our parents? Why, when we love, can it be so difficult and insane? How do we live with a love that consumes us? Why can't we all just get along? What is wrong between women and men? Why is America the way it is, violent and obsessed and often delusional? What is true? I love questions, particularly ones that we can never quite answer to our own satisfaction. They give me hope, in an unsettled sort of way. They help me believe that there are great discoveries yet to be made.
But this business of the heart . . . it's difficult. I'll be very frank (or Frankie [oh God I kill me][somebody has to]) and admit that I'm having trouble at this stage of rehearsal with giving myself to it with all my heart. Why? Well, it's probably a terribly involved question I ask on your behalf, but foregoing the venting of intense personal details (and collective sigh...and GO: "Aaahh...") let's us just trace the journey of Frankie for a moment. Who knows? Maybe we'll make a discovery or two. Come along with me!!!
He's one of Shepard's sensitive, intelligent brother characters (already I enter in judgment, eschewing discovery). The play opens with Frankie on the phone with his brother, Jake, trying to sort of talk him off a ledge, emotionally speaking, and get his brother to tell him where he is and what's happened to put him in this state. He keeps trying to calm him down. Eventually, it comes out that Jake has killed his wife. Then he hangs up, leaving Frankie to shout into a dead line after him.
The next we see Frankie, he's joined his brother in a hotel room somewhere and is trying to get to the bottom of what happened. He tries to comfort his brother, but also doesn't buy Jake's explanation of the events and criticizes his brother for always shifting blame for his own actions. At the height of this confrontation, Jake passes out suddenly. He comes to as Frankie is trying to understand what happened and help him, then explains that he feels as if he's going to die without his wife. Frankie offers to go to her family to find out if she's dead, or alive, or what, and Jake forbids it, then pleads with Frankie to stay with him, which Frankie agrees to.
Frankie's next scene occurs three days later, when his mother and sister arrive at the hotel at his behest. Jake's been deteriorating, talking to himself and shaking uncontrollably, for the entire time. Their mother comes in and tries to take over immediately, protesting that Jake is just "play-acting" over Frankie's objections. Jake wakes and imagines his sister is his wife, growing aggressive with her before passing out again. In the end, Frankie convinces his mother (it isn't hard) to take Jake whilst he goes off to find out what happened to Jake's wife, Beth. This drives their sister out of the house; she doesn't feel safe with Jake around. So it's off to Montana for Frankie.
When he reappears, it's about two days later at the home of Beth's family. We know from dialogue that he tried to convince Beth's brother to let him see her, and he refused. He doesn't appear on stage, however, until Beth's father, Baylor, comes dragging him in. Baylor's accidentally shot Frankie in the leg, having mistook him for a deer. Much follows in the rest of the scene, but for Frankie it's mostly about dealing with pain, shock, discovering Beth is indeed alive, trying to figure out what's wrong with her and beginning to perceive a resistance to his leaving, even if it's only to get him to a hospital.
It's unclear how much later we revisit Frankie on the family couch, but he and Beth are alone and she has taken off her shirt to wrap around his wound. He seems to be focused, past the shock, and claiming the bleeding has stopped. (How that's possible, what with nobody properly bandaging the wound, is a question for Mr. Shepard.) The scene that follows is an involved one, mostly between Frankie and Beth. He begins just trying to get her to put her shirt back on, and what follows is a kind of "getting to know you" scene, in which he's trying to get to understand the extent of her injuries and if his brother's story is true, and she's trying--well--to fall in love with him, basically. (This is also a scene in which something positively surreal happens; the characters have a discussion about acting, and playing a character.) Their interaction mounts until Beth is seducing Frankie by way of an assumed character, and he rejects her. By the end of their time alone, he is struggling to either make a phone call or leave of his own volition. The rest of her family...except her dad...huh...enters separately, none of them willing or able to help Frankie escape. Beth goes to bed (it's daytime), her brother goes out to hunt more deer (he's brought in one carcass already) and her mother comments on the snow and leaves Frankie alone on the couch.
In the second-to-last scene he has, Frankie is mostly asleep. He is finally woken by Baylor, who does so because he can't bend over to pick up his socks. Frankie is beginning to be feverish, and speaks at length about the craziness of everyone in the house and his frustration over not being allowed to leave. Beth comes downstairs and declares she's going to marry Frankie. He says no, her Mom says yes, her Dad says no. Beth's brother, Mike, enters and proclaims that he's got Jake tied up in submission outside, and that he's going to get him to apologize to them all. He leaves and Baylor goes upstairs as Frankie is left on the couch again, this time with Beth and her mother on either side of him, planning the wedding.
SPOILERS! SPOILERS OFF THE PORT BOW!
So in the last scene of the play, Frankie mostly lies on the couch and shakes with fever. He doesn't come around until Jake walks in the door, free now, at which point Frankie seems to believe Jake's there to bring him back home with him. But no. Jake is there to say goodbye to Beth, to tell her to be with Frankie instead, to which Frankie only responds once Jake is walking away, shouting after him that he was true to him. Beth goes to Frankie and the play ends with her holding him in her arms.
Okay. So. Discoveries?
Some of my more radical notions include:
- Frankie is in love with Jake.
- Frankie is actually gay, but hasn't admitted it to himself.
- Frankie always wanted Beth.
And one from the director:
- Frankie dies at the end, either after Jake leaves, or possibly before, and the scene between them and Beth is a kind of hallucination of what everyone wanted the chance to say, but never got to.
That's all well and fine. Great, even. 'Cept Shepard's plays don't exactly run on hydrogenated concepts; more on crude Texas gut emotion. When it all comes down to it, it works best when one puts all of their heart into it and takes it on faith. I suppose some understanding may help with that, but it's an issue more of identification-with than understanding-of. It doesn't matter that it doesn't make sense that Beth would love Jake intensely inspite of him almost beating her to death; what matters is that she just does, on stage and in front of us all. And whether or not Frankie would do more for himself in the course of the play, he doesn't. He's there for Jake, fighting for Jake, putting all his heart into Jake. And in the end, his heart gets broken.
Couldn't I just give you some french fries, instead?
Kinesis
Last Saturday evening I attended a dance concert:
. I just fit it in, thanks to the repeated calls from my friends who made it a priority to check in with me and make sure I didn't forget about it in the miasma of my current schedule. I went directly from rehearsal to dinner at a friend's restaurant, to this concert, and then even made it to a late party. The party was to bid adieu to the loft that was home to
for years. The concert, that was a culmination of a friend(and fellow Kirkos member)'s very hard, very disciplined, and as it turned out, very
fun
work.
, headed up by dancer/choreographer Melissa Riker, had its full evening of performance last Saturday. My ties to Mel are multiple. I met her, as I did many good friends, performing in a show called
,
in 2001. She,
,
and I formed a sort of creative support group not too long after that--The Exploding Yurts (
please
don't ask)--and Kirkos came into being shortly after that. In the six years that I've known her, I've had the pleasure of watching Mel work and grow through that work. Saturday evening was a surprisingly emotional experience for me. I should have expected it, but I was surprised to experience just how much hope and excitement I was giving off during the concert. I was seeing my friend's work fully realized. I know how difficult that is to achieve, and something about just how much that means to her.
Me and modern dance, we don't hang out much . . . in spite of having had long-term relationships with two professional dancers in my time. I have a great appreciation for what the dancers can do, how expressive and dynamic their bodies and movements are. I envy that, in truth. I also respect it. So much so, in fact, that I refuse to be categorized as a dancer. This occasionally brings much frustration to the likes of Friends Melissa and Patrick, who are hell-bent on convincing me that I am worthy of at least the adjective, "dancer," if not the title. I resist. It's related to how I feel about Joe Nobody doing
Guys & Dolls
in his community theatre and then going around calling himself an actor. I mean, sure, he is. (Mad props to ma' boy Joe.) But he hasn't received any training, he hasn't gotten up at dawn to stand in a line for an open call, he hasn't haggled over a summer stock contract or sold worldly belongings in order to take said contract.
But I transtate a bit.
So we don't hang, me and the modern. I have just enough experience and appreciation to say about a concert, "I liked it because of THIS. THIS seemed a little weak, but that may have been in support of achieving THAT." I've been to concerts with dancers before, and often we appreciate the opposite aspects. When a number leans toward narrative a bit, I get excited. When it is seemingly solely about the beauty of the movement, I begin to tune out. Don't get me wrong: It's beautiful. Wow. Pretty. But so is a photograph of a sunset, and somebody needs to tell me why I should care. That's me. I'm an actor. Because of this bias (and I've done what I can think of to separate my appreciation for theatre from my appreciation for dance), some dance concerts I've seen have made me want to claw out my eyes and throw them underfoot.
And it's not the ones that are all about the beauty. No. If I can figure that out from an early moment--that priority--I can sit back and relax, let them dance me where they may. Rather, it's the ones that have something to say,
but don't seem to give a damn if you understand it.
Or that say something
whether you like it or not, sucka!
These really get to me, because the people involved--though I'm sure they went in with the best intentions...in some cases--inevitably chalk my lack of understanding up to me, not their efforts or ability to communicate with me. I suppose you could say that I value communication in my art. Intentional communication, be it about ideas, emotions or something else entirely.
To this end,
Right Before You Fell
was sort of the perfect show for yours truly. I must confess that, right up front. This critic is biased. The concert utilized set pieces, spoken dialogue, live music, character, scenario . . . it was very theatrical. People were constantly doing things, not just fulfilling choreography, and acknowledging and responding to one another. Imagine that.
Read about the inspiration for the show
. Some would have hated it. If I had gone looking for pin-point-perfect technique, or classical movement, or really anything conventional at all, I would have been disappointed. Instead I was uplifted by vignettes about trying to get along with and without people. Between dances, open doorways and closed doors were moved about on rollers by dancers dressed like nuevo gypsies, as they held a kind of movement dialogue with one another. Each had what seemed to be their own character, informing their choices and scenarios. Melissa's acrobalance experience shone through at certain points, particularly to a number choreographed to Tom Waits' "
," a piece I was lucky enough to get a preview of at the
Kinesis
benefit in December (see
for a photo). That section, too, is a good example of one of the best aspects of
Right Before You Fell
: its sense of humor. I've known Melissa for a while now, so her brand of humor is about as familiar to me as anyone's.
RBYF
was a great manifestation of unbounded joy for living, and unabashed moments of the surreal.
I could critique some aspects of the show, of course. It irritated me not to have a schedule and titles of the different dances in the program, and I felt as though the end of the evening needed a more significant punctuation, or perhaps clearer imagery of having come full circle (or home, if the notion of taking a walk is to be followed through). But these things may become clear to me after our inevitable Yurtian debriefing. Kate, Patrick, Melissa and I will all gather and surmise, and I'll get the inside skinny on what her specific intentions were. Even without this knowledge, I walked away from the concert feeling fulfilled, and even a little happier about the little unhappinesses in my life at present.
Melissa has extended me an informal invitation to join
Kinesis
in some performances this summer. (She couches it in the term "movement actor" in deference to my sensitivity about artistic categories.) I hesitate, uncertain about what I can contribute and what I hope to get out of it, but seeing her concert shows me more possibilities for an exciting, empathetic collaboration. It might even be funny.
Hey! We could do excerpts from
Guys and Dolls
!
Extra-Special Birthday Edition!!!
No, no, no. It's not my birthday. Not yet, anyway. It is, rather, that time of year around which all of my friends have selfishly decided to arrange their birth dates. Let's get organized here, people! Couldn't we spread them out just a little more, and maybe make them a little less immediately-after-Christmas? I swear, it's like the holidays begin for me a marathon of gift-giving every year. And I forget more birthdays than I remember! Totally; totally. I'm awful. You have to be known by me for, like, at least ten years before I start saying to you: "Wait. Wait. Isn't your birthday some time this month?"
Case in point: My adopted brother (adopted by me, that is), "Anonymous," just had his thirtieth last Friday, and I failed to plan for it. Granted, I didn't hear about the party until about a week beforehand, but I should have been better prepared all the same. I should have realized the significance of this year and--when
schedule conflicts were being arranged--included March 23rd as a no-go date for rehearsal. Alas, I did not, and so missed the digging of the shin.
I can be short-sighted like that, but it's also possible that I'm in denial. Anonymous' birthday kicks off the birthday schedule for my troika of oldest friends, affectionately dubbed by my mother as "
." Anonymous is in March, I in June and Mark chimes in in August (It
is
August, right, buddy? [Man. Do I suck.]). This year, we are thirty. Ye Gods, the wonder of a round number.
It may not be wonderful, or even wondrous, yet the turning over of another decade of this life makes for some serious reflection. Even eschewing the coincidental little deadlines I set for myself at a very sage 21 years of age (see
), Year Thirty holds some significance for me. It holds significance in the universal subconscious as well. Jesus is widely believed to have begun his ministry in earnest 'round about that year of his life. Hamlet is often interpreted to be just thirty when he begins contemplating his readiness. And, of course, there was that
that took the airwaves by storm for about a season and a half. My hope had been to celebrate my thirtieth year since kicking and screaming into this world in Italia, busking in
, Roma. As time inexorably jogs forward, however, the prospect of that trip grows slimmer and slimmer. Nigh anorexic. Leaving me with the question: What, then, can I do to celebrate whatever it is I am and do on that very special day?
I put it out to the universe. But it is not for this reason I 'blog at you today. Nor is it to point up the bizarre nature of an actor's schedule as it relates to his ever-patient friends (i.e., "Sure, I'll be in your wedding. That is, if I don't get a gig. Even if I get a gig, I'll try to get off, of course. Of course, if it's tech week or a performance there's nothing I can do. But count me in! Maybe..."). No, I am compelled to write today because of other people's birthdays, and the potential artistry in honoring them.
Consider all the people you've known in the course of your life. Consider not even everyone, but just those people you've held a conversation with more than once. There are probably a whole lot more than 365 at this point (not to presume too much upon the age of my [5] readers or anything). So there is the potential that every day of the year, someone you've known is celebrating his or her self; indeed, on some days, more than one is. How many people do you not speak to anymore, who are turning a year over at this moment? How many have you forgotten entirely who might be remembering you attending their sixth birthday, right now? And just what the hell is my point?
Well, I find it humbling to contemplate this. It reminds me that every day we make a choice to honor the people we've loved and who've loved us with our actions, or to not. UU's believe in the interconnectedness of all living things, and when it comes to other people, we're supposed to respect that particular interconnectedness even more. Similar to a bunch of actors on stage at a given moment, we all have to depend on each other for things to turn out right. It's frightening. It's awesome. We have to take it for granted somewhat just to get by, not panic or become mad with power. But every once in a while, it's good to be reminded how things really are.
You say it's your birthday? Well it's my birthday too; yeah. Happy birthday to you . . .
So You Want to Get a Divorce?
This will be a long post. I considered trying to figure out how to link a document online, then got distracted by my own fingernails. The following is a sort of study guide to matrimonial law I served up about a year ago to provide my replacements at my day job with what I hoped was entertaining background information on all they'd be involved with there, legally speaking. My day job has gotten very little attention on this here 'blog. Here, then, is the only time it will come to the forefront of subject matter, I promise. It's written as though speaking to a potential divorcee, but I use it to train the assistant in the hope it will endear them a bit to their demanding clients.
So, you want to get a divorce…?
So, you want to get a divorce? Well, the first thing you have to ask yourself is: Does my husband/wife feel the same way? It’s sort of like when you were contemplating marriage in the first place. (Remember those heady days?) You have to test the waters to see if you’re getting divorced alone or together. This will be important later. The first official thing you want to do (and this is where we come in) is:
CONSULT with a lawyer.
Like most fairly affluent people in the New York area, you’re not about to find a lawyer by surfing the web or cruising lawyer bars. No, you ask your friends for a recommendation. You ask your divorced friends, your accountant friends and your lawyer friends (ha ha), and eventually you get a recommendation. Let’s say it’s for a certain lawyer, Ms. Murgatrude Miggins, Esq. (henceforth “M&M”).
You call up and, because they’ve never heard of you before, they ask you who referred you. You are nervous, because hey, this is a lawyer’s office, and you don’t want anybody to know you’re getting divorced…but eventually the smooth-mannered assistant coaxes a name out of you, writes it down and eventually too, you speak to Murgatrude.
She tells you that she has to meet with you to really evaluate your case, and that this is called a “consultation,” the asking price for which is now $400. This sounds peachy-keen to you (as you are no doubt fairly affluent) and you set a date.
The day arrives, and you sit down with Ms. Miggins, Esq., and spill your innards about the situation. Assuming you feel good about your chances with M&M representing you, the next step involves two documents:
· Retainer Agreement
And
· Client’s Rights and Responsibilities
Retainer Agreement:
A five-page letter of almost entirely boilerplate text and printed on stationary, the retainer agreement is essentially a letter that lays out in some detail the relationship between M&M and her client. The information most usually changed involves the amount of the initial retainer payment, and of course the new client’s name and address wherever applicable.
Client’s Rights and Responsibilities:
A kind of acknowledgement form both the client and the attorney sign expressing an understanding of the various protections afforded a client by the State of New York. The assistant of M&M keeps copies already printed in the green-labeled form file at the base of the left-hand shelves.
You sign the retainer agreement and client’s rights and responsibilities and hand over your retainer payment, and walk out the door feeling very adult and responsible, though a bit more financially depleted. And you will be, immediately, because fast on your heels is the assistant crossing the street to M&M’s bank to deposit your retainer check. Afterwards though, he or she returns to the office and makes a new computer folder for you and an expanding file with your name on it, and likely six folders within labeled: Correspondence, Legal, Drafts, Net Worth / Financial, Retainer Agreement and Notes.
And hey, even if you don’t decide to retain M&M as your lawyer just then, for your $400—and at least an hour of your life—you get M&M’s notes from the session stapled together and filed alphabetically in an expanding file labeled Consults, located in the file drawer directly above the client files.
For those who do decide to continue, the adventure is just beginning!
PRELIMINARY WORK to secure your advantage.
So as we’ve established, you’re fairly affluent, but who wants to take chances with your money or property? There’s a possibility that this thing will come down to a fiscal bloodsport between you and your ex, and while you truly “just want him/her to be happy,” it doesn’t mean you should be condemned to live the rest of your life lonely in impoverished homelessness. If you were the main provider, you need to be prepared to protect some of your assets so they don’t go in entirety to supporting your ex and dependants in your former lifestyle. And if you weren’t the main provider of the family, you need to establish just how “weren’t” you were, and do so early in the process in order to get as much support as possible from your ex. To these ends, the document you need is a:
· Statement of Net Worth
A detailed form, to which your most recent tax returns are attached, which represents your metaphoric fiscal profile. The Net Worth Statement (henceforward “NWS”), as it is sometimes called, is divided into a basic outline of general life information, wage information, expenses, assets and liabilities. M&M usually gives you a blank NWS right out of the gate, and it is up to you to fill it out, but up to her assistant to get it saved into their database. If you are handed a paper copy, later her assistant will type it into the system, saved under your name. If you are emailed the form, just hopefully you’ll fill it out on your word processor and email it back, saving everyone a lot of effort and billable hours.
What else can I do to help myself out in this strange new land, you ask? Well, make sure you have copies of as much relevant financial information from you and your soon-to-be-ex’s life together, including tax returns, records of holdings, deeds, bills and statements. In addition, anything you can do to keep your new attorney on the case without upping your billable hours unnecessarily is great for you. Along these lines, it is definitely best for all concerned that you and your soon-to-be-ex have some kind of agreement about wanting to get divorced from the get-go. That’s not always possible, but it makes for an uncontested divorce, rather than a contested divorce.
Uncontested divorce — Oh sure, the love is gone, but that doesn’t mean we have to have the Supreme Court of the State of New York intervene to get anything done. We’ve talked it over, and it’s time to get a divorce. And listen: It’s not even like we don’t have spitfire argument over who gets what; it’s just that we can agree to disagree and let our lawyers do the negotiating. We’ll work this thing out, print up and sign an Agreement, file for divorce thereafter using a set of forms and documents collectively known as Uncontested Divorce Papers. And then we’ll be free to move on with our lives, having likely spent only what we paid in our respective retainer fees.
Contested divorce — I hate you. Oh, how I hate you. I hate you so much, I’m not even sure I want to give you the satisfaction of actually divorcing you. And I don’t care how many hours, dollars or tears it takes, I and my lawyer are going to make you suffer for whatever it was you’ve done to me. There’s going to be a Summons filed and served on you (or me, eventually), and after that motion upon motion: Affidavits and Affirmations, Orders, Stipulations and Statements, Notices of every shape and color, Requests for Judicial Intervention, Demands and Interrogatories, Subpoenas and Verified Complaints. It won’t end until we’ve spent all of each others’ money, or you’ve died of blood loss from all the paper cuts. Then, maybe, we’ll draft an epic Agreement, only to have to submit a Modification Agreement weeks later, and when the dust finally settles all that will be left to hear is our lawyers bickering over which of them should have to draft and file the final Divorce Papers.
An UNCONTESTED DIVORCE: tricky, but reasonably civil.
Your uncontested divorce may involve preparing and filing some of the papers more commonly associated with a contested divorce, in which case the first thing to be filed would be a Summons, in order to get the case registered and acknowledged by the Powers That Be. Then you’d proceed to whatever you needed. But chances are, unless there are discrepancies in your ex’s NWS or there’s a general feeling of mistrust about the whole process, it will just be document production and negotiation regarding child support and maintenance payments, real estate and equitable distribution of property from here until you have a final draft of your Agreement.
· Agreements
They go by many names—Agreement, Settlement Agreement, Stipulation of Settlement and Agreement—but essentially they are all about two crazy kids coming to a common (and legally binding) resolution about how they’ll divide and live their separate lives. It’s usually a pretty lengthy document, anywhere from 10 to 80 pages, and divided into different titled “articles.” It does not get a back (blue) like every other legal document we deal with.
Most of the work behind an Agreement is done by the lawyers themselves in consultation with their clients and negotiation with one another, either telephonically or in meetings with or without their clients. As a client, you just have to know what you will and won’t accept in a deal, communicate that clearly with your attorney and be readily available to him or her when they need to ask you questions, procure documentation from you or send you a draft for your approval. The rest is the assistant’s domain, just making sure the calls get through and the changes get made to the document in a way that doesn’t sabotage the rest of its numbering and formatting.
And then bing! Bang! Boom! It’s done. You’ve settled the matter, everyone has signed with a notary (M&M) present and the copy of the Agreement to be sent to the Court has both of your initials on every page and next to any handwritten changes made to the text. Pop the bubbly and go spend the night with your new/old girl/boy friend, right? Well, not quite, I’m afraid. Before you’re officially divorced, there is still the dread:
· Uncontested Divorce Papers (UDPs)
Fortunately for you, these papers require little-to-no additional input from you, as most of the information in them has been determined from information you’ve already shared and the very Agreement you finally reached. Unfortunately for you, these “papers” are numerous (anywhere from 12 to 18, depending on whether children are involved) and when they are actually filed is up to the whimsy of the attorneys involved…and they’re not really getting any more money from you. So pester them. Bug them. Know who’s doing what and how. Here for you is a list in no particular order of everything that goes into a set of UDPs:
· Note of Issue
· Notice of Settlement and Proposed Findings of Fact
· Notice of Settlement and Proposed Judgment of Divorce
· Plaintiff’s Sworn Statement of Removal of Barriers to Remarriage
· Defendant’s Sworn Statement of Removal of Barriers to Remarriage
· Verified Complaint
· Affidavit of Plaintiff
· Affidavit of Defendant
· Affirmation of Regularity by Attorney
· Certificate of Dissolution
· Original Settlement Agreement
· Request for Judicial Intervention
· Plaintiff’s Affidavit of Facts and of Children’s Residence *
· Qualified Medical Child Support Order *
· Child Support Summary Form *
· Self-Addressed Stamped Form Postcard
* – Not included where parties have no children as a result of marriage.
Each document (not forms, though) gets its own back, and each has to be signed by somebody, and conform all their language between them and the other papers and the Agreement, and certain of them need what’s known as an Affidavit of Service attached to them, and probably at least three copies of the entire set need to be produced. In other words, it’s a lot of intricate, exacting, boring work that no one wants to do and most will procrastinate endlessly on. And yet, you’re not actually divorced until these UDPs are not only produced but filed properly with and approved by the Court.
That having been done, you’re done! Congratulations! You may now court whomever you choose, and the whole world can know about it! Oh, wait. You say your once-significant other physically abused you and you want money for damages? Or that said other has moved out and won’t talk to you, even about the sweet relief of divorce? Oh. Well then, what you need and will get is:
A CONTESTED DIVORCE: twice the money, half the results.
Oh bejeezums; you went and got yourself in a sticky spot, didn’t you? How could anyone involve themselves in a relationship that could go oh-so-wrong, and once having done so, how could said hypothetical anyone not work to remove themselves from such a situation sooner? Well, if difficult questions could be listed as assets on your NWS, you would certainly be rich as Croesus. Sadly, such is not the case. There are most likely few answers for you, either, but following are some types of legal documentation you should know, as you are likely also to need them in the very near future.
· Summons (With Notice)
This is what sets the ball in motion in terms of your matrimonial action. When one files a Summons, one also needs to fill out two forms, which your helpful assistant has copies of in his or her forms file, located under the left-hand set of shelves in his or her office. The first is a plain old piece of paper, called an Index # Cover Sheet. The second is printed on carbon paper, and is dubbed an Index # Purchase Form. Additionally, you will need a check for $210 (as of 8/05) made out to the appropriate County Clerk with whom the Summons will be filed. Once it’s filed and the Index # is purchased, every copy of the Summons must be standardized with the Index # and date of its purchase.
Then it gets really exciting. The Summons must be served upon the other party for the action to get active. This is either done via a service provider or by hand, by the assistant. But the assistant is rarely enlisted, and of course may refuse this task. This leads us to our next enthralling, all-purpose legal document.
· Affidavits
Simply put, this is the basic document upon which all proof and argument in matrimonial law is established. It’s used for anything voiced in the first-person that’s not “spoken” by a lawyer. That means that if it’s a client’s, assistant’s or even a messenger’s, it’s said in an Affidavit. This also means there are something of an endless variety of the things. Here are some examples:
Affidavit of Service (AoS)
This is the Affidavit an assistant will likely use the most. It also looks completely unlike any other Affidavit, lacking in the usual case heading and numbered-paragraph format. Often, you will find your attorney’s assistant’s name on your AoS. This is because the purpose of an AoS is to attach it to another legal document, one which you’ve sent to the adversary. The AoS is in essence a testimony of the sender, saying, “Yes, boy-howdy, I sure did send that Order to Show Cause to this attorney at this address by mail/messenger/FedEx/personal service/facsimile/trans-meditative state.” Because of the variety of methods of sending said AoS…es, there are also different forms of AoS for each method of delivery.
Affidavit of Plaintiff, or Plaintiff’s Affidavit (or Defendant’s, etc.)
This follows the basic format of every other Affidavit you might run into. It has the standard heading, with case title, Index #, Court and County, and the rest of the document is written in the first-person and formatted with numbered paragraphs, with a signature line at the end for the “author.” You get yourself an affidavit one of two ways. Either your attorney bases it on the notes he or she has taken and drafts it him/herself and submits it for your approval, or he or she bases it on a narrative they’ve asked you to write for them about the ordeals pertinent to the case. The best way to scribe such a narrative is to keep it factual and concise, but not without emotion where appropriate, and to email it so the language can easily be cut and pasted into your Affidavit. This saves everyone time and effort.
The rest of the types of Affidavits are fairly well explained by their titles, and all generally follow this format. Some examples:
Affidavit of Facts and Children’s Residence
Affidavit in Support of Motion
Reply Affidavit
There is a document that usually goes with any Affidavit coming from a client such as yourself, and it is known as an…
· Affirmation
This comes from your attorney, and is almost a carbon copy of the appurtenant Affidavit, only it’s in the “voice” of your attorney instead of you and cites more legal language and cases at certain points. It looks virtually the same; only the title and specific language differ. It’s important that this document match, in sum and substance, every point you have to make in your Affidavit. Obviously, it’s not necessary in the case of AoSes and the like.
· Orders
This is typically quite a short document (how novel) and is a bit like doing the typing for whichever Judge is presiding over your case. In essence, it is what you want the Court to sign off on, to make happen for you. It is usually backed up by an Affidavit, an Affirmation and some Exhibits, all stapled into one back and collectively referred to as an Order to Show Cause (OSC). Orders have a special text in the upper-left corner of the first page designating the particular Court address and room, and the signature line is for the Judge. Additionally, once the lawyer gets a signed Order back from Court, the assistant often has to copy the pages that are amended and signed by the Judge and attach them to any office copies of the Order.
· Stipulations
Similar to the Affidavit, this is an all-purpose document used when asking for a change of circumstance or basically anything more minor than an actual Court Order. It is often comparable to a “mini-Agreement,” in that it is something which both parties (hopefully) sign in agreement of. Examples include:
Stipulation (plain ol’)
Stipulation Extending Time to Serve Complaint
· Statements
Exactly as it sounds, a simple statement of fact(s). The NWS is such a document, although highly formatted. Usually Statements look rather like Affidavits…only they’re Statements.
· Notices
As it sounds, a document making known certain facts or occurrences in a given case. A Notice of Entry announces to all concerned when a particular document was filed in Court (these are attached to the Judgment of Divorce, and Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, in the UDPs), and a Notice of No Necessity announces any waiving of normally procedural requirement from the other side.
· Requests for Judicial Intervention
This is when the S. H.’s the F. in a big way. It is more a form than a document, though it is often accompanied by an Affidavit of some sort explaining the situation in greater detail. This document is used to get the Court’s attention in deciding something (said something often being a sort of punishment one attorney wants to inflict on the other for their bad conduct or tardiness) that the lawyers themselves can’t resolve and aren’t willing to negotiate any longer. This form is also filed with UDPs, in that it’s simply procedural when filing papers that require immediate decision.
· Demand for Production of Documents and Interrogatories
These are often directly related to the NWS, in that they’re used when your attorney has reason to suspect that your ex may have something to hide in terms of his or her financial status. These are a matched pair of rather lengthy documents that do what they say. The first demands very specific financial records, the second makes general inquiries into financial status and development. They are used in determining support and maintenance issues on both sides. The corollary to them are Responses to same, which are made far easier when the adversary is willing to email the documents to your attorney, because then his or her assistant just has to copy and paste the demands and inquiries into a new document and insert the answers provided by said attorney.
· Subpoenas
A document more commonly used in connection with the accused and witnesses in a criminal case, Subpoenas are nevertheless occasionally needed in matrimonial affairs. Generally a Subpoena is used to call a person or business entity in to take testimony from, either in the Court or in one of the attorney’s offices. This is another document for which service will be needed, and that service will undoubtedly be provided by an agency accustomed to handling such things, as it is a highly popular hobby in New York to attempt to avoid service of a subpoena.
· Verified Complaints
Yet another document included in UDPs, a Verified Complaint is used in that regard to list very simply the causes justifying a Judgment of Divorce and concisely state what relief is being sought for those reasons. In other contexts, a Verified Complaint can be used simply to get a complaint the party has on record with the Court, regarding anything from excessive lying to physical abuse.