A 2010 decision in a matrimonial action in Kings, Supreme, Ms. Schaffer secured a personal injury judgment of nearly $1 million for the wife who was a victim of domestic violence. In M.E. v. C.N., Ms. Schaffer successfully argued not only that her client should be divorced on grounds of cruelty and obtain 100 percent distribution of the marital assets due to her husband’s serious domestic violence against her, but that she should also receive compensatory and punitive damages. The Court agreed and awarded her the residence, the entirety of her deferred compensation, $18,150 in lost wages; $400,000 in pain and suffering; and, $500,000 in punitive damages.

Twelve years after another attorney submitted an uncontested divorce for a wife, and both the attorney and client assumed that the divorce judgment had been granted— but it hadn’t! The client subsquently remarried. Ms. Schaffer was able to obtain a divorce judgment nunc pro tunc— retroactive to the date the papers were originally submitted to the matrimonial clerk.

After the custodial mother tried— with no prior notice to the father— to take the parties’ eight year old son out of the country to live with her, so that she could attend a foreign medical school, Ms. Schaffer successfully negotiated a change in custody to her client, the father.

In a protracted matrimonial proceeding, Ms. Schaffer successfully moved for both a default judgment (after the defendant failed to answer the complaint), and an order precluding the defendant from submitting evidence (after he repeatedly failed to respond to discovery requests), prompting an advantageous settlement of the financial aspects of the divorce for her client.