New York Matrimonial Vocational Expert Services

Vocational experts are regularly retained in New York matrimonial matters to evaluate a spouse's earning capacity for maintenance (alimony) purposes. Matrimonial actions proceed in the Supreme Court, which the court system's divorce page names as the only court that handles divorce cases, with the papers filed in the county where either spouse now lives, and Family Court hears support matters; New York's state page sets out the Supreme, Family and Surrogate's Court locations for the core counties. The dispute the assessment answers is not what a spouse earns at the moment but what he or she could earn, and it answers in two parts. The first is employability: given the spouse's schooling, training, work record and any medical limit on work, is there work the spouse can get and keep? The second is earning potential: what does that work pay? The court receives an earning capacity it can weigh against the maintenance claim whether the spouse has left the workforce, is employed beneath what that background supports, or is preparing to go back to work.

An engagement begins with the conflict check and a scope that says whether the assessment covers one or both spouses, since that governs which records are collected and who is interviewed. Three kinds of record matter: education records, from transcripts to training certificates; employment records, the positions held and what they paid; and financial records, together with whatever medical records document a limit on work. The interview, and standardized testing where it adds something, document the spouse's skills, aptitudes and history. The labor market survey comes next, with the earning capacity analysis, both run for the spouse's own labor market; the report sets out the method and the opinions for the maintenance determination, and the expert testifies at deposition and trial on the court's schedule.

A court cannot weigh an earning capacity imputed to a spouse that it cannot examine, so the assessment rests on published data. It matches the spouse's schooling, training and work record to the occupations that background opens, then prices each of them with the wages the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics series reports for the spouse's area and tests each against the Local Area Unemployment Statistics unemployment rate for that area, which shows whether the work is there to be had. On this site thirteen New York city pages carry a metropolitan-area record, among them the New York City and Brooklyn pages and the Buffalo and Albany pages, and each shows the figures of its own area while the state's other city pages show statewide figures; the assessment itself takes its figures from the area where the spouse lives and works, and when the spouse's work record belongs to a different labor market it explains which area it drew on and why. The report keeps two numbers apart, the wage of the position the spouse held and what the positions open to the spouse would pay, so that the court has both numbers and knows where each came from.

The methodology does not change with the retaining party. KWVRS accepts matrimonial engagements from either spouse's counsel, the evaluation may be of either spouse, and the opinion is neutral whichever party retains it. The same records are read, the same occupational classification systems are applied and the same published wage series are cited in every engagement, which lets an opposing expert rerun the analysis and argue with its conclusions rather than its inputs, and the conclusion can be that the spouse already earns at or above capacity. The report is arranged to the disclosure requirements of the forum, and attorneys confirm which rule governs their own case. KWVRS prepares its New York matrimonial assessments at the Hackensack, New Jersey headquarters.