Category: Families

Staying together for the sake of the bills: Part 2, living with it

30 January, 2009 (10:18) | Configuration, Families, Housing, Rental, Tenure, US News | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]
 

As we saw yesterday, using some slice-of-life divorce drama from The New York Times, divorce not only ends a legal entity (the marital estate), it requires division of the assets into two independent clusters.
 

Each of us gets half of these assets
 
Dividing the marital union destroys economic value, both in transaction costs [...]

Staying together for the sake of the bills: Part 1, coming apart

29 January, 2009 (10:59) | Configuration, Families, Housing, Rental, Tenure, US News | No comments

Homes are great when we’re sessile, but when we’re mobile, the equity is a millstone – too valuable to abandon without a fight, yet incredibly difficult to liquefy, as illustrated in this revealing slice-of-life divorce drama from The New York Times:
 
When Marci Needle and her husband began to contemplate divorce in June, they thought [...]

Quiet enjoyment

1 October, 2008 (08:26) | Demographics, Families, Legal, New York City, Rent control, Rental, Tenure | 1 comment

Buried in the typical apartment lease is the resident’s right to ‘quiet enjoyment’ of the premises.  While it doesn’t specifically mean noise (rather, it refers to undisturbed occupancy), as anyone who’s lived in an apartment complex knows, ‘quiet’ is often a precondition to ‘enjoyment.’ 
 

I’m not enjoying your taste in music
 
Noise travels, and it cannot be [...]