A House In The Hamptons Is Not A Home

The New York Appellate Division for the Second Judicial Department has held that a divorcing couple’s Hamptons retreat was not a residence for venue purposes when the wife sheltered there with her pregnant immunocompromised daughter during the pandemic

This case presents two issues relating to the parties’ residence: (1) whether the parties’ seasonal use of the Southampton house on weekends prior to March 2020 made them residents of Suffolk County; and (2) whether the defendant’s retreat to the Southampton house at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic made her a resident of Suffolk County. We conclude that neither of these things made the parties residents of Suffolk County.

The defendant clearly established that the parties primarily resided in New York County. The defendant submitted, among other things, copies of: the parties’ income tax returns, listing their address in New York County as their residence and reflecting their payment of New York City income taxes; the defendant’s voter registration showing that she was registered to vote in New York County; the defendant’s driver license listing her address in New York County; motor vehicle records showing that the parties’ cars were all registered in New York City or were in the process of having the registration transferred from New Jersey to New York City; an email from the plaintiff to the parties’ art insurance carrier stating that the parties did not have any intention of adding any art to the Southampton house; and bank statements listing the Beresford apartment and the plaintiff’s Manhattan office as the parties’ addresses.

Although a person may have more than one residence, as in, for example, “a joint custody situation or other shared living arrangement” (Yaniveth R. v LTD Realty Co., 27 NY3d at 194), contrary to the plaintiff’s contention, the defendant demonstrated that neither party resided in Suffolk County at the time of the commencement of the action.

The plaintiff husband had initiated the divorce in Suffolk County.

The court here concluded that the trial court improperly found venue there and granted defendant wife’s motion to transfer the matter to New York County.

The background

The parties met while attending Columbia Law School and were married in 1985. After graduating law school, they moved to New Jersey, where they raised their three daughters. The defendant ultimately became a Superior Court Judge in Newark, while the plaintiff is a real estate developer with an office in Manhattan as well as a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the chairman of that museum’s Acquisitions Committee.

Beginning in the late 1990s, the parties rented an apartment on the Upper West Side as a pied-a-terre. In 2010, the parties purchased an apartment at the Beresford, located at 81st Street and Central Park West in Manhattan.

The split and the aforementioned art collection

According to the defendant, after the parties separated in April 2019, the plaintiff began renting an apartment near East 79th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The parties sold their New Jersey residence in 2020. The entirety of the parties collection of Old Master paintings, insured at $177 million, hangs at the Beresford apartment or the plaintiff’s apartment in New York City, except for one painting that has been consigned for auction.

Artnet News covered the consignment sale.

The aforementioned house in the Hamptons.

Meanwhile, in 2012, the parties purchased property in Southampton. In 2016, the parties demolished the existing house on the property and built a new house that cost more than $4 million. During a portion of the construction, the parties rented another house in Southampton.

According to the defendant, the parties only used the Southampton house for summer weekends, with limited exceptions.

Key

Here, although the defendant retreated to the Southampton house in March 2020, it is undisputed that the defendant planned only to stay there temporarily to assist her immunocompromised daughter and newborn grandchild when the COVID-19 pandemic was at its zenith in New York City. Under the circumstances of this case, the defendant did not “have the bona fide intent to retain [Suffolk County] as a residence with at least some degree of permanency”

(Mike Frisch)