New York Law Journal, December 11, 2025 —
For the lawyers out there, when you graduated law school, did you know what the terms “with prejudice” or “without prejudice” meant? I did not.
I do recall reading cases on “res judicata” and “collateral estoppel” in Civil Procedure class; however, both concepts were taught in such an amorphous manner it was hard to understand what they meant, in practice.
The Honorable Aaron D. Maslow’s recent decision in M.H. v. S.A., 2025 NY Slip Op 51713(U) (Sup. Ct., Kings Cty. 2025) explains all of these concepts in a manner that provides clarity. The decision also addresses New York City’s Gender-Motivated Violence Act (GMVA), which to my mind is relevant to the practice of divorce law.
In M.H., the parties started a romantic relationship in 2008. They began living together in 2010 and registered as domestic partners. They share one child born in 2013.
The plaintiff-mother alleged that the defendant-father engaged in “escalating controlling and abusive behavior” including “yelling, blocking her movements, and physically restraining her.” In one instance, the mother alleged that the father “screamed at her until she lost consciousness” and that he “monitored her communications” and “accused her of ‘whoring around’ when she was with her male friends.”
After their child was born, the parties relocated from New York to Massachusetts where they both worked for MIT. There, the mother alleged that the father “controlled their joint finances, threatened her about losing her job, and later defunded her position.”
The decision recounts several other alleged incidents of abuse, in multiple states, including one incident where the father allegedly “dragged their child by the hood of a jacket” in March 2016, followed by pushing the mother onto a bed and choking her in December 2016, and then another incident in June 2018 when the father allegedly confronted the mother “about a custody agreement and physically restrained her when she refused to sign it.”