Vikki Ziegler

Last updated
Vikki Ziegler
Born
New York City
EducationJD
Alma mater Quinnipiac University School of Law
University of Rhode Island
Occupation(s)Divorce attorney and author
WorksThe Pre-marital Planner: A Complete Legal Guide to a Perfect Marriage
Television Untying the Knot
Board member of Supreme Court of New Jersey to the District XI Ethics Committee for Passaic County
AwardsOutstanding Podcast award from the 41st Annual Gracie Awards

Vikki Ziegler is an American lawyer and author. Her book The Pre-marital Planner: A Complete Legal Guide to a Perfect Marriage was published in 2012, and from 2014 to 2016 she was the focus of the reality television show Untying the Knot . She practices matrimonial law and is a founding partner in the firm Ziegler and Zemsky LLC. As a business person, she has founded several divorce related websites.

Contents

Early life

Vikki Ziegler was born in Manhattan and raised in Wayne, New Jersey by South African parents. Ziegler's parents divorced in 1985 when she was twelve years old, and reportedly, she argued for (and convinced) her parents to seek joint custody during the proceedings. The experience gave her the motivation to become a divorce attorney herself when she became an adult. She attended the Gloria Frances School of Performing Arts and graduated from Wayne Hills High School in 1990. She worked as a fashion model while attending university, and graduated from the University of Rhode Island, where she studied Spanish, Sociology, and Political Science, as well as Quinnipiac University School of Law, after first attending Bridgeport Law. Following law school, she clerked for Justice Michael A. Diamond of the Family Division of the Superior Court in Passaic County. [1] [2] [3] [4]

As a lawyer, Ziegler worked for Walder, Hayden & Brogan during the mid-2000s, [1] where among other cases she was the attorney for the divorce of Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Michael Strahan. [5] Ziegler is now a founding partner and attorney with the firm Ziegler and Zemsky, a law firm specializing in marital law. [6] She is also an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School, where she teaches about prenuptial agreements [7] and same-sex marriage. [8] Ziegler is barred in New York, New Jersey, and Washington D.C. [9] She was also appointed to the Supreme Court of New Jersey to the District XI Ethics Committee for Passaic County. [10]

Television

Early in her career she appeared as a commentator on E!, [11] MSNBC, [12] CNN, Fox Business Network, and Fox News during discussions of celebrity divorce cases. [1] She has also appeared on daytime television shows such as Dr. Drew [13] and The Wendy Williams Show , [3] [14] as well as the 30 for 30 film "Broke" on ESPN. [9] In 2014 she began hosting the Bravo reality television show Untying the Knot. [2] The six half-hour episodes track Ziegler handling divorce cases, and includes her consultations with appraisal experts Mark and Michael Millea when items require auctioning. [3] The series was renewed in November 2014, and expanded to a full hour format for the second season. [15]

Writings

In 2008, she began work on a guide for divorce entitled The All Star Divorce. [1] She then published the book The Pre-marital Planner: A Complete Legal Guide to a Perfect Marriage in 2012, [8] [16] which includes the discussion of how to approach a prenuptial agreement as a couple before marriage. [17] [18] The All Star Divorce is slated to be her second non-fiction book. [9]

Other businesses

Ziegler is the founded of DivorceDating.com, a match-making website for divorcees, and a celebrity gossip website HookupsAndBreakups.com. Both were developed as a part of an effort to life "the stigma of divorce". [1] She is also the creator of the "Lavish by Vikki Ziegler" brand of hair perfume. [19]

Recognition

Ziegler was named one of the 40 lawyers under 40 by the New Jersey Law Journal in 2006. [1] In 2016 she received the Outstanding Podcast award at the 41st Annual Gracie Award. [20]

Related Research Articles

Divorce is the process of terminating a marriage or marital union. Divorce usually entails the canceling or reorganizing of the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage, thus dissolving the bonds of matrimony between a married couple under the rule of law of the particular country or state. It can be said to be a legal dissolution of a marriage by a court or other competent body. It is the legal process of ending a marriage.

Alimony, also called aliment (Scotland), maintenance, spousal support and spouse maintenance (Australia), is a legal obligation on a person to provide financial support to their spouse before or after marital separation or divorce. The obligation arises from the divorce law or family law of each country. In most jurisdictions, it is distinct from child support, where, after divorce, one parent is required to contribute to the support of their children by paying money to the child's other parent or guardian.

Legal separation is a legal process by which a married couple may formalize a de facto separation while remaining legally married. A legal separation is granted in the form of a court order. In cases where children are involved, a court order of legal separation often makes child custody arrangements, specifying sole custody or shared parenting, as well as child support. Some couples obtain a legal separation as an alternative to a divorce, based on moral or religious objections to divorce.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Little Falls, New Jersey</span> Township in Passaic County, New Jersey, United States

Little Falls is a township in Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The township was named for a waterfall on the Passaic River at a dam near Beattie Mill.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wayne, New Jersey</span> Township in Passaic County, New Jersey, United States

Wayne is a township in Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Home to William Paterson University and located less than 20 miles (32 km) from Midtown Manhattan, the township is a bedroom suburb of New York City and regional commercial hub of North Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the township's population was 54,838, an increase of 121 (+0.2%) from the 2010 census count of 54,717, which in turn reflected an increase of 648 (+1.2%) from the 54,069 counted in the 2000 census.

A prenuptial agreement, antenuptial agreement, or premarital agreement is a written contract entered into by a couple before marriage or a civil union that enables them to select and control many of the legal rights they acquire upon marrying, and what happens when their marriage eventually ends by death or divorce. Couples enter into a written prenuptial agreement to supersede many of the default marital laws that would otherwise apply in the event of divorce, such as the laws that govern the division of property, retirement benefits, savings, and the right to seek alimony with agreed-upon terms that provide certainty and clarify their marital rights. A premarital agreement may also contain waivers of a surviving spouse's right to claim an elective share of the estate of the deceased spouse.

Matrimonial regimes, or marital property systems, are systems of property ownership between spouses providing for the creation or absence of a marital estate and if created, what properties are included in that estate, how and by whom it is managed, and how it will be divided and inherited at the end of the marriage. Matrimonial regimes are applied either by operation of law or by way of prenuptial agreement in civil-law countries, and depend on the lex domicilii of the spouses at the time of or immediately following the wedding..

An agunah is a Jewish woman who is stuck in her religious marriage as determined by halakha. The classic case of this is a man who has left on a journey and has not returned, or has gone into battle and is missing in action. It is used as a borrowed term to refer to a woman whose husband refuses, or is unable, to grant her a divorce.

Covenant marriage is a legally distinct kind of marriage in three states of the United States, in which the marrying spouses agree to obtain pre-marital counseling and accept more limited grounds for later seeking divorce. Louisiana became the first state to pass a covenant marriage law in 1997; shortly afterwards, Arkansas and Arizona followed suit. Since its inception, very few couples in those states have married under covenant marriage law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Get (divorce document)</span> Divorce document in Judaism

A get, ghet, or gett is a document in Jewish religious law which effectuates a divorce between a Jewish couple. The term is also used to refer to the divorce itself. The get is a 12-line document written in Aramaic. The requirements for a get include that the document be presented by a husband to his wife. The essential part of the get is a very short declaration: "You are hereby permitted to all men". The effect of the get is to free the woman from the marriage, and consequently she is free to marry another and that the laws of adultery no longer apply. The get also returns to the wife the legal rights that a husband held in regard to her.

Stuart Jeff Rabner is the chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. He served as New Jersey Attorney General, chief counsel to Governor Jon Corzine, and as a federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey.

The Jewish prenuptial agreement has been developed in recent times with the stated intent of keeping the Jewish woman from becoming an agunah in cases where the husband refuses to grant her a get. Without such an agreement, Jewish marriages cannot be dissolved without the consent and cooperation of both spouses. This new type of prenuptial agreement makes provisions for the possibility of divorce. By setting up rules prior to the marriage in the form of a contract, both spouses have an interest to negotiate a divorce in a dignified manner, and get-refusal is avoided.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erika Jayne</span> American singer, television personality (born 1971)

Erika Girardi, known professionally as Erika Jayne, is an American singer, television personality, and actress.

Divorce in the United States is a legal process in which a judge or other authority dissolves the marriage existing between two persons. Divorce restores the persons to the status of being single and permits them to marry other individuals. In the United States, marriage and divorce fall under the jurisdiction of state governments, not the federal government.

Carla A. Katz served as president of Local 1034 of the Communications Workers of America from 1999 until 2008, representing 16,000 public and private sector workers in the state of New Jersey. Katz is currently full-time faculty at Rutgers University and an attorney with the firm of Cohen, Placitella and Roth in Red Bank, New Jersey.

A postnuptial agreement is a written agreement executed after a couple gets married, or have entered a civil union, to settle the couple's affairs and assets in the event of a separation or divorce. It may be "notarized" or acknowledged and may be the subject of the statute of frauds. Like the contents of a prenuptial agreement, provisions vary widely but commonly includes provisions for division of property and spousal support in the event of divorce, death of one of the spouses, or breakup of marriage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Teresa Giudice</span> American television personality

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Divorce law in Sweden</span>

Divorce law in Sweden concerns the dissolution of marriage, child support, alimony, custody and the division of property. Divorce restores the status of married people to individuals, leaving them free to remarry. The divorce laws in Sweden are known to be considerably liberal compared to other jurisdictions.

<i>Untying the Knot</i> American reality television series

Untying the Knot is an American reality television series that premiered June 4, 2014, and airs on Bravo. The series follows the life of Vikki Ziegler, a divorce mediator. Ziegler mediates, advises and divides divorcing couples' assets out of court. Mark and Michael Millea work with Ziegler in appraising items, they are featured regularly in the series.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Vikki Ziegler". NJ.com. 22 June 2008.
  2. 1 2 Winters, Debra. "Former Wayne, current Little Falls resident helps couples 'untie the knot' on Bravo". North Jersey News.
  3. 1 2 3 ROHAN, VIRGINIA. "North Jersey attorney Vikki Ziegler helps couples divorce on new Bravo show". North Jersey News.
  4. ↑ "Vikki Ziegler: Understanding Why She's the 'Legal' Hustler". Parle Magazine. December 2012.
  5. ↑ "Strahan's ex to auction Montclair mansion". NJ.com. 2 May 2007.
  6. ↑ Carmichael, Cody (20 August 2016). "The Top Ten Richest Lawyers of 2017 - The Gazette Review". Gazette Review.
  7. ↑ "Bravo's "Untying the Knot" Premieres Wednesday, June 4". Comcast Spotlight.
  8. 1 2 "'Untying the Knot': New reality show stars NJ divorce attorney". NJ.com. 8 May 2014.
  9. 1 2 3 "Vikki Ziegler - Understanding Why She's The 'Legal' Hustler - Parle Magazine — The Online Voice of Urban Entertainment". Parle Magazine. 13 December 2012.
  10. ↑ "Volunteers in Attorney Ethics System Conclude Terms of Service". New Jersey State Judiciary.
  11. ↑ "Janet Jackson and Wissam al Mana Split: What's at Stake?". E!. 11 April 2017.
  12. ↑ "Divorce Decisions". MSNBC.
  13. ↑ "Breakup broker: Bravo's 'Untying the Knot' stars Livingston divorce lawyer". NJ.com. 3 June 2014.
  14. ↑ Stockly, Ed (14 December 2016). "Thursday's TV highlights: 'The Big Bang Theory' on CBS". LA Times.
  15. ↑ Team, The Deadline (21 November 2014). "Bravo Renews 'Untying The Knot' For Second Season". Deadline.
  16. ↑ Shattuck, Kathryn (4 June 2014). "What's on Wednesday". The New York Times .
  17. ↑ Carol Pepper; Camilla Webster (2012). The Seven Pearls of Financial Wisdom: A Woman's Guide to Enjoying Wealth and Power. St. Martin's Press. ISBN   978-1-250-00832-9.
  18. ↑ "Pre-Marital Planning for Newly Engaged Couples". CBS. January 2, 2013.
  19. ↑ "Vikki Ziegler of 'Untying the Knot' Making Hair Perfume". 2 Paragraphs.
  20. ↑ "Ridgefield Playhouse to host event for women". News times. 16 August 2016.
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