Katie Holmes's decision to file for divorce from Tom Cruise in New York could lead to a legal showdown: Lawyer

Highlights

• A prominent US divorce lawyer has said that Katie Holmes's decision to file for divorce from Tom Cruise in New York could lead to a legal showdown.
• Read: Tom Cruise "Deeply saddened" by divorce
• Her move will likely lead to litigation to bring it back to California - where rules about how assets are split and divorces managed are more lenient, according to Santa Monica lawyer Michael Kelly.
• "Where Katie Holmes filed means it automatically sets up a jurisdictional dispute between the lawyers in New York and the lawyers in California," said Kelly, who is not involved with the case.
• "And there's no question that California is the home state," he added.
• Read: Katie Holmes files for divorce from Tom Cruise citing "irreconciliable differences"
• Kelly called a filing in New York a "tactical move" that likely was intended to take advantage of the state's "comparative fault" legal system for handling divorces - different from California's "no-fault" system.
• According to Kelly, comparative fault means a judge in New York can attribute fault for the break-up of a divorce and can handle the distribution of money.
• However, he said the couple's prenuptial agreement likely dictated that any divorce would fall under California law - and that because the number of lawyers who handle celebrity divorces is small, he'd heard details about it.
• "I understood that Katie Holmes was going to get three million dollars a year for the time that she spent with him, per year. That's not a guarantee," he said.
• "You're going to have an airtight prenup by whoever was the lawyer that represented Tom Cruise," he added. One key issue is who will get custody of the couple's 6-year-old daughter Suri.
• "I heard just a bit ago that Katie Holmes is going to try for primary physical custody or sole physical custody," Kelly said, adding that "there's no way that's going to happen".
• Read: Katie Holmes' parents are reportedly sad she has split from Tom Cruise
• According to him, the primary issue is what's in the best interests of the child - and that to break that, a litigant would have to show aberrant or dangerous or significantly callous behaviour towards the child by the other parent.
• Kelly said the couple likely faced one of the major issues any celebrity couple faces: inconsistent and jammed schedules that kept them apart more than they were together.
• Did this magazine cover send Katie Holmes over the edge?
• "Time together is one of the greatest glues that you'll ever see in that kind of a deal. And their variety and inconsistent shooting schedules may have kept them apart enough to tear the fabric," he said.
• Cruise and Holmes married in 2006 after a whirlwind love affair.
• He proposed at the Eiffel Tower and their wedding was held at a 15th century Italian castle.
• Holmes filed for divorce on Thursday, ending her first marriage.
• This will be Cruise's third divorce. He was previously married to actresses Mimi Rogers and Nicole Kidman, with whom he has two children.
• Read: The end for Tom and Katie, but should we be surprised?
• Holmes, who is 33, rose to fame on the teen soap Dawson's Creek.
• She went on to appear in Batman Begins and earned rave reviews for her roles in independent films such as 2003's Pieces of April and 2005's Thank You for Smoking.
• She took a break after giving birth to Suri in April, 2006, and marrying Cruise in November.
• Cruise, who turns 50 on Tuesday, won strong review for his latest role, as an Axl Rose-style rock star in Rock of Ages - though not corresponding box-office results.
• Read: Tom Cruise wanted to film Rock Of Ages for family
• His most recent Mission Impossible instalment, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, has made more than 690 million (m) US dollars worldwide.