NO BRAINER
By: Michael H. Gora
Q: I am in the process of getting divorced from a cop after an eighteen year marriage. He has a good salary, I don’t. He has a pension plan, all saved during the marriage, I don’t. He can afford to pay me some alimony and child support, he won’t.
I know he won’t because we were at the office of the mediator in the courthouse, you know the cheaper kind and, after two hours he walked out because he refused to agree to any reasonable settlement, taking the position that since he earned it all was his.
He said that our legislature was going to ban permanent alimony next year, and if he did not agree to alimony in a contract he would be able to get out of a judge ordered permanent alimony after the new legislation passes.
Is he correct? Is our Republican legislature continuing the “War on Women” that I heard about during the presidential campaign?
A: Your cop seems to be a little right and a lot wrong. As to his wish to keep all of the marital assets for himself because he “earned it” he has no chance of success. The equitable distribution statute is virtually bullet proof when it comes to equally splitting marital assets that is anything accumulated during the marriage as the result of marital labor and savings. So far the legislature is not messing with that concept.
On the other hand he appears to be right about the suggested demise of periodic “permanent” alimony. Under the proposed new statute a judge would not be able to award permanent periodic alimony but will have the power to grant “durational” alimony for a number of years equal to or less than the length of the marriage after the first seven years of marriage.
Additionally, the proposed new statute proposes a right granted to anyone who was divorced within two years before the passage of the legislation to go back to court to change the alimony plan from permanent to durational or less.
There is a quirk in that process: (1) if the permanent periodic alimony is agreed to in a marital settlement agreement, a contract, it is unlikely that a court could set it aside due to the constitutional protection granted to contract rights, but (2) if the permanent award came after a trial and judgment there would be no bar to the application of the proposed new statute.
In years of practice I have never met a man who wanted to give his wife alimony, of any kind. Apparently there were a couple of men in the legislature, who had recently undergone the divorce process, who have started and pushed the pending legislation. Sounds like sour grapes.
Michael H. Gora has been certified by the Board of Specialization and Education of The Florida Bar as a specialist in family and matrimonial law, and is a partner with Shapiro Blasi Wasserman & Gora P.A. in Boca Raton. Mr. Gora may be reached by e-mail at mhgora@sbwlawfirm.com.
