From this article:
Title kinda says it all. Can men paying alimony move to Florida and use their law to stop paying alimony?
FTR: I do NOT pay alimony and never have and seriously doubt I ever will.
From the law’s text,
(11) The court shall apply this section to all initial petitions for dissolution of marriage or support unconnected with dissolution of marriage pending or filed on or after July 1, 2023.
~Max
From the article linked above:
But, as with previous versions, opponents remained concerned that the bill would apply to existing permanent alimony agreements, which many ex-spouses accept in exchange for giving up other assets as part of divorce settlements.
“He (DeSantis) has just impoverished all the older women of Florida, and I know at least 3,000 women across the state of Florida are switching to Democrat and we will campaign against him, all the way, forever,” Camille Fiveash, a Milton Republican who receives permanent alimony, said in a phone interview Friday.
More broadly though, and I may not have been clear, my question is if one state can make it possible to dissolve a legal arrangement regardless of where you entered into that arrangement?
Put another way, can only men who got divorced in Florida avail themselves of this new law (and maybe women but I would think this is almost all men in this case)? Or can any guy roll down to Florida and do it?
IIRC many people facing legal judgements (including the likes of OJ Simpson) move to Florida to avoid having to pay the full court judgement against them. Florida law shields them from some amount of collection.
I think it’s not that Florida erases the debt as much as it just refuses to collect a debt accrued in another state-- kinda like not having an extradition treaty.
The catch is that you have to stay in Florida.
Is permanent alimony common in other states? I haven’t heard of anyone collecting permanent alimony in years.
In California, alimony is permanent if the marriage was greater than 10 years.
Permanent meaning usually until the payer retires and doesn’t have an income, then support ends. But there’s been cases* where a husband paid alimony until he retired, for more than a decade, then the ex came after his pension and won and got half of it. Yes, this stuff happens.
When I got divorced, the separation agreement had a specific clause protecting retirement assets.
So picture it: a couple marries at 20, divorces at 31. The higher earner owes the lower earner support for 34 years or longer. This is in theory. In practice, one or both will remarry and support terminates.
*my lawyer told me about this case, I do not have a cite, sorry.
I actually went on a date with a 55 yo woman who was receiving spousal support from a 74 yo man, 12 years after they divorced, and was defensive about it - she deserved it to maintain her lifestyle.
I don’t think it’s common in other states - but I’m pretty sure it exists in some form or another in all or almost all of them. . New York , for example, has a advisory schedule for durational alimony - for a marriage that lasts 0-15 years , the duration is between 15%-30% of the length of marriage, for a marriage of 15-20 years , it is 30%-40% and for a marriage of more than 20 years, alimony will be paid for 35%-50% of the length of the marriage. If a couple was married 50 years and then divorces , alimony will be paid for up to 25 years - that’s going to turn out to be permanent alimony in a lot of cases. I can’t imagine that any state is going to award only ten years of alimony to a disabled 40 year old who hasn’t worked since they were 20 because they were a SAHP and who is therefore not eligible for Social Security.
The Florida law has a similar provision :
(b) An award of durational alimony may not exceed 50
227 percent of the length of a short-term marriage, 60 percent of
228 the length of a moderate-term marriage, or 75 percent of the
229 length of a long-term marriage. Under exceptional circumstances,
230 the court may extend the term of durational alimony by a showing
231 of clear and convincing evidence that it is necessary after
232 application of the factors in subsection (3) and upon
233 consideration of all of the following additional factors:
Those factors include the extent to which the recipient’s ability for self-support is limited by age , employability, or a mental or physical disability or if that person is caring for a mentally or physically disabled child of the couple, even if that child is an adult.
That may have been true at one time, but everything I see for California says something like this :
Support lasts the reasonable amount of time it would take for the spouse to become self-supporting. The longer you were married, the longer it’s assumed this will take.
The judge starts with some basic assumptions:
For marriages less than ten years, support will last half the length of the marriage
For marriages more than 10 years, there’s no assumption about what’s reasonable
For these long-term marriages (lasting more than ten years) support may last for as long as the one spouse needs the support and the other spouse can pay. This could be for many years.
It could be permanent alimony if the marriage lasted longer than ten years but it doesn’t have to be. ( and alimony doesn’t usually end if either party gets remarried, only if the recipient does)
In practice, it’s indefinite. Negotiable. No limits. Your own cite shows this.
In practice, it can and sometimes is “forever”. My 55 yo friend’s 70ish benefactor was dying of cancer and still paid monthly, for some definitions of forever.
Strangely my 2014 separation agreement had a clause where either party remarrying would terminate support. Never got a chance to test that clause, neither of us wed before support ended.
Yes, in practice it’s indefinite and could be forever. but “indefinite” and and “could be forever” is very different from “In California, alimony is permanent if the marriage was greater than 10 years.”
Strangely my 2014 separation agreement had a clause where either party remarrying would terminate support. Never got a chance to test that clause, neither of us wed before support ended.
Because the two of you agreed to it - but it’s not common for the recipient to agree the payor can stop if the payor remarries.
So, can going to Florida remove this burden?
No - it only applies to divorce petitions filed after July 1, 2023 and sets out guidelines for Florida courts to use in setting or modifying alimony. In addition , Florida’s version of the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act says
A tribunal of this state may not modify a spousal support order issued by a tribunal of another state or foreign country having continuing, exclusive jurisdiction over that order under the law of that state or foreign country.
Yes. I am not surprised to learn that there are jurisdictions where
can be awarded permanent alimony.
Nor that a wife of 50 years might get alimony for the rest of her life after her husband dumped her for a trophy wife.
Probably all of the US states do that. I somehow got the impression that we were discussing:
And i haven’t heard of an able-bodied 31 year old being awarded alimony that lasted past the majority of the children she had custody of in ages. The divorces i know of (which have overwhelming been of able bodied people still of working age) either had no alimony award or maybe 5 years of alimony while the dependant spouse got back into the job market.
It’s going to be more complicated than simply “going to Florida.” By the apparent terms of the law, this is only going to apply to divorce petitions filed after July 2023. And, it’s only going to apply to divorce cases over which Florida courts have jurisdiction.
What you’re really asking is whether a divorce case can be transferred to another jurisdiction (here, Florida) and whether the new law will allow modification of the terms of the relevant order.
I know that child custody cases can be transferred (typically, if and to where the child moves). While a divorce decree would seem like a final judgment, ongoing payment requirements suggest that there is going to be some level of potential court oversight and retained jurisdiction.
I don’t think that a man can simply establish residence in Florida and then get the case transferred. I don’t know how that works, but I assume it’s going to require either the consent of the parties or some sort of good cause. I would assume, however, that if the case was transferred then Florida law would govern.
This is what confuses me though:
But, as with previous versions, opponents remained concerned that the bill would apply to existing permanent alimony agreements, which many ex-spouses accept in exchange for giving up other assets as part of divorce settlements.
“He (DeSantis) has just impoverished all the older women of Florida, and I know at least 3,000 women across the state of Florida are switching to Democrat and we will campaign against him, all the way, forever,” Camille Fiveash, a Milton Republican who receives permanent alimony, said in a phone interview Friday.
In vetoing the 2022 version, DeSantis pointed to concerns about the bill allowing ex-spouses to have existing alimony agreements amended. In a June 24, 2022, veto letter, he wrote that if the bill “were to become law and be given retroactive effect as the Legislature intends, it would unconstitutionally impair vested rights under certain pre-existing marital settlement agreements.”
But Senate bill sponsor Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota, tried to assure lawmakers that the 2023 version would not unconstitutionally affect existing alimony settlements. This year’s proposal “went to what is currently case law,” Gruters told a Senate committee in April, pointing to the court ruling.
“So what you can do right now, under case law, we now codify all those laws and make that the rule of law. So we basically just solidify that. So from a retroactivity standpoint, no, because if anything could be modifiable before, it’s still modifiable. If it’s a non-modifiable agreement, you still can’t modify that agreement,” he said.
< snip >
“My fears are that they can take you back to court, and I don’t have the money for an attorney. I literally live off a little bit I get for alimony. I work part-time, because I have all kinds of ailments. And now I’m going to be left without anything, absolutely anything,” she said.
Health insurance, Fiveash added, will “probably be the first thing to go” if her payments are reduced or eliminated.
“This is a death sentence for me,” she said. - SOURCE
If both parties live in Florida, and the divorce was in Florida, it sounds like one of the parties can ask the courts to modify the alimony agreement, and the party with more money is likely to be favored.
(Probably only the “divorce was in Florida” part is critical.)
According to the sponsor , it doesn’t “unconstitutionally” affect existing orders - but that doesn’t mean that existing orders can’t be modified. It just means that this particular law doesn’t change an order that couldn’t be modified into one that can. I’m not sure what the opponents ae concerned about -whether they think this law will allow modification to orders that didn’t allow it before or if it changes the factors to be considered and that’s what they are concerned about , even though the orders could always have been modified.
My wife and I were 50 and 52 when we divorced. We had a 15yo son and had been married 25 years. My lawyer told me she could hit me for support until I retired at 65, 13 years. We negotiated for less, but she could have been a hardass and there would have been nothing I could do about it.
Upthread I mentioned someone I personally met that was divorced, had no children, and had been receiving spousal support for 12 years.