Of all the conversations lawyers have with clients as we progress through , the most frequent one is about divorce spousal support (a.k.a alimony) spurs the most accusations and arouses the most anger—not always, but a vast majority of the time.I hear a variety of objections from the prospective payers of spousal support, most of them expressed far more colorfully than the examples I offer below:
“I supported him while he went back to school, started his own business, and then went belly-up. Now I’ve got to support him? That’s a joke.”
“So she raised the kids. How hard is that? They’re in school seven hours a day. What was stopping her from getting a job?
“She talks about all her sacrifices. She spends her mornings playing tennis and her afternoons at the spa. Some sacrifices!”
“I’ve busted my buns for 20-some years and now he gets half my assets and spousal support? It just never ends!”
I understand that in times of stress, people are often at their worst. I never judge because I’ve been there too and the cost of divorce was greater than ever. And I usually let them vent because once they get all the anger off their chests, I can usually bring them around to seeing the fairness in paying some divorce spousal support because it is fair.I have a good understanding of how spousal support is addressed in the world of position bargaining. Almost invariably, the opposing lawyers start at opposite ends of the range provided for payments and come to court prepared to fight to the bitter end with a vast and varied arsenal of arguments supporting their respective client’s position.In cases where a spouse’s future income is going to change substantially, either up or down, fixed long-term agreements don’t make much sense and may not be fair to one of the parties.
This might be the case if a spouse owns a start-up business that’s just about to take off. It might also be unfair to establish spousal support today based on historic incomes when a family has sacrificed in the past for the potential future. (Let’s say, for example, that the husband has worked doubly hard to support the family while his wife attended medical school, from which she graduated just shortly before the divorce.) In such cases, if spousal support is deemed fair, it is best set for a couple of years and then reevaluated.
