Removing Permanent Alimony for Divorcing Floridians a No Go

A previous blog discussed Florida’s child custody bill that would have started divorcing parents on equal ground in a custody battle with a presumption of 50/50 custody. Governor Rick Scott, who expressed creating a promise of equal custody would put the needs of the parents before the child, vetoed the bill.  The equal custody provision of the bill got more media attention. However, an even bigger portion of the bill was aimed at removing Florida’s current law regarding alimony.

Currently, Florida allows permanent lifetime alimony. Supporters of the alimony reform want to replace permanent alimony with formulas to calculate an award that would result in a fixed end date based off the length of the marriage and the spouses’ respective incomes.

Florida Judges Have Broad Discretion to Determine Who is Entitled to Alimony, the Amount, and For How Long the Alimony Can Last.

When determining whether to award alimony, the court will consider:

• the standard of living during the marriage,
• the duration of the marriage,
• the age and the physical and emotional state of each party,
• the financial resources of each party, including the nonmarital and marital assets and liabilities distributed to each,
• the earning capacities, educational levels, vocational skills, and employability of the parties,
• the contribution of each party to the marriage, including services rendered in homemaking child care education and career building of the other party,
• the responsibilities each party will have with regard to any minor children they have in common,
• the tax treatment and consequences to both parties of any alimony award, and
• all sources of income available to the party.

Sounds fair, right? Well, the presumption for long-term marriages, 17 years or more, is that any determined award of alimony is permanent. It’s a rebuttable presumption, so the court can disregard the presumption. Nonetheless, that’s not a burden the breadwinning spouse should have to endure.

Under the vetoed alimony reform, alimony would have had an end date, rather than an indefinite time frame. Although the current law already requires judges to take the above factors into consideration when considering an award of alimony, the reform would have taken away the discretional decision-making component and required the number to be calculated based off the formula, and thus, resulting with a fixed end date.

Current Law Allowing Lifetime Alimony Is Unfairly Applied

It’s geared at stay-at-home parents, usually the mother, who could not easily re-enter the workforce. Florida’s rationale behind alimony is that they, as a state, don’t want to support the impecunious spouse. Instead of forking up the money via welfare and food stamps, legislative intent is to look to the breadwinning spouse to provide for the non-breadwinning spouse.

Spouses are expected to maintain the same standard of living that was held during the marriage, but, in reality, that’s an insane standard. That assumes divorcing spouses will not remarry and will not inevitably have to support another spouse or 2 separate households. Had a stay-at-home spouse never gotten married and had kids, that spouse would have had to learn to support themselves. Marriage ending in divorce should not be an equivalent to a lifetime financial contract.

Additionally, many spouses are forced to work longer than they normally would have, not being able to retire, because they can’t afford to make alimony payments otherwise. How is that fair?  Current law allows spouses to ask for reductions in their alimony payment for retirement purposes, but it’s often overlooked.

Is There a Better System?

A parent that sacrifices their ability to have a career to stay at home and take care of their kids is great and, don’t get me wrong, should be given an award of alimony, but requiring an indefinite award seems excessive.

Using a formula to calculate an amount with a fixed end date seems like a more reasonable system than a permanent award, as it allows the spouse time to get back on their feet without forcing a breadwinning spouse to work beyond retirement age just to afford alimony payments. While I agree with the intent of the alimony reform bill, how the formula plays out in actual divorces may be a different story and I think there’s room for improvement.

Other than lengthy marriages that involve a stay-at-home spouse taking care of children, I don’t see a useful purpose for including length of marriage as a hard factor into the formula. While it should be considered, especially if the couple had only been married for a short amount of time, 17 years of marriage shouldn’t automatically equate to an alimony award–the length of the marriage shouldn’t be weighed as heavily in calculating a figure.

Need should be the #1 factor in the formula, as using a basic pre-determined formula may unfairly hurt the paying spouse. Earning potential, education, children, cohabitation or re-marriage, among other factors, should all definitely be considered. An exacting formula may not be the best answer and that’s why allowing judicial discretion is important, but there definitely needs to be some hardline rules or ways to incorporate formulas that won’t unfairly punish the paying spouse by requiring lifetime alimony.

Florida’s current guidelines aren’t bad; it’s more the execution of allowing lifetime alimony awards that’s hurting breadwinning spouses. With the veto of the bill, it’s unclear whether any kind of alimony reform will happen in the foreseeable future.