Alimony is one of the most charged words in English. A word that opens the door to all kinds of heartache. Divorce. Lawyers. Money. Dependence. Resentment. Who owes what to whom – for how long and under what circumstances?
Connecticut’s antiquated alimony laws – like those of many states around the country – are being scrutinized by lawmakers, lawyers, and advocates. Some are committed to updating the laws. Others argue publicly that everything’s fine while admitting privately that the family court system is a travesty. Even public supporters admit that five different judges will render five different decisions based on an identical set of facts.
Divorce is about the end of a relationship, and alimony is about its continuation beyond the finish line. The relationship is now entirely about money, and the money only goes one way. Recipients may feel they aren’t getting enough, payers that they are paying too much. Few have a kind word for the clogged court system or the lawyers' fees that eat away at family resources.
One of the most fraught alimony issues concerns ongoing payments to ex-spouses who are cohabiting. Because so many more men pay alimony than women, most often it’s men supporting ex-wives and new boyfriends, or boyfriends of many years. Even when payers are resigned to paying an ex-spouse, the equation changes when a new lover moves in. Resignation quickly morphs into resentment. And that spikes if the ex-husband has to support his ex, his children, his ex's boyfriend, and sometimes his children, who might all live in the marital home. But even with no children involved, being forced to support two able-bodied adults is a bitter pill to swallow.
It’s an open secret – or maybe not much of a secret at all – that the new couple don't marry because they would lose the alimony. Sometimes it’s $100 a week, sometimes $100 a day.
You’d think no one would have to swallow such a pill. If the marriage is long over and the recipient is in an established new relationship, the alimony should end, right? Well, no, not exactly. Not in Connecticut.
In Massachusetts, where the state’s 40-year-old alimony laws were just overhauled, cohabitation was updated to reflect 21st century social and economic realities. Alimony in Massachusetts can now be reduced or eliminated if the payer can show that the recipient has “maintained a common household with another person for a continuous period of three months.” (For details, please see the new law on the Mass Alimony Reform website, Sect. 49(d))
When Connecticut legislators considered new alimony provisions earlier this year (Raised Bill No. 5509), they included provisions like those now in place in Massachusetts. Even though a good many family lawyers believe there are problems with the current cohabitation laws, the alimony reform package, including the cohab provisions, died in the Judiciary Committee.
Under current law, alimony payers may try to modify payments if the recipient is cohabiting, but proving it is a nearly impossible standard. The statute for reducing or ending alimony upon a showing of cohabitation, Section 46b-86(b), requires the payer to meet a two-part test. The payer must prove that the couple lives together and that there is a financially supportive relationship between them.
The statute gives judges unbridled discretion in making every decision related to alimony. Even when there is abundant evidence of cohabitation and of a financially interdependent relationship, judges may rule to keep the alimony in place, leading one petitioner to call the courthouse in Danbury, where his return trips to divorce court take place, “the Danbury slaughterhouse.” Instead of his alimony going down, it’s gone up, while his ex receives monthly funds from her boyfriend and “loans” to purchase real estate. Appeals can cost $50,000 – and are often fruitless.
To try to prove cohabitation, payers must often hire private detectives and aggressive lawyers, and spend a fortune on discovery, which is the process of unearthing financial records, credit card bills, tax returns, and deeds and titles to houses, cars, and boats. For nearly everyone involved, this is distasteful in the extreme. It is easy to enlist children to take sides. Yet this is the statutory requirement in Connecticut.
Because the stakes are so high, recipients and their partners are easily tempted to hide resources and the nature and extent of their financial involvement. It’s an open secret that gaming the system is commonplace. A good many people now understand that even when the payer can prove a financially supportive relationship, a judge may still look the other way. Why? I have two suspicions:
1. There’s gender bias in the courts. Many judges are from “the old school,” and believe that women, even those who worked throughout their marriages, should still be “taken care of” by ex-husbands. Perhaps they still believe the out-dated stereotype of divorce: that men leave their wives for younger women and that they should “have to pay.”
2. Unlike many other states, Connecticut’s alimony laws have no guidelines and include no expectation that a recipient will ever have to become self-sufficient. By contrast, welfare recipients are given limits to being dependent, and child support ends on a date certain. Perhaps if the law imposed the idea of eventual self-sufficiency - with exceptions for special cases - judges could accept it more readily and apply it in more instances.
These are speculations. What’s not speculative is that Connecticut’s cohabitation laws are out-of-date and out-of-touch. They cause unnecessary acrimony for all family members, and they force long-divorced couples into ugly conflict and expense.
CT Alimony Reform, the state’s leading alimony reform group, favors updating the cohabitation laws, to bring sanity, fairness, and common sense to them.
CTAR is holding a free public meeting on to educate and inform citizens about current alimony laws, about proposals for change, and about how they can become involved in moving our laws and expectations into the 21st century.
Alimony laws in Massachusetts changed when citizens began to speak out. Eventually, word got out about what really happens in family court. And legislators knew they had to make changes.
I'm eager to hear from you - publicly or privately - on what you think alimony reform should look like. Please email me at info@ctalimonyreform.com. If you are interested in the issue but can't come to Westport, please contact us and we'll respond. We need your voices to be heard: info@ctalimonyreform.com.
Forty years ago our society was obviously structured very differently when the CT Alimony Statute was established. The time for updating this statute is long overdue; to bring it in line with our society of today, and to re-instill balance and trust in the CT Family Court System!
Please don't forget the other side of the story -- the spouse who has stayed home to raise children during a long marriage of perhaps 20+ years, and who has given up decades of professional advancement as part of the marriage agreement between a couple that believed they could "manage" on one salary -- a salary that can be as much as several hundred thousand dollars a year in a state like Connecticut. It is well-established that most men see an increase in earnings after divorce. Most women see a dramatic drop in living standard, along with the children. That is the norm. Though it's easy to understand the frustration about "supporting" the ex's new relationship, is this kind of reform simply a way to penalize those who want to go on with their lives and find love after divorce? If the alimony and child support are warranted, why does the paying ex-spouse get to tell the recipient what to do with his or her money? We could just as well let the payer dictate that no vacations are allowed, no dinners out, and strawberries only on the Fourth of July. I should add that I am an attorney, though I have never practiced divorce law.
The problem is that these laws were established when "Leave it To Beaver" and "Marcus Welby MD" were on the air and 99% of women were indeed homemakers and possibly 5% of the population divorced vs today where there are primarily 2 income familles (Husband and Wife) and 50% of married couples divorce. Secondly, there is the gaming of the system that occurs every day where as she noted Boyfriends move in, pay bills, offer deposits for a new home and are effectively avoiding marriage to insure the annuity stream continues. This is wrong and amounts to theft. What is so disheartening is that the Judges look the other way , by choice, when the facts are squarely before them. I have seen it first hand and don't need a law degree to identify a problem or an injustice. For whatever reason, the Judges, / the CT Family Court System that we intrust to do what right, are adrift from their beacon and balanced parameters are much needed.
You are correct. In CT virtually all divorce agreements include a co-habitiation clause. This group wants to take it one step further. In their proposed bill 5509, they state that alimony should terminate (and this is the actual wording)... "Oral or written statements or representations made to third parties regarding the relationship of the party receiving periodic alimony and the person or persons with whom he or she shares a primary residence" So the x spouse can run around and get a friend to make an oral statement that his x is co-habitating and based on that statement alimony would be terminated. I am not an attorney but that is the actual wording. Actually there are several things listed and this is just the first but as you can see from this first statement, the number of cases being filed on co-habitation will increase. Divorce lawyers will make more money not less if this reform goes through. Maybe that is why the MA lawyers went along with it. It is almost as bad as the Salem Witch trials. I agree with Ms. Fitzgerald. Elizabeth definitely has a personal agenda. She is the founder of the second wives club. I also would like to mention that I am fairly certain that the first wives did not have any representation at the negotiations when MA came up with their alimony reform. However the second wives were represented and therefore the second wives negotiated the first wives divorce. Very one sided.
As to your bizarre charge that the first wives in MA had no representation on the task force that revamped the alimony law: this is flat out not true. The "first wives" had 1. the entire weight of the law and 2. the Boston Bar 3. the Massachusetts Bar 4. The Women's Bar and 5. The Chief Justice of the Probate Court. There were 14 month of negotiations. I'm not sure where you obtained this info, but it is blatantly inaccurate. Please note, under the new law in MA, first wives who are lower=earners or non-earners get extremely generous alimony awards - much more so than in a great many states, including NY. For instance, someone ending a 15 year marriage gets 8 or 9 years of alimony (don't have the numbers in front of me). Someone ending a 19 year marriage gets 16 or 17 YEARS (please forgive if I'm off by a year or two). Again, most states do not award anything resembling these lengthy alimony awards. Lastly, your notion that a payer in MA can prove cohabitation by getting some of his friends to say the couple lives together is - I hate to say it - absurd. There is far more to proving cohabitation than that in MA. I have no idea where you obtained this information either, but it quite far from accurate.
Above you made the comment that you were not the founder of the 2nd wives club. I just went back and re-read your testimony which you presented to our legislators and is posted on their site under bill 5509. In your testimony you said, "in 2008 I found two Massachusetts organizations, online, Mass Alimony Reform and the 2nd Wives Club." I realize there were lawyers negotitating the MA reform, but lawyers represent both clients and are neutral. The voice of the first wives was not present. I would hope in CT they would either include an equal representation of first wives as CTAR members or exclude both. The MA Alimony reform is very one sided because the other side was not present at the negotiations I don't know why Elizabeth feels she is qualified to interpret the cohabitation part of the bill since she is not a lawyer. During the opposing testimony's that was given to our legislators by lawyers who practice in this field the comment was made that the proposed statue would turn cohabiation into an overreaching exploration.
Your statement, re Massachusetts: "The voice of the first wives was not present" remains absurd. Whom do think the Women's Bar represents? Lawyers are not the only people permitted to "interpret" bills or laws. English professors are not the only people permitted to interpret poems. Not all legislators are lawyers, and they spend time writing laws. No one says they can't because they are not lawyers - though maybe you think that should be a new rule. Non-doctors can read medical material and interpret it, but that doesn't mean they can practice medicine.
I think it is also essential not to conflate child support with alimony. I do not believe that my choosing to stay home entitles me, or any other stay at home spouse, to a lifetime of free money. Marital assets are divided during the divorce judgment; alimony should serve, as one writer above put it, as a "bridge" to self sufficiency. A man who doesn't support his children is, in my opinion, a despicable. Is a person who thinks that their ex owes them a lifetime pension for 18-20 years of work that much better? Your point about telling the ex spouse what to do with his/her alimony raises an interesting question: the purpose of alimony. Is it to allow the ex to get back on his/her feet and make a transition, or is it a kind of lifetime endowment? The over focus on full time moms unfairly penalizes women who did work (either by choice or necessity) during the marriage, because they do not generally qualify for the lush benefits accorded former stay-at-homes during a divorce.
Kudos to CTAR for opening a dialogue re: divorce and alimony. The family court system is completely broken. Shame on our judges, attorneys and elected officials.
I agree with you that child support should be extended until age 23. However, CTAR is not fighting to increase child support. They represent x-husbands and second wives. Believe me the last thing they are going to ask for is longer child support. If you read the propose bill 5509 which they are lobbying for, there is a paragraph that was included which would put child support payments into a trust. This would allow your x to monitor how you spend each penny. The only reform they are asking for on child support is the trust. Please go to the CT Legislative site and type in bill 5509 and read it. You will see there is nothing in there to increase child support but there is a paragraph to put it into a trust. All of us mothers need more support not less. We need to stick together and support each other.
I think that this feature of the law is common to most states. I am certainly open to correction on this if I am wrong. The only exception to the age-of-majority rule is if the child is disabled. I had this problem in my divorce, even though my ex makes an extremely good income. Basically I was told that unlike food, shelter, medical care, etc. a college education is not viewed as a basic right. Mine is just one case, but I believe that is the thinking behind it. I certainly am not justifying it! My ex kicks in nothing for our son. However, he has to live with himself, so perhaps that is punishment enough. Your juxtaposition of the young adult trying to pull his/her life together and the able bodied ex collecting checks is an interesting angle. Never thought of it that way. I have learned this: as our kids grow, they begin to understand their parents in terms of how they behave, not what they say. The truth about each parent's character emerges over time as kids become adults. Still, it isn't easy!
In CT child support does not pay for shelter even if it is a basic right. It may pay for food but that is about it. Medical care is usually split unless one parent can carry the children on their policy at work. However, shelter is a major concern. The mothers I know that did not receive alimony and made under $100k and did not immediately get married ended up using their parents as a supplement. I know many women in that situation. Their children's education, camps as well as their shelter is being paid for by their parents or at least supplemented. This is the same thing as alimony, the only difference is that instead of the father of the child paying it, the father of the daughter is stuck. Those that don't have parents or siblings to help them and those that make a very low income often apply for Husky medical insurance not only for their child but also for themself and other programs like food stamps. Most are so stressed out. Child support ends at age 18 while the children are still living at home until age 23. Even those that go off to college are home 3-4 months out of the year. Some come home every weekend. We really need to stop thinking of our own personal situation and think of our children and grandchildren. What are we leaving for them? Tell your child today they better find a career that pays $150+ or not have kids, because if they end up divorced they will fall into poverty. This new reform does nothing to address these issues.
I can understand your concern for your children. However, your assertion that it is impossible to live under $150,00 in CT shows that you represent a very narrow, privileged band of the state and national population. The median income in this country is well, well below $150,000. Everyone who posts on this blog, including you, is speaking out of his/her personal situation. Your representation of yourself as the sole mother concerned about the welfare of children (and now grandchildren) is a bit of a stretch. Good parents of all stripes have differing positions on these issues.
You can't reform alimony without reforming child support. They go hand and hand. Unallocated alimony is combined alimony and child support. Our child support guidelines end at age 18 while children are not self sufficient. Back in the 1950's they may have been able to get a factory job but those jobs are long gone. Child Support is more outdated than alimony but no one wants to talk about that. That is the real taboo. Children are not even allowed to have a drink of alcohol in this state until age 21. In MA their child support goes until age 23, why doesn't ours? If you only reform alimony and not child support then CT will have the worst divorce laws out of all the states. In addition the dollar amount of child support is way too low. It does not provide for a suitable home for the children, a basic need and it should. And it does not keep up with inflation (gas,oil) prices. You are going to have a lot of angry mothers out here if you reform one and not the other. Unlike MA our child support laws are WAY OUTDATED.
This wide-ranging discussion, which is informative, is covering several different areas of monetary recompense -- a splitting of the assets within a marriage, child support, alimony, and possibly other funds such as pension plans. It's a complicated issue, as has been pointed out. When you think about the law being antiquated, do remember that women still make only three-quarters of what a man does in this country. Women right out of college, with no spouse and no children, having made no choices about lifestyle, still get offered only 77¢ to the dollar a man is offered. There are gender differences, whether we think there should be or not. It will be interesting to see how the issues unfold as same-sex marriage becomes common, and spouses of the same gender divorce.
= INFORMATIONAL COMMENT STATE COURT JUDGES = 38 USC 5301 Nonassignability and exempt status of benefits. "Payments of benefits due or to become due under any law administered by the Secretary shall not be assignable except to the extent specifically authorized by law,.. a beneficiary shall be exempt from taxation, shall be exempt from the claim of creditors, and shall not be liable to attachment, levy or seizure by or under any legal or equitable process whatever, either before or after receipt by the beneficiary. = “It is well established that disability benefits are a protected property interest and may not be discontinued without due process of law. See Atkins v. Parker, 472 U.S. 115, 128 (1985); Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 332 (1976)” = How is it, that state court judges can arbitrarily and capriciously award as alimony, with the mere wave of a hand waive away a portion of a veteran’s VA disability rated compensation, moneys in the form of disability compensation, the disability rights of a veteran, whose disability rating that maybe determined and factored in as critical? Judgment as if all disabilities are exactly the same? State court judges, are in reality, playing doctor, without medical license or knowledge .. a practice forbidden, providing penalties by law , and border on medical negligence. All without any input, or approval from the Veterans Administration, overstepping those whose authority it belongs, the dedicated VA medical professionals, in the practice of medicine, re-evaluation, and rehabilitation of the veteran. While at the same time violating federal law, 38 USC 5301, 42 USC 1408, and the 14th Amendment. = “Clear and substantial” major damage to federal interests occurs when state court judges make lasting decisions, that seriously impact disabled veterans’ rated compensation and complicate Veterans Administration goals, and responsibilities. Upsetting, by overruling VA medical compensation decisions, which involve many hours of work that VA medical professionals have invested in the medical care, control, follow-up, and rehabilitation of disabled veterans. All this happens with VA complicity, when a state court, arbitrarily is allowed to take away a veterans VA disability compensation in third party alimony awards in violation of….. 38 USC 5301. 42 USC § 407 - Assignment of benefits, carries similar language. = Where is it written, the VA authority, when a state judge can arbitrarily overrule the VA, the VA medical doctors and other medical professionals’ that determine a veterans’ medical rating compensation? His future now without the compensation that was by law assured? Tax payer monies mandated by Congress purposely, as veterans service compensation for injuries received, life altering as they are, now being diverted purposely by state courts to healthy third parties in many cases, in a determined and engaging violation of the law. = Where is it written? Where is the eagerness of state legislators to extend this proposal and eliminate veterans disability compensation from alimony? Opportunity knocks, do the right thing and fight for your disabled veterans.