Helping You Understand Spousal Support
Spousal support is a difficult construct to understand. You may feel like you deserve spousal support because you gave up your earning potential to support your marriage. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you may already have a spousal support agreement with your ex-spouse that you would like to have altered in order to suit your and your ex’s current situation.
Working with KGH Family Law, we can answer your questions, lay out your options, and give you a better understanding of spousal support agreements.
What is Alimony?
Alimony is now more commonly referred to as spousal support. Spousal support is a payment made by one person to their former spouse. When two people are going through a divorce, one or both of them may request a spousal support agreement.
Spousal support is designed to relieve the monetary impact caused by a divorce. Should a spouse decide to become a stay-at-home parent while married, they may feel like they missed out on years of fiscal stability, including the blanks they would have in their resume. That spouse may feel like their skillset is outdated and that they will not do well on their own because they chose to support their family and remained unemployed during their marriage.
What Kinds of Spousal Support Are There?
Spousal support is often used as a blanket term that defines one person supporting the other after a divorce. That is not true. There are different types of spousal support, each one nuanced for different situations.
Temporary Spousal Support
Temporary spousal support is intended to provide temporary stability for a financially dependent spouse. This support can be used to help that person stabilize after a divorce by giving them time to find a job with adequate pay or training to reenter the workforce with a modern skillset.
Temporary spousal support is most common during a legal separation, where spouses are no longer living at the same address but are still legally married. Spousal support may be ordered to end when the couple decides to finalize their divorce.
Temporary spousal support payments can be used for anything that person needs to support themselves. This can include vehicle payments, medical expenses, education costs, legal fees incurred by the divorce, rent or mortgage, and other basic living costs.
Temporary spousal support provides payments to the dependent spouse for a limited amount of time. The court will decide when these payments end.
Rehabilitative Spousal Support
Rehabilitative spousal support is a payment agreement from one person to another after a divorce that is specifically designed to help the spouse who gave up their career to support their children or household acquire the necessary skills required to rejoin a workforce that continued to grow while said spouse was absent.
Rehabilitative spousal support may be granted for a specific amount of time, usually long enough for the receiving party to pursue an education, acquire needed training, or otherwise learn valuable work skills.
Permanent Alimony
Permanent or indefinite alimony is considered draconic by many courts in the modern times we live in. It is awarded when one party is unable to work due to age, physical illness, or mental illness or after a marriage of significant length ends.
Permanent alimony is exactly as it sounds; it is a spousal support system that does not have an expiration date.
Maryland courts prefer fixed-term spousal support agreements over payment agreements that are indefinite.
What Factors do Courts Consider for Spousal Support?
While you are going through divorce court, if you or your spouse request any form of spousal support, the court will consider several different factors.
Duration of marriage: The length of your marriage may influence the type and duration of spousal support that the court is willing to consider. Longer marriages are more likely to receive spousal support.
Financial situation: You and your spouse’s earning potential will be considered by the court. If there is a significant discrepancy from one person to the other regarding potential financial situations, the court may consider spousal support.
Standard of Living: You and your spouse built a life that you have both gotten used to. A judge may factor in the standard of living you and your spouse experienced while married in order to help the lower-earning spouse maintain a similar standard of living after a divorce.
Contributions and sacrifices: Both parties of a marriage are expected to contribute to the marriage. This can come either by financial contributions or by one spouse sacrificing their career or education in order to support a household.
What If You Wish to Change a Spousal Support Agreement?
If you are paying spousal support but would like to ask the court to alter or even end the agreement because of a change of circumstance, you may be able to petition the court to examine those new circumstances. It is possible to have the spousal support adjusted or terminated based on the new circumstances.
Should You Speak With a Spousal Support Attorney?
Did you know that once your divorce is finalized, if a spousal support agreement was not written into your divorce, it is nearly impossible to have one added later?
This is exactly why you should call 240-616-6968 to schedule your consultation with the experienced team at KGH Family Law.
Working with an experienced divorce lawyer, you can know that not only is the division of your assets and property fair, but your non-economical contributions to your marriage are taken into consideration.
Make sure you get to live the quality of life you deserve after your divorce. Call KGH Family Law today!