Palm Beach County Divorce And Family Law Blog

During this recession, divorce attorneys in Palm Beach Gardens, Wellington, and elsewhere in Palm Beach County have been dealing more and more with alimony modification matters. People are either attempting to lower their alimony payments or attempting to increase their alimony payments. However, experienced marital and family lawyers know that this trend is occurring against a backdrop of a growing movement throughout the United States for alimony reform. Pressures are mounting to change alimony, the practice of which some view as outdated and unfair. The proponents of the changes argue that the nature of marriage has evolved dramatically over the decades. Women now constitute almost half of the American work force. But alimony, a concept commenced in ancient law, has remained remarkably constant. Now, the idea that a divorced spouse should support their formerly married partner forever, even after the demise of their marriage, is being called into question. The philosophical core of this debate is whether alimony payments should be viewed as temporary (until the dependent spouse gets back on his or her feet) or is it a long term dividend for sacrifices made during the marriage. In many states, the debate seems to have swung on the side of limitation of alimony. Currently, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Massachusetts have bills being processed through their legislatures to limit the award of alimony. Reportedly, a Florida group has hired a lobbyist to push a bill to limit alimony payments to three years. The Ohio Bar Association appears to be in favor of a legislative bill that limits the length of alimony to seven years. It is too early to state definitively what will happen in Florida or elsewhere with this trend.

However, divorce attorneys in Palm Beach County know that as more and more divorced and non-divorced baby boomers reach retirement age, the recession has decimated their nest eggs and has erased millions of jobs. This conversion of circumstances may provide more momentum for the advocates of alimony limitation. Please click here to read the Wall Street Journal's article on this interesting and timely issue. If you would like to learn some less acrimonious ways to resolve a divorce related issue, please visit our squidoo lens on this issue at:

www.squidoo.com/messy-divorce.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Divorce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.