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A wife’s efforts to escape responsibility for a $13,500 credit card debt her husband ran up mere days before the wife filed for divorce proved unsuccessful. The debt, incurred to pay for the college education of the couple’s daughter, occurred during the marriage and was not the result of intentional waste or depletion of marital assets, meaning that the courts must classify it as a marital debt for purposes of establish an equitable distribution of the couple’s assets.

This couple’s 27-year marriage was nearing its end by June 2011. Although the wife had informed the husband she planned to seek a divorce, she did not file immediately. Around the same time, the couple’s adult daughter was planning to start college in North Carolina that fall. The husband charged $13,500 on the couple’s Discover credit card to pay for the daughter’s college expenses. Four days later, the wife filed her divorce petition.

At trial, the wife stated that she had not planned to pay for the daughter’s college costs, but instead insist that the daughter pay her own way. The wife persuaded the trial court that the husband’s maneuver was an attempt to force her should a financial burden she never intended to undertake and that the husband should bear sole responsibility for the Discover card debt.
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Deciding the appropriate amount of retroactive support a spouse should receive can be somewhat complex in cases where the couple continues to live together during at least part of the divorce process. In one such recent case involving a veterinarian and his wife, the 5th District Court of Appeal decided that the couple’s long-term marriage entitled the wife to permanent alimony and that the husband should not be allowed to claim the mortgage and household bills he paid during the separation as support to his wife.

This couple divorced after more than 17 years of marriage. The couple continued to live together for part of the period when the divorce was pending, and the husband gave the wife $6,000 per month for support and payment of certain household bills, including the mortgage. The trial court ordered the husband, a veterinarian, to pay durational (temporary) alimony of $3,500 per month for eight years. The court also decided that the husband owed the wife no retroactive alimony.

The wife contested these determinations on appeal. The 5th DCA sided with the wife, ruling that the trial court should have awarded permanent, not temporary, alimony. Florida law requires a trial court to consider primarily what the needs of the spouse seeking alimony are, and the other spouse’s ability to pay. Additionally, the law’s default position is that permanent alimony is the appropriate remedy in cases involving long-term marriages, which the statute defines as ones lasting 17 years or more.
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A court’s contempt power can be an extremely important and effective tool in ensuring compliance in family law matters, as spouses may ignore court order to spite their exes. This power does come with some clearly delineated limits, though. The power to force a spouse to meet the terms of an equitable distribution is one such area, leading the 4th District Court of Appeal to throw out a trial court’s contempt finding against an ex-wife who did not pay the mortgages on the marital home.

The case regarded a 2010 divorce. As part of the equitable distribution, the wife received the marital home. The distribution also called for the wife to assume total responsibility for paying the mortgages on the home, even though the husband’s name was the only one on the mortgages. After the divorce, the wife rented the home out, but did not pay the mortgage payments.

The parties soon returned to court, with the husband seeking a contempt order against the wife for failing to keep the mortgages current. The trial court refused the husband’s request, explaining that it could not utilize its contempt powers because paying the mortgages was an aspect of equitable distribution, not spousal support. Had the wife violated a term related to support, she could have faced punishment for contempt.
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Florida law provides people with various legal avenues to seek protection if they are victims of domestic harassment. Part of the key to obtaining an order of protection, though, is understanding the limitations of the law and what types of protective orders do, or do not, apply to you. One man’s attempt to seek protection from a jealous ex-girlfriend ultimately failed because, regardless of the woman’s conduct, the type of protective order the man sought did not apply to his situation.

One man ended his on-and-off relationship with his girlfriend in 2011 when he moved from Kentucky to Key West. The man began dating another woman and, by August 2012, the ex-girlfriend allegedly began harassing him. The ex-girlfriend sent packages of animal waste to his place of employment, faxed a letter to the girlfriend of the man’s brother threatening violence against the man and his new girlfriend and engaged in other threatening and hostile behaviors.

The man, representing himself in court, sought “protection against dating violence” against the ex-girlfriend, and the trial court entered an injunction. The 3rd District Court of Appeal reversed the ruling, however. The reason the injunction failed had nothing to do with the ex-girlfriend’s conduct. Regardless of the ex-girlfriend’s behavior, the man and the ex-girlfriend were not in a dating relationship and, as a result, the man could not seek protection from dating violence as defined by Section 784.046 of the Florida Statutes. That law limited the qualification for orders of protection against dating violence to situations where the victim either (1) was currently in a dating relationship with the harasser, or (2) the victim and the harasser had been in a dating relationship within the previous six months.
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Still motivated after their near-miss in the last session of the Florida Legislature, advocates for an overhaul to the state’s alimony laws are looking to a newly released documentary film to provide additional fuel to their cause. The film, entitled “Divorce Corp.”, allegedly demonstrates many of the excesses and flaws of Florida’s current system of family law and procedure. Proponents of changes to the laws governing alimony hope that the film will inspire the legislature to make another effort at reform, and that the governor will approve this time.

The Miami Herald reported on “Divorce Corp.”, which some theaters advertised as exposing “how children are torn from their homes, unlicensed custody evaluators extort money, and abusive judges play God with people’s lives while enriching their friends,” and its interrelationship with the movement within the state to amend Florida’s alimony laws. Alan Frisher, head of a pro-reform non-profit organization called Family Law Reform, supports the film. Frisher described “Divorce Corp.” as “another way to engage the public.” In addition to screenings of the documentary, Frisher also published a book entitled “Divorcing the System: Exposing the Injustice of Family Law,” and has held summits touting alimony reform.

In its 2013 session, the Florida legislature passed a controversial measure, Senate Bill 718, reforming alimony laws. The bill would have ended permanent alimony and established limits on the amount of alimony a spouse could receive. The changes would have also altered the definitions of short-, moderate- and long-term marriages. For example, the bill stretched the definition of “short-term” marriages from seven years or less to 11 years or less, and stated that the default outcome for short-term marriages is an award of no alimony.
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Contempt of court is an important provision of the law. It allows judges to punish and disincentivize parties from hindering the administration of justice. This may be especially relevant in family law cases where people, who would otherwise never think of defying a judge, do so, not so much due to their contempt for the court, but their contempt for their ex-spouses. Contempt is a serious matter and the law requires judges to go through several mandatory steps before they find parties in contempt. Failure to clear each of those procedural hoops can lead to an appellate court’s reversal of a contempt finding, as was the case in the recent decision in Wilcoxon v. Moller.

A couple reached a divorce settlement agreement in 2009 that laid out several terms regarding the couple’s two children, including health insurance, the children’s extracurricular activities and communication regarding shared parenting responsibilities. The parties agreed to maintain accounts on a subscription-based website in order to facilitate their communications. After a motion by the husband, the trial court found the wife in contempt by virtue or her having allowed her subscription to the website to lapse, failing to transport the children to extracurricular activities and failing to provide the husband with copies of the children’s health insurance cards.

The 4th District Court of Appeal overturned the contempt ruling. The appellate court did so because the trial court did not follow several necessary steps. Before a court can find a person in contempt, the court must have created an underlying order that was clear enough to put the parties on notice that the court was ordering them to do (or refrain from) certain actions.
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One variety of estate planning technique used to shield assets from creditors is the use of discretionary trusts, such as so-called “spendthrift trusts.” In a recent ruling by the 2d District Court of Appeal, however, the trusts a former husband created failed to block his ex-wife from collecting the alimony he owed her. The court decided that, although Florida has a public policy favoring the recognition of spendthrift provisions in trusts, it has a stronger policy favoring the protection of spouses through the enforcement of spousal support orders.

When a couple divorced in 2007, after 30 years of marriage, they reached a marital settlement agreement resolving, among other items, alimony. The agreement, which the court ratified, required the husband to pay the wife $16,000 per month. Despite receiving a sizable regular income from a series of discretionary trusts, the husband fell behind on his alimony.

The wife filed motions seeking enforcement of the alimony order, including asking the court to order the garnishment of any distributions from the trusts to the husband. The trustee objected, claiming that the law protected trust assets from all creditors, including the wife. The trial court agreed with the wife and issued the order.
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Resolving issues of back-owed child support can require creative problem-solving between the parties. Sometimes, that creativity may run afoul of the law if it impairs child’s legal right to receive support. One couple’s solution, which converted back-owed child support into a money judgment in favor of the wife and stripped the family court of jurisdiction over that judgment, did not violate the law, according to a recent 4th District Court of Appeal ruling. Because the agreement only removed the family court’s jurisdiction, and did not prevent the wife from pursuing the debt in civil court, the settlement did not contract away the child’s right to support.

The marriage of two attorneys ended in divorce in 1999. The agreed judgment between the parties required the husband to pay child support of $1,300 in 1999 and $1,500 starting in 2000, even though the applicable child support guidelines called for only $828 per month.

The husband fell behind on his support payments, resulting in several contempt proceedings and judgment enforcement motions. The couple eventually settled this dispute and the trial court entered an agreed order in 2008 that included a money judgment of $70,000 plus interest in favor of the wife. The family court also relinquished jurisdiction over that money judgment, except that the court retained the power to use its contempt powers if the husband did not stay current on the $828 per month of child support required by the guidelines.
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With Christmas having recently come and gone, many people likely received a new addition to an existing collection of possessions. For some, it may have been a new piece of jewelry; for others, perhaps a new power tool. When these collections of become an issue in a divorce, there is a clear right way, and wrong way, to go about seeking to include them in the equitable distribution of assets. The recent decision in a First District case highlights one of the wrong ways to establish value, which resulting in the 1st District Court of Appeal rejecting a wife’s efforts to include her husband’s tools in the couple equitable distribution.

The case went before the court of appeal as a result of a dispute over the value of the husband’s tools. In the trial court dissolution hearing, the husband testified that the tools were worth $500. The wife, in her financial affidavit, stated the tools’ value at $20,000. In crafting its equitable distribution, the trial court awarded the tools to the husband, and accepted the wife’s $20,000 valuation. Because the trial court accepted this larger valuation for the husband’s tools, it lessened the amount the husband received in the remainder of his equitable distribution.

The husband appealed, and the court of appeal sided with him. The problem for the wife was a lack of proof to buttress her $20,000 claim. During the dissolution hearing, the wife admitted that her assessment was a blanket statement without specific evidence to back it up. The court explained that some amount of tangible proof is necessary to back up valuations such as the wife’s. The court noted that its decision mirrored the 2d DCA’s ruling in a 2000 case, Lassett v. Lassett, where the court rejected a husband’s $10,000 valuation of his wife’s jewelry collection because the only proof supporting the claim was the husband’s unsubstantiated testimony.
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Prenuptial agreements are extremely valuable tools to establish financial boundaries and protect assets each spouse brings into the marriage. To be legal, both spouses must make a genuinely voluntary decision to sign the agreement. Forcing your future spouse to sign a prenuptial agreement in the middle of the night mere hours before your wedding is a recipe for failure, as it raises a strong inference that your spouse signed under duress, and not voluntarily. A husband discovered this in a recent case, where the 2d District Court of Appeal recently voided the couple’s prenuptial agreement, ruling that the husband’s timing raised a clear issue of coercion.

A man and his girlfriend scheduled their wedding for July 13, 2002, in Las Vegas. Less than a month before the wedding, he presented a draft of a prenuptial agreement to her. An attorney advised her not to sign, because the agreement waived her right to claim a statutory elective share, receive alimony or share in assets acquired during the marriage. Near midnight on the eve of the wedding, the man arrived at the Las Vegas airport, handed the girlfriend another copy of the agreement, and demanded she sign it and get it notarized. She complied.

When the wife filed for divorce in 2009, the husband asserted that the prenuptial agreement controlled the terms of asset distribution. The wife sought to set aside the agreement, arguing the court should void it because the husband improperly coerced her to sign it. The trial court sided with the husband, concluding that the wife waited too long to bring her claim of coercion, but the court of appeal overturned that ruling.
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