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Hi everyone, I’m Dr. Michael Mantell with another edition of Family Law Matters. And as always, it’s a privilege to be joining Bonnie Rabinovitch Mantel, owner and managing partner of the Primus Family Law Group. But today we have a very special person joining us.

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I’m gonna have Bonnie introduce a member of her team. Hi Michael, thank you again for having me. And as always, it’s a pleasure.

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I’m lucky today because one of Team Primus is here with us and her name is Kimberly Soule. And I’m sure you’ve seen her on our website and you’ve seen all the wonderful reviews about her because yep, she is that good. Hi everybody, Kimberly Soule here from Primus Family Law Group.

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I’m happy to be joining this morning. And we are delighted and really honored that you are taking time to spend some time educating the viewers of Family Law Matters. Kimberly, the topic that we’re talking about today is spousal support.

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Now, it’s an interesting topic from someone from the mental health perspective who works with couples, trying to keep them together, trying to help them separate and divorce in a healthy way. If they couldn’t support each other in the marriage, how are they gonna support each other in the divorce? What does spousal support mean? And tell us how you as a family law attorney handle that. Well, spousal support is based off of the marital standard of living.

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And so if there is a higher earning spouse, they are generally obligated to pay based off of the marital standard of living. So both spouses can come up with as close to what they had as a combined couple as possible. Obviously, going from two incomes in one family household to two separate incomes in two separate households, your expenses, they change.

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And so it’s really just ordered to ensure that that lower earning spouse is able to still make as much as they can depending on what the marital standard of living is. Now, in a contested divorce, by that, I’m not talking about it technically like you and Bonnie might refer to that term. But in a divorce where there’s a lot of animosity, and I imagine most divorces are like that, what happens if one spouse says, screw you, I’m not working anymore.

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You’re gonna have to pay more. Is that possible? Hold on a second, wait a second. Right, Kimberly? I mean, we have a lot of clients and parties that try to do that.

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And as seasoned family attorneys, we have to explain to our clients that the court will look at your past as well. If all of a sudden you just, ooh, you get served with papers and you stop working, judges are gonna be pretty clued into that, right, Kim? Yeah, absolutely. So you get that all the time where a spouse wants to just stop.

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Essentially, you go to court and you can ask the court to impute income to them based off of what their history has been or their education is. So the court can impute that income to them. And so then they’re stuck with a spousal support order, even if they have no job because they voluntarily quit their job.

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You can also ask that person to be ordered to make job contacts and things like that. So there are ways that you can get around doing that. Now, you used a big word, impute.

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Define that for the rest of us. So imputing income means the court essentially takes the income that you had or that you had the ability to earn and uses that and essentially pretends that that is your current income for purposes of calculating support. Aha, so even if you say, I’m not working anymore, the court says, well, that’s okay.

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It doesn’t mean you’re gonna get more money. I see, okay. Now, what do you hear as one of the most common concerns when it comes to spousal support issues? When’s it going to end? It is very hard for people to understand that now that you’re divorcing or getting or already divorced, let’s say, we’re in the process of getting your judgment finalized, that you may be on the hook to just pay this other person and it’s not just the wife.

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It could be from a woman to a man as well. It’s a spouse, whoever is the lower earner. And you could be paying that forever.

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And we say that and they go, what do you mean? Well, we’ve talked about before, Mike, the difference between a short-term marriage, something that’s less than 10 years. There’s a presumption that you only have to pay for half the length, but you trip over that 10-year mark and it goes into what is permanent, right? Keeping, marriage, death. Some, your spouse that you’re paying to has to either remarry or you have to die.

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There’s other ways that you can try to lower that amount down or the length of time down. You can essentially ask that a Gavron warning be issued, which is essentially a formal notice to the lower earner that they need to become self-supporting. And so with that Gavron warning, you can try to move at a later time to either lower support or terminate support whenever it’s appropriate, depending on the length of the marriage, because they were given that formal notice to become self-sufficient.

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Now, don’t freak out. Wait a second, don’t freak out. Because when I say that, you’re gonna have to pay support forever, I don’t want people to think that, A, it’s the same amount forever.

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Forever is forever. There’s a presumption that regardless of the rules, after about seven, 10 years, you can go back. Things may have changed.

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You may be on the cusp of retiring. You may have less income. She may have more income or he may have more.

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So there are ways that you can reach out to us and we will guide you on when and how to best go about that. We could talk about this topic for a long time. And folks, you can see why Primus Family Law Group is a firm where experience meets results.

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Listen to these two experts. If people wanna be in touch with you to get more information, how can they do that? Well, you can reach out to us at 619-574-8000. We offer a free 30-minute phone consultation and you can be put on any one of our calendars for that consultation.

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Reach out to us at our website, www.primusfamilylaw.com. And we’re more than happy to see how we can help you. Kimberly, thank you very, very much for your wonderful information and sharing it with us so willingly this morning. And Bonnie, we’ll see you next time.

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Thank you very, very much. Thank you. Have a good day, Michael.