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Hi everyone, welcome to Family Law Matters. I’m Dr. Michael Mantell, privileged as always to be here with Bonnie Rabinovitch-Mantel, the owner and managing partner of the highly esteemed Primus Family Law Group, where experience meets results. Hi Bonnie.

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Hi Michael, how are you doing today? I’m doing fine. I’m doing very well, and probably better than some who are facing the real dilemmas of a contentious divorce, which probably accounts for many, if not most. Now, we both work in an area in trying to help couples find a way to be the least litigious as possible.

One area that pops up every now and then is when it comes to the area of retirement. Let’s just suppose someone is considering retiring at the time of divorce, or they are retired and they haven’t quite reached the, quote, legal age of retirement of 65, I think it is. And someone in the family is saying, hey, get back to work, I want more money.

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How does that play out? Well, unfortunately, if your marital standard of living, so you’ve been married long enough to obviously reach close to the age of retirement, your marital standard of living included all those years where both of you were making the max amount that you could. And so, somebody wants to retire, you know, before the, it obviously depends how far before 65 they want to retire. But the court can either say, fine, you get to retire, but we’re going to impute you, we’re going to consider as if you are making the same amount of money, because you’ve made a voluntary choice.

Or they can say, go back and please look for a job. So obviously, it depends how close if you’re 61, it, you know, it’s a little bit different than if you’re trying to retire at 55. It’s going to matter, especially if you decided to have children later in life, because they will say that you contemplated that you would have to work until the age of retirement, because you had children that would still be minors until then, and now you want to retire.

But doesn’t, doesn’t it sound a little bit like revenge? In other words, we’re divorcing, I’m not letting you divorce because I want more money. Well, wait a minute. What if they were not divorcing? They’re happily married.

And one of the others says, hey, you know what, I’m tired. I want to go play pickleball or whatever it is. And I want to divorce, I want to, I want to, I want to retire versus you, honey, we need the money.

It will be okay. We’ll figure it out. They don’t go to court and have a battle about it.

They find a way to resolve it in the context of the marriage. Correct. If, but the problem is, well, in that scenario, the things that you do when you’re married and, and together are considered consensual, and then you get to do them good, bad, or indifferent.

If you’re married to somebody who’s spendthrifty and goes out and, you know, buys jelly beans every day, you’re not going to go to a court over that as well. It wastes the money in the same way. However, when you’ve got somebody who is, you’re now separated, it’s the state making this law.

Somebody may be taking advantage of it, but the law, the family code says that you have a duty to support your spouse and your children to the fullest extent that you can. Now, if somebody is disabled or that kind of thing, that’s a whole different ball of wax. It’s, I decide I’m 55 and I want to stop working.

Well, I, you know, if I still have children that are minors and a spouse, it becomes a state issue. The state does not want that child on its back. So it’s going to say little, so it’s going to say, wait a minute, you don’t get to retire yet.

You’re fully capable of working. You’re making a choice. And if that’s the situation, then we’re going to count support.

So either you’ll get less or pay more, or you’re going to go back to work because you can’t live, be paying the support based on an income you don’t have. Right. So the person who says, the person who says, you know, yeah, I’m, I want a divorce because if I keep working, I’m always working for her and I don’t want her or him.

I don’t want to do that. So, but that you’re saying the state says too bad that doesn’t work. It’s a valid argument to make it court that if you’re 52, 53 years old in good health, 54, 55 in good health and capable of working, go out and get a job either to support yourself.

So the other isn’t paying you spousal support or support, help support your children. So it’s not on the other person. Yes.

And I guess that the key here is that the person says I’m fine living with less, but I’m not going to work just to support her. That’s not going to work, but it’s not going to work. Obviously it’s a little different if you’ve had a long career in something and you’ve, you know, and there’s retirement benefits or pension benefits, all those things will come into play.

If people want to be in touch with you to get on your calendar and resolve some immediate issues that they’re facing, particularly now over the summer, how can they reach you? They can reach us at 619-574-8000. And I offer a free 30 minute phone consultation, or you can reach us online at www.primusfamilylaw.com. And there’s a form you can fill out and we will reach back out to you usually within 24 hours. Terrific.

Quani, thanks very much. I hope the summer is going well for you and look forward to our next Family Law Matters. Thank you.

Thank you, Michael. Have a great day.