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Welcome to Family Law Matters. I’m Dr. Michael Mantell, privileged to be joining Bonnie Rabinovitch Mantel, owner and managing partner of The Primus Family Law Group, a family-oriented firm where experience meets results. Hi, Bonnie.
Hi, Michael. How are you doing today? Doing beautiful. We are so fortunate here in San Diego to have this beautiful weather come upon us once again.
As long as you don’t care about the gas prices. Well, speaking of gas prices and costs, lots of couples who are going through separation divorce have the issue of financial support, spousal support it’s called. And that’s a very hot issue that has a lot of people with steam coming out of their ears.
And so I’m wondering a little bit about what are some of the things that we’re seeing currently that are driving people to have arguments, fights, concerns, anxiety about this area of spousal support? You know, a lot of people believe and set up themselves for failure in California by having this belief that their significant other doesn’t deserve it. Because let’s say, you know, you had a traditional relationship where one person worked and one person stayed home. I often hear, well, I paid for all of that with my money.
It’s very hard for people to understand that everything that you guys earned during the marriage was our money, regardless of who actually went out and did the job, the traditional job. So you can find a lot of people, Michael, feeling that their spouse doesn’t deserve spousal support. Other states call it maintenance or alimony.
We call it spousal support. So that’s a traditional marriage and more and more of those are sort of dwindling. We see couples where both are earning income.
How does it, you know, play into this where one member of the marriage and another member are earning the same amount of money or within, you know, thousands of each other? How does that play out? Well, if they’re earning the same amount of money, then there most likely won’t be an obligation or a right to spousal support because it’s all based on the disparity of income. What they’re trying to do is figure out what was your standard of living during the marriage, which is based on what both people brought in. And so when you’re determining that marital standard of living, that’s what says, well, one spouse is obviously earning so much less than the other.
So we’ve got to equalize that so that both can try to reach the marital standard of living. I personally find that interesting at best because when you’re living in a marriage and in one home, you have one set of bills that are paid for by your combined incomes. Now, when you get separated and divorced, you’re living in two homes but somehow you’re still supposed to maintain the marital standard of living.
It’s a falsehood. So the only thing we can do is bring us close to the marital standard of living. And when people want to speak about this more with you or your team at Primus Family Law, how can they reach you? Well, you can reach us directly at 619-574-8000.
And we will put you on our calendar for a free 30-minute phone consultation with me, the owner of the firm, or you can reach out to us at www.PrimusFamilyLaw.com and we will reach back out to you to make sure you get that consultation. And it doesn’t have to be contentious. It can be something that a couple can come together and mediate over and settle it in a very reasonable way and still have success in their spousal support, correct? Correct.
You can do it the better way, the easier way through mediation. Or if you really do need to litigate because there’s no way you’re going to agree, we’re happy to do that as well. Bonnie, thanks very much.
We’ll see you for another Family Law Matters soon. Bye, Michael. Bye-bye.