A Middle-Class Ex-Spouse Can Keep the Marital Home or Avoid Paying Alimony, but Not Both
When divorced people tell you that their divorce ruined them financially, it is usually because they lost their marital home or because a substantial portion of their income goes to paying alimony. Of course, in every divorce case, each ex-spouse gets only a portion of the marital property. If your spouse depended on you financially during the marriage, then at least in the beginning, most of her financial support will come from you after the divorce, too; Florida’s equitable distribution laws hold that marital property belongs to both spouses, and the fairest way to divide it is a division that enables both spouses to keep a standard of living similar to what they had during the marriage, but even if your ex-spouse never worked a day during your marriage, the longest duration that the court can order you to make monthly alimony payments is the length of the marriage. If you are in a middle-income tax bracket and both spouses worked during the marriage, but your income is higher, then your ex-spouse will probably get the marital home or an alimony award, but not both. For help wrapping your mind around the fact that equitable distribution means that both spouses lose something, contact a Boca Raton divorce lawyer.
Alimony Is Only Money, but a Home Is True Financial Stability
A recent column on the Yahoo Finance website tells the story of a divorced man who owns a house located walking distance from the beach in Southwest Florida. When he and his wife divorced, they agreed that he would keep the marital home, but he would pay her alimony. The article did not go into detail about how the couple arrived at this decision; perhaps their children were grown up and would not need to live in the family home with their mother, or perhaps the husband had bought the house before the couple married, so most of its value was his separate property.
To keep up with the alimony payments the court had ordered, the ex-husband would need more income, so he decided to use his house as a source of income. He turned one bedroom and bathroom of the house into an apartment for himself and used the rest of the house as a vacation rental. By the time Yahoo Finance interviewed him, vacationers had occupied the house every week for months, and he earned enough income from it to cover his alimony payments. The visitors always left the house in good condition, so he was able to clean it by himself between rentals; he had never needed to hire a cleaning service.
Contact Schwartz | White About Making Peace With Your Property Division Agreement
A South Florida family law attorney can help you negotiate a divorce settlement where you get to keep the item of marital property that is most important to you, even if you must give up other items of property. Contact Schwartz | White in Boca Raton, Florida about your case.
Source:
finance.yahoo.com/news/turned-part-florida-home-airbnb-144608031.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJ0zZEGAwA8zrcUZhwIY-8gVwtTh0eih24LpDmbFZe0Dt2KCzptz_e1hW63T_bCuz5Ybs5Cw8rQldLCaR4I1XWOJK6L2ugXBDnHZz5ZrB3Qr3TW4SrEUDBzFi_mGlk1kGgs-8P4gVkUQeQdkPKgRFn6c2Uf8Zk_Y7GNaB8QSRANW
