Fort Lauderdale Divorce Lawyer BlogDivorces can often be stressful times for the spouses involved. The pain and stress, in some circumstances, may motivate some divorcing spouses to try to achieve as swift a resolution to the case as possible. While that can be an understandable motivation, it is important not to agree to just any marital settlement agreement simply to resolve your dispute. As a recent Palm Beach County case demonstrates, the terms of your marital settlement agreement can have long-lasting effects for you, even years after your divorce has been finalized.
Articles Posted in Divorce
Florida Appeals Court Revives Wife’s Alimony Case After Filing Problems Triggered Unfavorable Trial Court Ruling
Sometimes, there can be varying degrees of success in a court case. In certain situations, you may win a ruling that gives you your “day in court,” but that may not necessarily mean that the path you took to get to that point was the best one. In a recent South Florida case, the Third District Court of Appeal ruled that a wife should be allowed to pursue her alimony claim. Although she won that case, the procedurally flawed filing she submitted to the trial court as a pro se litigant likely played a role in causing the case to take a longer and more complicated path than it probably should have.
Those Students Loans You and Your Spouse Took Out for Your Child…and Your Florida Divorce
A pair of errors by a trial court allowed a husband to win his appeal before the Second District Court of Appeal recently. The lower court’s failure to include in its equitable distribution a loan taken out for the purpose of funding the couple’s child’s education was erroneous, as was basing the husband’s obligation on his gross, rather than net, income.
Seeking a Continuance in Your Florida Divorce Case
When going through a divorce, some people desire to resolve the case as quickly as possible. Sometimes, though, it may be necessary, in order to obtain a truly fair and just outcome, to ask the court to put off ruling in your case. One recent case from southwestern Florida highlights a set of circumstances in which a wife needed additional time to obtain evidence about her husband’s business, and the denial of her continuance request created an injustice for her that required the Second District Court of Appeal to reverse the ruling.
Hearsay Rule Prevents Admission of Florida Husband’s Bank Statements for Purpose of Imputing Income
If you watch enough TV courtroom drama shows, you’ve likely seen it at some point. One of the lawyers will attempt to introduce some piece of evidence, and the other attorney will exclaim, “Objection! Hearsay!” While hearsay objections may be more commonly associated with criminal cases, they also take place in civil matters as well, including family law disputes. In a case recently before the Fourth District Court of Appeal, the hearsay rule and its exceptions were the key issue in deciding whether the wife had proper evidence to support her argument for imputing income to the husband. Since the appeals court decided that the wife’s evidence wasn’t admissible, that meant that the trial court order had to be reversed.
‘Extenuating Circumstances’ and Automatic Future Increases in Your Alimony Obligation in Florida
In an alimony case, the law gives trial judges a certain amount of discretion in how they structure an obligor spouse’s alimony payments. Even with this discretion, there are limits. For example, an alimony award should not automatically increase at some future date unless there are specific extenuating circumstances that warrant structuring the alimony obligation in that way. In the case of one Broward County couple, the husband’s alimony obligation, which automatically increased by 140% upon the couple’s child’s graduation from high school, was reversed by the Fourth District Court of Appeal because the trial court in the case listed no extenuating circumstances in its order.
Lump-Sum Alimony in Florida
When you think about alimony, you probably think about a court order that obliges one ex-spouse to pay the other ex-spouse a sum of money every month for a certain period of time (or permanently). The law also, however, allows the courts to hand out lump-sum awards of alimony. As with other alimony awards, the law has specific rules regarding when that type of alimony is appropriate. In one recent Second District Court of Appeal case, a lump-sum alimony award was overturned because the trial judge didn’t make the findings necessary to show that the award complied with the law.
Transferring Homes into Trusts and the Impact on Your Florida Divorce and Equitable Distribution
Sometimes, the intervention of a divorce can create some serious wrinkles in the estate plans two spouses created while they were married. Other times, the couple’s estate plans can sometimes create wrinkles in an equitable distribution plan. In the case of one southwest Florida couple, that is exactly what happened. When they divorced, one of the pieces of property that the Collier County trial court distributed was a home in California. The Second District Court of Appeal threw out that distribution because, prior to the divorce, the couple had transferred the home into an irrevocable trust, so it was outside the reach of their divorce’s equitable distribution.
Equitable Distribution in Florida and a Non-Marital Asset Maintained or Improved Using Marital Assets
When you are going through a divorce, especially one without a minor child of the marriage, one of the most important issues to resolve may be equitable distribution. While equitable distribution may be fairly straightforward in cases in which every asset is clearly marital or non-marital, many divorces and equitable distributions are more complex. In one recent case decided by the Fifth District Court of Appeal, the court was called upon to address a case in which the couple’s home was the wife’s non-marital property, but the property had appreciated in part due to improvements made using marital funds. In this case, the trial court’s decision to credit 50% of the marital portion of the appreciation to the husband was improper when the court also gave the home 100% to the wife.
Abolition of ‘Special Equity’ Law Wipes Out Unequal Distribution in Favor of Florida Wife
When you enter into divorce litigation, there are certain things you know at the outset. One of these is that the law presumes that your spouse and you should split all marital assets 50-50. This presumption is not ironclad, however, since fairness and the law dictate that a 50-50 split is not the proper outcome in all cases. In order to receive an uneven distribution in your case, the law requires your trial judge to make certain findings. In one recent case from the Tampa Bay area, the trial court’s failure to make the obligatory findings led the Second District Court of Appeal to throw out a distribution awarding the wife more than 50% of certain assets.