Did your spouse involuntarily lose a job or experience a reduction in income because of illness or injury? If you believe your spouse is truly incapable of making alimony payments, you may consider working out an agreement between the two of you which reduces or suspends alimony until your spouse gets back to work. Make sure, however, your spouse knows you're prepared to go to court if the payments don't start again.
You should also consider hiring an attorney to draft the agreement and ensure your rights are fully protected. If, on the other hand, your spouse is simply trying to avoid the obligation to pay alimony or refuses to pay despite your agreement, you'll have to head back to court for help. You'll need to file a motion legal paperwork with the court, and ask a judge to order your spouse to make the overdue payments and keep up with future payments.
This is sometimes called a motion for enforcement or contempt. If you do end up in court, you should definitely consult with an experienced family law attorney , who can draft persuasive legal motions and represent your interests in court. When paying spouses fail to pay court-ordered alimony, they are violating disobeying court orders, and judges don't like it when folks don't follow their orders.
Courts have a lot of discretion in terms of what sorts of punishments or fines they can impose on delinquent spouses. A judge may order that the delinquent spouse's personal financial estate, including the rents and profits from any real estate, be confiscated and applied toward alimony as the court feels is reasonable and just.
As stated above, courts have pretty wide discretion in deciding what punishment your spouse will receive for the failure to pay, or how to enforce the alimony award. Although these may vary from state to state, most states allow the following remedies.
New Jersey courts have held that a paying spouse's willful intentional disobedience of a valid court order to pay alimony may be punished by contempt. So, if you live in New Jersey and your spouse has failed to pay alimony, a court might hold your spouse in contempt. If the judge finds your ex in contempt, the first punishment will most likely be an order to pay the overdue support and possibly an additional fine.
After that, if your spouse continues to disobey the order, the judge may order jail time for the continued disobedience.
Many alimony orders start out with an income withholding order, which requires the payor spouse's employer to withhold the alimony amount from the payor spouse's paycheck and send it directly to the supported spouse.
We offer free consultations for our new clients. Experience Matters. Our founding attorney has over 25 years of experience in the legal field. As a firm you get over a century of dedicated legal experience advocating for your family's best interests. The Fisher v. Fisher Decision A Ontario Court of Appeal decision, Fisher v Fisher dealt with support in the case of a marriage lasting 19 years. View Profile.
She was previously Prior to that, she practised Family Law at a boutique Newmarket firm. Her experience covers all areas of divorce and family law , including custody and access , child support , spousal support , and division of property. Following her call to the Ontario Bar in , Lucy was welcomed back to the firm as an associate lawyer. Prior to that, she completed C as a Summer Student in and returned as an Articling Student in Convenient Meeting Locations Our team is able to meet with you and provide quality family law legal services in Markham, Oakville, Mississauga, Vaughan, and the surrounding areas.
Free Consultations We understand you have questions and need guidance on your next step. First Name Please enter your first name. Last Name Please enter your last name. Phone Please enter your phone number. Judges may revisit alimony rulings indefinitely for marriages of long duration. For marriages that last fewer than ten years, California courts commonly set the duration of spousal support at half the length of the marriage.
Spouses can request the court to review the amount or duration of alimony while the order is active. Once the alimony order is complete for short marriages, courts no longer have the jurisdiction to revisit them. If either spouse requests a change, California courts can review and modify these alimony orders indefinitely, or at least until the supported spouse remarries or dies. California courts will modify alimony orders only if new facts justify a change.
Either spouse can request a change to the amount or duration of alimony while California courts still have jurisdiction over their case. If both parties agree to the change in alimony, they can enter a written contract that the court can turn into an official court order. Otherwise, if the spouses do not agree, one party can file a motion with the court to change the alimony order. Motions to dismiss are filed for a range of reasons, which may include:.
While motions to dismiss can be effective at getting a case dismissed in its early stages, many cases do not have the flaws required. For California marriages that last longer than ten years, the court will likely determine the duration and amount of support to award by weighing factors [4] such as the following:. X and Y were married for eight years.
X and Y were married for 14 years. However, because X and Y have been married for more than ten years, their marriage is considered long-term. The court will retain jurisdiction to modify the support amount. Under these circumstances, the court may retain jurisdiction indefinitely, or at least until Y remarries or passes away. For example, if Y gets sick the month before the support is due to end, Y could ask the court to extend the duration of support and even ask for a higher amount of support.
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