The Florida Legislature is considering a bill that would end permanent alimony in most future divorces by establishing formulas that set terms and amounts based on the length of the marriage and the income difference between the spouses.
Sponsored by Rep. Colleen Burton and Sen. Kelli Stargel, both Polk County Republicans, the bill (HB 943) calls for payments that would range from 25 percent to 75 percent of the length of the marriage. Only in exceptional cases could judges violate the guidelines and state their reasons in writing.
Proponents of the bill want an end to lifetime payments and say recipients are using the existing law to extort a meal ticket even if they could work. Opponents say ending permanent alimony would make it impossible for mothers to stay at home with their children for fear of being left destitute and penalize women who give up their careers to keep a family afloat.
“There are extremes on both sides,” Burton said, adding that exploited alimony payers and recipients are not being fairly compensated. In many cases, she said, awards vary wildly in cases with similar circumstances. “We’re trying to give the courts some direction and some parameters of what people can expect.”
Stargel has pushed for alimony changes for years, including a 2013 bill that Gov. Rick Scott vetoed because it applied retrospectively to divorces that had already been finalized. She said the new bill, which is not retroactive, is a negotiated compromise and expects former opponents, including the Florida Bar Association’s family law division, to support it.
Fort Lauderdale family attorney Roberta Stanley, who worked on the new bill, said it “expands and refines” laws that allow child support payments to be reduced or terminated if the recipient remarries or enters into a financially supportive relationship . It also provides that if one party unreasonably requests or resists a change in alimony, the other party may be awarded attorneys’ fees – an attempt to prevent court costs from being used to help a former spouse reach an unfair settlement to force.
But supporters of the current system strongly oppose the measure.
Cynthia Mayer of Ponce Inlet, a member of the First Wives advocacy group, called the bill “anti-women and anti-traditional family” and said it could make dependents, 97 percent of them women, dependent on welfare in their later years .
Another member, Lakeland’s Cathy Jones, called it “the end of the stay-at-home decision for women in Florida.”
Jones said she gave up work while they were married at her husband’s request so she could raise their children and build a social life to help his career.
Now, she said, he’s a millionaire whose hobby is exotic cars while her net worth is $70,000; Her mortgage won’t be paid off until she’s 84.
“Women like me depend on alimony,” she said.
Miami Attorney Deborah Chames said the bill would not protect stay-at-home mothers who forego their prime careers.
“If I know that by the time I’m 50, my husband might have a midlife crisis and leave, then I have to make sure I have my own skillset” by staying in the workforce, she said.
But law advocates like Glen Wilner, a deputy chief of the US Marshal’s Service, said that while there was nothing wrong with the idea of alimony, “no one should be sentenced to pay for life.”
Wilner, of Martin County, was sentenced to pay $2,000 a month for life when he divorced his ex-wife in 2010, who was 41 and had a career as a personal trainer. They’re also splitting “a couple hundred thousand” of marital assets, plus half of the pension he’ll eventually get, and child support, though the two shared custody of their three children.
When asked if Scott would support legislation that isn’t retroactive, spokeswoman Jeri Bustamante said he will “review any legislation that comes on his desk.”
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