Retirement, Alimony and the Equitable Distribution “Double Dip”

A few weeks ago, the Family Law Section of the New Jersey State Bar Association held its annual symposium. The lectures covered a variety of topics and included dozens of speakers, but one of the topics sparked completely different opinions. The topic: Whether a support obligor can be forced to use assets distributed as part of an equitable distribution as a source of income to continue paying support after retirement.

The visceral reaction to this question is typically: “OOf course not – it’s a “double dip”.“However, the problem is much more complicated and far less clear. First, consider these principles of Innes against Innes117 NJ 496, 503 (1990):

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