click to enlarge
After 26 years of marriage, Rick Fleming and his wife divorced in the fall of 2009. The court ordered Fleming to pay her $2,200 a month for life. Their children are grown, they have both remarried and are working, but he still has to give her 40 percent of his income.
“Divorce should not be a life sentence,” Fleming said last month at a public hearing before a panel of state senators.
His campaign for legislative changes – to eliminate permanent alimony and limit the discretion of judges in determining payments – is gaining momentum in the Vermont House of Representatives. On March 1, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to establish a task force to propose legislative changes.
“We've heard a lot of horror stories,” said Senator Jeanette White (D-Windham), who serves on the committee. “I think it's important that this task force looks into this.”
Alimony is a court-ordered payment from a higher-earning ex-spouse to a lower-earning ex-partner. Traditionally, this meant that divorced husbands had to pay alimony to their ex-wives. The centuries-old system was designed to prevent non-working women from becoming impoverished after separating from their working husbands.
Today, either spouse can be required to pay alimony. The logic behind keeping alimony: If one spouse makes sacrifices that advance the other's career, he or she should be compensated for those years of non-monetary contributions. Post-divorce payments also help counteract the fact that employment prospects can be slim for older people who have not been working.
“There is no doubt that it is outdated. Today's marriages and lifestyles are very different from those of 50 years ago,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Sears (D-Bennington), referring to the state's alimony law.
“There is a perception that this is a problem for rich, white, old men, but that is not the case,” says Fleming, a white man and executive at an oil company.
But according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, men still make up about 97 percent of child support payers, and not everyone is convinced that restricting this practice would be in women's best interests.
“I would hate to take alimony off the table,” said Felicia Kornbluh, a professor at the University of Vermont who specializes in gender, sexuality and women's studies. By dismissing the provision as outdated, she argues, “I'm ignoring the fact that there is still economic discrimination” against women.
Intensely personal and sometimes messy divorce proceedings are not often discussed openly. But a group of desperate divorcees, led by Fleming and his second wife, are going public with stories they say show alimony payments gone wrong. In 2015, they formed a group called Vermont Alimony Reform, which now has 70 members, according to Fleming.
“It's a growing movement across the country,” Fleming said. “Vermont, which is very, very progressive in many ways, is lagging behind the times.”
States such as Minnesota, Florida, New Jersey, Connecticut, Arkansas and Oregon have recently changed or are considering changing their child support laws.
Massachusetts revised its law in 2012 and set strict limits on alimony. Payments stop when the alimony payer retires or when the receiving spouse has lived with another partner for at least three months. To bring more uniformity to the system, Massachusetts law also sets guidelines for determining alimony based on the length of the marriage and income disparity.
Vermont Alimony Reform seeks the same changes in the Green Mountain State, which Fleming says has some of the most “archaic” and “draconian” laws in the country. He points out that Vermont is one of only a handful of states that still allow permanent alimony.
In making these decisions, judges in Vermont consider the finances of both spouses, the length of their marriage, their age and their ability to work. They also consider the couple's standard of living. Alimony is designed to enable the person receiving it to maintain their lifestyle, not just to avoid poverty.
Vermont's alimony reform provides that payments will be limited to the amount necessary to enable the other spouse to support themselves – for example, through training programs or education – and will not continue indefinitely. Exceptions will be made for people with disabilities or mental health problems.
“Currently, our system is based on entitlement – it should be rehabilitative,” Craig Miller told senators at the public hearing. The Chester resident identified himself as a former child support payer. He said his lawyer warned him before his divorce: “You're a man, you're a professional, and you've been married for 15 years. You're going to get screwed.”
Miller was one of about a dozen people who told stories of financial hardship that night. But the committee heard only one side of each report. No one receiving alimony testified, nor did the judges who made the decisions.
Dan Woodcock of West Topsham, who divorced in 2013, told the committee: “I am hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. That was a known fact [when the court issued its alimony order]but I still pay over $100 a day in spousal support.”
Charlie Morse, a Northfield farmer, said he almost had to sell farm equipment to pay an unexpected child support payment. Eventually, his second wife stepped in and covered the $17,000 cost.
Fleming also relies on his second wife, Amy, to pay off his first wife's debts. Without Amy, he says he would likely be living in the back seat of his car. At the time of his divorce, he owned a business that was on the verge of bankruptcy. He later sold it to pay off his debts.
Fleming sought a retrial of his case, which went to the Vermont Supreme Court and ruled against him. Two years ago, after spending over $250,000 on child support and legal fees, he filed for bankruptcy.
A divorced woman from Essex Junction told the Senate committee, “I am responsible for paying alimony to a man who has emotionally abused me. And every month I have to write him this check and provide him with a life that I cannot provide for myself. It is very difficult.”
“It's obviously a very personal, emotional matter for everyone involved in the process,” said Chief Administrative Judge Brian Grearson. But, he noted, child support disputes are fairly rare in Vermont. Of the 2,380 divorce cases that went through the state's court system last year, only 181 were contested, according to Grearson. The judiciary doesn't track why cases are contested, he said, but it's unlikely that all 181 cases were about child support.
Sears said he was aware that his committee was hearing about “outlier” cases – and only getting one side of the story. “Nevertheless, they are cause for concern,” he said.
Grearson is hesitant to endorse comprehensive reform. He said while he supports adding guidelines to the law, he cautioned the committee against adopting rigid standards that would limit judges' discretion.
Pricilla Dubé, a longtime Burlington divorce attorney, agreed that this approach is impractical: “I have people who have moved from other countries to be with their spouse. They don't even speak the language and then they get divorced. I mean, how do you factor that into a [formula]? This is not possible.”
Patricia Benelli, an attorney who chairs the Vermont Bar Association's family law committee, tried unsuccessfully to dissuade the committee from calling for a major overhaul of the law. “I think if you do that, you're opening Pandora's box,” she said.
The venture will almost certainly spark a debate about gender roles.
Alimony reformers say they want to modernize a patriarchal policy that is now punitive for both women and men. But whatever their motives, they must contend with the fact that men's rights groups share the same cause. (Fleming said Vermont Alimony Reform has no ties to such groups.)
“It's a difficult issue for feminists,” said Kornbluh, who admits to having mixed feelings about child support. She added: “The claim is that [the push for reform] is neither for alimony payers nor for men, and yet it seems clear that the result would be that alimony payers, typically men after divorce, would pay less. I have to believe that's kind of the point,” she said.
Senate Majority Leader Becca Balint (D-Windham) supports the effort to review Vermont's laws – but with some reservations. “Although gender roles in households have changed dramatically over the past three decades, parity still does not exist,” she said. “Study after study has shown that women who work outside the home still do the majority of housework and child care in addition to their professional roles.”
Kornbluh concluded that the child support system, although imperfect, counteracts this ongoing injustice: “It is not a great system, and yet it is the system we have.”
Correction, March 13, 2017: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that Dan Woodcock told the committee he had asked the court three times to reconsider his child support order. That statement actually came from a different man. The earlier version also incorrectly reported where Woodcock lives.
Comments are closed.