After three vetoes of similar measures, a proposal to revise the state’s child support laws — one of the most emotional issues Florida lawmakers have grappled with in the last decade — is back on track in this year’s legislature.
Proponents of changing the law and the Florida Bar Association’s family law division, which has had heated arguments over the issue in the past, say they have reached an agreement on the latest version.
But excluded from the mix are the “First Wives,” a group of mostly older women who have traveled to the state Capitol year after year to plead with Republican leaders to take existing child support agreements off the chopping block.
As in previous versions of the bill, the main bone of contention this year is a proposal that would abolish so-called “permanent” alimony. The measure would introduce a process for ex-spouses who are paying alimony to request changes to alimony agreements if they wish to retire.
Proponents of this year’s legislation (SB 1416 and HB 1409) say it would legally codify a court decision in a 1992 divorce case that would guide judges when making decisions about retirement.
The bills would allow judges to reduce or eliminate alimony, support, or alimony payments after considering a number of factors, such as “the age and health” of the person making the payment; the normal retirement age for that person’s occupation; “the economic impact” that a reduction in maintenance would have on the recipient of the payments; and the “motivation for retirement and likelihood of returning to work” for the person making the payments.
READ MORE: Third time wasn’t the appeal as DeSantis vetoes Florida Legislature’s alimony reform
Philip Wartenberg, a Hillsborough County family law judge and chair of the Florida Bar’s family law division, said that unlike a similar bill vetoed by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year, the proposal would not require judges to change the alimony payments when someone retires.
“It’s not a ‘should’, so it’s not an automatic right to a pension, which we opposed in last year’s bill, which we felt was really biased in favor of payers,” Wartenberg told The News Service of Florida in an opinion telephone interview. “It’s a ‘May’. It’s very clear.”
But Robert Doyel, a retired family judge, disagreed.
“The amendment part of the bill says nothing about what it relates to, so it applies to any situation, any order that has been previously entered. So it’s absolutely retroactive,” Doyel, a former law professor, told the News Service. “They cheat you by saying it’s not retroactive.”
Proponents of change have spent a decade trying to revise laws that have not been updated in decades. Many of the proponents are affluent professionals who claim lifelong child support obligations have forced them to continue working well past the point at which they intended to retire.
Michael Buhler, chair of the Florida Family Fairness Committee, said in a statement that his group supports the deal negotiated with the Family Law Section.
“Florida Family Fairness is pleased that we have reached an agreement with the Florida Bar Association’s Family Law Division to abolish permanent child support and create a statutory pension law for child support payers. “Anything that brings clarity to this difficult process and ends permanent child support payments is a win for Florida residents,” Buhler said.
Last year’s veto by DeSantis marked the third time that bills had passed through the Republican-controlled legislature, only to be defeated. Former Gov. Rick Scott twice vetoed such a bill, with a 2016 standoff over the matter leading to a near-crime outside Scott’s office.
In its 2022 veto message, DeSantis highlighted concerns about the bill (SB 1796), which would allow ex-spouses to change existing child support agreements.
“If CS/CS/SB 1796 were to become law and be given retrospective effect, as the legislature intended, it would be unconstitutional to affect acquired rights under certain pre-existing marriage agreements,” the governor wrote.
Jan Killilea, who founded the First Wives Advocacy Group Facebook group a decade ago, said she “unleashed an angry mob” when she began speaking out in 2013 against a proposal aimed at retrospectively abolishing permanent child support payments.
Killilea said she opposes the current bill because it lacks enforcement provisions that require ex-spouses to perform child support obligations, among other things. Killilea said her ex-husband owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in child support payments but the courts did not compel him to pay the money. She predicted the bill would have devastating consequences for older women whose only source of income is child support.
“It’s really sad that we are the ones affected by this bill, but we have no voice,” she said.
The bill, set for consideration by the Senate Fiscal Policy Committee on Thursday, has sparked panic among women in the First Wives group, who have joined forces on Facebook and Twitter.
“It’s a mess. “It’s an absolute mess,” said Camille Fiveash, a 62-year-old woman from Milton who has been married for 30 years and whose alimony is her main source of income.
Fiveash is among the women who claim stable support is their only safeguard against poverty and homelessness. Most child support recipients did not work outside the home while raising their children and supporting their ex-husbands as the men climbed the corporate ladder.
Many of the women said they agreed to give up assets such as family homes or retirement investments in exchange for permanent alimony payments that they believed would last a lifetime.
“I’m going to be penniless and dependent on the state and collecting food stamps and everything else,” Fiveash said.
In addition to abolishing permanent maintenance, this year’s proposal also limits rehabilitation maintenance to five years. Under the plan, people married for less than three years would not be eligible for alimony, and those married for 20 years or more would be eligible for payments for up to 75 percent of the marriage’s length.
The identical House and Senate bills would also allow alimony payers to seek amendments if “a supportive relationship exists or has existed” that their ex-spouses were a part of in the past year. Critics like Doyel argue that the provision is vague and could apply to temporary housemates who help supporters cover their living expenses for a short time.
This year’s version of the bill does not contain a controversial provision that would have required judges to start with the “presumption” that children should divide their time evenly between parents. Scott largely justified his veto of a 2016 child support bill with a similar child sharing provision. The Family Law Department strongly opposed the inclusion of the child sharing provision in previous versions of the alimony reform proposals.
Wartenberg said he found ex-spouses’ objections to the current proposal confusing.
“I can’t explain it other than out of fear of what happened before, and perhaps concern that this will do the same thing we think previous bills were trying to do. We certainly don’t see it that way. In fact, last year we were the ones who pushed for the inclusion of this language,” he said. “We are satisfied with the product as it is currently described.”
Copyright 2023 WLRN 91.3 FM. See WLRN 91.3 FM for more information.
Comments are closed.