If alimony reform is enacted in Florida, it may be too late for Tarie MacMillan, a 65-year-old who runs a jewelry store near Tampa.
Fifteen years ago, MacMillan was ordered to pay her ex-husband $7,000 a month. Still, she has joined the crusade to lobby state legislatures to change the legal requirement to financially support a spouse before or after marital separation or divorce.
Some states have already restricted judgments, particularly for marriages lasting less than 20 years. However, most states, such as Florida, are still being worked on or are constantly evolving.
“I thought I would be my own island of misery to go through, but when I got into it I was very impressed. There is a light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.
Alimony, also known as spousal support or spousal support, is an ongoing payment from the higher-earning spouse to the lower-earning spouse. It has changed and shifted over the 40 years since the Supreme Court ruled that it applied equally to both sexes.
However, it is still heavily biased towards men paying women. According to the 2010 Census, only 3% of the approximately 400,000 alimony recipients are male, a 0.5% increase since 2000. Recipients claimed $9.2 million in payments on their 2013 tax returns.
Unlike child support, which is common when a divorcing couple has children, alimony payments have always been very rare, rising from about 25% of cases in the 1960s to about 10% today, said Judith McMullen, a law professor at the Marquette University. In a study of Wisconsin cases, she found it was only 8.6%.
Now that women are more likely to pay child support, they are committed to change.
“It’s unfair for men to pay for it and unfair for women. But women are much more outraged about it,” said Ken Neumann, founder of the Academy of Professional Family Mediators.
A check until death
Tanya Williams, who has been sending a check to her ex-husband of 13 years, is among those who don't understand the concept of “permanent” alimony – when one spouse pays the other indefinitely – and has joined the cause against it.
“There is no other contract where liability continues after the contract ends,” said the 52-year-old dentist, who was divorced in Florida but now lives in North Carolina. “You can't quit your job and say, 'I still have needs, so you have to keep paying me.' “
To combat this problem, states like Massachusetts, Texas and Kansas in most cases limit themselves to helping lower-income spouses get back on their feet or get further education. The general consensus is that everyone should work, and the only people likely to receive a longer-term award are those who are disabled or retired.
“We are not a post-gender society,” said Mary Kay Kisthardt, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. But she said the usual argument against alimony is that everyone can earn it, so there is no need for it.
In New York, for example, new rules come into effect in January 2016 that further restrict alimony based on the length of the marriage. The rules also limit the way one can forecast the future income of professionals such as doctors, said Caroline Knauss-Brown, a partner at Blank, Rome in New York.
Negotiate it
Alimony payments are often negotiated before they end up in court, as 90 to 95% of cases are resolved.
“There's less legal support for it, less social support for it and it's not a great bargaining tool,” said McMullen, who expects alimony will become less common and only be awarded in cases of actual disability.
For the 400,000 already in the system, there are always opportunities to request a change or attempt renegotiation, but the chances are slim. “Essentially you have to wait for them to die,” Neumann said.
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