As transportation and public safety dominated the final days of the 2016 legislature, our elected officials made quiet — and surprisingly quick — changes on the home front.
Support reform has come to Minnesota.
On Tuesday, the Senate voted 45 to 12 in favor of the domestic support reform bill. The measure allows changes to the long-standing practice of spousal support after divorce, when the recipients of the money clearly share their home and life with a new significant other.
Those making the payments can go back to court a year after the divorce is final, seeking reductions, stays, or outright terminations.
The bill passed the House of Representatives by a resounding 112-9 in early May, led by co-author, Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover, who called it “just so common sense.”
Gov. Mark Dayton was expected to sign the bill before the Legislature adjourned on Monday.
It’s not too soon. Cohabitation is common today, and we are decades past an era when divorce was based on guilt and women were typically stay-at-home mothers and whose post-divorce economic security depended on that essential financial support.
In fact, more and more women are now paying alimony to their ex-partners.
I’m glad to see protections for the small number of divorced people who are legally in a difficult position. I think of a woman who reached out to me after I first wrote in support of the bill. Formerly a stay-at-home mom of four, she divorced after 22 years and is doing everything in her power to recreate herself, including returning to grad school with financial support and working two jobs. She pays only with cash, drives a car with 150,000 miles and is very proud to have $5,000 in her 401(k), even though she knows “that’s a drop in the bucket of what I’m going to need” .
She told me that she doesn’t want to marry her partner, to whom she pays rent, until she’s out of debt in about two years. “I know firsthand that marriage is stressful enough without the added financial tension and worry,” she said.
The bill’s greatest advocate empathizes with its challenges.
“There has to be a safety net,” agreed Dr. Michael Thomas von Marshall, a dentist who founded the Minnesota Alimony Reform (mnalimonyreform.com). “Judges need to find these outlying cases. You still have to go to court, file an application, provide evidence. The courts are also there to protect women.”
But that protection, Thomas believes, should be limited to women like the one above. Divorced and remarried a decade ago, he pays alimony to his ex-wife, who he said has been in a committed relationship for more than seven years and enjoys homes in two states.
“Let’s determine whether someone is honoring the law or not,” he said. His frustration is hardly unusual.
Sue Griffin said she was “staggered by the number of people out there with similar stories” to hers.
After her divorce, she declined spousal support because she worked full-time, but accepted child support for her daughter. When her ex-husband fell on hard times, she agreed to a reduction in child support and ended up receiving nothing.
Her second husband, on the other hand, has been paying $2,100 a month for 18 years to a woman he was married to for 11 years. He must pay her until she dies or remarries. She has been with a man for 10 years and the two had a “commitment ceremony” where they exchanged rings.
“I had no idea this was going on,” said Griffin, who wrote a letter to the governor urging him to sign the law. “I’m glad they’re finally doing something about this, but I’m sorry it’s taken so long.”
It may take even longer to bring about the big changes some have been hoping for.
“All things considered, I would describe this as a gentle change in Minnesota’s spousal support laws rather than any radical reform,” said divorce attorney Michael Boulette of Lindquist & Vennum. “This may result in an increased number of applications in the short term – if only due to increased awareness – but it is difficult to say whether these applications will be any different than they would have been without the new law.”
He points to states with more bite, including Massachusetts and New Jersey, which underwent sweeping changes in 2011 and 2014 respectively, and Illinois, which has long considered the recipient’s cohabitation with another person to be grounds for ending payments.
The question is whether advocates of changing spousal support could use this to provide impetus for further changes, he said.
Thomas of Minnesota’s Alimony Reform remains optimistic.
“Is it perfect? No. The bar is high. However, it addresses a major abuse of the system. My hope is that the law will bring ex-spouses to the negotiating table. “Hey, do you need a little more time? OK. But let’s end this sometime.’ ”
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