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Senate Signs Off On Alimony Overhaul
March 6, 2016
The Florida Senate approved an alimony overhaul that would establish formulas for alimony payments and includes a controversial provision dealing with how much time children should spend with their divorced parents.
The proposal, approved in a 24-14 vote Friday, is a compromise with the House, which originally objected to the inclusion of the child time-sharing provision. The measure now goes to the House.
The time-sharing issue was at the center of a bitter dispute between two prominent Republican lawmakers — Senate budget chief Tom Lee and House Rules Chairman Ritch Workman — that caused a similar bill to die last year. Lee wanted child time-sharing included in the bill, while Workman opposed it.
A compromise between Lee and Workman, reached late in this year’s session, did away with a proposed presumption that children spend their time equally between both parents. Instead, judges would “begin with the premise that a minor child should spend approximately equal amounts of time with each parent.”
Critics of the measure complained that there was little substantive change between the “presumption” and “premise” that children split their time between parents.
Workman has worked for years with alimony-reform advocates and the Florida Bar’s Family Law Section to revamp what all sides called Florida’s outdated alimony statutes.
The Family Law Section endorsed the alimony changes, but objected to the time-sharing provision, a position Lee’s new language hasn’t changed.
At Lee’s request Friday, the Senate amended the time-sharing provision to apply only to divorces or child custody cases filed after Oct. 1. Lee said that would address a concern about retroactivity expressed by Gov. Rick Scott in vetoing an alimony measure three years ago.
But Senate Minority Leader Arthenia Joyner argued that the alimony portion of this year’s bill (SB 668) was still retroactive because the new guidelines would apply to people seeking modifications to their payments.
Under the proposal, the duration of alimony payments would be based on the number of years of marriage, while the amount of the payments would rely on a couple’s gross income — the higher earner’s salary minus the earnings of the spouse seeking alimony.
Joyner said the changes would “substantially reduce” payments to women, who make up 96 percent of alimony recipients.
“The reason for the change is not rationality. It is to reward the privileged,” Joyner, D-Tampa, said. “I think this is a travesty. It’s a disgrace and a shame that we would do this to those who have given their all for so many years to their families.”
But Sen. Kelli Stargel, a Lakeland Republican who sponsored the measure, said that she wanted to provide predictability for couples, who in the past have used the process of divorce to punish each other.
“Going through a divorce is heart-wrenching for all the parties,” said Stargel, who said she has been married since she was 17 years old and has never been divorced. “The parents get so angry and so mad at each other. … The children are the ones that suffer.”
The proposal is designed to provide clarity and remove some of the emotion that plays out during litigation, she said.
“This was supposed to be empowering to people who are going through a divorce,” Stargel said.
The House could vote on the legislation early next week. The annual legislative session ends next Friday.
by Dara Kam, The News Service of Florida
Comments
13 Responses to “Senate Signs Off On Alimony Overhaul”
@ Chris in Molino:
Thanks for your response. I absolutely agree. Thank the Good Lord for my loving second husband who has been a great father to both his girls and my own. They are literally “Ours”.
@No Excuses
All I know is (being a once married man to a twice married woman) that when you love and accept a person, you love everything about them. Their children are part of them so you cannot love the person without loving the children. Therefore, the matter of responsibility and money becomes unimportant as you do it because their yours, you are a family. Thats all I mean.
Not disagreeing with your opinion, Chris in Molino, but the wording of your first post to this blog sounds exactly like you are saying once a woman (OR a MAN) remarries, then child support should change. My question was why? The new spouse (or step-parent, if you will) is not legally responsible for the new step-child. The other biological parent is, regardless of whether the ex-parent is a vengeful so and so or not. My ex-husband was extremely vengeful and attempted to get everything he could from me to ruin me and for no other reason. He was not successful, but, as you stated, it cost me a LOT of money. Just clarifying why I asked you the question – your wording sounds exactly like what I stated above.
@ shay, no, I don’t pay alimony….I can just spot a money trap from a mile away. I shouldn’t have to provide for another adult, EVER, after we are no longer together. Period. You’re an adult, get your own income. People who receive alimony are leaches, pure and simple.
@No Excuses
I’m speaking from EXACTLY the same position as your second husband. We do not want any support from the dead best dad, costs too much to get it. Too many fathers not being responsible not just monetarily but by not spending quality time or teaching life lessons. And too many women caring more about money and vengeance than the children.
To eveyone else : if this doesn’t apply to you, then no need to respond, right ?
@Chris in Molino:
I get what you are saying about the child support being modified if the custodial parent remarries. How are those children the legal responsibility of the step-parent? Morally, yes. Legally, no. The child support should be based on the income of the mother and the father of the children, and paid accordingly by the non-custodial parent. I’m speaking from the position of having a second husband who has been a wonderful father to my children, including helping to pay for food, clothing and educational opportunities, vehicles, college, etc. I could go on. The biological first father does NOTHING for these children, simply because they are now over 18 and did very little for them before they turned 18. So, how is it in any way, legally, the responsibility of a step parent to provide monetarily for step-children? What is mom (or dad) supposed to do if they depend on the child support to take care of the children? Child support includes helping to keep a roof over the heads of the kids, water, electricity and a liveable situation for the children.
Just a note here – it’s not only women who try to gouge their ex-spouses for alimony. I’ve seen men do it too, if they can qualify. I know this personally. My children do not speak with their father today, through no fault of mine. He is responsible for it through his own angry, vengeful behavior. The kids had eyes in their heads and knew who was responsible for it.
@chris You’re delusional!! Men shouldnt be reponsible for other men’s children just because they’re in a relationship with their mother.
I work two jobs to support my two children because the men I had children were decided to be dead beats. One even refuses to acknowledge the child he fathered. I don’t rely on men or agencies to support me and quite frankly I’m appalled by your comment. Not all women use their children as banks. If your comment had even a little hint of plausibility then I guess I could lump all men as cheaters,liars and deadbeats. Unbelievable!! I’m not sure if your theory is meant to hurt the women or the or the men in a relationship where there are children from another relationship. I’m sure men would be real eager to get in a lasting relationship with a woman raising children alone simply because he’d have to pay for another mans child so we’d have lots of single women or maybe in your scenario we’d have lots of women marrying men for their money.
@me just fyi it isn’t only women who receive alimony. You obviously are a man who pays it and thinks it’s unjust. Should’ve gotten a pre-nup.
Too bad the next stop cant be the child support lottery.
Yes, lots of men who aren’t responsible, and just as many women irresponsible.
As long as the woman remains in a home with the children, all for child support. But once she attains another future child supporter to reside in the home, support should be no more in monetary form but in the form of actual needed goods of the child.
Alimony shouldn’t exist in the first place. Nothing like women winning the divorce lottery and taking money they didn’t help earn in perpetuity.
Kelly Stargel hit the nail on the head “The children are the ones that suffer”
And many people that get divorced don’t meet the Biblical definition of divorce, and that is in the case of violence or abandonment or death of spouse, to say we just stopped loving each other or we could not get along does not cut the mustard, and God warns of remarriage outside of these conditions, and actually calls it adultery, and the person that marries them is guilty of the same!
I commend Senate Minority Leader Arthenia Joyner for her comment, in which she used the word “priveledged”. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many of the politicians are persuaded in their decisions due to financial contributions to their campaigns. So many have forgotten they were elected to represent the people a d not the people of wealth.
I have seen three cases in the last few years (one very up close and personal) where lying, vindictive women have sought to destroy their husbands, none of whom were unfaithful or abusive, through divorce. Unfortunately, they destroyed their children through the process. Perhaps, if these women knew they weren’t going to make a fortune for their deeds, they would reconsider. By the way, it would help if the judges were intelligent enough to see through these gals. Our laws have made it very easy for women to cry wolf.
Good for Kelli Stargel! I, too, have been married since I was 17, and in those 45 years my spouse and I have had to work through some very tough situations.
You know without being told which senator is republican and which one is democrat by how the dem relies on someone else’s hard work.
What has happened to our society?