Maryland Divorce Lawyer Blog

The Maryland General Assembly Weighs Passage of a Law to Institute ‘No-Fault’ Divorce in This State

February 27, 2023 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

The Maryland General Assembly is weighing the prospect of making this state a “no-fault” jurisdiction in terms of divorce actions. For some couples contemplating the prospect of divorce, such a change may have little impact; for others, it may matter a great deal. The bill is a reminder that, like all areas of the law, divorce law is frequently evolving. To put yourself in the best position possible, retain an experienced Maryland divorce lawyer who is fully up-to-date on all the changes in the law.

The bill, House Bill 14, would allow spouses to seek a dissolution based solely on their “irreconcilable differences.” Additionally, Maryland judges could grant divorces based on six months’ separation or medical proof that the other spouse is permanently incapacitated and incapable of making decisions.

Currently, Maryland has two forms of divorce: limited divorce and absolute divorce. Limited divorce doesn’t end the marriage and doesn’t allow you to remarry someone else, but somewhat functions like a form of legal separation, allowing you to obtain certain relief like an award of support. The bases that Maryland law currently recognizes for the award of a limited divorce are (1) cruelty (toward you or a minor child), (2) excessively vicious conduct, (3) desertion, or (4) voluntary separation.

What to Do When Your Divorce Involves Litigation in Maryland and Out of State

February 14, 2023 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

A skilled Maryland divorce lawyer can provide crucial assistance in most divorce cases. However, there are some types of cases where the aid of knowledgeable legal counsel is especially crucial, and that includes matters that span across multiple jurisdictions.

For one couple in Baltimore County, their divorce spanned multiple countries. The husband was a dual citizen of the United States and Nigeria. The couple married in the Nigerian capital in 2003 but relocated to Pikesville the next year, where they remained until their separation in 2019.

The wife filed her Maryland divorce petition in late May 2021. Three months later, the husband asked the judge to dismiss the petition. The reason? The husband had already filed a divorce petition in Nigeria in October 2020.

Contempt of Court and Who Has (and Who Doesn’t Have) a Right of Appeal in a Maryland Unpaid Alimony Dispute

January 31, 2023 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

If you have an alimony obligation and your ex-spouse is seeking to have you held in contempt of court, this is a very serious matter that you should treat accordingly. If a court declares you in contempt, you could be ordered to pay fines or even jailed. This requires serious countermeasures, including retaining the services of an experienced Maryland family law attorney.

P.R. was a Montgomery County husband facing that type of potential legal consequence. He and his wife divorced in May 2017. Three months prior, the spouses signed a marital settlement agreement that called for the husband to pay the wife non-modifiable alimony for a period of 10 years.

In 2020, the spouses became embroiled in a dispute over $6,350 in court-ordered attorney’s fees that the wife owed the husband. The husband took that $6,350 out of his alimony payments over a period of nine months.

Pursuing a Finding of Contempt of Court in Maryland When Your Ex-Spouse Has Not Met Their Alimony Obligation

January 17, 2023 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

Unpaid alimony matters are intensely fact-driven, meaning that your case can be much more successful if your judge has all the facts and is presented with all the circumstances regarding your ex-spouse’s non-compliance. If your ex-spouse isn’t living up to their alimony obligations, you can (and should) seek relief from the courts. And you should act promptly in contacting a knowledgeable Maryland unpaid alimony lawyer about protecting your rights.

The alimony case of F.S. and S.M. was a dispute that involved a large sum of unpaid alimony. The spouses, who divorced after 30 years of marriage, worked out a property settlement agreement that included an alimony provision. The agreement set the initial alimony amount at $1,500 but said that, if the wife no longer lived in the marital home, the amount of alimony was $3,250 per month.

The wife moved out in September 2016.

In December 2019, the wife asked the court to find the husband in contempt because he had not paid his alimony. Before the trial judge, the husband argued that he never agreed to anything regarding alimony in the separation agreement. After the hearing, the court concluded that the husband was in contempt, having never paid any alimony. The court set the husband’s unpaid alimony amount at $130,750.

Adulterous Affairs, Dissipation of Marital Assets, and Equitable Distribution in a Maryland Divorce

December 30, 2022 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

One of the more painful experiences a spouse can endure is to devote years — or even decades — to a marriage only to discover that your spouse has not been as faithful to you as you’ve been to them. While heartbreaking and sometimes infuriating, your spouse’s infidelity won’t always have much of an impact on the outcome of your divorce… but sometimes it will affect that outcome in a major way. To determine your rights and options if your spouse has been cheating, you need to speak to a knowledgeable Maryland divorce lawyer.

Maryland is one of the states that recognizes both no-fault divorce and at-fault divorce. One of the grounds for absolute divorce under Maryland law is adultery. Even in a case of a divorce on the ground of adultery, that affair may not “move the needle” much in terms of the financial aspects of the court’s judgment. So, if an adulterous spouse is someone who earns only minimal income with few economic opportunities and little chance of becoming self-supporting and the “innocent” spouse has substantial wealth and income, the adulterous spouse may still be entitled to alimony and/or a monetary award, even if the infidelity was the reasons for the marriage’s breakdown.

There’s one scenario, however, where a spouse’s extramarital affair(s) can have a huge impact on those financial elements of divorce, and that circumstance was illustrated in a recent divorce case originating here in Montgomery County.

Know Before You Go to Sign: The Importance of Getting Legal Advice Before Signing an Agreement Relinquishing Your Right to a Marital Asset

December 16, 2022 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

In this blog, we’ve discussed in the past the importance of consulting a knowledgeable Maryland divorce lawyer before you sign documents like prenuptial agreements, post-nuptial agreements, and marital settlement agreements, which can alter your ownership rights in various marital and/or non-marital assets. As a recent divorce case from Prince George’s County illustrates, even if you’re not signing a prenup or a settlement agreement, the need for experienced counsel exists any time you’re signing something that purports to alter your ownership rights in one or more assets.

The spouses in the Prince George’s County case, R.T. and B.J., married in 1988 and lived in a home in Clinton. 25 years later — in early February 2013 — the husband told the wife he desired to separate and to live in his own home. A few weeks later, the husband approached the wife about buying a residence in Cheltenham that would serve as his home.

The couple decided to execute three contracts, each of which was notarized. Together, the agreements reflected the wife’s intention to relinquish all her rights to the husband’s retirement account and that the husband would relinquish all ownership rights to the residence in Clinton. The husband was not represented by counsel when he signed the documents.

What Does — and Doesn’t — Qualify as an ‘Unconscionable’ Income Disparity in a Maryland Alimony Dispute

November 30, 2022 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

In some states — like Florida, for example — permanent (a/k/a indefinite) alimony is the default for marriages of a certain duration. By contrast, a spouse seeking indefinite alimony in Maryland must prove certain factors unrelated to the duration of the marriage to obtain that kind of award from the court. Those standards can be enormously helpful if you’re opposing your spouse’s request for indefinite alimony, but you should never take anything for granted in your divorce case. Instead, ensure that you’re protected by retaining an experienced Maryland divorce lawyer to handle your alimony matter.

In Maryland, a trial court may award a divorcing spouse indefinite alimony only if the judge finds that “due to age, illness, infirmity, or disability, the party seeking alimony cannot reasonably be expected to make substantial progress toward becoming self-supporting” or that, even after the spouse seeking alimony made the maximum amount of progress toward becoming self-supporting “as can reasonably be expected,” the spouses’ “respective standards of living… will be unconscionably disparate.”

In one Montgomery County couple’s alimony dispute, the husband emerged successful because the wife failed to clear either of these hurdles.

Sweating the Small Stuff: How Diligently Tending to All the Details Can Be Essential to Having an Enforceable Prenuptial Agreement in Maryland

November 17, 2022 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

Statistical research says that as many as 80% of people of divorced people will eventually remarry. The bad news is that second and subsequent marriages have a greater than 60% chance of ending in divorce. What’s all that mean? It means that, before you embark on that second or subsequent marriage, it is wise to consider pre-marital planning — such as a prenuptial agreement — before you wed. An experienced Maryland family law attorney can help you go about taking all the necessary steps to protect what you’ve built up to this point in your life.

A fairly negotiated and properly executed prenuptial agreement can be a huge help if you and your new spouse-to-be both have substantial wealth. It can be of even greater value if you have amassed wealth and your spouse-to-be has not, as one recent prenuptial agreement case from Baltimore County helps to illustrate.

In the Baltimore County case, the husband was a man in his early 50s who owned a successful construction and refrigeration business. He’d been married once, having divorced after 25 years, and had four adult children. The wife was in her late 20s, had a 12-year-old daughter, and according to the court, “was employed at an adult entertainment establishment” when she met the husband.

How an Extramarital Affair Cost a Maryland Spouse $7M After a Maryland Court Upheld His Postnuptial Agreement

October 31, 2022 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

As is true of all contracts, prenuptial and postnuptial agreements require several ingredients for success. All parties should negotiate with good faith, and endeavor to live up to the promises they make in the agreement, as opposed to assuming that, if they fall short of the agreement’s terms, their attorney simply can get them out of it by getting the contract invalidated. If you are considering a postnuptial agreement, make sure that the terms you empower your Maryland family law attorney to negotiate are ones that you can live with… and live up to.

That background brings us to an interesting recent case from here in Montgomery County that involved a postnuptial agreement.

The wife was an account executive for a catering company. The husband was a wealth management advisor and wasn’t always faithful to his spouse. The wife discovered one of the husband’s affairs in 2014 and the couple separated. They eventually worked toward reconciliation, but the wife only agreed to continue the marriage if the husband signed a postnuptial agreement.

How Avoiding Procedural ‘Missteps’ Can Be Critical to Success in Your Maryland Divorce Litigation

October 17, 2022 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

In a very recent case opinion announced by the Court of Special Appeals, the court wrote that “[s]ometimes one misstep early in a case can have repercussion for the rest of the case.” Those kinds of damaging missteps can include, among other things, failing to comply with all the pretrial deadlines the trial court sets. Whether it is managing deadlines, accumulating evidence, securing expert witnesses, or tending to any of the other essential “details” that go into a successful family law case, make sure you’ve retained the services of an experienced Maryland divorce lawyer to handle your matter.

These things may sound small, but a shortcoming — even just a single one — potentially can have massively harmful results, as a recent Montgomery County case demonstrates.

R.Z. and D.Z. were parents going through a child custody case. In any kind of civil case in Maryland, all parties will receive something called a “scheduling order.” This is an order that sets various dates and deadlines, like the trial date, pre-trial conference date, discovery deadlines, and so forth. One of the things generally included in these kinds of orders is the deadline for parties to designate their expert witnesses.