Case Summaries

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.

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 Maryland Law Does (and Doesn’t) Require in Order for You to Receive a Reduction in Your Alimony Obligation

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

The pandemic did vast damage to many businesses, particularly ones in the service industry, like restaurants. Whatever industry you’re in, a significant downturn in your financial situation is inevitably painful. One thing that may be available to reduce some of that financial stress is a reduction of your alimony obligation based on your pandemic-triggered income loss. The law imposes certain requirements on any parent’s case to reduce his/her alimony, so you want to be sure that you’re fully prepared. Part of that includes retaining the services of a knowledgeable Maryland alimony lawyer.

Don’t be misled into thinking that the financial setback you’ve endured must be totally the result of things out of your control in order to get a reduction of your alimony payment. A recent alimony modification case from Montgomery County shows what we mean.

The husband was one of the creators of a chain of restaurants serving Mediterranean cuisine. By the time the husband divorced, the restaurant chain had locations in several states.

Retiring Marylanders and Their Alimony Obligations from Previous Property Settlement Agreements

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

Divorce is a big transition in the lives of many people. So is retirement. A significant number of people entering retirement have to deal with divorce-related financial obligations, including alimony. Whether you are the spouse who’s receiving alimony or the spouse who’s retiring, a knowledgeable Maryland divorce lawyer can help you best protect yourself and your financial needs.

K.R. was one of these retiring Marylanders. He and his wife divorced in 2014 after 39 years of marriage. The spouses worked out a property settlement agreement. With regard to alimony, the agreement said that the husband would pay the wife $10,000 per month. It also said that the alimony obligation would reduce to “36.36% of the husband’s earned income” starting in 2019… unless the alimony obligation was “otherwise terminated or modified by a court.”

In 2020, the husband went back to court to extinguish his alimony obligation. He argued in his motion that he’d retired due to the COVID-19 pandemic and no longer earned any income. The court concluded that, although the husband had no income, he had over $1 million in assets, and refused to terminate alimony, but did reduce the sum from $10,000 per month to $4,000 per month.

The Value of a Good Legal Advocate in Your Maryland Divorce: It Goes Further Than You Might Think

July 29, 2022 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

A knowledgeable Maryland divorce lawyer can help your case in countless ways. Sometimes, those ways involve in-depth knowledge of the law or the effective use of the pre-trial discovery processes to get key evidence. Other times, a skilled divorce lawyer can help by managing a client’s expectations and giving them strong, unflinching advice about what sort of things can help your case… and which ones almost certainly won’t.

As an example, let’s look at the divorce case of A.T., an Upper Marlboro man whose wife filed for divorce the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2018.

The husband, in response, “did not file an answer, counter complaint, or any pleading requesting relief from the court.”

Overcoming Typos and Math Errors in Your Maryland Divorce Judgement to Arrive at a Fair and Equal Result

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

“Lawyers often joke that we went to law school because we aren’t good at or don’t like math,” quipped a Maryland Court of Special Appeals judge recently. In a similar vein, a student in a law school seminar once interrupted the instructor who was laying out a math-intensive hypothetical. “Pardon me, Professor, but… we don’t do math. If we did, we wouldn’t be here.” Similar to the Court of Special Appeals Judge’s observation, the student was implying that he and his classmates arrived at law school rather than medical school or engineering school solely as a result of their poor math skills or strong dislike of math. In seriousness, though, math and law can — and do — intersect frequently, especially in divorce cases involving the division of marital assets. When you are in a divorce case where that is a significant issue, your outcome can often be enhanced by having on your side a skilled Maryland divorce lawyer (who may or may not love math.)

The case that spawned the Court of Special Appeals’ observation about math was a recent divorce dispute about retirement assets. The judgment in that divorce action stated that the “parties shall equalize their retirement assets.” To do that, the court instructed the wife to roll over $303,388 from her retirement to the husband’s retirement.

The problem was, as the appeals court put it, “something didn’t add up,” and fortunately for the wife, her legal team spotted it and argued it in her motion to enforce the judgment. Specifically, the wife’s counsel found the presence of a typographical error and deduced that a transfer of $303,388 would not equalize the spouses’ assets. To achieve an equal split, the wife argued, the correct sum should have been $40,000 less, or $263,388.

Valuation of Marital Assets and Monetary Awards in Maryland Divorce Cases

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

In many walks of life, people say that “timing is everything.” In civil lawsuits, timing isn’t everything but it definitely is a very important thing. That’s especially true in divorce cases. When it comes to things like alimony and monetary awards, the date used for evaluating the spouse’s assets is key. Sometimes, even just a difference of only a few months can alter the outcome by thousands of dollars. As with any essential detail of your divorce case, a knowledgeable Maryland divorce lawyer can help you identify the correct date and, in the process, get you a fair outcome.

Maryland law requires a trial court, before imposing a monetary award as part of a divorce, to engage in the three steps. First, the judge must identify what property is the husband’s, what is the wife’s, and what is marital. Second, the trial court must decide the value of the marital property. Finally, if the judge determines that simply dividing the marital assets “according to title” would yield an unfair result, then the judge adds a monetary award to the spouse who received the lesser group of titled marital assets.

In S.L. and T.L.’s divorce case, the trial court in Prince George’s County went through all those required processes. The court determined that, of the couple’s $1.24 million in assets, $553,000 was titled in the husband’s name, $86,000 was in the wife’s name, and $602,000 was titled in the spouses’ names jointly. After subtracting the couple’s marital debt, the judge ultimately awarded the wife a monetary award of $50,000.

A Recent Alimony Case from Baltimore County Again Shows How Damaging Proceeding Without a Knowledgeable Attorney Can Be

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

Sometimes, it may seem easy to think that you can proceed with your divorce case without legal representation. You have documents supporting your arguments and your issues are straightforward, so an attorney isn’t necessary, right? Having convinced yourself, you show up to a hearing, an arbitration, or a mediation. Then, oftentimes, bad things happen. An unfavorable divorce-related ruling can be extremely damaging, either personally, financially, or both, so make sure you have a knowledgeable Maryland divorce lawyer on your side throughout your divorce case to protect your interests.

As an example, there’s this alimony case from Baltimore County. The husband was a highly-compensated anesthesiologist making more than $27,000 per month and his wife was a community college professor who made a little more than $7,000 per month. In the summer of 2020, the court convened a remote status conference. Shortly after that, the wife’s attorney contacted a retired judge about mediating the alimony dispute between his client and her husband.

The husband inquired from the retired judge whether the mediation was private or court-ordered and was told the court ordered it. At the time of the mediation, the husband was in the hospital, one day removed from a medical procedure that required local anesthesia. Nevertheless, he didn’t obtain an attorney.

When Your Spouse Can (and Can’t) Get Alimony in Maryland Even After Your Both Signed an Agreement Waiving the Right to Alimony

April 29, 2022 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

When you decide to enter into a prenuptial agreement or a marital settlement agreement, there are several critical phases. There’s the phase where you and the other party negotiate the terms of the agreement, and you work to ensure that all the terms adequately protect your interests. There’s also the phase where you and the other party execute the agreement, and you work to ensure that the document you sign matches the bargain you struck during the negotiation phase. Finally, there may be a phase where you have to litigate to enforce the agreement and get the benefit of the contract you signed. At each of these phases, your chances of getting the fairest possible outcome can be enhanced by having legal representation from an experienced Maryland spousal support (alimony) lawyer.

That’s because, at any phase, things can go astray from what you wanted… and executed.

For example, there’s the alimony case of X.L. and H.L., a couple who, in March 2016, worked out a prenuptial agreement. In that document, both spouses agreed to waive the right to receive alimony in the event of separation or divorce. They married one month later.