Case Summaries

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.

A Maryland Man’s Transition into Retirement Allows Him to Obtain a Termination of His Ex-Wife’s Indefinite Alimony

April 15, 2022 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

For most people, one of the biggest financial transitions we’ll make is from full-time employment to retirement. The move into retirement comes with many changes, and often involves a substantial reduction in income. When that happens, that reduction may entitle you to obtain a reduction in the amount of alimony you owe… or maybe even elimination of your entire remaining alimony obligation. A knowledgeable Maryland alimony lawyer can help guide you through the process and obtain a modification that is fair based on your new circumstances.

F.H. was one of those people. He planned to retire from work in early 2021 at the age of 71. He, however, remained obligated to pay his ex-wife $2,500 per month in indefinite alimony following a 2015 divorce. The husband, as a result, filed a motion with the court to get his indefinite alimony terminated.

In Maryland, getting your indefinite alimony terminated requires demonstrating several things to the court. For one thing, you have to show that there has been a “material change in circumstances that justify” the termination. This, by the way, can be a change on your end or your ex-spouse’s end. For example, if you become disabled and your post-disability income is a mere fraction of the $300,000 you were making as a physician, that might make termination justified. Alternately, if your spouse gets a new job making double what she did before, that might also be the sort of change of circumstances that justifies termination of your alimony obligation.

What You Need When Your Spouse Has Accused You of ‘Dissipation of Assets’ in Your Maryland Divorce

December 16, 2021 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

In music and other popular media, there is the stereotype of the deceitful spouse who, during the pendency of the couple’s divorce, empties the couple’s bank accounts and absconds with the funds. That stereotype exists because that sort of malfeasance does happen sometimes. If it has happened to you, or if you have been wrongfully accused of engaging in this type of misconduct, you need a knowledgeable Maryland divorce lawyer going to bat for you.

One Baltimore County couple had a $100,000 dispute of this type in their divorce case. The husband had withdrawn $100,000 from certain marital accounts. The wife said that the husband had impermissibly dissipated the funds, while the husband said that the withdrawals were related to the legal fees he’d amassed in the divorce litigation.

At the outset, it’s important to recognize a few things. One, in Maryland, dissipation of assets occurs when one spouse wastes, spends, or sells a marital asset for reasons not related to the marriage or to reduce the amount his/her spouse will get in the final divorce judgment’s property award.

What Your Proof in a Maryland Divorce on the Basis of ‘Cruelty of Treatment’ Does (and Doesn’t) Have to Include

April 16, 2021 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

In a lot of states, there is only one option for obtaining a divorce, and that is the “no-fault” option. (There are actually 17 of those states.) Maryland is not one of those 17. In this state, you have the choice of getting a “no-fault” divorce or getting a divorce based on the conduct of your spouse. The choice you select can make a big difference so, before you go to court and file either kind of divorce, be sure you’ve retained a knowledgeable Maryland divorce lawyer to get the information and advice you need.

In internet slang, there exists the word “stigginit.” It is, essentially, a variation of “sticking it,” and means “sticking it” to someone or acting out of pure spite. Some believe that, if a spouse chooses to proceed with a fault divorce as opposed to a no-fault divorce in a state (like Maryland) that has both options, that spouse is just “stigginit” to their ex, or being spiteful. In reality, that’s not true. Obtaining a divorce due to your spouse’s fault can yield some very tangible benefits for you, such as a larger spousal support award (or your spouse receiving a smaller award,) as well as a more favorable child custody arrangement.

Here in Maryland, there are several ways you can get a fault-based divorce. They include your spouse’s adultery, your spouse’s deserting you, your spouse’s going to jail for a crime, or your spouse’s having gone insane. There’s also a ground for something called “cruelty of treatment” and, as one recent divorce case revealed, that ground encompasses more than just physical violence.