Divorce

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 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.

‘Commingling’ Assets and Its Impact on the Distribution of Property in a Maryland Divorce

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

People are waiting longer to get married. Statistics show that the average age of Maryland men marrying for the first time is roughly 30 and, for Maryland women, 29. That means that, whether you’re talking about a first marriage or a subsequent marriage, the odds are greater than ever that the spouses are entering the marriage with significant wealth. For many spouses-to-be, one important financial goal is to ensure that the assets they want to share are shared and the ones they want to keep separate stay separate. Proper planning is vital in this area because, as a knowledgeable Maryland divorce lawyer will tell you, a failure to handle these assets properly could result in a non-marital asset unintentionally switching to marital status in the eyes of the law.

A recent Montgomery County divorce case shows this concept in action.

In terms of determining which assets were marital and which were non-marital, the spouses agreed about their home, the cars, and the checking accounts, but they did not agree about certain annuity accounts.

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.

‘Pure Hot Rage’: ‘Washingtonian’ Looks at Female Payors of Alimony in Maryland, DC, and Virginia… and Ways to Potentially Avoid Undesirable Alimony Outcomes

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

Late last year, Washingtonian covered a trend regarding alimony that’s on the rise in Maryland, D.C., and Northern Virginia: divorces where higher-earning wives leave owing alimony to their husbands. The piece is a useful reminder that anyone (husband or wife) can potentially be ordered to pay alimony in Maryland and that ways (such as prenuptial agreements) exist to help avoid part or all of the horror of an unexpectedly unfavorable divorce judgment. Whether you’re negotiating a prenup or litigating alimony, make sure you have a knowledgeable Maryland family law lawyer on your side to fight for a fair outcome.

Many of the ex-wives in the Washingtonian piece expressed deep anger and resentment about paying alimony to ex-husbands who they viewed as insufficiently industrious. One wife described her husband as someone whom she “begged” to find a job, always without success. Another expressed resentment about owing alimony from a marriage where she allegedly earned the bulk of the family’s income and also bore the lion’s share of responsibility for domestic tasks.

One wife complained, “It’s not just as simple as saying, ‘Because men pay it, women should pay it, too.'”

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.”

Dealing With Your Spouse’s Family Business in Your Maryland Divorce

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

Family-owned businesses are a staple of the American commercial landscape. Many of these businesses are passed down across multiple generations. Sometimes, though, the family business in question is your spouse’s, not yours. When that happens and you’re divorcing, some or all of that business may be a marital asset subject to equitable distribution. Getting a truly just outcome in that scenario means getting a proper determination of both the business’s status (as marital) and its value. A skilled Maryland divorce lawyer can help go about obtaining that just and appropriate outcome.

A recent example of this kind of divorce case comes to us from Baltimore County. The husband’s parents were successful businesspeople, having run a seafood market and restaurant west of Baltimore since 1963.

The husband and wife married in 2004. In 2005, the husband (“Eric”) and his father (“Bill”) formed a corporation to operate the market and restaurant. Initially, Eric owned 25% of the shares and Bill owned 75%. In January 2006, Bill transferred his shares to Eric and Eric’s sister. That left Eric with 75% ownership and the sister with 25%.

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.