Salem Family Law Blog

Recent posts have mentioned that Massachusetts alimony reform has led to changes which now permit more flexibility in determining payments. For example, if a receiving ex-spouse moves in with another adult, the paying ex-spouse may have the right to reduce or eliminate alimony payments. Massachusetts also permits for another post-divorce modification: changes to child support orders when appropriate, for example, because of substantial changes in income or custody rights.

However, one family law subject is mainly unalterable after a divorce is finalized: property division. Thus, Massachusetts residents may be interested to know, that when divorcing spouses sit down to divide assets, the ultimate determination of who gets what will likely be the last word. A court recently confirmed the absolute nature of divorce decrees as they are related to property division.

Massachusetts' new alimony law has already changed how alimony paying ex-spouses approach their spousal support obligations. The alimony bill, signed into law last fall and made effective in March, permits a judge to stop alimony payments if evidence demonstrates the recipient spouse cohabitates with a new significant other.

Prior to Massachusetts' alimony reform, judges ordered alimony payments based off factors such as income of the former spouses at the time of divorce. However, the old alimony law did not consider in depth, how lifestyle changes subsequent to divorce might affect alimony payments. Consequently, a paying ex-spouse may have had to make alimony payments until the recipient ex-spouse remarried, or died.

In the United States, and Massachusetts specifically, the disinterest in legal custody of one's child because of a divorce does not release a parent from the obligation to care for that child. The legal parents of a child maintain an obligation to care for the child until adulthood. Thus, if one parent is granted sole legal custody, merely because the other parent gives up or is not granted sole child custody, the relinquishing parent will still be obligated to make child support payments.

Recently, a woman in China began "putting the word out" that due to her impending divorce, she wanted to put her two-month old son up for adoption. The woman would still have to get approval from her husband to move forward with the adoption effort. The Chinese public had much to say about the matter, submitting some 10,000 plus comments. The conversation dealt with the question of whether the parent possesses a legal obligation to care for the child, even though the couple was divorcing.

For decades, studies concluded that moving-in together prior to marriage meant a couple's odds for divorce were higher than those who waited to live together until after they married. In the late 1960s, only about 10 percent of U.S. couples, including couples in Massachusetts, moved in together prior to marriage. Studies showed that those couples cohabitating prior to marriage in the 1960s demonstrated a higher rate of divorce.

Today, about 60 percent of couples live together before marriage. While living together may involve increased stress, statistics now show that pre-marriage cohabitation does not necessarily mean divorce, as it was once thought to.