Modern Divorce - The Do-Over For A Better You

Maximizing your spousal maintenance

March 17, 2021
Modern Divorce - The Do-Over For A Better You
Maximizing your spousal maintenance
Show Notes Transcript

Spousal maintenance - what used to be called alimony - can be a key negotiating point in a divorce. In this episode of the Modern Divorce Podcast, Family Law Attorney Billie Tarascio talks with Ryan Claridge, a Modern Law attorney, who talks about the strategies involved when it comes time to asking for spousal maintenance. 

It's not a divorce penalty, Ryan says, but it is a bridge for one spouse who makes less money than the other, to receive income from the other spouse for a period of time. Sometimes courts look at spousal maintenance as "compensatory," such as when one spouse supports another while getting a college degree, for instance. 

For anyone who is in the midst of splitting up and potentially receiving - or paying - spousal maintenance, this discussion is all about your money and how you can make the most of it.

Billie Tarascio (00:01):

Hello, and welcome to the modern divorce podcast. I'm your host, Billie Tarascio. I'm the owner of modern law, a family law firm in Phoenix area. I've been a divorce attorney for more than 15 years. I've got four kiddos. I'm divorced myself. And on this podcast, we're going to cover everything related to divorce. Be it legal issues, financial issues, children issues, blended family issues, counseling mediation, and more. I hope you enjoyed the podcast.

Billie Tarascio (00:29):

Hi there. This is Billie Tarascio with the modern divorce podcast. And today I am joined by modern law attorney, Ryan Claridge, and we are going to talk about one of the stickiest most heavily debated, most difficult issues and family law, and that is spousal maintenance. But first, welcome to the show. Ryan,

Ryan Claridge (00:51):

Glad to be here.

Billie Tarascio (00:52):

Ryan will you tell everyone a little bit about your background?

Ryan Claridge (00:58):

Sure. I've been doing family law for roughly 10 years. I was born in Canada. I live in Scottsdale with my wife and two children. Expecting two more, and family law is my only area of practice.

Billie Tarascio (01:13):

Fantastic. I love it. I'm excited for people to get to know you, you are a sort of recent addition to modern law, but it kind of doesn't feel like it because you fit in so well, maybe that's the 10 years of practice or the style of practice, but how would you describe your style of practice?

Ryan Claridge (01:31):

I would describe my style as confrontational as I need to be. I try to be very open, very Solomon friendly. I use humor a lot sometimes in situations where it's not called for, but it usually works out for me. And, you know, I'm very fair. I think I'm easy to talk to, but you know, if confronted with some stupidity or some unreasonableness I can get, I can get quite angry.

Billie Tarascio (01:58):

Ryan, I love the way that you present arguments. So everybody, every attorney has their own style and personality and the way that they lawyer comes through that personality and with Ryan, it's this dry sarcasm and, and he says things with a straight face that most of us wouldn't dare say no. And you seem to get away with it. How have you always done that?

Ryan Claridge (02:24):

I think so. It's kind of always been my sense of humor. You know, and it's very easy sometimes just to kind of say things out loud when they sound unreasonable, ask questions that kind of everyone is thinking just to say them out loud and if you can keep a straight face not everyone can, you know, it can be effective.

Billie Tarascio (02:45):

So that's the key. The key is you say absolutely outrageous things that maybe some people would shy away from, but you say it without any emotion whatsoever.

Ryan Claridge (02:56):

Yes. And I've certainly been accused of being emotionless than once in my life, but I, I do have emotion.

Billie Tarascio (03:02):

So give our audience a example of what we're talking about

Ryan Claridge (03:10):

On the spot. I'm not too sure, but I'll just say that in depositions, I certainly ask questions that I know we're going to get objected to make people repeat objectionable things that they've said or questionable things. Sometimes I just say, huh, which really isn't a question, but it makes people uncomfortable. But off the top of my head, I can't think of an example.

Billie Tarascio (03:34):

Sorry. No, that's all right. That's all right. I know, I know many times a company meetings, you have reiterated what you've said in court and the rest of the attorney is I'll say, did you really say that? And you're like, yes, I did. So we're all a little bit in awe of your abilities. And I think that it's a perfect segue to talk about spousal maintenance and you and I are going to take opposite ends of a hypothetical, but it's probably gonna revamp over the podcast episode. So we are talking about spousal maintenance and spousal maintenance in Arizona is governed under ARS 25, three 19. So whenever we talk about spousal maintenance you really have to do so with that statute in front of you. And whenever you make your arguments, you really have to do so. Would that in front of you? There's not a lot of case law in Arizona, so here's our hypothetical. We've got a husband and wife, 12 year marriage husbands in it. Wife was a school teacher. She stopped working when she had her kiddos when she began having kiddos, let's say four years ago. And they are now going through a divorce. Ryan, you represent wife. How do you begin to tell her how much spousal maintenance to ask for

Ryan Claridge (04:55):

Sure. So I would probably start by asking her how much her husband makes right now and how much he's made in the past and who contributes more to the community finances. Of course, when you're married, you know, you split all bills, equally, every community, every community bill as a community asset, but the most couples don't make the same amount. So it kind of asks like what's the proportional shared. Is, does husband pay about 70% of the house bills? Is it 80? Is it 90? And I would ask because the judge is gonna ask, I would ask her to look to her life post-divorce and I would try to get an idea of what she thinks her expenses are going to be, because that can be a really good jumping off point. Cause you want to have it grounded in as much tangible information that you can print in front of the judge. So I would ask what her plan is, where she's going to live. What our standard of living is being, how much is the rent or mortgage going to be? How much is their car payment going to be? How much is insurance going to be now that she has to provide it for herself and things of that nature.

Billie Tarascio (06:09):

This is an absolute critical factor and it is three one nine B one, the standard of living during to the marriage and then your needs moving forward. The ability from whom the spouses is from whom maintenance assault can pay for spousal maintenance plus, and we'll get into all of the B factors, but in Arizona, it's really interesting. You, you must qualify first and there's five different ways that you can qualify for spousal maintenance. Now, in our case, let's say the husband makes $150,000 a year and she's not working. So she doesn't meet any, would you try to qualify her under only one factor or many of the different factors?

Ryan Claridge (06:54):

I would never try and qualify her only under one factor because it's not. The statute says, you know, it's a combination of the factors. So any one is enough, but you don't want to rest your legal argument on just on just one of the factors. If there's more than one available, even if you're a brave and courageous like me, I would like to have multiple, multiple legs to stand on. So the first factor is, you know, does the spouse that's seeking support? Do they lack sufficient property? So here, you know, in a 10 year marriage most people are on their first or second home. So we're not going to have a lot of equity in the home. I think we talked about, you know, maybe the home could have been refinanced recently or maybe they had just moved out of their starter home into their not so forever home when they had their kids, right? So if we're just dividing the assets in half half of wives that says, I'm sorry, half of the marital assets are not going to be enough for wife to survive.

Billie Tarascio (08:00):

So I think this is great. And I think factor one is really about, do you have income producing property? If you are getting in as part of your divorce, you know, several millions of dollars that money can create income for you. So you have been given property to provide for your reasonable needs in dividends, or if you are, if you are a couple that has, you know, I am talking to a couple right now that has quite a bit of rental property. And so if you split the rental property, you've got immediate income. And so if you've got immediate income that can provide for your reasonable needs now reasonable is a completely relative term. Then you, you probably don't qualify under factor one. Do you agree with that assessment?

Ryan Claridge (08:48):

I agree. And you know, during the consultation or a strategy session, this can be a rather moment because if you're with someone who's going through a divorce and I'm not sure how they're going to make ends meet and their husband or the wife makes, you know, 10 times what they do. And then you find out that they own six homes or you find out there's a huge stock portfolio. Then you say, look, we don't really need to go much further because half of all of this you're going to be fine,

Billie Tarascio (09:21):

Right? Property can create income. And that is a fantastic position to be in, but it may kill your spousal maintenance argument. Now, the next factor is, are you unable to be self-sufficient through appropriate employment or you have a child whose age, or, or condition prevents you from seeking employment outside the home, or you lack the earning ability in the labor market to be self-sufficient. Now, I don't know why we have, or on all of these things that are sort of different in one factor, but tell me what your take on this factor. Okay.

Ryan Claridge (10:01):

Sure. So obviously if you're the caretaker of like a special needs child and you're not able to leave the home that that would weigh in those are rare cases, but they do exist unable to be self sufficient through appropriate means. You know, the court is definitely pumps the self-esteem up of all litigants against and tells them that almost anyone can be self-sufficient through appropriate means. So I've never had someone qualify there. And a lot of times people will sit, try and say they qualify there because they have some sort of like an addiction or alcohol problem. That's not something you want to bring to the court. The time that that does come into factor it does factor into play is when we might have a, like a 65 or older, maybe late sixties person who was just not going to be able to go back to college, to go to a vocational school, to improve their income. That's where that that's where that, where that would factor in not a factor in our hypothetical case here.

Billie Tarascio (11:05):

Okay. Now number three is really interesting, has made a significant financial or other contribution to the education training, vocational skills career, or earning ability of the other spouse. How does that actually work?

Ryan Claridge (11:18):

So here I would ask my client, you know, when her husband got his advanced training to get the job that he has now, where were you? Did you, were you watching the children so he could complete his tasks? Were you helping them with schoolwork? Were you paying for his tuition? Were you just taking care of everything else, maybe in the household bills? So your spouse could advance themselves. And that is, that is fairly common in my experience.

Billie Tarascio (11:49):

Absolutely. I mean, this is like, let's say somebody, somebody, you know, parents put the son-in-law through school, you know, that is a significant financial contribution to their education that they get to go take forth. And it's an equitable argument. It's that, you know, if you, if you invest in your spouse's career, you should get some benefit from that moving forward now,

Ryan Claridge (12:17):

Because the plan like going back to the marriage or the plan was for, you know, in this case, my client, the wife, you know, she was going to sacrifice more. So husband could earn more, not for himself, but for the community and for everyone. Right,

Billie Tarascio (12:31):

Right. Right now it's, it's interesting because we've got this massive shift in culture, in judges. And in that everyone has heard about, you know, when we're talking to potential clients, they're worried because they've heard that judges aren't doing spousal maintenance anymore. You know, you'll hear that. And that's not true judges, aren't doing spousal maintenance anymore. Isn't an accurate statement, but there is some truth to that. Can you explain what's going on in the family court?

Ryan Claridge (13:04):

Sure. So in the FA the family court, you know, it's probably a, it's a quarter of equity and it's probably, you know, needs to be most in tune with the culture. I would think as an initiative of law, you have to remember that, you know, family court judges, our husbands, their fathers, their wives and mothers too. So what they have seen and what our culture is seeing is, you know, more, more women in the workplace, more women going to graduate school, more women going to law school. So you have more representation on the family court bench. Not just a women, but you know, people who are just observing the culture. So the idea that women are unable to provide for themselves without a husband or without spouses support, is it's just, it's just not true anymore and is not reflected in our culture anymore.

Ryan Claridge (13:57):

And like I was saying earlier, family court judges will pump your tires and tell you, you know, you can go provide for yourself. You just need a little encouragement. So it's a little bit of the shifting culture and a little bit of a, kind of a turn towards self responsibility too. And in family court, you can kind of get trapped if you're the one seeking spousal support, because a lot of times the things you might need to do in a custody battle to improve yourself, to be a better parent are also going to prove your earning potential and make you a more stable person.

Billie Tarascio (14:33):

That's interesting. What do you mean by that? Can you give me an example of that?

Ryan Claridge (14:38):

Sure. So I have cases sometimes where maybe one parent is a, is battling alcoholism or addiction, or has some other, you know, allegations of mental health. So, but in a custody battle, they'll say, well, I'll do X, Y, and Z to prove that my mental health is great, so I can have full custody of my child. But what they're also doing at that point is saying, well, I can get everything together and leave it always mental health concerns. And you could probably get a promotion and could probably go to school to probably handle more stresses.

Billie Tarascio (15:14):

Right. Right. I think that that's a great point. And especially for marriages of this kind of short and medium term duration, usually we're talking about people who are under 40, or maybe even under 30 and most judges at that point are looking at a 30 something year old or even a 40 year old and saying like, you have a lot of life left, you're on your own sister, correct. Maybe I'll give you a couple years, but you got to figure it out because that's the expectation. Now that gets really hard for people who've been married for 30 years and they're 50 or older, and they've got a very high earning spouse and they invested 30 years of their life into this person's career. That's, that's a different story,

Ryan Claridge (16:10):

Right. And it's not prescribed anywhere in the statute. But what I have seen now, as judges are awarding spousal maintenance is kind of a rehabilitative award that it's, it's a runway to get you back to where you might've been, but it's not a permanent rule. It's not a permanent award unless it's you know, you have a very older receiving spouse on the long marriage. It's very rarely permanent anymore.

Billie Tarascio (16:38):

I'm really glad you brought that up. I used to practice an Oregon and Oregon has three specific types of maintenance, rehabilitative, compensatory, and permanent. And I see in the factors, those themes and most judges in most cases, and most lawyers are presenting a rehabilitative approach. How much do you need to get by? So you can be on your own and sometimes a case calls for that. And sometimes a case calls for a more compensatory strategy where you want to figure out how to quantify the unjust enrichment I'm using all sorts of lawyer terms, but to figure out how to be made whole or how to get an equitable distribution that pays the spouse that invested in the other spouse. Now, can you make everything that I just said and say it in a better way?

Ryan Claridge (17:31):

I don't know if I could say in a better way, but you know what spousal maintenance isn't is like a divorce penalty, right? So when our clients that are worried about pain, a high amount of spousal maintenance, you know, they might plan on, you know, trying to hide assets are reducing their income in some way maybe before, even during the divorce litigation. And that is almost ideal that that is never recommended. Cause you know, a good attorney like us through that I would almost prefer if there were, there were three different types of spousal maintenance in Arizona. We probably have three different statutes and more direct factors, but you know, as we look we're now on the part B

Billie Tarascio (18:19):

We haven't touched on four and five

Ryan Claridge (18:23):

Before the Centrica says, you know, how to marriage of a long duration and is of an age that might preclude the possibility of gaining employment adequate to be self sufficient. The second part of that, I mean, what is the age that precludes the possibility of being self-sufficient we don't know, is it 40? Probably not. Is it 50 maybe, but there's no, there's no defined age. Right, right. And then, you know, had a marriage of a long duration. Well, 10 years is a long time. Right. But it's not 30. It's not, it's not 40. So, you know, you know, the more vague the statute is, you know, the more work lawyers have to do and the more latitude we have to work at with I almost always tell my clients that five years is not a marriage and long duration. It's just not 10 years is probably where I start sending that. Maybe it's not a marriage long duration, but that's probably where you start to qualify for spousal maintenance. But it's certainly not a benchmark. It's certainly not guaranteed.

Billie Tarascio (19:31):

It's it's true. So you're exactly right. There's this concept that you have to be married a certain number of years to qualify for maintenance. And if it's a very short-term marriage that you won't qualify for maintenance and that seems to be true with how we see these things play out, although it's not in the statute. And so theoretically if you've been married two years, you could ask for spousal maintenance. The thing is, if you were supporting yourself before that two year marriage just fine, then you're going to have a hard time proving need. Now if you've been married two years, but you've been together and dependent for 15 years, that might help your argument for maintenance. Okay.

Ryan Claridge (20:16):

It could, but I always tell clients and prospective clients that the time you spent together, but not married, it was done. It doesn't have, it. Doesn't have a lot of sympathy for you. So what Arizona is dividing is your marital community, and that starts to date your married. And it ends the day of the date of service.

Billie Tarascio (20:40):

The last factor is significantly reduced the spouse's income or career opportunities for the benefit of the other spouse. This is really a compensatory analysis. How much did you invest? And what is the, what is the amount in equity that you should get back, even if you can support yourself?

Ryan Claridge (20:58):

Right? So here, one of the most common things people think about is, you know, how many times did the family move for the other spouse's job, right. And you know, usually when you're making that decision, spouse is getting the job offer and the other city or the other, you know, maybe in a different time of day, you know, that's, that's the only thing is that's considered not can, you know, my client find a teaching job in that city, in that market or, you know, even out of the country. So that's what I see most common is I have clients say, Oh, they moved five or six times support husbands career. Right. So we look there and then we look at, well, you know, coming out of coming out of college, you know, my husband and I had very similar lack ALSAC scores are very similar, you know, like similar grades, but we just decided that I would say home and he would go to school. Right. So how much did I give up? How much of my potential and for how long by just deciding that he would go to school and I would not, or he would take more complicated job and I would not. So that's something that we look at. And we certainly had cases where our whole framework is spousal maintenance is compensatory. Okay. Our client didn't work for 10 years. Here's how much the whole trust his income went up. And that's, that's the only thing that we're going to look at.

Billie Tarascio (22:23):

Now, most of those cases tends to settle. I have not, I don't know what a judge does in that case. Do you have any idea, have you seen this play out?

Ryan Claridge (22:39):

I have not taken a case like that all the way to trial. Not that I can,

Billie Tarascio (22:42):

It was really settles because we've got a high earning spouse and we've got two educated spouses. Both of whom are making very rational, very business-minded decisions. And that usually settles, which is not about outcome.

Ryan Claridge (22:56):

Correct. And the time to go over this analysis is not when you're a month out from trial in the first week of hiring your attorney. So you can present this argument to the opposing attorney, to the opposing spouse and try and promote that settlement.

Billie Tarascio (23:13):

Absolutely. Okay. Let's talk about the B factors. Once, once you've qualified, you've said yes, I've made the investment or no, I can't support myself. Now you qualify. And now the question is, okay, how much do I get?

Ryan Claridge (23:28):

So the first factor is the standard of living established during the marriage. Established is kind of the interesting word, right? Because you know, your standard of living can go up during the marriage can go up dramatically after a promotion, right. You can go down after a layoff or something of that nature. So what I tend to look at is what was the average income during the marriage pot? Not the end of the beginning. I don't knock off the high year and the low year, but I look at the average. Right. would you agree, bill?

Billie Tarascio (24:05):

Absolutely. And you know, what's really interesting about this is this is the question of how did you live during your marriage? How did you use your money? And sometimes people will live far above their means during their marriage. There'll be in, in huge amounts of debt, but there'll be asking for spousal maintenance to maintain a lifestyle that they could never afford in the first place. And they certainly can't afford after divorce. So I don't, I think I'm happy that there's 13 factors in this. Isn't the only one.

Ryan Claridge (24:35):

Correct. other fat heard, we kind of talked about earlier is the duration of the marriage, right? So these are the amount and the duration factors. So the duration of the marriage isn't gonna affect, I don't think the dollar amount you're getting every month, but it's going to correlate to the length of the marriage, right? So, you know, for a 10 year marriage, 12 year marriage, I wouldn't be asking for 10 or 12 years of support in a negotiation, usually I ask for about half the length of the marriage in support in court, you can, it's sort of the wild, wild West, but in a mediation selling point. So you're in our case, when you have a 12 year marriage, I would open up asking for six or seven years of support

Billie Tarascio (25:22):

For me when I am figuring out how long to ask for maintenance. The first question that I ask is, am I making a compensatory claim or a re rehabilitative complaint? You know and then if it's rehabilitative, how long, you know, what is the plan to actually, and what rehabilitative means is, okay, I can't, my earning capacity is $30,000 a year now, but I want to become a psychologist and I have two years left of college and then an internship. And then three years later, I'll ramped up to be this. And so that would be kind of the way that you figure out the link that I would typically want to ask for.

Ryan Claridge (26:04):

Right. And they're going through that same analysis. You can also, even though, even though I said it wasn't a factor, I guess I was lying. Yeah. That's a good way. That's a good way to find the starting amount. If you can show a judge, here are my expenses. Now, here are my expenses from the ceremony during the marriage. And here's how much my gap is. Okay. My gap is $2,000 a month. I can close that gap and two or three years of finishing my education, right? So I lied earlier. You can use this factor to determine the amount as well.

Billie Tarascio (26:41):

It, it really helps if you come a judge with a plan and I found that over and over and over again, if you asked for an arbitrary amount, I think your award is likely to be lower. And if you go in with a concrete plan, you say, here's exactly how much it's going to cost me and health insurance. If you're very specific with your need, you're much more likely to get that funded through the court.

Ryan Claridge (27:05):

Correct. the next factor is the age employment history and earning ability of the spouse, any emotional condition of the spouse seeking maintenance. So relatively self-explanatory, I think the older you are, the bigger impediments, your earning ability obviously the more you're going to, the more likely you're going to get a longer duration, the more likely you're going to get a higher amount. I don't know so much about employment history. I think here the court is kind of ideological. No, if you had the training, you're going to get the job. And they expect you to look, look hard for a job. It's not uncommon for a judge on temporary orders to require the party seeking maintenance to keep a log of their job search. Right? So certainly if you've been out of work for a long time I don't think judges are saying that's going to be a permanent impediment for you to find a job. It just might take a bit longer. Okay.

Billie Tarascio (28:11):

Those factors that really overlaps with what you were saying about custody. If you go in under spousal maintenance and you say, I have been, I have a disability I'm unable to work because I'm severely, mentally ill or, you know, my bipolar disorder is, is rendering me where I can't work. You're going to have a difficult time saying, but I'm an amazing parent. I can't work, but I can take care of my kids. And I'm not saying that those two things can't be true. They could be true, but you need to be very careful if you're making this argument.

Ryan Claridge (28:44):

Correct. certainly if you're going to argue that you think, you know, like all men are spiders or something, so you can't work. I mean, you're eventually, you're going to be afraid of you're your own adult son, right? So that is, that is a way where you can track people, not you, an attorney can track people for you because in family court, while you might spend a portion of your testimony on custody and a portion of your testimony on attorney's fees, and of course your testimony on also maintenance, you know, they're all, they all interplay. It's not separate days. It's not separate categories on the judge's mind. So you really can't use all the arguments have to be consistent.

Billie Tarascio (29:23):

Absolutely. The next factor I think is one of the most important,

Ryan Claridge (29:29):

Correct? So turning down a bed, it's essentially this factor is looking at the ability of the, of the spouse is actually paying support to be able to pay the and sport themselves. And I think this factor is really in here because the court, obviously, if there's a exorbitant amount of spousal maintenance and the person in order to pay it, it cannot pay us. Then I case is going to be back, right? It's going to be back because they stopped paying and the other spouse is suing or they're back because the spouse is supposed to paying, you know, saying you cannot pay. So this is a way for the courts to kind of prevent unnecessary babysitting of the case. So obviously, you know, if, you know, if you're, if you're the paying spouse is netting like $8,000 a month you can ask for nine and spousal maintenance, right?

Ryan Claridge (30:25):

It's just not going to work so that as well as that character gets at, and then the other time that comes into play, wouldn't come into play in our hypothetical. But a lot of times some are longer marriages, you know, you're going to have a longer marriage and you might have a longer term, but what if the supporting spouse paying support is retiring soon, right? W what if it's a mandatory retirement? What if it's a field where you're not allowed to work past 65, right? Then he might say he, or she might say, I can pay this for five years, but after my 16th birthday, I'm not allowed to, you know, be a rocket scientist or, you know, a surgeon or something. Right. So that's where that factor can kind of sneak up on people.

Billie Tarascio (31:11):

The other thing that I see happen here is when you are making decisions about where to live, whether to move out what, what you're taking on as expenses and what your spouse is taking on as expenses could really impact your spousal maintenance award. Now, I've got a case where I'm working on right now, and these are, these people have been married for a long time. They have a lot of money and husband is a smart man. And he moved his wife out of their million dollar home, put her in a much smaller home and they bought it. So she's got no mortgage. He's got a million dollar mortgage. When, when we go to look at the spousal maintenance factors, and one of the factors is can he pay maintenance while meeting his own needs, his own needs, and his bills will impact the amount of money available to pay her and maintenance. So you really have to think about the decisions you're making pre divorce and how they might impact this analysis.

Ryan Claridge (32:13):

Right? And then this is another time to have kind of a candid discussion with your client. That's seeking support, because if you find like you were alluding to earlier that this was a couple that was living beyond their means, but it maybe a husband can, you know, easily hiring a higher wage earner. Well then maybe something you say is that, you know, the person instead of having as much, or as long as their duration, you asked that you, the paying spouse instead take more of the debt, right? Because then you know, when you're going through your expenses, you have less debt to pay. That's less money. You need

Billie Tarascio (32:52):

Factor seven seems like a repeat of everything we talked about to qualify. And it says the extent to which the spouse seeking maintenance has reduced the spouse's income or career opportunities for the benefit of the other spouse. This is almost an exact replica of what we talked about in order to qualify, but now it should be considered when determining both the duration and the amount, how would you present this argument?

Ryan Claridge (33:18):

I think this is the time to go in more, more in detail. So you would want the spouse, who's looking to receive maintenance through what exactly he or she did to, to what, what duties, what time constraints, you know, they took away from the absorb on behalf of the marital community. So if it was, you know, they continue to like, they worked two jobs, right. Instead of one, if they you know, did a hundred percent of the parenting, if they had if they helped the other party, like on their test to help study if they were a lab rat or something really go into the nitty gritty of how they cause that's, that's what it says. It says the, it doesn't say, did they help? It says, what is the extent, really walk through and show, you know, the sacrifices that spouse made for their other spouse.

Billie Tarascio (34:10):

I really like to have this quantified by an expert, and this is not something that a lot of lawyers do, but if you were doing a personal injury and your hand was injured and your, your future earning capacity was affected, an expert will testify. What was the dollar amount of the impact? And that would be the amount of damages that you were seeking. Now, I know this isn't damages, and I know it's a different analysis, but to me, if I'm, if I'm presenting this argument, I want an accountant or an economist to say, when we moved three times that affected my, my potential career in this way. And over my lifetime, here's the impact. Now that might be a huge number, but it might be able to let me successfully argue for 15 years of maintenance instead of 10.

Ryan Claridge (35:01):

Right. And then it doesn't always present itself this way. But if you have a situation where one spouse just stopped working, then you could look at, okay, what were they making the glass two years? They were working? What, you know, might have a raises look like, or even just, you know, inflation over the years. Like how many years at what dollar amount did they miss out on the benefit of the community?

Billie Tarascio (35:25):

Well, and to benefit the community is key. So just because somebody doesn't work doesn't mean they were necessarily benefiting the community. So if I were the husband's lawyer, I would say, listen, wife didn't want to benefit the community. She always wanted the ability to stay home. And he afforded her that, but, you know, he was happy to put them in daycare. So it really depends on, you know, who we're representing and what side we're taking on that.

Ryan Claridge (35:52):

Correct. the next factor talks about the ability of both parties after the divorce to contribute to the future educational costs of their mutual children. This is where you might say, look, even though say you have kids, or they're in their, you know, about to be college age, but not college age, guess what? You don't have a duty to pay for your kid's college. Right. but there's kind of a societal pressure to do so. So maybe here, this is where a dad that said, you know, you're going to have to get a basketball scholarship to go to college. Might walk that back and say, Hey, look I'll pay more than half or a hundred percent of the kids college. If you mom produce your need for spousal maintenance, otherwise I'm having to pay this much. Then I guess, you know, they have to go to NAU or something to to not a great school. That's kind of

Billie Tarascio (36:50):

Ryan, did you just say any use of bad school?

Ryan Claridge (36:56):

I don't, yeah. I mean, I know I make fun of NAU because I don't know anyone's ever gone there. So I mean that, that's an emotional argument. That's a a pain spouse could make. Right. and it's also a very practical one that a family court judge will, if you, again, if either side can put forth concrete numbers of what an expensive action will look like that's come out to judge. Right?

Billie Tarascio (37:27):

Right. And, and a couple of questions, like in order for this to even be relevant, one of the things we're looking at is, is there a college fund? Has this family decided that college is important? Have they already put one kid through school? And there's one kid left are mom and dad both agreeing to leave the college fund in place for the children or our mom or dad asking to split the college fund if there was college money. And one of those parents wants to split that money, that fund, especially the higher income spouse now wife spousal maintenance claim should include and quantify how much it would cost to put the kids through school.

Ryan Claridge (38:05):

Absolutely. the next factor factor nine is the financial resources, including marital property, a portion to that spouse in the divorce process. So we kind of talked about this earlier, right? If you're getting enough money to last you two lifetimes G even though you're entitled to it, even though you're not getting anything extra by getting your 50%, if you're at 50% of whatever is a huge, it can be hard to tell the judge, yes, I need all that money. Yes, I have all that money, but I'm also going to need monthly support, right? Maybe if you have a really strong compensatory claim or a punitive type claim, that's when you might try that. But given the kind of rehabilitative nature that I've seen of spousal maintenance, if you're getting, you know, half of $10 million, half of $2 million and that's more than you have in retirement, that's, you know, divided by the years, left in your life as a big number. You're going to have a hard time, I think, getting any support at all, but ultimately that's not terrible news. Right. You're going to survive.

Billie Tarascio (39:20):

That's true. It's true. I mean, all of this is about equity. How do we make sure people are okay? And they're treated fairly, that's the analysis. Okay.

Ryan Claridge (39:29):

Right. And then the, and then the last part of there is to meet that spouse, his own needs independently, right? So that's a real simple calculation is what is half of this? What is the nature of the property? Can I use it as a liquid kind of reinvest it? Is it just cash? And a lot of times I'll walk through a lot of client through even a pain client through and say, you know, half of what you're giving your spouse divided by, you know, number of years left in their life. If that number is more than they're making or more than they've ever made in their life, then they don't need to worry about paying support. Cause it's just not going to happen.

Billie Tarascio (40:10):

So that's interesting because there is case law that says a CA a spouse should not be required to dissipate their retirement assets in order to live. Okay.

Ryan Claridge (40:22):

That is, that is true. But we have a like, you know, a 70 year old client getting half of, you know, getting a million dollars, right. They might not be working. Maybe they have 10 years left in their life, maybe a 15, that's a hundred thousand dollars a year that that's at least an argument you can show. In addition to what they can provide for themselves, their own retirement accounts that are on other assets, it's just really, really difficult to walk into court and say, you need, they ignore that huge pile of money I have over there. Right. And I need this extra money as well. It's, it's a hard argument to make. We kind of talked about this before, and maybe this is a factor that gets kind of overplayed, but it's the time necessary to require additional training or additional education or define appropriate employment. So this might be the root of where that rehabilitative, where that prescriptive aspect of the statute comes into place. Because almost always when I'm asking for spousal maintenance, or if I'm fighting against, you know, I want to give the court an idea of how long, how quickly or how long it's going to take that party to get back on their feet. Right?

Billie Tarascio (41:41):

Yeah. This is really easy. Like if somebody in the middle of the program, you know, you started your nurse practitioner program you are going to be able to make $110,000 a year, but not for the next 18 months. That's how long you get to ask for it clear.

Ryan Claridge (41:59):

And this is where this is where a judge might ask some questions. Now it's kind of scary when you're interviewing our clients on the stand and then the other attorneys is the same thing. And then the judge has a few questions, right? So the judge might say, you know, what are you looking to do with the rest of your life? Or really how long does that take

Billie Tarascio (42:17):

To have a plan? Yeah, absolutely.

Ryan Claridge (42:20):

And if you don't have a plan, then the judge will impose one on you and it might not be as realistic or an of what you want to do. So the more, more pro the more, more of a rubric you can give the judge the better off you're going to be. Otherwise they decide for you and they know very little about your lives because they only have three or six hours with you.

Billie Tarascio (42:42):

And I think the moral of this whole story is if you go in and you just say, I need spousal maintenance and you don't have a very specific plan for exactly what you need and for exactly how long expect your spousal maintenance award to be small, because when people are calling up, I mean, we started this, this podcast with, you know, I've heard people aren't giving spousal maintenance anymore. Is that true? Well, to some extent, yes. And so you can not show up and just be like, I need spousal maintenance. It's fair. You have to do better than that. You have to do a lot of work to get a real spousal maintenance award in Arizona.

Ryan Claridge (43:15):

Correct. And you can get through, you can survive the part a, of the test and you can qualify repair part B. You might give it a diminimous award, like $500 for a year or something,

Billie Tarascio (43:28):

And that's happening all the time. Right?

Ryan Claridge (43:32):

Correct. because the judge there is kind of being extra conservative saying, okay, yes, you qualify. But then I wait all these other factors, and this is what this is, what's spit out. Right. the last couple of factors I'll skip to as well, and that's just the cost of health insurance. So you need to do some research to see how much does it cost to insure yourself after that. But 11 is interesting. It's excessive or abnormal expenditures, destruction, concealment, or fraudulent disposition, disposition of community property. So here, if you think your, your spouse is hiding money or didn't make a full disclosure, this is where this factor can come in. And you know, if you do a little bit of this concealment, a little bit of this destruction, the judge is going to be very angry. And he's going to assume that there's more and is really going to give a wide wide latitude to the opposing attorney. I've absolutely.

Billie Tarascio (44:32):

This is waste. This is irresponsible spending. This is increasing your expenses. You go out and you buy Ferrari. Now I can't pay my wife's spousal maintenance. This is really behavioral. This is there's money missing. So this is buying a snowblower in Scottsdale, right? A snowblower in Scottsdale. So if there's behavioral issues, that's where we need to talk about it. The last factor is so narrow, but it's actual damages and judgements from conduct that resulted in a criminal conviction where either the spouse or a child was the victim that is so narrow. But when there are issues of domestic violence and you have actual quantifiable damages and your spouse has been convicted, then we can get some compensation here under this factor as well.

Ryan Claridge (45:28):

Yeah. And thankfully, that is a that is your rare factor. But it's, it's when it can come into play, but fortunately, most of our clients do not have that.

Billie Tarascio (45:38):

Right. And the other thing is if somebody has been convicted of a crime in Arizona, there's often restitution. So we have to look at that too. And then if somebody is in jail, it's hard to get yourself spousal maintenance as well. So it doesn't come up a lot because it's so narrow. But you know, it is there. So, all right, we have exhausted all of the spousal maintenance factors. I think this was a really good discussion about the complexity of spousal maintenance. Anything else to add today before we end Ryan?

Ryan Claridge (46:10):

I don't think so. I agree. It was a great discussion and yeah, I think it was informative. And if anyone has any questions on any Pacific factors that can feel free to reach out to them,

Billie Tarascio (46:20):

Either of us sounds great. You have an amazing day.

Billie Tarascio (46:24):

Thanks so much for listening to the modern divorce podcast. Remember anything you've heard today or anything you read online is not the replacement for actual consultation with an attorney and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Even if you called in and we spoke to you, you were anonymous and we don't have your details and you have not become a client of modern law. However, we would love to speak with you, or you should seek out the advice of legal counsel or counseling or any other expert near you. And if you have an idea for a show topic, or you need to speak with an attorney in Arizona, you can reach me at info. I N F o@mymodernlaw.com.