Paying Alimony Forever?
Special Report
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – At the Norfolk County Jail, he was inmate 35634. Foxboro business owner Jim Foley spent two weeks behind bars. His crime was failure to pay his ex-wife $8,500 in spousal support.
“The alimony payment is $1500 dollars a week. I’m currently making $1350 dollars a week,” Foley says. After 31 years of marriage, Foley and his first wife divorced in 2002. At the time, he signed a legal agreement, promising to keep the checks coming until he turns 65 years old.
Foley says he never missed a payment until last year when his heavy equipment business tanked with the economy. He claims he lost everything, including his home. Even after filing bankruptcy, Foley hasn’t been able to convince a judge to reduce the payments and has been accused of hiding assets.
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EXCERPT FROM TED’S BLOG:
” I realize divorce and alimony are emotionally charged issues and I understand there are valid points on both sides. Also, Alimony is SEPARATE from child support. It’s money usually paid by the higher earning spouse to the lower earning spouse after a divorce. With that said…let’s discuss.”
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His current wife says the financial burden is destroying their life.
“Why do you do that to a man who simply can’t afford a very high alimony payment? That’s just morally wrong and it should be legally wrong,” Foley’s current wife Jayn says.
There is no place in the country with divorce laws like Massachusetts, and critics describe them as unfair and outdated. Separate from child support, most states order alimony as a temporary financial bridge to get a dependent spouse on their feet after a divorce, but in Massachusetts, alimony can last a lifetime.
A no-fault divorce state, it makes no difference who terminated the marriage, and the gender-neutral payments are sometimes calculated on someone’s capacity to earn, not what they actually make.
“I don’t think anybody, male or female, should be dependant on anybody for financial support their whole entire life,” says Kate Kent, a nurse-midwife from Stowe who says she recently learned another thing about alimony in Massachusetts, that it affects second wives.
Her lawyer advised her not to marry her fiancé, telling her she may be forced to contribute her assets and income to help him pay his ex-wife’s alimony.
“I think it’s fair to say I would feel angry and resentful. If it was children, it would be a completely different story,” Kent says.
“Yes, its broken, it needs to be fixed,” says Steve Hitner, the founder of a group trying to reform alimony laws in the Bay State.
Hitner says he’s heard hundred of alimony horror stories and has one of his own. The small business owner says the laws need to be changed on Beacon Hill.
“We had everybody contact their senators and their state reps to inform them of their horror stories. What happened was we got 72 co-sponsors of this bill.”
David Cherny, a family law attorney in Boston for 28 years says the system is not as bad as some make it out to be, and cautions against a cookie cutter approach.
“I know one of the issues that’s being promulgated is the concept of terminating alimony when you retire, alimony stops. I think that, again, we run into that problem with setting those strict guidelines that when A happens, B happens,” Cherny says.
Jim Foley says unless his alimony payment is reduced, he will only be forced further into debt.
”Everything you worked for, it’s gone,” Foley says.
His biggest fear is that he would lose his income altogether, because he will be locked up again in jail.
