The court will order alimony payments for a specific duration. This period defines how long the payments will continue. What is the starting point for durational alimony payments when awarded years after a divorce decree? Does the durational period begin to run at the time of divorce, or at the time of the alimony order? If there is a temporary alimony order, does the date of the first temporary payment affect the durational period?
This has become an important issue in recent years. Massachusetts no longer recognizes lifetime alimony in most cases. You must carefully examine the duration of alimony payments in most situations. This step is crucial for accuracy.
In the recent case of Snow v. Snow, [1] the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court addressed this issue. In that case, the wife did not pursue her alimony claim during the divorce proceedings. However, she sought an alimony order over four years after the divorce was final. She explained that circumstances had changed. The husband had supported her with weekly payments of $1,000, but he stopped making them. The wife became homeless and was living out of her car. She filed a request for alimony and received an order of temporary alimony in the amount of $850 per week. She received an order of general alimony four months later. The amount was $810 per week, payable for 179 months. The judge noted that the start date for the durational period was the date of the first temporary alimony payment. Both parties appealed.
Transferring the case on its own, the Supreme Judicial Court held that the durational period for former wife’s general term alimony began to run on the award of general term alimony, and not on the date of the divorce judgment nor the date of the award of temporary alimony. Temporary alimony, the high Court reiterated from previous cases, is NOT general alimony. Here, the wife’s complaint was an initial request for alimony, rather than a modification, and the general term began at time the alimony order was issued.
In addition, the Court addressed two other issues. First, the Court ruled that Probate and Family Court must consider the husband’s post-judgment overtime income when determining the alimony award. The trial judge erred because he only considered the husband’s base pay as his income for purposes of calculating alimony payments. Second, the Court held that the Probate and Family Court was required to make a specific determination as to whether health insurance should be provided by the husband to the wife. The wife successfully argued that this issue should have been addressed by the trial court.
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[1] Snow v. Snow, 476 Mass. 425 (2017).