Orange County Spousal Support Attorney

Spousal Support Factors in Orange County CA

Income & Earning Capacity

The income of each spouse is one factor. Earning capacity is another. That is, if one party doesn’t work, only works part-time, or is underemployed, the court can consider what they could earn if they were working, working full time, or working at a job that meets their skills. The court can say, “we don’t care that you are not working, and we cannot force you to work, but we can run a calculation based on a hypothetical income that you should be making or that you’re choosing to not make.”

For example, there is the famous case of a doctor who decided to be a priest. He is going through a divorce, he finds God amid his divorce, and he wants to become a priest. The judge said, “No problem! You’ll be whatever you decide to be, but I’m going to look at your income. You decided to become a priest, great, but your obligation to your spouse and your child is the highest obligation that you have before you pay your rent and your bills. Therefore, I am going to run your income based on a hypothetical calculation.”

This is known as “imputation of income” and it goes back to earning capacity. How about a younger couple who’s getting divorced? One spouse is highly educated but stayed home to raise the children. They are under 50, maybe they have a degree, at least a high school degree. The court is going to expect them to go to work or get some kind of education or training to freshen up and join the workforce.

Marital Standard of Living

The law says the person who will get alimony is entitled to live at, or maybe below, the standard at which they lived when they were married. However, they are not entitled to live beyond their marital standard of living. Note: The marital standard of living ends at the date of separation, and the marital standard of living is generally the description of someone’s lifestyle, e.g. did they have a middle class, luxurious middle class, or standard lifestyle?

They can consider how expensive their house was, the cars they drove, the kind of birthday parties they had for their kids, the designer purses they purchased, where they shopped and ate, whether they had multiple cars and the latest cars, did they have servants, or import tiles from Italy for their 12,000 square foot mansion in Newport Coast?

Forensic accountants or lawyers can mathematically calculate the marital standard of living with two methods: an income approach and an expense approach.

With the income approach, we look at the gross income of the family for the past three, or maybe five years, before the date of separation to try to capture a sample of their lifestyle during this time. The best, and most accurate, way to do this is to look at tax returns because we assume they are true. We gather their tax returns for a certain number of years during the marriage, add up the income, and divide the total by the same amount of years to get the average. Then we let look at how many people lived on that average.

For example, if the average is $100,000 a year, and there is a wife, a husband, and two children, we first divide the $100,000 by 12 months. Assuming kids don’t spend as much as adults, a fair division would be to count each child as half of an adult, hence two children will account for one adult and two adult spouses will equal a total of three. We can now divide the $100,000 by 12 months and 3 adults, which is roughly $2,777 per person per month, which becomes the maximum average share of the income for the spousal support seeker.

The attorney will advise the judge that the person is entitled to no more than this amount per month based on their standard of living. However, the attorney can also argue that the person is expected to work at some point and the maximum amount should be offset by the amount of money the spousal support seeker can earn. For example, the attorney could argue that she can earn $1,000 a month, so the maximum amount their client should be paying each month is $2,777 minus $1,000 for a total of $1,777.

Now, there could be all sorts of arguments about why the kids are being arbitrarily counted as half an adult in terms of expenses. And another argument will be the number of years we should average. No law says we should go back three, five, ten years, or one year. It is whatever amount of time the court finds sufficient to capture the standard of living. For most people, if you chart their income from the date of marriage to the date of separation, it is usually a straight line going up.

The attorney representing the person seeking spousal support will want to average just the past few years. The attorney representing the person paying spousal support will want to go as far back as possible to reduce the average. Furthermore, the attorney representing the seeker might want to argue that the other party is not being truthful on their tax return and they will want to present a different number supplied by their accountant based on the marital standard of living.

In this case, an accountant will do a retroactive cash flow calculation. So, for example, if the date of separation is 2015, they would take their tax return for 2015 and adjust it for what is supposedly the real income. They will do the same for 2014 and 2013 and now they can find the average income based on those numbers and suggest a different number for spousal support. This is the “income approach.”

The expense approach is the other option. It is very time-consuming and expensive because they have to go through receipts, credit card statements, bank statements, and more. They have to track every dollar the couple has spent over the past few years of their marriage. What they spend is net income. Thus, if we do an expense calculation, these are assumed to be numbers after taxes are paid.

With an income approach, on the other hand, we perform calculations based on numbers before they pay taxes and Spousal Support is paid gross. They are being paid the gross amount and they will pay taxes on it. So, if they are going to use an expense approach, they will need to adjust the income up. This means that once they agree on how much per month they were spending, they have to bump it up to a higher number hypothetically calculated, i.e. based on the receiver’s taxable rate and how much support would be needed (gross) to end up with that number. As a consequence, we now have to determine what the receiver’s tax rate is and both sides will most likely disagree on what that taxable rate is because they don’t yet know what property each party will have which will affect their taxable rate.

Age & Health

If someone is 70 years old, we can’t expect them to go back to work and argue earning capacity for them. What if they are paraplegic or have a medical condition that prevents them from working? The judge will consider these factors when determining the amount and length of Spousal Support. Other factors are the assets and liability of each party and what each party ends up with after the divorce. The judge will not rule on long-term spousal support until they have ruled on the division of assets.

Balance of Hardship

After all these factors are considered, the judge can ask whether the court is being fair to both parties. The judge can ask questions such as, “If I make this spouse pay this much, what will that do to them? What are their expenses? Do they have kids from another marriage? Are they going to be left with enough to pay for the bare necessities of life such as rent?” On the other side, they will ask, “This spouse has passed the age of retirement with very little, yet the other has lots of property, etc.” Balance of hardship is a way to ensure that the court is being fair to both sides.

Length of Marriage

In California, you have a short-term marriage if you have been married for less than 10 years. In this case, the law presumes the length of time you will be paying or receiving alimony is about half the length of the marriage. Therefore, if you were married for eight years, you will presumptively pay or receive spousal support for about four years.

If your marriage lasted more than 10 years, it is considered a long-term marriage and there is no rule for how long you will pay or receive spousal support. That is not to say that it is indefinite. It can end if the person who receives Spousal gets remarried, or one spouse passes away, or “until further order of the court.” This means that it is not lifetime/permanent spousal support. Either side can go back to court if they want changes made to the order. If they don’t do anything and they are both alive and the receiver of spousal support is not remarried, everything remains the same.

Gavron Warning

A Gavron Warning means the receiver of spousal support is expected to be self-sufficient within a certain amount of time. Under a short-term marriage, a reasonable amount of time is defined as half of the length of the marriage.

Family Support in California

Family support is different than child support or spousal support. Family support is a way to get more support from the supported party. It bumps up the number. If you run the computer program, in one scenario you might have one number for child support and a separate number for alimony, and in another scenario, you run different calculations and get the family support amount. That family support number will generally be higher than the child support and spousal support numbers combined.

One may assume that if they want more money, it would make sense to agree to family support. The problem with family support, however, is that it is not allocated as to what part is child support and what part is spousal support. The problem with family support is that it is not deductible on tax returns. Spousal support is deductible, so the payor deducts it on their tax return. This means that if you agree to pay family support of $5000 a month, you may be asking for problems later, because, after months of paying, when you get to the end of the case, you need to go back to the first payment you made for family support and determine how much of the $5,000 is child support and how much is spousal support.

The spouse paying family support is going to want to claim the tax benefits and the person who receives support will likely say, “Wait a second, I didn’t know that I was supposed to pay taxes on some part of the family support and I never file a tax return because I have no income. I was getting family support. What are you telling me? I now have to tell the IRS that I didn’t pay the taxes I was supposed to pay on the family support and pay penalties? No! I don’t want to do that, and I didn’t keep any money to pay the taxes! I don’t want to do it.” So that’s the problem with Family Support.

Free Consultation with a Spousal Support Lawyer in Orange County

At Moshtael Family Law, our team includes an in-house CPA to help handle the complex financial aspects of your divorce, including alimony. With our dedicated CPA, we bring a high level of analysis and detail-oriented focus to the spousal support/alimony process and also the ability to conduct a preliminary analysis of income available for support.

We offer a free consultation for those seeking legal representation. Contact Moshtael Family Law today to meet with one of our Orange County alimony attorneys.

Call (714) 909-2561 or send a message via our private online contact form.