Marital Lifestyle & Alimony

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One of the topics discussed at the 2012 Family Law Symposium under section "Arguments Lawyers Fail to Make" was related to the inadequacy of New Jersey 's official CIS form in the budget's left hand column labeled "Joint Life Style" for the purpose of an alimony claim trial.

The logic goes like this; Marital Lifestyle figures for the supported spouse are likely to include the supporting spouse's expenses that will not be paid by the supported spouse after the divorce. Normally, marital lifestyle figures play a critical role in alimony determination, but these figures are meant to include marital lifestyle of the supported spouse only.

The proposed supported spouse's attorney questions the supported spouse, who says, "Yes, those are my expenses." Then, the other party's attorney should point out that the line item is, in fact, for the entire family before the separation. The supported spouse is put in a situation where he/she has to subtract from each line item, expenditures for the supporting spouse and the children. After all, why should the supported spouse receive alimony for ...
... expenditures that he/she would not and could not incur post judgment? However, is this common flaw in marital lifestyle budget presentations picked up and argued by lawyers regularly?

As your technology provider, we routinely work with lawyers and pro-actively provide practice solutions. We cannot and do not practice law, but we do provide you tools to solve issues like marital lifestyle and alimony issues very easily within our CIS software, New Jersey's most popular child support program.

In your CIS program, section Part-D, click on "Show Individual Historical Expenditure." Here, you can breakdown marital expenses - Expenses for the plaintiff only or for the defendant and children. You can then print a separate Lifestyle Expenditure report, which will show five columns side by side and is ready to enter as a trial exhibit, for an Early Settlement Panel or Economic Mediation.

For trial preparation, have the litigant break down the marital lifestyle figures individually, so you do not count the supporting spouse's expenses and the children's expenses in the supported spouse's lifestyle figures, thereby avoiding the aforementioned trap.

While we are on this topic, for the purpose of breakdown, children's expenditures might be less critical because they are not expected to have separate expenses in each category. However, categorizing children's expenses separately may be helpful because they will be useful for other purposes, such as quantifying extraordinary expenses for children, i.e. automobile insurance.

To learn more about this topic as well as many other program features you may not be utilizing or to watch an overview video, visit CIS Software's web page.

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