The Timing Of Your Divorce Is Important

The pending divorce of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner Divorcing after 10 years of marriage opens the question of the timing of their divorce. In California a marriage of less than ten years affects the alimony. One decade does it, in terms of altering your rights to alimony in a divorce. California's famous 10-year rule, however, is widely misquoted and misinterpreted. Before hanging onto a bad marriage for a few more years to clinch the supposed alimony benefits of a marriage of long duration, it pays to understand the actual meaning of this concept within the context of California law.

While there in no direct corollary in Arizona law timing is a factor. A judge in Arizona may award temporary, or "pendente lite," meaning pending the final divorce, maintenance during divorce proceedings. When the final order is entered, the judge may also order either temporary or permanent maintenance for a period of time. An order may direct one spouse to pay the other a lump sum, or more commonly, a monthly amount for a specific length of time.

Permanent spousal maintenance is becoming increasingly rare. Even after longer marriages, courts mostly tend to look at maintenance as rehabilitative, in other words, put in place temporarily to allow a spouse to find a job or obtain training and education to improve employment prospects.

During mediation spousal support can be one of the items negotiated between the two parties.

Periodic maintenance payments are usually taxable to the recipient and tax-deductible by the payer. Couples can sometimes take advantage of this situation by structuring payments to create the best possible tax scenario for both spouses. The IRS generally treats lump-sum payments as property distributions even if the court or the couple refers to the payment as maintenance or alimony. Under these circumstances there would be no tax effects for either spouse.

Arizona is a community property state. Community property, joint tenancy and other property held in common will typically be divided 50/50 by the court if the parties are not able to come to an agreement. Marital misconduct will have no effect on property division, but the court can consider excessive or abnormal use of community property, including actions of fraud, concealment or destruction.

Property acquired by either spouse outside of Arizona shall be deemed to be community property if the property would have been considered community property if it had been acquired in Arizona.

Property owned prior to the marriage, and gifts and inheritances received during the marriage are generally considered separate property, as long as they haven’t been comingled with marital property, and are typically awarded back to the owning spouse. A court may put a lien on these assets, however, to secure child or spousal support payments.

At WHYmediate?, we give you the tools you need to resolve your Divorce conflicts in a positive learning environment. 

WHYmediate? Mediation Services
4500 South Lakeshore Drive Suite 300 
Tempe, AZ 85282 
(480) 777-5500
http://whymediate.solutions

"Ben Affleck SDCC 2014 (cropped)" by Gage Skidmore - https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/14783041472/. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ben_Affleck_SDCC_2014_(cropped).jpg#/media/File:Ben_Affleck_SDCC_2014_(cropped).jpg Creative Commons Jennifer Garner image taken by Karon Liu 2009