Most clients do NOT realize why it's difficult to determine spousal support in a long marriage, especially if there were private businesses, shared businesses, or basically any type of business that was making some decent income. Especially when one spouse was a stay at home spouse, this can create a huge, huge problem for the other party, as spousal support will not only be huge, it will likely practically break the party that worked, financially. This is an expensive thing to do legally mainly because it will take time to get the 14 factors and the evidence and then to weave it altogether for the argument?
The reason we say this is because it's true?
There are 14 (yes, fourteen) factors that the court will look at to determine the spousal support--and IF a judge only uses the Dissomaster (computer program) then it's unlikely the dissomaster can implement the 14 factors. Therefore any long term spousal support case should have a trial brief which will go over all of the 14 factors.
I am not going to list the 14 factors here [believe me, it can be very involved] but you can easily look them up online. The question on the 14 factors will eventually require a knowledge of quite a few personal facts, so only the spouse or close friends would likely know those facts. If some of the facts are left out, that would be up to you or your attorney, and how best to present the case.
Trust me, it's not exactly an easy job if it is done correctly.
Even if both spoues work, it's still not really that simple. In some cases attorney herein will use all 14 factors but in a few cases where spouses are both high income earners, there may not really be a need for spousal support. Obviously a stay at home Mom would likely require support of some type. Also, if there are no children and the spouse
has never worked, that is an entirely different issue in spousal support--I don't have time to explain it here.
But it's likely that if the wife was not a homemaker with kids and just didn't work at all, the court *might* make her (or him) look for a job. No guarantee, but since people these days are gender fluid, it's hard to say sometimes who the wife is or what she (or he) is capable of...therefore in Los Angeles for example, I would expect to see a case come out involving same sex partners with one having a much higher income; and that party might not necessarily be the male [if there is a male involved at all]. In fact, since they do not even LIST the GENDER of the children on a
divorce petition anymore---it's possible that they may even stop calling the parties husband and wife....Just sayin'.........
