A Warning to Alimony Recipients in Florida

Alimony May Be Reduced or Terminated If an Ex-spouse Allows a New Partner to Move In.

Florida has long recognized a divorced party's right to receive alimony following a divorce. Typically, the award is made to the former wife, but, in some circumstances, the former husband may be the recipient.

Section 61.08, Florida Statures, provides that the alimony may be "rehabilitative or permanent in nature"; the former primarily an award for a limited period of time to allow the divorced person to obtain education or training or, perhaps, counseling to the end that he or she can be self-supporting and no longer in need of alimony.

Permanent alimony, on the other hand, is usually awarded and is payable until the former wife re-marries or dies. (Parenthetically, alimony can be awarded continued after the person having the obligation dies; it can be made an obligation of his or her estate!) Typically, an award of permanent alimony is made when the marriage was of long duration and the former spouse is unlikely to be self-sufficient in the near or distant future. For example, a former wife who has been a homemaker, without career, over a twenty- or thirty-year marriage while the husband pursued education and career.

The statute provides for a number of criteria to determine the amount and duration of alimony, including the respective needs and income of the parties and the standard of living to which the ex-spouse has become accustomed.

Often, a divorced woman, recipient of permanent alimony, will have a man move in with her, without marriage, possibly to ensure the continuation of alimony or, equally likely, continued social security or pension benefits which might end upon remarriage.

In 2004, the Florida Fourth District Court of Appeals wrote in Reno v Reno that "cohabitation may justify the elimination of alimony depending on how the new living situation has impacted the alimony recipient's financial condition and the continued need for alimony."