Going Your Separate Ways In Your Golden Years

If trends continue in their current direction, gray divorce will be the only kind of divorce there is.  The age at first marriage is increasing, and fewer young people are getting married.  Some members of the young generation want to keep their friends close and their finances separate, even going so far as to enter co-parenting relationships with platonic friends.  Of the young people who get married, an increasing number of them go into their marriages with prenuptial agreements so meticulously crafted that they will probably never get divorced.  That leaves the old generation.  People who have lived long enough to realize that life is short are the ones ending their marriages.  In these divorce cases, the couple spent decades thinking that they would be together forever, but then things changed, and now that they are getting divorced, they must reevaluate their future.  Almost everyone’s economic circumstances are so tough these days that, whether you are single, married, and divorced, retirement is not going to be all sunset walks on the beach.  You might not be able to retire at all, and the court may or may not order your ex-spouse to provide for you in your old age.  If you are getting divorced and are almost old enough to start drawing Social Security, contact a Birmingham divorce lawyer.

Can the Court Make You Un-Retire Even as Your Ex-Spouse Gets Income From a Family Trust?

When the court divides a couple’s marital property in a divorce, the goal is to make the parties financially independent of each other and for each of them to live in economic circumstances as close as possible to what they had during the marriage.  People who got married in their 20s and divorced in their 50s or older tend not to own much property separately from their spouses; if one spouse has a substantially higher income, the court will usually issue a QDRO to divide the payouts from the higher income spouse’s retirement account.

Things get complicated when the parties’ separate property puts them on unequal financial footing.  For example, inherited assets are separate property, even if you are married when you receive them.  An Alabama court ruled on a case where the husband began receiving income from a testamentary trust when his mother died, at which point he had been married to his wife for more than a decade.  When the couple divorced several years later, the court counted the trust income as the husband’s separate property and did not include it among the marital assets to be divided.  This put the wife in a precarious financial position, even as the husband could retire comfortably while receiving money from his late mother’s trust.  The wife appealed the decision, but the appeals court affirmed it.

Contact Peeples Law About Gray Divorce

A Birmingham family law attorney can help you if you are going through a divorce and are already retired or are approaching retirement.  Contact Peeples Law today to schedule a consultation.

Source:

scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12147187720457016827&q=divorce+river&hl=en&as_sdt=4,61,62,64&as_ylo=2015&as_yhi=2025