When a marriage ends in divorce, there may be many questions leading to how one of the parties is going to stay afloat financially. Typically, a court will award spousal support, or how it is more commonly known as “alimony” to one of the parties. Usually, the court decides to award alimony to the most financially vulnerable of the former spouses. It is important to know all the relevant information concerning alimony.
Determining alimony
Courts have a very methodical approach when it comes to awarding spousal support. For one, a judge follows the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act, which lists a series of recommendations that the court could follow when it comes to assigning alimony. For example, they advise the court to look into age, physical and emotional state, economic conditions, the amount of time that the recipient of the alimony will need to receive training or education to be able to financially support themselves, standard of living when the couple was married, length of the marriage, ability of the giving party to both support himself or herself and their former spouse.
Receiving alimony
What proceeds when one of the parties wants to receive alimony? Usually, it is recommended that the requesting party should ask for it as part of the divorce process. Both parties can also reach an agreement by themselves and bring it up with the judge so that he or she can include it in the court order. If the couple cannot reach an agreement by themselves, then a judge will decide whether spousal support should be assigned or not.
