Lawmakers Look at Revamping Florida Alimony Laws

Florida legislators are moving forward with a renewed effort to revamp the state’s alimony laws, with the proposal including controversial provisions that could apply retroactively, a contentious plan dealing with child-sharing agreements and a new process involving the retirements of ex-spouses who make alimony payments.

Efforts to rewrite the state’s alimony laws have touched off emotional debates for nearly a decade. The battle has, in part, pitted homemakers and stay-at-home dads against breadwinners, who argue they are forced to continue working past retirement age so they can afford to make required monthly payments to ex-spouses.

Former Gov. Rick Scott twice vetoed legislation that would have overhauled alimony laws. A standoff over the issue led to a near-fracas outside Scott’s office in 2016.

Proposals ready for House and Senate floor votes this year would do away with what is known as permanent alimony and set up a maximum duration of alimony payments based on the lengths of marriage. Spouses who have been married for less than three years would not be eligible for alimony and those who have been married 20 years or longer would be eligible to receive payments for up to 75 percent of the term of the marriage.

The amount of alimony would be capped at “the amount determined to be the obligee’s reasonable need or an amount not to exceed 35 percent of the difference between the parties’ net incomes, whichever is less,” said the Senate bill (SB 1796), which was approved Tuesday by the Rules Committee.

The measure also would require judges to begin with a “presumption” that children should split their time equally between parents. Scott largely pinned his 2016 veto of an alimony bill on a similar child-sharing provision.

The Senate bill, sponsored by Sarasota Republican Joe Gruters, also would set up procedures related to retirements of ex-spouses who pay alimony.

Ex-spouses who pay would have to give one year’s notice indicating they intend to retire and could stop payments upon retirement, except under certain circumstances.

Under Gruters’ plan, alimony recipients whose income would be up to 130 percent of the federal poverty level without alimony, are full-time caregivers of mentally or physically disabled children or who are unable to care for themselves would be able to file objections to the retirement notices. Judges would be allowed to extend the duration of alimony in those instances.

The proposed changes drew emotional testimony from ex-spouses on both sides of the issue during Senate committee meetings this week.

Milton resident Camille Fiveash told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Monday that she’s been traveling to Tallahassee for a decade trying to persuade legislators not to allow retroactive changes that would affect ex-spouses like her.

Fiveash said she couldn’t afford an attorney when she got divorced so she accepted a deal from her ex-husband in which he pays alimony in exchange for being allowed to hold onto his retirement savings.

“I have been fighting this bill for 10 years. … This is so stressful to us every year,” a tearful Fiveash told the panel, describing her experiences in the Capitol. “I had a man shove me. I had a man stalk me, and I’ve had death threats. Death threats because of this bill. I’m just a middle-class woman surviving. … I make $10 an hour. My kids don’t have the money to take care of me.”

But Natalie Sohn-Willis, a West Palm Beach physician, said she’s also been coming to the Capitol for more than a decade to fight for alimony law changes.

Sohn-Willis told the Rules Committee on Tuesday that she’s in her 16th year of paying alimony to her ex-husband — a year longer than their marriage lasted.

“I implore you. Don’t let this year go by. Ten years I’ve been coming here, begging to prevent my children from ever going through this nightmare that I have lived for the last 15 years. There’s only one winner in all of this and all of divorce. … The only winners are the lawyers because they take home the money,” she said.

Carla McAuliffe, a 59-year-old Deerfield Beach resident, pleaded with senators Tuesday to reject Gruters’ proposal.

“It’s like telling us that signed contracts that are legal documents aren’t worth the paper that they’re written on, and really that the laws that are meant to support us and protect us aren’t there for us. And I don’t want to believe that,” McAuliffe said.

But Gruters, who doubles as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, told the Rules Committee that the bill would establish “consistency and predictability” for families and courts.

The measure won’t have any impact on alimony settlement agreements that are what he called “non-modifiable.”

“The only thing the retirement provision is doing is providing parameters and guidance for courts to use” when considering modifications to agreements, Gruters said.

“I want to make this very clear. If a recipient gave up assets in exchange for permanent alimony, (the) bill will not allow the payor to stop paying alimony,” he said. “This is changing the process of what is already allowed with the sole goal of cutting litigation.”

Alan Frisher, who helped launch the effort to change alimony laws about a dozen years ago, urged senators to support the bill.

“People change. Situations change. Economies change. Laws must change to keep up with current trends and times,” Frisher said Tuesday. “Is it perfect? No. But what legislation really is?”

But Andrea Reid, an attorney who spoke on behalf of The Florida Bar’s Family Law Section, predicted that the bill, if passed, would spark litigation and create confusion for tens of thousands of divorce cases in the pipeline.

“This bill promotes gamesmanship,” Reid said. “When this bill passes, and it does have retroactivity in it, it absolutely does, when it passes, 76,000 cases are going to come to an absolute halt and everybody’s going to have to decide what they’re going to do and everybody’s going to have to change their direction.”

McAuliffe leaned against a window ledge in the Capitol and sobbed after the Rules Committee passed the measure.

“I’m concerned about it being retroactive. I gave up my career because we decided together that we were going to do that,” she said, adding that she would have to start out “like a teenager” in the job market. “All the things that I gave up in the divorce to make it settled, I can’t go back to that.”