How Could My Marital Standard Of Living Affect My Divorce?

Maintaining financial security after divorce often proves challenging for many people. Most do not, however, have to sacrifice their lifestyle because their marriage is ending. Instead, how a couple lived before divorce can play a significant role in the types of financial assistance they receive after their marriage has been dissolved. Read on to learn more about how your family’s standard of living could impact your own divorce.

Assessing Your Standard of Living 

When a couple decides to divorce, they must submit financial affidavits, in which they disclose important information about their:

• Individual assets, including real estate, vehicles, and personal possessions, like valuable art or jewelry;
• Individual incomes;
• Total debts, including mortgages, personal loans, and credit card balances;
• Rent or mortgage payments, as well as household maintenance costs, such as landscaping and cleaning;
• Healthcare expenses, including medical and dental care;
• Amounts spent on personal care, like clothing and personal grooming services; and
• Entertainment costs, such as dining out, gym memberships, and vacations.

Besides helping couples get a better handle on the kinds of assets they may need to divide upon divorce, these disclosures have the added benefit of giving courts a clearer understanding of a couple’s standard of living, or their overall lifestyle during a marriage. This in turn, could affect whether a court awards alimony to a lesser earning spouse, or what is determined a “fair” division of marital property.

Maintaining Your Standard of Living After Divorce 

In Florida, a couple’s standard of living can affect a number of divorce-related issues. For instance, judges are directed to take a family’s standard of living into account when making decisions about:

• Who will retain which assets during the property division process;
• Whether one spouse will required to pay alimony to the other and in what amount; and
• How much a non-custodial parent should pay in child support.

When making these determinations, courts will look to a couple’s standard of living. How a family lived prior to divorce, for instance, will largely dictate whether a judge thinks that a lesser earning spouse requires financial support after divorce. Similarly, a child support award will reflect a family’s standard of living before divorce, ensuring that children are able to engage in the same types of recreational activities, or to attend the same school, as they did before their parents separated. To learn more about how your family’s pre-divorce expenses and earnings could affect your post-divorce financial circumstances, reach out to our legal team today.

Request a Consultation with a Florida Divorce Lawyer 

Legally ending a marriage in Florida will undoubtedly require that you make some major adjustments, some of which will be financial. You should not, however, have to make unnecessary sacrifices when it comes to your standard of living. To learn more about how your pre-divorce expenses could affect the outcome of your own dissolution proceedings, call 954-945-7591 and set up a free case review with experienced Fort Lauderdale divorce lawyer Sandra Bonfiglio, P.A. today.

Sources: 

mypalmbeachclerk.com/departments/courts/unified-family-court

leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0000-0099/0061/0061.htm