Westport Spousal Support Lawyer

If the financial impact of a divorce would significantly change the standard of living for one involved party, the higher-earning spouse may be ordered to provide some degree of monetary support to their lower-earning former partner. However, the specific amount of support the court will order, or even whether the court will order alimony to be paid at all, can vary depending on the circumstances.

Whether you want to pursue support yourself or minimize the impact an alimony order might have on your own financial future, help from a Westport spousal support lawyer could be crucial to effectively pursuing your desired outcome. A knowledgeable divorce attorney could help you understand how family courts usually rule on these kinds of issues and how various aspects of your marriage might affect the court’s order.

Factors for a Court to Order Alimony

Connecticut General Statutes §46b-82 defines several specific criteria that courts may consider when deciding whether to accept a petition for spousal support, including, but not limited to:

Each party’s unique financial needs
The age and physical health of each party
How long the marriage in question lasted
Each party’s income and their future earning prospects
The property each party received or will receive through the division of marital assets
The impact that spousal support would have on the children under the prospective recipient’s custody

A local alimony attorney could help an individual petitioner emphasize the importance of the particular factors in their unique case.

Types of Spousal Support

Depending on the relevant factors and other details unique to each case, family courts have the authority to grant three different types of alimony, each of which is meant to serve a different purpose and lasts for a different amount of time. First, while the divorce process is still ongoing, a court may grant temporary spousal support, also known as pendente lite alimony, to a lesser-earning spouse to ensure they can remain financially stable in the short term.

Once a divorce is finalized, a court can either allow the temporary support order to run out without replacing it, or it can order one party to continue providing support to the other on a rehabilitative or permanent basis. Rehabilitative alimony explicitly meant to last only until the recipient can acquire enough education or job training to support themselves with their own income and is common in situations where the recipient has not been out of work for a significant amount of time.

Permanent alimony is generally only ordered when the recipient cannot be expected to ever support themselves financially, either because of old age, some sort of disability, or the sheer length of time out of the workforce. A spousal support lawyer in the area could go into further detail about what kinds of support may be available in a particular situation.

A Westport Spousal Support Attorney Could Help

Pursuing an ideal spousal support order can be difficult if you are not familiar with how courts generally rule on these matters, and especially if you do not have skilled legal counsel at your side who could for an order that would serve your best interests.

A Westport spousal support lawyer could work tirelessly to fight on your behalf for the support you need or the amount you would prefer to pay. Call today to learn more about what an attorney could do to help.