Thursday, February 25, 2016

Nation's Leading Alimony Expert Strongly Cautions Florida Gov. Rick Scott to Veto One-Sided Reform Bills - Conduct Proper Study


 
 
 

 

February 22, 2016

Governor Rick Scott
State of Florida
The Capitol
400 S. Monroe St.
Tallahassee, FL 32399-0001

Dear Governor Scott:

I am writing to urge you to veto SB668/HB455 and to establish a task force to study options for alimony reform in Florida.  For the sake of the many Florida mothers and grandmothers who have invested in their families rather than a career or job, please do not sign this bill.  I have spent almost 25 years studying alimony.  (See my book:  The Marriage Buyout; The Troubled Trajectory of U.S. Alimony Law (NYU Press 2014)).  If I have learned anything, it is that alimony is complex.  Reform can have unintended consequences and so should be the product of a careful, deliberative effort to understand and improve the law rather than a one-sided push to protect alimony payors by kicking recipients off the “alimony gravy train.”  There are two sides to every story;  SB668/HB455 hears only one side.  Please veto this bill. 

SB 668 is full of problems, but I’ll limit this letter to three critical points: 

1.  Why alimony matters.  Alimony has an awful reputation, partly because its roots lie in old notions of wives as inevitable dependents.  But contemporary alimony is not about dependency; it is about partnership.   In a recurring script, family life involves teamwork:  one parent prioritizes paid labor while the other (typically a mother) prioritizes family labor.  This sharing enables the couple to enjoy a home and family;  it also benefits the primary wage-earner by allowing him to maximize his investment in paid labor.  Meanwhile, the primary caregiver who takes on the lion’s share of family responsibilities incurs invisible costs.  Whether or not she also works for a paycheck, the primary caregiver typically experiences an earning capacity loss as a result of her family labor.  This phenomenon is so well known it has a name:  “the motherhood penalty.”  So long as the marriage remains intact and income is shared, the primary caregiver’s earning capacity losses are invisible.  But if divorce prematurely ends the partnership, these losses are fully exposed.  The longer the marriage, the more likely the primary caregiver’s earning capacity losses will be unrecoverable.

This common script is not a goal, but it is a reality that explains why divorce tends to impact women more harshly than men.  When marital property is scant, as it is in most divorces, alimony is the only judicial tool for addressing the earning capacity losses stemming from the marital division of labor.  If marriage is a partnership, if marriage is about sharing the joys and sorrows, the risks and costs and benefits of life together, these losses should be shared.  This is why alimony matters.

2.  Kicking Grandma off the “alimony gravy train”  In a significant change from current law, SB668/HB455 creates several strategic pro-payor presumptions that facilitate downward modification or termination of alimony awards.  These modification presumptions apply to existing alimony orders as well as new ones.  Their purpose and effect is to place the burden of protecting an existing award, and of assuming the financial costs necessary to do so, on the alimony recipient.  As a practical matter, this means that if the alimony recipient cannot come up with the funds to hire an attorney and finance a defense, she will lose her alimony or at least a chunk of it.  This is a foreseeable and likely outcome since alimony recipients are by definition less able to bear the costs of litigation than payors.     

The most troubling pro-payor presumption is triggered by a payor’s retirement.  Current Florida law already allows a court to make a fair adjustment of alimony in such cases, and rightly so.  But SB668/HB455 goes much further, creating a presumption that age-appropriate retirement alone justifies reduction or termination of alimony without regard to any other relevant factors.  And there may be plenty of other relevant factors—the payor may be asset rich, the marriage may have been long, the recipient may have been a full-time caregiver of multiple marital children and be unable to recover her resulting earning-capacity loss, the size and duration of the alimony award may have been part of a settlement-agreement tradeoff for a smaller share of marital property.  The possibilities are many, for marriages do not come in one-size-fits-all boxes.  Yet, while these facts are clearly pertinent to a proposed modification or termination of alimony, the court may never learn of them.  If the alimony recipient cannot bear the costs of litigation, who will bring these facts to the attention of the court?  Probably not the payor.

It gets worse.  The likelihood that an alimony recipient will be unable to assume the financial costs of litigation is increased by an alarming provision in SB668/HB455 that allows a court to reduce or suspend alimony while the modification petition is pending.  Stripped of alimony, how can the already-financially-strapped recipient come up with the cash necessary to resist a termination petition?  Many cannot and will give up without a fight. 

There is more.  If the alimony recipient does somehow finance a defense to modification but loses, she risks punishment at the hands of a judge who decides her attempt to protect her alimony was “unreasonable.”  The punishment?  She is liable for the payor’s attorney fee.  No matter that the payor picked a high-priced, Palm Beach lawyer.  It’s not much of a leap to suppose that even a mildly risk-averse alimony recipient with few financial resources will be intimidated into giving up her award without a struggle.  This seems to be the plan and it will likely work.  Shame on the drafters of SB668/HB455. 

3.  Why No Task Force?   The egregious outcomes of the modification presumptions of SB668/HB455 may have been overlooked by the Florida legislature.  Maybe not.  Either way, extensive reform of the economics of divorce should have been undertaken only after careful deliberation and consideration of the impact of reform on various groups—not just on payors, but also on mothers and grandmothers and children, on the State (which may be asked to support the former spouses of asset-rich payors), and on the institution of marriage itself.   Fairness demands that every affected party have a voice.  Some charge that SB668/HB455 is the product of one-sided advocacy by wealthy alimony payors.  A task force inquiry into alimony reform would go far in quelling this concern.  The task force might be composed of men’s rights groups, women’s rights groups, judges, attorneys (those who specialize in high-asset divorces and also those who deal with low-income and middle-income clients), law professors, and other volunteers.   

A task force could prove invaluable in thinking through another portion of the bill—the presumptive guidelines for calculating the amount and duration of an initial alimony award.  Guidelines may increase the consistency and predictability of alimony awards, but guidelines themselves are empty sets:  it is the numbers that populate them that ensure either consistent equity or consistent inequity.   Some charge that the guideline formulae are stingy and will produce awards that are significantly lower than current awards.  Will they?  Has anyone compared the size of an alimony award under SB668/HB455 with current Florida practice?  If the outcome is different, was this intentional?  Is it an improvement?  Where did the numbers in SB668/HB455 come from?  Did the legislature check out (and reject) the 2012 Massachusetts alimony guideline legislation (enacted after a multi-year task force inquiry)?  The guidelines in New York or those proposed by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers or those proposed by the American Law Institute?  The 2008 Canadian guidelines, implemented after a seven-year project?  The formulae in these guidelines all differ and none are like those in SB668/HB455.  Which formula gets it right?  The guideline formula is, of course, Florida’s choice, but that choice should be informed, deliberate and careful—not hasty and certainly not the result of a special-interest group dedicated to limiting alimony awards.  Grandma deserves better. 

Please veto SB668/HB455 should they come before you and appoint a bipartisan task force of experts to explore the complex issue of alimony reform.   There are many good reasons to do so.

Very truly yours,
Professor Cynthia Lee Starnes
 

 
Professor and Scholar Cynthia Lee Starnes Bio:

 

Honors:

The John F. Schaefer Chair in Matrimonial Law

Michigan State University College of Law

2011 to present

The Lizzie J. McSweeney Professor of Family Law

Michigan State University College of Law

2009 to 2011

Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs

Michigan State University College of Law

2007 to 2009

Professor of Law

Michigan State University College of Law

Fall 1989 to present

Courses: Family Law, Contracts, Family Dissolution Law Reform Seminar, Commercial

Law, Secured Transactions

Professor – Studies Abroad

Doshisha University

Kyoto, Japan

May-June 2013

Course: Global Perspectives on Family Law

 

Education:

Columbia University School of Law, LL.M., 1989.

Indiana University School of Law, Indianapolis, J.D., cum laude, 1983.

Indiana Law Review – Note & Development Editor, 1982-83; Associate Editor,

1981-82.

Michigan State University, B.S., with high honors, 1973.

 

Publications:

THE MARRIAGE BUYOUT: THE TROUBLED TRAJECTORY OF U.S. ALIMONY LAW

(New York University Press, May 2014)

Co-Author, COMMERCIAL TRANSACTIONS UNDER THE UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE AND

OTHER LAWS (LexisNexis, 6th ed., 2011)

Editor, UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE FORMS WITH PRACTICE COMMENTS, MICHIGAN

COMPILED LAWS ANNOTATED, vols 1 - 4, 3rd ed. and annual Annual Pocket Parts

(Thomson/West)

And, over 20 Published Articles and book co-authorship in the area of Family Law, the Socio-Economic Impact of Divorce and Alimony.