Dallas Divorce Law Blog by The May Firm

The Wall Street Journal reports that more men are receiving alimony, up to 3.6% over the 5-year period ending in 2006, compared to 2.4% in the previous 5-year period.  Even in the Dallas, Texas area divorces, more men are sacrificing their career opportunities in favor of their wife’s.   Wives make more money than husbands in 33% of all marriages (including those where the husband may  not work.)

Alimony is the money that a higher-earning spouse gives to a lower-earning spouse following the end of the marriage.  Texas has a very limited court-ordered alimony statute, only providing alimony (aka maintenance in Texas) where the parties have been married for 10 or more years, plus the spouses lack property in the divorce to provide for the other spouse’sreasonalbe needs, plus either the spouse lacks the ability to earn wages to meet minimum needs or the spouse or a child have a disability that makes working outside the home difficult.  However, alimony can be provided for by agreement even when the situation lies outsides of the exact parameters of the legal statute.

Men are receiving alimony today for the classic reasons that women traditionally did.  A common argument is that they sacrificed their careers for the sake of their wives or children.

Some spouses find it distasteful to write a check each month to their former spouse.  So, the increasingly common practice is to trade alimony for a fatter slice of the marrital property pie.

A recent article in the American Bar Journal confirms what Dallas divorce lawyers are seeing — the downturn in the economy is making divorces more difficult.  For many couples, their primary assets are the house and the 401K.  House values are declining and so the asset is not worth as much to the divorcing couple.  Also, the physical division of a house as an asset is more difficult because home sales have slowed and mortgage refinances are more difficult to get.  This makes it more difficult for a spouse to receive the division of the equity from that asset.  Some couples are already so heavily mortgaged that there is no equity in the house, so when the value falls, they may have negative equity.

With the sharp declines in the stock market, 401K values are also tumbling.  This leaves less to divide of a normally fairly liquid and divisible asset.

In many cases, a divorce that would have once been a split of an estate with a positive net worth is now an argument over division of debts.  Some couples are even staying together because of the bad economy.  Or… worse… getting a divorce, but continuing to live together.

How many times do I hear spouses in Dallas divorces say, “I just don’t know the man I married.”  Christie Brinkley in her divorce complained that she didn’t know the man she married after she found out that he had been spending $3000 per month on internet porn and had an 18-year-old mistress.

Catholic priest Pat Connor has been lecturing high schoolers for 40 years about choosing the right person to marry.  “Hollywood says you can be deeply in love with someone and then your marriage will work. But you can be deeply in love with someone to whome you cannot be successfully married,” says the white-haired priest.  Here are his tips:

• Never marry a man who has no friends.  This usually means that he will be incapably of the intimacy that marriage demands.
• Does he or she use money responsibly?  Most marriages flounder because of money — she’s thrifty and he’s on his 10th credit card.
• Steer clear of someone whose life you can run, who never makes demands counter to your’s. It’s good to have a doormat in the home, but not if it’s your husband.
• Is he overly attached to his mother and her mythical apron strings?  When he wants to make a decision, say, about where you should go on your honeymoon, he doesn’t consult you, he calls his mother.
• Does he have a sense of humor? A therapist said, “more marriages are killed by silence than by violence.” Of course, domestic violence is very serious, but in Dallas area divorces, I do see more people that have marital problems because of a lack of communication.  The strong silent type may be charming and intriguing at first, but ultimately destructive to the marriage.
• Don’t marry a problem character thinking you can change him.  People are the same after marriage as before, only more so.  If he’s a heavy drinker before marriage, he’s not going to change just because he marries a good woman.
• Take a good unsentimental look at his family — you’ll learn a lot about him and his attitudes towards women.  Is there a history of divorce in the family?  An atmosphere of racism, sexism, or prejudice?
• Are his goals and deepest beliefs worthy and similar to your’s?
• Does he possess those character traits add up to a good human being — the willingness to forgive, praise, be courteous?  Or is he inclined to be a fibber, to fits of rage, to be a control freak, to be envious or secretive?

Married internet browsers beware:  information obtained from internet browser history and spyware is being used as evidence in divorce cases.  One survey shows 79% of divorce attorneys reported use of internet browser history as evidence, while 44% show increase in spyware use.  Many people use the internet to act anonymously, but in reality using the internet is one of the more public things a person can do.

Trackers should also beware.  Some tracking software can be considered an invasion of privacy in violation of certain laws restricting wiretapping.  Keystroke analysis is one such type of tracking that can cause problems. 

In Dallas divorces, we are seeing an increase in invasion of email accounts to obtain evidence.  This can also be problematic and a violation of the law.

A recent survey of nation-wide divorce lawyers confirms a local trend — electronic evidence is being used more widely in divorce litigation.  E-mail is the most prevalent form of electronic evidence being used, but text messages and GPS tracking are other forms that litigants are finding informative. 

In Dallas area divorce litigation, there has been a distinct increase in requests for seizure of computer equipment for analysis by forensic computer experts.  Forensic (which means used in court) computer experts are able to locate information on a hard drive that was previously deleted.  The delete key is actually a fallacy — deleting information from a computer may delete it from normal view, but the information remains on the hard drive until that particular closet of memory has been written over by new information. For example, I have used this type of evidence to identify hidden assets in a property division. 

It does appear that women present electronic evidence for use in litigation more than men, according to the nation-wide survey.

Custodial parents in areas affected by Hurricane Ike may experience a delay in receiving child support checks, the Texas Child Support Disbursement Unit and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said last week. Abbott has urged parents to contact a toll-free child support hotline to inform child support officials about any temporary address changes. Additionally, parents can sign up to receive payments automatically through their bank or through a state ATM card.  Staff, Tyler Morning Telegraph  09/15/2008

Parade Magazine ran an interesting story on marriages and divorces in America.  Their survey confirmed that money and sex are the main sources of stress in a marriage.  Of their respondents, 43% reported that they squabble over money.  Household chores ranked second, although men consider chores less of an issue than women – telling since men still do considerably less housework than women.  As for sex, three-quarters of the respondents in the survey reported their sex lives were fulfilling, while 25% put their sex lives on the tolerable or terrible end of the spectrum.  Even so, 60% of the men reported that they don’t have sex enough, while 51% of the women shared that feeling. Despite those complaints, most of the respondents reported being faithful to their spouses, although 25% of men said they’d strayed outside their marriage or refused to answer the question.  Only 15% of women reported cheating or refused to answer the question.

Of the women, 44% have thought about leaving their husbands, where 31% of men have had the same thought.

Question… with a national divorce rate holding around 50% (and a slightly higher rate of divorce in Dallas Texas area) the respondents of the Parade survey must not be typical of the whole of society. 

Apparently Alec Baldwin has a book coming out this week that talks about his experience with the divorce process.  I read an excerpt of the book online — the introduction and part of the first chapter.  What I read seemed to be his “rant” on perceived corruption in the judicial system in California.  He calls the judges inept and the lawyers lazy.  I plan to get the book and read the rest of it just to see what he has to say.  I don’t know the lawyers or the judge involved with his case. No doubt he had a bad experience with his divorce — we all remember the ultra-inappropriate voice mail left for his daughter. No doubt the judge in his case disapproved.  I am curious to see how much of the book shows a viewpoint skewed by his bitterness and anger as opposed to a bias in the system that is more far-reaching.  I was struck immediately by a story he tells in chapter 1 about controversies with movie producers where he concludes that the producers are more corrupt than the illegal drug business.  I question his credibility in criticizing the legal system when he also calls the movie producers corrput.  Sounds like he’s saying, anything I disagree with is therefore corrupt.  Overall, his book seems like an honest, maybe even raw,  account of an embittered divorce — not so dissimilar to the experiences of many people.  He also disucsses his opinions on “parental alienation”, which he calls a syndrome, although I’ve never known of it to be a diagnosable condition. He does seem to shed light on the inequities and prejudices that continue to persevere in our country over women versus men in raising children.  Starting a discussion of those inequities in a valuable result of his book, I just hope that the good that can come from a celebrity bringing a private situation in the public eye isn’t overshadowed by his bitterness and anger. 

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A little bit of technology and a change in Texas family law are allowing families separated by divorce and distance to maintain close relationships. On September 1, Texas became the fourth state to allow video visitation. While proponents of the practice admit that video visitation cannot replace personal visits, they note that it can serve as a powerful substitute. Andrew D. Smith, Denton Record-Chronicle 11/05/2007

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