In awarding alimony, a divorce court will usually set the amount at a level that enables both former spouses to live the same quality of life they lived during the marriage.
But if a recent ruling from the highest court in Massachusetts serves as any indication, a couple’s habit of saving for a “rainy day” during their marriage may be a relevant factor in setting the payor spouse’s alimony obligation.
The couple, Amy and Glen Openshaw, were married in 1991. They had six children and enjoyed an upper middle-class lifestyle.
Despite their income of more than $1 million annually, they were modest spenders who allocated significant portions of their income to investment and savings while donating 10 percent of their income to their church.
Amy filed for divorce in 2018 and received sole legal and physical custody of their remaining minor child. The Family Court also divided the marital estate 55 percent to Amy and 45 percent to Glen, who was additionally ordered to pay $5,020 a week in alimony.
The court set alimony based on Amy’s most current financial statement, which included $1,000 per week in savings and $730 per week in charitable giving.
Glen appealed, arguing that the couple’s habit of allocating a sizable portion of their income as savings should not have been factored into his alimony payment. Rather, he argued, it should be based strictly on the marital level of consumption of goods and services.
But the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court disagreed.
As the SJC reasoned, if the family budget during the marriage was characterized by regular saving, calculating alimony based strictly on consumption would force Amy either to reduce her level of consumption to continue that pattern or abandon saving in order to maintain her marital lifestyle.
That would defeat the purpose of alimony, the court said.
Massachusetts is not the only state to consider saving habits in setting alimony amounts; a number of other states do as well. Talk to a family law attorney to learn how this issue is handled where you live.
