Spousal Maintenance

No. We hear this one a lot, and we know many litigants (particularly men) worry about this. This is not something to be concerned about. Judges, regardless of gender, strive to apply the law in a neutral way. In our experience, the judge’s gender does not make a difference in the outcomes of cases.

No. Spousal maintenance is applied in a gender-neutral fashion.

No. Once the court awards no spousal maintenance, the court loses jurisdiction to order a future modification. In other words, once spousal maintenance is ordered to be zero, it says zero. 

You have three years from when the last payment was due.  

You can file a Petition to Enforce Spousal Maintenance with the Court and ask the Court to enforce its order. The Court has options, including fines and, in cases where a spouse is quite behind in payments, they may set a purge amount—an amount your spouse must pay, and if they don’t pay it, a warrant will be issued for their arrest, and they will be in jail until they pay it. 

Both you and your spouse takes a risk in making spousal maintenance non-modifiable. For the recipient spouse, they bear the risk that they may need more money than initially thought or may need it for a longer period of time. The paying spouse bears even more risk. If a paying spouse becomes disabled or loses their job or business, they must still pay their spousal maintenance. There are occasionally some very harsh results that happen to a paying spouse because of a non-modifiable provision. 

Spousal maintenance is only modifiable by agreement between you and your spouse. The effect of the agreement is to remove all jurisdiction from the courts to modify spousal maintenance at all. The advantage is that you litigate spousal maintenance, which can be a heavily litigated issue, only once. Once spousal maintenance is made non-modifiable, it does not get revisited. And you are only back in Court if the paying spouse fails to pay.

No. Arizona law does not permit common-law marriages, and since you never married otherwise, the law considers both of you to be single. In situations like yours, other states have created what is called “palimony,” which allows spousal maintenance for people who never legally married. Arizona is not one of those states. So, people who live together for decades but never marry are not entitled to spousal maintenance.

Yes. You can argue that your spouse should be attributed their former income for purposes of determining spousal maintenance. To persuade the court, you will need to show your spouse’s decision to change job was unreasonable and that they are voluntarily and unreasonably underemployed.

Yes, that is the kind of transition for which spousal maintenance was intended. But be aware that does not necessarily mean you qualify for spousal maintenance or be awarded it.

Spousal maintenance is not that simple. Much more information must be considered to determine whether spousal maintenance is going to be ordered. This is where a consult with an attorney is helpful. 

No. Adultery does not enter into the spousal maintenance calculation on either side of the ledger.