You'll have a hard time getting alimony with a 4 year marriage, but your best bet is to find a lawyer in Alabama who can advise you on that and make an affidavit for your German authorities so that you can get support in Germany.

One thing in your favor would be if you had a job in 2003 that you left to go be with him, and if he gave you money in 2007 when you returned to be with your mother, because he knew it was only fair. If that was the situation, then youv'e got a chance of convincing a judge that you deserve to be paid for the fact that you left a good job to follow him and he knew it because he gave you money to help out when you went back for your mother.

Otherwise, the Alabama people are going to say, "why should be require one of our own to support a woman who married an older man here with the hopes of getting money out of him, stuck around 4 years and then left him? It's not the kind of story that automatically makes it look like alimony is a good idea.

So you may very well be able to get someoen to confirm that alimony is not a possibility in Alabama for you, sufficient to show your government that you're destitute and then you can get on the German social security system.

Interestingly, I know someone else that somethng similar happened to. She didn't come here, but they lived together for 20+ years there and the long term of the marriage would have suggested that he owed alimony, but what happened was that seh didn't take care of herself as doctors recommended after an illness, and made her illness get owrse, she became totally disabled and what was going to happen was that he would lose his entire life savings to support her in a nursing home UNLESS he divorced her. He had returned here a few years into her illness because she was already being cared for by some version of public insurance, but when it came down to paying for the 24 hour care she needed, when they were sending her to another facility, that's when they threatened to start siphoning money away from him before they'd pay for her care. So he divorced her. She was much better off for having confirmation that he was not going to be required ot pay alimony or ongoing support. and he didn't have to lose everything just to keep her in a mediocre nursing home before she died. Sad, but this was the way the German government required thigns to go before they were willing to give her the same benefits that they'd have given any otehr German citizen... it seems that being married to an American was the difference... that if her husband hd been German, they'd not be runnign him bankrupt before giving her assistance... they practically FORCED teh divorce and such before they'd help her out, which was kind of tragic. He actually didn't want to divorce her, though he was angry for her not following doctor's orders (which caused her to have a stroke that caused her permanent disability).

But sometimes, that's the way governments work.

Get a lawyer in Alabama to give you some information online about what's up in your case and you'll be able to figure out what you need to do.