Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 84
Loc: IL
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My wife is now almost a year into receiving disability payments, partially for some physical afflictions, but mostly for psychiatric issues. I make too much for her to qualify for medical benefits through them, so she's on my insurance. I bring home roughly $2600/mo while she's getting roughly a $1000/mo from disability. We also get a small check for her son and a small check for our son. I'm sure she would be able to get medical benefits through SS if she were on her own. I keep reading on here about people negotiating out how to divide up things to save on attorney costs, this is what my former wife did and all I had to do was sign off on her papers and it was easy. If I pursue a divorce, I know I would want to have custody of our son due to her mental issues and just the fact that I couldn't imagine being separated from him. So, some questions are:
If we were divorced and I had our son, would he still be entitled to that monthly SS check, or does he have to be physically living with her for it to come?
If I had our son, and with her on disability, could I even expect to get child support payments from her? If I could, would it be possible for me to use this in negotiations with her saying something like, if you let me stay in the house (which I owned premarital) and don't pursue alimony from me, I won't try to get child support from you?
What is this I've been seeing in some threads regarding permanent support? Are some of you actually having to pay permanent support for disabled former spouses even if you didn't have anything to do with the disability? Is this seen more in longer marriages (mine is less than 10 years)?
thanks
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Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 84
Loc: IL
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Oh, and I guess I'll throw in too that she gets child support for her son who will be in college in a year. The payer is something like $60 - $70,000 in arrears to her, so I'm assuming he will be paying this for some time to come. It is a variable amount, but comes to around $330/mo on average.
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gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 5048
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If you get your son, then she will owe child support to you. Spouses who get the kids RARELY owe spousal support to the other spouse, but your case may be an exception becasue of her disability... the court will USUALLY say that the money really needs to stay in the house of the child.
Whatever, she owes support to you for child support, but this probably will be "satisfied" by the SS payments due to him as a child of a disabled parent. There is some rule about that & I can't remember it offhand, AnswerGuy is usually able to put his finger on the written rules, and this is one of them... maybe he can find it for you... the rule has something to do with disability being counted as part of the disabled spouse's child support & you can't get DOUBLE for that... um, like, how do I explain... OK... like she owes you $500 a month in child support because you are 100% custodian of the child. The social security administration pays $300 to you a month for the child for being the child of a disabled parent. The net result is that she NOW owes you $200 a month in child support. The rule is that you can't collect the FULL amount of support from HER that she owes to you if you are getting some of it from social security, becasue that is supposed to count against what she owes to you.
Go to social security & ask to make certain... but I'm telling you, the money goes to the child, not to the disabled parent... she is not entitled to extra FOR HERSELF simply because, as a disabled person, she has a child... NO... the CHILD is entiteld to something, becasue as a minor, he has a parent who is not able to provide & is covered under our social security system. Just like a child of a deceased parent will get social security death benefits ... those get paid out to WHOEVER is the guardian, the other parent, whether or nto they were divorced at the time of death... the grandparents... or even a foster family... it's FOR the kid but it's paid to the guardian so that the guardian can afford stuff that the other parent would have paid for... food, daycare, christmas gifts, or wahtever!
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Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 84
Loc: IL
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Well, at least THAT'S some good news in all of this. I had been wondering because I was thinking I had read somewhere in her materials that he had to be actually physically living with her for her/him to receive the check. She actually gets a check with both her and his names on it. I'm guessing she would still receive it and have to sign off on it before sending the money to me/him in this scenario. If I go further with this, of course, I would look much further into the SS rules.
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Jada
Platinum
Reged: 06/02/07
Posts: 3316
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[quote]Oh, and I guess I'll throw in too that she gets child support for her son who will be in college in a year. The payer is something like $60 - $70,000 in arrears to her, so I'm assuming he will be paying this for some time to come. It is a variable amount, but comes to around $330/mo on average. [/quote]
And does not count in any child support calculations for the child you have together. It is not income to her.
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gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 5048
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Yes, the check goes to whoever the child lives with. If she's named as payee, the child must live with her. That does not mean that the child doesn't get a check, just that SHE is not getting it or named on it. Once the child comes to live with you, then you notify social security to change the payee information and address on the check, and they'll send you the same paperwokr telling you to inform them any time the kid leaves you to live with a different guardian, becasue YOU will no longer be entitled to the check.
The extra she gets for child support from another parent is not calculated in as income to her for the purposes of calculating child support, but might be counted as "other resources" to her for the purposes of deciding how much (if any) alimony she deserves to get. It's not "income". It's an outstanding debt owed to her by someone else and she is lucky enough to have the government helping to pursue the deadbeat dad and arrange assignment of wages & such, as opposed to the rest of us in the world who are owed money by some deadbeat (not child support money, but something else), and have to go through the process of suing them & figuring out all the details of how to collect it from them if we win our lawsuit. It's JUST a debt owed, and if there is a set payment of it that's pretty guaranteed, then it's an "other resource".
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Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 84
Loc: IL
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Thanks, yes, that was kind of my angle here. The fact that her son that she is now getting child support for will soon be off to college and, hopefully, making his own way soon. I realize that the child support is supposed to be directed to the care of the child, but I can practically guarantee that he will see very little of it once he leaves the house. And if she continues to receive it for many years, it will be eaten up by her fondness for shopping, not buying pampers for her 20-something year old son. So yes, I was kind of tossing it out that she will (as long as the checks keep coming) be getting extra income beyond her SS check. And if she were to actually manage herself medically well, she could even work part time and potentially be making much closer to what I make once you add it all up.
Thanks for the info regarding the SS checks. Probably would have taken me hours of research on some govt website to have found that on my own.
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Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 84
Loc: IL
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Ok, trying to summarize things so that my foggy mind can be a bit more clear here. With the above in mind:
-Wife of 6 years, currently on disability for a collection of medical problems, but probably more primarily because of her psychiatric diagnosis.
-One young child from the marriage who receives a check in wife's name from disability. He was a preemie who still qualifies for some special services himself due to some delays.
-One house that I owned for over a year prior to marriage.
If I were to file, and gain child custody due to her mental illnesses, and my son was getting support from her via his disability check and/or an monies she was told to pay as CS, would there be anything I would be owing to her after all of this? Would she have any claim to the house value? I really would want to try and stay in this house if possible. It's nothing real special, but it's home to my son and very important to him. Clean neighborhood, bus picks up one door away from the house, neighbors are great. Just trying to weigh what dark clouds there might be waiting out there for me if I were to file, if there is anything I'm not thinking of or would not be aware of.
thanks
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Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 84
Loc: IL
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Can anybody answer the above questions? If it helps any, I'm in Illinois.
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gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 5048
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The house value is somethign different from the rest of the things you've talked about. It depends upon when you bought it, what it was worth when you did, etc., etc...
There are several things that all fit together, but which are apples & oranges & can't be discussed at the same time.
Alimony. This is whether or not she deserves part of your earnings, mostly with the reason being that she can't support herself without it.
CUstody, parenting time & other parenting issues. This is supposed to be based upon the best interests of the child (though we all know this is sometimes loosely interpreted or handled in a real biased way).
Child support. This is supposed to be according to a formula based upon your income, hers, how much time each of you has with the child, etc. It's supposed to be entirely separate from the issue of parenting time, but there are people who actually try to manipulate the parenting time to make a better support arrangement... not in the best interests of the children but to work loopholes in the system for the benefit of their own personal budget.
Property settlement: usually the most financially significant decision being made, if people own houses, cars & have credit, debt, pension plans, etc. This property settlement will be separate from everything else, but most of the state laws about alimony (spousal maintenance) will say that it shoudl take into account whether the property settlement leaves the receiving spouse with enough resources to provide for themselves without needing alimony, in which case someone can use the property settlement to mess with the alimony... and often the person who gets the house will also get the kids... so that is also an area where the two intersect. Otherwise, these things are supposed to remain separate from the otehr major areas of the divorce.
For the property settlement figure out ALL of your assets & ALl of your debts. Houses, cars, IRAs, bank accounts, clothing, silver, china, ... etc... use a separate ledger tfor the smaller personal things that would be nearly worthless at a garage sale, and tehn look at the larger things to see who shoudl get what.
It will depend upon when you acquired each item, what was used to pay for it, etc., etc.
Usually if you take one of the larger items, like the house, you wil have to pay the other person for their half of the value of it, and get a new loan to pay off the old loan plus what you owe them for it. Usually if you get a car, you have to altso take the loan on it.
What you generally want to do is make a ledger of assets & debts, see who gets which, and kidn of even things up ... basically similar values on each side of the ledger... separating out, of course, things that are separate property, like stuff you owned before the marriage & inherited things.
Tell us what you have, how much it's worth, how you paid for it, etc., and maybe we can help answer some of your questions about whether or nto you'll be able to keep it.
It's not a guarantee that you'll get the house, is what i"m saying.
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