Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 85
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: 85
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: 5138
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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: 85
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: 3457
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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: 5138
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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: 85
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: 85
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: 85
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: 5138
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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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Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 85
Loc: IL
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I'll throw out first that DW had a bankruptcy maybe a year before we got married. Will explain why many things are just financed under me.
House was purchased by me over 2 years before getting married (I had thought previously it was just a year), with my father cosigning and inputting $15,000 into the deal with my agreement to pay him back with monthly payments. It was a new construction house in a new subdivision, but I got it at a pretty good price because the builder was wanting to move it. Two story house for about $117,000 minus the $15,000 from my dad. Equity loan taken out after marriage currently has about $14,800 debt on it. House has a market value of roughly $180,000 I would estimate, based on the info at the time of the equity loan and comparison of other houses in the neighborhood. Has about $98,000 left on the princ plus the equity loan, plus what I owe my dad, which is still about $10,000.
Two cars, both under my name on the loan only. One is 3 years old with 2 years and about $11,000 left to pay on it. Other is less than a year old with over 4 years left to pay on it at about the same $11,000 left to pay. Both are in very good condition.
Credit cards probably have around $15,000 total debt on them, much related to her expenses, but also various other expenses as well. Majority of it is on card listed with my name only on it.
Everything else would be variable. Have a decent bedroom set in our room, but rest of our furniture is only decent to tolerable. Two old TV's and one digital TV that is not very big. Decent computer that is a couple years old. Washer/dryer, microwave, fridge...round out the higher value stuff. Everything else would just start whittling down the various crap we have. We don't have much of anything of any major value. Just assorted and various things laying around. Nothing I couldn't live without or would mind still having, either way.
We both have 401k accounts, hers at her previous work before disability, mine at my current work, both are about the same amount and not much at roughly $4,000 or so.
Bank accounts will be slimmed down in the next day or two as I drain one to pay for property taxes. After that, mere crumbs left. Total left of all combined might be a few thousand at best.
Hopefully, that covers what you were looking for...
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gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 5138
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I'm assuming you put nothing other than your dad's loan down on the house? If so, it looks like it was mostly paid for by funds earned during the marriage. In a community property state, that kind of automatically means that the house belongs to both of you. As well as the other property.
To keep the house in a community property state, you'd have to pay her for her half of the equity, probably taking out a new loan to cover it all.
On the cars, it's not so important that there's $11000 loans on them as it is what they're worth. If one is upside down by a thousand & the other is worth $3000 after you pay off teh loan, then when you put this stuff on a ledger to divide it, the one who gets the upside down car will get the other to pay them... I think it ends up being $2000 (that's the $1500 for half the "equity" of the $3000 car, plus $500 for the privelege of having the other take teh upside down car.)
If I were you, I'd offer to take the house, take out a mortgage for her half of the marital estate less 10% of the price of the house (for costs of sale), give her the more expensive car and thereby reducing the amount that you owe to her for the house/property overall.
You'll have to split up the furniture & stuff.
Technically, parts of your retirements, 401Ks & etc that are earned during the marriage are your joint property & parts earned before the marriage are separate, so technically, she may deserve a big part of yours and you may deserve less of hers since she's been disabled for so long... but since it's not a huge number, it's not worth arguing too hard over... just remember that if she gives your entire retirement account to you and wants to keep hers, you're probably out ahead of the game... but if she wants part of yours, make her pay the price of a qualified domestic relations order to make that happen. She may decide not to do it once she realizes the price of getting it to happen is almost the same as the value of what she would get from it.
i'm not ignoring that you may have just gotten a big blow in knowign that your house might not be yours... so let me say this... you are NOT in a community property state. I dont' know of any midwest states which go with the community property laws. I don't know exactly what your state's law will say about these issues, but I've given you waht the community property general picture would be... so you'll ahve to go to a lawyer & see if your state might have laws which help you prevent this from happening.
In a community property state, the idea is that the marriage is an equal partnership with both partners contributing equally, if one is sitting home & the other is earning money, they dont' much care and aren't going to go through any calculations of how much it was wroth to the family that the one who sat at home also was doing dishes or whatever... they're just going to call it equal and if you didn't think it WAS, then you shouldn't have stayed married for so long OR you should have just accepted that you were GIVING AWAY your efforts at life to this person. But you dont' get to get out o fgiving them half of everything earned during the marriage unless they were really BAD & did something like gamble it away.
But you'll wnat to take these ideas & take them to a lawyer & see if your state's laws might be a little easier on you than the community property laws. There are some guys on ehre who think the community property laws are the worst things that ever happened to MAN kind. So check. I'm willing to bet that the bottom line results of your own laws are not so terribly different, but I'm dying to find out for sure.
Do not delay, as I've said before, a marriage as long as yours is on the verge of ... well, the principle that you are giving her stuff by letting her stay married to you... it becomes more & more important in the alimony realm when the marriage is longer and she's been earning next to nothign for a lot of that time... with your ex, earning next to nothing, being on disability, you want to make certain you ditch the marriage before the law starts calling her a poor, dependent woman who YOU MADE dependent by allowing her to be this way for so long.
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Samsung
Platinum
Reged: 06/14/07
Posts: 2209
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Do you have an attorney yet? Since she has custody of one child already, judges are extremely reluctant to separate siblings. Regardless of psychiatic problems, you would have to provide overwhelming evidence she is a threat to the child's well being. It will probably need to be powerful enough, where the state is actually taking the other child away at the same time. Plus, with you being the primary wage-earner, and her at home, it will be a tremendous uphill battle, as she will be the presumed primary parent. Illinois also uses the presumption that kids should live primarily with one parent, thus they will not award shared parenting if you have a custody battle. What is your wife's view on this? Is she voluntarily willing to give up custody? Direct negotiation is going to be your best bet. Gigi gave you a breakdown of how things will be split in the property settlement in the previous post, and it appears very accurate.
Edited by Samsung (06/27/07 06:31 AM)
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Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 85
Loc: IL
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No, I do not have an attorney yet. Things have been pretty hectic, both at home and at work, plus she just got out of the hospital yesterday, so we're dealing with that. With regards to the other child, he is entering his senior year of high school, so a year from now he will be looking at going off to college anyway. Maybe waiting until then would be better? What she is voluntarily willing to do is unknown, as her attitude and moods towards everything tend to fluctuate. All of this is very interesting, and most likely saving me some lawyer time, either by answering questions or giving me thinking points to bring up if I should talk to a lawyer, and thereby probably shortening the amount of time I would have to spend talking to one. Appreciate your replies and PM's.
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Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 85
Loc: IL
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Although, I would think...and hope...that events like the most recent, where she went from being coherent and alert to visual and auditory hallucinations and suicidal ideations within a span of about 2 hours would be considered a hazard to any child's well being.
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mell1213
New
Reged: 07/07/07
Posts: 3
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Hopefully I read your post wrong. You're asking about money and IF you get your SON. I know it takes money to live but the LOVE MUST COME FIRST!!! Please don't put that child it the middle. I'm sure you're angry and hurt but as a parent, we must get over it.
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Bullet
Silver
Reged: 06/16/07
Posts: 85
Loc: IL
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You'll have to be more specific about which post you're talking about and which part of that post. If you're talking about the original post, this forum is about alimony and support, so I asked a question directly dealing with that aspect of my situation. I have other threads/posts in other forums dealing with issues like custody of my son. I don't put my son in the middle of anything. His well being has been my priority from the beginning and continues to be so. Some people have said, "you should do this or that right now!", but sometimes that just isn't feasible. My son continues to be in good care, my wife continues on with her treatments and seems to be making some positive breakthroughs, and I will continue my vigilance over the whole situation. The questions I ask here are for me to collect information and increase my knowledge base so that if one day I decide that things are at a point that I need to do something, I'm not starting at square one in gathering this information. I have tried to make my questions specific to the forums that they're in, hence the questions about money in this forum. It's difficult to split things up in the different forums as the issue of divorce impacts so many things simultaneously.
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