Divorce Support Forums: Maintenance

The 18 year old will probably be taken off the order at trial, but file a motion today to say he's 18 and chooses to live with you and therefore there should be no more support for that one, and request that support paid since his 18th birthday be refunded to you in an equalizing payment after the divorce is final.

It was a really long marriage so he'll probably owe some support, for about 1/3 to 1/2 of the length of the marriage, to her. But the court is less likely to order that if he ends up getting the kids, because one of the considerations in most states for spousal support is which of the spouses ended up with the additional obligation of keeping the kids in their house... and since the kids hang out at his house most of the time, he probably should consider asking for that parenting time plan to be officially changed, anyways, to reflect reality so that the child support calculation is not a sham (the sham being that it would LOOK like the kids are spending a whole lot more time with mother than they really do, so mother gets a whole lot more support than she should, and the person who is really taking care of them more often ends up with less money to do so because of the inflated support amount going to her.

Rest assured that even with the 2 remaining little ones, the 17 year old is not too far from emancipation as well, so this is not a "forever" commitment even if that one prefers to stay at Mom's house for the last year of high school. But for sure, if the little one is spending more time with youo, make certain that gets corrected in the final trial.

But with the bankruptcy, it's highly likely that he SHOULD not get the equity from the house. He's not supposed to be able to leave bankruptcy with property while giving the shaft to his creditors... and it sounds like she has creditors who will be coming after the equity, anyways.

Ordinarily, bankruptcy alone will cause a divorce to be delayed, so if the bankruptcy is not final, I'd be surprised if the judge allowed the case to proceed, and if your friend is the one who declared bankruptcy, well... HE is the one who caused that much of the delay. And frankly, if he declared bankruptcy separately without telling her or allowing her to join in on it, then it kind of gives her the shaft becasue the creditors he had who were given the shaft in the bankruptcy will simply go over to her since she was married to him at the time the debt was incurred, and will demand that SHE pay the shortage, so don't worry, she is going to be feelign quite a pinch as well.

If there were debts that did not show up on a credit report of him and so he didn't include them in his bankruptcy, the creditors are probably not goign to be allwoed to pop up in his life anyways even if the ex defaults... I assume these are debts she created after the filing of divorce? If so, then the creditors should not have a right to come after him... though that doesn't stop them from trying, for sure... they just can't legitimately recover from him... I had a friend this happened to... 10 years after the divorce he tried to buy a new car & was declined for credit because his ex had gotten a new credit card AFTER THE DIVORCE and apparently told them that she was married to him in order to get them to give her teh credit. She didn't pay it and they decided to some after him but they didn't ahve his address so it jus twent into default and they put it on his credit rating. It was a mess to fix, but the bottom line is taht it DID get fixed because it was NOT HIS CREDIT.

To prevent messes like this, your friend will want to run his own credit report before he goes to court and will want to get a release form from her so that he can run her full report before court, so that there is a full accounting of debts at the time of the final trial in the divorce.

Good luck.