Divorce Support Forums: is paying for insurance = alimony?

You put the $425 into the total spousal maintenance calculation and give her a check for the total amount. She becomes responsible for maintaining her insurance through COBRA (which will be offered to her, not you, once your employer gets notice of the split)... or not. If she chooses to go without insurance and spend the money on something else that's her stupid decision... and not yours to worry about.

And now for the REAL reason you do it this way and don't set it up the other way just because YOU feel it's convenient and YOU're better at managing things than she is... because the minute you set it up that you will be providing the insuracne, you're job will be outsourced to Mexico and you'll be without insurance... or your employer's insurer will go bankrupt, or any number of other things will happen that you have no ocntrol over and will double your cost. And if SHE was responsible for it, if the cost doubled then she'd have incentive to look for other alternatives that would work for her... but if YOU are the one in charge and you've actually named that you're keeping it through Cobra or whatever... YOU become responsible for this and she has ZERO incentive to try to cut costs. Or do the right thing in any way.

Once the main earner who is paying support decides to say he's going to pay her insurance or her house payment or her utilities ... well... she's stuck. She needs to keep THAT insurance or THAT house or THOSE utilities. And he's stuck... HE needs to keep up THAT insurance or THAT house or THOSE utilities, even if, after the dust clears, he finds out that the house payments have a balloon mortgage due, that her utilities include a phone bill from hell since the separation, or that hte insuracne costs have skyrocketed and he cant' even afford his own any more... but has a court order forcing him to pay hers anyways... SHE will end up insured with a roof over head while the main breadwinner ends up in bankruptcy court.

SO MUCH BETTER to give a money amount... the estimated amount that she'll need to get by for the length of time they've agreed upon... and let her manage the money... EVEN if she's a BAD money manager, she is an ADULT and it's important for HER to have incentive to cut costs so ... well... so she can have a LIFE, instead of very expensive life insurance!

Heck, it's the same principle with teaching kids how to budget money. Figure out how much you spend on them and give it to them as an allowance. Now, becasue they're kids & not adults, the idea is to help them & discuss it with them & sit down with their budget & plan how much to spend on shoes and how much to spend on a prom dress and how much to spend on video games and weekend movies... and the experts who suggest this as a plan are saying that the kids who have this type of allowance/budget plan are the kids who learn to cut costs, who comparison shop for their new cellphone rather than demanding the latest greatest thing being advertised on TV... who choose to shop at Target rather than Hollister.

When you have control over your own money, you have incentie to figure out how to live within your means. If the necessities of life are provided under a contract like a divorce decree, then the choices are taken away and there is no incentive to do the work to comparison shop and be reasonable about costs.

Expect that everything you separate out and offer to pay as part of the decree instead of alimony will eventually become a difficulty that you'd wish you hadn't put in there. And I'll bet that for every perosn who has a specific thing like this in thier decree who has not had a problem with it YET, there is going to be someone who wishes they'd never THOUGHT of putting something so specific in thier decree.

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