Divorce Lawyers New York - Recent Family Law Decisons (30)
RECENT FAMILY LAW DECISIONS (30)
Change in Circumstances
While receiving maintenance, petitioner has an affirmative obligation to seek appropriate employment and to make a good-faith effort to become financially independent and should petitioner not fulfill her obligations, subsection (a) directs that the maintenance award may be modified upon respondent’s showing of substantial change in circumstances; thus, while the order did not provide for review of the maintenance award, respondent is not precluded from seeking a review during the 10 year period if there is a substantial change in circumstances.
Discretion
Whether the terms of a dissolution judgment providing for maintenance should be modified or terminated rests within the sound discretion of the trial court, and its determination will not be disturbed on review unless the record shows an abuse of that discretion.
Standard
The trial court’s decision to terminate maintenance will not be disturbed on review unless it is contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence.
Settlement Agreement
Where parties’ agreement clearly and unambiguously limited the duration of maintenance by stating that it would not extend beyond the earliest of three specific events, the expiration of 78 months, and the wife’s death or remarriage, and the agreement precluded a modification extending wife’s right to maintenance beyond that time, although the parties’ agreement was sufficiently clear to make the duration of payments non-modifiable, because the agreement incorporated into the judgment of dissolution did not clearly preclude modification of the amounts of maintenance and other benefits within the prescribed periods, the trial court could modify amounts payable with the time limitations prescribed by the parties’ agreement.
Post-dissolution modification of maintenance is judicially precluded only where a settlement agreement clearly and unambiguously expresses the parties’ intent to make maintenance non-modifiable.
Termination
In General
Each case for termination of maintenance must rest on its own facts, given the unique nature of personal relationships.
Allowed
Where the petitioner had come from being unemployed with no outside income at the time of the dissolution, to having completed her college education in accounting, and employment with earnings of $20,000 per year, respondent’s petition for termination of maintenance payments should have been granted because the statutory goal of rehabilitative maintenance had been achieved.
