Getting Help With Your Divorce

What You Need To Know About The Different Kinds Of Alimony Payments

While most people know that a court can order someone to pay alimony to their former spouse once they are divorced, they may not be aware of all the different kinds of alimony that could be owed. Here are four kinds of alimony payments you may pay or receive after a divorce.

Temporary Alimony

The legal name for temporary alimony is also called pendente lite, and it is paid in situations where your spouse is unemployed or not making much of an income at all. They are awarded temporary alimony in order to help them with living expenses during a time that the divorce is being processed. It is not always automatically awarded since a court sometimes needs a request to order this type of alimony to be paid.

Permanent Alimony

Be aware that once alimony has been awarded after a finalized divorce, it will be an expense that will be paid indefinitely until your former spouse passes away or marries another person. While the name of this type of alimony payment may imply that it is permanent, it is possible to petition the court to lower the amount that is owed. This could be due to losing a job and not having the income to make the payment. However, a former spouse can also petition to receive more alimony if you have greatly increased your earnings or they suffered some type of financial hardship.

Rehabilitative Alimony

Another type of alimony payment is for rehabilitative purposes. For example, a spouse that stayed at home to take care of the kids will most likely need more help getting back into the workforce with no recent employment history or possibly needing additional training to re-enter their old profession.

Money received from rehabilitative alimony can be used to go back to school or even start their own business. In order to be awarded this type of alimony payment, the receiver must present a plan to a judge about how they will use this money to achieve their goal. Rehabilitative alimony will only be owed for a specific amount of time but can be extended under certain circumstances.

Reimbursement Alimony

You can request reimbursement alimony if you helped make an investment in your spouse that they are now benefiting from after the divorce. A good example will be if you paid for your spouse's college during the marriage while they were not working, and they requested a divorce after they finished college. The profession that your former spouse goes into will be taken into consideration, as well as how soon the divorce was requested after the investment was made.

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