Ex-Wife Entitled to Continued Alimony Despite Cohabitation
Tennessee alimony modification case summary.
Rachel Ransom Strickland v. Patrick Dustin Strickland
Ex-Wife Entitled to Continued Transitional Alimony Despite Cohabitation
The husband and wife in this Williamson County, Tennessee, case were divorced in 2018. The trial court adopted their marital dissolution agreement, which awarded the wife transitional alimony $2,000 per month alimony for 48 months. The agreement provided that the alimony was non-modifiable except in the case of the wife’s death, remarriage, or cohabitation with a romantic partner.
The wife rented an apartment, and about two weeks after her first alimony payment, her romantic partner moved in. His name was added to the lease, and the partner payed half the utilities.
Upon learning this, the husband went back to court and asked that the alimony be terminated, based upon the cohabitation provision of the Tennessee statute. The wife argued that she still had a need, and pointed to the language of the marital dissolution agreement. The trial court agreed with the husband, and suspended the alimony as of the date of the husband’s filing. The wife then appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals. The wife argued that the language of the agreement took precedence over the cohabitation statute, since the parties specified that alimony was not modifiable.
But the appeals court quickly dealt with this argument, since the agreement specifically referenced the cohabitation statute. The appeals court therefore had to delve into the details of the statute.
Under the cohabitation statute, there is a presumption that alimony is no longer needed upon a showing of cohabitation. The presumption is that the spouse is receiving support from the romantic partner, and therefore no longer has the need for alimony. The trial court held that the wife failed to rebut this presumption, but this is where the appeals court differed.
The appeals court cited an earlier case in which the recipient’s expenses had not changed. In this case, the wife kept the alimony payments in a separate account, and used these only for certain expenses of herself and her child. The wife produced spreadsheets showing that she did not receive any support from her partner, and the appeals court held that this evidence was sufficient to rebut the first part of the presumption.
The court then looked at whether she had a continuing need for transitional alimony, and concluded that she did. It noted that the wife remained unemployed, and that her only income was the alimony and child support. The court conceded that her rent was half what it would have been otherwise, but she still paid a significant amount toward these expenses.
For these reasons, the Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s findings, and held that the wife had a continuing need for alimony. After addressing other issues in the case, the Court of Appeals remanded to the trial court.
No. M2020–01070-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Nov. 16, 2021).
See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.
To learn more, see Alimony Modification in Tennessee Law | How to Modify Alimony and our video, How is alimony decided in Tennessee?
