Wife Gets $2.5K/Mo. Rehabilitative Alimony for 3 Yrs 10 Yrs Married

Tennessee alimony divorce case summary after 10 years married.

The husband and wife in this Robertson County, Tennessee, case were married in 2006 and had no children. They moved frequently during the marriage, first to Germany where the husband was stationed in the Army. They later moved to Alabama and then to Tennessee. In 2012, they moved to Dubai, where the husband worked as a helicopter pilot. They maintained a home in Tennessee, and the wife returned there in 2014. Later that year, the husband began an affair with a woman in Dubai. The wife discovered this while the husband was in Tennessee, and they separated after a confrontation.

The husband had a college degree and retired from the military in 2012. The wife had a high school education, and prior to the marriage, she worked as a medical referral coordinator in Florida. When she moved to Europe, she quit her job, and she later obtained a medical transcriptionist certificate. That certificate later expired, when the wife was working for the husband’s decorative concrete business. The husband’s work in Dubai paid over $16,000 per month, and he also had $2,400 in military retirement, $900 in disability, and $1,800 rental income. The wife suffered a knee injury in 2015 and had not been working.

Trial was held before Judge Ross H. Hicks, who divided the parties’ property. The husband was also ordered to pay $2,500 per month rehabilitative alimony for three years, as well as certain other expenses. The wife was also awarded $20,000 attorney fees. After post-trial motions were heard, the husband appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

After addressing the property issues in the case, the appeals court turned to the question of alimony. The husband argued that alimony should have been denied or set at a lower amount because of the short duration of the marriage.

The trial court had found that the wife had a need for alimony, and that she planned to go back to school to get a degree.

The appeals court noted that trial courts have broad discretion when it comes to alimony, and that appellate courts generally don’t second-guess those decisions. Instead, the appellate court’s job is to make sure the lower court applied the correct standard and reached a decision that was not clearly unreasonable.

In this case, the appeals court agreed that the lower court had used the right standards, and had reached a decision that was not unreasonable. The lower court had considered the relatively short duration of the marriage, but had found that other factors were more compelling. The appeals court reviewed the evidence and agreed with the lower court’s reasoning. It similarly concluded that the trial court had acted properly in awarding attorney fees. It also agreed with the wife that she was entitled to attorney fees for the appeal, and remanded the case for the trial court to compute the amount.

For these reasons, the Court of Appeals affirmed and remanded the case.

No. M2016-01661-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Apr. 24, 2017).

See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.

To learn more, see Alimony Law in Tennessee.