Wife Pays No Alimony to Unemployed Country Club Husband

Tennessee law case summary on alimony in Tennessee divorce and family law from the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

Nancy Randolph Deakins v Lynn Lampton Deakins – Alimony – 24 year marriage.

The divorce of Nancy Deakins, husband, and Lynn Deakins, Husband, occurred after 24 years of marriage. The court declined the husband’s request for alimony. The couple married in December of 1983 and had two children. The wife filed for divorce in 2006 citing inappropriate marital conduct and irreconcilable differences. The trial occurred in July of 2007 when the wife was 51 and the husband was 55.

The husband graduated from Vanderbilt in 1974 with a degree in business administration and worked as a manufacturer’s sales representative at Pearson, Deakins and McGinnis, his father’s firm. His annual income was $50,000. The wife had two bachelors of arts degrees including one in sociology and the other in art history. She worked for her family-owned business Hardwick Clothes. During the marriage, she worked part-time for $20,000 per year but at the end of the trial, she was earning $43,800 as an advertising director.

During the marriage, the wife managed the household and paid household expenses, which were supplemented with the $1,000 the husband provided to her each month. He used the remainder of his income for discretionary spending, including maintaining three golf memberships. The husband drank and did not purchase anything for the children. The husband’s father’s business closed in 1995 and did not contribute the $1,000 towards the family in the two years prior as he did not take an income. In 1996, he worked an investment advisor at A.G. Edwards. He left the position after 18 months and did not work again during the last 10 years of the marriage. The wife filed for divorce in 2006.

Eventually, the husband sought treatment for his alcohol condition, but not until an intervention occurred in June of 2006. Both parties were to inherit a sizable amount of money. The wife did so when her mother died and the husband would when his mother died. The trial granted the wife’s divorce based on the husband’s inappropriate marital conduct, not due to his alcoholism but his dissipation of assets. The trial court divided the property in the case and denied the husband’s request for rehabilitative income.

The husband appealed the decision for not awarding rehabilitative income, as he claimed he was clearly the disadvantaged spouse and in need and the wife had the ability to pay. In testimony, the husband said he was not sure he needed it. He stated his only asset to live on (as other funds were tied up in retirement accounts and trusts) was his pension and profit-sharing plan. He also said the wife lived in a 4,000 square foot home with a value of $500,000 while he has a one-bedroom apartment over a mall paying $410 per month and a food bill of $20 a day.

The appeals court did not find any apparent barrier preventing the husband from using his education and training to get a new job and that his health had stabilized. He noted he was open to working involving a manual labor position. The court, therefore, ruled the husband did not need rehabilitative alimony and noted that the trial court had not erred in this manner.

No. E2008-00074-COA-R3-CV, September 30, 2009.

Disclaimer: See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.

Memphis divorce lawyer, Miles Mason, Sr., JD, CPA practices family law exclusively and is founder of the Miles Mason Family Law Group, PLC, which handles Tennessee family law matters including divorce, child support, alimony, prenuptial agreements, child custody, parental relocation, child support modification, alimony modification, and divorces including business valuation and forensic accounting issues.