Tennessee Wife Receives $8,000 a Month in Rehabilitative Alimony
Tennessee law case summary on alimony in Tennessee divorce and family law from the Tennessee Court of Appeals.
Kathryn A. Duke v Harold W. Duke III – Tennessee Rehabilitative Alimony Law – 16 Years + Married |Note: this is the second case summary on alimony in this blog.
Kathryn A. Duke, the wife and Harold W. Duke, III, the husband, were married in 1991 and had three children. The husband is a medical doctor and the owner of Emergency Services Network (ESN), a business that operates emergency departments in hospitals. The wife worked for seven years as a registered nurse but stopped working after the birth of their first child in November 1995. The mother filed for divorce in May 2007. Grounds for divorce included irreconcilable differences, inappropriate marital conduct and substance abuse. After a six day trial, the court granted the divorce, divided the marital property, gave the mother rehabilitative alimony in the amount of $8,000 a month for eight years, required the husband to pay into educational trusts for the three children and to pay the wife over $309,000 in legal fees. The mother appealed the categorization of alimony and the father appealed the award of legal fees and payments to educational trusts for the children.
Trusts for higher education
The trial court ordered the father to pay into an educational trust for each of his children ($15,000 a year each for two children and $20,000 a year for the third child) for post-high school education. The father argued that these sums were well above what was required by the child support guidelines and that he had already set up accounts for his children containing amounts higher than tuition at the University of Tennessee. He argued that their college fees should be paid from those accounts. According to evidence, the accounts, which were set up prior to the start of divorce proceedings, were not specifically designated for education. However, the trial court’s order to open these educational trust funds did not include any reasoning for the amount required and neither side brought evidence regarding the future costs of higher education for the children. Therefore, the court of appeals affirmed the lower court’s ruling that the father must establish educational trusts for his children, but asked the lower court to consider the amount to be deposited in these trusts each year.
Award of rehabilitative alimony is justified
On appeal, the wife argued that an award of alimony in futuro was required, and not an award of rehabilitative alimony as ordered by the trial court. According to the law, rehabilitative alimony gives the disadvantaged spouse an opportunity to gain job skills or education in order to enable her to become self-sufficient. In contrast, alimony in futuro provides long-term support, until death or remarriage, when there is an economic disadvantage and rehabilitation of the disadvantaged spouse is not feasible.
The wife argued that the court’s decision is contrary to the law, since the husband makes over $1,000,000 per year and as a nurse, the wife can never expect to approach even 10% of those earnings.
In this case, the mother is young and healthy, previously worked as a nurse and has time to work since her children are in school all day. The trial court therefore held that she can be rehabilitated. At the same time, she is in need and the husband is able to pay, which is the primary consideration when awarding alimony. Alimony in futuro, as determined in Gonsewski, is only granted when rehabilitation is not feasible and long term support necessary – the income of each spouse is not relevant. While the law requires that the post-rehabilitation standard of living of the disadvantaged spouse should be comparable to that of the other spouse, the earning disparity, “standing alone”, is not enough to prove that living standards are not comparable. Finally, the need discussed in the law is not the need to reach parity with the advantaged spouse but rather “the need to be rehabilitated to increase earning capacity and to be assisted in the rehabilitation.”
No. M2009-02401-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. June 1, 2012).
See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.
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