News Worth Noting

• 11/18/11 - Breaking News: Alimony reform advances in Florida House and Senate.
  This is great news for Florida Alimony Reform and for all our members.
  
  Our years of working toward this moment have been rewarded. We have convinced key legislators that our state's Alimony laws are terrible broken ----and they have adopted our strategies to begin fixing them.
  
  Two key legislators have recently introduced identical bills in the House and Senate that will bring our Alimony laws into the 21st century.
  
  Rep. Ritch Workman (30 Brevard County) and Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla (36 Miami) are spearheading Florida's journey to Alimony equity. To read their bills as filed, H. B. 549 and S.B. 748, please click on the following links.
  
  [View/Download House Bill HB 549]
  [View/Download Senate Bill SB 748]
  
  There will be more news in the days and weeks ahead about how you can help turn these bills into law. We still have a long way to go to prevail, and Tallahassee is a complicated place, far from where most of us live and work. To make our voices heard, it will cost MONEY. Please donate anything that you can. The Alliance is a nonprofit Florida corporation and contributions are tax deductable. (501-c-3)
  
  H.B. 549 and S.B. 748 include provisions that will:
  *Limit the maximum duration of Alimony based on the length of marriage;
  *Terminate Alimony upon full retirement age (currently 66, determined by the U.S. Social Security Administration) except in extreme circumstances;
  *Cap Alimony at no more than 20% of the payer's met monthly income.
  *Allow existing Alimony payers to modify their judgments based on the new law;
  *Revise cohabitation standards;
  *Prohibit using a payer's current spouse's income or assets in modification hearings;
  *Revise provisions for the tax treatment and consequences of Alimony.
  
  Please take note and make your best effort to be a part of this movement.
  
  Alliance for Freedom From Alimony, Inc. in corporation with Florida Alimony Reform
   
• 06/25/11 - The Ledger.com: Billboard's Owner Seeks to Put an End to ‘Permanent Alimony'.  LAKE WALES | Drivers in Polk County are used to seeing roadside billboards promoting the Florida Lottery. One is a bit different. There's a small billboard on State Road 60 near Lake Wales bringing attention to what the sign's owner calls "the alimony lottery."
• 03/13/11 - New Alliance billboards erected on Dixie Hwy in Pompano Beach FL. [click thumbnails for larger photo.]

     
   

• 02/08/11 - WCVBTV, Boston: State Could End Alimony For Life Law.  If you live in the state of Massachusetts, there's one thing that never ends: alimony. It's a life-long financial obligation that can turn lives and finances upside down. Now a new legislative proposal could radically change that mandate.
• 02/08/11 - The Huffington Post: Lifetime Alimony in Massachusetts: You're Kidding, Right? Wrong. But on the subject of alimony, forget everything you've heard about Massachusetts. Its alimony laws are medieval. Draconian. Pure insanity.
• 01/30/11 - The Boston Herald: Reform Could End Alimony for Life: Massachusetts’ alimony-for-life law could come to an end under a “radical” reform bill being pitched by a compromise coalition of divorce attorneys, women’s legal advocates and lawmakers who say the plan is the best chance yet to fix the antiquated system.
• 08/19/10 - July 14th Letter to Bill McCollum, candidate for governor of FL, requesting his position on Alimony Reform. No reply after over a month. Consider his lack of response when you are at the polls this year.
• 03/09/10 - HB 277 Defects. Letter from Dick Lindsey to FL Rep. Snyder outlining problems with the bill.
• 01/18/10 - Representative James Frische's proposed HB277 which is sponsored by  [S.B. 1194] Thad Altman from Melbourne and which ignores the Alliance's proposed revisions below. This new bill does little to solve the present problems inherent in 61.08.
• 09/30/09 - The Alliance's Proposed Revisions to Florida Statutes 61.08 - Patterned after the ones successfully used in Texas where there is no alimony, only rehabilitative support and limiting it to a maximum of three years in duration.
• The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing - A report to the nation by Benjamin Scafidi, an economist in the J. Whitney Bunting School of Business at Georgia College & State University. The co-sponsoring organizations are the Institute for American Values, the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, Georgia Family Council, and Families Northwest.
• Spousal Support - The Other Ohio Lottery - A judicial thesis by Ohio Judge Leslie H. Spillane. The subject of this thesis is the inconsistency of spousal support awards in divorce cases in the State of Ohio. The work examines the history of spousal support awards in this state by reviewing Ohio case law from 1897 to the present. It also attempts to show the present extent of the problem of inconsistent awards by publishing the results of a 1997 statewide survey in which judges and magistrates made widely varying awards in five hypothetical cases. The article examines several possible reasons for the inconsistency in spousal support awards, including the changing paradigm for marriage, the lack of a single cohesive theory upon which to base spousal support , and the lack of statutory guidance.
• 02/15/08 - States Challenge Traditional Alimony - Article in the National Law Journal`
• 06/10/05 - Chapter 2005-168 - Siplin cohabitation bill - The Florida Legislature passed this bill into law June 10, 2005.

Reports to Legislative Committees:

• 01/07/05 - Report to the Florida Legislative Delegation Concerning Permanent Alimony Statutes and the State of Family Law. Presented by Robert Sell, Chairman Citizens For Liberty And Privacy.

Board Report Updates:

• 04/14/10
• 04/05/08
• 07/15/07

Alimony Articles