In a divorce, couples must resolve various financial and legal issues. One of the economic issues that divorcing spouses in Forney must resolve includes spousal support. Under a spousal support order, one spouse must provide monthly payments to their ex-spouse. Understanding how the Texas spousal support laws affect your rights or obligations can help you protect your interests in a divorce case.
Understanding Spousal Support in Texas
In Texas, spousal support, also called spousal maintenance, refers to an award of periodic payment from the future income of one spouse for the benefit of the other spouse. In a divorce case, a spouse must assert a claim for spousal maintenance in a divorce complaint or answer. However, even when a spouse requests maintenance, they will not automatically receive it. Instead, spouses must agree to maintenance as part of a prenuptial, postnuptial, or divorce settlement agreement, or the court must find a spouse requesting maintenance eligible for an award.
Spousal maintenance serves several goals, including helping a lower-earning spouse meet their living expenses after divorce and providing financial support as they prepare to reenter the workforce and become self-sufficient.
Eligibility for Spousal Maintenance in Forney
Under Texas law, a spouse may become eligible for spousal maintenance following divorce under certain circumstances. First, a spouse may become eligible for support if the other spouse has been convicted or received a deferred adjudication for a criminal offense constituting an act of family violence that occurred during the marriage against the spouse or the couple’s child within two years before the filing of the divorce petition or during the pendency of the divorce proceeding. Alternatively, a spouse may become eligible for maintenance if:
- They cannot earn sufficient income to provide for their minimum reasonable needs due to an incapacitating physical or mental disability,
- The parties’ marriage lasted for at least ten years, and the spouse requesting support cannot earn sufficient income to provide for their minimum reasonable needs, or
- The spouse requesting support has primary physical custody of a child of the marriage who requires substantial care and personal supervision due to a physical or mental disability that prevents the spouse from earning sufficient income to provide for their minimum reasonable needs
How Texas Courts Determine the Amount and Duration of Spousal Support
When couples turn to the courts in Forney to decide the issue of spousal maintenance in a divorce case, the judge must consider various factors, such as:
- Each spouse’s ability to provide for their minimum reasonable needs independently, considering their financial resources upon the dissolution of the marriage
- Each spouse’s educational and employment skills, the time necessary to acquire educational or training to enable a spouse seeking maintenance to earn sufficient income, and the availability or feasibility of such education or training
- The duration of the marriage
- The age, employment history, earning capacity, and physical and mental health of the spouse seeking maintenance
- The effect on each spouse’s ability to cover their minimum reasonable needs while providing child support
- The contribution of one spouse to the other’s education, training, or increased earning capacity
- The property brought to the marriage by each spouse
- The contribution by a spouse as a homemaker
- Any marital misconduct, including waste, destruction, or concealment of property, adultery, cruel treatment, or family violence
Modifying or Terminating Spousal Support
In most cases, spouses may request modification or termination of spousal support upon a showing of changed circumstances, such as prolonged illness, disability, or extended job loss. Courts may also terminate spousal support when the spouse receiving support remarries or cohabitates with a romantic or intimate partner.
Why Work with a Forney Spousal Support Lawyer?
When couples in Forney get divorced, one spouse may receive spousal support to address the economic disparity between the spouses or to assist a spouse as they return to the workforce and become self-sufficient. Contact Guest & Gray today for a confidential consultation with a Forney divorce attorney to learn more about how the spousal support laws may affect your financial rights or obligations following your divorce.
