Hello everyone. It’s Chris, Pritt back again with a new topic in West Virginia divorce. Today is a continuation of our series where we go through all of the alimony factors found in West Virginia law. We’ve been through quite a number of them, and we’re going to continue with that today. Now the next factor we’re going to talk about as far as the alimony factors are concerned is the standard of living established during the marriage.
This is an important factor that the court is going to take into account and I’ll use this by way of an example. Let’s say that you have one person who is a CEO of a company, and they have established a certain lifestyle throughout the marriage. That factor is that is going to weigh heavily in terms of whether the court you’re going to award alimony. So in that scenario, let’s say the person has been working in that job with a high income for several years, it’s going to weigh a lot heavier than let’s say a person who has only been working it for a few years and is right out of college. There’s a standard of living that’s been established, but at the same time, the standard of living hasn’t been as long in duration, based on those circumstances. You really can’t argue that there’s been a tremendous amount of established income. That’s the difference between the two.
So the other factor that a court can consider among the 20 factors is the likelihood that a person is going to be able to increase their income earning ability throughout the marriage. This is only a situation where the issue of rehabilitative alimony is going to be an issue. There’s a difference between rehabilitative alimony and permanent alimony. Rehabilitative alimony is for those situations where let’s say you have somebody who has been in the marriage for five, eight, or maybe 10 years. They can still go and make a decent living if they were to get the right kind of training. So if they can establish that they can go and get the education and be able to make a decent living based on the training then the court may consider whether the other person should pay for that training. Also, that would weigh in favor of the person being able to receive some sort of alimony award.
That consists of today’s topic. Please tune in tomorrow or the next business day to see more analysis of the alimony factors in West Virginia divorce. If you have any questions at all, feel free to give us a call at (304) 720 4412 or email us at chris@prittlaw.com.
