Hey everyone, it's Chris Pratt back again with a new topic in West Virginia divorce. Today we're going to be continuing on with our series where we evaluate all the alimony factors found in West Virginia law. There are twenty factors in total and today we will be going over two new factors.

The first factor we are going to discuss today is the extent to which one of the parties contributed to the other obtaining things in their education, skills, and career. For example, let’s say one spouse worked while the other went through school. On the other hand, maybe one spouse made financial sacrifices so that the other spouse could move around and get a higher paying job. Those things could lend themselves towards one person being awarded some type of alimony. Things such as these are very significant in terms of awarding alimony and plays an important role in permanent alimony as well as rehabilitative alimony.

The next factor we’re going to talk about addresses the ability of an individual being able to increase their income earning ability through being awarded alimony. This is a factor that's going to apply more in the context of rehabilitative alimony. Rehabilitative alimony is alimony that's usually shorter in duration for the purposes of trying to get the person's skills higher so that they can actually make more money. So if the person can establish that through alimony, they can substantially increase their income-earning ability then that can become an important factor for courts to consider. Sometimes people come up with a plan that they present to the court where they demonstrate their plan of going back to school to get an advanced education. The key part of that is though is that it has to prove how them going back to school could substantially increase their income-earning ability. So it's really really important that the person comes up with a reasonable plan that they can present to the court to show why they're going to be able to

substantially increase their income-earning ability if let's say the other person pays for their school or for them to obtain other skills.

So, this consists of today’s topics. If you have any questions feel free to give us a call at (304) 720 4412 or email us at [email protected].