We’re going to go over the subject of lump sum alimony in a West Virginia divorce Today. Now, lump sum alimony is a type of alimony that is sometimes awarded and there are benefits to it sometimes. However, potential pitfalls could be waiting as well. Well, let’s first talk about what lump-sum alimony is. Let’s say that you’ve got a bunch of assets that you have divided and one person is getting $300,000 and the other person is getting to let’s say $300,000. You have equal amount of assets from the divorce, but you also have a situation where let’s say you’ve got one person has a whole lot of income coming from their job, but the job is very unstable and they don’t know whether from year to year, whether they’re going to actually have that job anymore.
Let’s say that you’ve got somebody else who doesn’t have very much work experience and who doesn’t have an ability to make as much money in certain situations. Using that as an example, you can sometimes do what’s known as lump sum alimony. Lump sum alimony is when one person is going to be paying the other person in addition to equitable distribution. They’re going to be paying them a large amount and it’s going to be fixed. There are some real advantages to that sometimes under the right circumstances. Let’s say that in that scenario, the people who are otherwise dividing the property equally, but the one person might not be able to get alimony, but they don’t have any certainty about that because the other person could come back and modify it in the future no matter what.
In this case, then they’re stuck going back into court and this can become a mess and it’s something that they don’t want to deal with. What you can do is agree that the one person is willing to pay that other person a fixed amount of lump sum alimony. The one person would get 350,000, the other person would get 250,000 and then from that point going forward, that would be all the alimony that would be paid. Now there are actually advantages to this for both parties. The one person might like the idea of the other person never being able to come back and go after them for more alimony. They pay it in a lump sum and they never have to deal with it.
The other person in this example might prefer the lump sum alimony because they know they’re getting a certain amount. In the long term, they might not get as much, but it’s a certainty that they’re going to be getting a fixed amount and something is better than nothing. Just remember, something that you can do in many instances in a West Virginia divorce is ask the court to have you be awarded or pay what we call lump sum alimony.
