Today, we’re going to be discussing the subject of preparing your spousal support budget after your West Virginia divorce. This applies whether you might be potentially paying spousal support or if you’re someone who expects that you might receive some sort of spousal support now or going to be needing support in the future. The first thing that you do is start with all of the expenses that you have going into the future. Let’s say we’re talking about mortgage payments, car payments, car repairs and more.
We are talking about the cost of your utility bills, how much you’re going to need for food, how much he might need for a reasonable amount of a term of entertainment. What you want to do is tally all those things up and that’s going to be your budget. This is whether you’re paying or whether you’re going to be potentially receiving some sort of spousal support. It’s important that you take a look at that budget and you come up with a number that is going to be considered reasonable for the most part.
What the courts will do is they will allow you to receive some sort of reasonable budget going into the future for the most part. Every now and then you’ll see some judges who might give you more than that, but sometimes that’s not the case. You need to use that budget you came up with as a starting point for trying to figure out how much you’re going to need going into the future. Now what that’ll be based on is whether it’s going to be for example, rehabilitative or it’s going to be permanent. Now, longer marriages are more likely to be considered to be candidates for what they call permanent alimony. If you have a marriage that is a short duration, then that is more likely to be in the camp of rehabilitative alimony.
One of the things that can be very critical is that the two of you have a huge income disparity and in my book, that’s really going to increase your odds of getting the alimony seeking. You need to be thinking about what you’re going to be likely bringing in as far as income. What is your budget or ex’s budget? You break it down to how much you think you’re going to be needing going into the future. Just every conceivable expense you think you might have going into the future you want to write down. Like for example, something that you might not think of such as clothing, car repairs, house repairs etc. All of these things are things that you are going to need to be thinking about for developing a budget. It’s important and just something that you need to be thinking about once you get ready for filing. This applies to whether you were going to be paying spousal support or whether you think you’re going to need it going into the future.
