Alimony

While New Jersey’s alimony statute requires consideration of up to 10 different factors, three core ones are (i) the duration of the marriage, (ii) the actual financial needs of the spouse who seeks support and (iii)  the financial ability of the spouse from whom support is sought.

Alimony issues should be tackled early in the litigation to maximize the chances for achieving the client’s objectives.  In appropriate cases, attorneys will retain employability experts who, for example, may provide testimony regarding imputation of income to deliberately underemployed or unemployed spouses, who in reality should not be seeking alimony, but do so nevertheless.  Such experts may also prove instrumental in convincing the court that the paying spouse should be earning substantially higher wages than he or she claims to be earning, and that therefore his or her alimony responsibility should be greater.