Arizona Family Law Lawyer & Attorney : NRG - Nirenstein Ruotolo Group

Lump Sum Support

In several states, a spouse may pay the total alimony obligation at the time of the divorce by giving the other spouse a lump sum payment equal to the total amount of future monthly payments.

If you accept a lump sum alimony payment, you may face tax consequences. For example, if you receive a lump sum payment that's referred to as "alimony" in your divorce decree, you may be subject to taxes on the full amount for that year. But if the same payment is called a "settlement," you may not be taxed. Don't sign any documents or agree to any terms until you've consulted an expert, such as an accountant who specializes in divorce issues. The money you spend on a consultation could be peanuts compared to what you might owe in income taxes.

To find out more about your state's alimony laws, go to your local law library or go online to the free legal research center at www.nolo.com, and click on "Statutes and Cases."

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In In re Marriage of Cerevka, Calif. Ct. App., No. B171989, 3/7/05, the California Court of Appeals ruled that a divorced man who agreed to a qualified domestic order equally dividing two pension plans as of a certain date cannot challenge that distribution due to subsequent losses to the plan resulting in his receiving an unequal share.

The man, Joseph Cerevka, married his wife Eva in 1962; they separated in 1999. In September 2001, they met and reached a settlement agreement regarding the distribution of their property. Among other assets, the couple had a Keogh plan and a tax code Section 401(k) plan. In October 2000, the combined value of the plans was approximately $1.6 million. By June 2001, the plans' value had fallen to $1.2 million.

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Biological parents and adoptive parents must support a child until:

• the child reaches the age of majority (and sometimes longer if the child has special needs or is in college)
• the child is on active military duty
• the parents' rights and responsibilities are terminated (for example, when a child is adopted), or
• the child has been declared emancipated by a court. (Emancipation can occur when a minor has demonstrated freedom from parental control or support and an ability to be self-supporting.)

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The Maricopa County Superior Court is sponsoring a free seminar series designed to make the Family Court process more accessible and understandable. The next session will be held on Friday, April 1, at 10 a.m. and will focus on the Self Service Center.

Court staff will be on hand to provide information about procedures, documents and issues commonly encountered by litigants in divorce proceedings.

The one-hour session takes place in the jury assembly room of the Superior Court Southeast Facility, 222 E. Javelina Drive, in Mesa.

Court staff designed the seminar topics to help court customers better understand a variety of new and existing court services available to them through Family Court.

For more information, click here.

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The question "Who is the father?" is not as simple a question as you might think. There are important legal distinctions between different situatio

Acknowledged Father

An acknowledged father is any biological father of a child born to unmarried parents for whom paternity has been established by either the admission of the father or the agreement of the parents. An acknowledged father must pay child support.ns relating to paternity.

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A divorced noncustodial father does not have a constitutional right to participate in his children's public school education, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled March 11th in Crowley v. McKinney, 7th Cir., No. 02-3741.

Rejecting the father's claim that he has a protected liberty interest in such participation and cannot be deprived of it without due process, the court said his claims "founder on the scope of the federal constitutional right over the education of one's children".

To read the full opinion, click here.

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The following article from the Arizona Republic is another story about a child custody battle between a drug-addicted mother and the child's grandparents. Unfortunately, the child loses.

"He could continue living with his grandparents, people who have taken care of him for the past year and a half, providing him with a nice home and a normal life.

Or he could be returned to his mother, a 23-year-old with a history of substance abuse. A woman who last year witnessed her boyfriend's murder in a dispute over drugs. A woman who has been off drugs, according to CPS records, for nearly six months and now lives in a halfway house.

Can you guess where the boy is headed?"

Click here for the full article.

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Doggie Divorce Survivors

New York - WABC, March 15, 2005

Remember "The War of the Roses?" The Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner characters have nothing on some divorcing New York couples. These days they're not fighting over who gets the apartment, or the china. They're squaring off over who gets Fido or Fluffy.

Pet custody is becoming an increasingly hot topic in divorces, especially in New York where pets can provide a warm refuge from the cold city. But when a divorce threatens to take that four-legged friend away.

Click here for the full article.

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Jurisdiction Was Lost Under UIFSA When Parties and Child No Longer Reside In Arizona

March 8, 2005

In McHale v. McHale, Ariz. Ct. App., 1 CA-CV 04-0022, (click here for full opinion), the Court of Appeals found that the trial court erred in holding that it retained jurisdiction to modify its previously issued child support order after both parties and the child had moved from Arizona. Construing the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act ("UIFSA"), the court explained that the trial court misinterpreted the Act when it concluded that it retained modification jurisdiction because the original order had not yet been modified by a court of another state.

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Click here for a "Letter to the Editor" of "Psychiatric Services", a magazine published by The American Psychiatric Association.

The letter is in response to the January 2005 issue where John Monahan, Ph.D., and his colleagues (1) reported on tools used in the public mental health system as leverage to improve adherence to psychiatric treatment in the community. One of the "tools to be used" was to use a leverage strategy, that is, the threat or actual loss of custody or contact with children.

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March 15, 2005

Free Press News Services

MONTCLAIR, N.J. -- New York Giants defensive end Michael Strahan filed for divorce from his wife of almost six years Monday, the same day a judge issued a restraining order against her, a spokesman for Strahan said.

Superior Court Judge Thomas P. Zampino ordered Jean M. Strahan to deposit into escrow more than $3 million she had removed from the couple's joint bank account last week and deposited into her own account, said Ernie Landante, who works for a public relations agency hired by the 12-year veteran.

On Thursday, Strahan was served with a temporary restraining order telling him to keep away from his wife. Landante said the five-time Pro Bowler and his wife had a verbal argument, and she filed a complaint of harassment against him with the Montclair police Thursday night. About two hours later, Strahan turned himself and was released on his own recognizance.

Click here for the full article.

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March 14, 2005

A Cook County family court judge has ordered Chicago doctor Richard Phillips to double his child support payments, and he'll soon start building a relationship with a 5-year-old daughter he's never met.

But he won't give up a pending civil lawsuit accusing his old flame, Olympia Fields doctor Sharon Irons, of a "calculated, profound personal betrayal" after a brief tryst in 1999. Phillips insists the pair never had intercourse and that Irons "harvested" his sperm after oral sex to impregnate herself.

Phillips won a victory in the case last month when an appeals court ruled -- if he can actually prove he was the victim of a sperm scheme -- Irons can be held liable for inflicting emotional damages.

Click here for complete article.

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Effective March 1, 2005, filing fees in Maricopa County Superior Court have increased as much as $40 for family court filings.

It now costs $276 to file a dissolution of marriage petition; the filing fee for a response costs $231.

In order to save yourself time and unnecessary aggravation, we recommend contacting the Clerk of Court prior to issuing a filing fee check for other filings.

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Dwight Gooden walked out of jail Monday, one day after he was charged with punching his live-in girlfriend in the face.

The one-time star pitcher for the New York Mets and Yankees was told to stay away from Monique Moore before Judge Walter Heinrich ordered him released without bail on a misdemeanor domestic battery charge.

Click here for more.

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A new green paper launched by the European Commission proposes to find solutions for 'international couples' seeking divorce.

The paper discusses the difficulties faced by couples of different nationalities who need to know which member state's divorce law is applicable.

Click here for the complete article.

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U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Crowley v. McKinney, 03/11/05 - No. 02-3741).

Dismissal of plaintiff's suit, alleging that defendant-principal's failure to give certain notices to non-custodial parents deprives him of a constitutional right to participate in his children's education, is reversed where his equal protection claim was adequately plead and dismissed prematurely.

Click here for full opinion.

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By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
03/11/2005

PHOENIX -- Four Republicans united Thursday to kill legislation to say that the penalty for raping a spouse should be the same as assaulting anyone else.

The vote of the House Committee on Human Services came after foes said they feared boosting the penalty would provide incentives for a wife to charge rape.

"That's going to be much more likely to happen in a scenario where two people are normally having sexual relations and then, if one person decides for whatever reason that they would like to attack the other person this is a very serious way to get it done," said Rep. Mark Anderson, R-Mesa.

There also were questions of whether it is appropriate to have the penalty for rape -- up to 15 years in prison -- apply when the attacker and victim are married.

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A man's motion to terminate his alimony obligation to his ex-wife, who rents the basement of her home to her boyfriend of four years, was properly denied where he failed to show that they were "cohabiting," the Kansas Supreme Court ruled Feb. 18th in In re Kuzanek, Kan., No. 90478, 2/18/05.

The court also said that the intermediate court stepped outside the boundaries of appellate review in asserting that the rental arrangement was a "sham" and reversing the trial court. The high court did acknowledge, however, that it soon may be time to reconsider the definition of "cohabitation" utilized by the state's courts. To read the full opinion, click here.

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Chinese authorities are sending "think again" letters to couples applying for divorce after the number of people ending their marriages surged by 21 percent last year. The growing number of legal breakups, which have increased fivefold since 1979, has raised concerns that members of the first generation to grow up in one-child families were so spoiled that they are unable to make the sacrifices required of marriage.

Click here for the full story.

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Steve Barreras, the alleged father, paid about $20,000 in court-ordered child support to Viola Trevino over a 5-year period for a child who has been declared nonexistent by an Albuquerque judge. For the full story, click here.

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This story appeared in Political Affairs Magazine and deals with paternity issues in a strange case.

Capitalism Gone Mad

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote that capitalism has "resolved personal worth into exchange value....for exploitation veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct exploitation....stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored...converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-- labourers."

So Marx and Engels might be the only ones to fully understand today's capitalism gone mad story based on a brief, recent newspaper article. In fact, they might see these wild events as "normal" in a system where normality is defined in exchange value.

The story deals with an Illinois Appeals Court decision concerning the property value of sperm. It seems that a female doctor a number of years ago got her male doctor lover to provide her with sperm through an oral sex encounter. She then used this sperm to inseminate herself, bear a child, and subsequently file a paternity suit against the male doctor, using DNA evidence to prove his paternity. The court awarded her $800 a month in child support.

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Prenuptial agreements in South Dakota cannot limit alimony because that runs counter to state public policy, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday in an appeal involving the divorce of a multimillionaire Sioux Falls banker.

The high court's unanimous decision said the provisions on alimony in a 1995 agreement between T. Denny Sanford and Colleen Anderson cannot be enforced.

However, the part of the agreement dealing with a division of property is valid and can be enforced because South Dakota law allows prenuptial agreements to set conditions for dividing property in the event of divorce, the Supreme Court said.

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Like a divorce, an annulment is a court procedure that dissolves a marriage. But, unlike a divorce, an annulment treats the marriage as though it never happened. For some people, divorce carries a stigma, and they would rather their marriage be annulled. Others prefer an annulment because it may be easier to remarry in their church if they go through an annulment rather than a divorce.

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TUCSON, Ariz. Meth has become Pima County's leading cause of child neglect, outpacing all other drugs combined.

Last year, about 600 Arizona children were taken from their homes and put in foster care due to their parents' problems with meth, a cheap and easy-to-make drug that causes a long-lasting, euphoric high.

Click here for the complete article.

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This article explores the effect of divorce on Pro Golf Players. Pretty interesting stuff.

Click here for the full article.

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In the California case, Steven S. v. Deborah D. (03/03/05 - No. B175996), the trial court's finding that a child was conceived through artificial insemination, not sexual intercourse, establishes that plaintiff-sperm donor is not the child's father since Family Code section 7613(b) provides that the donor of semen is treated in law as if he were not the natural father of the child thereby conceived. Click here for the full opinion.

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North Phoenix -- Paradise Valley School District officials' plans to expand drug testing to seventh-graders may be in limbo, if they don't receive a grant from the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. Click here.

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A husband's longtime refusal to interact socially with his wife is valid grounds for a divorce, a state Supreme Court justice has ruled in a potentially precedent-setting case. Click here for the full article.

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We found this article on a friend of our's Kansas Family Law Blog site, and thought it may be helpful to all of the military personnel embroiled in family law disputes. Click here for the full American Bar Association article.

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Associated Press
Mar. 3, 2005 04:54 PM

The Sheriff's Office says it's holding a deadbeat dad who racked up $210,000 in back child support.

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office Child Support Warrant unit arrested 54-year-old Paul Hernandez at a South Phoenix church this morning on a child support warrant.

The sheriff's office says its deadbeat parent roundup has resulted in 44 parents being arrested since mid February.

Last year, the sheriff's office made 97 arrests and cleared a purge amount of back child support payments nearing $1.1 million.

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It is apparent that this story won't go away. Here, is more on the juicy allegation-ridden divorce of the moment. Click here.

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Model-turned-actress Denise Richards has filed for divorce from actor Charlie Sheen, her husband of 2 1/2 years, according to court papers made public this week.

Richards, 34, who is six months pregnant, filed divorce papers in Los Angeles Wednesday and asked for custody of the couple's year-old daughter as well as the baby she is expecting with Sheen.

Click here for more.

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Click here for an interesting article on a currently hot topic -- threats against judges, and particularly, family court judges.

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File this under -- You Don't Hear This Everyday.

Could a bar of soap make all the difference?

An Iranian woman says she wants to divorce her husband because he has not washed for more than a year, according to a press report. The 36-year-old woman, identified as Mina, reportedly told a court in Tehran that her husband smells so bad even their children will not go near him. Click here for the full story.

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New York has continuing jurisdiction over a custody dispute involving a child who, at the time his father retained him following visitation, had lived in Norway with the custodial mother for two years, the New York Supreme Court, Kings County, has decided in EB v. EFB, N.Y. Sup. Ct., No. 9159/02, 1/4/05.

Addressing for the first time application of the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Enforcement Act in a case where the underlying custody order was issued prior to the Act's effective date and the modification request was made after such date, the court rebuffed the mother's contention that Norway has home state jurisdiction under the Act's predecessor, the UCCJA. It said that because the father remained in New York following the parties' divorce and issuance of the custody order, the state retained jurisdiction

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Kansas' civil Protection from Stalking Act does not suffer the same constitutional infirmities that caused an earlier version of its criminal counterpart to be declared unconstitutionally vague, the Kansas Supreme Court decided on February 18th in Smith v. Martens, Kan., No. 91827.

Explaining that the civil act contains objective standards, and that when read as a whole it conveys a sufficiently definite warning as to the proscribed conduct, the court also rebuffed a claim that the act was unconstitutionally overbroad. The underlying case involved a woman who obtained a one-year protective order against her ex-husband.

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Better enforcement of parental responsibility across Europe comes into effect today.

Family law rules known as Brussels IIa help to clarify the relationship between family law in England and Wales and the European Union.

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World News
Beijing, China

Amid the economic boom and easing of divorce law, China saw over 1.6 million couples split in 2004, up 21.2 per cent over the previous year, the state media reported today.

Compared to 2003, 282,000 more couples divorced with an increase rate of 21.2 per cent, the reports quoted statistics released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

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By Ryan Pearson
ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES -- A judge struck down a California law that allowed billionaire investor Ron Burkle to seal some records related to his divorce proceedings, saying it is unconstitutional.

Superior Court Judge Roy L. Paul ruled Monday that the law that went into effect last summer violates the public's constitutional right to access civil court proceedings and records. The law had been challenged by lawyers for Burkle's wife and by attorneys for the Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press.

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LOS ANGELES Mar 1, 2005

The marriage between Rebecca Romijn and John Stamos is officially over. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Harvey A. Silberman signed off on the family law judgment Thursday, nearly a year after the couple announced they were separating after five years of marriage.

The marriage was officially terminated as of Tuesday, according to the document. The couple have no children.

Romijn, 32, is filming "Man About Town" with Ben Affleck. Her screen credits include "Rollerball" and "Femme Fatale."

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By James Gilbert -- The Yuma Sun
Mar 1, 2005

A former St. Francis of Assisi School teacher sentenced to more than seven decades in prison after being convicted of molesting his second-grade students will get a new trial.

The Arizona State Court of Appeals on Thursday overturned a 2003 Yuma County Superior Court conviction against Phillip Gregory Speers.

This is the second conviction against Speers that has been overturned. In September, the appeals court overturned a separate conviction in 2002 for downloading pornographic images of minors from the Internet.

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The discussion continues. What are the benefits vs. drawbacks of all-day kindergarten, a program backed by Governor Janet Napolitano. Parents and legislators remain at odds over program. Click here for coverage in the Arizona Republic.

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Stephen Meadows has filed for legal separation from his wife of 14 years, Leeza Gibbons.

Stephen Meadows, the husband of TV host and producer Leeza Gibbons, has filed for legal separation from his wife. In papers filed on February 7 in Superior Court, Meadows cited "irreconcilable differences" as the reason for the split.

The couple were married on Feb. 14, 1991, and they separated on January 28, 2005.

Gibbons, who also has a daughter with her second husband (British actor Chris Quinten), hosted "Entertainment Tonight" from 1984 to 1995; from 1993 to 2000, she had a daytime talk show called "Leeza".

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Generally, in order for someone to claim a child as a dependent, he or she must provide at least 50% of the child's support during the tax year. For couples who are still married and living together, claiming kids as dependents is usually a slam-dunk.

Things get complicated, however, when parents divorce or separate. Now, only one of you can claim the dependent exemption. (The IRS will come down hard if both of you try to claim it; they cross-reference dependents' Social Security numbers to make sure taxpayers aren't doing this.)

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In order to qualify as child support, the payments recieved by an ex-spouse must be designated as child support in the divorce or separation agreement. If the agreement lumps the payments together as "family support" or "alimony," or doesn't otherwise designate a specific portion of each payment as child support, none of the payment will be considered child support for tax purposes.

This can have adverse tax consequences for the recipient of child support payments, because family support or alimony is taxable to the recipient. So instead of receiving nontaxable child support, the ex-spouse will be receiving alimony, which is taxable to the payee, regardless of what the payee actually uses the money for.

Copyright © 2004 Nolo

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