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My wife told me that she was going to quit her job and work at Burger King because she doesn’t want to pay me alimony. What do I do? I’m Steve Kramer. I’m a Florida Family Law attorney. She doesn’t get to just quit working so she avoids paying you alimony. You can do what’s called imputing income to her, where the court can impute income to her. Let’s say your wife’s a doctor and she’s making two hundred thousand dollars a year, and she has made two hundred thousand dollars a year every year for the past ten years. And she simply quits her job and says, “Eh, I’m not going to pay alimony”. That’s not going to fly with the court. Because what you’re going to do, is you’re going to go into court, and you’re going to bring her records. You’re going to show the court exactly how much money she has made over the years. And the other thing that you can do is you can bring what is called a vocational expert. They’re an expert in employment, and they can come before the court and say, “This woman can make two hundred thousand dollars a year in this market right now, and she is simply choosing not to work”. Or the court can find that she is choosing not to work. And even if she is not working, she can be forced to pay the alimony, and then the court can treat her as if she makes two hundred thousand dollars a year. And that can be a double-whammy, because now she is out of work, and she has got to pay a very significant alimony award, and she has destroyed her credibility in front of the court. Now the court thinks she is a fraud, and now the court doesn’t trust anything she has to say, and it can spill over into every other facet of the case. And you have put yourself in a fantastic position in your case. So, why am I telling you this? I am telling you this because child support issues, financial issues, and because alimony issues are very, very common in divorce cases, and they’re easy to overlook and handle the wrong way. And, some people – some attorneys don’t even understand how we impute income. How people can’t just get away with these tactics of trying to cheat the court or cheat their spouse or beat the system. But we understand how it works. So pick up the phone, give me a call, and I would be glad to sit down and go through your case with you. Thanks.
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