Posted by Nydia Streets of Streets Law in Florida Alimony
The main aspects of determining an alimony claim in a Florida divorce revolve around need and ability to pay. That is the need of the spouse asking for alimony and the ability of the other spouse to pay it. To understand this analysis, it is important to accurately compute the income of each party. This was an issue in the case Leyte-Vidal v. Leyte-Vidal, 4D21-879 (Fla. 4th DCA October 26, 2022).
The parties were married for approximately 26 years by the time a petition for divorce was filed. The wife was mostly a homemaker during the marriage and had not worked full-time in more than 19 years. A month after the petition for divorce was filed, the husband, who was a pilot, entered a collective bargaining agreement with his employer via his union. Concurrent with this, the husband received a one-time bonus that made his income for that year $326,000. His historic earnings showed he made at most $250,000 since 2015. The wife was awarded alimony based on the court placing the husband’s income at $326,000. The husband appealed.
The appellate court reversed, holding “The record does not support the trial court’s finding that the Husband’s income was $332,500. The Husband had never historically earned a recurring income of $332,500. The single year when he approached that figure he received a one-time, non-recurring signing bonus. ‘[I]t is error for the trial court to impute income to a spouse in an amount higher than the spouse has ever historically earned, absent special circumstances.’ Tarnawski v. Tarnawski, 851 So. 2d 239, 242 (Fla. 4th DCA 2003). A bonus must be ‘regular and continuous’ before it can be included in a party’s income for support purposes. Rudnick v. Harman, 162 So. 3d 116, 117 (Fla. 4th DCA 2014).”
The court also found error in the trial court’s determination that the wife’s need was $6,500 per month when her testimony was that she needed $6,000 per month. Furthermore, the court held “By using the wrong year for the minimum wage, the trial court made a mathematical error in computing the Wife’s income for child support purposes. The final judgment imputed full-time income to the Wife at the ‘prevailing’ minimum wage. But the child support worksheet shows that the trial court relied upon the minimum wage from 2020 rather than the ‘prevailing’ minimum wage in effect when the final judgment was entered in early 2021. On remand, the trial court should recalculate the child support award based on the “prevailing” minimum wage in effect at the time of the final judgment.”
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