The new, Massachusetts alimony law was signed by Governor Patrick on October 4, 2011 after winning approval in both the House and Senate. The changes establish guidelines for alimony payments and include limits on the duration of the payments. The new law essentially will eliminate lifetime alimony in many cases and will in part be determined by the length of the marriage.

The new law is a significant departure from current alimony practice and will have a dramatic impact on both parties to a divorce.
Some highlights of the new law include:

•    Indefinite alimony can still be awarded for long term marriages, defined as lasting twenty years or more.
•    Alimony for long term marriages will end when the payer’s spouse reaches retirement age, as defined by the Social Security Act.
•    For short term marriages lasting less than five years, alimony may not last longer than half of the number of months of the marriage.
•    With short term marriages judges can order “reimbursement alimony” if one party had put the other through school or job training.
•    For intermediate term marriages, defined as lasting longer than five years, but less than ten years, the maximum alimony term is 60% of the months of marriage.
•    For intermediate term marriages of more than ten years, but less than fifteen years, the maximum alimony term is 70% of the number of months of marriage.
•    For intermediate term marriages which are more than fifteen years, but last less than twenty years, the maximum alimony term is 80% of the duration of the marriage.
•    If the payer has remarried, the new spouse’s income and assets will be excluded from alimony determination and modification actions.
•    Cohabitation suspends, reduces, or even terminates alimony when it can be shown that the person who is receiving alimony has maintained a common house or has lived with another person for at least three months.
•    Child support payments will be factored into alimony and ---- (THIS IS CONFUSING!)
•    Alimony will be limited and should generally not exceed the needs of  the person receiving it, or 30% - 35% of the recipient’s (?) gross income, established at the time of the order.
•    A second income or income from overtime work will not be included when considering alimony modification and would be presumed to be immaterial to the alimony if the part worked more than a single full time equivalent and the second job or overtime commenced after the entry of the initial order.
•    Health and/or life insurance premium payments reduce alimony.
•    Alimony extensions will be limited.
•    Alimony will end at the remarriage of the recipient.

As most people are aware there are a lot of concerns about social media with issues of privacy and concerns about who you and your children might be “friending”.   In today’s legal climate there are a lot of legal risks associated with the internet that people are not aware of.  It is a fairly common practice for school resource police officers to troll social media for students who might be on YouTube, Facebook, My Space and other social media tools, to monitor their activities.  In some cases they have taken out criminal complaints if what they found on the social media appears to be a crime.

I just recently had one case in which the school resource officer went as far as charging my client along with a friend of his with the eavesdropping statute for essentially taking a video of another party, supposedly without that other party’s permission.  You do see charges whether it is an assault or minor in possession or other crimes that can be viewed. 

In addition, it is a common practice among probation officers to look for the probationers and their friends on social media networks to see if there are any posting or pictures showing in violations of their probation.  This might include minor in possession of alcohol or talking about it or marijuana or other questioning activities.  I have been in court where I have seen children who have ended up being committed to DYS or the house of corrections based on what was posted on the social media networks.

The courts have a long history of involvement with issues related to parental rights and obligations. With rapidly changing societal norms and the ease of paternity testing, there has been a great deal of confusion about the definition of a “legal parent” and even what constitutes a “family”.

In Massachusetts there was a very controversial case (Paternity of Cheryl, 434mass.23.32746n.e.2nd 488, 2001) involving paternity. The Mass. Supreme Judicial Court was asked to review a case in which a man signed an acknowledgment of paternity and did not take advantage of paternity testing and later discovered that he was not the biological father. Should he be treated as the father and be responsible child support? The Court found in this case that family stability outweighed the non-biological father’s rights. This, in effect, meant that the non-biological father was determined to be the legal father and must continue to provide child support.

New issues related to this case are coming to the fore. I have recently been involved in two cases dealing with variants of issues related to this case. In one case, the biological father didn’t know that he was the father or even that the mother was pregnant until there was a court action several years later. Another man had signed a paternity acknowledgment making him the legal father. The juvenile court in this case found that biological father didn’t have any standing in determining issues related to custody, even though he was in fact the biological father.