I have been ordered to pay $1000 per month in alimony. It has been over a year since the original ruling and I recently went back to court on a material change of circumstance.
Three months after the trial, the ex willfully signed a lien for her attorney to get all of the monthly payments I make for alimony. Custody went from shared to her having custody and my child support went up about $800 per month. She claimed she needed 6 years of alimony to get a bachelor's degree in dental hygiene. She was awarded 5 years of alimony.
At the recent trial, we proved she has not attended one single college course and in fact has made no attempt to get her GED. She is not getting alimony for it's intended purpose, her attorney gets all of it. She still owes him around $16,000. So for the next 16 months he will still get it. He is threatening to file a contempt order because my last payment for support was due October 25th. My paycheck was short so they couldn't garnish the full amount of alimony.
All her child support got paid and over $500 for alimony was paid as well for October. She owes me money in the property settlement which was also part of this recent trial. When everything owed on both sides is balanced out, she still owes me around $36 if I leave what has been paid to date alone. Yet because her attorney has a guaranteed paycheck, he files motions for "his" alimony when I'm only 6 days late on only part of the alimony.
My attorney wanted to fight to reduce or eliminate the alimony based on the change of circumstance. I had a detective for 2 weeks that confirmed she had moved close to her boyfriend, that her boyfriend stayed the night at her duplex every night, that they had Bar B Q's together and that the house he stayed in was owned by his retired parents that live out of state. She also put him down on the kids school enrollment forms as their emergency contact. In court, she admitted he had bought groceries for her and when my attorney called her boyfriend, he admitted the same and said marriage is in the future.
My attorney didn't feel we had enough for cohabitation so she went for change of circumstance based on the other changes since trial. The judge ruled that he didn't see enough of a change to change the alimony. He even made a comment that my current wife (who was not present at trial) should quit going to college to support the fact that I have to pay alimony.
My wife was accepted into the dental hygiene program that my ex claimed she needed alimony for so she could go through this program, ironically. My wife has a year and half left of school and will start out making $27 per hour and this judge has the audacity to say that!
After trial, I found a Virginia case in the appellate court. A women had a relationship with another women and the ex husband was trying to prove cohabitation. The trial judge ruled that because it was same sex, it didn't apply basically. The appeals court overruled the trial courts decision and due to the facts that the girlfriend of his ex was listed as an emergency contact for her and her kids, they lived on separate streets but spent at least 5 nights per week together, did NOT own any property together or shared bank accounts, but obviously had a relationship like marriage as defined by the cohabitation clause. They were the same sex and he got his alimony dropped! Same story with my ex only she is doing all this with a man. I don't know what weight another states ruling has on Kansas though.
I too think that alimony is involuntary servitude. I'm not sure why this hasn't been addressed in the supreme court. They are the ones who handle constitutional rights, from what I understand. I see procreating as being responsible for supporting children that have no means of supporting themselves. But even that has a limit on it when they are 18 years old or out of high school. She is a grown able bodied women who has worked as a dental assistant for 13 years and makes $15 per hour. All my alimony payments are doing is giving her attorney reason to keep increasing her bill so he gets paid longer and this also increases my attorney bill!
I am hoping I can get some advise on what I can do from here. I'm frustrated and can't afford this.
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