An alimony overhaul that brought together people once bitterly divided on the issue has created an even deeper rift between two powerful Republican lawmakers who blame each other for a failure to get the bill passed this year.
After a year of wheeling-and-dealing by lawyers, lawmakers and others, the alimony proposal died when the Senate refused to take up the House’s version of the bill, which would have established a formula for alimony amounts based on the length of marriages and the amounts of money spouses earn.
The acrimony over the measure involved a provision, pushed by Senate Appropriations Chairman Tom Lee, that would have established a “50-50” presumption regarding child sharing between divorcing spouses.
The House proposal (HB 943) didn’t go as far as Lee wanted, and the Senate did not consider the measure after the House adjourned and went home Tuesday.
Lee said language about child sharing in the House bill was “poorly drafted” and “designed to create confusion in the courts.”
But House Rules Chairman Ritch Workman accused Lee of being a “bully” and “hijacking” the bill for his own reasons. Workman sponsored an alimony overhaul vetoed by Gov. Rick Scott two years ago and worked on a revamp for more than eight months with The Florida Bar and representatives of an organization seeking to change the state’s alimony laws,
The Family Law Section of the Bar supported the alimony overhaul but strongly opposed Lee’s child-sharing element, one of the reasons Scott gave for his veto of the 2013 version.
Workman said Scott told him this year “don’t bring back retroactivity and don’t bring back drama” if he wanted the governor’s approval. Workman also said Lee promised in March that he would not allow the child-sharing portion to kill the bill.
But Lee refused to back down from the requirement despite repeated attempts to amend it, Workman complained.
He accused Lee of having a personal grudge about the issue because of Lee’s own child custody dispute.
“What he cares about is getting back at the judge that didn’t give him 50-50 time share 15 years ago or whenever he got divorced,” he said.
But Lee, who is divorced and remarried, said his views on the issue had nothing to do with his own situation.
“It’s reprehensible that he would go there. I actually have 50-50 custody of my children. So, nice try. But I do policy here. Am I informed by experiences I have in a wide array of things? Absolutely. But I’m never going to make policy on the basis of my own personal experiences. This has nothing to do with my own personal custodial arrangement,” Lee, R-Brandon, said.
Lee said the bill was doomed because the House left before he could work out his objections to the time-sharing guidelines. The House adjourned three days before Friday’s scheduled end of the legislative session.