After years of wrangling, lawmakers are poised to approve an alimony overhaul that would do away with permanent alimony and change the way judges decide how much time children should spend with their divorced parents.
The time-sharing portion of the alimony measure was at the center of a bitter disagreement between two prominent Republican lawmakers — Senate budget chief Tom Lee, who wanted it included in the bill, and House Rules Chairman Ritch Workman, who opposed it.
The disagreement caused alimony proposals to stall last year.
While Lee and Workman reached consensus on the measure this week, changes inserted into the Senate proposal on Tuesday haven’t satisfied the Family Law Section of The Florida Bar, which remains opposed to the time-sharing provision.
Like last year’s legislation, both chambers are again proposing to establish a formula for judges to use when deciding alimony payments for divorcing couples.
Lee proposed an amendment on Tuesday he said “softens” the child-sharing component of the Senate bill. The amendment did away with language that would have established a state policy that a schedule “that provides for substantially equal time-sharing with both parents” — an issue known as a legal “presumption” — is in children’s best interest.
Instead, the Senate measure (SB 668) now instructs judges to “begin with the premise that a minor child should spend approximately equal amounts of time with each parent” and instructs the court to formulate a time-sharing plan based on a variety of factors.
Lee, whose wife is a judge, has pushed for the time-sharing changes to reduce animosity in child custody cases.
“It takes some of the ambiguity out of the statute but not all of it. The language goes from a presumption to a premise, and it no longer says 50-50 (time sharing). It’s approximately, so it gives the court a little bit of room, and then it retains all of the criteria and asks them to inform the litigants of the reason the court has arrived at its decision,” Lee, R-Brandon, said.
Workman said he would have preferred the alimony bill not address time sharing, but called the revamped Senate proposal a “good compromise” that would likely get a House floor vote, if approved by the upper chamber.
“It moves away from the presumptive language that I think was very detrimental in previous versions of time share,” Workman, R-Melbourne, said.
“The merged family-law bill does seem to accomplish both what the members of the Senate wanted when it comes to time share and what the members of the House wanted when it comes to alimony reform,” he said.
The proposals would eliminate certain types of alimony, including permanent alimony, and create formulas for alimony payments.
The duration of alimony payments would be based on the number of years of marriage, while the amount of the payments would rely on a couple’s gross income — the higher earner’s salary minus the earnings of the spouse seeking alimony.
The proposals do not contain a retroactivity provision that prompted Gov. Rick Scott to veto an alimony reform measure three years ago, but critics of the overhaul maintain that the changes would hurt older women who stayed at home to raise children and then have a hard time finding jobs.
Workman has worked for years with alimony reform advocates and the Bar’s Family Law Section to revamp what all sides called Florida’s outdated alimony statutes.
The Family Law Section endorsed the alimony changes, but objected to the time-sharing provision, a position Lee’s new language hasn’t changed.
Switching from a “presumption” of equal time sharing to a “premise” of the same does little to change the impact of the proposal, lawyers for the Family Law Section argued.
The revised Senate bill would favor one parent who “has the financial resources to disprove this presumption” of equal time sharing, Elisha Roy, past chair of the Family Law Section, said in a text.
The changes would likely cause an increase in child-custody litigation, Roy predicted.
Workman said it was “tough to hear” the Family Law Section opposed the measure, but that he’s heard from other divorce lawyers who support it.
“So I feel comfortable enough that is a step in the right direction because it’s not universally rejected by all of those that work in the business,” he said.