If you have questions about divorce, legal separation, or alimony in Connecticut, please feel free to call the experienced divorce attorneys at Maya Murphy, P.C. in Westport today at 203-221-3100 or email Joseph C. Maya, Esq. at JMaya@Mayalaw.com.

An appeal was brought when, after ten years, plaintiff filed a motion to modify alimony solely on the basis of an increase in the income of the supporting spouse.

The parties were divorced in 2000 after 29 years of marriage. The plaintiff was awarded $15,000 per month in alimony, along with a sum equal to 25% of any bonus income that the defendant received. In 2010. The plaintiff filed a motion for modification of the alimony on the grounds that the defendant’s income had “greatly increased” and that her medical expenses had “skyrocketed”.

The trial court found that the defendant’s salary in 2000 was $696,000. In 2010, his annual salary was $3.24 million, plus $3 million in stock option cash-ins. Discounting the alimony received from the defendant, the plaintiff’s annual income is between $8,000 to $12,000. The plaintiff had no college degree and has not been employed since 1977.

On appeal, the court concluded that an increase in a supporting spouse’s income, alone, does not ordinarily justify a modification of alimony. Alimony, the court reasoned, is historically “based on the continuing duty of a divorced husband to support an abandoned wife and should be sufficient to provide her with the kind of living [that] she might have enjoyed but for the breach of the marriage contract by the [husband].” Wood v. Wood, 165 Conn. 777’284 (1984).

Overall, there is little, if any, legal or logical support that a legitimate purpose of alimony is to allow the supported spouse’s standard of living to match the supporting spouse’s standard of living after a divorce.

For a free consultation, please do not hesitate to call the experienced family law and divorce attorneys at Maya Murphy, P.C. in Westport, CT at 203-221-3100. We may also be reached for inquiries by email at JMaya@mayalaw.com.