How long is long enough for spouses to pay alimony? Group wants to limit time in SC
Wyman Oxner says he has paid enough for his failed marriage.
Oxner, who has been paying alimony for two decades, has launched a campaign to abolish “permanent” alimony in South Carolina.
“There’s no reason to have to pay somebody forever simply because your marriage failed,” said Oxner, who said he was married for 21 years and has been paying alimony since 1999.
Oxner isn’t alone.
The Oxner-founded S.C. Alimony Reform group says it has more than 200 members and an alliance with a second-wives group. Similar efforts to change alimony laws are ongoing in Florida and Connecticut.
S.C. lawmakers are listening. They could create a task force this session to assess the state’s alimony laws.
But others in South Carolina say the state’s current laws, which provide judges with flexibility, should not be changed.
“We really don’t need to fix what’s not broken,” said Jim McLaren, a Columbia family law attorney.
Alimony proposals
S.C. Alimony Reform is proposing ending alimony after a certain period of time – for example, capping it at half the length of an ended marriage. Oxner would go further, capping alimony at 10 years regardless of a marriage’s length.
Under current law, permanent alimony only ends if a former spouse dies, or the person receiving alimony remarries or cohabits for an extended period of time. Alimony also can be modified by a court.
Thousands of South Carolinians could have a stake in the alimony debate.
Divorce cases in South Carolina have increased from nine years ago — to 17,015 in 2014 from 12,224 in 2005.
But alimony statistics are difficult to find in South Carolina. Court administrators do not track alimony because it is often contained in a court order that could address a variety of topics and is difficult to extract.
Trying to get the state’s alimony law changed, Oxner contacted his local legislator, state Rep. Jerry Govan, D-Orangeburg, who filed a resolution to create a study committee to look at those laws.
While politicians have a reputation for studying issues almost to death, creating a study committee can be an important first step to changing state law.
Recent State House study committees have resulted in proposals to fix the state’s crumbling roads, increase penalties for domestic violence and legalize medical marijuana.
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Larry Martin, R-Pickens, met with S.C. Alimony Reform members last week, telling them he could favor creating a task force to study the issue.
Other alimony proposals introduced this session include a bill, sponsored by Rep. Doug Brannon, R-Spartanburg, to change state law so there would be a presumption of no permanent alimony in marriages of less than 10 years, unless significant factors exist justifying the payments.
‘We also don’t agree’
S.C. Alimony Reform has spent a little more than $6,000 on ads and billboards around the Columbia area, Oxner said.
The ads are intended to attract alimony-payers to the organization, Oxner said, adding his group has more than 200 members, some of whom helped pay for the ads.
While alimony can be paid by men and women, most often it is paid by men, the group says.
S.C. Alimony Reform also is working with the Second Wives Club, a group of wives married to men paying alimony to an ex-wife.
Second Wives Club chairwoman Heather Hahn said women in the group are sending letters to lawmakers to give alimony reform a female face, too.
“We’re working women, and we also don’t agree with this,” she said.
Melissa Cash of Greenville said she is part of the Alimony Reform group because her husband pays alimony.
Cash, who was married previously, said she did not take alimony from her ex-husband.
“I couldn’t understand the logic of it — to maintain a financial umbilicus to somebody I no longer wanted to live with,” she said.
‘A mistake to take away . . . discretion’
Columbia family law attorney McLaren says the alimony reform movement is unneeded.
McLaren says the state’s alimony law, which he helped write in the ’80s, includes about a dozen factors that guide judges in determining how much — if any — alimony should be awarded.
There also are various forms of alimony, including rehabilitative alimony, intended eventually to make a former spouse self-supporting, for example, providing job-training or education.
S.C. Alimony Reform members say they support rehabilitative alimony. Members also say they have no issue with child-support payments.
McLaren said the current law is a good one, giving judges a place to start in determining alimony, adding each divorce case is different.
“It would be a mistake to take away . . . discretion from Family Court judges and try to substitute bright-line rules, which I don’t think lend themselves to what (judges are) having to decide,” said McLaren.
South Carolina’s alimony law is similar to North Carolina’s and Virginia’s, added McLaren.
‘Alimony fishhook’
Alimony is not intended to be punitive, said West Columbia family law attorney Mark Taylor. “It’s intended to . . . deal with the economics of a breakup of a marriage.”
There is a reason for alimony to be awarded in some situations, added Columbia family law attorney Kermit King.
For example, if a couple marries when both are 25 and divorces a decade later, their careers oftentimes are in different places, King said. If the woman had children while the man advanced in his career, they could be in unequal economic situations after the divorce, King said.
In that case, “I don’t think there’s any question about the fact that the man is in better shape.”
In those situations, the man ought to pay some alimony because, otherwise, the two are not getting treated equally, King said.
Still, it is “pretty rough deal” for someone to wind up supporting a former spouse until death or remarriage, King said.
As a result, King said he advises clients who could be likely to pay alimony, most often males, not to “get that alimony fishhook in your mouth.”
This story was originally published February 9, 2015 at 5:51 PM.