It is all about the money...
EXACTLY!!!
When the Florida Senate was in session this past March, an organization I'm associated with hoped to finally bring reform to Florida's alimony law (Statute 61.08). This organization consist of hundreds of men like myself that have been ordered to pay alimony to ex-wives for the rest of our lives. This fight has gone on for many years now in our state.
After the state of Texas reformed their lifetime alimony law a few years ago (as some other states have also done in recent years), we had hoped to bring simular reform in Florida. As in Texas, we were not asking to eliminate alimony altogether. Just limit it to a maximum duration of three years with an exception in extreme cases involving mentally or physically handicapped spouses.
With thousands of hard earned dollars spent by the members and supporters to draft a proposed bill simular to Texas's reform bill that was passed, and tens of thousands of dollars spent on a high profile lobbiest to carry the bill to the Florida House of Representatives, our bill never made it onto the table for vote by the House. Instead, a bill (HR277) which was drafted and presented by a group of Florida attorneys darn near the eleventh hour before the session, easily made it onto the table and was voted into law this past March by the Florida Senate. It went into effect July 1ST, 2010.
Instead of limiting alimony awards to three years, it allows for lifetime alimony to continue to be easily awarded. Instead of there being the original three types of alimony awards: lump sum, rehabilitative, and permanent (lifetime), their bill ADDED two more reasons that alimomy can be awarded in the reformed statute!
Family Law in Florida is a billion plus dollar business. Lawyers, counties and the state benefit greatly with alimony. Costly ongoing litigation trying to have lifetime alimony orders overturned do nothing but fill greedy attorneys pockets with money on no-win cases, even though they will tell you they can get it overturned. They know RARELY is the State of Florida or the county in which the order was handed down willing to overturn such an order. To do so would mean lost revenue to local and state government processing monthly alimony payments. It would also be going against a fellow judge's ruling. It is rumored that there is a VERY strong fraternity amongst Florida attorneys and judges When a case is brought before a Florida judge, they are barely willing to open the case file and review it, and then quickly withhold the orginal ruling to get you out of their courtroom.
Interesting question (as I've researched this ):
How many divorced attorneys and judges that were divorced in the state of Florida were ordered to pay permanent (lifetime) alimony to their ex-wives?
Pond scum protects its own kind!!!
Through the years some men have cracked under the pressure of no relief from this lifetime sentence of alimony. Some have gone so far as to kill their ex-wives and then commit suicide. And then the authorities wonder why?
By the way, the judge that ordered my lifetime sentence to alimony payments, Judge Gene R. Stepenson, was the same judge that ordered Ailene Wuornos to death in her murder trial.
