Spousal Support

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For the second time in six weeks the Appellate Division, Third Department, reduced an award of spousal maintenance for the failure to adjust for the distributive award based on the husband’s business. In its October 22, 2015 decision in Gifford v. Gifford, the Appellate Division, Third Department, modified a maintenance award because of the trial court’s failure to adjust the husband’s income for computation purposes to account for the distributive award to the wife based on the husband’s business. In September, in Mula v. Mula, the Third Department held that once valued, the income attributable to ownership of a professional practice may not also be the basis on which to award spousal maintenance (see, the September 14, 2015 blog post).

In Gifford, the parties in this divorce had stipulated a resolution of Equitable Distribution issues, including a $210,000 award to the wife based on the value of the husband’s geotechnical engineer business. After a trial on maintenance on counsel fees, Supreme Court Justice Vincent J. Reilly awarded the wife nondurational maintenance of $6,000 per month from January 1, 2014 through January 31, 2020, $3,000 per month from February 1, 2020 through June 1, 2022, and $800 per month thereafter, terminating upon either party’s death or the wife’s remarriage.

The Third Department held that Justice Reilley erred in utilizing the husband’s total average annual income of $332,431 for purposes of calculating a maintenance award, without making an adjustment for the distributive award of the company.Continue Reading Double-Dipping: The Interrelationship of Business-Based Distributive Awards and Spousal Support

When calculating a child support obligation, what effect does a simultaneous spousal maintenance award have? The November 21, 2013 decision of the Appellate Division, Third Department, in Alecca v. Alecca reveals the conflict among the Departments, questions of logic, and the need for action by the Legislature.

Agreeing with Judge Anthony McGinty, deciding for the Ulster County Supreme Court, the appellate court held in Alecca that if a spousal maintenance award does not terminate until after all children have been emancipated, the maintenance award may not be deducted from the payor’s income for child support calculation purposes. Spousal maintenance does get deducted if it terminates before all children are emancipated and the awarding court provides for a specific adjustment of child support at the time of the maintenance termination.

Child support is presumptively the function of the Child Support Standards Acct (C.S.S.A.) formula (D.R.L. §240 [1-b]; F.C.A. §413). Depending upon the number of children to be supported, the presumptive formula is a certain percentage of parental income, with the obligation of the support payor being the payor’s pro rata portion of the combined parental income of both parents. In addition to the basic child support obligation, the parents’ obligation to pay additional amounts for health and child care expenses  is also presumptively a function of the parents’ pro rata shares of their combined income. Although relevant, an add-on obligation for educational expenses (if warranted by the circumstances, justice, and the best interests of the child) is not expressly a function of pro rata shares.Continue Reading Child Support Computations When Spousal Maintenance is Awarded

1040.jpgThe Appellate Division, Second Department, has again told J.H.O. Stanley Gartenstein that it was improper for him to award nontaxable spousal maintenance.

In Siskind v. Siskind, in addition to awarding the wife $65,000 per year in nontaxable maintenance until the wife reached her 65th birthday, J.H.O. Gartenstein equitably distributed the parties’ assets, awarded child support and a $340,000 counsel fee, and secured the husband’s support obligations with a $4 million life insurance policy (reduced on appeal to $3 million).

In its November, 2011 modification of that award, the Second Department recognized the presumption that spousal maintenance should be taxable income to the recipient spouse, and deductible to the payor. The appellate court stated:

. . . there was insufficient evidence justifying the Supreme Court’s direction that maintenance be nontaxable to the plaintiff, which is “a departure from the norm envisioned by current Internal Revenue Code provisions.”

In 2007, in Grumet v. Grumet, the Second Department had modified J.H.O. Gartenstein’s award to the wife of non-taxable maintenance, declaring that in the absence of a stated rationale for a departure from the norm envisioned by the Internal Revenue Code provisions, a maintenance award should be taxable.

Maintenance is appropriately taxable income to the recipient. Baron v. Baron (2nd Dept. 2010), Markopulous v. Markopulos, 274 A.D.2d 457, 710 N.Y.S.2d 636 (2nd Dept. 2000) ; see also Taverna v. Taverna (2008), where the Second Department modified the trial court award by making maintenance taxable. Such may have been the holding because the trial court properly declined to consider the husband’s tax liabilities resulting from the liquidation and distribution of investment accounts incident to equitable distribution, as the husband had failed to offer any competent evidence concerning the liabilities which would be incurred. See Fleishmann v. Fleischmann (2010 Supreme Westchester Co., Lubell, J.)Continue Reading The Taxability of Spousal Maintenance Payments: a Subject of Inconsistent Court Decisions