Legal Question in Family Law in West Virginia

Re: alimony alternatives

Bear in mind that I do not practice in your state. Your state laws might be different from mine.

You have two issues that immediately come to mind:

First, spousal support is taxable to you as income. Its a deduction to the paying spouse.

Second, spousal support is never guaranteed. An obligated spouse can try to discharge the obligation in bankruptcy (assuming s/he can meet the requirements), can just stop paying and require the recipient to go back to court for enforcement, or it can end at your remarriage.

Okay, three issues --

And third, not a substantive legal issue but an emotional issue: as long as he controls the support purse strings, you are dependent on your former husband as long as his obligation remains. You're severing ties. Sever the economic ties, too.

You don't want to be wondering when the monthly check will arrive. You do want to control your own investment, you want to collect the interest, and you want to control your own budget.

Propose a lump sum payment and call it "property settlement." I don't claim to handle tax matters but I believe the IRS hasn't changed its stance on this. The IRS considers a property settlement a rearrangment of marital assets within the marriage. As long as the settlement is during or coincident to the marriage/dissolution, you can receive the payout after the dissolution and still call it settlement. (But if the payments look like alimony, walk like alimony, and quack like alimony, the IRS will call it alimony so you have to factor in a time frame for periodic payments.) But you're not a bank. Ask husband to make whatever financing arrangements he needs to make so he can pay the whole amount at once. Maybe refinance the house, pay you, then claim the mortgage interest deduction on his taxes.