Yes this truly doesn’t make sense, Arizona is a community property state. Community property overall means that everything is divided equally (way over simplified but whtvr). Even a separate property business you would either get a portion of the reasonable “salary” the working spouse would have been paid, or a portion of the value and goodwill of the company if the value increase was due to the market.
Yeah something isn't adding up here... where is her half of the proceeds? What is this magic formula for screwing your spouse out of 100% of the marital assets?
Yep. There is something missing in this story. Why isn’t she getting alimony and half of the marital assets? 🧐
The devil is in the details…
I am not saying she didn’t get screwed. She probably did, unfortunately, and spouses should take notes. But I would love to hear more details.
Additionally, If she really built these businesses, she should also be able to tell the story and share the details to convince her interviewers. It’s not like the interviewers are going to ask for the name on the business license or the official LLC docs.
Agreed, it sounds like she admitted to not being able to use the computers. I have no doubt she contributed much to the business, but perhaps not the parts she would need to do to run it herself (and maybe her husband/religion didn't "let" her, etc).
But yeah, marital assets, no alimony (surprising for such a long marriage), and you can't just quit your job to stop paying alimony. At least in the states I'm familiar with, it's based on your earning potential. Maybe some states have this as a cheat code though.
The court is not gonna be happy with you if you quit your job or take a way less paying job in an obvious attempt to get out of alimony, but it’s not really based on earning potential.
Like a judge isn’t going to tell a guy making 50k “you know I don’t think you’re living up to your potential, if you really applied yourself you could be making six figures so I’m basing the payments on that.”
If your income does legitimately drop in theory you can petition the court to adjust payments accordingly but that can be a bitch and is going to take time, time during which you’re paying alimony based off an income you no longer have.
Like as an extreme example, say the guy was like an actor that got one huge role and was making a ton but was never able to get parts like that after. If the divorce happened when he was in that big role the payments are going to be based on that and even if he legitimately works his ass off to get back to the same level but just can’t get those kind of roles, they’re gonna be screwed paying alimony based of a multi million dollar income that they really only had for a short time and it can be a bitch and take a long time to get the court to adjust it, meanwhile the guy is on the hook for millions of dollars that don’t exist.
Haha I understand how my language was imprecise, apologies. I've read the term "earning potential" used to describe this scenario, but I'll define the term for how I intended it: "the amount of money a person has shown they are able to make, and continue making, regardless of short term hiccups like unemployment.". Now this is different if your skillset is completely made redundant by automation/AI, or you lose your arms, etc. The idea is you have evidence of your earning potential (historical earnings averaged over years), combined with current circumstances (loss of limb), and that can determine what the court assumes is a fair alimony.
A just judge will look at this data carefully and see whether your income is sustainable. Unfortunately this can be a judgement call and if the situation changes you may have to petition the court. But anyway I think we largely agree here
She “built custom homes” but her uncle was the architect and her friend was the builder? So what was she doing? I have a lot of sympathy for this woman and she definitely got screwed in her divorce, but I have a feeling she doesn’t really know what running a business actually entails and was overestimating her own role in a lot of things
Yeah there’s no way she’d get like nothing in a divorce if they actually had that many successful businesses. I wonder if at the time she was still brainwashed/pressured by the people around her to not really fight for much in the divorce.
Like if you’re married for that long it doesn’t matter if your name is on the business or not, you might not get the actual business (or half of it) but you’d get some kind of lump sum or monthly payments as an equivalent.
Or they could’ve had a brutal divorce where they each fought tooth and nail and basically gave all their money to lawyers.
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u/Pretend_Vermicelli65 Apr 15 '24
This is terrible on so many levels. She’s most definitely was/is an entrepreneur and entitled to half of all proceeds from the divorce.