Spousal support options after decades of marriage
Dear Mrs Macaulay,
I have been married to a man for 27 years. I filed for divorce in 2024. The filling is still in court. What are my options with regards to filing for spousal support currently?
You have not stated whether your divorce petition included a claim for ancillary orders for maintenance and division of property. If these were included in your petition, then your attorney-at-law can file a Notice of Application for your maintenance, and your affidavit in support of your application. It should state your occupation, if any, within and/or outside the home; detail the length of your marriage; the children, if any, of the marriage and their ages and their current occupations; and whether any of your husband’s family members lived in the home with you and what you did for their care.
It must also specify what you did during the years of your marriage for the running of the home, what you provided, and what you bought for the home, and how and where you are presently residing and why, if it is no longer in the family home. It must also specify whether the erstwhile home premises is/was legally owned by you and your husband, and how (jointly or as tenants-in-common). It must state your husband’s occupation and what he earns, and what provision he used to make to the home and family expenses, and whether he owns any other property, stocks and shares and their value. And finally, what you need financially for your standard of living to be made to be the same or close to that which you enjoyed during your 27-year marriage.
If the claim for maintenance was not included in your petition, your lawyer can prepare and file your application for maintenance by a Fixed Date Claim Form and Affidavit in Support in the Supreme Court, or your application can be filed in the Family Court of your parish. Whichever court your application for maintenance is filed in, the judge will consider what your actual financial needs are, and what yours and your husband’s standard of living had been. The judge would also consider the property owned — real and personal — of each of you, your respective incomes, and the future prospects of you both for personal growth. The fact of your 27-year marriage and life together would also be considered, as well as your respective conducts throughout those years, and as I stated above, what responsibility was met by you both for members of the family and for the maintenance of the home. Or, you and your husband can enter into a maintenance agreement to meet your reasonable needs which can be produced to the court to accept and make into an order of the court.
You must understand that the Maintenance Act provides that each spouse has the legal obligation, as far as he or she is capable, to maintain the other spouse when either needs maintenance to meet their reasonable needs. The court should and would consider a lengthy list of matters stated in the Act, which include what I have stated here, before determining and ordering what it considers would be fair and reasonable.
It would also consider whether there is any property to be divided pursuant to the Property (Rights of Spouses) Act (PROSA) and what your share would be, and about when this may be completed.
Your attorney should consider filing an application for your share, if your husband legally owns property, real or personal, which fall within the provisions of this Act. Such applications should be made within 12 months of your divorce having been made absolute, unless the court allows a longer period upon an application for this to be done. This would affect the court’s consideration about the length of time for the maintenance order to be in place, and having considered all the matters which ought to be considered before a decision is made.
The court would and should also take into account yours and your husband’s entitlement to pension or some other additional benefit. The facts relating to this should also be included in your affidavit in support of your application.
I hope that I have made all that you are entitled to clear, while your petition is still being dealt with. In your Affidavit in Support of your application for maintenance, you must state the fact that your petition for the dissolution of your marriage was filed and the date of its filing and the stage it has reached. Then when you obtain the decree absolute, you ought to produce it in an additional affidavit for the judge hearing your maintenance application to be fully informed as to your status.
I have also mentioned the possibility of an application pursuant to PROSA for division of interests, just in case you had not considered this, and for you to speak with and instruct your attorney about this, so that you can apply for and obtain everything you are entitled to have under the law.
The sooner you have your application filed, the sooner your hearing date shall be, and you can obtain the orders and be more settled for your future.
All the very best.
Margarette May Macaulay is an attorney-at-law, Supreme Court mediator, notary public, and women’s and children’s rights advocate. Send questions via e-mail to allwoman@jamaicaobserver.com. All responses are published. Mrs Macaulay cannot provide personal responses.
