The Appeals Court ruled, in Pisano v. Pisano , on numerous issues involving a bifurcated trial, a prenuptial agreement, temporary alimony and family loans.  The primary issues in the case all could have been prevented by inclusion of clear provisions in the Prenuptial Agreement.  This is not a criticism of the drafters, because in many instances the soon to be married couple don't want to deal with these types of specifics.  However, this case demonstrates the importance of clear and thoughtful decision-making and drafting when creating a Prenuptial Agreement. 1. Trial Judge's determination that the Prenuptial Agreement excludes income derived from separate assets from consideration of alimony - UPHELD. While the prenup did not explicitly say "income from separate assets is excluded from the calculation of alimony" as clearly as it could have, the appeals court upheld this decision finding that the language of the prenup clearly intended to exclude income from s...

Massachusetts Appellate courts have been busy interpreting the recent changes in alimony law, but they’re not the only courts struggling with legal questions surrounding alimony.  The U.S. Tax Court is tasked with interpreting the treatment of alimony under the I.R.S. Code and this has led to some interesting decisions in 2015.  Yes, I just used “tax” and “interesting” in the same sentence, but trust me if you are paying or receiving alimony, or representing clients who are, you need to know about these decisions. David H. Goodman, CPA/ABV/CFF, CVA of Gosule, Butkus & Jesson, LLP has been kind enough to provide us with summaries of these recent cases: U.S. Tax Court Alimony Decisions: 5 Cases You Should Know Guest Post by David H. Goodman, CPA/ABV/CFF, CVA Below I have summarized five U.S. Tax Court cases in which the Court ruled against the taxpayer on issues involving deductible alimony. In each of these the taxpayer attempted to deduct a payment as alimony and...

In September of 2011, the Alimony Reform Act was signed into law in Massachusetts, and it took effect on March 1, 2012.  We've previously summarized the many changes that this Act brought to Massachusetts Alimony Law: The New Massachusetts Alimony Law in a Nutshell.   As with many new laws, though, it raised as many questions as it answered.   Now that this law has been around for two years we are starting to receive answers to some of those questions from the Appeals Court and SJC. One of these questions was whether temporary alimony orders count against the duration of general term alimony orders which begin only after a final Judgment.  The new alimony law contains duration limits in M.G.L. c. 208 § 49 , which create a presumption that alimony ends at a certain time based on the length of the marriage.  For example a marriage of between 15 and 20 years, could have alimony as long as 80% of the length of the marriage.  For a marriage of 15 years thi...