Massachusetts Divorce

Divorce in Massachusetts is a relatively straight forward legal matter. However, people often confuse straightforward with "do it yourself" concepts and wind up hiring a lawyer after they have created a precedent that can't be undone. The summary below shows MA divorce in general.

Obstacle One: Assetts and Liabilites MGL 208 section 34

Massachusetts is NOT a "community property state" as is often misunderstood by my clients that do their legal research on the internet and then hire me after they've realized they need a lawyer. Massachusetts looks at your marital assets and debts not by the title that it’s held in, but more on the factors listed in the statute. Then according to those factors a judge will deem a division of property in what is considered to be "fair and equitable". It is this fair and equitable standard that causes major differences amongst divorcing couples. Each couple has established their property in such varying ways that the standard meant to make things fair often causes a very cold and hard analysis of how to distribute this property. Most people have a hard time understanding this concept. So, they start to divide things on their own and carve out their idea of what belongs to them, or make demands of the other party and it creates difficulty for the other areas of a divorce process.

Alimony is a factually determined obligation that requires analysis.

Alimony is not a given in this state. But if you are in a long term marriage you may be required to pay alimony/palimony. If you’re in an intermediate term marriage there may be a shorter judgment of alimony to help the less established party get an education, or build a business that will get them to a new level of financial independence. Another factor may be a party’s health or disability that requires the more financially stable party to be responsible for paying alimony to the other party. In any case, these are fact specific questions that need to be reviewed and then balanced against the other assets that the parties may be dividing. Again the totality of the circumstances in each different case will dictate if alimony, or separate support is required. Divorces that include children deserve more attention than I can give in this short guide. Children look for Custody/visitation and support. Separate guides on those topics will come later.