Changing or ending alimony
Alimony can be modified or terminated. The changes that usually justify it are:
- A substantial involuntary drop in your income
- A business failing
- A substantial rise in your former spouse's income
- A significant cut to your overall compensation package
- Recent retirement from your profession
- Your former spouse remarrying
- A major health problem that damages earning ability
- Increases in the cost of living
Be realistic about the hurdle. The person asking for the change carries the burden, and generally has to prove a financial change in circumstances that is substantial, unforeseeable and permanent. All three. That is a high bar, and it is where most of these applications are won or lost.
Changing child support
Either parent can ask for child support to be looked at again whenever it is warranted. The purpose of child support is to meet the child's needs: food, shelter, clothing, health care and education. When those needs change, or when a parent's finances change, the number may need to change with them.
New Jersey courts are conservative about this. They will only modify a support order where there has been a valid and significant change in circumstances.
There is one exception worth knowing. A step increase based purely on a cost of living adjustment can sometimes be achieved without a hearing at all.
The date it takes effect
Child support modifications are generally not retroactive. If support is changed, the change runs from the date the motion asking for it was filed, not from the date your circumstances actually changed.
That is the practical reason not to wait. Every month you put off filing is a month at the old number that you do not get back.
Changing custody
Custody can be modified, but where an arrangement appears to be working for everyone, a New Jersey court will usually leave it alone. The parent asking for the change has to show a substantial change in circumstances. Examples that qualify:
- A major relocation
- A major change in a parent's job or hours
- A major change in a parent's behavior that is bad for the child, such as substance abuse
- Domestic violence in a parent's home
- Dangerous conditions in a parent's home
The two ways custody gets changed
By consent order. This is the easy route. It is an agreement between both parents that replaces the existing arrangement. Everything in it is agreed by both of you, and once it is entered it is enforceable.
By motion. Where a consent order is not possible, you go through the New Jersey courts by filing a motion showing a substantial change in circumstances.
When the other side will not follow the order
A court order is binding. When the other party simply ignores it, whether that is support going unpaid or parenting time being withheld, the answer is not to let it slide. You go back to court to enforce it.
Enforcement and modification are two different applications, and they often travel together. Letting arrears build or a schedule quietly lapse makes both of them harder.