Divorce Wisdom: Will the Court Reimburse You for the Bad Acts of Your Spouse?

Okay, so you have been married for a while and have endured years of injustices at the hands of your evil husband or wife. The following types of scenarios often lead a divorcing party to seek retribution from the court:

You are the major bread earner in the family and your spouse ran up massive credit card debt in your name.

You received an inheritance from your aunt and took your spouse on a lavish 5 star trip to Tahiti with the money, only to return home and learn that your husband/wife has been having an affair with his/her yoga instructor.

You finally get the courage to leave your bad marriage after being physically and emotionally abused for years – You want out, but you also want justice for the pain you have lived through.

You find out your spouse has a major gambling addiction and has secretly dissipated the marital retirement funds.

We have all heard horror stories about bad marriages. These stories are filled with tales of deceit, addiction, abuse and financial ruin. If your marriage has been like a bad made-for-television movie and you finally call it quits, will the judge right your wrongs? This question cannot easily be answered in the negative or the affirmative and is usually fact specific. However, having said that, I will say in general a judge will allow you to end your bad marriage but he/she will never be able to make you whole for all of the injustices you suffered if you are in an abusive situation.

Here are some general thoughts to consider:

The Marital Partnership:

In many ways, your marriage is a partnership and you, therefore, sink and swim with that partnership until you legally end the relationship. Therefore, it is important to ask whether you are in a fiscally healthy relationship or not.

Fault:

In Michigan, the courts start out with the general premise that a divorcing couple shall equally divide the property that both parties accumulated during the marriage. However, fault is a consideration in property division and may be considered in awards of attorney fees and spousal support.

If you believe your spouse is responsible for the breakdown of the marriage, the burden is on you to prove why. In this instance, a cost vs. benefit analysis is necessary. How much will it cost you in attorney fees to prove that your spouse caused the breakdown of the marriage? How egregious was the fault and how long ago did it occur are both important questions to consider when deciding whether to pursue fault. If the fault occurred years ago, I might include it as case background, but I would not solely rely on it to support a claim for more than 50% of the marital estate. If the fault you claim is limited to your spouse cheating, that is also usually not a good enough basis to spend a lot of money in attorney fees pursuing the claim.

Reimbursement:

If you willingly spent your separate money (inheritance, premarital funds) on your spouse, do not expect the court to issue you a refund just because you decided to file for divorce.

The court will look at the events that occurred close in time to the filing of the divorce action. If you allege that your spouse assaulted you five years ago, the impact on your case will be much less than if the assault occurred immediately before the filing for divorce. Similarly, if your spouse gambled away thousands of marital dollars ten years ago and you knew it and stayed married anyway, the court will not pursue your reimbursement claim a decade after the money was lost.

In short, you may be able to seek relief from the bad acts of your husband or wife that occurred or were discovered close in time to the filing of the divorce. These are usually events that led you to file for divorce in the first place. However, having said that, remember, our court system is not designed to right all the wrongs that occurred over the course of your marriage, especially the injustices that occurred years ago.