Understanding Spousal Support Determination in Ohio Divorce Cases (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: We are frequently asked by people going through a divorce, how is the court going to determine how much spousal support I'll have to pay or how much spousal support I will receive? And it's not an easy question to predict. Compare that to child support where there's a calculation in place. And so you use a computer program and you input certain variables such as incomes, cost for health insurance, daycare, etc. and it spits out a number that is the presumed correct number. It doesn't vary from there, but it gives you a starting point. That is not the case in spousal support. There is no calculation to start with. So what the court does is, in the statute, looks at a variety of factors and then comes up with a reasonable amount of support for a reasonable duration of time. The factors are various, but they include things like the ages of the parties, the relative health, education, incomes, earning ability, perhaps the extent they've stayed home with minor children during the marriage and their career has been delayed, things of that nature. And then the court comes up with a reasonable amount. As you can imagine, that will vary widely from not only county to county, for instance, some urban counties versus rural counties, but in some instances, judge to judge. And it makes it very difficult to compare yourself. If you're going to buy a car, one of the things you do is you look to see, okay, what are other people paying for this? And it's very difficult to determine, you know, are you getting what other people are getting? And in large part, that's because of the large number of factors that go into spousal support. Some people like to argue that there should be an equalization of incomes. That is actually not the law in Ohio. There's no words that say incomes should be equalized. But it can serve as a starting point for, you know, what might be a ballpark number to work with. And so you can take both parties' incomes after taxes and determine what it would take in spousal support to equalize them and then go from there. That doesn't always make sense. To do it that amount, if you look at the other variables, but it at least gives you a starting point. So in Ohio, there is no calculation, but rather the rule is it's a reasonable amount of spousal support for a reasonable period of time. And then the court looks at the various factors and determines in their mind what it should be. So if you're working with your attorney and trying to determine, you know, how much should we offer or should we be requesting, what you do is you look at those factors and perhaps compare it to what income equalization would be and adjust from there.