SPOUSAL MAINTENANCE AND AUTOMATION

Living in this modern age where computers and advance technology does almost everything automatically for us now, do not fall for the mistake of thinking that child support and spousal maintenance (alimony) garnishment orders automatically cease. Even though Court orders often have the end date when spousal maintenance (alimony) ends and child support orders contain the presumptive emancipation date when child support should end because the child turns eighteen, orders of assignment that essentially garnish these payments from your paycheck do not typically contain an end date. As such, these orders are open-ended and employers will continue to take the money out until they get a subsequent order modifying or quashing (stopping) the previous order. In addition, even if you have a very sympathetic employer who you prove that your payment obligations should end, most employers do not want to be sued or be held in contempt of Court so they will err on the side of caution and not disobey the assignment order until they get a new order modifying it or stopping it.

On a related note ...

Letting the bank automatically pay your bills can be dangerous. The biggest danger is that you lose track of your finances. Recently I handled a case for a rather wealthy client who was self-employed and set up his spousal maintenance (alimony) to be paid automatically each month along with some other bills. At the end of his four-year obligation, he informed the bank to stop making the automatic deductions, which at first they did. Unfortunately, a couple of months down the road, the bank somehow messed up and started the automatic payments again. Of course, his former spouse did not tell him that the payments started up again and collected almost another year before the error was discovered. We then had to take the former wife back to Court as she refused to voluntarily re-pay these overpayments. While things did eventually work out and my client got his money returned over time, it was an expensive headache for my client.

Bottom line: If you use a bank to make automatic payments for you, you should still monitor your statements on a monthly basis. Also, if your bank seems to make repeated errors that you have to correct, don't trust it to pay your bills.