Marriage is something that everyone dreams of when they are together with someone they enjoy spending time with. It can lead to a fulfilling relationship between two people who can get through thick and thin.
Eventually, the years will lead to them starting a family and settling down into a role that allows them to have a fully functional household. However, some couples tend to lose that spark that burned inside of them and caused the two of them to fall for one another. It could be a variety of reasons, but after 10-years of marriage, that spark is gone, and now talks of divorce have started to become a common subject in the household.
Marriage has been said to last somewhere around seven years before the average spouse starts to become restless and strays away from the marital vows.
It’s a phenomenon that is known as the seven-year Itch. Usually, the honeymoon period starts to end, and both couples are just unsatisfied with what is being offered by either of them.
During the honeymoon period, spouses will usually be a bit more forgiving or willing to compromise on specific subject matters. Being in a long-lasting marriage takes some hard work between both spouses. Without putting any sort of work into maintaining your relationship, tension, frustration and resentment will start to pile up over time.
For some spouses, the breaking point for a divorce can come at seven years. However, some couples can last much longer than that, and making it past ten years can add a marital milestone that could impact your divorce case.
With the decision to finally divorce, you would typically tell those closest to you, which can lead to some advice from friends and family members. While the consul they are offering may seem excellent at first, some of them could be wrong and lead to negative consequences if followed.
A piece of general advice that appears is the ten-year rule, and this one has caused problems to arise during a divorce case. The ten-year rule has been broadly misinterpreted in divorce laws in California and several states. Plenty of people have interpreted this rule as the spouse will be guaranteed alimony for the rest of their life if they reached the ten-year mark in their marriage.
Unfortunately for you, this is far from the truth.
The 10-year rule
When you are going through a divorce, there is a high chance that you will not be in the same financial position as your spouse. Some people become stay-at-home parents, are between jobs, or merely collect a smaller annual income.
Being in a position where you have to support yourself can be worrisome, especially if it comes to taking care of children. The courts agree that it's unfair for a spouse to live without some financial assistance. California spousal support laws defend spouses who are at a financial disadvantage during the time of divorce.
The set amount of alimony assists the spouse by paying for their general needs and attempts to maintain a standard of living established during the marriage. The extent of the marriage will help the spouse have a reasonable amount of time to find a new job, go back to school, or make a seamless transition from being married to single. California law states that the usual presumption for the duration of support is "one-half the length of the marriage" for marriages that have lasted less than ten years.
Meaning that if you were married for a total of six years, the judge will rule to limit alimony for one-half of the marriage if the requirements exist.
Section 4336 allows the court to hold jurisdiction over the issue of alimony in marriages of long duration. The court also states that the support will end when either of the parties has died, remarried, or entered into a registered domestic partner of the recipient.
When dealing with a marriage of long duration, which is defined by the statute of being ten years or longer, a court is incapable of setting a termination date. That is clarified by Family Code Section 4336.
This law states that “For the purpose of retaining jurisdiction, there is a presumption affecting the burden of producing evidence that a marriage of 10 years or more, from the date of marriage to the date of separation, is a marriage of long duration.
However, the court may consider periods of separation during the marriage in determining whether the marriage is in fact of long duration. Nothing in this subdivision precludes a court from determining that a marriage of less than 10-years is a marriage of long duration.”
The law is merely stating that marriages of more than ten years automatically qualify for the long term, which is where the infamous name of “The 10-year rule” came. That means that a court will not award you spousal support for the rest of your life but will retain the ability to grant you spousal support indefinitely in marriage over the ten-year mark.
This means that the court can award you spousal support for longer than half the length of your marriage but will not surely do so.
Here’s an example of how this works. Let us say you get divorced at the age of 40 after a 12-year marriage and are in optimal health. The court will expect you to be self-supporting during a set of time, and therefore discontinue spousal support while having the power to reorder support should something happen.
However, if you divorce at the age of 65 after 30 years of marriage and are incapable of going back into the workforce, the court could potentially continue to order spousal support for an extended amount of time if the supporting spouse is still working.
Keep in mind that retirement of either spouse and receipt of equal retirement, pension, and social security benefits will also go under review by the judge, who shall decree the duration of spousal support and the amount.
Several other challenges need to be addressed for couples who have been married for ten years or more but have decided to finally divorce. Only then will you understand what is at stake and why it’s complicated.
Assets and Liabilities
When it comes to marriages that have lasted for a short while, couples may haven't begun to co-mingle their assets or liabilities.
During the divorce case, they will still have their own property and debts such as cars, checking accounts, credit cards, and statements from their pension or 401k from before they married one another.
The trust between both spouses may have possibly not settled in to take a massive step like commingling finances.
That makes things less complicated when it comes to deciding on who gets what during the divorce. Although, being married for ten years can make divorce troublesome if you already commingled any or every one of your assets and liabilities.
After being married for ten years or more, you most likely have joint marital property such as:
Chances are you are also on your way towards amassing enough money in your retirement accounts for your twilight years. Since you have tied your lives together financially, the separation of your assets and liabilities will introduce a whole other level of complexities.
The working issue
If you are similar to any other couple, chances are you were married for a couple of years before you decided it was time to have children and expand your family. A decision like this will usually mean that one of the spouses will remain at home with the children.
If this is the case and one of the spouses is at home with the children, they probably have been out of the workforce for a long time. Jumping back into the work field and getting what was previously earned before retirement could be challenging, if not impossible.
Even if both spouses are working outside of the household, there still is a chance that they are relying on one another quite a bit for their daily routine.
Since the children will be at the stage where school, homework, after school activities, extracurricular activities, sports, and hanging out with friends are happening.
Both spouses are actively trading places, trying to regularly shuttle from place-to-place and ensure that their schedules are aligned to achieve this. When it comes to spouses married for ten years, divorce can become disruptive to this daily routine.
Changing all of this at the current moment, especially with children involved, can add another layer of difficulty to the divorce case.
Social security benefits
Divorce cases will rarely have any positive news for either spouse. However, when it comes to dealing with Social Security, divorces after 10-years is an exception.
If either of the spouses were married for 10-years or more, they could be eligible to receive social security benefits based on the ex-spouse's earnings. It could also lead to the spouse to receive substantial benefits than if they were to collect on their own.
o become eligible for this substantial benefit, you need to meet these requirements:
Now you may be wondering what happens if you are the ex-spouse in this situation?
Does your benefit decrease if your former spouse begins to collect social security benefits based on your earning history? The answer is no!
Your own marital status won’t matter as well. Regardless if you are remarried, divorced, or widowed, your former spouse will still collect off your earnings, with no effect on you or your current spouse.
Dividing assets and liabilities
Now that you are going through a divorce, you will have to make a decision on who is going to get what. How this happens all depends on the state you are currently living in. For instance, some states use the principles of equitable distribution, while others may use the principles of community property instead.
However, there is something you should be aware of. Regardless if you live in a community property state or equitable distribution state, you and your spouse will still have enough freedom to decide how you will divide your marital assets and debts.
Unfortunately, there are no guidelines set on how assets and liabilities are divided between a couple. The rules merely state that it needs to be fair for both parties.
Although when it comes to divorce cases, what is qualified as fair?
Unfortunately, no one is exactly clear on this critical information. You will not have any guide when it comes to dividing your assets and liabilities nor any clear definition of what's fair. At this point, it comes down to both spouses negotiating what they believe is fair with the assistance of a mediator. The best thing you could do is talk it out and see what will suit both your needs, especially when it comes to specific matters, such as custody of children.
Conclusion
Like any other aspect of spousal support, there are plenty of complex factors at work, and each one will vary depending on the situation. Regardless of whether the marriage lasted less than or more than ten years may indeed become a crucial factor in determining your divorce. However, it may not be for the reason you have heard.
The 10-year rule is something that impacts both couples in ways they may not expect, and while spousal support is agreed upon, it won’t last for a lifetime. Hopefully, this article has managed to give you a clear picture of the 10-year rule.
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