Domestic Relations - Questions & Answers

Q: What is “marital property”?

A:  Marital property is anything acquired by the parties during the course of their marriage, such as  salary, pension benefits and real or personal property.  It does not include inheritances or anything a party acquired prior to the marriage unless that party has made a gift of the property to his or her spouse.  Note, improvements in value to property acquired before the marriage or by inheritance becomes marital property if marital funds are used in the improvements.  Many people make the mistake of thinking that once they separate, whatever they acquire is not real property, but this is not the case.

Q: Can Grandparents petition for the right to visitation with their grandchildren?

A: Yes and no.  There is a Grandparents’ Visitation Statute, Family Law 9-102, but in a recent constitutional challenge to the statute,  Maryland’s Court of Appeals  held that grandparents seeking visitation with their grandchildren must first show prima facie evidence of parental unfitness or exceptional circumstances demonstrating current or future detriment to the child in the absence of  visitation with his or her grandparents.  If the grandparents are able to overcome that hurdle, the trial court will then examine whether it is in the child’s best interest for the Court to order visitation with the grandparents.

Q: How does the court decide whether to award alimony, and for how long?

A: The Court must consider all the factors listed in FL § 11-106(b) and not give any one of them special weight.  These factors include the ability of the party seeking alimony to be self-supporting;  the time for that party to gain sufficient education or training to enable them to find suitable employment; the length of the marriage; standard of living attained; each party’s contributions to the marriage; the circumstances leading up to the parties’ separation; age; physical and mental condition; the ability of the party who is being asked to pay alimony to support him or her self while paying alimony; any agreement between the parties; and the financial needs and resources of each party.  Concerning resources, the Courts have recently held, in a case where the wife was seeking indefinite alimony due to the disparity between her ability to earn a living and her husband’s ability,  that it is proper to consider whether the wife was living in a “marriage type” relationship with another person.  Even though the Alimony Act does not preclude indefinite alimony in that situation, it  would be relevant to the wife’s financial status and whether or not her standard of living was “unconscionably disparate” from the former husband.

Courtesy, Lee J. Eidelberg