Alimony troubles: Two sides escalate battle in NJ

Article here. Excerpt:

'For some ex-couples, the economy has made child support, alimony and other financial terms of divorce even harder to bear. And these fresh battles are adding urgency to an acrimonious debate over alimony reform in New Jersey.

Take Lynn Sebold, a 49-year-old mother of two teenage girls who earned six figures and owned a four-bedroom home in the Basking Ridge section of Bernards with her husband.
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Sebold lost her well-paying sales job in 2011, and for the next 10 months she searched “diligently” for a job, she said. Last March she found one, but for almost half of what she had previously earned.

Although her income and expenses have been reduced, her alimony has not because “there is no bright-line rule” to measure whether her career change is a permanent or substantial change as allowed by New Jersey law, according to court documents. Discretion was up to the judge, H. Matthew Curry, who wrote in his January court order that Sebold had “not provided sufficient information to establish that her financial circumstance is not a temporary, ephemeral situation.”

Sebold’s experience illuminates two growing trends in New Jersey.

First, like more and more women, she ascended in the work force, became her household’s top earner and after divorce paid alimony to her ex-husband.

Second, Sebold is among the growing number of men and women who, for various reasons but mostly economic ones, are going back to court trying to have alimony payments reduced or terminated, according to matrimonial lawyers and court statistics.

These, along with other factors, have helped shape the current battle to reform alimony.'