Divorcing couples put a great deal of effort into negotiating their divorce settlement. But what happens if you decide later on that those settlement terms no longer work for you? Can you revisit the negotiation? Alter the terms of your deal?
The answer varies depending on what you want to accomplish and why. Here are a few things you can and can’t renegotiate later.
You Can’t Renegotiate the Entire Settlement
First off, the complete settlement cannot generally be reopened and put up for debate again. Unfortunately, if you find that many aspects of it are unsuitable, you aren’t likely to be able to have the entire document discarded or rewritten en masse. Instead, you will need to pick and choose what’s most important and focus on changing what you can.
You Can Renegotiate Support Terms
One of the most important elements of divorce decrees over the long term is financial support. Child support needs can easily change over the years and can often be revisited. If your decree did not address who pays for college costs, for instance, you can often litigate this. If your spouse’s financial situation improved, you may also choose to sue so that your child can have more of what they deserve from that.
The subject of spousal support can also be reopened. This most often happens when your own financial picture is reduced – such as if you haven’t been able to find work as expected – or when your spouse’s circumstances are different. Spousal support has a limited shelf-life, of course. Most alimony orders terminate after a set number of years or when you remarry, so you must act within this window.
You Can’t Renegotiate Property Division
One piece of bad news is that it’s unlikely you can reopen the matter of how your assets were divided. These decisions were based upon your finances at the time and state rules. State rules often mandate an even split of marital assets, so these may not be negotiable in the first place. And even if your financial situation changed later on, marital assets were what they were when you filed.
The one major exception to this rule is if there is new – and definitive – evidence that your spouse lied during the divorce. If you find out later that they had secret real estate or financial accounts, or they hadn’t sold assets you believed were gone, you may ask the court to set aside the original division and make a new determination. The divorce decree may even stipulate that you have this right.
You Can Renegotiate If Terms Are Not Followed
What if your spouse hasn’t lived up to the terms of the divorce? Maybe they have failed to pay required spousal support, to pay the mortgage on a family home, or to follow custody rules. In these cases, you may have two methods of dealing with the problem.
First, you may seek enforcement of the terms of a court order to get what you’re owed – either financially or otherwise. If you pair that with modification of the decree, though, it may make compliance easier. If your spouse can’t afford to pay all the ordered support, for example, you could enforce back pay but also reduce the amount for the future to make payment more likely.
As you better understand what you can and cannot change, finding a good solution to post-divorce challenges is easier. Learn more about the best way to approach the renegotiation of your divorce decree by speaking with the legal team at Siben & Siben LLP today. We will assess your decree, the changes in your situation, and all legal options available to help you find the right move forward.