New Developments in Utah Law Governing Termination of Alimony
New developments in Utah case law governing the termination of alimony with the case of Scott v. Scott. In this case, the ex-husband moved to terminate alimony and won.
The ex-wife claimed that her relationship with her post-divorce boyfriend did not rise to the level of cohabitation required by law to terminate her alimony award.
The district court terminated alimony by finding that the ex-wife’s relationship exhibited many of the hallmarks of a marriage relationship that Utah’s case law recognizes. Like a married couple, ex-wife and her boyfriend (a) engaged in an extended and exclusive sexual relationship; they spent a significant amount of time together at the boyfriend’s homes and elsewhere, including on vacations and holidays; they established a common household involving shared expenses and shared decisions, boyfriend authorized ex-wife as a user on his credit cards, and the two participated jointly in financial and other decisions related to the purchase of a home together, a house where Jillian acted like a spouse, made decorating decisions, to which she and her boyfriend agreed she had her own a key. Ex-wife’s boyfriend gave her “family status” at a country club based on his representation that the couple was “living together and maintaining a common household. When boyfriend broke up with ex-wife he paid her a financial settlement on the condition that she “sign a release from all future claims.”
Ex-wife claims that the determination of “shared residence” was a threshold legal requirement that must be established before any other “hallmarks” of marriage are considered in the cohabitation analysis. The Utah Supreme Court disagreed.
Ex-wife took the view that the home the couple shared was not the legal domicile for either her boyfriend or her. The Utah Supreme Court disagreed.
Ex-wife argued that the shared-residence threshold requires a couple to live together for a longer period of time than she and her boyfriend did. The Utah Supreme Court disagreed.
Shared residence is not a threshold element that must be met before other hallmarks of marriage may be considered in the cohabitation analysis. The key hallmarks of a marriage-like relationship under Myers go to the “nature and extent” of a couple’s “common residence, relationship, and interactions.” These considerations are assessed in a holistic inquiry that recognizes that there is no single prototype of a relationship akin to marriage.
Moreover, the term “shared residence” does not mean legal domicile.
[The Utah Supreme Court did not delve into the distinction between domicile and residence, but in a nutshell: essentially domicile involves one’s intent while residence is where one actually is.]
The home in question in this case may not have been the prototypical “principal domicile,” but it was a common residence or dwelling. Neither ex-wife or her boyfriend were visitors in that home. It was a common residence—albeit one of several.
The Supreme Court acknowledged that “shared residence” implies some period of time that is indicative of a marriage-like relationship, but declined to endorse a hard-and-fast rule as to a precise minimum number of days to establish shared residency in all circumstances.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
Tags: 2020 UT 54, alimony, cohabitation, cohabiting, common residence, legal domicile, mandate rule, marriage-like relationship, Scott v. Scott, terminating alimony, termination of alimony, Utah Supreme Court