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Reasonable Living Expenses After Filing for Divorce
© 2004 National Legal Research Group, Inc.
FLORIDA: Karimi v. Karimi, 867 So. 2d 471 (Fla. 5th Dist. Ct. App. 2004).
Dissipation of marital property did not occur when the husband, an unemployed stay-at-home father, used marital funds to pay living expenses for himself and his son after the filing of the action.
As part of the equitable distribution of the parties' marital estate, the trial court allocated a certain bank account to the husband. At the time the divorce petition was filed at the initiation of the divorce proceeding, the account contained approximately $7,000. When the final judgment was entered, it contained nothing. The account was essentially a checking account that the husband had used for day-trading prior to the separation of the parties. The uncontradicted testimony was that the funds were used to support the husband and his son at the initiation of the proceedings, as he was not working at the time and was residing in the marital home as a stay-at-home dad. It was also established that the husband had to borrow funds from family and friends in order to meet his financial needs. Nevertheless, the trial court allocated all of this depleted asset to the husband. The appellate court found this to be an abuse of discretion.
Unquestionably, admitted the court of appeal, if marital misconduct results in the depletion or dissipation of a marital asset, the trial court may make an unequal distribution of marital property or may assign the asset to the dissipating spouse as part of that spouse's equitable distribution. However, where the asset is used by one of the parties out of necessity for reasonable living expenses, that asset should not be assigned to the party who used them absent a finding of misconduct. Here, there was no such finding with respect to the particular account, and as there was no evidence contradicting the evidence regarding his use of the funds, the account should not have been assigned to him for equitable distribution purposes. The entire division of marital assets must be revisited by the trial court.
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