Professional Licenses and Degrees - Divorce Encyclopedia

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Term Definition Professional Licenses and Degrees - the piper must be paid.

Application in Divorce In divorce actions today, courts increasingly must be deal with the benefit of another and the promise of a payoff of enhanced earnings as a result of the degree.

Professional degrees have "an obvious personal value to the holder, and while increased future earnings ar not guaranteed, they are certainly very common." In this routine, which is very common ("Nobody marries a doctor -- only a medical student," as the saying goes), both spouses work on the assumption that the lucrative professional career eventually would reward both of them with a higher spouse who made the career sacrifice.

All too often, a young woman who marries a medical student and puts him through medical school finds herself shucked and in a divorce from a nowprospering professional, and simple fairness demands that reimbursement must come into play.

Faced with this situation, the courts have three remedies: "(1) distribution of marital award based on some equitable principal."

In many jurisdictions, the primary remedy for one-sided estate. In this regime, the courts do not treat the professional degree as marital property, but divide the estate unequally in favor of the supporter spouse.

Reimbursement alimony of a fixed duration is inviting option when the marital estate is small, as often happens when the marriage falters early on.

Courts sometimes spouse who helped advance a partner’s career. Reimbursement is not based on need but on fairness.

In short, courts, therefore, apply a variety of what are called "theories of reimbursement," including making it a factor in property division and a factor in reimbursement alimony.

In the calculation of spouse through school," is in turn compensated by being put through school.

A lengthy marriage after the schooling ends argues against any compensation to the working spouse because he or she has enjoyed the benefits of the other spouse’s career advancement.

Two states -- New York and Michigan -- treat professional degrees as marital property. New York courts hold that a nonstudent spouse (usually a husband) through school is "entitled to receive, not merely the value of her contributions, but some modest portion of the expected return which motivated her to sacrifice so much to begin with."