Page 22 - November 2018

Possible changes to maintenance payments in divorce agreements
Changes may be coming to the way main- tenance payments work in divorce arrange- ments. This July, the Illinois General As- sembly passed House Bill 2537. HB 2537 proposes to modify Section 504 of the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act (750 ILCS 5/504), which
deals with Illinois spousal maintenance payments, also known as alimony.
utory maintenance guidelines will be raised. According to the 2015 version of the law, courts determine the maintenance amount and duration based on statu- tory guidelines when the combined income of the parties is less than $250,000. The 2018 version of the law will increase the income threshold from a combined income of $250,000 to a combined income of $500,000. This means that the statutory guidelines will be applied to higher-income families. If the combined income of the couple is above the $500,000 threshold, the court is not required to adhere to statutory guidelines and may determine maintenance amount and
duration based upon several factors.
Second, new calculations will be used to determine
the duration of maintenance. Under the current law, the duration of maintenance is calculated based on five-year periods of time. Currently, the multiplying factors that determine the length of maintenance are: for marriages of five years or less, the length of the marriage is multi- plied by 0.20; for marriages more than five years but less
FOP
Legal Rep t
DANIEL HERBERT
Under existing law, Illinois family law courts are instructed to weigh several factors to determine whether maintenance is appropriate. If the court deter- mines that maintenance is appropriate, it will typically use statutory formulas to determine how much to award in maintenance and for how long the maintenance pay- ments will continue. If, as expected, HB 2537 is signed by Governor Rauner and goes into effect in 2018, there will be changes to the existing Illinois spousal maintenance law.
First, the income threshold for application of the stat-
22 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ NOVEMBER 2017