David T. Beans v. Amy S. Beans

Pensacola, Florida divorce lawyers represented husband and wife in a dissolution case.

Married in 1995, David and Amy signed the MSA as part of their divorce proceedings, an agreement the circuit court approved and incorporated into its dissolution decree in August 2018. Under the MSA, the decree obligated David to pay $3,000 a month in permanent periodic alimony and $1,200 a month in child support.[5]Amy also would receive 40.47 percent of David's military retirement pay. At the same time, the MSA stipulated to an



understand[ing] that [David] will be retiring from the military in June of 2019 and does not know what his income will be at that time. If/when a modification action is filed, the parties agree to submit in good faith to informal dispute resolution with their respective counsel of choice as quickly as possible in an attempt to resolve the issue.



Finally, per the MSA, the decree divided retirement and financial accounts and gave each spouse certain accounts "free and clear" from the other spouse.



As contemplated, David retired from the military and set on a path of transition to employment in academia. Around the same time, on July 1, 2019, David filed a petition to modify or eliminate the alimony award decreed a year earlier. While the petition was pending, with Amy's agreement, David began to pay nominal alimony every month while he pursued his doctorate and worked as a teaching assistant. Both Amy and David relied on David's military retirement payments for income, David's net income (the retirement payments combined with his teaching pay) hovering between $4,500 and $5,600, producing a surplus between $220 and $1,320; Amy's net income remaining steady (a combination of her share of David's military retirement and her own income from employment), resulting in a monthly deficit of $1,869 without the alimony. David obtained the doctorate degree in December 2019, but he continued to pay only nominal alimony for months afterward while he worked as a teaching assistant through May



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2020, took the summer off, and started work in August as an assistant professor at a small university in North Carolina. Amy incurred significant debt to cover her living expenses in the absence of the monthly alimony during this time, to the tune of $39,000: $16,000 against her 401(k) and $23,000 on credit cards.



The circuit court calculated the modified alimony going forward based on the financial picture as it appeared in fall 2020. David's net income-a combination of that military retirement, as before, and his income from the new assistant-professor position- came out to be $7,091. Adjusting some of David's claimed expenses, the circuit court found he had a monthly surplus of $1,699, a surplus it found could increase to $2,271 if David reduced or eliminated certain expenses that appeared to be excessive or unnecessary: lawn care, clothing, gifts, sports and hobbies, entertainment, and bank charges. David carried a mortgage on a new house in North Carolina, a car loan, and $15,600 in credit card debt to purchase new furniture. Accounting for the $51,957 in cash and $110,190 in retirement savings David had, the circuit court calculated his net worth to be $174,173.



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Beans v. Beans, 1D2021-3358 (Fla. App. Sep 18, 2024)