FLORIDA FAMILY LAW UPDATE: Week of February 20, 2017

Trial court properly calculated wife’s income. Courts must include reimbursed expenses or in kind payments to the extent that they reduce living expenses when calculating income of a party. Therefore, the amount husband agreed to pay for the mortgage on the formal marital home, where wife lived and the in kind contribution by wife’s mother to wife’s cell phone bill was properly included as income. Further, trial court’s imputation of part time work was also proper under the circumstances as wife was voluntarily unemployed.

 

Trial court’s disqualification of attorney representing wife from entire case was too broad. Opposing counsel had set the deposition of counsel for wife and wife’s counsel failed to appear. Instead, trial court should have compelled the deposition to allow discovery on the counsel’s involvement in the underlying dissolution of marriage case and then considered the issue of possible disqualification.

 

Trial court order finding contempt for failure to pay alimony was deficient on its face as there was no finding of present ability to pay support.