How Long Do Money Awards Last After a Divorce or Other Family Law Case?

We sit down with Pacific Cascade Legal's Partner, Will Jones, to discuss the various types of money awards that might be ordered by a judge, and how long they last after a family law matter finalizes.

If you would like to speak with one of our attorneys, please call our office at (503) 227-0200, or visit our website at https://www.pacificcascadelegal.com.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this communication is intended to provide legal advice nor does it constitute a client-attorney relationship, therefore you should not interpret the contents as such.

Transcript

Intro:
Welcome to Modern Family Matters, a podcast devoted to exploring family law topics that matter most to you. Covering a wide range of legal, personal, and family law matters, with expert analysis from skilled attorneys and professional guests, we hope that our podcast provides answers, clarity, and guidance towards a better tomorrow for you and your family. Here's your host, Steve Altishin.

Steve Altishin:
I'm Steve Altishin, Director of Client Partnerships at Pacific Cascade Legal, and I'm here with our Lead Family Law Attorney, Will Jones, to talk about how long money awards last after a divorce or another family law case. So Will, how are you doing today?

Will Jones  0:48  
Not too bad Steve. Getting kind of towards the winter here and I have a kid who's in first grade, he has brought home every germ, I have some of the germs. So if I cough a little bit, sorry about that. 

Steve Altishin  1:01  
No that's okay. I lived with, you know, every single one of those for 12 years. Just sort of the cost of being a parent. So let's talk about what money awards are first, like, what constitutes money awards? And why is it different than, you know, just an award that says, hey, you get the house?

Will Jones  1:28  
So the I guess the easy way to think of money awards, and they're technically judgments and judgments is the big term that we use, because they're contained within a judgment. A judgment is something a judge signs usually concludes a case of some sort, the big distinction that we need to make in money, words, money judgment, is that those are debts. But debts are not money, words or judgments. Those are two separate things. A debt is if you owe somebody money, that's fine, you can owe people money, it's not a big deal. But the people that you owe money to say visa, or America or whoever you got out there, if you owe them money, that's neat. They can call you they can send you letters, they can report you to the credit bureau all that's well and good and fancy and all that stuff. What none of those people can do is come and take your stuff against your will. So they try to harass you send us a check, do this that the other thing, there's a massive difference between owing somebody money. And that being a judgment, once it's a judgment that judges looked at the facts of whatever case is right, so Bank of America comes by they sue you, they get that turned into a judgment. Now they can take your stuff, right, you end up in debtor creditor law where they can lean your house, garnish your wages, garnish your bank account, take personal property, all that stuff, right before it's a judgment, when it's just a debt, they can't do any of that all they can do is just annoy you enough to hope that you pick the end of their rope. Once a judge has signed off on it. Now you have this whole other body of debtor creditor law where they can actually come and take things against your will. In the family law context. We oftentimes look at child support spousal support equalizing judgments, made judgment that results from marital waste, where the parties may owe each other money for something but those are judgments just like a bank, America sues you the same rights and privileges applied to be able to garnish and do all those type of things. So big difference between debts and judgments. 

Steve Altishin  3:25  
Like you said, it's a judgment for money. So transfer an order by the judge that you give your car to your spouse or something, obviously, maybe not a money judgment. But what about something like you, husband, are going to make this payment to visa? Or make this payment to the car company? Is that a money judgment in the type that we're talking? Or is that something different?

Will Jones  3:51  
It's different, and it's quite a bit different. So if you're talking about say, You guys agree, or the judge awards and ends up in a judgment, that one party is say, going to pay health insurance for the remainder of the year or something like that, that's not a judgment as it sits, it's clearly an order of the courts contained within a judgment. But it's not a money judgment, there's no dollar sign attached. So if you think of it, if we were going to do a process like garnishment, for somebody, where's the part of the judgment of the money award that tells me how much that is and is payable to my client, my clients supposed to be having their health insurance paid, I can't send a garnishment over to the opposing party's bank account. Because I don't have an amount and I don't have a judgment that says it's owed to my client. That is is an action they should have taken. So what ends up happening is we're going to sit there, we're going to turn that into a judgment via contempt, right? We're going to say, hey, we had to pay this health insurance. Now he owes us this. Now the contempt judgment is going to have a money award for my client. Now I have a money word for my client, I can go and garnish his bank account, because I've taken that action and turn it into $1 for you, it's payable to my client and sign off by the court. 

Steve Altishin  4:59  
Right. Okay, let's then start with, again, how long they take. And let's kind of start with the one that isn't necessarily the one that everyone talks about or thinks about-- spousal support, child support--but this equalizing judgment. So if you get one of those, if the court says, you know, you got this stuff, you got that stuff, we're going to make it fair. So you're going to owe this person that much money. How long do they have to collect it? How long does that judgment actually exist?

Will Jones  5:30  
So you get an equalizing judgment, that's just a regular money judgment, which is the way I like to look at him because an equalizing judgment is just like any other judgment except child and spousal, right? Those are the two special ones. If visa sues you, that's a money judgment, not child or spousal same as your equalizing judgment, if it's titled, judgment, due to marital waste, regular judgment, everything's normal, it's not one of the two special ones. So that judgment comes out from the date that judgment comes out or the date, it's payable, whichever ones later. So if the judgment says this is due and payable within 90 days, it's not when the judgment comes out, it's when the clock starts ticking on it. Right. So from that point, you're looking at 10 years, right? 10 years. Now, the important part and the big distinction that we need to make in this is the judgment itself lasts for 10 years and can be extended, we'll get there. We go back to the concept of debt versus judgment, right? The judgment portion of this last 10 years, which means you can garnish you can lean you can do all those things to forcibly take something from somebody else, the debt itself, in terms lasts forever, you still owe that person that money. But what's not going to happen after that 10 years is the court isn't going to do anything to enforce it. You go in 10 years, and one day the courts gonna go, you want to garnish this person, now. It's expired, it's over, we're not going to help you, and you still call it annoy him and go, You owe me money, I want my money, that could still happen. Because technically, the obligation, moral obligation, if you want to think of it that way is still there. So as you come upon your 10 years of your money and judgment that can be extended one time for up to 10 years, super simple process certificate extension, this hasn't been paid, I just want to extend this another 10 years. So functionally, you have 20 years. But if you don't extend it at 10 years, you're done, you go to file your extension a day after your 10 years is up, the court goes You can't extend this, it's already lapsed, it's not being extended, you want the new judgment, you're not going to get it. So regular money judgments 10 years, extended one time for 10 years. 

Steve Altishin  7:40  
So let's move on then to spousal support. This is one of the, I guess, two exceptions to the plain old money judgment. How does spousal support work in terms of how long you have to collect, or have the court enforce a collection?

Will Jones  7:56  
So spousal support, in general, is special in the legislature when they dealt with this stuff made it super special. So the way that it works, and the way that I think of it in my head is it's 2510 1510. Those are the numbers and we'll break them down. So spousal support is special in a couple different ways. Oftentimes, it's exempt from the bankruptcy court. So it's really hard to bankrupt out of spousal support is one weird kind of collection piece of it. So the first number we're talking about is 25. Right from the date that the judgment comes out that deals with the spousal support award, if 25 years to collect on that, right, that's the first number because the legislature likes to give you all kinds of different numbers just to make sure you have to go and look them up every time. If they were all the same, we would know them every time but you got to look them up 25 years from the date the support award starts, well, if somebody is 50, and gets a support award for an indefinite period of time, they're going to turn 75. And under that rule, it would terminate, right, that's just the way it would go. And the court meant for it to go on forever. The second part of that rule is the 10. It's 10 years from the date that the payment is due. So person turns 75 payment becomes due the first month when they turn 75. Well, the 25 year rule is gone. So the second rule is 10 years after the payment was due, whichever of those two is later. So now the 25 year rule doesn't matter for our 75 year old. Now it's the 10 year rule. So now they have 10 years that they have their judgment to do that. You have those two as our default rules, 25 years, 10 years from the payment. Then you go back to the discussion we just had about regular judgment 10 years renew it, you get 10 years. Why this works this way. I don't know. It's the law. I didn't write it. Spousal support that extension date is 15 years. So you have 15 years in which to extend it right. I don't know why they changed that. You have the 10 years of the prior rule, but they did. Now we go back to The 10, which is if you renew your judgment within that 15 year period of 25 or 10 years, that extends it for another 10 years 2510 1510. Now to make spousal support nice and even more special, because why wouldn't we do that, you can have indefinite number of extensions, you can just keep putting them in regular money judgment 10 years you do a once you've done spousal support every 15 years, you get it for 10. But you can do that every time, you can just keep doing those, basically, until no one is left on the planet. Eventually, I think you're gonna give up on it.

Steve Altishin  10:40  
I like it. So, now that that's crystal clear, let's move on to child support, which is again, one of the special ones, right?

Will Jones  10:51  
So child support, also special, the bankruptcy court, all that stuff very hard to discharge. Plus, child support in general collections kind of takes on a little bit of a different tone, because the DOJ will collect that all on its own. So Child Support Services will do some of that stuff. But the rules on child support are really simple when we talk about judgments 35 years from the date of jet, easy. So spousal support, we're going to just go ahead and put it all in a blender and see what happens child support 35 years, thank you. And we're done. I assume that makes everybody's life a little bit easier. In general, just to kind of put this out there. So everybody knows most judgments specifically for child support, but most other judgments 9% per annum interest is a statutory rate. So 1.5% a month that does add up over a long period of time. arrearages with interest can be collected by the DOJ at more than 100% of the payment, I believe it's 115 right now might be 120, and half of the original payment. So it does add up. And that's across all the judgments, whether they're renewed, not renewed, it just keeps building. So in simple interest as well as that compound.

Steve Altishin  11:56  
Before we leave child support, one question, obviously, it's a kid, he's the child, the child may be one year old, and may go to college, and may have a support thing going for maybe not 35 years, but getting somewhere close to it. And so I'm assuming that if it's at its 30th year and the kids getting out of college and you've got arrears that haven't been paid, you don't have 35 years then ,you have 35 years from the time the judge ordered it way back. 

Will Jones  12:36  
Yeah, exactly. 

Steve Altishin  12:37  
Okay. Okay. I love that. Now, we're gonna move off this just a second one last question. And it is, you can't collect something after that time through the court. But are there some ways to still have some hammer if, and I'm just thinking to myself, you have child support? Or if you have a spousal support, another maybe equalizing judgement, I'm not so sure. And this person just refuses to pay, refuses to pay, refuses to pay-- doesn't give a rat's you know what, and doesn't pay. Can you go into court? Is there some sort of way to go into court and have the judge, is there something that judge can do to that person for not paying, which isn't actually collecting the money? 

Will Jones  13:30  
Conceptually, yes. Functionally, it gets very difficult with some of the function that happens and some of the difficulty that happens. And if you go back in time, and you read some of Larry gore and stuff, contempt, is the willful violation of a court orders your judgment, right? That's pretty simple. The problem with contempt is you're talking about the collection of money, for which you have the judgment for where there's debtor creditor law, right? So you go and try to hold somebody in contempt, you know, what you get out of that content, a judgment from what you already had. So some of the weird kinds of tricks that we can do from time to time is to go you were supposed to do this action, right? He was supposed to pay health insurance is one we used earlier, where he was supposed to transfer a car title, we'll take that and we'll put it together with and you didn't pay this either. Now we have an action that can be taken and we can start dealing with a new judgment for contempt. That's a new judgment. Now all your timelines are new. So that's one of the ways that we can kind of work around that. But technically once your judgments are expired, can't do anything about it doesn't say that it repairs people's credit. It doesn't say that it makes them nice people doesn't mean you can't talk bad behind their back what you shouldn't do Congress only please, but the court can't do anything to pull money away from them no longer have that authority once the judgment expired. 

Steve Altishin  14:51  
Got it. Last dumb question. I mean, I have a lot of dumb questions, but on this particular subject you're talking about. When the timeline ends, and I'm assuming that you just have to file, but then the procedure could take six more months, but it's not the matter of getting the money. It's a matter of when you file or serve or something.

Will Jones  15:14  
Exactly. And I think a good general rule for people to keep in their heads is the courts don't punish people for the courts delay. If this was 1802, and you could just walk in in front of a judge and go, he owes me money. He does and bangs the gavel and signs off on it. That's fine. So what the court does is they say, look, as long as you got your stuff, when in time, we'll get to it. Our delay shouldn't punish you. And that's across all types of cases. We don't want to harm you because we can't get to your case today.

Steve Altishin  15:40  
Well, gosh, Will, thanks for sitting down with us today and talking about this. This is a subject that sounds easy, it's not easy. And I at least would advise people if they come to this situation, to go back to their lawyer, because there's stuff going on that needs to be done. Because if you don't file correctly, I don't think they probably give you any leeway for that either. So thanks for joining us today. If anyone has any further questions, please feel free to contact us. We will get you connected with an attorney who can help you, and until next time as always, stay safe, stay happy, be well.

Outro:
This has been Modern Family Matters, a legal podcast focusing on providing real answers and direction for individuals and families. Our podcast is sponsored by Pacific Cascade Legal, serving families in Oregon and Washington. If you are in need of legal counsel or have additional questions about a family law matter important to you, please visit our websites at pacificcascadelegal.com or pacificcascadefamilylaw.com. You can also call our headquarters at (503) 227-0200 to schedule a case evaluation with one of our seasoned attorneys. Modern Family Matters, advocating for your better tomorrow and offering legal solutions important to the modern family.