My ex gets monthly alimony and we have a custody agreement. We have a verbal agreement that if I will omit a section in the custody agreement that states that she cannot have a party of the opposite sex stay the night that she will omit the alimony. How can we do this without having to go back through the court system? Can we just draft up a document and have it signed by both parties and have it notarized? Thanks for the help!
*** Not a lawyer ***
If the current situation is a court order (including a separation agreement that was incorporated into the divorce order), then I believe you’ll need to go back to court to have it modified. But if you both agree on what is to be modified, it may be able to be done as a “consent order”. You’d probably want to have a lawyer look at your specific situation and help you draft the documents for the court, particularly to make sure you don’t wind up not being able to modify the alimony while still giving her what she wants.
If your alimony and custody agreement are in the form of a signed and notarized separation agreement, and the agreement has provision for modification, then you should be able to follow the terms of the provision in order to modify it.
Note that the “alimony recapture rule” may affect your income taxes if it has been less than three years since you started paying the alimony. There’s a calculator on this site to help you determine that (I’d link to it, but linking is disabled).
You can enter a modification of the separation agreement to change the provisions regarding child custody and alimony. If the provisions you want to alter are in a court order, you will have to file a motion to modify, but you can also submit a consent order to the judge changing the underlying orders.