Legal Question in Family Law in Maryland

Re: Maryland Guidelines

Judges have a lot of discretion about what they might order in alimony, child support and a division of marital assets. There are really no "normal" guidelines or rulings regarding alimony or a division of retirement pay or other marital property. There are guidelines for child support, which are presumed to be correct for all children, but that presumption can rebutted by the specific facts of an individual case. If a judge orders payments without some basis in the facts of the case, he will probably be reversed on appeal, but if the facts reasonably support the judge's decision it will be affirmed. If the judge found your ex-wife to be in need of temporary, rehabilitative alimony and found you to have enough financial resources to pay it and to meet your own needs, he would have the discretion to order the payments. There are a lot of factors a judge is supposed to consider in reaching such a decision, including the ability of each of you to be self-supporting, the length of your marriage, the causes of the end of the marriage (in other words, fault), and the needs of the children. A lot of the basis for a judge's decision is subjective, and as long as an appeals court concludes that the decision of the judge was reasonably supported by the facts of the case, even if the appeals court judges would have decided differently, they will affirm the trial judge.