Spousal support is not mandatory. The facts and equities in a particular case must be considered in awarding spousal support. One of the factors that must be considered is domestic violence, which includes “abuse perpetuated against a child of a party. Genise’s conduct in providing alcohol to minors and forcibly cutting her daughter’s hair qualifies as “domestic violence” by any reasonable definition of the term.
The Court of Appeal did not think kindly of Genise. “We need not consider here what role the fault of a party may have on the award of spousal support in the ordinary case. This is far from the ordinary case. Here, in order to molest Shane, Genise provided her son and other children with alcohol and pornography, and assaulted her daughter. When Genise’s daughter tried to obtain help for the psychological damage, Genise threatened her daughter with the warning she would be removed from her home. In addition, Genise’s children’s testimony made it clear that their sense of humiliation and betrayal caused by Genise’s arrest and conviction was psychologically devastating. Finally, the harm Genise caused to Shane and his family cannot be calculated. In this case the trial court was more than justified in denying Genise spousal support.”
Gomez v. Schu, decided December 6, 2016.
These are real appellate court cases that boil down to a specific Burning Legal Question. The dialogue is my conception of what the attorneys might have said, not necessarily the actual arguments. At the end of each case there is a link to the Smoldering Legal Answer - what the judges actually decided.
