Please personalize the following email template and send it to your Massachusetts' legislators. The legislators need to hear your voice!
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Dear Representative (or Senator) ______________,
Reforming Massachusetts' archaic alimony laws has become a top news story, as the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, The New York Times, Boston Magazine, the Boston Business Journal, The Lowell Sun, Fox news 25, NECN, WBZ TV4, and the Metrowest Daily have all published horror stories on the injustices from the current case law approach to alimony (see http://www.massalimonyreform.org/index.html to view the stories).
I support House Bill 1785, "An Act to Relative to the Determination of Alimony Payments". This law will end the abuses caused by unclear alimony laws that have been reported in the press. Even the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recognized that Legislative law did not allow for an alimony payer to retire in the recent Pierce V. Pierce decision, a freedom available to all other Americans (see the Boston Globe, http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/11/sjc_retirement.html?s).
Also, as reported in the press, current case law discourages women from marrying divorced Massachusetts men since the Probate and Family courts have ordered second-wives to work and pay alimony to their husband's first wife. This means that second wives have lost a fundamental right to freely chose who to marry.
House Bill 1785 is written to fix the injustices identified by the press, and to achieve the following goals:
- Support self-sufficiency and independence for the lower-earning spouse through alimony payments that continue during a transition period, which lasts more than a decade in long-term marriages;
- Maintain appropriate judicial discretion to fairly judge unique circumstances where the lower-earning spouse is physically or mentally unable to work to gain self-sufficiency, continuing alimony payments in special cases, and only until no longer needed;
- End lifelong alimony dependency, allowing each party of the divorce to move-on with independent lives;
- Provide alimony payers the same right to retire that is enjoyed by all other citizens;
- Protect second wives from current case law, which requires judges to fully investigate second-wives' income and assets and then force the second wives to pay alimony to their husband's non-working or under-employed first wife, or face jail;
- End expensive legal battles over vague alimony laws and interpretations; and
- Provide equal and consistent application of the law, regardless of the judge.
Please work with the Joint Judiciary Committee to move House Bill 1785 to a vote in the House and Senate as soon as possible.
Thank you,
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