Recipients fight alimony system change

03/30/2005

Jean Hopfensperger, Star Tribune
March 30, 2005

Evelyn Cook was floored when she received a letter a few months ago from the Minnesota Department of Human Services saying it would stop collecting alimony payments, ending a decades-long service.

Although alimony is not as common as it was 20 years ago, thousands of women rely on payments from ex-husbands to make ends meet. Cook, a former Plymouth homemaker, said she abandoned a teaching career to raise her children and can’t command a decent salary anymore.

Since Cook’s divorce several years ago, the Human Services Department has withheld alimony from her former husband’s paychecks and sent it to her in South Carolina.

A bill now in the Legislature would continue the service now scheduled to stop in June.

“It’s not costing the state any money,” Cook said of the collection help. “And for women like me, it offers a sense of security and a neutral ground for making payments.”

On Tuesday, a Senate panel agreed with Cook. The Judiciary Subcommittee on Family Law voted unanimously to include the measure continuing alimony collections in its omnibus spending bill.

The department did not oppose the measure. It decided to stop collecting alimony only after it learned that current law does not specifically grant it authority to do so, said Wayland Campbell, who oversees the payments, now known as “spousal maintenance.”

The bill is a reminder of an era when women routinely abandoned careers to raise children, and when a single wage earner typically supported a family.

About 4,000 women receive alimony through the collection system, used primarily for collecting child support, said Campbell. About 1,700 are at risk of losing the service because they don’t have active child-support cases, he said.

None of this sits well with Cook.

“It feels discriminatory,” said Cook, who works as an administrative assistant. “Just because I’m 55 years old, and my kids are out of the home, doesn’t mean it won’t impact my family. My children need me to take care of myself. I need to take care of my dad.”

Cook is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed against the department by the Rider Bennett law firm of Minneapolis. Attorney Deborah Yerigan said two types of women are awarded alimony these days. One is older women leaving decades-long marriages—often to successful men—who are unprepared to support themselves. And some younger women still are awarded alimony, but typically for shorter periods, she said.

“We’re not trying to make ex-husbands out to be deadbeats,” said Yerigan. “But just like with child support, it’s good to have something in place to protect people from the ones ... who don’t pay.”

The collection service pays for itself, because the person paying the alimony pays $15 a month for the service, Campbell told the committee.

Diane Cushman, director of the Legislative Commission on the Economic Status of Women, testified that she’s gotten at least a dozen calls from women scheduled to lose the collection service.

“Most of them are elderly women,” she said. “Most of them are low-income. And most of them are scared to death. They don’t have the resources to go to the courts for enforcement.”

The House Civil Law and Elections Committee is scheduled to take up the bill today.