Escanaba, MI Divorce Law Firms & Lawyers

You are entitled to one-half the community property. If you can prove to the court that the house and the business are community property, then you would get one-half of that. I suggest you call the State Bar of Idaho and get a referral for a family-law attorney. Based on what you have said, it will not be easy.

You are right to be thinking ahead as to what documents to make sure to take with you. You will want to have at least the following documentation: your last few years of tax returns; a current statement of the loan owing on the home; your bank statements and retirement statements. Whether you are entitled to spousal support or attorney's fees, etc., is dependent on your specific facts and income and an attorney can help you determine how strong your case is and what your rights and responsibilities are. If there are other assets that may be worth something (gun collections, jewelry, artwork, furniture) you will want to document those as well (pictures or video with date stamping can work). You could also discuss with an attorney whether appraisals would be helpful to have.

There are many things that you would need to do and issues that you would need to clear up before you could stop paying alimony. First, in response to your question as to whether the UK divorce decree is enforceable in the USA, the answer is that it can be enforceable in the USA if it is registered with the court of competent jurisdiction in the United States. Second, mere belief that your ex-spouse is no longer residing in the United States (and as you mentioned, your ex-spouse must reside in the United States as a condition of receiving alimony) cannot justify a unilateral decision on your part to stop paying alimony. This means that after you have duly registered your UK divorce decree in the United States (and in Utah) with the court of competent jurisdiction, you would then need to file, depending upon the language in your decree, either a petition to modify the decree of divorce or a motion to terminate alimony based upon your ex-spouse's failure to comply with the alimony conditions of the decree of divorce. Only after the court orders that you may terminate the payment of alimony would you be legally permitted to terminate the payment of alimony. However, the court would likely grant a motion on your part to suspend payment of alimony while the case was pending, so that you do not end up paying alimony month after month after month only to have the court determined that you should not have been paying all that time, yet being unable to recover that money from your ex-spouse who would most likely have spent it.