Child Support
Residency Requirements and Grounds for Divorce
You or your spouse must be a resident of Tennessee for at least six months to file for divorce. A divorce case begins when one spouse files a complaint for divorce. The divorce papers must be filed in a county where either you or your spouse resides.
Tennessee has both no-fault and fault divorces. For a no-fault divorce, there only needs to be a statement that there are irreconcilable differences within the marriage and a showing the spouses have lived apart for two years. Note that you and your spouse need to agree on child support, custody, and property and debt division issues. In a no-fault divorce, there is a waiting period of 60 days from the complaint filing date before divorce is granted; 90 days if there are children.
The fault grounds include:
- Adultery
- Desertion
- Cruel and inhumane treatment
- Felony conviction with prison sentence
- Habitual drunkenness or narcotics abuse
Dividing the Property
Marital property, the assets and debts acquired during your marriage, is divided "equitably" when you divorce. This means a fair division, and it may not be an equal division, depending on your case. Spouses keep their "separate property," which is property owned before marriage, or received by gift or inheritance.
Know that separate property may be reclassified as marital property if it was commingled or mixed with marital property. Examples of separate property include:
- Assets you had before you married
- Income produced by a separate property investment
- Inheritance
In deciding how to divide the property owned by divorcing couples, judges will consider a number of factors, including:
- Marriage length
- Age, physical and mental health, vocational skills, employability, earning capacity, estate, financial liabilities and needs of each spouse
- Contribution by one spouse to the education, training or increased earning power of the other spouse
- Relative ability of each spouse to acquire assets in the future
- Contribution of each spouse as a homemaker or wage earner to the acquisition, preservation, appreciation, depreciation or dissipation of the marital or separate property
- Value of the separate property
- Estate of each spouse at the time of the marriage
- Economic circumstances of each spouse at the time the division of property is to become effective
- Tax consequences to each spouse
- Amount of Social Security benefits available to each spouse
Be prepared with information on your property, including when you purchased it, an estimate of value, and details such as account numbers, serial numbers and so forth. You'll be ready to meet with a Tennessee divorce lawyer and it can save you a lot of time and money.
Alimony
Alimony is a court-ordered payment from one spouse to another for financial support. A court can order alimony to either party. State law provides for several alimony types, serving different purposes, such as rehabilitation, allowing a spouse to re-enter the job market. In deciding the amount that should be paid, a court will generally consider such factors as:
- Relative earning capacity, obligations, needs, and financial resources of each spouse
- Relative education and training of each spouse
- Marriage duration
- Age, mental and physical condition of each spouse
- Whether custodial parent of a minor child will be able to seek and hold an outside job
- Separate property
- Distribution of the marital property distribution
- Standard of living
- Contributions to the marriage
- Relative fault of each spouse
- Tax consequences of the award
A court can order temporary maintenance while the divorce is pending. The temporary order ends when the final judgment for divorce is entered.
The spouses may agree to make alimony nonmodifiable. If there is no agreement, maintenance may be modified only upon a showing of a "change in circumstances." If alimony is not received at the time of the divorce, it cannot be obtained later.
Child Custody and Visitation
In Tennessee, the court will make child custody decisions based upon the "best interest" of the child. The court may award sole custody to one spouse or joint custody to the spouses or even custody to a third party. There is a presumption in favor of joint custody if both parents agree. The court considers all relevant factors including the following:
- Love, affection and emotional ties existing between the parents and child
- Disposition of the parents to provide the child with food, clothing, medical care, education and other necessary care and the degree to which a parent has been the primary caregiver
- Importance of continuity in the child's life and the length of time the child has lived in a stable, satisfactory environment
- Stability of the family unit of the parents
- Mental and physical health of the parents
- Home, school, and community record of the child
- The reasonable preferences of children 12 and older
- Physical or emotional abuse to the child, to the other parent or to any other person
- Character and behavior of any other person who resides in or frequents the home of a parent
- Each parent's past and potential for future performance of parenting responsibilities
State law requires parents to attend a parenting education seminar and to create a written parenting plan. These requirements are aimed at securing and supporting parenting roles in divorce.
If the court orders sole custody, it will usually award the non-custodial parent visitation rights to see the child. Visitation terms are granted unless doing so would place your child in imminent danger of being harmed.
After the custody order is signed by the judge and filed with the court clerk, both parents are bound by it. A "material change in circumstances" will justify a modification of a child custody order. The court will then consider the petition to modify custody using a best interests standard.
Child Support
Both parents are responsible for supporting their children, and child support is is generally ordered through the age of 18 years old or until the child is a high school graduate. The amount is based on child support guidelines, and is presumed to be correct. A court can deviate from the guideline amount, but must make a written finding stating why. Going outside the guidelines may happen if a child has special needs or the guidelines amount wouldn't be fair to a parent.
A Tennessee child support order can be modified if there has been a "significant variance" between the child support guideline amount and the current support order. The court must increase or decrease child support based on the guidelines unless the gap exists due to an issue already decided by the court, and the conditions haven't changed, such as a child's need for added support.
Questions for Your Attorney