Thank (or blame) Denton divorce attorney as true alimony comes to Texas Sunday, August 28, 2011 DENTON – (The Dallas Morning News) -- Football legend and broadcaster Terry Bradshaw used to grouse good-naturedly on late-night TV about how difficult it is to get a divorce when your wife is a divorce lawyer. His ex and the mother of his two children, Charla Bradshaw, isn’t just any divorce attorney.
On Thursday, when Texas becomes a full-fledged alimony state, you can thank or blame her. The 49-year-old managing partner of the Denton office of KoonsFuller PC was the driving force behind legislation that makes alimony available to many more warring spouses.
“This brings us up to speed with other states,” Bradshaw says. “Some states leave it up to the discretion of the judge. I’m sure the recipients would love for our statutes to become broader. And that could happen. But I’m happy with how far we’ve come from where we were.”
There’s a mistaken belief that Texas doesn’t have alimony. But 16 years ago, the Lone Star State became the last in the union to adopt any form of alimony. It’s called “spousal maintenance,” and it’s among the most restrictive in the nation. As a result, it’s rarely used.
During the last session of the Texas Legislature, Bradshaw was a member of the legislative committee for the family law section of the State Bar of Texas. She helped write the alimony legislation, testified before lawmakers and lobbied for the bill’s passage.
“Alimony’s been the red herring, the white elephant, the 600-pound gorilla that no one wanted to bring up,” says Bradshaw, who in her 18 years as a divorce attorney has seen way too many wives get the short end of the stick when it comes to income after the divorce. “I just jumped out there and did it.”
Bradshaw says the next few days are critical for people considering divorce.
“If somebody walks into my office right now, and I think they’re a candidate for the new alimony, I’m going to tell them that we’re going to file after Sept. 1, and vice versa if it’s the other way.”
Without Bradshaw’s leadership, Texas might have continued to languish in the backwaters of spousal support, says fellow committee member in Kathy Kinser, principal of Kinser & Bates LLP in Dallas. “We had one of the worst alimony statutes in the country. To say that Charla was passionate about changing that is putting it mildly. She, pretty much on her own, researched all 50 states’ alimony statutes, did a complete overview for the committee and made suggested changes that were not overwhelmingly accepted by all of the committee members.”
And that’s putting committee opposition mildly.
Rallying support
The new legislation probably would have died in committee if Bradshaw hadn’t lobbied other leading family lawyers for their support. The changes were included in the family law package and were passed into law with surprisingly little legislative debate.
One theory is that the Texas Legislature was so distracted by other issues that it failed to take notice that one of the state’s most historically contentious issues was being overhauled.
Since its passage, there’s been almost no publicity about this or two other big family law changes effective this week. One gives judges more discretion in dealing with spouses who lie and cheat about assets and the other gives relief to men who’ve been nailed for child support for kids who turn out not to be theirs.
Bradshaw was keen on all three, but it was the alimony statute that pushed her buttons. She’s a longtime advocate for giving women a greater opportunity for getting alimony.
Texas is a community property state where the division of assets starts out at 50-50. This doesn’t change with the new legislation.
Nor does the law that presumes that there’s no alimony due unless proven otherwise.
But there are two critical modifications. One increases the maximum amount of spousal support from $2,500 a month to $5,000 a month, or 20 percent of gross earnings, whichever is lower. The second considers how long the marriage lasted to determine the duration of the alimony.
“There are plenty of hoops in the statute that they’ve got to go through to get alimony,” she says.
Bradshaw gets paid $425 an hour. So why did she give up countless billable hours in this pursuit?
“In any profession, you need to give back to it, but also because I felt it needed to be changed. I’m so tired of telling someone who’s been married 50 years, ‘I’m sorry, you’re going to have to take half of your husband’s retirement income, and that’s it.’”
She's been there
Bradshaw has been divorced twice. Her second marriage, to divorce attorney and mediator Coye Conner, ended earlier this year. “If people say, ‘You don’t understand’ or ‘You don’t know what I’m going through,’ I can say, ‘Well, yes I do.’”
Bradshaw, who grew up in Denton, earned her undergraduate degree from Texas Woman’s University and completed all of the coursework (but not the thesis) for a master’s in marriage and family therapy.
She had been accepted to law school at Southern Methodist University and wanted to get started on a career she’d been thinking about since working as a paralegal temp at a family law firm in Houston.
“I try to help people understand what’s happening to them. I guess this is where that therapist part of me comes out,” she says. “I like to take a chaotic situation and help people move forward. It’s just as much planning about what life is going to be like after divorce as it is about getting the case over.”
Bradshaw admits to playing up her looks as sucker punch to people who think that blonde equates with dumb. “It works a lot better with lawyers who don’t know me,” she says.
She had her own practice until 2008, when she merged her practice into KoonsFuller.
Ike Vanden Eykel, principal of KoonsFuller, says there’s none better when it comes to combining presence and acumen. “I took note of her very early in her career as someone who is insightful and deals with people at a very high level. She combines intelligence and brut tenacity in a courtroom. She’s just amazing.”
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AT A GLANCE: Charla Bradshaw
Age: 49
Resides: Westlake
Born: Post, Texas
Title: Managing partner Denton office of KoonsFuller PC
Education: Graduated from Denton High School, 1980; bachelor of science, summa cum laude, Texas Woman’s University; juris doctor from the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University, 1993
Personal: Married and divorced twice; two grown daughters
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TEXAS DIVORCE LAW CHANGES START THURSDAY
On Thursday, the terrain of Texas’ divorce landscape is in for major changes.
Alimony will become available to more people. Judges will have more power to punish those who lie and cheat about their assets during a divorce. And men who are wrongfully paying child support can file suit to get out of it.
Denton family law attorney Charla Bradshaw, who served on the legislative committee for the State Bar of Texas and lobbied for the changes, explains:
Alimony, a.k.a.
The maximum amount of “spousal maintenance” was increased from $2,500 a month to $5,000 a month, or 20 percent of gross earnings (whichever is less), to provide for a spouse’s “minimum reasonable needs.” Those needs, which aren’t defined by law, will be determined by the court on a case-by-case basis.
When a spouse or child is a victim of family violence, the spouse is eligible for maintenance support for up to five years if he or she lacks sufficient property and earning ability to provide for minimum reasonable needs.
A spouse who is not a victim of family violence but has been married for at least 10 years and lacks sufficient property and earning ability can also seek alimony. The length of the marriage determines the duration of support.
If a couple has been married for at least 10 years but not more than 20 years, the spouse asking for maintenance support may receive it for up to five years.
If the couple was married for at least 20 years but not more than 30 years, the duration of maintenance is no more than seven years.
If the couple was married for 30 years or more, the spouse seeking maintenance may receive it for up to 10 years.
Economic fraud
This law addresses a fairly common practice of one spouse hiding or undervaluing assets during the divorce. It directs the court to recalculate the estate as if the fraud had not occurred and then divide the reconstituted estate as community property. The court can also award the wronged spouse a money judgment.
Mistaken paternity
Under this legislation, sometimes called the “Who’s Your Daddy Law,” a man who’s been paying child support but finds out he’s not the biological father has one year from the time of his discovery to file suit to stop the court-ordered payments.
If the court determines that he is not the biological father, his obligation stops immediately, except for unpaid child support that is still due.
A judge may grant visitation rights to a man who seeks it, even if he is not the biological father, if his absence will cause mental harm to the child.
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