Modification of a Divorce Agreement

Divorce agreements are often in need of changing as time goes along. Obviously, people’s lives change. Their needs change. Their incomes change. Their schedules change. So a typical reason that a divorce agreement might be modified is that the parenting schedule has to change because someone’s work schedule changed or that the child support needs to change because someone has significant increase in income or that medical insurance loan. Who’s going to provide it is now a problem because one party becomes unemployed. Those are just quick examples of why divorce agreements might need to change. The one thing though that does not change ever in a divorce agreement is the division of the assets and liabilities that is considered non-modifiable by a court. Each party is entitled to know that whatever they receive for asset in debt allocation is something they can rely upon and moving forward towards their future. But the child related provisions do change and those are always modifiable because the court wants to be able to take control of anything related to the children so that they can (not sure) the best interest of the child. So in every divorce agreement, we designate what is modifiable and what is not modifiable. So for instance, the asset division and the debt division that’s considered to survive the entry of the divorce judgment. Survival means that it does not get modified and if a term merges in a divorce agreement that means that it is modifiable and subject to modification by the court.

This informational blog post was provided by Cynthia Hanley, an experienced Massachusetts Divorce Lawyer.