Hi, I’m getting a divorce in California (I know, I’m very lucky, right?) and my wife is asking for at least 3k monthly to go on the agreement for alimony + child support, which I’m thinking is way too much money. She is also taking half of everything (house, assets, appliances, etc.), including half of my 401k since we’ve been married for over 10 years in CA.

She also says she’s not going to work full time (she only works part time now) and now I can understand why (of course, she wants me to provide her with the same living standard without getting a real job).

I looked it up and the general rule of thumb is that she gets 40% of my net income minus half of hers. But she is making almost working part time at minimum wage so that doesn’t help… Even though she is supposed to work towards becoming ser-sufficient, she doesn’t seem to be worried about that (and getting 3k out of me every month, who can guarantee she ever will?).

I take home 8k a month and we have two kids - one is a minor (13) and the other is not. We’ll share the minors time and the adult will live with me. For a very particular reason I’d rather not specify here, the adult son is not able to work so I’ll have to provide for him too. On that note, I was wondering if that can be considered as a hardship and be factored into the calculation of the alimony as well?

I’ve tried to use different alimony calculators online but I get completely different figures even though they both are using the same Santa Clara method.

To summarize my questions here: 1. When the judge will look at how much my spouse is making, is he/she going to consider how much she’s currently making or how much she would make if she worked full time (because there’s no reason why she wouldn’t, unless she wants to live on my money forever - which a lot of people would tend to making 3k a month)?

  1. How much the hardship with my son would factor in into thhis calculation? What dollar amount would be used to factor that in?

Lastly, if I wanted to get a calculation result that is as close as possible to what the judge would determine, what’s the best way to do that? Is there like a specialist that could do that for me? I talked to two marriage lawyers but they both were very vague in their answers….

I can’t resist but also ask - what’s the BS that says we have to provide the same standard of living to our spouses after the divorce?? How do you cut a cake in half and still give the whole cake to your wife to give her the same standard? Oh, I know how! You starve to death and give her your half!