People often want to know how it affects their divorce when one of the couple has had an affair or committed some infidelity, in heart or body.  As attorneys, we have had this question arise from both sides of the fence.

First, let’s talk about “fault.” It’s a bit confusing because people speak about fault in two different ways in Utah divorces.

First, sometimes people call Utah a “no fault” State. This is a statement about the “grounds” for getting divorced. Second, parties to a divorce will want to know if alimony, other monetary awards, custody or parent-time in the divorce can be resolved more favorably for them if they can show the other party is “at fault” for causing the deterioration of the marriage. The most prevalent time this argument is made is when the other party had an affair or committed some other infidelity. Here the person is asking a question about the law regarding “fault” and how it affects outcome. These are two very different things.

We will call the first usage of “fault” GROUNDS and the second usage of “fault” OUTCOME.
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The Utah Code for Standard Minimum Parent-time is found at Utah Code Annotated 30-3-35 (and 30-3-35.3 if your children are less than 5 years old). Utah Code Annotated 30-3-35 was updated in 2010 and below we provide the most recent version, as of November 2010.

This code provision provides the basic parent-time schedule for the regular rotation of parent-time, holidays, snow days, and many other divisions of time and duties between parents, including the ability for third parties to provide transportation for parent-time. If you are subject to this provision by agreement or court order, it is well worth reading carefully or even coming into our office for an inexpensive ($25.00) consultation to have the code interpreted to apply to your particular circumstances. (more…)

The Utah Court website and the Utah Office of Recovery Services website provide child support calculators that use the current Utah child support guidelines to accurately calculate child support.  You can link to them from this site by clicking on the links in the previous sentence.

BUT a child support calculator is not helpful to you if you don’t know what information to put into the calculator and why! (more…)