Under current New Jersey law, alimony is determined at the time of divorce, and it can either be negotiated by spouses and their lawyers or it can be ordered by a court of law. Whether alimony is handled in or out of court, the purpose of alimony is always to establish fairness between divorcing parties.

Alimony is often used to level the playing field when a spouse has made significant sacrifices during the marriage. For example, a woman might be entitled to alimony because she gave up her career during her marriage and now she has a decreased earning potential. In an interesting case that is taking place outside of court, a New Jersey woman is arguing that she deserves alimony to finance the preservation of her eggs.

The woman is asking her future ex-husband for $20,000 to pay for the costs related to egg freezing. While it seems like an odd request, she claims that as a married couple, the two shared an expectation to start a family. Now that the woman is older, her window of fertility may soon close.

During the couple’s marriage, they reportedly underwent multiple unsuccessful in vitro fertilization attempts. The woman is now claiming that the fertility treatments were part of her marital lifestyle, and New Jersey law states that the marital lifestyle should be maintained to a reasonable extent after divorce.

Whether this woman will be able to attain alimony for her eggs remains to be determined. There are no previous cases on the books that address this exact issue; there have been, however, cases in which courts have given women the custody of embryos that were frozen during past relationships, finding that women do have an interest due to time-barred fertility.

While this case is fairly unusual, it is an example of the preferences of many divorcing couples to handle alimony and other family law issues outside of court. Working with attorneys to negotiate such matters gives people the flexibility to come up with their own solutions to unique problems.

Source: New York Times, “Alimony for Your Eggs,” Sarah Elizabeth Richards, Sept. 6, 2013