Modification

Changing Your Divorce Decree When Your Life Changes

As hard as you may try to make the correct arrangements when you and your spouse divorce, change is an inevitable part of life. There may come a time when you need to request a modification to your divorce decree to accommodate some significant change in your life. Our Salt Lake City attorneys can petition to modify your divorce decree.

To change a divorce decree in Utah, you must be able to prove a significant change in circumstance that was unforeseeable at the time of the divorce and remains in the child’s best interest. Substantial changes may include:

• The loss of a job
• Getting a job or promotion
• Having another child
• Relocating more than 150 miles away from your former spouse’s residence
• Discovery of child abuse
• Mental illness of a child or parent
• Drug or alcohol abuse by a child or parent
• Criminal charges against or the conviction of a parent
• Chronic denial of visitation by the custodial parent

If you are petitioning for a change in child support or alimony, whether you wish to lower the payment or have the payment increased, you must show a significant enough change in circumstances on your part to warrant this. If the change in child support is within the first three years of the divorce and your income has decreased or increased more than 30 percent, you may not have to petition to make the change. Talk with the lawyers of Brown Family Law about your situation.

Salt Lake Child Custody Modification Attorney

Custody of your children may need to be modified as they get older and their schedules change. If the custodial parent intends to move more than 150 miles away from the noncustodial parent, he or she must give notice within 60 days of the move, and the noncustodial parent has the right to petition for a hearing as to whether the move is in the children’s best interests.

We understand that life changes. When that has a significant effect on your duties to your children or to your former spouse, we can help.