An alimony judgment you already have is not erased by a later divorce that fails to address alimony.
A Decree Is Not a Claim
Evans v. Evans, 191 Ga. 752 (1941), draws the line. A wife brought a separate maintenance action, and the parties agreed to temporary alimony of $45 per month, which the court made its judgment. He paid it for years. No permanent alimony judgment was ever taken.
The husband then filed a separate divorce action. His wife did not contest it and did not ask for alimony there. The divorce was granted in 1939, and neither the case nor the decree mentioned alimony at all.
When he stopped paying, she brought contempt proceedings for $720 that had accrued after the divorce. He argued the divorce decree had automatically ended his obligation.
The Georgia Supreme Court disagreed. The judgment “was not nullified by the decree of divorce. It stands upon a different footing from a mere unadjudicated claim for alimony.” He was ordered to pay and held in contempt.
Abeyance Requires an Alimony Ruling
Evans makes a second point that is easy to miss. The statute puts a separate maintenance proceeding in abeyance when a divorce is filed and the judge “shall have made his order on the motion for alimony.”
The Court held the statute “does not authorize abeyance of the proceeding for temporary alimony on account of filing suit for divorce, where the judge has not ‘made his order on the motion for alimony.’”
So the filing alone changes nothing. If nobody raises alimony in the divorce, your existing award keeps running.
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This post is a quick overview of the law and is not intended as legal advice. Please feel free to contact our office for a consultation if you have questions about this or any other legal aspects regarding your case!