Lifetime Alimony -
Your ex Will Be the Parasite on Your Back Until the Day One of You Dies

Lifetime alimony is for life - until she dies, you die, or she remarries.  Notice that neither of you have legal control over who dies first, but the one controllable variable is in the alimony recipient's hand.  Does the Tennessee legislature actually believe an alimony recipient is going to give up her court appointed sugar daddy to marry someone else, especially when that ex can legally co-habitate with the lover(s) of her choice?  An excellent example of this injustice is the man who took his ex to court because she was cohabitating. She succesfully argued in court that the new boyfriend wasn't contributing very much to her living expenses and so it shouldn't result in her loosing her alimony.

It is not only that the alimony recipient forces the payer to work until the time of death, there is the constant threat of the alimony recipient and her attorney dragging the payer back into court anytime they wish, forcing him to hire an attorney, take time off of his job or his business and forcing the payer to provide every financial transaction he has made since the last time he was dragged into court.  The alimony recipient and her lawyer know full well the judge will more than likely make the poor indentured servant pay the alimony recipient's attorney fees.  It is win-no lose situation for the recipient, a lose-lose situation for the payer.

The TN Supreme Court ruled in Bogan vs Bogan that retirement can be considered as a reason a lifetime alimony payer could seek a modification of payments. It is incomprehensible that this should even be questioned.  What the courts are saying and the Tennessee Legislature has sanctioned is a system in which a parasite is granted to live off one person and not work all her life, and her ex husband must take a chance that when he retires after supporting her financially for years on end, some judge might be willing to lower his alimony payments. If he takes that chance and retires, and the judge doesn't lower his alimony, he is in big trouble financially. Incidentally, in Bogan vs Bogan, his alimony was lowered from $2,300 to $945/month, not eliminated.  Of course, the legalized extortion is not over, he still remains under the jurisdiction of the court and can be dragged back into court at the whim of his ex.

To see how embedded the alimony income transfer is in the minds of some of the judiciary read the dissenting opinion in Bogan vs Bogan

By comparison, the sentence for the Class A felony of 2nd degree murder is not less than fifteen (15) years nor more than sixty (60) years. Tennessee Code § 40-35-111. So with parole, one could easily be out in less time than Mr. Bogan had paid alimony at the time of his retirement.