Re Spousal Support My ex husband earns $120,000 per year.

1. The order was to be reviewed one year after I retrained and obtained full time work. The existing order will end Oct.13, 2010. I retrained in my field ( ultrasound) from Oct.2008-0ctober 2009. I began working full time Oct 13/09. I am working on this now because it took so long to get into family court last time and I want to be prepared.

2. There are three children, ages 19, 21 and 23. They are all in university and two live with me 4 months of the year.( summer and Christmas)

3. He has always disagreed with the order to provide support for me. He changed my child support for two of the children to spousal support, in order to be able to claim the support. The change wasn't noticed by me until it was too late and my lawyer didn't seem to think it mattered. We have been divorced for 5 years and my understanding was that spousal support would continue for many years. I do not understand his reasoning but he told me he was done in October. I wanted to know if you think I have reason to pursue more support.

4. When the order was made I was earning approx. $30,000 per year as a daycare teacher.

When we first separated I received both spousal and child support. The initial agreement was that if his income increased or mine decreased by more than $10,000 per year, we would go back to court to change the order.

During the summer of 2007 I had a breakdown and was in the hospital for most of the summer. My income was reduced to zero. I applied to go back to court for a support adjustment and it took almost 1 year to get into family court. During that time I worked in a daycare to try and support my son and myself ( this amount was the $30,000 they used for my income) .

On the day of court, the lawyers were going back and forth with different proposals....this was just before we were to meet with the judge. My lawyer advised me to accept one of the offers and I did not notice it was no longer child support but all spousal support. My exhusband laughed at this afterwards and said they got one over on us. It was too late to change and my lawyer said it didn't matter. It did though as I have to claim it all as income and he gets to write it all off. I have accepted that ultimately it was my mistake but I felt my lawyer should have caught on they had changed the wording.

Thank you for your advice. I wanted to ensure I was correct in continuing to ask for spousal support.

Laurie Small