DUI Terminates Florida Woman’s Alimony
We always knew that a DUI was expensive. On average, a DUI can cost the defendant between $5,000 and $20,000, but a West Palm Beach woman recently discovered that drunk driving can be much more expensive than that. Patricia Craissati was divorced in 2001, and the agreed that Mr. Craissati would pay her more than $2,000/month in alimony for the rest of her life…unless she remarried or “cohabitated” with another person for more than three months.
In 2005, Patricia was involved in a drunk driving accident which severely injured two men, and was sentenced to nine years in prison. Now, her ex-husband has prevailed with the creative argument that Patricia has been “cohabitating” with her cellmate for more than three months and is thus no longer entitled to alimony.
While the argument sounds a bit absurd–after all, Patricia’s cohabitation isn’t voluntary, and surely not what the parties contemplated when settling their divorce case–but this week two members of a three-judge appellate panel agreed with Mr. Craissati and ruled that Patricia was, indeed, cohabitating and that her ex-husband was therefore no longer liable for alimony.
