A Florida appeals court threw out a lower court order that stripped a mother of all parenting time and denied her alimony after she took a steep pay cut.
Rebecca Zalkin saw her earnings tumble from $49,449.60 to $20,000 during the 2020-2021 school year when she stepped down from a teaching position to work as a teacher's assistant. Following that shift, a Broward County trial judge ruled she had voluntarily underemployed herself, assigned her an imputed salary of $54,000, rejected her alimony claim, and handed her former husband, Jeffrey Zalkin, sole decision-making authority and total timesharing over their two minor children.
But the trial judge jumped the gun.
The Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled that the trial court failed to make mandatory statutory findings regarding actual financial need and ability to pay before terminating the alimony claim. Under Florida law, judges must measure both parties' net monthly incomes rather than relying on gross estimates. The appellate panel found the trial court bypassed this net-income calculation and improperly overlooked Jeffrey Zalkin's voluntary contributions to his 401(k) retirement plan when sizing up his financial capacity.
Courts can impute income to a spouse who chooses to earn less. Yet Florida law limits that power. A judge cannot pick numbers out of thin air.
Penalizing a spouse requires concrete proof that a specific, qualifying job is open and attainable right now. While a school representative testified at trial that a teacher holding a master's degree could earn $54,000, the record contained zero proof that an actual opening existed for Rebecca Zalkin at that rate. The appellate judges struck down that $54,000 figure as speculative. They also rejected the trial judge's attempt to impute investment returns from retirement assets without confirming that withdrawals would preserve the underlying principal.
The bench did not wipe out every trial finding. It affirmed that ongoing financial gifts from the wife's father were recurring contributions rather than loans. It also upheld the finding that her relationship with her boyfriend qualified as a supportive relationship under state law, a factor judges may weigh in equity. Yet neither gifts nor personal relationships exempt a trial court from calculating exact net numbers.
The appellate court vacated all subsequent amendments made while the appeal remained pending, upheld the denial of attorney fees, and sent the case back to the Broward County bench for a full recalculation of net income, child support, alimony, and parental timesharing.