What Is Alimony (Spousal Support)?

What Is Alimony?

Alimony (also called spousal support or maintenance) is a payment, usually made monthly, from one spouse to the other during and sometimes after a divorce. Courts will decide whether one spouse is entitled to alimony based on the higher earning spouse's ability to pay support and the lower earning or unemployed spouse's need for financial support.

Types of Alimony Available

Each state has its own laws on the types of alimony available and how spousal support is determined. In this article, we'll cover three of the most common types of spousal support: temporary, rehabilitative, and long-term or permanent. If you have questions about alimony in your state, speak to a local family law attorney for specific advice.

Temporary alimony is paid during the divorce and is meant to help the lower-earning spouse cover the new expenses of a separate household, such as rent or mortgage, credit card and utility bills, and the cost of food and clothing. This type of alimony is intended to last until the divorce proceeding is over and will terminate once the divorce is finalized and/or a judge issues a new support order.

Rehabilitative alimony is granted when one spouse is unable to become self-supporting for a period of time. Courts will try to determine how long it will take for the supported spouse to gain the job skills and education necessary to become employed and set alimony at an amount and duration that will allow that to happen.

Long-term or permanent alimony is typically reserved for long marriages (over 10 years), where one spouse is unable to become self-supporting due to age, disability, or low earning capacity. Common reasons for low earning capacity include a lack of education or job skills, or because one spouse took a long absence from the work force in order to raise children of the marriage and care for the household.

With long-term or permanent alimony, courts will look at both spouse's incomes and financial circumstances, and try to set alimony at an amount that provides the supported spouse with the same or similar marital standard of living the couple enjoyed during the marriage.

How Do Courts Determine Alimony?

In a divorce, both spouses must exchange financial information regarding their income, expenses, assets, and debts. For temporary support requests, courts in most states will use the financial information to determine an appropriate amount of need-based alimony using a temporary support calculator.

For the other types of alimony, such as rehabilitative and permanent, the court will determine each spouse’s income and evaluate specific factors to set a final amount of spousal support. The factors vary from state to state, but some of the most common include:

• each spouse’s income and earning capacity
• the extent to which the supported spouse contributed to the other’s educational degree or professional license during the marriage
• the paying spouse’s ability to pay spousal support, considering earning capacity, earned and unearned income, assets, and standard of living
• each spouse’s financial needs
• the marital standard of living enjoyed during the marriage
• each spouse’s debts and assets, including separate property
• the length of the marriage
• the supported spouse’s ability to become employed without interfering with the care of the parties’ minor children
• each party’s age and health
• the balance of hardships to each party, and
• the goal that the recipient spouse will be self-supporting within a reasonable period.

How Long Does Support Last?

As noted above, temporary alimony ends when the divorce case is finalized and/or the court issues another alimony order.

Rehabilitative alimony typically has an end date listed in the support agreement and/or divorce judgment. Typically, rehabilitative support only lasts as long as it takes the supported spouse to get the necessary training or education to reenter the workforce.

In most states, permanent support will terminate if the supported spouse remarries or begins to cohabit (live) with a romantic partner. In some states, this termination is automatic, but in others, the paying spouse must go to court and ask the judge to end alimony based on the other spouse's remarriage or new partnership.

If you don't want to leave it up to state law, you can negotiate to include an end date in your divorce settlement agreement and/or include circumstances such as remarriage that would trigger an automatic termination. If your agreement is silent on an end date, state law will control.

Can You Modify Alimony?

Unless your agreement or divorce judgment states that alimony is not modifiable, then either spouse can return to court to ask for a modification to increase or decrease alimony.

The person asking for the modification must be able to prove there has been a significant change in circumstances since the original order that warrants changing the alimony amount.

For example, if the supported spouse isn’t making an effort to find a job or become self-supporting, or if the paying spouse becomes ill or disabled and can no longer work, the court may modify or even terminate alimony.

Enforcing Alimony

Once a court issues an alimony order, the paying spouse must follow it until support ends or the court issues another order modifying support. In many cases, courts will issue a wage assignment order, which means that alimony comes right out of the paying spouse's paycheck and is directed to the supported spouse. This prevents the paying spouse from simply deciding to stop paying one day.

However, if there is no wage garnishment, and a paying spouse fails to pay, the supported spouse can go back to court and ask a judge to issue an earnings assignment to serve on the other spouse's employer. Once it's served, the employer will withhold support from the paying spouse's wages.

If the former spouse has racked up arrears (past due alimony), the supported spouse can also request that the earnings assignment include the total amount required to pay off the overdue support. In many states, past due support also incurs interest, so the court can include that amount as well.

If you have questions about alimony in your case, speak to a local family law attorney for advice.