Alimony, also called spousal support or maintenance, is one of the most unpredictable parts of a divorce. In some states the calculation is essentially arithmetic. In others, two judges in the same county can produce wildly different orders on identical facts. Knowing which kind of state you are in changes how you should approach the case, what to ask your attorney, and what offers to take seriously in negotiation.
This guide breaks down the three formula types, walks through the math in each formula state, lists the discretionary factors used everywhere else, and explains how to come up with a realistic estimate before you spend money on a consultation. For a state-specific estimate, use our Alimony Calculator.
The three approaches states use
Alimony statutes fall into three categories. Which category a state belongs to is our own classification, and it has been checked against the state's own statute in six states out of fifty: Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New Hampshire, New York and Texas. Illinois is the clean one: 750 ILCS 5/504 puts an arithmetic calculation for both the amount and the term in the statute itself, which is what "formula" is supposed to mean, and the label holds. Florida and Texas are the awkward pair. Fla. Stat. § 61.08 gives the court a need-and-ability finding bounded by hard arithmetic ceilings on both halves, and Tex. Fam. Code ch. 8 gives it a threshold finding bounded by a ceiling on the amount and a ladder on the term. Neither is a calculation a judge starts from and then departs from, so "hybrid" survives on our own definition of that bucket rather than on the one we had in mind when we wrote it. Treat the lists below as where our data puts each state rather than as a finding about it.
Formula states apply a guideline calculation, often based on a percentage of income or a function of the income difference between spouses. Judges can deviate from the guideline, generally with an explanation on the record. Our data puts five states here: California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York.
Discretionary states give the judge full authority to decide whether alimony is owed, how much, and for how long. The statute lists factors the judge must consider, but does not constrain the result with a formula. This is where 43 of the 50 sit on our data, including Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and New Jersey.
Hybrid states use a guideline or a hard statutory limit for part of the question and leave the rest to the judge. Our data puts Florida and Texas here, and both labels have now been checked against a rendered statute. Florida: since the 2023 reform its statute caps duration as a share of the marriage length AND caps the amount at 35 percent of the difference between the two net incomes, leaving the judge to find need and ability to pay inside both ceilings. Texas: Chapter 8 of the Family Code has been read for this site, and it does the same two things in a different order. Tex. Fam. Code § 8.055(a) caps the amount at the lesser of $5,000 a month and 20 percent of the paying spouse's average monthly gross income, § 8.054(a) caps the term on a ladder keyed to the length of the marriage, and § 8.051 puts a threshold in front of the whole question that no calculation can reach: a court may order maintenance only where the spouse asking for it will lack sufficient property on dissolution to provide for their minimum reasonable needs. So both labels survive on our own definition of the bucket, which covers a state setting hard statutory limits around a discretionary decision rather than a calculation the judge starts from.
California is worth a note, because it shows how rough this classification is. Our data calls it a formula state on the strength of its widely used temporary support guideline, while its post-judgment support is decided on statutory factors with no formula at all. A single label for a state where our copy describes two different things is a simplification, and the same caution applies wherever you see one.
The practical effect is significant. In a formula state, your attorney can usually quote you a reasonably narrow range for both the amount and duration after a short conversation. In a discretionary state, the same attorney will give you a much wider one. How much wider is not something we can put a number on, and this guide used to say four to six times, which was nobody's measurement.
Formula states: what each one states
All five are set out below. Read the heading literally: some of these are the formulas our own copy states and some are provisions read here, and each section says which case it is in.
California
Our copy states the temporary support guideline for California as 40% of the higher earner's net disposable income less 50% of the lower earner's, and it puts the post-judgment factors at fourteen. Neither figure has been opened here, and California is the one entry in this section where the reason is not a refused connection. Our copy's temporary calculation is a county-level rule rather than a statute, so there is no single instrument to open, and our fourteen is a count of the factors at Cal. Fam. Code § 4320 that nobody here has made. So we cannot tell you that those percentages are California's published guideline, or that fourteen is the number § 4320 lists.
Post-judgment: decided on the statutory factors, with no calculation of any kind. That half is not in dispute and it is why California sits awkwardly in this section at all - a single label for a state running a guideline at one stage of a case and open discretion at the next is a simplification, and the note above says so.
Duration: nothing is printed here. Our copy holds no California durational rule and we are not going to construct one.
Illinois
Illinois is the one state in this guide whose statute we have read, and 750 ILCS 5/504 is quoted rather than summarised below. The guideline route needs two things at once: combined gross annual income of less than $500,000, and a paying spouse with no obligation to pay child support or maintenance from a prior relationship. Note the mismatch the statute builds in, because it catches people out. The threshold is measured on gross income and the calculation inside it runs on net.
Amount: 33 1/3% of the payer's net annual income, minus 25% of the payee's net annual income. The award is then capped so that the payee's own net income plus the award does not exceed 40% of the parties' combined net income. Net income here is the figure section 505 defines, not take-home pay, which is why our own calculator publishes these terms and does not run them: it collects gross.
Duration: the length of the marriage multiplied by a factor the statute fixes for each year of it. Below 5 years the factor is .20. At 5 years it is .24, and it rises by .04 for each further year, reaching .80 for a marriage of 19 years or more but less than 20. At 20 years or more the multiplier stops: the court, in its discretion, orders maintenance for a period equal to the length of the marriage or for an indefinite term. The statute measures the marriage at the time the case was commenced rather than as of today. Our Illinois alimony calculator runs this ladder.
Example: Payer's net income $7,000/month, payee's $3,500/month. 33 1/3% of $7,000 = $2,333. 25% of $3,500 = $875. Initial result: $1,458/month. Cross-check: combined net is $10,500, so the payee's 40% ceiling is $4,200. The payee already nets $3,500, leaving $700 of room. The order comes down to $700/month. On a 12-year marriage the term would be 12 x .52, or 6.24 years.
One provision not to confuse with the one above. Section 504(b-1)(1)(A-1) holds an older calculation, 30% of gross less 20% of gross against a 40% of combined gross ceiling. It reads like the current rule with different numbers, and it applies only to modifications of orders entered before January 1, 2019 that keep the pre-2019 tax treatment. If you are looking at a figure built from 30 and 20, you are looking at the wrong subsection unless you are modifying an old order.
Massachusetts
Mass. Gen. Laws c. 208, section 53(b) states that the amount of alimony should generally not exceed the recipient's need or 30 to 35 per cent of the difference between the spouses' gross incomes. That section was read from the Massachusetts General Court's own site on 2026-08-27, so the range is the statute's rather than ours. The instrument behind it is chapter 124 of the Acts of 2011, which took effect on 1 March 2012, so where this guide used to say "the 2012 Alimony Reform Act", 2012 is the year it came into force and 2011 is the year it passed.
How current is that? The General Court states, on the page the General Laws are served from, that the site includes every amendment to the General Laws passed before 31 May 2026. So chapter 208 as quoted here is the chapter as it stood on that date. It also runs a separate archive of Session Laws holding acts adopted as of 10 August 2026, and it points readers there for anything enacted since, which is a real ten-week gap. Of the 99 acts passed in that gap, 90 have been read one by one and none of them touches chapter 208. The other 9 would not load, so this is narrowed rather than settled, and those 9 are the whole of what is left to check. The General Court also notes that its web edition is not the official version of the General Laws; that is the Secretary of the Commonwealth's Acts and Resolves.
What still stops us calculating with it is not the date. Section 53(b) does not measure its percentage against the income you would read off a payslip: it sends you to the definition of income in the Massachusetts child support guidelines, subject to its own exclusions in section 53(c). We have now read that definition, from the Trial Court's own guidelines, which took effect on 1 December 2025, and it is the reason we still will not run the calculation rather than the reason we could start. Section I of those guidelines counts gross income from whatever source and lists thirty kinds of it, most of which never appear on a payslip, which would put the real figure above what you entered. The same section also lets a judge count none, some or all of any overtime and second-job income, and it takes business expenses off self-employment income, which would put it below. Those pull in opposite directions and which one is bigger depends on things this calculator never asks you, so we cannot tell you which way our figure would be wrong. Section 53(c) is a further exclusion on top and nobody here has opened it, as of 2026-09-01. Our calculator applies neither the range nor the durational ladder.
Duration: section 49(b) ties the maximum term for general term alimony to the length of the marriage, on four bands. Section 49(b)'s ladder runs: up to five years of marriage, no longer than half the months of the marriage; up to ten years, 60 per cent of them; up to fifteen, 70 per cent; up to twenty, 80 per cent. Each band takes its upper edge, so a marriage of exactly ten years is in the second band and not the third. Above twenty years the subsection sets no durational limit at all, and section 49(c) lets a court order an indefinite award there.
Two things about that ladder before you plan around it. It opens by letting a court go beyond its time limits on a written finding that the interests of justice require it, so it is a starting point rather than a wall, and we show it beside our estimate rather than shortening the estimate to it. And where there is also a child support order, section 53(g) governs how long alimony and child support may run together, which can reach further than this ladder rather than less far.
Example, using the figures our copy states: higher earner $9,000/month, lower earner $3,000/month. Difference: $6,000. 32.5% (the midpoint): $1,950/month.
New Hampshire
RSA 458:19-a, II(a) states that the amount of a term alimony order is the lesser of the payee's reasonable need or 23 percent of the difference between the parties' gross incomes, unless the court finds that justice requires an adjustment. That section was read from an Internet Archive capture of gc.nh.gov dated 2025-02-20, because the General Court's own site refused this one when we last tried it, on 2026-10-07, so a change New Hampshire made after February 2025 is outside it. The formula took effect on January 1, 2019. Paragraph III makes the term at most half the length of the marriage, unless the parties agree or the court finds that justice requires an adjustment.
Two corrections to what this guide used to say. The rate runs on gross income, not adjusted gross: gross income as RSA 458:19, V defines it, less the child support, alimony and health-insurance costs each party is ordered to pay and actually pays, with the child support ordered for the couple's joint children added to the payee's income. And half the length of the marriage is a ceiling on the term rather than a typical one. The ceiling on the New Hampshire calculator page is worked on the gross figures the form collects, without those adjustments and without the reasonable need half; the rate applies to the gap between two incomes rather than to either one, so we can put no direction on the adjustments, though the need half can only bring the statute's figure down.
New York
New York uses a two-part formula that runs on the payor's income up to a statutory cap. Note whose income that is. The cap is on the payor alone, not on the two incomes combined, and the combined-income figure people quote belongs to the Child Support Standards Act, which is a separate rule in a separate statute.
We are not printing a current figure for the cap, and here is exactly what we can and cannot tell you about it. Section 236 defines the income cap as "up to and including one hundred eighty-four thousand dollars of the payor's annual income", and then says that beginning March 1, 2020 and every two years after, the figure rises by the average annual change in the consumer price index for all urban consumers over the prior two years, rounded to the nearest thousand dollars, with the Office of Court Administration to determine and publish the amount. So $184,000 is the base written into the statute and it is not the number in force: several adjustments have run since, and as of 2026-09-01 the current figure lives in an Office of Court Administration publication we have not been able to retrieve. Take it from there, or from a New York attorney.
Duration in New York is set against a schedule the statute calls advisory, and that word does real work. The court "may" use it, must state its reasons either way, and nothing in the schedule prevents non-durational maintenance in an appropriate case. The bands run 15 to 30 percent of the marriage length for a marriage of up to and including 15 years, 30 to 40 percent for more than 15 up to and including 20, and 35 to 50 percent above 20. A marriage of exactly 15 years falls in the bottom band.
The percentages were read out of § 236(B)(6)(c) on 2026-09-01, alongside the duration bands above, and both routes are below. Which route applies turns on two facts and not one, and this is where most summaries of New York go wrong, ours included until we read the section.
Where child support is payable AND the paying spouse is the non-custodial parent: 20% of the payer's income minus 25% of the payee's, OR 40% of the two incomes combined minus the payee's income, whichever is less.
Every other case, including a paying spouse who has the children most of the time: 30% of the payer's income minus 20% of the payee's, OR the same combined-income test, whichever is less.
Either result stops at zero rather than going negative. There is also a floor the summaries usually leave out: if the guideline amount would take the paying spouse below the self-support reserve for a single person, the amount becomes the difference between their income and that reserve, and if they are already below it there is a rebuttable presumption of no maintenance at all.
Above the income cap, judges may use the formula or apply discretion. Up to the cap the court shall order the guideline amount unless it finds that amount unjust or inappropriate on the factors § 236(B)(6)(e)(1) lists, and says why in writing.
Example (no children), worked on the section's own arithmetic: Payer $9,000/month, payee $3,000/month. Calculation A: 30% of $9,000 = $2,700, minus 20% of $3,000 = $600. Result: $2,100. Calculation B: 40% of $12,000 = $4,800, minus payee's $3,000 = $1,800. Lower of the two: $1,800/month. Our own calculator does not run this; the figures it shows for New York are a national approximation, for the two reasons given at the top of this section.
Colorado: advisory guidelines in a discretionary state
Our data put Colorado with the formula states until its statute was read. The guidelines it holds are something the court considers rather than a calculation it has to follow, so Colorado now sits with the discretionary states, and what the guidelines say is still worth knowing before a first meeting.
Colorado's guidelines are advisory, which is the first thing to know about them. C.R.S. § 14-10-114, read from an Internet Archive capture of content.leg.colorado.gov dated 2026-09-24 (the 2024 edition; the General Assembly's own site refused the file on 2026-10-07), has the court work out a guideline amount and term and make findings about them, then set what is fair and equitable, and it says the guidelines "do not create a presumptive amount or term of maintenance". They reach a marriage of three years or more where the parties' combined annual adjusted gross income does not exceed $240,000, so a couple at exactly $240,000 is inside the guidelines rather than above them. Adjusted gross income is not gross income: subsection (8)(a) takes off gross income the child support and maintenance a party actually pays under an earlier court order, counting non-deductible maintenance at 1.25 times what is paid, and makes an adjustment for children of another relationship the party must support. Above $240,000, subsection (3.5) has the court weigh the statutory factors instead of the guideline amount.
Amount: not printed here, and the reason is worth stating. What this guide used to give was the pre-2019 calculation. Since maintenance stopped being deductible to the payer, the statute scales the guideline amount down by a share that depends on the couple's combined income, and leaving that out overstated support. The copy read here is the 2024 edition and the guidelines are advisory, so we would rather send you to the statute and a Colorado attorney than publish our own run of the arithmetic.
Duration: a schedule tied to marriage length, for marriages of three to twenty years. The figures we used to give came into this guide at the original build, and the copy read here prints a placeholder where the statute's table belongs, so they are not printed. For a marriage over twenty years the court may award maintenance for a set term or an indefinite one, and may not go below the twenty-year guideline term without specific findings.
Discretionary states: the factors that actually matter
In a state without a formula, the judge weighs statutory factors. The list varies but almost always includes:
- Length of the marriage. The single most important factor, and a longer marriage tends to bring longer support.
- Standard of living during the marriage. Used as a benchmark for what the supported spouse should be able to maintain, at least in the short term.
- Each spouse's earning capacity. Not just current income but what each spouse could reasonably earn given education, work history, and the local job market.
- Contributions to the marriage. Career sacrifices, support of the other spouse's education or career, child-rearing, homemaking.
- Age and health. Older or less healthy spouses are more likely to receive longer support.
- Financial resources. Assets received in the property division, separate property, expected inheritances.
- Tax consequences. Particularly relevant after the 2018 tax law change.
- Fault. Our records put marital misconduct among the alimony factors in 17 states, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia among them, and leave it out for the other 33. That is our classification of each state's factor list rather than a reading of 50 statutes. Where a state's own alimony law has been read and speaks to conduct, the reading decides the entry. Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire and New Jersey are among the 17 because each lets a court weigh fault or the parties' conduct: Idaho, Missouri and New Hampshire name it in their own alimony sections, New Jersey's section lets the court consider the proof of the ground the divorce was granted on, and Michigan's factor list is the one its Court of Appeals quotes from Olson v Olson. Colorado is among the 33 because its statute says maintenance "shall be made without regard to marital misconduct".
The factors get applied through case law and local norms, which is why local family law attorneys are so much more accurate than out-of-state lawyers when estimating discretionary cases.
How long alimony lasts
This section used to give three rules of thumb for how long alimony lasts at each marriage length, as what usually or commonly happens. They were ours, nothing measured them, and they are withdrawn. The direction is not in doubt: a longer marriage tends to bring longer support, and some states allow an indefinite award once a marriage is long enough, as the statutes below show.
Four states' duration rules have been read out of the statute for this site, and they are the ones to trust on this page. Florida allows no more than 50 percent of a marriage under 10 years, 60 percent of one from 10 to 20, and 75 percent of one at 20 or over, with the amount capped separately at 35 percent of the difference between the two net incomes. Delaware limits eligibility to half the length of the marriage and removes the limit entirely at 20 years. Kansas holds a 121-month limit, which sits in the modification section and applies to a maintenance award and to each period of reinstatement rather than to a single order. Maine presumes against general support below 10 years and presumes it will not run beyond half the marriage from 10 to 20, though a court can set either presumption aside.
Massachusetts also ties duration to marriage length, and its rule is not on that list either. Mass. Gen. Laws c. 208, section 49(b) sets the maximum term as a share of the number of months of the marriage, rising by band, and for a marriage longer than 20 years section 49(c) lets the court order alimony for an indefinite length of time. That is the ladder's shape, which is what reached us; the bands' own wording did not, so this guide states no percentage for any band and our calculator computes none.
Types of alimony
Most states recognize several types, and the type affects both amount and duration:
- Temporary (pendente lite) alimony. Often calculated using a guideline even in discretionary states.
- Rehabilitative alimony. Time-limited support to allow the recipient to retrain or finish a degree. Common in mid-length marriages.
- Permanent or long-term alimony. Available after long marriages. Increasingly restricted in modern statutes.
- Reimbursement alimony. A payment to compensate one spouse for funding the other's education or training during the marriage. Used in places like Massachusetts and New Jersey.
- Lump-sum alimony. A one-time payment in lieu of ongoing support. Often used when one spouse wants a clean break.
If the case settles, the parties can structure alimony any way they want, including combining types.
How to estimate alimony before the first attorney meeting
You can put a rough figure together yourself with three pieces of information:
- Your state's category. Formula, discretionary, or hybrid.
- The income difference between spouses. Gross monthly income for each.
- The marriage length. Years from wedding to date of separation (or filing, depending on the state).
If you are in a formula state, the number to work from is your state's own calculation, and the section above says which parts of it we are willing to print and which we are not. If you are in a discretionary state, there is no published calculation to start from, and this guide no longer offers a rule of thumb in place of one. The calculator on this site starts from 22% to 38% of the income difference in a discretionary state and then multiplies it by a factor for how long the marriage lasted, which runs from 0.40 at a marriage of two years or less to 1.60 above twenty-five. What comes out the other end is 8.8% to 60.8% of the income difference, over a term of 13.3% to 66.7% of the marriage length. Every one of those numbers is ours and no state publishes any of them.
Be careful what you do with that range, and the reason splits by axis.
On the AMOUNT there is still nothing anywhere to score the model against. No state publishes a spousal support amount our figure can be read against, no study in our records produced those percentages, and the one alimony statute we have read, 750 ILCS 5/504, works its amount out from a net income figure this calculator does not collect. So not even Illinois helps on that axis. What we can now say instead is how far our own arithmetic runs past the ceilings five states set, because it runs past all five. In the four whose ceiling has no flat term in it, the worst point on our grid puts our figure at 1.37 to 2.09 times the state's own limit. The fifth is Texas, where the ceiling stops growing at a flat $5,000 a month while our figure carries on rising, so the multiple there has no maximum at all and we are not going to quote one.
On the DURATION the model has been measured, and it is the one place on the alimony side of this site where our figure can be missed in both directions. Section 504(b-1)(1)(B) publishes a term at every marriage length. The top of our band runs 3 times that term at a one-year marriage, falls below the statute's figure from a twelve-year marriage on, and settles at exactly half of it from twenty years up, with the statute's own figure landing inside our band at 9 of the 50 marriage lengths. The sign changes in the middle of the range, which means no single correction factor could fix it.
The child support approximation had the same standing until it was measured against eight state schedules, and it turned out to run under some of them and over others through the middle of the income range and 69 to 240 percent above them at the top.
That measurement is the child support model's and not this one's. What it tells you about alimony is only this: a range nobody has scored can be a long way out without looking it, so treat an unmeasured range as unmeasured. Use it to prepare for a conversation, not to plan around.
Our Alimony Calculator runs that kind of estimate for you. Be clear about what it is: a national approximation applied the same way in every state, and not an implementation of any state's own formula. It says so beside every figure it returns, along with how far our own arithmetic can run at either end.
When alimony ends
Alimony orders end on:
- A date specified in the order. Most modern alimony orders have explicit end dates.
- Remarriage of the recipient. Almost universal across states, though it is sometimes waivable.
- Cohabitation. Many states allow modification or termination if the recipient cohabits with a new partner. The standard varies (some require a "marriage-like" relationship; others apply a financial-dependence test).
- Death of either party. Orders end at death unless secured by life insurance.
- Court modification. A substantial change in circumstances (job loss, retirement, disability, significant income change) can support a modification motion.
Modification standards vary. Some states allow modification of any alimony order; others (notably for non-modifiable settlements) hold the parties to whatever they agreed to.
Tax treatment after 2018
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 changed alimony tax treatment for any divorce finalized after December 31, 2018:
- Payer: No longer deductible. You pay alimony out of after-tax income.
- Recipient: No longer counted as taxable income.
For divorces finalized before 2019, the old rules still apply unless the order is modified and the modification specifies the new rules.
This change increased the after-tax cost of paying alimony significantly. A payer in the 32% bracket who used to pay $3,000 per month at an after-tax cost of about $2,040 now pays the full $3,000. Many post-2018 cases negotiate lower amounts to reflect the lost deduction.
Run your numbers
Alimony is one of the most consequential pieces of a divorce settlement. A few hundred dollars per month over ten years is over $100,000 of value. Take the time to model multiple scenarios. Our Alimony Calculator will show you a state-specific estimate, and the Divorce Cost Estimator will tell you what the case itself is likely to cost.
This estimate is for planning purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. Consult a licensed family law attorney in your state for guidance specific to your situation.