Alimony is when a person is legally obligated to provide financial support to their spouse before or after marital separation or divorce.

Alimony is designed as a tool to equitably divide a couple’s resources. Payments can be made as a lump sum, as ongoing payments, or as a property transfer.

A judge can also award alimony payments on either a temporary or permanent basis. Permanent alimony payments normally continue until the recipient remarries or cohabitates with a new partner or starts a higher-paying job.

In the United States, specific requirements for alimony differ from state to state.

No, alimony is not automatically assigned, and not all lower-earning spouses will be awarded alimony.

In addition, some states only award alimony payments to people who have been married for a certain length of time.

Family court judges determine eligibility for alimony based on several factors that can influence eligibility, depending on the laws of each state. These factors include:

• The recipient spouse’s financial condition and needs
• The recipient spouse's employment and earning capacity
• The impact on the recipient spouse if they were to leave the workforce to raise children
• If the recipient spouse is the custodial parent of a small child (or disabled child) and isn’t able to seek employment outside the home

Yes, either spouse can ask for the alimony amount to change if there has been a significant change of factors or circumstances.

For example, the paying spouse loses their job or the recipient spouse starts earning more.

No, the terms refer to the same thing and are interchangeable.

Alimony is money that is paid by one spouse (usually the higher earner) to the other spouse, as determined and ordered by the court.

Child support is the money that is paid by a parent to their child's custodial parent, in order to care for the child. This money can only be used for the care of the child.

Each state has a different way of calculating spousal support.

For example, in California, the court will usually take 40% of the higher-earning spouse’s net monthly income and subtract 50% of the lower-earning spouse’s net monthly income. By contrast, in New York, alimony typically amounts to 25% of the higher-earning spouse’s net monthly income minus 20% of the lower-earning spouse’s net monthly income.

For this reason, the state where you file for divorce could impact the amount of alimony you pay or receive.

This depends on the length of the marriage. On average, alimony lasts for 60-70% of the total length of the marriage.

In other words, a two-year marriage might result in 14-17 monthly alimony payments.

The federal law recently changed, and now the tax law favors alimony recipients.

For divorces on or after January 1, 2019, alimony received does not count as taxable income. For the paying spouse, alimony paid is still subject to taxes.

The reverse is true for people who divorced prior to 2019. For earlier divorces, alimony received is counted as taxable income, and alimony paid is tax-deductible.