Alimony is awarded in a relatively small percentage of U.S. divorces. Research has estimated that approximately 10% to 15% of divorces involve an alimony award, although the frequency and amount of spousal support vary considerably by state and the circumstances of each case.
Spousal support, or alimony and maintenance, is intended to provide financial assistance to a couple when one spouse has a lower income or leaves employment. It is something that many states allow a court to order, but the specifics concerning the amount, length, and circumstances all vary greatly among states.
A White Plains spousal support lawyer covers how that formula-based approach applies to divorces in Westchester County and the surrounding area.
What Spousal Support Is Meant to Do
Spousal support aims to assist the spouse who is earning less in reasonably maintaining the level of income and standard of living they were used to during the marriage for a period of time that allows the spouse to transition. Sometimes, spousal support also provides funding for the required education or training to prepare the supported spouse to be able to transition to a self-supporting lifestyle.
Courts make a distinction between the support of a marriage, which is paid out pending the completion of a divorce, and the ongoing support of a former partner. This support may be for a duration of years in longer marriages, for a transition period after the marriage ends in shorter marriages or for any time in between.
Most states ignore marital misconduct such as infidelity when deciding support, but there are exceptions. Deliberately hiding assets or income is considered misconduct. Doing so can have an impact on the final support order.
According to the legal firm website https://www.chvatallaw.com/, it is important to consult an experienced divorce attorney when a person is seeking spousal support or their spouse is seeking it from them.
Two Different Approaches: Factors Versus Formulas
States take one of two approaches to setting a spousal support amount, and the difference matters a great deal to what a divorcing spouse should expect.
Some jurisdictions leave the duration of spousal support to judicial discretion, weighing statutory factors instead of applying a fixed formula. These are commonly known as factor states. Washington is one of them. The factors include the financial condition of the requesting spouse, time for acquiring education or training to secure appropriate employment, the level of living attained during the marriage, the length of the marriage, the age and health of the requesting spouse, and the paying spouse's ability to meet their needs while paying maintenance. These factors alone are not determinative of spousal support.
In Washington, a spouse does not need to show financial necessity in the classical way to be awarded maintenance. All the court needs to do is determine whether it is just to make the award given all the circumstances. There is no statutory provision for the duration of support, but attorneys in Washington often refer to guidelines based on marriage length, even though these guidelines have no statutory basis.
Other states, including New York, apply a statutory formula as a starting point rather than leaving the amount purely to discretion. New York's formula runs the paying spouse's and receiving spouse's incomes through a set calculation, up to an income cap that adjusts periodically.
The result serves as a guideline the court can depart from if it finds the outcome unjust based on additional statutory factors. Duration in New York is likewise guided by advisory percentages tied to the length of the marriage, with longer marriages normally supporting a longer maintenance period.
Why the Distinction Matters
The first mistake a spouse can make is based on the wrong assumptions about how their state operates when compared to a friend's divorce that took place in another state. In states that use factors, the court considers things like a family's standard of living and how easy the spouse requesting alimony will be able to re-enter the workforce. This can result in two similar families receiving vastly different alimony orders. States that use formulas have more predictable alimony amounts, but the results may not meet the families' needs.
In either case, spousal support is connected to other parts of the divorce proceedings and, especially, to child support and property settlement.
Modifying or Ending Spousal Support
Many states have statutes that allow modification of the support order post-divorce if there are substantial and unforeseen changes in the situation for the parties involved. These circumstances may include being out of work involuntarily, an income change, and illness.
In case the ex-spouse who receives the alimony gets remarried, then the support ends automatically. Most of the alimony agreements take into account the case of the death of any of the two people during the term of the agreement.
The division of property does not have the possibility of being changed once the divorce is granted, unlike the agreement concerning spousal support.
Getting the Details Right
Since the laws governing spousal support are state-specific, as discussed above, the general knowledge about it is merely a point of beginning and does not replace a person's knowledge of how it applies in the specific state. The criteria that are considered by the Washington State court and those used by the New York court to calculate spousal support are both an effort at answering one and the same question of allocating the financial effects of divorce equitably, but they arrive there using very different methods.
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