Alimony in Alaska.
Whether the state sets a formula or leaves it to the judge, what the court has to weigh, how long it runs, and what brings it to an end.
See a different stateAlaska
No formula, cap or presumptive amount, in statute or in any statewide court rule found on the Alaska Court System's own site. The statutory standard is 'as may be just and necessary', bounded only by the instruction that the award 'must fairly allocate the economic effect of divorce'. Text read at https://www.akleg.gov/basis/statutes.asp?media=print&secStart=25.24.140&secEnd=25.24.180
Use the state’s own words
Alaska calls it maintenance. AS 25.24.160(a)(2) is the operative grant and uses 'maintenance'; AS 25.24.140(a)(2) uses 'spousal maintenance' for the award during the pendency of the action. The word 'alimony' appears in the divorce chapter only in the modification section, AS 25.24.170(a).. Using the state’s own term matters when you are searching for forms or reading an order — the words are not interchangeable across state lines, and some of them mean different things in different places.
The short version4 points · tap one to jump to it
- What the law actually says
- How long it lasts — No. AS 25.24.160(a)(2) authorizes maintenance 'for a limited or indefinite period of time, in gross or in installments' and ties duration to nothing.
- Does behavior matter? — Barred as to entitlement; permitted as to conduct affecting the marital estate.
- When it ends, and when it can change — Not addressed. Alaska has no statute terminating maintenance on death, remarriage, cohabitation or retirement.
In this subject 4
What the law actually says
The short version4 points · tap one to jump to it
- What the law actually says
- How long it lasts — No. AS 25.24.160(a)(2) authorizes maintenance 'for a limited or indefinite period of time, in gross or in installments' and ties duration to nothing.
- Does behavior matter? — Barred as to entitlement; permitted as to conduct affecting the marital estate.
- When it ends, and when it can change — Not addressed. Alaska has no statute terminating maintenance on death, remarriage, cohabitation or retirement.
In this subject 4
The power the court has
What the judge has to weigh
How long it lasts
Duration
No. AS 25.24.160(a)(2) authorizes maintenance 'for a limited or indefinite period of time, in gross or in installments' and ties duration to nothing. The length of the marriage is factor (A), but there is no bracket, presumption or maximum keyed to it.
Does behavior matter?
Marital misconduct
Barred as to entitlement; permitted as to conduct affecting the marital estate. AS 25.24.160(a)(2) directs that maintenance be awarded 'as may be just and necessary without regard to which of the parties is in fault' — the identical phrase appears in the property-division paragraph, AS 25.24.160(a)(4). But factor (E) is 'the conduct of the parties, including whether there has been unreasonable depletion of marital assets'. Read together, marital fault in the divorce sense is excluded and economic misconduct is included.
When it ends, and when it can change
What brings it to an end
Not addressed. Alaska has no statute terminating maintenance on death, remarriage, cohabitation or retirement. AS 25.24.140, AS 25.24.150, AS 25.24.155, AS 25.24.160, AS 25.24.165, AS 25.24.170 and AS 25.24.180 were read in sequence and none of them creates a termination event. AS 25.24.180 says only that 'The effect of a judgment decreeing a divorce is to restore the parties to the state of unmarried persons.' Termination therefore depends on the terms of the individual judgment and on modification under AS 25.24.170.
Changing it later
AS 25.24.170(a): 'Subject to AS 25.20.110, any time after judgment the court, upon the motion of either party, may set aside, alter, or modify so much of the judgment as may provide for alimony, for the appointment of trustees for the care and custody of the minor children or for their nurture and education, for the care, nurture, and education of unmarried 18-year-old children of the marriage while they are actively pursuing a high school diploma or an equivalent level of technical or vocational training and living as dependents with a parent, guardian, or designee of the parent or guardian, or for the maintenance of either party to the action.' The subsection states no threshold: no 'substantial change in circumstances' language appears in it for maintenance, unlike the child-support provision in AS 25.24.170(b). Whether the parties may agree that maintenance is non-modifiable is not addressed by the statute.
Worth knowing about Alaska
Alaska's maintenance factors are, word for word, the first five and the last of its property-division factors in AS 25.24.160(a)(4), and the statute then makes 'the division of property under (4) of this subsection' itself a maintenance factor. The result is that Alaska drafts maintenance as a residual of the property division rather than as a separate income transfer. The same subsection also contains a provision with no counterpart in the other eleven states read here: AS 25.24.160(a)(5), letting the court provide 'if an animal is owned, for the ownership or joint ownership of the animal, taking into consideration the well-being of the animal.'
The tax rule changed, and most guides still describe the old one
For a divorce or separation instrument executed after 31 December 2018, alimony is not deductible by the person paying it and not taxable to the person receiving it. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act repealed the provisions that made it otherwise. For an instrument executed on or before that date the old treatment continues — deductible to the payer, taxable to the recipient — unless it is later modified and the modification expressly adopts the new rule.
This is not a detail. Under the old rule a higher-rate payer could transfer income to a lower-rate recipient and the two of them shared the saving. That saving no longer exists, which changes what a given number is worth to each side. New Hampshire wrote the point into its own statute: its 23 per cent figure assumes non-deductibility, and reverts to 30 per cent if the federal treatment is ever restored.
Alaska has no state income tax, so the question of whether the state follows the federal rule does not arise. The federal treatment above is the entire picture. In four states that do levy an income tax — Arkansas, California, New Jersey and New York — it is not. The fifty-state table.
Authority: Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Pub. L. 115-97, section 11051, repealing Internal Revenue Code sections 71 and 215; see also IRS Publication 504.The other number that decides your budget
How Alaska calculates child support, and the overnight count that moves it more than income does.
And the question underneath it
What Alaska presumes about custody, and what the judge has to weigh.
The rest of what we have written about Alaska. Every figure is quoted from Alaska’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.