Alimony, state by state.
Whether your 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. Every figure read off the statute, on the state’s own site.
Three states put a binding formula in the statute. One more — Arizona — ordered its Supreme Court to write guidelines, and those bind. Two states have a formula that runs only while the case is open. Two publish a calculation the statute says binds nobody. Eight set a ceiling on the amount or the length without computing anything. California’s famous formula is one county’s local rule.
In the remaining 33, a judge weighs a list of statutory factors and arrives at a number. That is why the useful question is not formula or no formula but what kind of thing is it, and what does it reach — and it is why the figure someone quotes you from a search result is so often for the wrong half of the case.
Five different answers, not two
Every state below links to its own page, where the operative statute is quoted in full and linked to the state’s own site.
The statute sets a formula and the court starts from it 3 states
Three states, and only three. In each of them the arithmetic reaches the award made at the end of the case, not just support while it is running. New Hampshire is the clearest: 23 per cent of the difference between the parties’ incomes, capped at the payee’s reasonable need, for at most half the length of the marriage.
The legislature ordered the courts to write guidelines, and they bind 1 state
Arizona sits by itself. The statute does not contain a formula; it commands the Supreme Court to adopt guidelines, which it did. A trial judge who departs from them has to say why in writing. That is a formula in substance and a court order in form, which is why lists that recognize only statutes get Arizona wrong in both directions.
A formula, but only while the case is running 1 state
Virginia’s percentages are in the statute and they reach pendente lite support only. The award made at the end of the case is decided on the factors, with no arithmetic at all. If you have been quoted a Virginia number, ask which of the two it was for.
Not the legislature at all: a statewide court rule, for temporary support 1 state
Pennsylvania’s percentages live in Pa.R.Civ.P. 1910.16-4, a rule of civil procedure, and they govern spousal support and alimony pendente lite. Post-divorce alimony under 23 Pa.C.S. 3701 has no arithmetic anywhere in it.
The famous formula is one county’s local rule 1 state
There is no statewide California spousal support formula. The 40/50 calculation people quote is Santa Clara County Local Rule 3.C. Other counties use their own, and none of them governs the award made at the end of the case, which Family Code section 4320 sends to the factors.
There is a calculation, and the statute says it binds nobody 2 states
Colorado’s statute is captioned “advisory guidelines” and says so in terms. Vermont’s table sits inside a factor list introduced by the word “including”. A judge in either state may depart without explaining why, which is the difference between an advisory guideline and a binding one.
No computation. A ceiling on the amount 4 states
A cap tells you the worst case, not the likely one. Texas caps monthly maintenance at the lesser of $5,000 or 20 per cent of the payer’s average gross monthly income. Florida since 2023 caps durational alimony at 35 per cent of the difference between the parties’ net incomes. Neither tells you what a court will actually order.
No computation. A limit on how long 4 states
The constraint here is the calendar rather than the check. These states leave the amount to the factors and put a boundary on the term instead — which for a long marriage can matter more than the monthly figure does.
No arithmetic anywhere 33 states
Thirty-three states. The judge weighs a list of statutory factors and arrives at a number. Two judges on the same facts can reach different answers, and that is not a flaw in how we are describing it — it is how the law is written. On these pages the factor list is quoted in full from the statute, because the factors are the only thing there is to work with.
Three things that are the opposite of what people assume
Alimony does not automatically end on remarriage in eight states
“It stops when they remarry” is the single most repeated thing about alimony, and in eight states the statute does not say it.remarriage, remarries and cohabitation searched for. What these states have instead is a power to write the rule into the order — which means that if nobody wrote it in, it is not there.
Florida is a ninth case of a different shape. Section 61.08 has no general termination clause at all: bridge-the-gap and durational alimony end on death or remarriage by their own subsections, and rehabilitative and temporary alimony say nothing. Indiana is recorded the same way, but has not been checked against Indiana’s current code, for the reason given at the bottom of this page.
In Ohio, a decree that says nothing about modification cannot be modified
Almost every state lets a court change periodic support on a change of circumstances. Ohio inverts it. R.C. 3105.18(E) removes the court’s jurisdiction to modify unless the decree expressly reserved it. Not harder to change — impossible, because the power was never retained. Alabama does something similar at Ala. Code s. 30-2-57(c) where a decree neither awards alimony nor reserves the question.
Separately, several statutes make particular species of support non-modifiable with no agreement needed: Massachusetts reimbursement and transitional alimony, Florida bridge-the-gap alimony, New Jersey reimbursement alimony, Tennessee alimony in solido and transitional alimony, and New Hampshire reimbursement alimony. If your order uses one of those words, the changed-circumstances route may be closed before you start.
Six states forbid the judge from considering an affair
Whether behavior counts is the first question most people ask, and the answer is a state-by-state coin toss. Six states put the bar in the operative sentence itself — Illinois awards maintenance “without regard to marital misconduct”, and Colorado, Minnesota, Washington, Arizona and Delaware each say the same thing in their own words. Others let it in only through its money consequence: Florida allows the court to consider adultery and any resulting depletion of assets, which is a narrower door than it sounds. Each state page quotes its own sentence.
The tax rule changed in 2019, 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. 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. The trigger is the date the instrument was executed, not the date a payment is made, which is the part most often paraphrased wrongly.
Four legislatures wrote the change into their own arithmetic. Illinois, Colorado, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania each carry two versions of their rule, selected by the tax treatment of the order. New Hampshire says so on the face of the statute: its 23 per cent figure assumes non-deductibility and reverts to 30 per cent if the federal treatment is ever restored. A page that quotes one version without saying which regime it belongs to is wrong for half its readers.
Authority: Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Pub. L. 115-97, section 11051, repealing Internal Revenue Code sections 71 and 215; 750 ILCS 5/504(b-1)(1)(A-1) and 5/504(b-4); N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. s. 458:19-a(II)(c); Pa.R.Civ.P. 1910.16-4(a)(1). See also IRS Publication 504.All fifty states
The middle column is the word the state actually uses. It is not decoration: searching for “alimony forms” in a state whose statute says maintenance is how people end up on the wrong paperwork, and eight states use more than one word for more than one thing.
| State | What it is called there | Is there a formula | The other two numbers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Alaska | Maintenance | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Arizona | Spousal maintenance | Guidelines, binding | Support · Custody |
| Arkansas * | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| California | Spousal support | One county’s rule | Support · Custody |
| Colorado * | Maintenance | Advisory only | Support · Custody |
| Connecticut | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Delaware | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Florida | Alimony | Cap on the amount | Support · Custody |
| Georgia * | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Hawaii | Support and maintenance | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Idaho | Maintenance | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Illinois | Maintenance | Formula, binding | Support · Custody |
| Indiana * | Maintenance | Cap on the length | Support · Custody |
| Iowa | Spousal support | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Kansas | Maintenance | Cap on the length | Support · Custody |
| Kentucky | Maintenance | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Louisiana | Spousal support | Cap on the amount | Support · Custody |
| Maine | Spousal support | Cap on the length | Support · Custody |
| Maryland | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Massachusetts | Alimony | Cap on the amount | Support · Custody |
| Michigan | Alimony and spousal support | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Minnesota | Spousal maintenance | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Mississippi * | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Missouri | Maintenance | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Montana | Maintenance | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Nebraska | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Nevada | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| New Hampshire | Alimony | Formula, binding | Support · Custody |
| New Jersey * | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| New Mexico | Spousal support | No formula | Support · Custody |
| New York | Maintenance | Formula, binding | Support · Custody |
| North Carolina | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| North Dakota | Spousal support | Cap on the length | Support · Custody |
| Ohio | Spousal support | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Oklahoma | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Oregon | Spousal support | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Pennsylvania | Three separate words | Court rule, during the case | Support · Custody |
| Rhode Island | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| South Carolina | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| South Dakota | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Tennessee * | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Texas | Maintenance | Cap on the amount | Support · Custody |
| Utah | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Vermont | Maintenance | Advisory only | Support · Custody |
| Virginia | Spousal support and maintenance | Formula, during the case | Support · Custody |
| Washington | Maintenance | No formula | Support · Custody |
| West Virginia | Spousal support | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Wisconsin | Maintenance | No formula | Support · Custody |
| Wyoming | Alimony | No formula | Support · Custody |
Where we stopped, and why 7 states marked *
Every figure and every quoted passage on these fifty pages came from a statute on a state’s own site, a court’s own page, or a legislature’s own enacted Acts. Nothing came from a law firm summary, an aggregator or an encyclopedia. Seven states we could not read that way, and rather than quietly downgrading the source we have marked them and said what happened:
- Arkansas
- The Arkansas legislature’s server would not complete a modern secure connection. The text is the state’s own; the publication date of the version served is what we could not pin down.
- Colorado
- Colorado publishes its guideline term table as an image inside a PDF. The figures were read from the Judicial Branch’s own advisement form instead.
- Georgia
- Georgia does not publish its own code for free, and no enacted Act from 2001 to 2026 reprints the alimony sections.
- Indiana
- The Indiana General Assembly’s site served an application shell rather than statutory text on every path we tried.
- Mississippi
- Mississippi’s code is published commercially. The section came from the Legislature’s own bring-forward bill; what is unconfirmed is currency past 2024, not the wording.
- New Jersey
- New Jersey publishes its bills and enacted Acts as plain readable pages, but its consolidated statutes sit behind an application shell that serves a frameset rather than text. N.J.S.A. 2A:34-23 was read instead from the Legislature’s own enacted text of P.L.2014, c.42, the Act that rewrote the section and sets it out in full. We found no later Act amending it — but that is a negative from searching the Legislature’s published Acts, not from reading a consolidated copy.
- Tennessee
- Tennessee’s code is published under contract by a commercial publisher. The text was rebuilt from the Secretary of State’s own Public Acts.
What that means for you: the words on those pages are reliable — every quoted passage came from a source we name and link. What we cannot vouch for is that nothing has changed since, or that the subsection numbering matches what a subscription service would show. If you are citing a section in a filing, check the number against a law library copy. Quote the words with confidence.
The number that usually matters more
Child support is calculated, not argued, in every state — and the overnight count moves it more than income does.
And the question underneath both
Is 50/50 the default where you live? In 26 states nothing is presumed in either direction.