Getting your finances in order: what to expect, what is taxable, and who pays for what
Divorce is a financial event that people experience as an emotional one. The single biggest predictor of how you come out of it is not who was right — it is whether you understood your own position early enough to make decisions from it. This page is the money picture: what you can expect to receive or pay, what the tax code does to each of those numbers, who pays the lawyers, and what the process costs before anyone has agreed on anything.
Nothing on this page is saved. The ticks are yours and they stay in this browser tab — close it, or open this page on your phone instead, and they are gone. Nothing you tick is sent to us. If you need to keep it, print the page or take a screenshot.
Every tax rule below is cited to the Internal Revenue Code, an IRS publication, or a Revenue Procedure, by section and number. Every fee rule is cited to a state statute or an official court schedule. Where a figure circulates widely but we could not find a primary source for it, we say so rather than repeat it — there are several of those on this page, and they are marked.
This is information, not advice. Support formulas, property rules and fee-shifting are state law, and the tax consequences of any specific settlement depend on facts we do not have. Corrections go up at thecusp.app/corrections.
First: what actually determines the numbers
Almost every question people arrive with — how much alimony, how much support, who keeps the house — has the same shape of answer. There is a state formula or a state factor list, a set of inputs that you can measure now, and a range of discretion that a judge or a negotiation fills in. Knowing which of the three you are arguing about saves more money than any other single thing.
| The question | What governs it | How much discretion there is |
|---|---|---|
| Child support | A state guideline formula, presumptively binding | Least. Every state has a numeric formula and a presumption that the number it produces is correct. Deviating requires written findings. This is the most predictable number in your case — run it early. |
| Alimony | A statutory factor list; a formula in a minority of states | Most. In many states there is no formula at all, only factors a judge weighs. Length of marriage, income disparity and earning capacity do most of the work. Two judges can reach different answers on the same facts and both be right. |
| Property | Community property or equitable distribution | Depends which. Nine states divide community property; the rest divide equitably, which means fairly and not necessarily equally. What counts as marital versus separate is often the whole fight. |
| Attorney fees | A fee-shifting statute, if your state has one | Varies enormously, and this is the one nobody tells you about. See below — in New York there is a rebuttable presumption in your favor if you are the less-monied spouse. |
| Guardian ad litem / evaluator fees | A court order allocating them | Usually charged to the parents and split at the court’s discretion — and it can be all of it against one of you. |
Your state’s specifics: child support by state · alimony by state · what it costs by state
The tax rule that changed, and that most advice still gets wrong
Alimony is no longer deductible by the payer, and no longer taxable to the recipient — for any divorce or separation instrument executed after 31 December 2018.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act did not amend the old rules. It repealed them outright: IRC §215, which gave the payer the deduction, and IRC §71, which put the payment in the recipient’s income, are both gone for post-2018 instruments.
Source: Pub. L. 115-97 §11051 · 26 U.S.C. §§71, 215 (repealed) · IRS Pub. 504, Divorced or Separated Individuals
This matters more than it sounds. Under the old rules a high earner paying alimony got a deduction, which meant the government was effectively subsidising the transfer — money moved from a high bracket to a low one and the couple paid less tax in total than either would alone. That subsidy is gone. Post-2018, the payer is paying with after-tax dollars and the recipient receives tax-free. The same headline number is therefore worth substantially more to the recipient, and costs substantially more to the payer, than the identical number would have in 2017.
Anyone quoting you an alimony figure by analogy to what a friend paid before 2019 is comparing two different things.
Instruments executed on or before 31 December 2018 keep the old treatment: the payer deducts, the recipient includes. Not because of a grandfather clause, but because the repeal’s effective date simply never reaches them.
The trap is modification. A pre-2019 order that gets modified after 2018 keeps the old treatment unless the modification expressly says the new rules apply. Silence leaves the old treatment in place. So a modification changing only the amount does not flip the tax treatment — but a modification drafted by someone who assumed it would can produce a number that is wrong for both of you.
Source: IRS Notice 2018-37 · IRS Pub. 504
The assumption that if the IRS does not tax it, no state does either, is wrong in at least two large states, for two different reasons.
New York decoupled deliberately: it “opted not to follow changes made by the TCJA to the treatment of alimony.” New York filers subtract alimony paid and add back alimony received on the state return, regardless of the federal treatment.
California decoupled too, and then changed its mind — which makes it the one to get right if you are divorcing there now. California did not adopt the TCJA change for instruments executed 1 January 2019 through 31 December 2025: the payer deducts and the recipient includes on the California return, via a Schedule CA adjustment. The FTB states it plainly: “We do not conform to the federal Alimony changes effective January 1, 2019, through December 31, 2025.”
That ended this year. Under SB 711, for any instrument executed on or after 1 January 2026, California conforms — not deductible, not includible, no adjustment needed. A pre-2026 instrument keeps the old California treatment unless it is modified after that date and the modification expressly states the repeal of the deduction for alimony payments applies to the modification.expressly says the SB 711 amendments apply. So two Californians with identical orders signed six weeks apart, either side of 1 January 2026, have different state tax positions for the life of the order.
When this page first went up it said we had checked two states. We have since traced every state’s conformity position to its own revenue department or conformity statute. 36 states conform. 9 have no income tax at all. 4 are decoupled — each by a different mechanism. And 1, Maine, we still could not establish.
We wrote up what the fifty-state survey actually found — four decoupled states, four unrelated mechanisms, and the four words in an Arkansas statute that separate it from an almost identical Alabama one. Read it →
The four decoupled states, and why each one is different:
| State | Mechanism | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Arkansas | Froze the federal rule in 1987 | Ark. Code § 26-51-417 adopts 26 U.S.C. §§ 71 and 215 “in effect on January 1, 1987” as Arkansas’s own rule — a historical snapshot, not a live reference. The 2017 repeal did nothing to it, so the payer still deducts and the recipient still includes on the Arkansas return. |
| California | Decoupled, now sunsetting | Decoupled for instruments executed 2019 through 2025; conforms for instruments executed on or after 1 January 2026. See above — this is the one with a live date cliff. |
| New Jersey | Never used federal conformity at all | New Jersey’s Gross Income Tax Act defines income through its own closed list of categories and was never tied to the Internal Revenue Code. Its own provisions make alimony taxable to the recipient and deductible to the payer, and the TCJA simply never touched them. |
| New York | Deliberate decoupling by guidance | New York expressly declined to follow the TCJA change. Subtract alimony paid and add back alimony received on the state return, regardless of when the instrument was executed. |
The nine with no state income tax, where the question does not arise: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wyoming.
The 36 that conform, so the federal treatment is the whole answer: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin.
Could not establish: Maine. We could not retrieve a current conformity provision or a revenue-department statement on alimony specifically, and we would rather say that than infer it from a neighboring state. We have written to Maine Revenue Services and will publish the answer. Alabama was on this list until we read its statute directly — it conforms, by a pair of cross-references to two federal sections repealed in 2017. The detail.
Every state links to its own page below, with the citation. The fifty-state money index.
Source: NY Dept. of Taxation and Finance TSB-M-18(6)I · California FTB, Schedule CA (540) instructions
Model every support proposal in after-tax dollars, because that is what you are actually paying. A payment that would have cost you sixty cents on the dollar before 2019 now costs you a dollar.
Two consequences follow. First, the negotiating range that felt reasonable to your lawyer under the old regime is genuinely more expensive now — it is not your imagination. Second, because the recipient receives tax-free, a smaller number can leave them in the same position they would have been in under a bigger pre-2019 number. That is a real argument and it is a fair one.
If you are in New York or California, run the state numbers separately from the federal ones. They do not move together.
Every dollar of spousal support you receive is now yours. No withholding, no April surprise, no quarterly estimated payments on it. That is a real improvement in your position over the pre-2019 world and it should be priced into what you accept.
The catch is that the payer knows the deduction is gone, so the headline numbers being offered are often lower. Compare positions after tax, not before — a smaller tax-free number can beat a larger taxable one, and it can also be worse. Do the arithmetic.
Child support is different and always has been: not deductible by the payer, not taxable to you, and that never changed.
You are the group most likely to have little or no alimony either way, which makes property division and the tax basis of what each of you takes the whole ballgame. Skip ahead to the carryover basis section — it is the part that costs people the most and gets discussed the least.
The other thing to settle early is who claims the children, because with similar incomes the dependency benefits are worth roughly the same to each of you, and that makes them tradeable in a way they are not when incomes are far apart.
What is taxable and what is not: the whole list
| Money moving between you | Payer | Recipient | Authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alimony, instrument after 31 Dec 2018 | No deduction | Not income | Pub. L. 115-97 §11051; IRC §§71, 215 repealed |
| Alimony, instrument on or before 31 Dec 2018, unmodified | Deductible | Taxable income | Former IRC §§71, 215; IRS Pub. 504 |
| Child support | No deduction | Not income | IRS Pub. 504 — never changed |
| Property transferred incident to divorce | No gain or loss recognized | Not income; takes the transferor’s basis | IRC §1041 |
| Retirement split by QDRO | Not taxed on the transfer | Taxed when distributed, to the recipient | IRC §414(p) |
| IRA divided under a decree | Not a taxable distribution if done correctly | Taxed on later withdrawal | IRC §408(d)(6) |
| Attorney fees you pay for the divorce | Not deductible. Personal expense. | IRS Pub. 504 | |
If a payment called alimony drops or ends on something to do with a child — the child turning eighteen, finishing school, marrying, leaving home — the IRS treats that portion as child support, not alimony.
This matters on pre-2019 instruments, where it removes a deduction the payer thought they had. And when a payment is short, the shortfall is applied to child support first and only then to alimony — so underpaying does not reduce the support arrears, it reduces the alimony.
Source: IRS Pub. 504, restating former IRC §71(c)(2)
Filing status, and the date that decides it
Your filing status for an entire tax year is fixed by your marital status on the last day of that year. Divorced on 30 December and you are single for the whole year. Still married on 31 December and you are married for the whole year, whatever happened in February. This is the single most consequential date in the financial calendar of a divorce, and it is frequently within your control.
Source: Rev. Proc. 2025-32, §4.14(1) (standard deduction) and §4.05 (child tax credit), tax year 2026
Head of household is worth $8,050 more in standard deduction than filing separately, and it is available to some people who are still legally married. The IRS calls this being “considered unmarried,” and every one of these has to be true:
- You file a separate return from your spouse.
- You paid more than half the cost of keeping up the home for the year.
- Your spouse did not live in your home during the last six months of the year.
- Your home was the main home of a qualifying child for more than half the year.
- You can claim that child as a dependent, subject to the divorced-parents rule.
Source: IRS Pub. 504, “Considered Unmarried”
A spouse who moves out in August has lived in the home during the last six months of the year. Head of household is off the table for that year, for both of you. A move-out in June, and it is available. Nobody mentions this at the time, and by the following April it cannot be fixed.
What married filing separately costs you. It is sometimes the right answer — particularly if you do not trust the other return — but know the price. Filing separately generally means losing or sharply limiting: the child and dependent care credit; the earned income credit; education credits and the student loan interest deduction; the adoption credit; the credit for the elderly or disabled if you lived together at any point in the year. The capital loss deduction against ordinary income drops from $3,000 to $1,500. More of any Social Security benefit becomes taxable, at a much lower threshold. The traditional IRA deduction phases out at a far lower income. And if one of you itemises, both of you must — so a spouse who itemises can force you off a $16,100 standard deduction without asking.
Source: IRS Pub. 504, “Married Filing Separately”
Do not sign a joint return on autopilot because it saves money in the aggregate. A joint return makes you jointly and severally liable for the whole tax, including tax on income you never saw and deductions you did not take. The IRS can collect the entire amount from you regardless of who earned what and regardless of what your decree says. A divorce decree binds your spouse. It does not bind the IRS.
If you have already signed one and it has gone wrong, there are three routes under IRC §6015 — innocent spouse relief, separation of liability, and equitable relief — all requested on Form 8857. Two of the three carry a two-year deadline running from the first IRS collection notice. Do not sit on it.
A different problem with a different form: if a joint refund is seized to pay your spouse’s separate debt — their back taxes, their student loan, their child support from another relationship — that is injured spouse, not innocent spouse, and it is Form 8379. These two are constantly confused, including by preparers.
Source: IRC §6015; IRS, “Innocent spouse relief”; Forms 8857 and 8379
You are usually the one proposing a joint return, because it usually saves tax overall. Understand that you are asking the other person to accept unlimited liability for your return. If you want it, the ordinary price is an indemnification clause in the agreement — and you should know that clause binds you to them, not the IRS to anybody.
Watch the itemising interaction. If you itemise and they do not, you have forced them onto itemised deductions too. Sprung on someone in April, that is a fight; agreed in advance, it is a term.
Who claims the children
The default is the custodial parent — and for this purpose that means the parent the child spent the greater number of nights with during the year, not whoever the order calls the custodial parent. Nights, counted.
The custodial parent can release the dependency claim to the other parent by signing Form 8332. It can be signed for one year, for several, or permanently.
What travels with it: the dependency claim itself, and the child tax credit.
What does not travel with it, ever: the earned income credit, head of household filing status, and the child and dependent care credit. Those stay with the custodial parent as a matter of law, no matter what the form says and no matter what the decree says. A decree that purports to give the other parent head of household status does not do so.
Source: IRS Form 8332 and instructions; IRS Topic No. 602
With similar incomes the child tax credit is worth close to the same to each of you, which makes alternating years genuinely neutral and easy to agree. Two children, one each, is cleaner still — it avoids an annual negotiation and it survives a bad year between you.
Whatever you agree, put the signed Form 8332 in the file when you sign the agreement. The most common failure here is not disagreement, it is a parent who agreed in March and cannot be reached in April.
Check whether the credit is worth anything to you before you trade for it. The child tax credit phases out at higher incomes, and a benefit you cannot use is not a concession — it is a bargaining chip you should spend on something you can.
If you do want the claim, you need a signed Form 8332 for every year you claim, attached to your return. A clause in the decree is not a substitute for the form and the IRS will not accept it as one.
The claim is probably worth more to you than to them, because $1,700 of the credit is refundable — you can receive it even with little or no tax liability. Do not give it away as a small concession. It may be the largest single number in your year.
And remember what you keep regardless: head of household, the earned income credit and the dependent care credit stay with you as the custodial parent even if you sign the release. If someone tells you that signing Form 8332 costs you head of household, they are wrong.
The trap: two equal-looking piles that are not equal
Transfers between spouses incident to divorce are not taxed at the time — no gain, no loss, no tax event. That sounds like good news and it is, but it comes with a condition that decides who is really better off: the person receiving an asset takes over the other person’s cost basis. The tax does not disappear. It moves, with the asset, to whoever ends up holding it.
Source: IRC §1041. “Incident to the divorce” means a transfer within one year of the marriage ending, or one related to the cessation of the marriage occurring within six years.
Two accounts. Each is worth $200,000 today. On a spreadsheet the split is even.
Account A was bought for $180,000. Built-in gain: $20,000.
Account B was bought for $60,000. Built-in gain: $140,000.
At a 15% long-term capital gains rate, whoever takes Account A owes about $3,000 on sale. Whoever takes Account B owes about $21,000. The “equal” division was actually $18,000 apart, and the person who feels cheated will not find out for years.
The same logic runs through the whole marital estate. $200,000 in a Roth IRA, $200,000 in a traditional 401(k), and $200,000 in a taxable brokerage account are three different amounts of money. Ask for the cost basis of every asset before you divide anything. If someone resists giving it to you, that is information too.
You can exclude up to $250,000 of gain on selling a main home, or $500,000 on a joint return, if you meet the ownership and use tests — broadly, owned and lived in it for two of the last five years.
Divorce gets two specific accommodations. A spouse who receives the home in the divorce can add the other spouse’s ownership period to their own. And a spouse who moved out under a decree, but whose former spouse still lives there, is treated as using the home while that continues.
Where this goes wrong: one spouse keeps the house with the children and sells years later — now single, so the exclusion is $250,000 rather than $500,000, on a house that appreciated for the whole period. The person who took the “safe” asset can end up with a six-figure tax bill the person who took cash never faced. Model the sale before you agree to keep the house, not after.
Source: IRC §121, including §121(d)(3)
Retirement, and the word everyone uses wrongly
A QDRO — qualified domestic relations order — is a court order that directs a retirement plan to pay part of a participant’s benefit to a former spouse. It is defined at IRC §414(p) and it applies to employer plans: 401(k)s, pensions, 403(b)s.
IRAs are divided under a completely different provision, IRC §408(d)(6), by a transfer incident to divorce made under the decree. Calling that a QDRO is simply wrong.
The consequence is not semantic. A distribution made to a former spouse under a QDRO escapes the 10% early withdrawal penalty — and the IRS’s own table of penalty exceptions marks that exception as not applicable to IRAs. Take cash out of an IRA in a divorce expecting QDRO treatment and you can be hit with a penalty that would not have applied to the same money in a 401(k).
Source: IRC §414(p); IRC §408(d)(6); IRS exceptions to tax on early distributions
You will be told that a military pension cannot be divided unless the marriage lasted ten years overlapping ten years of service. That is not what the rule says.
10 U.S.C. §1408(d)(2) governs one thing only: whether DFAS will send the payment directly to the former spouse. It does not govern whether a court can divide the pension. A court can divide a military pension after a shorter marriage — the former spouse just has to collect from the retiree rather than from the government.
That is a real practical difference and worth negotiating around. It is not the bar people describe.
Source: 10 U.S.C. §1408(d)(2)
Federal civilian employees are divided by a COAP — court order acceptable for processing — not a QDRO, under the FERS and CSRS rules. The names matter because a plan administrator will reject an order drafted under the wrong regime, and rejections happen months later, after the decree, when nobody wants to reopen anything.
More detail: dividing retirement: QDROs, IRAs and pensions
Who pays for the lawyers
This is the section that changes outcomes and almost nobody knows exists. In most states a court can order one spouse to pay the other’s attorney fees, and in some states it can order that while the case is still running rather than at the end.
The distinction between those two is not technical. A fee award that only arrives at final judgment is worth very little to someone who could not afford a lawyer during the case — by then the damage is done. An interim or pendente lite award is what actually prevents a wealthier spouse from winning by attrition.
| State | Statute | What it provides |
|---|---|---|
| New York | Dom. Rel. Law §237 | The strongest in the country. “There shall be a rebuttable presumption that counsel fees shall be awarded to the less monied spouse,” and fees “shall be awarded on a timely basis, pendente lite, so as to enable adequate representation from the commencement of the proceeding.” Not discretion — a presumption, running from day one. |
| California | Fam. Code §§2030–2032 | The court must ensure each party has access to legal representation, ordering one party to pay what is reasonably necessary, with written findings on any disparity. Separately, §271 allows fees as a sanction for conduct that frustrates settlement — which can be imposed on the poorer spouse just as easily as the richer one. |
| Illinois | 750 ILCS 5/508 | Two distinct statutory tracks: interim fees awarded from the opposing party during the case, and contribution settled at the end. |
| Florida | Fla. Stat. §61.16 | Fees and costs after considering the financial resources of both parties. A party found without justification in refusing to follow a court order may not be awarded fees. |
| Colorado | C.R.S. §14-10-119 | After considering the financial resources of both parties, the court may order a party to pay a reasonable amount for the cost to the other of maintaining or defending the proceeding. |
| Texas | Fam. Code §§6.708, 106.002 | Reasonable attorney’s fees may be ordered as costs in divorce and in parent-child proceedings, enforceable as a judgment. |
Note on scope: these six are verified. We have not surveyed all fifty, and we will not claim which state is narrowest until we have. State-by-state pages are in progress.
Ask about an interim fee award at the first meeting, not the third. This is the single most actionable item on this page for you. The question to your lawyer is exactly: “Does this state allow an interim or pendente lite award of attorney fees, and should we move for one now?”
Do not let being told to wait until the end pass unexamined. Waiting until the end is how a spouse with money wins a case they should not win — not by being right, but by being able to keep going.
If you are in New York, the presumption is in your favor by statute. Make sure it is being used.
Budget for the possibility that you will pay both sides. In several states that is the default expectation rather than a penalty, and in New York it is a rebuttable presumption against you.
The other exposure is conduct-based and it is separate from ability to pay. California’s §271 sanctions frustrating settlement, and it can be satisfied out of your share of the community property. Slow discovery and litigating small points are expensive strategies in a way that is not always obvious from the invoice.
Fee-shifting is least likely to help either of you, because these statutes generally key on disparity. That makes process choice the main cost lever you have. Mediation, a collaborative process or a limited-scope arrangement will usually beat two full retainers, and neither of you has the leverage that makes litigation pay.
The cost nobody warns you about: guardians ad litem and evaluators
If custody is contested, a court may appoint someone to look into it. In private custody cases the parents are generally the ones who pay for that, and the court decides how to split it — which can mean all of it against one of you.
| Role | What they actually are | What they do |
|---|---|---|
| Guardian ad litem | Not your child’s lawyer. Advocates for the child’s best interests as the GAL sees them. | Texas puts it plainly: a GAL “shall consider the child’s expressed objectives… but is not bound by those expressed objectives.” If your child tells the GAL what they want, the GAL may recommend the opposite. |
| Attorney ad litem / child’s counsel | A lawyer with the child as client. | “Shall follow the child’s expressed objectives.” This is the opposite duty from a GAL, and the difference is the whole point. |
| Amicus attorney (Texas) | A lawyer assisting the court, not representing the child. | Texas created this third role specifically to separate legal skill from best-interest judgment — the clearest statutory acknowledgment anywhere that the other two get confused. |
| Custody evaluator | A mental health professional producing a report and often a recommendation. | Interviews, observation, collateral contacts, sometimes psychological testing. See the caution below. |
Source: Tex. Fam. Code §§107.001–107.005
CASA was created in 1977 for abuse and neglect proceedings in dependency court, and the national model does not cover private custody litigation between two parents. There are documented local exceptions — Family Law CASA in King County, Washington, adapted the model for high-conflict private custody — but they are exceptions and should not be assumed.
This is uncomfortable and we would rather print it than not. The peer-reviewed forensic psychology literature is openly critical of several instruments still used in custody evaluations.
Otto, Edens and Barcus reviewed them and found: the Perception of Relationships Test has no interrater reliability data; the Parent Perception of Child Profile “lacks reliability and validity data entirely”; the Custody Quotient has no published validity data and interrater reliability that “ranged from 50% to 100%”; the ASPECT normative sample was disproportionately well-educated and Caucasian. Grisso’s underlying criticism is that these tools “were not designed to assess parents’ relationships to children… and these are often the central questions in child custody cases.”
Read that in proportion. It is not a reason to refuse to co-operate with an evaluation, and a good evaluator relies on interviews and observation rather than these instruments. It is a reason to ask, on the record, which instruments are being used and what the published reliability data for them is.
Dating: that review is from 2000. We have not established whether these specific problems have been fixed in newer editions, and we are not going to imply either way.
Source: Otto, Edens & Barcus, “The Use of Psychological Testing in Child Custody Evaluations,” Family and Conciliation Courts Review 38 (2000)
What it costs — the honest answer
We looked for official published fee schedules. There are almost none. Here is everything we could verify from a state source:
| State | Published figure | What it actually is |
|---|---|---|
| Minnesota | $1,500 flat, family/custody cases | The GAL Program’s published fee schedule. Other tracks: $1,000 abuse/neglect/TPR, $500 other juvenile, no charge for orders for protection. |
| Massachusetts | $50/hour, capped at 10 hours | The state-funded rate under Uniform Probate Court Practice XXXII. Further hours need court authorization. |
Both are state-subsidised program rates, well below market. A privately retained GAL in either state typically charges ordinary hourly rates far above them.
For privately retained GALs and for custody evaluators, we could not find a single official published fee schedule anywhere. The figures circulating — low thousands to tens of thousands — come from law-firm marketing pages and salary aggregators. We are not going to launder those into a citation by repeating them. If you need a number for your own budgeting, ask your county’s family court clerk what appointees in that county actually charge. That is a real answer and it is free.
Some states protect people who cannot pay. Minnesota provides that any part of GAL costs the court finds the parties incapable of paying shall be borne by the state courts, and bars ordering payment by a party on public assistance or below the poverty line.
But do not generalise from that to a right to a free lawyer. In Turner v. Rogers (2011) the Supreme Court held there is no automatic right to appointed counsel for an indigent parent in civil family proceedings — even where incarceration for contempt is possible — provided adequate alternative safeguards exist.
Whatever right to counsel you have in a custody case is a matter of your state’s statute, and in some places it is narrowing.
Source: Minn. Stat. §518.165 · Turner v. Rogers, 564 U.S. 431 (2011)
When an appointment is proposed, ask two questions immediately: how will the fee be allocated between us, and can it be allocated entirely to the other party? In many states it can.
Ask about an indigency waiver in the same breath. It is far easier to raise before the appointment order is entered than to unwind afterwards.
Expect to carry most or all of it, and price that into whether contesting a custody point is worth it. A contested evaluation can cost more than the difference between the two schedules being argued over.
Four deadlines that outlive the decree
| Item | What to know |
|---|---|
| Health insurance | Divorce ends coverage under a former spouse’s employer plan. COBRA continuation is available, and divorce also opens a special enrollment period on the marketplace. Both are time-limited windows measured in days, not months. The detail. |
| Social Security | You may be able to claim on an ex-spouse’s record if the marriage lasted at least ten years and you meet the other conditions. This costs them nothing and does not reduce their benefit. Nine years and eleven months is a different answer from ten years and one day. The detail. |
| Beneficiaries | Retirement accounts and life insurance pass by beneficiary designation, not by will and not by decree. An unchanged form is the most common expensive mistake after a divorce, and it is discovered by the people who inherit. The detail. |
| Joint debt | A decree allocating a debt between you does not bind the lender. If your name is on it, the creditor can still come to you. Refinance or close, do not merely assign. The detail. |
What to do this month
In rough order of how much each is worth relative to the effort. Ticks are saved in this browser only — nothing is sent anywhere.
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What we could not verify
Publishing this list is the point of the site. Each of these is something we went looking for and did not find to a standard we would put our name to.
- Whether Maine follows the federal alimony rule. We have now traced the other forty-nine states to a revenue department publication or a conformity statute. Maine we could not establish, and we have written to Maine Revenue Services.
- What a privately retained guardian ad litem costs. No official published schedule exists that we could find, in any state. Only law-firm estimates, which we will not cite.
- What a custody evaluation costs. Same. We specifically looked for a state judicial fee schedule and found none.
- Which state has the narrowest attorney fee-shifting. Naming one would need a full fifty-state survey. We have six states verified.
- Whether the custody-evaluation instrument criticisms from 2000 have since been addressed. The critique is solid and citable. Whether newer editions fixed it, we do not know.
- Massachusetts GAL practice. The statute says the Commonwealth pays. Practice appears to include privately retained GALs paid by the parties. We have flagged the tension rather than resolving it.
If you know the answer to any of these — particularly if you are a practitioner in a state we have not covered — tell us. Corrections are published with the date, what changed, and how long the error was live.
The most expensive mistakes in a divorce are made in the year after it — a retirement account that still names an ex-spouse, an order that divided a pension but never reached the plan, an insurance window that closed while somebody was recovering.
The checklist for after the decree → — what has a real deadline, what only looks like it does, and the three things courts have held that a decree does not do by itself.