Alimony in Nebraska.
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.
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There is no arithmetic in Nebraska’s statute. The court decides the amount and the length from the factors below, and two judges on the same facts can reach different answers. That is not a flaw in how we are describing it; it is how the law is written.
Use the state’s own words
Nebraska calls it alimony. Neb. Rev. Stat. 42-365 is captioned 'Decree; alimony; division of property; criteria; modification; revocation; termination' and uses 'alimony' throughout. Neb. Rev. Stat. 42-351(1) uses the more general phrase 'the support of either party' for temporary and final orders.. 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.
What the law actually says
The power the court has
What the judge has to weigh
How long it lasts
Duration
'[D]uration of the marriage' is one of the named criteria in the first sentence of 42-365, but the statute attaches no bracket, ratio, presumption or maximum term to it. Nebraska sets no statutory duration rule.
Does behavior matter?
Marital misconduct
The statute is silent. Neb. Rev. Stat. 42-365 neither requires, permits nor bars consideration of marital misconduct. Nothing in the section makes alimony depend on either party's conduct.
When it ends, and when it can change
What brings it to an end
Neb. Rev. Stat. 42-365, quoted verbatim: 'Except as otherwise agreed by the parties in writing or by order of the court, alimony orders shall terminate upon the death of either party or the remarriage of the recipient.' There is no cohabitation provision and no retirement provision in the section.
Changing it later
Neb. Rev. Stat. 42-365 sets out an unusually specific set of limits, quoted verbatim: 'A proceeding to modify or revoke an order for alimony for good cause shall be commenced by filing a complaint to modify. Service of process and other procedure shall comply with the requirements for a dissolution action. Amounts accrued prior to the date of filing of the complaint to modify may not be modified or revoked. A decree may not be modified to award alimony if alimony was not allowed in the original decree dissolving a marriage. A decree may not be modified to award additional alimony if the entire amount of alimony allowed in the original decree had accrued before the date of filing of the complaint to modify.'
Worth knowing about Nebraska
The two closing bars in the modification paragraph are the notable feature and they are easy to miss. If the original decree awarded no alimony, no later court may add it — 'A decree may not be modified to award alimony if alimony was not allowed in the original decree'. And if the whole of the awarded alimony had already accrued before the modification complaint was filed, no more may be added. Nebraska's threshold is also stated as 'for good cause', not as a substantial change in circumstances. Nebraska has no statutory alimony formula and no statewide court-rule alimony guideline; the Nebraska Supreme Court's published guidelines in this area govern child support, not alimony.
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.
Alongside the federal rule, Nebraska’s own income tax follows the federal treatment. That means the federal answer above is the whole answer here — no state adjustment for alimony either way. Four states do not — Arkansas, California, New Jersey and New York — so this is worth knowing rather than assuming. The fifty-state table.
Source: Neb. Rev. Stat. § 77-2714; § 77-2714.01(1) the state source
The other number that decides your budget
How Nebraska calculates child support, and the overnight count that moves it more than income does.
And the question underneath it
What Nebraska presumes about custody, and what the judge has to weigh.
The rest of what we have written about Nebraska. Every figure is quoted from Nebraska’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.