Ohio has no alimony formula. It puts everything in the decree instead.

Ohio has no alimony formula. There is no percentage, no bracket, no cap and no schedule anywhere in R.C. 3105.18. The whole standard is the word reasonable in division (B), read through fourteen factors in division (C)(1).

And Ohio calls it spousal support, not alimony, which matters when you are searching for forms or reading an order. R.C. 3105.18(A) defines it as payments “both for sustenance and for support”, and expressly excludes anything paid as part of a division of property or a distributive award under R.C. 3105.171. “Alimony” survives in the chapter caption and in the transitional language for orders entered before 1 January 1991.

But the absence of a formula is not the most consequential thing on this page. Because Ohio legislates almost nothing about how support behaves after the decree, the decree itself has to say it — and where it is silent, the court is not merely reluctant to act. In two specific situations it has no power to.

OneWhat the statute does not contain

Four absences, each of which people assume is there.

On the software and the county schedules. Spousal support software is widely used in Ohio practice, and some counties publish local guideline schedules. Nothing of the kind is authorized by R.C. 3105.18 — and we have not read any such local rule from a primary source, so we do not describe what any particular county does. What can be said from the statute is that a number produced by software or a county schedule does not carry the force the child support guidelines carry. It is an input to an argument, not a rule.

TwoThe fourteen factors, and the two instructions around them

The chapeau is doing as much work as the list. It covers “the nature, amount, and terms of payment, and duration” — all of it — and the verb is shall consider all of the following.

The two instructions that sit around the list

ThreeThe sentence that has to be in your decree

This is the part of Ohio law with the most money in it, and it is the part least often explained. Ohio inverts the ordinary rule: the court has no power to modify unless the decree gave it one.

Legal separation is the exception. R.C. 3105.18(D): in an action brought solely for legal separation under R.C. 3105.17, a continuing order for periodic payments “is subject to further order of the court upon changed circumstances of either party.” No reservation is needed there.

Where jurisdiction was reserved, one word decides a great deal

Note the asymmetry. Any increase counts. Only an involuntary decrease does. A payor whose income falls by choice has not, on the words of the statute, shown a change of circumstances. A payor whose income rises has.

FourWhat actually ends it, and the assumption to stop making

FiveDoes behavior matter? The statute is silent, and the silence is pointed

None of the fourteen factors names conduct, fault, adultery or misconduct. Factor (n) — “any other factor that the court expressly finds to be relevant and equitable” — neither authorizes it nor forecloses it.

And Ohio has not abolished fault. R.C. 3105.01 lists causes for divorce, and division (C) of that section is “Adultery”. So the same chapter recognizes adultery as a ground for the divorce and omits it from the support factors.

Now contrast the property statute, which does name a kind of misconduct and confines it to money. R.C. 3105.171(E)(4), verbatim: “If a spouse has engaged in financial misconduct, including, but not limited to, the dissipation, destruction, concealment, nondisclosure, or fraudulent disposition of assets, the court may compensate the offended spouse with a distributive award or with a greater award of marital property.”

The remedy there is a property remedy, not a support remedy — and R.C. 3105.18(A) expressly says a distributive award is not spousal support. So financial misconduct has a named statutory consequence and it is paid out of the property column.

SixTax, and the Ohio conformity date that goes stale

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, unless it is later modified and the modification expressly adopts the new rule.

Under the old rule a higher-rate payer could shift income to a lower-rate recipient and the two of them shared the saving. That saving no longer exists. Note that the tax consequences of an award are factor (l) in Ohio’s own list, so this is not background — the statute directs the court to weigh it.

Ohio’s own income tax follows the federal treatment, so there is no state adjustment for alimony either way. Four states do not follow it — Arkansas, California, New Jersey and New York — which is worth knowing rather than assuming.

But Ohio does not adopt federal changes automatically. It incorporates the Internal Revenue Code as it exists on a statutory effective date that the legislature re-sets roughly every year — currently 5 March 2026, from Senate Bill 9 of the 136th General Assembly — and separately lets a taxpayer elect the Code actually in effect for the tax year. Any Ohio conformity date quoted without naming the amendment behind it goes stale within a year. Ours names it.

Authority: Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Pub. L. 115-97, s. 11051, repealing Internal Revenue Code sections 71 and 215; see also IRS Publication 504. State treatment: Ohio Rev. Code s. 5747.01(A) and s. 5747.01(H).