Alimony in Oklahoma.
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 stateOklahoma
There is no arithmetic in Oklahoma’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
Oklahoma calls it alimony, and 'alimony as support' where the statute needs to distinguish it from property. 43 O.S. section 121 is captioned in part 'Alimony'; section 134 is captioned 'Alimony payments – Designation of support and property payments – Termination of support – Cohabitation by former spouse'. Section 110(B)(1)(b) uses 'spousal maintenance' for temporary orders. Section 129 is captioned 'Alimony without divorce'.. 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
None. Neither section 121 nor section 134 ties duration to the length of the marriage, and neither sets a bracket, presumption or maximum term. The length of the marriage is not mentioned in either section.
Does behavior matter?
Marital misconduct
Section 121 is silent: nothing in it requires, permits or bars consideration of marital misconduct in fixing alimony. Fault enters the chapter by a different door. Section 129, 'Alimony without divorce', provides verbatim: 'The wife or husband may obtain alimony from the other without a divorce, in an action brought for that purpose in the district court, for any of the causes for which a divorce may be granted. Either may make the same defense to such action as he might to an action for divorce, and may, for sufficient cause, obtain a divorce from the other in such action.' That makes fault grounds the gateway to a freestanding alimony action, but it says nothing about weighing conduct in setting the amount of alimony on a dissolution.
When it ends, and when it can change
What brings it to an end
43 O.S. section 134(B), quoted verbatim: 'The court shall also provide in the dissolution of marriage decree that upon the death or remarriage of the recipient, the payments for support, if not already accrued, shall terminate. The court shall order the judgment for the payment of support to be terminated, and the lien released upon the presentation of proper proof of death of the recipient unless a proper claim is made for any amount of past-due support payments by an executor, administrator, or heir within ninety (90) days from the date of death of the recipient. Upon proper application the court shall order payment of support terminated and the lien discharged after remarriage of the recipient, unless the recipient can make a proper showing that some amount of support is still needed and that circumstances have not rendered payment of the same inequitable, provided the recipient commences an action for such determination, within ninety (90) days of the date of such remarriage. Any modification of alimony payments shall be effective upon the date of the filing of the requested modification.' Cohabitation is dealt with separately and is a ground to modify rather than an automatic terminator. Section 134(C), quoted verbatim: 'The voluntary cohabitation of a former spouse with a member of the opposite sex shall be a ground to modify provisions of a final judgment or order for alimony as support. If voluntary cohabitation is alleged in a motion to modify the payment of support, the court shall have jurisdiction to reduce or terminate future support payments upon proof of substantial change of circumstances of either party to the dissolution of marriage relating to need for support or ability to support. As used in this subsection, the term cohabitation means the dwelling together continuously and habitually of a man and a woman who are in a private conjugal relationship not solemnized as a marriage according to law, or not necessarily meeting all the standards of a common-law marriage. The petitioner shall make application for modification and shall follow notification procedures used in other dissolution of marriage decree modification actions. The court that entered the dissolution of marriage decree shall have jurisdiction over the modification application.' There is no retirement provision.
Changing it later
43 O.S. section 134(D), quoted verbatim: 'Except as otherwise provided in subsection C of this section, the provisions of any dissolution of marriage decree pertaining to the payment of alimony as support may be modified upon proof of changed circumstances relating to the need for support or ability to support which are substantial and continuing so as to make the terms of the decree unreasonable to either party. Modification by the court of any dissolution of marriage decree pertaining to the payment of alimony as support, pursuant to the provisions of this subsection, may extend to the terms of the payments and to the total amount awarded; provided however, such modification shall only have prospective application.' Property payments are outside this power: section 134(A) provides that 'Payments pertaining to a division of property are irrevocable and not subject to subsequent modification by the court making the award.'
Worth knowing about Oklahoma
Two things. First, Oklahoma requires the decree itself to split every periodic payment into its support component and its property component — section 134(A): the court 'shall plainly state, at the time of entering the original decree, the dollar amount of all or a portion of each payment which is designated as support and the dollar amount of all or a portion of the payment which is a payment pertaining to a division of property.' That designation, not the label the parties use, determines whether the payment can ever be modified. Second, the statutory definition of cohabitation in section 134(C) is written in gendered terms — 'the dwelling together continuously and habitually of a man and a woman who are in a private conjugal relationship' — and subsection (C) opens with 'The voluntary cohabitation of a former spouse with a member of the opposite sex'. That is what the enacted text says; we report it as printed and do not speculate about how it is applied. Sourcing note: 43 O.S. section 134 was read live in full from the Oklahoma State Courts Network, the statute browser the Oklahoma Legislature's own site frames (https://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/DeliverDocument.asp?CiteID=71857). Requests for section 121 were then met with an automated-traffic verification page, which was not bypassed; sections 110, 121 and 129 were read instead from the Oklahoma Senate's own PDF of Title 43, and that PDF's text of section 134 matches the live OSCN text word for word, which is the cross-check relied on for the PDF's currency.
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, Oklahoma’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: Okla. Stat. tit. 68, § 2353(2) (defining ‘Internal Revenue Code’ as the U.S. Internal Revenue Code ‘as the same may be amended or adopted from time to time applicable to the taxable year’) the state source
The other number that decides your budget
How Oklahoma calculates child support, and the overnight count that moves it more than income does.
And the question underneath it
What Oklahoma presumes about custody, and what the judge has to weigh.
The rest of what we have written about Oklahoma. Every figure is quoted from Oklahoma’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.