Alimony in Texas.
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 stateTexas
There is no computation, only a ceiling. Tex. Fam. Code 8.055(a), quoted verbatim: 'AMOUNT OF MAINTENANCE. (a) A court may not order maintenance that requires an obligor to pay monthly more than the lesser of: (1) $5,000; or (2) 20 percent of the spouse's average monthly gross income.' 'The spouse's' in paragraph (2) means the obligor's; the cap is on the obligor's payment. Gross income is defined for this purpose at 8.055(a-1), which includes '100 percent of all wage and salary income and other compensation for personal services (including commissions, overtime pay, tips, and bonuses)', 'interest, dividends, and royalty income', 'self-employment income', 'net rental income (defined as rent after deducting operating expenses and mortgage payments, but not including noncash items such as depreciation)' and 'all other income actually being received, including severance pay, retirement benefits, pensions, trust income, annuities, capital gains, unemployment benefits, interest income from notes regardless of the source, gifts and prizes, maintenance, and alimony', and excludes, among other items, 'Department of Veterans Affairs service-connected disability compensation', 'supplemental security income (SSI), social security benefits, and disability benefits' and 'workers' compensation benefits'.
It tells you the most a court may order. It does not tell you what a court will order.
Use the state’s own words
Texas calls it 'Maintenance', and the word is defined. Tex. Fam. Code 8.001(1), quoted verbatim: '"Maintenance" means an award in a suit for dissolution of a marriage of periodic payments from the future income of one spouse for the support of the other spouse.' Chapter 8 is captioned 'MAINTENANCE'. The words 'alimony' and 'spousal support' do not carry the statutory meaning in Texas; 'spousal maintenance' is used in the withholding and enforcement provisions.. 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
Tex. Fam. Code 8.054, quoted verbatim in full: 'DURATION OF MAINTENANCE ORDER. (a) Except as provided by Subsection (b), a court: (1) may not order maintenance that remains in effect for more than: (A) five years after the date of the order, if: (i) the spouses were married to each other for less than 10 years and the eligibility of the spouse for whom maintenance is ordered is established under Section 8.051(1); or (ii) the spouses were married to each other for at least 10 years but not more than 20 years; (B) seven years after the date of the order, if the spouses were married to each other for at least 20 years but not more than 30 years; or (C) 10 years after the date of the order, if the spouses were married to each other for 30 years or more; and (2) shall limit the duration of a maintenance order to the shortest reasonable period that allows the spouse seeking maintenance to earn sufficient income to provide for the spouse's minimum reasonable needs, unless the ability of the spouse to provide for the spouse's minimum reasonable needs is substantially or totally diminished because of: (A) physical or mental disability of the spouse seeking maintenance; (B) duties as the custodian of an infant or young child of the marriage; or (C) another compelling impediment to earning sufficient income to provide for the spouse's minimum reasonable needs. (b) The court may order maintenance for a spouse to whom Section 8.051(2)(A) or (C) applies for as long as the spouse continues to satisfy the eligibility criteria prescribed by the applicable provision. (c) On the request of either party or on the court's own motion, the court may order the periodic review of its order for maintenance under Subsection (b). (d) The continuation of maintenance ordered under Subsection (b) is subject to the procedural requirements for a motion to modify as provided by Section 8.057.' The brackets are maximums, not entitlements: paragraph (2) is a separate, mandatory command to order the shortest reasonable period. Amended by Acts 2023, 88th Leg., R.S., Ch. 443 (H.B. 2070), s. 1, eff. June 9, 2023.
Does behavior matter?
Marital misconduct
Misconduct enters twice, in different roles. As a factor at 8.052(10): 'marital misconduct, including adultery and cruel treatment, by either spouse during the marriage', and at 8.052(11): 'any history or pattern of family violence, as defined by Section 71.004.' And as a ground of eligibility at 8.051(1): a conviction or deferred adjudication for a criminal offense that also constitutes an act of family violence against the other spouse or that spouse's child, committed during the marriage, within two years before filing or while the suit is pending, is one of only four routes through the eligibility gate. Texas thus uses one party's misconduct to create the other's eligibility, which is rarer than using it to reduce an award. Note that where eligibility rests on 8.051(1), the duration ceiling is five years even for a marriage of under ten years.
When it ends, and when it can change
What brings it to an end
Tex. Fam. Code 8.056, quoted verbatim in full: 'TERMINATION. (a) The obligation to pay future maintenance terminates on the death of either party or on the remarriage of the obligee. (b) After a hearing, the court shall order the termination of the maintenance obligation if the court finds that the obligee cohabits with another person with whom the obligee has a dating or romantic relationship in a permanent place of abode on a continuing basis. (c) Termination of the maintenance obligation does not terminate the obligation to pay any maintenance that accrued before the date of termination, whether as a result of death or remarriage under Subsection (a) or a court order under Subsection (b).' The cohabitation test is mandatory once found ('the court shall order the termination'), and it reaches a 'dating or romantic relationship' without requiring the couple to hold themselves out as married.
Changing it later
Tex. Fam. Code 8.057(c) and (d), quoted verbatim: '(c) After a hearing, the court may modify an original or modified order or portion of a decree providing for maintenance or a maintenance qualified domestic relations order under Subchapter H on a proper showing of a material and substantial change in circumstances that occurred after the date of the order or decree, including circumstances reflected in the factors specified in Section 8.052, relating to either party or to a child of the marriage described by Section 8.051(2)(C). The court: (1) shall apply the modification only to payment accruing after the filing of the motion to modify; and (2) may not increase maintenance to an amount or duration that exceeds the amount or remaining duration of the original maintenance order.' '(d) A loss of employment or circumstances that render a former spouse unable to provide for the spouse's minimum reasonable needs by reason of incapacitating physical or mental disability that occur after the divorce or annulment are not grounds for the institution of spousal maintenance for the benefit of the former spouse.' Also 8.057(c-1), added in 2021: 'A party who files a motion to modify maintenance based on a material and substantial change of circumstances may not be considered on that basis alone to have admitted a material and substantial change of circumstances regarding any other matter.' The original order is a ceiling in both amount and time; modification can only go down or stay the same. And a spouse who was not eligible at the divorce cannot become eligible later.
Worth knowing about Texas
Four. First, and most important: the commonly quoted Texas figure – 'the lesser of $5,000 a month or 20 percent of the obligor's average monthly gross income', 8.055(a) – is not what makes Texas restrictive. The eligibility gate at 8.051 is. A spouse who does not satisfy the property test and one of the four listed grounds gets nothing at all, and the cap never comes into play. Second, the ten-year ground carries its own rebuttable presumption against maintenance under 8.053(a) unless the applicant has 'exercised diligence' in earning income or developing skills. Third, modification is one-directional under 8.057(c)(2): the court 'may not increase maintenance to an amount or duration that exceeds the amount or remaining duration of the original maintenance order', and 8.057(d) forecloses instituting maintenance after the divorce on the basis of later job loss or later disability. Fourth, Texas polices agreed orders: 8.059(a-1) provides that 'The court may not enforce by contempt any provision of an agreed order for maintenance that exceeds the amount of periodic support the court could have ordered under this chapter or for any period of maintenance beyond the period of maintenance the court could have ordered under this chapter', and 8.061 provides flatly that 'An order for maintenance is not authorized between unmarried cohabitants under any circumstances.'
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.
Texas has no state income tax, so the question of whether the state follows the federal rule does not arise. The federal treatment above is the entire picture. In four states that do levy an income tax — Arkansas, California, New Jersey and New York — it is not. The fifty-state table.
Authority: Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Pub. L. 115-97, section 11051, repealing Internal Revenue Code sections 71 and 215; see also IRS Publication 504.The other number that decides your budget
How Texas calculates child support, and the overnight count that moves it more than income does.
And the question underneath it
What Texas presumes about custody, and what the judge has to weigh.
The rest of what we have written about Texas. Every figure is quoted from Texas’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.