Alimony in Vermont.
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 stateVermont
Vermont has a numeric guideline for both amount and duration, and it is in the statute itself — not a court rule, not a local rule — and it applies to post-divorce maintenance, not to temporary relief. But its legal force is precisely stated and easily overstated: it is the ninth item in the list of factors the court considers, not a presumption and not a starting figure the court must rebut. 15 V.S.A. section 752(b) opens 'The maintenance order shall be in such amounts and for such periods of time as the court deems just, after considering all relevant factors, including:' and item (9) is 'the following guidelines:' followed by this table, reproduced as printed: Length of marriage | % of the difference between parties' gross incomes | Duration of alimony award as % length of marriage 0 to <5 years | 0-16% | No alimony or short-term alimony up to one year 5 to <10 years | 12-29% | 20-50% (1-5 yrs) 10 to <15 years | 16-33% | 40-60% (4-9 yrs) 15 to <20 years | 20-37% | 40-70% (6-14 yrs) 20+ years | 24-41% | 45% (9-20+ yrs) The amount column is a percentage of the difference between the parties' gross incomes. The duration column is a percentage of the length of the marriage, with the resulting year ranges given in parentheses. Nothing in section 752 says the guideline amount is presumed correct, and nothing requires written findings to depart from it — the contrast with a state such as Arizona, whose statute makes the guideline output binding absent written findings, is the point worth drawing.
The statute says in terms that it does not create a presumptive amount. A judge may depart from it without explaining why.
Use the state’s own words
Vermont calls it maintenance. 15 V.S.A. section 752 is captioned 'Maintenance' and distinguishes maintenance 'either rehabilitative or long term in nature'. The word 'alimony' appears in the statute only inside the guideline table itself, in the column headings 'Duration of alimony award' and the entry 'No alimony or short-term alimony up to one year'.. 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.
Your browser may warn you about the link below
Vermont’s own legislature site serves an incomplete security certificate. Some browsers show a warning on it and some do not, depending on what they already have cached. It is the state’s real site and the text is the real statute — the fault is in the state’s server configuration, not in the link.
What the law actually says
The power the court has
What the judge has to weigh
How long it lasts
Duration
Yes, and numerically. Two of the nine factors bear on it: section 752(b)(4), 'the duration of the civil marriage', and the third column of the section 752(b)(9) guideline table, 'Duration of alimony award as % length of marriage', which runs from 'No alimony or short-term alimony up to one year' for marriages under five years to '45% (9-20+ yrs)' for marriages of twenty years or more. As with the amount column, these are guideline figures inside a factor, not presumptions.
Does behavior matter?
Marital misconduct
The statute is silent. None of the nine factors in section 752(b) refers to fault, conduct or misconduct, and nothing elsewhere in section 752 requires or bars its consideration.
When it ends, and when it can change
What brings it to an end
The statute is silent. Neither section 752 nor section 758 provides for termination on death, on remarriage, on cohabitation or on retirement, and the subchapter that contains them — 15 V.S.A. ch. 11, subch. 6 — has no termination section at all. Its sections are 751 (property settlement), 752 (maintenance), 753, 754, 755, 756, 757 (security for payment) and 758 (revision). Retirement enters only as a factor in fixing the award, at section 752(b)(8). A Vermont order that is to end on remarriage must say so; the statute does not say it. Source for the subchapter contents: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/chapter/15/011
Changing it later
15 V.S.A. section 758, quoted verbatim in full: 'On motion of either party and due notice, and upon a showing of a real, substantial, and unanticipated change of circumstances, the court may from time to time annul, vary or modify a judgment relative to maintenance, whether or not such judgment relative to maintenance is based upon a stipulation or an agreement.' The closing clause matters: a stipulated maintenance judgment is modifiable on the same showing as a litigated one.
Worth knowing about Vermont
Vermont is the headline finding of this batch and the one most likely to be reported wrongly in either direction. The guideline table is genuinely statutory — most states with numeric guidelines have them in a court rule, a local rule, or nowhere — but it is not presumptive, because the legislature placed it inside the list of factors rather than above it. Both halves of that sentence need to be said together. The history is also worth stating because the numbers have moved: the table was added to section 752 by 2017 Act No. 60, section 2, and the current percentages were substituted by 2019 Act No. 40, section 6, which lowered every amount band (for example, the 5-to-under-10-year band went from 15-35% to 12-29%, and the 20+ band from 30-50% to 24-41%). Act 40's own effective-date section provides: 'Notwithstanding 1 V.S.A. section 214, Sec. 6, 15 V.S.A. section 752(b)(9) (maintenance guidelines), shall apply to actions filed on or after January 1, 2019.' Finally, Vermont expressly addresses short marriages in the statute: the first row of the table reads 'No alimony or short-term alimony up to one year' for a marriage of under five years. Two access notes. First, legislature.vermont.gov serves an incomplete TLS certificate chain (leaf only, missing the GlobalSign RSA OV SSL CA 2018 intermediate); this was repaired by fetching that intermediate from the certificate's own CA Issuers URL and confirming it chains to a root already in the trust store, so verification was completed, not weakened. Second, the site itself carries the notice 'The Vermont Statutes Online is an unofficial copy of the Vermont Statutes Annotated that is provided as a convenience' — it is the General Assembly's own publication, and it is what the General Assembly says about it. Act text: https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2020/Docs/ACTS/ACT040/ACT040%20As%20Enacted.pdf
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, Vermont’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: Vermont Department of Taxes, 2025 Vermont Income Tax Form Instructions Federal Conformity Supplement: ‘Section 60 of Act 164 updated Vermont’s date of static conformity to the federal tax law by amending 32 V.S.A. § 5824. Vermont now generally conforms to the laws of the United States as in effect on December 31, 2025.’ the state source
The other number that decides your budget
How Vermont calculates child support, and the overnight count that moves it more than income does.
And the question underneath it
What Vermont presumes about custody, and what the judge has to weigh.