Paul Horton: Understanding Alimony

All spouses have an obligation to deal with each other in some form or fashion, and that obligation carries on even after divorce when one spouse needs financial help from the other, as support installments. In Utah, sometimes you can escape alimony – but if you’ve been married for over 7 years, and one of the parties has been a “stay at home” mom or dad – there is a chance you may have to pay alimony.

Types of Alimony

In Utah, alimony is referred to in three different ways: as alimony, spousal support, and maintenance. Temporary maintenance is an order that one spouse must financially support the other while the divorce is being finalized. Once the divorce is finalized, the temporary maintenance stops and the judge decides whether permanent alimony is appropriate. A spouse could receive temporary maintenance but no permanent order once the divorce is finalized, or could receive no temporary maintenance during the divorce but later receive a permanent order. Judges decide whether or not to order spousal support based on individual circumstances of each case.

How Alimony Works

To decide whether spousal support is appropriate, the judge will look at the needs of the spouse asking for support and whether the other spouse has the financial ability to provide financial help. For example, if your income is lower than your spouse’s but you are able to support yourself, you may not be entitled to alimony. The court will also look at other factors when making a decision about support:

the length of the marriage
each spouse’s age and health status
each spouse’s present and future earning capacity
the need of one spouse to incur education or training expenses
whether the spouse seeking maintenance is able to become self-supporting
whether caring for children inhibited one spouse’s earning capacity
equitable distribution of marital property, and
the contributions that one spouse has made as a homemaker in order to help enhance the other spouse’s earning capacity.

The court will also look to see whether the acts of one spouse have inhibited or continue to inhibit the other spouse’s earning capacity or ability to obtain employment. The most common example of this would be domestic violence. If one spouse’s abuse of the other affected that abused spouse’s ability to maintain or to get a job, the court might consider those actions in making its order.

Length of Alimony

Impermanent upkeep orders end when a last judgment for divorce is entered. Regardless of whether you’ve been accepting provision while your divorce was in process, you will just keep getting installments if the judge makes a changeless request for it. Permanent alimony ends either on a date specified in the order, at the death of either spouse, or when the spouse receiving alimony remarries

Either of the spouses can ask the judge to modify the permanent order if there is a substantial change in circumstances. For example, if the spouse receiving support gets a better paying job, the court may reduce the payment amount or even terminate the payments.

The state of Utah provides an online guideline calculator for temporary spousal support. The calculator only looks at each spouse’s income and does not take into consideration any of the factors listed above, so you’ll get an estimate but not necessarily the exact amount the judge would order.

Alimony is tax deductible to the paying spouse and must be reported as income by the receiving spouse.

Free Consultation with an Alimony Lawyer in Utah

If you have a question about divorce law or if you need to start or defend against a divorce case in Utah call Ascent Law at (801) 676-5506. We will help you.