California Family Code Section 4320 sets out the factors a judge must weigh before ordering permanent spousal support in a divorce or legal separation. There is no calculator and no formula. The court works through each factor in the statute, looks at the evidence, and arrives at an amount and duration it considers fair.1California Legislative Information. California Code Family Code 4320 Because judges have wide discretion in how they balance those factors, knowing what the court is actually looking at is the closest thing to a preview of the outcome.
Why Section 4320 Only Applies to Permanent Support
Before the divorce is final, either spouse can ask for temporary spousal support to cover living expenses. Temporary support runs on a simpler standard: the supported spouse’s needs and the other spouse’s ability to pay, usually calculated with a guideline formula.2California Legislative Information. California Code FAM 3600
Permanent support is different. Once the divorce is final, the court must walk through every factor in Section 4320. Case law flatly prohibits using the temporary support guideline calculator for the final award. That is why the temporary number and the permanent number can look nothing alike, and why a temporary order should not be read as a preview of what the judge will ultimately do.
The Marital Standard of Living
The marital standard of living is the benchmark the court measures everything else against. It captures the lifestyle both spouses shared during the marriage—housing, transportation, travel, dining, discretionary spending—not just bare necessities. Each spouse’s financial needs get evaluated in light of that standard.1California Legislative Information. California Code Family Code 4320
The court also reviews each party’s assets and obligations, separate property included.1California Legislative Information. California Code Family Code 4320 A spouse who kept a substantial inheritance as separate property, or who has significantly more retirement savings, will see that weighed in the analysis. The goal is not identical post-divorce lifestyles, which is rarely possible. It is to keep one spouse from shouldering a disproportionate share of the financial fallout while the other lives comfortably.
Earning Capacity and the Path to Self-Sufficiency
The court examines whether each spouse can earn enough to sustain the marital standard of living on their own. For the supported spouse, that means looking at marketable skills, the job market for those skills, and how much time and money additional education or training would require.1California Legislative Information. California Code Family Code 4320 A spouse who left the workforce for a decade to raise children gets evaluated differently than one who maintained a career throughout the marriage.
The statute explicitly recognizes that time spent on domestic duties can damage future earning power. If one spouse stepped away from a career to run the household, the court treats that career gap as a factor favoring support, not as evidence of laziness.1California Legislative Information. California Code Family Code 4320
Section 4320 also states a policy goal: the supported spouse should become self-supporting within a reasonable period. For marriages under ten years, a reasonable period is typically half the length of the marriage. A six-year marriage points toward roughly three years of support.3California Legislative Information. California Code FAM 4320 The court can still order more or less based on the other factors.
The Gavron Warning
When ordering support, the court can issue a Gavron warning: a formal notice telling the supported spouse they are expected to make reasonable efforts to become self-supporting. It does not set a hard deadline. What it does is lay the legal groundwork for the paying spouse to later ask for a reduction or termination if the recipient hasn’t made genuine efforts. For long-duration marriages, the court can decide the warning is inappropriate and skip it.
Ability of the Paying Spouse to Pay
Support is not only about need. The court evaluates the paying spouse’s earning capacity, income from every source (earned and unearned), assets, and their own standard of living. A judge will not order support that leaves the paying spouse unable to meet reasonable expenses. This factor also intersects with custody: the court considers whether the supported spouse can work without harming the children in their care.1California Legislative Information. California Code Family Code 4320
Contributions to the Other Spouse’s Career
If one spouse helped the other earn a degree, professional license, or career advancement, the court weighs that contribution. The classic example is one spouse working while the other went through medical school or law school, but the factor applies broadly to any situation where one partner’s career progress depended on the other’s sacrifices.1California Legislative Information. California Code Family Code 4320 The spouse who deferred their own professional growth shouldn’t have that sacrifice ignored just because a tuition check got reimbursed in the property division.
Marriage Duration, Age, and Health
Length of marriage is one of the most consequential factors. California law creates a presumption that a marriage of ten or more years—measured from the wedding date to the date of separation—is a marriage of long duration. For those marriages, the court retains jurisdiction over spousal support indefinitely, meaning there is no automatic end date. The court can still terminate support later if circumstances change, but the default is open-ended jurisdiction.4California Legislative Information. California Code Family Code 4336
Two nuances matter. The court can consider periods of separation when deciding whether a marriage truly qualifies as long-duration, and it can find that a marriage shorter than ten years qualifies based on the circumstances.4California Legislative Information. California Code Family Code 4336 The ten-year mark is a presumption, not a bright line.
Age and health matter for practical reasons. An older spouse, or one with chronic health problems that limit their ability to work, will generally need more support for longer. A 60-year-old with a thin work history faces a very different job market than a 35-year-old in good health.1California Legislative Information. California Code Family Code 4320
Domestic Violence
The court must review all documented evidence of domestic violence between the spouses or against either spouse’s child. That includes protective orders issued after a hearing, no-contest pleas to criminal charges, findings of domestic violence made during the divorce, and the emotional distress caused by the abuse.1California Legislative Information. California Code Family Code 4320
A separate statute, Family Code Section 4325, goes further. When one spouse has a criminal conviction for domestic violence—specifically a misdemeanor conviction or a conviction resulting in probation—entered within five years before the divorce filing or during the proceedings, the law presumes the convicted spouse should not receive any spousal support from the victim. That presumption can be overcome, but only by a preponderance of the evidence. Section 4325 also directs the court to order attorney’s fees paid from community assets when circumstances warrant, so the victim doesn’t fund the abuser’s defense out of their separate property.5California Legislative Information. California Code FAM 4325
Tax Consequences
The court must consider the immediate and specific tax consequences of a support order to each party.1California Legislative Information. California Code Family Code 4320 The rules have shifted, and the current landscape matters for both spouses’ bottom line.
For federal taxes, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act eliminated the alimony deduction for divorce agreements executed after 2018. The paying spouse cannot deduct payments, and the receiving spouse does not report them as income.6Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 452, Alimony and Separate Maintenance California did not conform for years, so state and federal tax treatment diverged. Starting January 1, 2026, California conforms to the federal rule for any new divorce or separation agreement: alimony is neither deductible by the payer nor taxable to the recipient for both state and federal purposes.7Franchise Tax Board. Alimony
Anyone with a California divorce finalized between 2019 and 2025 needs to pay attention. Alimony may have been deductible on the state return even though it wasn’t deductible federally. Modifying that agreement after 2025 could change the tax treatment if the modification expressly adopts the new rules.7Franchise Tax Board. Alimony The kind of detail that can cost thousands of dollars if missed.
Hardships and the Catch-All Factor
The court must balance the hardships each party would face, and it can consider any other factors it considers just and equitable.8California Legislative Information. California Code FAM 4320 Together, these provisions give judges room to address circumstances that don’t fit neatly elsewhere: a special-needs child’s care costs, a family business that is difficult to divide, an unusual financial reality that none of the enumerated factors quite captures. In practice, the hardship-balancing factor is where the court makes sure the overall result feels equitable after the mechanical march through each item on the list.
What Section 4320 Doesn’t Cover
Section 4320 governs how the initial permanent support order gets set. It doesn’t govern what happens later. Two rules that come up constantly sit in nearby statutes.
If the supported spouse moves in with a new romantic partner, Family Code Section 4323 creates a rebuttable presumption that their need for support has decreased. The paying spouse can use it to ask for a modification or termination. The supported spouse doesn’t have to hold themselves out as married; simply living together is enough to trigger the presumption, and the burden then falls on the supported spouse to rebut it.9California Legislative Information. California Code FAM 4323
More broadly, under Family Code Section 3651, the court can modify or terminate support when a material change of circumstances calls for it—job loss, a substantial raise, a serious health diagnosis, retirement, cohabitation. Feeling that the payments are too high or too low is not enough on its own. And if the original divorce agreement states that support is non-modifiable, neither party can later ask the court to change it.10California Legislative Information. California Code FAM 3651 Agreeing to a non-modifiable term locks both sides in regardless of what happens next, which is worth understanding before signing.