Do You Have to Pay Alimony in Texas? Caps, Duration, and Limits

Alimony in Texas is uncommon, tightly capped, and time-limited. A judge can order spousal maintenance only when the requesting spouse clears strict eligibility rules, and even then the monthly payment cannot exceed the lesser of $5,000 or 20 percent of the paying spouse’s average gross monthly income. Most Texas divorces end without any court-ordered support at all. What people often call “alimony” in a Texas settlement is usually contractual alimony, which the spouses negotiate themselves and which follows a different set of rules than a court-ordered award.

Two Kinds of Alimony in Texas

The first thing to sort out is which type of support is on the table, because the answer changes almost everything else.

Court-ordered spousal maintenance is what Chapter 8 of the Texas Family Code authorizes: periodic payments from one spouse’s future income, ordered by a judge, subject to eligibility rules, dollar caps, and duration limits. If the paying spouse stops paying, the court can hold them in contempt, which can mean fines or jail.¹

Contractual alimony is support the spouses agree to during settlement, usually in mediation, and it becomes part of the final decree as a contract term. Because it is contractual rather than court-ordered, enforcement is weaker. A court generally cannot use contempt to force payment unless the agreement specifically permits income withholding or the payments fall behind. The receiving spouse instead has to pursue a breach-of-contract claim, which is slower and offers fewer remedies. Income withholding through the employer does not apply automatically the way it does with court-ordered maintenance.¹

The tradeoff is flexibility. Spouses using contractual alimony can agree to amounts above the statutory cap, longer payment periods, or lump-sum arrangements a judge could not order. For higher-earning couples, that flexibility is often why contractual alimony ends up in a settlement even when a court would never have ordered maintenance.

Who a Texas Court Can Order to Pay Maintenance

A Texas judge cannot order spousal maintenance unless the requesting spouse first shows they will lack enough property after the divorce, including their own separate property, to meet their minimum reasonable needs. That alone rules out many people. Then the requesting spouse has to fit one of four specific categories.²

Family violence. The other spouse was convicted of, or received deferred adjudication for, a family violence offense against the requesting spouse or that spouse’s child, and the offense occurred within two years before the divorce was filed or while the case was pending. Length of marriage does not matter here.
Long marriage with inability to earn. The marriage lasted at least 10 years, and the requesting spouse cannot earn enough to meet minimum reasonable needs.
Disability. The requesting spouse has a physical or mental disability that prevents earning sufficient income.
Disabled child. The requesting spouse is the primary caregiver for a child of the marriage with a physical or mental disability requiring substantial care, and that caregiving prevents earning enough to meet needs.

Two boundaries worth flagging. The family violence category requires a conviction or deferred adjudication. A protective order by itself is not enough. And the 10-year marriage category does not automatically produce an award; it just gets the requesting spouse through the door.²

The Presumption Against Maintenance

Even when the 10-year category applies, Texas law starts from a rebuttable presumption that maintenance is not warranted. To overcome it, the requesting spouse has to show they were diligent about either earning enough income or building the skills to do so during the separation and while the divorce was pending.³

In practice, that means concrete evidence: an actual job search, enrollment in training, or other steps toward self-support. A general claim of being unable to find work, without proof of the effort, is where a lot of maintenance requests fail. The burden sits on the person asking for support.

How Much and For How Long

Texas puts hard ceilings on court-ordered maintenance. Monthly payments cannot exceed the lesser of $5,000 or 20 percent of the paying spouse’s average monthly gross income. A judge has no discretion to go higher, no matter how wealthy the parties are or how great the need.

Duration depends on the length of the marriage:

Marriages of 10 to 20 years: up to five years.
Marriages of 20 to 30 years: up to seven years.
Marriages of 30 years or more: up to 10 years.

These are maximums, not defaults. The statute directs the court to limit maintenance to the shortest reasonable period that allows the receiving spouse to become self-supporting. If the basis for the award is a spouse’s disability or the care of a disabled child, the court can order payments to continue as long as the disability persists, without the marriage-length caps applying.²

For family violence cases involving marriages shorter than 10 years, maintenance is still available, but duration is generally capped at five years.

What the Judge Weighs Within the Caps

Once eligibility is settled, the judge looks at a list of factors to fix the amount and length. Those include each spouse’s ability to meet their own needs after the property division, both spouses’ education and job skills, how long it would realistically take the requesting spouse to get the training needed for adequate employment, and whether that training is actually available.⁴

The court also weighs the length of the marriage, the requesting spouse’s age, health, and employment history, and any marital misconduct such as adultery or cruel treatment. Contributions by one spouse to the other’s education or career count in the analysis. Contributions as a homemaker are an explicit statutory factor, which matters because time out of the workforce directly affects earning capacity.⁴

When Maintenance Ends or Can Be Reduced

Court-ordered maintenance is not permanent. A judge can modify an existing order if there has been a material and substantial change in either party’s circumstances since the order was entered. Significant changes in income, employment, or the receiving spouse’s needs can all qualify. Modifications generally only allow a decrease or termination, not an increase in amount or duration.

Maintenance ends automatically on the death of either spouse or the remarriage of the receiving spouse. It also ends if the receiving spouse begins living with a romantic partner on a continuing basis, but this one requires a court hearing: the paying spouse has to file a motion and prove the cohabitation before the court will terminate the obligation.⁵

Termination does not wipe out unpaid amounts that already accrued. If back payments are owed at the moment the obligation ends, that debt survives.⁵

How Payments Get Collected, and What Happens If They Stop

Court-ordered maintenance is paid periodically, usually monthly, and the standard enforcement tool is an income withholding order. That order directs the paying spouse’s employer to deduct the amount from each paycheck and send it to the receiving spouse or a state disbursement unit. Combined withholding for both spousal maintenance and child support cannot exceed 50 percent of disposable earnings, and child support takes priority when both exist.¹

Withholding does not apply automatically to contractual alimony unless the agreement provides for it or the payer falls behind. That gap is one of the biggest practical differences between the two types of support.

If a paying spouse falls behind on court-ordered maintenance, the receiving spouse can ask the court to enforce the order. The strongest option is contempt, which can bring fines or jail for willful nonpayment. The court can also enter a judgment for the total arrearages, and a receiving spouse who never had withholding in place can request one going forward.

Bankruptcy will not clear the obligation. Domestic support obligations are specifically excluded from discharge in both Chapter 7 and Chapter 13.⁶ The automatic stay that normally freezes collection against a bankruptcy debtor does not apply to domestic support either, so income withholding can continue during an active bankruptcy, and a court can even establish or modify a maintenance order during the case.

Federal Tax Treatment

For any divorce finalized after December 31, 2018, spousal maintenance and contractual alimony payments carry no federal income tax consequences on either side. The paying spouse cannot deduct the payments, and the receiving spouse does not report them as income. This applies to both court-ordered maintenance and contractual alimony.⁷

Divorces finalized on or before December 31, 2018 still follow the older rules unless a post-2018 modification expressly adopts the new tax treatment. Under those older rules, the paying spouse deducted the payments and the receiving spouse reported them as taxable income.⁷

1
Justia Law. Texas Code Family – Chapter 8 – Maintenance
2
State of Texas. Texas Code Family – Section 8.051 – Eligibility for Maintenance
3
State of Texas. Texas Code Family – Section 8.053 – Presumption
4
State of Texas. Texas Code Family – Section 8.052 – Factors in Determining Maintenance
5
State of Texas. Texas Code Family – Section 8.056 – Termination
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 523 – Exceptions to Discharge
7
Internal Revenue Service. Frequently Asked Questions on Alimony and Child Support