Does Texas Have Alimony? Eligibility, Limits, and Enforcement

Yes, Texas has alimony, but the state calls it “spousal maintenance” and makes it harder to get than in almost any other state. Under Chapter 8 of the Texas Family Code, a judge starts from the position that maintenance is not needed, and the spouse asking for it has to clear specific eligibility hurdles before any payment is ordered. Even when a court does order support, the monthly payment is capped at the lesser of $5,000 or 20 percent of the payer’s gross income, and the longest a court can order payments is 10 years.¹ Because those limits are so tight, many divorcing couples negotiate their own private support arrangements, called contractual alimony, that go beyond what a judge could impose.

Who Qualifies for Spousal Maintenance

Every request begins with the same threshold. The spouse asking for support must show they will not have enough property after the divorce, including separate property, to meet their minimum reasonable needs.² Meeting that threshold alone is not enough. The requesting spouse also has to fit one of four categories:

The other spouse was convicted of or received deferred adjudication for a family violence offense against the requesting spouse or their child, and the offense happened within two years before the divorce was filed or while the case was pending.
The requesting spouse has a physical or mental disability that prevents them from earning enough to meet basic needs.
The marriage lasted at least 10 years and the requesting spouse cannot earn enough to be self-supporting.
The requesting spouse is the primary caretaker of a child of the marriage with a physical or mental disability that requires substantial care, and that caregiving prevents them from earning adequate income.²

The long-marriage route carries an extra hurdle. The statute presumes maintenance is not warranted unless the requesting spouse has been diligent about earning income or developing job skills during separation and while the divorce was pending.³ A spouse who sat idle during a lengthy separation faces an uphill fight. The presumption can be rebutted, but the burden sits on the person asking for help.

One boundary worth knowing up front: if a spouse becomes disabled or loses a job after the divorce is final and no maintenance order was entered, those later hardships are not grounds to start a new obligation. Maintenance has to be pursued during the divorce itself.

How Much a Court Can Order and for How Long

The monthly cap is the lesser of $5,000 or 20 percent of the paying spouse’s average gross monthly income.¹ For a spouse earning $20,000 a month, the 20-percent figure ($4,000) controls because it falls below $5,000. For a spouse earning $30,000 a month, the $5,000 hard cap kicks in because 20 percent would be higher.

Gross income includes wages, salary, interest, dividends, royalties, net rental income, self-employment earnings, retirement benefits, severance, trust distributions, and capital gains. The court works from tax returns and financial records to set the average. The cap applies regardless of the standard of living during the marriage. Living in an expensive home and driving luxury cars does not entitle a spouse to maintenance reflecting that lifestyle if the formula does not support it.

Duration is capped by how the recipient qualified and how long the marriage lasted, and the judge is directed to order the shortest period that lets the recipient become self-supporting.⁴

Family violence with a marriage under 10 years: up to 5 years.
Marriage of 10 to 20 years: up to 5 years.
Marriage of 20 to 30 years: up to 7 years.
Marriage of 30 years or more: up to 10 years.

Two exceptions allow open-ended payments. When the recipient qualifies because of a personal disability or because they are caring for a disabled child of the marriage, the court can order payments to continue as long as the qualifying condition lasts.⁴ Either party can ask the court to review whether the disability still prevents self-sufficiency, so these orders are not truly permanent.

What a Judge Weighs in Setting the Award

Once eligibility is established, the two anchors are what the requesting spouse reasonably needs and what the paying spouse can actually afford.⁵ Around those anchors, the statute lists other factors:

The financial resources each spouse walks away with after the property division, and any need for education or job training.
The standard of living during the marriage, considered as one input rather than a guarantee.
The length of the marriage. Longer marriages generally support larger and longer awards.
The age, employment history, earning ability, and physical and emotional condition of the requesting spouse.
Contributions by one spouse to the other’s education, training, or earning capacity.
Any history of family violence.
Marital misconduct and financial fault, including wasting community assets through hiding money, gambling, or reckless spending.

The statute also lets the court consider any other factor it finds just and equitable, which gives judges room to handle unusual situations.

Contractual Alimony: Going Beyond the Statutory Limits

Because the statutory caps are so tight, many divorces settle with a private support agreement Texas law calls contractual alimony. These agreements can include payments above $5,000 a month, durations past 10 years, or other terms a judge could not impose in a contested hearing. That flexibility is why contractual alimony is the tool of choice in higher-income divorces.

How the agreement is written determines how it can be enforced. If the terms stay within what a court could have ordered and a judge approves them, the recipient can enforce them through contempt of court, the same as a court-ordered award.⁶ Contempt carries the threat of jail, and that creates real leverage.

Any portion of an agreement that exceeds the statutory limits does not get contempt enforcement. A court cannot jail someone for failing to pay an amount larger than what it could have ordered on its own. The recipient’s only remedy for that portion is a breach-of-contract lawsuit, which produces a money judgment rather than the threat of incarceration. Income withholding through the employer is also unavailable for the contractual portion. Anyone signing a generous contractual alimony deal should understand this enforcement gap before agreeing, because a large payment on paper is worth much less if the payer stops writing checks and civil collection is the only tool left.

One common protection built into these agreements is a requirement that the paying spouse maintain a life insurance policy naming the recipient as beneficiary, typically in an amount matching the remaining obligation. Court-ordered maintenance ends when the payer dies, so a policy fills that gap and gives the payer a reason to keep coverage active.

When Payments End or Change

Maintenance terminates automatically when either the payer or the recipient dies, and it ends when the recipient remarries.⁷ No court filing is needed for those events to cut off future payments, though anything that had already accrued is still owed.

Cohabitation ends payments too, but it takes a court hearing. The paying spouse has to prove the recipient is living with another person in a dating or romantic relationship, in a permanent residence, on a continuing basis. All three elements matter. A recipient who occasionally stays with a partner but keeps a separate home may not meet the standard, while a recipient who moves in and shares expenses on an ongoing basis is exactly what the statute targets.

Either spouse can ask the original court to modify an order by showing a material and substantial change in circumstances that happened after the order was entered.⁶ Two limits apply. Modifications can only reduce the payment or shorten the remaining term; a court cannot increase the amount above the original figure or extend the end date. And as noted earlier, hardships that arise after the divorce cannot create a new maintenance obligation where none existed.

Enforcement If the Payer Falls Behind

A court-ordered maintenance award is enforceable through contempt, which is the strongest collection tool in family law. If payments stop, the recipient can file a motion to enforce, and a finding of contempt can carry jail time.⁶ The court can also enter a money judgment for the arrears and enforce it through income withholding and standard debt-collection tools.

The paying spouse has an affirmative defense: they must prove they lacked the ability to pay, had no property to sell or pledge, tried unsuccessfully to borrow the money, and knew of no other legal source of funds. All four elements. Saying “I can’t afford it” without documenting real efforts to find the money will not work.

If the payer moves out of state, federal interstate support law lets the recipient send an income withholding order directly to the payer’s new employer or register the Texas order in the new state for enforcement there. Modification, though, still has to go back to the Texas court that issued the original order.

Federal Tax Treatment

For any divorce finalized after December 31, 2018, spousal maintenance has no federal tax consequence for either party. The payer cannot deduct the payments, and the recipient does not report them as income.⁸ The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act repealed the alimony deduction permanently, with no sunset.

That change shows up in settlement math. Under the old rules, a high-earning payer effectively paid alimony at a discount because the deduction offset part of the cost. Now the full payment comes out of after-tax dollars, and the payer feels every dollar. Recipients keep the entire amount tax-free. Divorces finalized before January 1, 2019, still run on the old rules, with the payer deducting and the recipient reporting the income.⁹ If you have a pre-2019 order and are considering a modification, be careful: opting into the new tax rules through a modification is possible and cannot be reversed.

1
State of Texas. Texas Family Code 8.055 – Amount of Maintenance
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State of Texas. Texas Family Code 8.051 – Eligibility for Maintenance
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State of Texas. Texas Family Code 8.053 – Presumption
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State of Texas. Texas Family Code 8.054 – Duration of Maintenance Order
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State of Texas. Texas Family Code 8.052 – Factors for Determining Maintenance
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State of Texas. Texas Family Code Chapter 8 – Maintenance
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State of Texas. Texas Family Code 8.056 – Termination
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 215 – Alimony, Etc., Payments (Repealed)
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Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 452, Alimony and Separate Maintenance