Under Texas spousal support rules, a judge can order maintenance only after the requesting spouse clears strict eligibility hurdles, and even then the payments are capped at the lesser of $5,000 per month or 20 percent of the paying spouse’s average monthly gross income and limited to a maximum of five, seven, or ten years depending on how long the marriage lasted. Texas is one of the toughest states in the country on court-ordered support. The rules live in Chapter 8 of the Texas Family Code, and knowing how they work shapes almost every financial decision you make during a divorce.
Two Kinds of Spousal Support in Texas
Texas law recognizes two different things people call alimony, and the distinction matters. Court-ordered maintenance is what a judge can impose under Chapter 8. It carries statutory caps on both amount and duration, and the eligibility requirements are demanding. Contractual alimony is support the spouses negotiate and agree to as part of a settlement.
Because contractual alimony is a private agreement, it sits outside the Chapter 8 limits. Spouses can agree to any amount, any duration, even permanent support. The tradeoff is enforcement. If the paying spouse stops making contractual alimony payments, the receiving spouse’s remedy is a breach-of-contract lawsuit rather than contempt of court. A court cannot hold someone in contempt for failing to pay an amount that exceeds what the court itself could have ordered under Chapter 8.1State of Texas. Texas Family Code Section 8.059 – Enforcement of Maintenance Order Contractual alimony can be more generous on paper and harder to collect when things go wrong.
Everything below concerns court-ordered maintenance, because that is where the statutory rules create traps.
Who Qualifies for Maintenance
Courts start from the presumption that maintenance is unnecessary. To qualify, you must show that you lack enough property after the divorce to cover your minimum reasonable needs, and you must also meet one of these conditions:2State of Texas. Texas Family Code FA 8.051 – Eligibility for Maintenance
- Your spouse was convicted of or received deferred adjudication for a family violence offense committed during the marriage, either within two years before the divorce was filed or while the case was pending.
- You were married for at least ten years and cannot earn enough income to meet your basic needs.
- You have a physical or mental disability that prevents you from earning sufficient income, regardless of marriage length.
- You are the primary caregiver for a child of the marriage who has a physical or mental disability that requires substantial care and keeps you from earning enough to support yourself.
The ten-year marriage path is the most common, and it carries an extra hurdle. There is a rebuttable presumption that maintenance is not warranted unless you have been diligent about developing the skills or education needed to support yourself.3State of Texas. Texas Family Code Section 8.053 – Presumption Judges look at your work history, education, and whether realistic job training was available to you during the separation period. Spending that time making no effort to become employable is often fatal to the request.
How Much and How Long
Texas caps court-ordered maintenance at the lesser of $5,000 per month or 20 percent of the paying spouse’s average monthly gross income.4State of Texas. Texas Family Code FAM 8.055 – Amount of Maintenance Gross income includes wages, bonuses, commissions, rental income, and retirement benefits. For a spouse earning $180,000 a year, or $15,000 a month, 20 percent works out to $3,000, and that lower figure becomes the ceiling.
Self-employed spouses and those with irregular income complicate the math. Courts have discretion to determine average monthly gross income and often look at several years of tax returns to smooth out the fluctuations. If your spouse owns a business, expect the court to examine business expenses to determine whether personal spending is being routed through the company.
Duration limits depend on why you qualified and how long the marriage lasted:
- Family violence in a marriage under ten years: up to five years.
- Marriage of 10 to 20 years: up to five years.
- Marriage of 20 to 30 years: up to seven years.
- Marriage of 30 years or longer: up to ten years.
A spouse who qualifies because of a disability, or because they care for a disabled child of the marriage, can receive maintenance for an indefinite period. The court keeps authority to review and modify that order if the disability improves.
These maximums are ceilings, not defaults. Courts routinely award shorter durations when the evidence suggests the receiving spouse can become self-sufficient sooner. A judge who sees a viable path to employment within two years is unlikely to award five just because the statute allows it.
What Courts Weigh in Setting the Award
Once eligibility is established, the court decides amount and duration by weighing eleven statutory factors, including each spouse’s financial resources after the property division, education and employment skills, marriage duration, age and health, contributions as a homemaker, contributions to the other spouse’s earning power, marital misconduct, and any history of family violence.5State of Texas. Texas Family Code FA 8.052 – Factors in Determining Maintenance
In practice the first several factors do most of the work. A 55-year-old spouse with limited work history and health problems after a 25-year marriage is the textbook candidate. A healthy 35-year-old with a marketable degree after a 12-year marriage faces a much steeper climb, even when the technical requirements are met. Adultery, cruelty, and wasteful spending of shared assets are not ignored, though Texas courts do not use maintenance as punishment.
When Maintenance Ends or Changes
Court-ordered maintenance terminates automatically if either spouse dies or if the receiving spouse remarries.6State of Texas. Texas Family Code FA 8.056 – Termination No court order is needed for either event to cut off future payments.
Cohabitation works differently. If the receiving spouse moves in with a romantic partner on a continuing basis, the paying spouse has to file a motion and prove the arrangement at a hearing. The court then orders termination if it finds the receiving spouse is living with someone in a dating or romantic relationship in a permanent residence on a continuing basis.6State of Texas. Texas Family Code FA 8.056 – Termination Shared bills, joint leases, and witness testimony about the living arrangement are the usual evidence.
Termination of future payments does not erase any maintenance that accrued earlier. If the paying spouse owes back payments at the moment of remarriage or cohabitation, those arrears remain collectible.6State of Texas. Texas Family Code FA 8.056 – Termination
Either spouse can also ask the original court to modify the amount. The court will only change it on proof of a material and substantial change in circumstances, such as the receiving spouse landing a well-paying job, the paying spouse losing employment involuntarily, or a significant health change.7State of Texas. Texas Family Code Section 8.057 – Modification of Maintenance Order Voluntary unemployment does not count. If the paying spouse quits or deliberately reduces income, the court will base payments on what they are capable of earning. The burden is always on the party asking for the change.
Enforcement and the Two-Year Clock
When a paying spouse falls behind, the most direct option is a motion for enforcement. A court can find willful nonpayment to be contempt and sentence the delinquent spouse to up to six months in jail for each violation, and it can order that spouse to pay the other side’s attorney fees and court costs.8State of Texas. Texas Family Code FA 8.207 – Contempt An income withholding order directs the paying spouse’s employer to deduct maintenance directly from wages. Withholding is not automatic and has to be requested or ordered.
Federal law also allows past-due spousal support to be collected by intercepting the paying spouse’s federal tax refund through the Treasury Offset Program, once the debt has been referred to the state child support enforcement agency and reported to the federal government.9eCFR. 31 CFR Part 285 Subpart A – Disbursing Official Offset
There is a hard time limit on all of this. Spousal maintenance arrears in Texas are subject to a two-year statute of limitations from the date each payment was due.10State of Texas. Texas Family Code FA 8.208 – Limitations Let unpaid maintenance sit for more than two years without taking legal action, and you lose the right to collect it. This is a common and costly mistake.
Federal Tax Treatment
For any divorce or separation agreement executed after December 31, 2018, the paying spouse cannot deduct maintenance payments, and the receiving spouse does not report them as income.11Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 452, Alimony and Separate Maintenance The payments are a non-event for federal tax purposes.
Agreements finalized before 2019 still run under the old rules: the paying spouse deducts the payments and the receiving spouse includes them in gross income. Those pre-2019 tax rules only change if the parties modify the agreement and the modification expressly states that the post-2018 repeal applies.11Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 452, Alimony and Separate Maintenance Without that language, the old agreement stays under the old treatment indefinitely.
For anyone divorcing now, the effect is straightforward. The paying spouse bears the full cost with no deduction, and the receiving spouse keeps the full amount with no tax on it. Build that into any negotiation, because a $3,000 monthly payment now costs the payer $3,000 in after-tax dollars.
What Happens If the Payer Files Bankruptcy
Spousal maintenance does not disappear in bankruptcy. Federal bankruptcy law classifies maintenance as a domestic support obligation, and domestic support obligations cannot be discharged.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S.C. 523 – Exceptions to Discharge The debt survives the case in full.
The automatic stay that normally freezes collection when someone files bankruptcy also does not apply to spousal maintenance. A receiving spouse can keep collecting through income withholding, pursue establishment or modification of the support order, and collect from any property that is not part of the bankruptcy estate.13Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 362 – Automatic Stay A bankruptcy filing by your ex-spouse is not a reason to stop enforcement.