Spousal Maintenance | Sabrina Layman

Spousal maintenance is a tool the court can use in any case to balance the division of assets, debts, and financial outcome. There’s an unwritten rule that parties are entitled to, or should get, one year of spousal support for every three to five years of marriage. 

That information comes from a judicial deskbook, published a long time ago, but it gives us some perspective. Shorter-term marriages where both parties are working don’t necessarily use spousal maintenance, because each person can support themselves. 

Longer-term marriages, or cases where there are significant financial resources — investment accounts, real estate — may use spousal maintenance to bridge the gaps. But there’s really no strict rule, other than: Do you need it, and does the other side have the ability to pay? 

There’s a whole list of other factors in the law, almost all of which are boring on a video. So I think if you just think of spousal maintenance as a tool that gets you from the beginning of the divorce to the end outcome, that’s probably the best way to look at it.