I have practiced Minnesota family law for over 25 years, much of it in high-conflict divorces and cases involving businesses and spousal maintenance is one of the most heavily litigated issues I see, with the rules changing in 2024. Alimony cases are tough, confusing, and often provide little guidance in the statutes. This article will try to help you understand what the heck is going on in MN regarding Spousal maintenance and alimony.
NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY: Spousal maintenance, spousal support, and alimony are all the exact same thing; you’ll hear your lawyer and various legal experts and articles interchangeably using those words, so don’t get confused.
Spousal support is not automatic in Minnesota. A court awards it only when one spouse genuinely needs help meeting their reasonable living expenses and the other spouse has the ability to pay. When the court determines it’s needed, then we look at the duration, which is called either transitional or indefinite, and the amount turns on need and ability to pay rather than a fixed formula.
As of August 1, 2024, the length of the marriage drives a set of “rebuttable presumptions” about whether support is awarded at all and how long it lasts. Support can be changed later if your finances change substantially, and it can be enforced through the court if the paying spouse stops paying. Below, I walk through how each of these pieces actually works in a Minnesota case.
“REBUTTAL PRESUMPTION”: It’s just a legal phrase that means it’s assumed, but if there are specific facts, it can be unassumed.
Also, please note that if you read an article before August of 024 on alimony, many parts of it will be outdated and wrong.
No. There is no rule that one spouse automatically pays the other after a divorce. Minnesota calls this spousal maintenance rather than alimony, and the standard is gender neutral. Under Minnesota Statutes section 518.552, a court may order maintenance only if the spouse asking for it either lacks enough property to provide for reasonable needs given the marital standard of living, cannot adequately support themselves through appropriate employment, or is caring for a child whose circumstances make it inappropriate to require that parent to work outside the home.
In practice, the question I am really answering for a client is whether there is a meaningful gap between what one spouse needs and what they can earn or already have. In a marriage where both spouses earn similar incomes and leave with a similar share of property, maintenance is unlikely. In a long marriage where one spouse stepped back from a career to raise children or support the other’s business, an award is much more likely. The facts matter more than any slogan about who pays whom.
This is where the 2024 changes matter most. For years Minnesota courts talked about temporary, short-term, and permanent maintenance. The statute now uses two labels for post-divorce support: transitional and indefinite.
Transitional maintenance is paid for a set period of time to help a spouse get education, training, or work experience and become self-supporting.
Indefinite maintenance: has no fixed end date and is used when the court does not expect the receiving spouse to become fully self-supporting, often after a long marriage or because of age or health.
The law also cleaned up older orders. Under the 2024 amendments to the maintenance statute, an award of temporary maintenance issued before August 1, 2024, is now treated as transitional, and an award of permanent maintenance from before that date is now treated as indefinite. There is still a third category, temporary maintenance, but that term now refers narrowly to support paid while the divorce is pending under section 518.131, not to a type of long-term award.
Since August 1, 2024, the duration of maintenance starts from presumptions tied to the length of the marriage, measured from the date of marriage to the date the divorce action is started. These presumptions are rebuttable, meaning a judge can depart from them based on the facts, but they are the starting point.
If the marriage lasted less than five years, the law presumes no maintenance should be awarded. If the marriage lasted at least five years but less than twenty, the presumption is transitional maintenance for no longer than half the length of the marriage, assuming the need and ability factors support an award. If the marriage lasted twenty years or more, the presumption flips toward indefinite maintenance when those same factors are met.
Because the clock stops on the day the action is commenced, the timing of a filing can affect which presumption applies in a marriage sitting near one of these thresholds. That is a detail worth discussing with a lawyer before anyone files.
There is no spousal maintenance calculator in Minnesota the way there is a child support guideline. The court weighs the factors listed in section 518.552, subdivision 2, which include the financial resources of the spouse seeking support, the time needed to get education or training for appropriate work, the standard of living established during the marriage, the length of the marriage and the career sacrifices made during it, the age and health of both spouses, the ability of the paying spouse to meet their own needs while paying, the contribution each spouse made to the other’s career or business, and each spouse’s need and ability to prepare for retirement.
In southern Minnesota I see one factor cause more fights than any other, and that is income itself. When a spouse farms or owns a business, gross income on a tax return rarely reflects what the household actually lived on. Depreciation, equipment purchases, retained earnings, and personal expenses run through the business all distort the picture. In agricultural counties around Mankato and the surrounding region, pinning down a fair income figure for a self-employed or farming spouse often requires forensic accounting and a careful look at several years of returns, not a single pay stub. Getting that number right is usually where a maintenance case is won or lost.
Often, yes. Under section 518.552, subdivision 5b, either party can ask the court to modify the amount or duration of maintenance by showing a substantial change that makes the existing order unreasonable and unfair. The recognized grounds include a substantial increase or decrease in either party’s income, a substantial increase or decrease in either party’s need, or a substantial change in the tax laws affecting maintenance. When the court rules on a modification motion, it applies the same need, ability, and duration factors that govern an original award, measured as of the time of the motion.
There is an important exception. If the parties signed a stipulation that expressly limited or waived the right to modify maintenance (Often called a Karon Waiver), and the court made specific findings approving it, the award may be non-modifiable no matter how your circumstances change. That is why I tell clients to read the maintenance language in a proposed decree very carefully before signing. A waiver that feels harmless on the day of settlement can become a serious problem years later.
Do not simply stop paying. A maintenance order stays in full effect until a court changes it, and unilaterally stopping can expose you to a contempt finding, interest on the arrears, and in serious cases jail. If your order is modifiable and you have suffered a real, involuntary loss of income, you can file a motion to reduce maintenance based on the change in your circumstances. File promptly, because a modification can generally be made retroactive only to the date the other party was served with your motion, not back to the day you lost the job.
Expect the court to look closely at whether the income loss is genuine and beyond your control. You cannot quit, take a deliberately low-paying job, or stop looking for comparable work and then ask to pay less. If the judge concludes you could still earn enough to pay, the order will not change. The honest path is to document the job loss, keep up your job search, pay what you can, and get the motion on file quickly.
The statute addresses each. Maintenance can be reduced, suspended, or terminated if the spouse receiving it cohabits with another adult, though the court weighs factors like the economic benefit of the cohabitation and how long it is likely to last, and a cohabitation motion generally cannot be brought within the first year after the decree. Maintenance can also be modified when the paying spouse retires in good faith, with the law presuming good faith once that spouse reaches full Social Security retirement age. And unless the decree says otherwise, the obligation to pay future maintenance ends on the death of either spouse or the remarriage of the spouse receiving it.
A maintenance order is a court order, and Minnesota courts will enforce it. The first thing I tell clients is to document everything: the exact dates of missed payments and the precise amount owed. Clean records make every enforcement tool work better.
Next, find out why the payments stopped. Sometimes there is a legitimate reason such as a job loss or illness, and a short-term repayment arrangement makes more sense than litigation. But a paying spouse does not get to decide on their own to stop. If your former spouse is simply refusing to pay, you can ask the court to enforce the order. Common remedies include a motion to hold the non-paying spouse in contempt of court, automatic income withholding from wages, entry of a money judgment for the unpaid amount with interest, and other collection tools against income and assets. Which approach fits depends on the other person’s finances and willingness to cooperate, so these cases are best handled one at a time rather than with a single template.
One older rule that many people still believe is no longer true. For divorces finalized after December 31, 2018, spousal maintenance is no longer deductible by the paying spouse and is no longer taxable income to the receiving spouse under federal law, a change made by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. You can read the current federal treatment on the IRS page on alimony and separate maintenance. This matters because it changes the real cost of an award, and any number you negotiate should account for it.
Spousal maintenance is fact-driven, and the 2024 changes mean older guidance can lead you astray. If you are considering divorce, facing a maintenance claim, dealing with a job loss, or trying to collect support your former spouse has stopped paying, get advice tailored to your situation before you make a move. You can review the Minnesota Judicial Branch’s divorce and dissolution help topics and the full text of section 518.552 to understand the framework, then talk with a lawyer about how it applies to you. At Kohlmeyer Hagen, Law Office Chtd., I help clients across southern Minnesota from our offices in Mankato and Rochester. Contact us for a confidential consultation.
