In Iowa, there is no absolute rule that says whether a spouse gets alimony in a divorce. If it’s determined that a spouse should get alimony, there is no real formula for how much they should receive. How much, and how long alimony is paid, is totally up to the judge, and different judges see things differently.
Iowa Law lays out the following factors to consider when determining whether a spouse should receive alimony:
The length of the marriage;
The age, physical, and emotional health of the parties;
The distribution of property in the divorce settlement;
The education of each party at the time of the marriage and the time of the divorce action;
The earning capacity of the party seeking alimony, which includes consideration of the following: educational background, training, employment, skills, work experience, length of absence from the job market, responsibilities for children in the party’s care, and the time and expense necessary for the party to obtain the required education or training that would be needed to find appropriate employment;
The likelihood and the time it would take for the party seeking alimony to become self-supporting and live at a standard reasonably comparable to what the party enjoyed during the marriage;
The tax consequences to each party;
Any mutual agreements made by the parties in which one party agreed to financial or service contributions with the expectation that the other party would reciprocate that contribution in the future;
The provisions of an prenuptial agreement;
And any other factors that the Court finds relevant in an individual case
If you and your spouse are discussing alimony, you should be aware that there are three types of alimony:
The most common is called rehabilitative alimony. I often refer to this as “launch and ramp up” alimony because it is designed to give a spouse a running start post-divorce. It’s often used to allow the spouse to obtain training or education to make them more job-worthy. It’s often given to a spouse who reduced or eliminated their ability to work during the marriage for some reason. (Perhaps, for example, to take care of children.) A good rule of thumb is that this alimony is paid for 1-5 years post- divorce.
Another type of alimony is reimbursement alimony. This often comes into play when a spouse has used their separate money (perhaps from an inheritance or pre-marriage money) to pay for something (such as education) for the other spouse. Or, it may be paid because one spouse gave up their ability to have future earning capacity so their spouse could “get ahead” in the workforce (the length received is what is reasonable to make the spouse who sacrificed whole).
The third type of alimony is permanent or traditional alimony which is paid to a spouse who can’t really go into the workforce post- divorce and earn enough money to support themselves in a reasonable manner. I see permanent alimony on long term marriages (20 years or more) and when a spouse is older and can’t re-educate themselves or do anything to increase their employability. This alimony is usually paid for life of the payee, or at least until that spouse receives social security benefits.
Once you’ve decided that you and your spouse want to have alimony paid, you have to determine how much. The most practical way to do this is for each spouse to develop a detailed budget of what they need to live, and in the case of the spouse receiving alimony how much is needed to obtain the proposed training or education, and get a job.
Once both spouses develop a budget, they need to contrast bottom lines to the amount of money that is coming in. Does one spouse have excess cashflow over their budget needed? If so, can they pay all or part of that amount as alimony for some period of time? The court doesn’t expect a person to pay alimony if it means they will end up not being able to support him or herself on their income. And, just because your spouse makes more money than you, it doesn’t mean you are entitled to alimony.
Some people are opposed to alimony in general because they don’t want to write a check to their former spouse every month. A solution to this is that you make the distribution of property and debts different than 50/50 which is sometimes called buying out alimony. For example instead of paying you $300 a month for two years, I simply give you $7,200 extra from my half of my retirement account after we divide it. Or we sell the house and I give you $7,200 out of my half of the proceeds.
There are many nuances to alimony and after being a practicing attorney for many years I’ve negotiated alimony awards in as many ways as you can think of. If you and your spouse want to have alimony be a part of your divorce, you can develop some possible proposals and run them by your UnHitchUs attorney at your consultation.