Durational alimony is what replaced permanent alimony in Florida. Since July 1, 2023 it is the workhorse award in most contested cases — and it is the only form with hard arithmetic written into the statute. Two ceilings govern it: one on how long it can run, one on how large it can be. Understanding both before you negotiate is the difference between settling from knowledge and settling from fear.
What durational alimony actually is
Section 61.08(8), Florida Statutes, allows a court to award durational alimony “to provide a party with economic assistance for a set period of time.” That phrase does the work. It is not rehabilitation — there is no plan to fund and no credential to earn. It is not a bridge across a few months of transition. It is ongoing support, for a defined number of years, after which it stops on its own.
Because it has no rehabilitative purpose to satisfy and no two-year ceiling, durational alimony is where the money in a Florida alimony case usually is. It is also where the 2023 reform bit hardest: the old permanent award is gone, and what took its place comes with a calendar and a calculator attached.
The three-year threshold
Durational alimony may not be awarded following a marriage lasting less than three years. That is a bright line, not a factor to be weighed. Below three years, the alimony conversation is limited to temporary support during the case, bridge-the-gap, or rehabilitative alimony — and nothing else.
Length of the marriage is measured from the date of marriage to the date the petition for dissolution is filed, not the date of separation and not the date of the final judgment. In a case sitting near the three-year line, or near one of the category boundaries below, the filing date is not an administrative detail. It is a term of the deal.
Ceiling one: how long it can last
The statute sorts marriages into three categories, each with a rebuttable presumption attached:
- Short-term — under 10 years. Durational alimony may not exceed 50% of the length of the marriage.
- Moderate-term — 10 years up to 20 years. The cap is 60%.
- Long-term — 20 years or longer. The cap is 75%.
Worked through, that means an 8-year marriage supports at most 4 years of durational alimony. A 14-year marriage supports at most 8.4 years. A 24-year marriage supports at most 18 years. The award also may not exceed the length of the marriage itself.
Two things people consistently get wrong about these numbers. First, the cap is a ceiling, not an entitlement — a court can award far less, or nothing at all, and routinely does. Second, the category boundaries are rebuttable presumptions. A marriage of 9 years and 10 months is presumptively short-term, but the presumption can be argued, and the difference between 50% and 60% of a decade-long marriage is roughly a year of payments.
Ceiling two: the 35% cap
The amount of durational alimony is the lesser of the recipient’s reasonable need, or 35% of the difference between the parties’ net incomes. Whichever number is smaller controls.
Net income is not gross salary and it is not what lands in a checking account. It is calculated under section 61.30(2) and (3) — the child support statute — and excludes spousal support paid under a court order in the same case. So the working figure runs through the same allowable deductions a child support guideline calculation uses.
An illustration. Suppose one spouse nets $14,000 a month and the other nets $4,000. The difference is $10,000; 35% of that is $3,500. If the recipient’s demonstrated reasonable need is $5,200 a month, the award is capped at $3,500 — need loses to the statutory ceiling. If instead the demonstrated need is $2,800, the award is $2,800 — the ceiling is irrelevant and need controls. In roughly half of real cases the 35% figure never binds at all, which is why treating it as “the number” is a mistake that costs money on both sides of the table.
There is a further backstop in section 61.08(9): an alimony award may not leave the payor with significantly less net income than the recipient, absent written findings of exceptional circumstances.
Need and ability to pay still come first
Before any of the arithmetic applies, the court must make a specific factual finding that the party asking for alimony has an actual need and that the other party has the ability to pay. The burden of proving both sits with the person requesting support. If either finding fails, the analysis ends there and no award follows — the percentages never come into play.
Where those thresholds are met, the court weighs the statutory factors in section 61.08(3): the duration of the marriage, the standard of living established during it, each party’s age and physical and mental condition, the resources and income of each party including income from nonmarital assets, earning capacity and employability, contributions to the marriage including homemaking and career-building for the other spouse, and responsibilities for the parties’ minor children. The court must put its reasoning in written findings, including the type of alimony and the length of the award. Those written findings are also what makes an award reviewable on appeal — their absence is one of the more common grounds for reversal.
Extending past the cap
A court may extend durational alimony beyond the 50/60/75% ceiling, but only on clear and convincing evidence that the extension is necessary — a materially higher standard than the preponderance standard that governs most family law questions. The court applies the general factors and then four additional ones:
- The extent to which the recipient’s age and employability limit self-support.
- The extent to which the recipient’s available financial resources limit self-support.
- Whether the recipient is mentally or physically disabled, or has been diagnosed with a condition that has rendered or will render them incapable of self-support.
- Whether the recipient is the caregiver to a mentally or physically disabled child the parties have in common — including an adult child. An extension granted on this ground terminates when the child no longer needs that caregiving, or on the child’s death, unless one of the other three factors independently applies.
These are narrow grounds and they are proved with records, not testimony about how things feel: medical documentation, vocational evaluations, benefit determinations, care schedules.
Modifying it later: amount versus length
The statute treats the two ceilings very differently after judgment, and this asymmetry is the single most valuable thing to understand about durational alimony.
- The amount may be modified or terminated on a substantial change in circumstances under section 61.14. Job loss, a genuine and involuntary income drop, disability, a reasonable retirement.
- The length may not be modified except under exceptional circumstances. Practically, the term you leave the courthouse with is the term you keep.
The consequence is straightforward: at settlement, the number of years is worth negotiating harder than the monthly figure. The monthly figure has a statutory path back into court. The calendar essentially does not.
When it ends
Durational alimony terminates automatically on the death of either party or on the remarriage of the recipient. Two other events matter and are frequently litigated:
- A supportive relationship. Under section 61.14(1)(b), a court may reduce or terminate support where the recipient is in a supportive relationship short of marriage. The 2023 reform also made a supportive relationship an express consideration at the initial award stage, under section 61.08(3)(h).
- Reasonable retirement. Section 61.14(1)(c) gives the payor a defined route to modify on retirement, and a reasonable retirement is likewise something a court may consider when the award is first made.
Where security matters, section 61.08(4) permits the court to order life insurance or a bond to protect the award — but only on specific findings of special circumstances, not as a matter of course.
Tax treatment
For any judgment entered after December 31, 2018, alimony is not deductible by the payor and not taxable to the recipient for federal purposes. Older orders may still run under the prior rules unless they were modified in a way that adopted the current treatment.
This is not a footnote. Under the old regime, a high earner shifted income to a lower bracket and the household kept more after tax. That arbitrage is gone. A $4,000 monthly obligation now costs a top-bracket payor roughly $4,000 in after-tax dollars, not the $2,400 it would have cost pre-2019. Any settlement modeled on pre-2019 intuition — or on an online calculator that has not been updated — is wrong in the payor’s disfavor.
What actually moves the number
In practice, durational alimony cases turn on four things, in roughly this order:
- The net income figures. Because the cap keys off a difference in net incomes, every dollar of characterization — bonus, K-1 distribution versus salary, perquisites, deferred compensation — moves the ceiling. This is where a lawyer who can read a tax return earns the fee.
- Imputed income. Where a spouse is voluntarily unemployed or underemployed, income can be imputed, which changes both the need finding and the difference the 35% applies to. See our page on imputation of income.
- The length of the marriage. Especially near a category boundary, where the filing date can shift the ceiling by a year or more.
- The quality of the need evidence. A documented budget tied to the marital standard of living beats a round number every time — in both directions.
If your case involves a closely held business, equity compensation, or a professional practice, the income analysis drives everything downstream. Those cases are covered on our pages for high-net-worth divorce, divorce for business owners, and valuing a business in a divorce. For the other forms of support and how they fit together, start with our main Orlando alimony page, and see bridge-the-gap alimony for short-term transitional support.
Durational alimony FAQs
No longer than 50% of a short-term marriage (under 10 years), 60% of a moderate-term marriage (10 to 20 years), or 75% of a long-term marriage (20 years or more) — and never longer than the marriage itself. A court may exceed those caps only under exceptional circumstances proved by clear and convincing evidence. The caps are ceilings; shorter awards are common.
It is the lesser of the recipient’s reasonable need or 35% of the difference between the parties’ net incomes. Net income is computed under section 61.30(2) and (3), excluding spousal support paid by court order in the same case. Because the smaller figure controls, the 35% cap does not bind in every case — often demonstrated need is the lower number.
No. Durational alimony may not be awarded following a marriage lasting less than three years. Bridge-the-gap alimony, rehabilitative alimony, and temporary support during the case remain available, and the length of the marriage is measured from the date of marriage to the date the petition is filed.
The amount can be modified or terminated on a substantial change in circumstances under section 61.14. The length cannot be modified except under exceptional circumstances. That asymmetry is why the number of years is usually worth negotiating harder at settlement than the monthly payment.
Remarriage of the recipient terminates it automatically, as does the death of either party. Cohabitation does not end it automatically, but a supportive relationship under section 61.14(1)(b) can be grounds to reduce or terminate support, and it is also something a court may weigh when the award is first made.
Not for federal purposes under any judgment entered after December 31, 2018 — it is neither deductible by the payor nor taxable to the recipient. Orders predating 2019 may still follow the old rules. This reversal changed the real cost of every alimony dollar and makes pre-2019 settlement math unreliable.
Yes. Permanent alimony was eliminated effective July 1, 2023, and section 61.08 now applies to initial petitions pending or filed on or after that date. Durational alimony is the longest-running form that remains. Existing permanent awards were not automatically converted, but they remain subject to modification and termination under section 61.14.
This page is general information about Florida law, current as of its last review, and is not legal advice. Alimony outcomes depend on facts a page cannot know. Statutory citations are to section 61.08, Florida Statutes, as amended by Chapter 2023-315, Laws of Florida.