Child Support & Alimony

Mention alimony and most men and women sigh and roll their eyes. Men feel exploited. Women feel ambivalent. On the one hand women want their fair share of family resources, and on the other they want to cut ties to their former spouses. Interestingly, most women never receive any alimony.
Typically alimony is paid in periodic installments (weekly or monthly, for example) for a certain length of time or until the death of one of the spouses or the remarriage of the recipient. Unlike child support, alimony is taxable to the recipient and deductible by the paying spouse under the rules of the Internal Revenue Service. As a result, many high earning spouses are better off paying family support in the form of alimony instead of child support because alimony is paid in pre-tax dollars and child support is paid in after-tax dollars. That means a dollar of alimony may cost the paying spouse 60 cents whereas a dollar of child support costs $1.40, assuming the paying spouse pays 40 percent of income in taxes.
Child support ends on the emancipation of a child. Emancipation, meaning the child coming of age and capable of self-support, is determined under state law. In Massachusetts and Hawaii, for example, that may occur as late as the age of 23, unless a child is incapacitated. Georgia and many of its sister states set the age at 18. Furthermore, each of the 50 states has its own version of the Child Support Guidelines to help calculate an appropriate amount of support in a case.
Alimony might continue beyond the emancipation of the last child, and unlike child support, it is not determined by a set of published Guidelines. Judges have enormous discretion when awarding alimony. That creates uncertainty