In Massachusetts, we typically don’t see alimony cases where the parties have children and their combined income does not exceed $250,000.00, because Massachusetts law does not allow the court to use the same income that is used to calculate child support to also calculate alimony. So typically an alimony case is one where either the party’s income exceeds $250,000.00, usually by a significant amount, or the children are almost at the age where they’re going to be emancipated and child support’s not gonna be an issue for very long. There’s a statute in Massachusetts that states that the amount of alimony to be awarded to the recipient spouse should be based on that spouse’s need or generally 30 to 35 percent of the difference in the party’s incomes. Now that was workable up until the federal tax laws changed in 2018 so that alimony is no longer tax deductible to the payor, and it’s no longer taxable income to the recipient.

Even though Massachusetts still has this statute on the books that suggests, you know, a guideline of, like, 30 to 35 percent of the difference in the income, that’s really not fair now given the changes in the federal tax law. And Massachusetts so far hasn’t issued any guidelines or even any case law on what the – how that statute should be interpreted in light of the federal tax changes. So divorce lawyers in Massachusetts are sort of trying to determine what is a more fair percentage to use in an alimony case, because 30 to 35 percent in most cases is now no longer fair given the changes in the federal tax law.