Attorney Rueschemeyer provides expert divorce mediation for couples in Worcester, Boston, Springfield, and all MA locations with online divorce mediation on Zoom.
To calculate how much Massachusetts alimony you might pay or receive, simply fill in the information below and click “Calculate”. You will see results instantly, including approximate after-tax income for each spouse.
This MA alimony calculator is the most helpful on the web because of three unique features:
1) it allows you to try various, specific percentages (of your choice) for calculating alimony,
2) it calculates approximate post-tax, post-alimony income for each spouse, so you can see the real life outcomes of different alimony amounts,
3) it allows you to enter a weekly alimony dollar amount, rather than a percentage, to see what ex-spouses’ post-alimony, post-tax income could look like for a particular amount of weekly alimony. We think in dollar amounts (“I’m paying $400/week in alimony”) rather than in formula percentages (“I’m paying 27% of the differences between our incomes in alimony”), so this allows you to try out different numbers.
The calculator on this page is also unique in that it:
a) takes into account the payor’s full Social Security age, which can affect the duration of alimony, and
b) determines who the “payor” and “recipient” are instead of asking you to determine this on your own.
After making calculations, you can download a .pdf of the results with an explanation of the amounts and duration of the alimony.
You can learn more about alimony in MA on this page.
This calculator is NOT for couples who will be paying or receiving child support. If you expect to be paying or receiving child support in addition to paying or receiving alimony, you should skip the calculator on this page and go to this Cavanagh combined alimony-child support calculator.
You can do calculations based on: A) a percentage that you specify (it’s the percentage of the difference between your incomes), or B) a weekly alimony dollar amount that you specify.
A) To calculate alimony using a percentage, simply enter a number between 1% and 35% under “A)”, below. If you do not enter a number, it defaults to 25.5%, which is the middle of the range that the Massachusetts Bar Association has recommended as a maximum alimony amount.
Under the 2011 Alimony Reform Act, maximum alimony amounts were not to exceed 30-35% of the difference between spouses’ incomes. Alimony lost its deductibility for the payor starting in 2019, however, and the Massachusetts Bar Association has recommended that 2019 cases onward should use 23%-28% of the difference in incomes as the maximum for alimony.
B) To calculate using a specific weekly alimony amount, simply enter a weekly alimony amount under “B)” (“Enter the dollar amount that you…..”).
This may seem strange at first: “Why do I want to calculate an alimony amount if I already know how much to pay?”
But it’s not so strange when you see the results, which show after-tax, after-alimony income for each spouse. This allows you to see if a particular alimony dollar amount allows both of you to move forward in your lives after divorce.
The calculator also gives you the maximum length of time that general term alimony would be paid.