Most alimony questions start at a kitchen table with a household budget written out by hand. Mortgage, car, insurance, the pharmacy. Then a line at the bottom with no name on it, because you have not decided what to call the money that used to arrive every other Friday from someone else’s job.
Twenty-three years of marriage, and Florida law has a number for that.
Behind the unnamed line is a question about alimony, and behind that a question you have not said out loud, which is who you are supposed to call about any of it. None of that is a failure of planning on your part. It is what the end of a long marriage does to household arithmetic. So let me give you the uncomfortable answer first. Choosing a lawyer for an alimony case is a financial modeling decision wearing the costume of an emotional one, and the attorney who makes you feel best across the conference table is often not the one who will do best by your net income five years from now.
Permanent alimony is gone. What you can ask for instead
On July 1, 2023, Florida stopped awarding permanent alimony. Senate Bill 1416 rewrote section 61.08 of the Florida Statutes, and it applies to every initial petition for dissolution of marriage pending or filed on or after that date, which covers nearly every case in front of a judge today. Four forms survived: temporary support while the case is pending, bridge-the-gap, rehabilitative, and durational.
Bridge-the-gap covers legitimate short-term needs, runs no longer than two years, and once entered neither the amount nor the duration can be changed. Rehabilitative alimony pays for you to build the capacity to support yourself, caps at five years, and requires a written rehabilitative plan inside the order, meaning a credential with a timeline and a cost attached rather than an intention to go back to school sometime.
Durational alimony provides economic assistance for a set period of time, and the statute regulates it more tightly than the other three.
Length of marriage runs from the wedding date to the date the petition gets filed, and the statute builds in rebuttable presumptions: under ten years is short-term, ten to twenty is moderate-term, twenty or more is long-term. A durational award cannot exceed 50 percent of a short-term marriage, 60 percent of a moderate-term marriage, or 75 percent of a long-term one, and it is unavailable after a marriage lasting less than three years. The amount is the lesser of your reasonable need or 35 percent of the difference between the parties’ net incomes under section 61.30.
A lot of people read that and conclude alimony in Florida is dead. It is not. Run the arithmetic on a twenty-three year marriage and 75 percent of it is more than seventeen years of durational support, before anyone argues for an extension under the exceptional circumstances the statute lays out for age, disability, or caring for a disabled child.
And the 35 percent figure is a ceiling rather than an entitlement. The statute pairs it with a second limit in subsection (9): an alimony award cannot leave the payor with significantly less net income than the recipient unless the court writes findings of exceptional circumstances.
The question worth asking at your first consultation
Ask the attorney sitting across from you what would make them tell you your expectations are off.
It is a hard question to ask, and it is the most useful one you have. You will walk in wanting to know what you can get, which is a human thing to want after the year you have had, and most attorneys will want to reassure you with a number. A figure offered before anyone has read three years of tax returns and your spouse’s pay stubs is a guess, and a guess delivered with confidence is the costliest kind of comfort there is.
A few others worth bringing with you:
- How many contested alimony cases have you tried to final hearing in the last two years, not settled, tried?
- Do you run the net income calculations yourself or send them out?
- What does the written findings requirement mean for how you build my record?
That last one carries more weight than it sounds. Section 61.08 requires the judge to make written findings of fact on the form of alimony, the length, and the need and ability to pay, and those findings are what an appellate court looks at if the result has to be challenged. An attorney building toward them from the first hearing is protecting an option you would otherwise lose.
Why an alimony case is never only about alimony
Which cuts against the title on this article, so let us explain.
Alimony is never decided by itself. It moves with equitable distribution, with who keeps the house, with the parenting plan, with whether the retirement account gets divided now or bought out later. Support is one slice of the marital pie, and its size depends on how the rest of the pie gets cut. What you are looking for, then, is not an alimony specialist but a Daytona Beach divorce attorney who can hold the whole settlement in view and tell you in plain terms what it is worth to you in year one, year five, and year twelve.
But two practical details rarely come up in a first meeting, and both will shape your life every month for years.
Alimony payments ordered on or after January 1, 1985 are generally directed through the state depository under section 61.181, and where there is no minor child the statute says they need not run through it at all. Plenty of couples handle support between themselves instead. Worth knowing first: where there is a minor child and the court excused the depository, either party can later file an affidavit alleging default, and fifteen days later the depository notifies everyone that payments have to go through it.
The second one carries more at stake. If you are the spouse receiving support, the death of the payor ends the obligation. Section 61.08(4) lets the court order the payor to buy or maintain a life insurance policy or a bond to protect the award, though only with specific findings that special circumstances warrant it, and the court can split that cost between you based on ability to pay.
Adultery comes up in nearly every first meeting. The court is permitted to consider it and any resulting economic impact when setting the amount, which means the court cares about the marital money that got spent on it.
Board certification, and why the courthouse matters
Board certification is the nearest thing Florida has to a real filter. To certify in marital and family law, an attorney has to show the specialty made up at least half their practice for five years, handle at least 25 contested cases in that window with seven of them tried, complete 75 hours of approved continuing legal education, pass a written examination, and clear peer review, then repeat it every five years to recertify. It guarantees no result in your case, but it does tell you the attorney across the table has carried seven contested matters through trial.
Then there is geography, which sounds like a sales pitch until you have sat through a docket. The Seventh Judicial Circuit covers Volusia, Flagler, Putnam, and St. Johns counties, and Volusia cases are heard in DeLand and Daytona Beach. A Volusia County family lawyer who appears in those divisions week after week knows the standing orders, the local practice on financial affidavits and disclosure, and how each division sets an evidentiary hearing, none of it written down anywhere you can look up.
The line with no name
That unnamed line is not asking about alimony. It is asking about the distance between the life you budgeted for and the one arriving. A capable Volusia County divorce lawyer turns it into something with edges, a number, a term of years, a modification standard under section 61.14, and a way to collect when your ex decides in year four that he disagrees with the judge.
Bring the tax returns to that first meeting, and bring the handwritten budget too. It describes your household better than any court form will, and the line at the bottom is the whole case.
At Rice Law Firm, our board certified attorneys handle divorce and alimony matters throughout Volusia and Flagler counties, and we treat support as one part of the whole financial picture rather than a line item argued off by itself. Whether you are coming out of a long marriage or defending a support claim you believe is inflated, our Daytona Beach family lawyers will walk you through the numbers before you commit to anything. Call us at 386-257-1222 when you are ready to talk.