How to Lower Your Alimony Payment

Alimony, also known as spousal support, is designed to offer the spouse with lower income financial support by awarding them a portion of the income of the higher paid spouse. Obviously, this is a source of great stress for many, so here are some tips to help minimize your alimony payment.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

1. Allow your ex-spouse to move on emotionally. If your spouse moves in with another person, then alimony payments may cease. If they remarry, your payments will definitely stop.
2. Encourage your ex-spouse to get a better job. If a court reassesses your situation and finds your spouse is receiving a higher income than they were during the initial judgment, it’s likely that the alimony payments will be reduced or eliminated.
3. Make sure that you’re paying “alimony” and not “child support.” Federal tax law dictates that alimony is deductible for you, and is taxable income for your spouse. Child support, on the other hand, is not deductible.
4. Be careful about terminating alimony when a child reaches adulthood. If you do, the government has on occasion, retroactively classified past payments as child support instead of alimony, making you responsible for those unpaid taxes.
5. Contact a divorce attorney. There is a chance that the initial settlement was unfair from a legal standpoint, and you are able to see more clearly now that emotions have settled.

Tips & Warnings

• Be patient, be reasonable and be courteous. Having more civil relations with your ex-spouse may influence them to be more lenient on you and the amount of payment.
• If your salary goes down, you become responsible for another child, or are in some way, shape or form financially burdened, the courts may award a lower payment.
• Lowering your alimony isn’t easy because divorce isn’t easy. Be reasonable, but beware of trying to lower your payment as a form of revenge.