Spousal maintenance: how it works, how much, and the tax

Spousal maintenance is a regular payment of income from one former spouse to the other after divorce, made because one of them cannot meet their reasonable needs from their own resources and the other can afford to help. It is separate from child maintenance and separate from the division of capital such as the house, savings and pensions. The single most important thing to understand is that there is no formula: unlike child maintenance, the amount is decided case by case under section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, and it is paid out of taxed income without being taxed again on the person who receives it.

Because maintenance is part of the wider financial picture rather than a standalone sum, the realistic way to gauge it is to look at the whole settlement together. You can model how income and capital interact for your own situation with the settlement range estimator, which frames maintenance as one component of the overall division rather than a number in isolation. This guide then explains how awards are decided, how long they last, how they end, how they can be turned into a lump sum, and how the tax works.

What spousal maintenance is (and is not)

Spousal maintenance, known in court paperwork as spousal periodical payments, is ongoing income support paid by the higher earner to the lower earner following divorce or dissolution. It exists to cover the gap between what the receiving spouse can reasonably provide for themselves and what they reasonably need to live on, once both people are running separate households.

It is easy to confuse with two other things it is not:

• It is not child maintenance. Child maintenance supports the children and, for most families, is worked out by the Child Maintenance Service using a fixed percentage of the paying parent's gross weekly income. Spousal maintenance supports the ex-spouse as an adult and has no percentage attached. If you want the formula that does apply to children, see our guide to the child maintenance CMS formula.
• It is not a capital settlement. Dividing the house, pensions, savings and investments is a one-off exercise in splitting assets. Maintenance is an income stream that continues after the capital is divided. The two are decided together, because more capital to the lower earner usually means less need for ongoing maintenance, and vice versa. The mechanics of splitting the assets themselves live in our divorce financial settlement guide.

The government's overview of dividing money and property when a relationship ends treats maintenance as one strand of the financial arrangements, alongside pensions and property, that can be agreed between you or, failing agreement, decided by a court.

How courts decide whether to award maintenance, and how much

When a court is asked to make a financial order, it works through the checklist in section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. The first consideration is always the welfare of any children under 18. After that, the court weighs a set of factors including:

• Income and earning capacity: what each party has now and could reasonably be expected to have, including any increase in earning capacity it would be reasonable to expect them to acquire.
• Financial needs and obligations: the reasonable outgoings of each household going forward.
• Standard of living enjoyed during the marriage.
• Age of each party and the length of the marriage.
• Contributions each has made, including looking after the home and caring for the family.
• Any physical or mental disability of either party.

Two of these do most of the work when it comes to income. On one side sits the receiving spouse's reasonable needs; on the other sits their earning capacity, meaning not just what they earn today but what they could realistically earn after a reasonable adjustment period. Maintenance typically fills the gap between the two, but only to the extent the paying spouse can afford it after meeting their own reasonable needs. Where there is not enough income to go round, needs are prioritised and the standard of living during the marriage inevitably drops for both households.

Modern judicial practice has shifted markedly. The clear steer is toward helping the receiving spouse make the transition to financial independence rather than preserving an indefinite entitlement. The court is expected to probe earning capacity actively and to expect the receiving spouse to take reasonable steps to become self-sufficient over time. This does not mean maintenance is dead: for long marriages, older parties, or where a genuine and lasting inability to work exists, ongoing support remains appropriate. But the starting assumption is no longer that one spouse supports the other for life.

How long maintenance lasts

Maintenance can be ordered in two broad shapes:

• Term orders run for a fixed period, chosen to give the receiving spouse time to adjust, for example while retraining, rebuilding a career, or waiting until the youngest child starts school. When the term ends, the payments stop.
• Joint-lives orders run until the recipient remarries or one party dies. Once the norm, these are now the exception, reserved mainly for long marriages and later-life divorces where independence is not a realistic prospect.

Within term orders there is a further, crucial distinction. An extendable term lets the receiving spouse apply, before it runs out, to have it lengthened if they genuinely still cannot manage. A non-extendable term does not. The court achieves the non-extendable version by attaching a direction under section 28(1A) of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, under which it "may direct that that party shall not be entitled to apply" to extend the term. A section 28(1A) bar gives both people a hard, certain end date, which is valuable for a clean transition, but it also removes the safety net if things do not improve as hoped, so whether to include it is one of the sharpest decisions in the whole order.

The push toward defined endings comes from the Act itself. Section 25A imposes a duty on the court to consider whether financial obligations between the parties can be ended "as soon after the making of the order as the court considers just and reasonable", and, where it does order maintenance, to consider limiting it to a term "sufficient to enable the party in whose favour the order is made to adjust without undue hardship" to independence.

The main shapes a maintenance order can take compare like this:

Type of order	Duration	Variation and extension	Clean-break interaction
Joint lives	Runs until the recipient remarries or either party dies	Either party can apply to vary the amount up or down, or to end it, on a change of circumstances	No clean break while it runs; now the exception, mainly for long marriages and later-life divorces
Extendable term	Fixed period chosen to cover the transition to independence	Amount can be varied, and the recipient can apply before the term ends to have it lengthened	Clean break follows once the term expires without extension
Non-extendable term (section 28(1A) bar)	Fixed period with a hard end date	Amount can still be varied during the term, but no application to extend the term is allowed	Guarantees a clean break on income at the end date, with no safety net if circumstances do not improve
Nominal	A token amount that runs until varied or dismissed	Can be varied upward to a real figure if the recipient's circumstances change	Defers the clean break: it exists to keep an income claim open as a safety net

How maintenance ends

A spousal maintenance obligation can come to an end in several ways:

• Remarriage of the recipient: maintenance stops automatically and permanently, and cannot be revived, if the person receiving it remarries or forms a new civil partnership.
• Death of either party: the obligation ends on death, unless it has been secured against an asset or supported by life insurance arranged for that purpose.
• Expiry of the term: a term order simply ends on its end date (subject to any extension where the term is extendable).
• Variation or a further order: either party can apply to vary the amount up or down, or to bring it to an end, on a material change of circumstances, such as job loss, a large change in income, or the recipient beginning to cohabit with a new partner.

Cohabitation deserves a note, because it is often misunderstood. Living with a new partner does not automatically end spousal maintenance the way remarriage does. It is, however, a change of circumstances the paying spouse can put before the court, and it frequently results in a reduction or termination because the receiving spouse's needs are now being met in part by someone else.

Clean break versus ongoing maintenance

The alternative to maintenance is a clean break: a settlement structured so that everything is dealt with by capital and pensions, no ongoing income passes between the parties, and neither can bring a future income claim against the other. Where there is enough capital to meet both parties' needs, a clean break is generally preferred because it severs the financial tie, removes the friction and cost of a continuing relationship, and gives both people certainty. The law leans this way too, which is why section 25A requires the court to consider it in every case.

A clean break is not always possible. If one spouse cannot meet their reasonable needs from their share of the capital alone, some form of income provision has to fill the gap, whether as ongoing maintenance or as a capitalised lump sum. Many orders take a hybrid form: maintenance for a defined term to cover a transition, followed by a clean break once the term ends. The interaction between the clean-break duty and how orders are drafted is covered in our guide to consent orders and clean break orders.

Capitalising maintenance into a lump sum

Rather than paying month by month for years, a paying spouse can sometimes pay a single capital sum up front that represents the value of the future income stream. This is capitalisation, and the standard tool for calculating it is a Duxbury calculation. A Duxbury figure works out the lump sum that, if invested and gradually drawn down, would produce the required income for the relevant period, taking assumed investment growth, inflation and tax into account.

The attraction of capitalisation is a clean break on income: once the lump sum is paid, the maintenance question is closed for good, with no risk of a future variation in either direction. It works best where there is enough capital available to fund it and where both parties place a high value on certainty and finality. Because a capitalised sum is a slice of the overall asset division, it is best understood as part of the whole settlement rather than a separate transaction, which is where modelling the total picture, for example with the settlement range estimator or by reading the financial settlements hub, helps you see the trade-offs clearly.

The tax treatment of spousal maintenance

The tax position is refreshingly simple, and it is the same for the vast majority of people divorcing today.

• The recipient pays no tax on it. Spousal maintenance is not taxable income. It does not go on a Self Assessment return as income, and it is not counted as income for means-tested benefits such as Universal Credit.
• The payer pays it from taxed income. Maintenance comes out of income the payer has already been taxed on, and in general it cannot be deducted from their taxable income. The logic is that taxing the recipient as well would tax the same money twice.
• One narrow relief survives. Maintenance Payments Relief gives a payer a reduction of 10% of the maintenance paid, capped at £436 a year (10% of £4,360), but only where either party was born before 6 April 1935 and the payments are made under a court order to a former spouse who has not remarried. For anyone born after that date, this relief does not apply, which in practice means almost every current divorce.

Tax rules can change and individual circumstances vary, so it is worth confirming the current position on gov.uk at the time you settle. But as a rule of thumb, spousal maintenance is a straightforward post-tax transfer: what the payer sends is what the recipient keeps.

Getting the numbers right for your situation

Because spousal maintenance has no formula, the figure that matters is the one that emerges from full financial disclosure and honest household budgets, weighed against the section 25 factors and the strong modern steer toward independence. Small drafting choices, such as whether a term is extendable or barred under section 28(1A), or whether to capitalise, have long-term consequences that are hard to unwind later. Treat this guide as general information rather than legal or financial advice, because every case turns on its own facts and numbers.

If you want your own settlement, including any maintenance element, assessed against your actual finances, a specialist family law firm can advise on what is realistic and how best to structure it. To be put in touch with a vetted specialist, use our contact page.