“Am I Paying (or Getting) Maintenance?” — A Minnesota Spousal Support Guide

By Matt Ludt

Spousal maintenance — what most people still call alimony — is one of the most misunderstood parts of Minnesota divorce law. It’s also one of the most emotionally charged. People walk into my office with strong feelings about what’s fair, and those feelings are almost always shaped by assumptions that don’t match how the law actually works.

Minnesota overhauled its maintenance statute in 2024, and the changes matter. Some of what people think they know is now outdated. Here are ten things worth understanding if maintenance is likely to be part of your divorce — whether you expect to pay it or receive it.

1. Maintenance Isn’t Automatic — There’s a Threshold You Have to Meet

Before a court even considers how much maintenance to award, the spouse requesting it has to clear a basic hurdle. Under Minnesota law, the court can award maintenance only if the requesting spouse lacks enough property to meet their reasonable needs given the marital standard of living, can’t adequately support themselves through appropriate employment, or is caring for a child whose circumstances make outside employment impractical.

That word “appropriate” matters. A court isn’t going to tell a 55-year-old who spent two decades managing a household that any minimum-wage job counts as appropriate employment. But a court also isn’t going to ignore a spouse’s realistic earning potential just because they’d prefer not to work. It’s a fact-specific inquiry, and it starts before anyone talks about dollar amounts.

2. The Marital Standard of Living Sets the Benchmark — Not Bare Necessities

Maintenance isn’t about survival. It’s about the standard of living the couple established during the marriage. If you lived modestly, that’s the frame. If you lived well, that’s the frame too. The idea is that both spouses should end up somewhere in the vicinity of how they were living together — as close as the math allows.

This means the budget each spouse presents to the court is critical. Judges scrutinize those budgets carefully. Fixed costs should be real, documented numbers. Discretionary spending should reflect what the couple actually spent during the marriage — not aspirations, and not spending that was funded by debt. Courts have called out parties who claimed the other spouse’s budget was extravagant while submitting an even higher one of their own. Consistency matters.

3. Both Sides of the Equation Get Examined

Maintenance isn’t just about need. The paying spouse’s ability to pay is weighed equally. The court looks at whether the spouse being asked to pay can cover their own reasonable needs while also supporting the other spouse.

This is where things get tense. A high earner may feel the number is too high. A dependent spouse may feel it’s not enough. The statute requires the court to balance both sides, which means neither spouse is likely to feel the outcome is perfectly fair. Courts will also look at whether either party is underreporting or deliberately limiting their income — and if there’s reason to suspect that, historical earnings become the focus.

4. The 2024 Statutory Changes Created Real Presumptions About Duration

Before 2024, the duration of a maintenance award was largely left to the judge’s discretion. Attorneys talked about “rules of thumb,” but there was no statutory formula. That changed.

Now, Minnesota law creates three presumptions based on the length of the marriage, measured from the wedding date to the date the divorce action was filed. For marriages under five years, there’s a presumption against any maintenance. For marriages between five and twenty years, transitional maintenance is presumed, lasting no more than half the length of the marriage. For marriages of twenty years or more, indefinite maintenance is presumed.

These are rebuttable presumptions — meaning a strong enough set of facts can overcome them. But they’ve fundamentally shifted the landscape. If your marriage was twelve years, you’re now working within a framework that presumes a maximum of six years of maintenance. That’s a very different starting point than what existed before.

5. Transitional and Indefinite Maintenance Serve Different Purposes

The terminology changed in 2024. What used to be called “temporary” maintenance is now “transitional.” What was “permanent” is now “indefinite.” The new labels are more accurate.

Transitional maintenance is designed to give a dependent spouse time — time to retrain, finish a degree, rebuild a career. It assumes the spouse will eventually become self-supporting; the question is when. Indefinite maintenance is for situations where self-support is genuinely uncertain — not just uncertain in timing, but uncertain in whether it will happen at all. A spouse with a serious health condition, or one who left the workforce at 30 and is now 58 with outdated skills, may face that kind of uncertainty.

The practical difference is significant. With transitional maintenance, there’s typically an expectation that the receiving spouse will actively work to increase their income. With indefinite maintenance, courts have held that there’s no such obligation unless the decree specifically says otherwise.

*Spousal maintenance cases often force people to confront the real economic story of the marriage. I had one matter where the wife had stayed home for nearly twenty years while the husband’s career advanced steadily. By the time the divorce came, he genuinely believed she should “just get back on her feet,” as though two decades away from the workforce could be undone with determination alone.*

*I have also seen cases where the opposite was true, and the higher-earning spouse was struggling to meet obligations that felt impossible after the marital standard of living. Those cases are rarely clean. They involve need, ability to pay, age, health, retraining, and the very different ways each spouse imagines fairness.*

*What I have learned is that maintenance is not just a financial issue. It is often the point at which the practical cost of a marriage becomes visible. For many clients, that realization is painful, because numbers can make a relationship feel final in a way words never did.*

*Over the years, I’ve noticed a pattern. People come in thinking maintenance is simple — you earn more, you pay, or you earn less, you receive. But the cases that stay with me are the ones where the story underneath the numbers was more complicated. The spouse who gave up a nursing career to move across the country for the other’s promotion. The husband who took early retirement and then got served with a modification motion he didn’t see coming. The woman who was terrified that six years of transitional maintenance wouldn’t be enough to rebuild a career that had been dormant for fifteen.*

*What I’ve come to understand is that maintenance is where the invisible work of a marriage — the career sacrifices, the household management, the years spent raising children instead of building a resume — gets translated into dollars. That translation is never exact. It can’t be. But it’s the best tool the law has, and when it’s done well, it gives both people a fair shot at rebuilding.*

6. You May Be Expected to Use Your Assets — Not Just Your Income

This is a significant shift from how Minnesota courts historically approached maintenance. For decades, the prevailing view was that a spouse shouldn’t have to liquidate investments to cover monthly expenses. Courts said as much repeatedly.

The 2024 statutory changes appear to open the door to requiring a recipient spouse to draw on assets — potentially including both marital and non-marital assets — to meet their needs. This doesn’t mean courts will routinely order people to drain their retirement accounts. But it does mean that a large property award may now factor more directly into the maintenance calculation. If you’re awarded $500,000 in liquid assets, a court may consider the income those assets can generate — and possibly more than just income — when deciding whether you have a genuine need for monthly maintenance.

Courts have long been willing to impute a rate of return (typically around 4%) on substantial liquid holdings. That practice is likely to carry even more weight now.

7. A Karon Waiver Can Lock In Your Agreement — But Only Through Settlement

One of the most powerful tools in maintenance cases is something called a Karon waiver. It allows the parties — through a negotiated agreement, not a court order — to permanently give up the right to modify maintenance in the future. The court’s jurisdiction is divested entirely.

This can be attractive to both sides. A paying spouse gets certainty: the amount won’t go up. A receiving spouse also gets certainty: the amount won’t go down. But a Karon waiver has to be done precisely. The agreement must be fair, supported by real consideration, made after full financial disclosure, and contain specific language that expressly and immediately divests the court of jurisdiction. Miss any of those elements, and the waiver may not hold up.

You can only get a Karon waiver through settlement. A judge cannot impose one. That makes it one of the strongest incentives to resolve a maintenance dispute by agreement rather than going to trial.

8. Retirement Can Be Grounds for Modification — With Guardrails

Under the 2024 changes, the statute now explicitly addresses retirement as a basis for modifying maintenance. If the paying spouse retires, they can seek a reduction, suspension, or termination of their obligation. But the court will look at whether the retirement is in good faith — not just a strategic move to stop paying.

Retiring at or after full Social Security retirement age, or at the customary age for your occupation, creates a presumption of good faith. Retiring at 52 because you’d rather not work anymore does not. The court will also look at whether both parties have managed their assets reasonably since the divorce and what financial resources are available to each.

One practical note: you can file a modification motion before you actually retire, as long as you specify the date retirement will occur. The modification can then take effect on that date. This avoids the gap some people worry about — continuing to pay maintenance for months while the motion works through the system.

9. Cohabitation Doesn’t Automatically End Maintenance

A lot of people assume that if the receiving spouse moves in with a new partner, maintenance stops. It doesn’t. Under Minnesota law, cohabitation is a basis for seeking a modification, but it’s not an automatic trigger. The paying spouse still has to show that the current arrangement is unreasonable and unfair.

The court considers several factors: whether the recipient would marry the new partner but for the maintenance award, the economic benefit the recipient gets from the cohabitation, how long the cohabitation has lasted, and what would happen financially to the recipient if maintenance were reduced and the relationship ended. These are hard things to prove, and courts have set a high bar. Simply living with someone isn’t enough.

Also worth knowing: the parties can agree in advance — through a Karon waiver — that cohabitation won’t be grounds for modification at all. And a motion based on cohabitation can’t be brought within the first year after the decree unless there’s extreme hardship.

10. Tax Treatment Changed in 2019 — and It Still Catches People Off Guard

Before 2019, maintenance payments were tax-deductible for the paying spouse and taxable income for the receiving spouse. That’s no longer the case for any decree entered on or after January 1, 2019. The paying spouse now pays maintenance with after-tax dollars, and the receiving spouse receives it tax-free.

This matters more than people realize. It effectively makes maintenance more expensive for the payor and changes the negotiation dynamics. Courts are required to consider net — not gross — income when evidence of tax impact is presented. If your attorney isn’t running the numbers on an after-tax basis, the maintenance figure being discussed may not reflect what either spouse will actually experience.

One exception: if your original decree was entered before 2019, the old tax treatment may still apply, even to modifications made after that date. That’s a narrow but meaningful carve-out for longer-standing obligations.

What This Means for You

Maintenance cases are where the financial architecture of a marriage gets taken apart and examined piece by piece. They require honest budgets, realistic expectations, and a clear understanding of what the law actually says — especially after the 2024 changes reshaped the landscape.

If you’re the spouse who may need support, the most important thing you can do is build a credible budget tied to the marital standard of living and be honest about your earning potential. If you’re the spouse who may be asked to pay, the most important thing is to understand that your obligation is measured against your ability — not your willingness — and that courts take a thorough look at the full financial picture.

Neither side gets everything they want in a maintenance case. But both sides deserve to understand what the law provides, what the realistic outcomes look like, and how to make decisions that hold up over time.