Austin Spousal Support Lawyer: What Texas Alimony Law Actually Allows
Texas is one of the hardest states in the country to get alimony from, and most people are surprised how narrow the rules are. That cuts both ways. If you are asking for support, the gates are specific. If you are being asked to pay, the statute protects you more than you expect.
Our Austin spousal support lawyers handle these cases across Travis, Williamson, and Hays counties from our downtown office. Shane M. Boasberg brings more than 20 years of Texas family law experience to them. This page lays out what the statute actually says, not what people assume. Call (512) 561-5003 for a free consultation.
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Texas Alimony Calculator
Could you qualify for spousal maintenance, and how much could a Texas court actually order? Run your numbers below. The statute caps maintenance at the lesser of $5,000 a month or 20% of the paying spouse’s average monthly gross income, with duration limits keyed to the length of the marriage. Want a version you can bookmark? Use our standalone Texas alimony calculator.
Estimate only, based on Texas Family Code Chapter 8: eligibility grounds (sec. 8.051), the cap of the lesser of $5,000/month or 20% of the paying spouse’s average gross monthly income (sec. 8.055), and the duration limits (sec. 8.054). Courts must order the lowest amount and shortest duration that meet minimum reasonable needs, and contractual alimony agreed in settlement is not subject to these caps. This tool does not create an attorney-client relationship and is not legal advice.
What Is Spousal Support (Alimony) in Texas?
People use alimony, spousal support, and spousal maintenance interchangeably. Texas law does not. Spousal maintenance is the court-ordered kind, governed by Chapter 8 of the Texas Family Code, with hard limits on who qualifies, how much, and for how long. Contractual alimony is whatever you and your spouse agree to in writing. Temporary spousal support is what a judge can order while the divorce is pending.
The distinction is not academic. It decides whether a judge can jail someone for not paying, whether the $5,000 cap applies, and what happens if your circumstances change later. For the plain-English version, start with our overview of what spousal support means in Texas.
Key Takeaways
- Texas is a hard state to get alimony in. A judge can order spousal maintenance only if the spouse asking for it will lack enough property after the divorce to cover their minimum reasonable needs and one of four specific conditions applies.
- The caps are real. Court-ordered maintenance cannot exceed the lesser of $5,000 a month or 20% of the paying spouse's average monthly gross income, and duration is tied to the length of the marriage: five, seven, or ten years at the outside.
- Contractual alimony and court-ordered maintenance are enforced differently. A judge can jail someone over a Chapter 8 maintenance order but not over contractual alimony, because Texas does not imprison people for debt. Which one you sign matters more than the number in it.
Texas Alimony Laws: Why This State Is Different
Most people arrive with expectations shaped by a friend’s divorce in another state. Texas does not work that way. This was one of the last states to allow court-ordered alimony at all, and the version it eventually adopted was written to be narrow. The monthly cap was only raised from $2,500 to $5,000 in 2011.
What that means in practice: a long marriage and a wide income gap do not, by themselves, get you maintenance. Neither does the fact that one spouse gave up a career to raise children, however unfair that feels. The judge has to find you will lack sufficient property after the divorce to meet your minimum reasonable needs, then find that you fit one of four statutory categories. There is no general fairness exception.
We would rather tell you that at the first meeting than three months and several thousand dollars later. When a case does not clear the statute, the leverage is almost always in the property division, and that is where we put the effort.
Spousal Support vs. Spousal Maintenance in Texas
Court-ordered spousal maintenance lives in Chapter 8 of the Family Code. Everything about it is constrained: eligibility, amount, duration, and how it ends. A judge cannot go outside those limits even if both spouses ask.
Contractual alimony is different. You and your spouse can agree to any number for any length of time, and the court will approve it as part of your decree. The catch is enforcement. Because it is a contract rather than a maintenance order, unpaid contractual alimony is a debt, and the Texas Constitution prohibits imprisonment for debt. The Texas Supreme Court settled this in In re Green: a spouse cannot be jailed for failing to make contractual spousal payments, even when they appear in a divorce decree.
There is a wrinkle worth knowing before you sign. An agreed order for Chapter 8 maintenance can be enforced by contempt, but only up to what the court could have ordered on its own. Anything above the cap, or beyond the statutory duration, falls back into ordinary debt collection. Sign a generous agreed order and the generous part is the part with no teeth.
The Three Types of Spousal Support in Texas
Texas recognizes three arrangements and they do different jobs. Temporary spousal support carries a dependent spouse through the divorce itself. Contractual alimony is what the two of you negotiate. Court-ordered spousal maintenance is what a judge can impose over an objection. Most cases we handle involve at least two of the three.
Temporary Spousal Support During the Divorce
While the divorce is pending, an Austin judge can order one spouse to support the other. This comes from a different statute than Chapter 8 maintenance: Section 6.502 lets the court issue temporary orders, and it rests on the duty in Section 2.501 that each spouse owes the other support during the marriage.
You get it by filing a motion for temporary orders and putting on evidence of what you need and what your spouse can pay. Bring bank statements and a real budget. A temporary orders hearing is short, and Travis County judges have seen a great deal of aspirational math.
Contractual Alimony
Contractual alimony is a negotiated agreement, and the flexibility is the point. You can exceed the statutory cap, run it past the statutory tiers, and tie it to events the statute never contemplated, like a house sale or a child finishing school.
The trade-off is enforcement. Chapter 8 maintenance can be enforced by contempt and wage withholding; contractual alimony generally cannot. If your spouse stops paying, you file a breach of contract suit and collect on a judgment rather than asking a judge to enforce an order with jail behind it.
None of which makes it a bad idea. It is often the right answer, particularly when the paying spouse wants certainty or the receiving spouse would not qualify under Chapter 8 at all. It just has to be drafted by someone who knows what it is.
Court-Ordered Spousal Maintenance
This is the one a judge can impose whether the paying spouse agrees or not, and it is the hardest to get. The court must find that the spouse asking for it will lack sufficient property after the divorce, including their own separate property, to provide for their minimum reasonable needs. That is the threshold question and it comes first.
Worth knowing: Chapter 8 maintenance is one of only two obligations in Texas that can reach a person’s wages. The Texas Constitution bars wage garnishment except for court-ordered child support and spousal maintenance. Contractual alimony does not make that list.
Who Qualifies for Spousal Maintenance in Texas?
Eligibility is a two-part test, and people routinely miss the first part. Under Section 8.051, the spouse asking for maintenance must first show they will lack sufficient property after the divorce, including their own separate property, to meet their minimum reasonable needs. Only then does the court ask whether one of these four applies:
A family violence conviction. Your spouse was convicted of, or received deferred adjudication for, an offense constituting family violence against you or your child, committed during the marriage, within two years before filing or while the case was pending. Note what that requires: an actual conviction or deferred adjudication. A protective order alone does not satisfy it, and neither does an allegation, however true.
An incapacitating disability that keeps you from earning enough to meet your minimum reasonable needs.
A marriage of 10 years or longer in which you lack the ability to earn enough to meet those needs.
Caring for a disabled child of the marriage, of any age, whose care prevents you from earning enough.
One thing the statute never defines: minimum reasonable needs. No formula, no table. It is decided case by case, which is why the evidence you put on matters.
How Much Alimony Will You Get? The Texas Caps
The ceiling is fixed by statute. Section 8.055 caps court-ordered maintenance at the lesser of $5,000 per month or 20% of the paying spouse’s average monthly gross income. Lesser, not greater. A spouse earning $15,000 a month is looking at $3,000, not $5,000.
Gross income is defined, and the definition surprises both sides. It includes wages, overtime, commissions, tips, bonuses, interest, dividends, self-employment and net rental income, severance, retirement and pension income, annuities, capital gains, and unemployment benefits. It excludes Social Security, SSI, workers’ compensation, and VA service-connected disability.
Within that ceiling the court weighs the Section 8.052 factors: earning ability and financial resources, education and how long retraining would take, length of the marriage, age and health, contributions as a homemaker, and marital misconduct, including adultery and cruel treatment. Texas grants no-fault divorces, but fault is expressly on this list, which is one reason infidelity can still matter.
How Long Does Alimony Last in Texas?
Duration is keyed to the length of the marriage, and Section 8.054 sets hard ceilings. Five years for a marriage of at least 10 but not more than 20 years, or a marriage under 10 years where eligibility rests on a family violence conviction. Seven years for at least 20 but not more than 30 years. Ten years for 30 years or more.
Those are ceilings, not entitlements. The statute directs the court to order maintenance for the shortest reasonable period that lets the receiving spouse earn enough to meet their minimum reasonable needs, with exceptions for disability, caring for a young child of the marriage, or another compelling impediment.
Maintenance ends automatically on the death of either spouse or the remarriage of the recipient. Cohabitation is different, and it catches paying spouses badly: if your ex moves in with a romantic partner, the obligation does not stop by itself. It takes a motion, a hearing, and a finding by the judge. Stop writing checks on your own and you are simply in arrears.
Defending Against a Spousal Maintenance Claim
If your spouse is asking for maintenance, the statute gives you more to work with than most people expect. Each of the following is a place a claim can fail.
The Rebuttable Presumption Against Maintenance
Section 8.053 creates a presumption that maintenance is not warranted. It applies to the most common route to eligibility, the ten-year marriage, and it stands unless the spouse seeking support shows they exercised diligence in either earning enough to meet their minimum reasonable needs or developing the skills to do so, during the separation and while the divorce was pending.
That is a real burden, and it is often where these cases turn. What did they actually do in the eighteen months this case has been on file? Note the limit: the presumption does not apply to the family violence, disability, or disabled-child routes.
The Other Places a Claim Fails
The property threshold. Before anything else, the court must find the requesting spouse will lack sufficient property after the divorce to meet their minimum reasonable needs. A large enough share of the community estate answers the maintenance question by itself, which is why property division and maintenance should be negotiated together rather than in sequence.
Earning ability, not current earnings. The statute asks about the ability to earn. A spouse capable of working and choosing not to is a very different case from one who cannot.
The math on the cap. Twenty percent of average monthly gross income is frequently well under $5,000, and gross income excludes Social Security, workers’ compensation, and VA service-connected disability.
What you sign. Agreeing to a number above the cap converts the excess into contractual alimony, which you cannot be jailed over but also cannot easily undo. A number inside the cap stays modifiable. Very different documents.
Modifying a Spousal Maintenance Order
Either party can ask the court that entered the order to change it, on a showing of a material and substantial change in circumstances occurring after the order. A layoff, a serious illness, a large raise.
Two limits people do not expect. A modification can never increase the amount above the original order or extend it beyond the remaining duration, so a modification motion is only ever a way down. And any change applies only to payments accruing after the motion is filed, which makes the filing date matter more than the hearing date.
And if maintenance was not ordered in your divorce, you cannot come back later and create it. Our modification practice covers what can and cannot be reopened.
Enforcing Spousal Support When the Payments Stop
A maintenance payment not made on time becomes an arrearage the day it is late. There is no grace period.
For Chapter 8 maintenance the tools are real: contempt, which can include jail; income withholding straight from the paycheck; a money judgment; and, since 2021, an order reaching pension and retirement benefits. Withholding for maintenance and child support together is capped at half of disposable earnings, and child support takes priority.
An obligor who truly cannot pay has a defense, but it is narrow and must be pleaded and proved: no ability to pay, no property to sell or pledge, an unsuccessful attempt to borrow, and no known source to borrow from. Being broke is not the defense. Being broke, having tried everything, and being able to document it, is.
Child Support and Spousal Support Together
These are separate obligations with separate rules. Child support is calculated from statutory guidelines and belongs to the child. Maintenance is discretionary, capped, and belongs to the spouse.
They interact in three ways. The court can weigh what a spouse already pays in child support when assessing their ability to pay maintenance. When both come out of one paycheck, child support is withheld first and the combined total cannot exceed half of disposable earnings. And when an obligor owes both, maintenance must run through the state disbursement unit rather than going directly to the ex-spouse.
Family Violence and Spousal Maintenance
Family violence is the one route to maintenance that does not require a ten-year marriage. It is also the route people most often assume they qualify under when they do not, because the statute requires a conviction or deferred adjudication for an offense constituting family violence against you or your child, committed during the marriage, within two years before filing or while the case is pending.
A protective order is not a conviction. Where a criminal case is active, the timing of the divorce filing against the criminal disposition can matter a great deal. Separately, a documented history of family violence can support a disproportionate share of the community property.
Are Alimony Payments Taxable in Texas?
For any divorce finalized after December 31, 2018, the answer is clean: the spouse receiving support does not report it as income, and the spouse paying it cannot deduct it. The 2017 federal tax law repealed the old alimony deduction outright.
Divorces finalized on or before that date still run under the old rules, where the payer deducts and the recipient reports. If you later modify a pre-2019 order, that treatment continues unless the modification expressly states the new rules apply. It is an opt-in, it does not happen by accident, and it is worth negotiating rather than overlooking.
Texas has no state income tax, so there is no second layer. We are not tax advisors, and where real money is involved we want your CPA in the conversation.
How Our Austin Spousal Support Lawyers Handle a Case
The first thing we do on an Austin spousal support case is answer the threshold question honestly: does it clear Section 8.051 at all? If not, we say so, and move the effort to the property division, where the money usually is anyway. Nobody benefits from a maintenance claim that was never going to survive.
If it does clear, the work is evidentiary. On the receiving side that means a documented picture of minimum reasonable needs and a real record of diligence in seeking work or training. On the paying side it means the gross income calculation, the earning-ability argument, and the presumption. These cases are won with bank statements, budgets, job applications, and pay records, not adjectives.
Finding a Spousal Support Lawyer Near You
If you are searching for a spousal support lawyer near me, the useful question is not how many years an attorney has practiced. It is this: based on what I just told you, do you think I qualify under Section 8.051, and why? An Austin attorney who handles these regularly will give you a real answer, with the caveats, in the first meeting.
Our law firm takes spousal maintenance cases throughout Travis, Williamson, and Hays counties, including Round Rock, Cedar Park, Georgetown, Pflugerville, Kyle, and San Marcos, and we handle them alongside the divorce itself rather than as a standalone matter.
Why Austin Clients Choose SMB Law, PC
Shane M. Boasberg has practiced Texas law for more than two decades, with a background running through private practice, the Texas Legislature, and the Office of the Texas Attorney General. He is recognized by Texas Monthly as a Rising Star and belongs to the State Bar of Texas, the Austin Bar Association, and the Capital Area Trial Lawyers Association.
The legislative background matters more here than elsewhere. Chapter 8 keeps moving: the cap doubled in 2011, the presumption narrowed the same year, retirement benefits became reachable in 2021, and a new attorney’s fee provision took effect in September 2025. Reading the current statute carefully is most of this job.
Our Austin law firm’s client reviews are on Google, Yelp, and the BBB, and they are worth reading before you ever call. When you are ready, the free consultation carries no pressure: (512) 561-5003.
Talk to an Austin Alimony Lawyer
Spousal maintenance in Texas is a narrow remedy with hard numbers attached, and most of the outcome turns on whether you clear the statutory gates and what you can document once you do. Whether you are asking for support or defending against a claim, the analysis starts in the same place: Section 8.051, then the caps, then the evidence.
Call SMB Law, PC at (512) 561-5003 or reach us through our contact page. The first consultation is free, and you will leave it with a straight answer about whether Texas law gives you a claim worth pursuing.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Does adultery affect alimony in Texas?
It can. Texas grants no-fault divorces, but Section 8.052 expressly lists marital misconduct, including adultery and cruel treatment, among the factors a court weighs in setting the amount and duration. It does not create eligibility on its own, and it will not get maintenance for a spouse who does not otherwise qualify. It can move the number.
Can I go to jail for not paying alimony in Texas?
For court-ordered Chapter 8 maintenance, yes: contempt is available and can include jail. For contractual alimony, no. The Texas Constitution prohibits imprisonment for debt, and the Texas Supreme Court held in In re Green that unpaid contractual spousal payments are a debt even when they appear in a decree.
What happens if my ex moves in with a new partner?
It does not end automatically. Death and remarriage terminate maintenance by operation of law, but cohabitation requires a motion, a hearing, and a finding that your ex lives with a romantic partner in a permanent place of abode on a continuing basis. Until the court makes that finding, stopping payment puts you in arrears.
Can I get alimony if we were married less than 10 years?
Usually not. The 10-year threshold governs the most common route to eligibility. The exceptions are a family violence conviction or deferred adjudication against your spouse within two years before filing or while the case is pending, your own incapacitating disability, or caring for a disabled child of the marriage.
Who pays the attorney's fees in a spousal support case?
Each side generally pays their own. But as of September 1, 2025, Section 8.063 gives Texas courts express authority to award reasonable attorney’s fees, court costs, and expenses in proceedings to terminate, modify, or enforce spousal maintenance, payable directly to the attorney.
Spousal Support Lawyers Serving Nearby Communities
SMB Law, PC represents clients across Central Texas. Choose your city for local court, filing, and case details: