Texas is a least-generous state.
Start there.
Spousal maintenance in Texas is court-ordered, post-divorce support paid by one former spouse to the other under Texas Family Code Chapter 8. It is not the same thing as alimony in popular usage, and Texas is widely considered one of the least generous spousal support states in the country. The statute was designed to be restrictive. Eligibility is narrow under § 8.051, the duration is capped by length of marriage under § 8.054, and the monthly amount is capped under § 8.055 at the lesser of five thousand dollars or twenty percent of the obligor’s average gross monthly income.
Two distinct paths to post-divorce support exist in Texas, and confusing them causes real damage. Statutory maintenance is what a judge can order in a contested case. Contractual alimony is what spouses can agree to in a settlement, and it is not bound by the statutory caps. Most negotiated long-marriage settlements use the contractual path.
Eligibility: the four statutory paths.
Texas Family Code § 8.051 sets a two-part test. First, the spouse seeking maintenance must lack sufficient property, including separate property awarded in the divorce, to provide for that spouse’s minimum reasonable needs. Second, that spouse must fit one of four statutory paths. The four paths are not interchangeable, and only one needs to apply.
The family violence path requires a conviction or deferred adjudication of the other spouse for an act of family violence committed against the seeking spouse or a child within two years before the divorce was filed or while the divorce was pending. This path does not require any minimum length of marriage. The ten-year path requires a marriage of ten years or more combined with the inability to earn enough to meet minimum reasonable needs after diligent effort. The disability path requires that the seeking spouse cannot earn enough due to an incapacitating physical or mental disability. The custodial path requires that the spouse is the custodian of a child of the marriage who requires substantial care because of a physical or mental disability.
Rehabilitative, not lifestyle-preserving.
The Texas statute is built on a rehabilitative theory — temporary support that bridges the recipient toward self-sufficiency, not lifetime maintenance of the marital lifestyle. Texas Family Code § 8.054 directs the court to limit any maintenance award to the shortest reasonable period that lets the recipient earn enough to meet minimum reasonable needs through diligent efforts — training, education, or returning to the workforce. The ten-year ceiling for the longest marriages exists partly as a recognition that some recipients cannot rehabilitate at all (the disability and child-custody paths sit outside the rehabilitative theory entirely).
What “minimum reasonable needs” actually means is the second pivot point. It is not the lifestyle the marriage produced. The standard runs closer to: can the recipient cover basic housing, food, transportation, and healthcare? A long-marriage spouse who lived in a large home and drove a newer vehicle does not receive enough statutory maintenance to maintain that life — they receive enough to cover an apartment, groceries, and a way to get to work. The gap between the marital standard of living and what the statute will actually fund is the single most important number to surface early. It is also why most long-marriage settlements use contractual alimony rather than statutory maintenance: the statutory floor is intentionally below the lifestyle line.
Duration: the statutory caps.
Texas Family Code § 8.054 sets hard ceilings on how long a court can order maintenance, and the ceilings are tied to the length of the marriage rather than to need. For marriages of less than ten years where eligibility is based on family violence, the cap is five years. For marriages of ten to nineteen years, the cap is five years. For marriages of twenty to twenty-nine years, the cap is seven years. For marriages of thirty years or more, the cap is ten years. Within those ceilings, the statute directs the court to limit maintenance to the shortest reasonable period that allows the recipient to earn enough to meet minimum reasonable needs.
Two exceptions matter. Maintenance based on disability of the recipient or custody of a disabled child can continue for as long as the qualifying condition continues, subject to periodic review under § 8.054(b). The duration cap applies only to court-ordered statutory maintenance, not to contractual alimony agreed in a settlement.
Amount: the cap and the factors.
Texas Family Code § 8.055 sets the monthly amount cap at the lesser of five thousand dollars or twenty percent of the obligor’s average gross monthly income. Average gross is calculated across all sources of income, before deductions, over a representative recent period. Whichever number is smaller is the ceiling. Most contested awards land well below the ceiling because the recipient’s minimum reasonable needs are typically less than five thousand dollars per month and the court is directed to order only what is necessary.
Within that cap, the court applies the factors in § 8.052 to set the actual amount. Those factors include the financial resources of each spouse, the education and employment skills of each, the duration of the marriage, the age and physical and emotional condition of the spouse seeking maintenance, the contribution of one spouse to the education or earning power of the other, and any history of family violence. The factors also include the contribution of a spouse as homemaker and any marital misconduct.
Maintenance vs contractual alimony.
Most long-marriage settlements in Texas use contractual alimony rather than statutory maintenance, and the distinction matters. Statutory maintenance is what a court can impose in a contested case under Chapter 8. Contractual alimony is what the spouses agree to between themselves, made part of the divorce decree as an agreement incident to divorce under Texas Family Code § 7.006. The statutory caps on amount and duration do not apply to contractual alimony.
The practical consequences are significant. Contractual alimony can run longer than ten years, can pay more than five thousand dollars per month, can continue past remarriage if the parties agree, and can be tied to a wide range of conditions the parties choose. Enforcement is different too. Statutory maintenance is enforceable through the contempt powers of the family court. Contractual alimony is enforceable as a contract, generally through a civil suit for breach, although decrees often include enforcement language that mirrors statutory remedies. Both are common. We choose the path that fits the facts.
Modification and termination.
Texas Family Code § 8.056 allows modification of a statutory maintenance order on a material and substantial change in circumstances of either party. Common triggers include a significant decrease in the obligor’s income (job loss, disability, retirement), a significant change in the recipient’s circumstances (new employment, inheritance, recovery from a disability), or the discovery that the original needs analysis was incomplete. The motion is filed with the court that issued the original order, and either spouse can file. Contractual alimony is generally not modifiable unless the agreement says so.
Termination is governed by Texas Family Code § 8.057. Statutory maintenance ends on the recipient’s remarriage, on either spouse’s death, or on a court finding that the recipient is cohabiting with a dating or romantic partner in a permanent place of abode. The cohabitation finding is fact-specific and contested often. Contractual alimony termination is governed by the agreement itself, which may or may not mirror these statutory triggers. We draft termination language carefully.
The reality: a least-generous state.
Texas is widely ranked among the least generous states in the country for spousal support, and the design is deliberate. The statute was enacted in 1995, narrowed several times since, and remains structured around the premise that property division should resolve most cases. The statutory caps mean that even a thirty-year marriage to a high-earning spouse caps out at sixty thousand dollars per year of support for ten years, an amount that does not approach the lifestyle of most long-marriage households. Many recipients spend more than that on healthcare alone in the years before Medicare.
That reality drives the planning. In long-marriage and high-asset cases, we usually negotiate contractual alimony rather than rely on statutory maintenance, because the statutory cap is too low to fund a reasonable post-divorce life. We model the after-tax cost (alimony has not been deductible to the payer since 2019), coordinate the support analysis with the property division, and draft termination provisions that fit the facts. The statute is a floor when the parties agree.