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There Is No Alimony Formula in Michigan’s Statute
Michigan’s spousal support statute is short, old, and permissive, and it contains no calculation of any kind. People arrive expecting a formula like the one that governs child support and find instead a sentence that authorizes a court to act and says almost nothing about how. Reading that sentence closely explains most of what follows in a support case.
MCL 552.13(1) provides that in every action for divorce or separation, the court may require either party to pay alimony for the suitable maintenance of the adverse party. The operative word is may. Nothing in the section entitles anyone to support, and nothing in it sets an amount or a duration.
What the Sentence Actually Authorizes
Three things sit inside subsection (1), and they are usually treated as one. The first is alimony for the suitable maintenance of the adverse party, which is the ongoing support most people mean by the word. Suitable maintenance is the standard, and it is not defined further.
The second is an order to pay such sums as are deemed proper and necessary to conserve any real or personal property owned by the parties or either of them. That is a preservation power, aimed at keeping an asset from deteriorating or being lost during the case, and it is distinct from support.
The third is an order to pay any sums necessary to enable the adverse party to carry on or defend the action, during its pendency. That is the statutory basis for temporary support and for attorney fees where one spouse controls the money and the other cannot otherwise litigate. Our Michigan alimony page covers how each of those is requested.
Remarriage Is Grounds, Not a Trigger
Subsection (2) is the part most often stated wrong, including by people who have read it. An award of alimony may be terminated by the court as of the date the party receiving alimony remarries, unless a contrary agreement is specifically stated in the judgment of divorce.
The court may terminate. The award does not end on its own, and the statute does not describe remarriage as a default that operates without an order. A payer who stops paying on the wedding date has stopped without authority, and a recipient planning around an automatic cutoff has planned around a rule that is not there.
The same subsection adds that termination does not affect alimony payments that accrued before it. Amounts already due remain due, whatever the court does with the award going forward.
Where the Amount Comes From Instead
With no formula in the statute, the amount and duration come from the court’s discretion, exercised against factors developed in case law rather than written into the section. The Sparks factors are the framework Michigan courts apply, and they reach past relations and conduct, length of the marriage, ability to work, source and amount of property, age, ability to pay, present situation, needs, health, prior standard of living, general principles of equity, and any other relevant consideration.
That list is why two cases with the same incomes can produce very different awards. A court is weighing a set of considerations rather than applying a schedule, and the evidence that moves the weighing is evidence about the marriage and the parties, not a spreadsheet.
The contrast with child support is the clearest way to see it. Under MCL 552.605(2) a court must order the formula amount for a child unless it makes specific findings that the formula would be unjust or inappropriate. Spousal support carries no such presumption, no such formula, and no such findings requirement. One is bound by arithmetic and the other by discretion.
Support After the Property Is Divided
A second statute ties spousal support to the property award. Under MCL 552.23(1), where the estate and effects awarded to a party on judgment are insufficient for that party’s suitable support and maintenance, the court may also award spousal support out of the real and personal estate, in gross or otherwise, after considering the ability of either party to pay, the character and situation of the parties, and all the other circumstances.
The sequence that provision creates is worth noticing. Property is divided first, and support is considered against what the division left. A spouse who received substantial assets is in a different position on support than one who did not, because the statute asks whether the award was sufficient before it asks anything else.
Modification runs through MCL 552.28. On petition of either party, after a judgment for alimony, the court may revise and alter the judgment respecting the amount or payment, and may make any judgment respecting those matters that it might have made in the original action. That authority is broad, and it is the reason a support provision drafted as modifiable stays open for the life of the award.
Whether a support provision is written as modifiable or not is decided at judgment and is often not read again until someone wants to change it. It is worth reading before it is signed. We are glad to look at it with you before anything is filed. Call us at (800) 525-6386.
Reading a Support Provision Before Signing It
A support award is built from discretion, which means the record that informs that discretion is what a spouse actually controls. Our Michigan family law team at Neumann Law Group handles support matters from Traverse City and Grand Rapids to Detroit, and the property division that precedes any support question is covered on our Michigan property division page. We are happy to talk it through with you. Call (800) 525-6386 or contact our office.