Answer:

I was meeting with a client last month and he was willing to pay alimony to his spouse. However, the question was how long should he be obligated to do it? In Georgia, there’s no set formula for how long alimony lasts or how much alimony can be for every month or every year, so long as alimony exists. It oftentimes, based on your circumstances and your facts, will be determined that alimony should last for X number of years. Ultimately, if you’ve not been married for ten years or longer, alimony may not be on the table for you. If you have been married for longer than ten years, especially if you get up to 20, 25, 30 years of marriage, then the court is going to look at an alimony obligation and determine how long the alimony should last. There are lots of factors that could go into that, whether your spouse is employed or could be employed, whether with some schooling or education they could go into the workforce and make a substantial amount of money that maybe they didn’t already have, then alimony may be set for three to five years to allow them to transition into the workforce and get an education and move along in their financial status. However, if you have someone who’s elderly, who’s not going to enter back into the workforce, you may have alimony obligations for a longer period of time. It’s very rare now that alimony lasts a lifetime. However, Georgia law still does allow that. A judge may say, based on the circumstances, that alimony should be endless until at least the other person dies or remarries. In that circumstance, there may not be a year or a time period that alimony would cease. However, it’s more normal, and especially in our circuit or with our local judges, that they’re going to designate a number of months or a number of years that that alimony is going to last. That’s going to be based on how long you’ve been married, and one spouse’s need versus the other spouse’s ability to pay. They also factor in any kind of facts such as educations or other means as you transition into divorced life. Those facts and circumstances may lead a court to plug in alimony for a certain period of time.