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Updated for 2026 guidelines

Indiana Alimony Calculator 2026

Here is the truth most alimony calculators will not tell you: Indiana does not have alimony in the way most states mean it. A court can order spousal maintenance in exactly three narrow situations, one of them capped at three years, and outside those doors there is nothing to award and nothing to calculate. This page lays out the real framework.

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The three doors Indiana law actually opens

IN sets alimony by judicial discretion; there is no statutory formula. Courts weigh the enumerated factors below.

Factors the court weighs

  • Whether the spouse seeking maintenance is physically or mentally incapacitated to the extent that self-support ability is materially affected (the incapacity ground)
  • Whether that spouse lacks sufficient property to provide for their needs AND must forgo employment as custodian of a child whose physical or mental incapacity requires it (the caregiver ground)
  • The educational level of each spouse at the time of marriage and when the action is filed
  • Whether an interruption in the education, training, or employment of the spouse seeking maintenance occurred during the marriage as a result of homemaking or child care responsibilities, or both
  • The earning capacity of each spouse, including educational background, training, employment skills, work experience, and length of presence in or absence from the job market
  • The time and expense necessary for the spouse seeking maintenance to acquire sufficient education or training to find appropriate employment (the rehabilitative ground)

IC 31-15-7-2(1) to (3)

Duration limits

  • Incapacity maintenance: Maintenance may run during the period of physical or mental incapacity, subject to further order of the court; there is no fixed outer limit while the incapacity continues (IC 31-15-7-2(1)).
  • Caregiver maintenance: Maintenance may continue while the custodial spouse must forgo employment to care for a child whose physical or mental incapacity requires it, in such amounts and for such periods as the court considers appropriate (IC 31-15-7-2(2)).
  • Rehabilitative maintenance: hard 3-year cap: Rehabilitative maintenance may not exceed three years from the date of the final decree (IC 31-15-7-2(3)). This is the only door resembling ordinary alimony, and it is capped.
  • Temporary maintenance while the case is pending: Child Support Guideline 2 recommends capping temporary maintenance at 35 percent of the paying spouse weekly adjusted income, and child support plus temporary maintenance together at 50 percent.

Assumptions

  • This tool does not estimate a dollar amount for discretionary states: any number would be invented.
  • Court-ordered maintenance actually paid comes off weekly gross income at Line 1D of the child support worksheet before the schedule lookup (Guideline 3C), and child support plus temporary maintenance together should not exceed 50 percent of the paying spouse weekly adjusted income (Guideline 2).
  • Indiana has no general alimony: outside the three narrow IC 31-15-7-2 grounds there is no award to estimate, and Indiana publishes no maintenance formula or calculator. Any Indiana alimony number printed by a website is invented. The official IC 31-15-7-2 text could not be fetched from iga.in.gov and was cross-checked against a reproduction current as of 2026-01-01: official-confirmation-required.

Estimate only. The court or state agency calculation controls.

Indiana alimony under IC 31-15-7-2 (spousal maintenance: three narrow grounds only).

How Indiana handles spousal maintenance

Indiana abolished common-law alimony decades ago and replaced it with something much smaller: statutory "maintenance" under IC 31-15-7-2. The statute does not tell judges to weigh a long factor list and pick a fair number for any deserving spouse. It defines three specific situations, and only three, in which a maintenance order is even possible.

Door one is incapacity maintenance. If a spouse is physically or mentally incapacitated to the point that the ability to support themselves is materially affected, the court may order maintenance during the incapacity, subject to further order. There is no fixed end date while the incapacity continues.

Door two is caregiver maintenance. If a spouse lacks sufficient property to provide for their needs and must forgo employment because they have custody of a child whose physical or mental incapacity requires it, the court may order maintenance in amounts and for periods it considers appropriate.

Door three is rehabilitative maintenance, and it is the only one that resembles ordinary alimony. After considering each spouse’s education, whether homemaking or child care interrupted the education or career of the spouse seeking support, each spouse’s earning capacity, and the time and expense needed to acquire training for appropriate work, the court may order maintenance for at most three years from the final decree. The cap is hard: not renewable into an open-ended award.

While a divorce is pending, the child support Guidelines add two recommended ceilings: temporary maintenance should not exceed 35 percent of the paying spouse’s weekly adjusted income, and temporary maintenance plus child support together should not exceed 50 percent. Those are pendente lite guardrails, not a formula for a final award.

That is the whole system. There is no duration chart, no percentage of the income gap, and no published calculator, because outside the three doors there is no award to compute. Spouses can still agree to support in a settlement, and courts will enforce the agreement, but the statute will not impose one.

General alimony
None. Indiana law has no general-purpose spousal supportsource
Statute
IC 31-15-7-2: incapacity, caregiver, and rehabilitative maintenance onlysource
Rehabilitative cap
Not more than 3 years from the date of the final decreesource
Temporary ceilings
35% of weekly adjusted income; 50% combined with child support (Guideline 2)source
Child support interaction
Court-ordered maintenance paid comes off weekly gross at Worksheet Line 1Dsource

How to use this page

Use the panel above as a reality check, not a calculator. It carries the three statutory grounds and their duration rules. Before arguing about amounts, ask the threshold question: does this case fit one of the doors at all? Most Indiana divorces do not, and in those cases the honest answer to "how much alimony will I get" is zero unless the spouses agree otherwise.

If a door might fit, build the record it requires. Incapacity maintenance needs medical evidence tying the condition to reduced self-support. Caregiver maintenance needs proof of the child’s incapacity, the custody arrangement, and the property shortfall. Rehabilitative maintenance needs a concrete plan: the training or degree, its cost, its length, and how the marriage interrupted the seeker’s earning path.

Watch the settlement route. Indiana couples can agree to spousal support beyond what the statute would impose, and a court will enforce the agreement, including making it non-modifiable if it says so. What no court can do is invent an award outside the three grounds over the other spouse’s objection.

If maintenance is ordered or agreed, it feeds child support: court-ordered maintenance actually paid is deducted from weekly gross income at Line 1D of the child support worksheet. Our Indiana child support calculator has the field.

What this estimate includes

  • The three IC 31-15-7-2 maintenance grounds, condensed faithfully from the statute
  • The 3-year rehabilitative cap and the open duration of incapacity and caregiver maintenance
  • The Guideline 2 temporary-maintenance ceilings while a case is pending
  • The Line 1D interaction with the Indiana child support worksheet

What it leaves out

  • Any dollar estimate of an Indiana maintenance award: no formula exists to run
  • Agreed spousal support in settlement agreements, which is contract territory
  • Property division under IC 31-15-7-4 and following, decided alongside maintenance
  • The federal tax treatment of payments under agreements made before 2019

Indiana alimony FAQs

Is there alimony in Indiana?

Not in the usual sense. Indiana law has no general spousal support that a judge can award because a marriage was long or incomes are unequal. IC 31-15-7-2 allows maintenance in three narrow situations only: a spouse whose incapacity materially affects self-support, a spouse who must forgo work to care for an incapacitated child, and short-term rehabilitative support capped at three years. Outside those, a court cannot order it.

How is alimony calculated in Indiana?

It is not. Even inside the three maintenance doors, the statute gives no formula, no percentages, and no duration chart beyond the 3-year rehabilitative cap; the amount is judicial discretion on the evidence. Any website that prints an Indiana alimony number from your incomes is running another state’s math or inventing its own.

How long can maintenance last in Indiana?

It depends on the door. Incapacity maintenance can run for the period of the incapacity, subject to further court order. Caregiver maintenance runs for the periods the court considers appropriate while the caregiving need continues. Rehabilitative maintenance has a hard statutory ceiling: three years from the date of the final decree, full stop.

Can a healthy, employable spouse get support after a long Indiana marriage?

Not from a judge, unless the rehabilitative door fits, and then for at most three years. This is the sharpest difference between Indiana and neighbors like Illinois, which has a statewide maintenance formula, or Michigan and Ohio, where courts weigh factor lists for open-ended awards. In Indiana the long-marriage, unequal-income story is addressed through property division, not ongoing support.

What about support while the divorce is pending?

Temporary maintenance is possible while a case is pending, and the child support Guidelines recommend ceilings: not more than 35 percent of the paying spouse’s weekly adjusted income, and not more than 50 percent when combined with child support. Those figures are weekly, like everything on the Indiana worksheet, and they end with the decree.

Can spouses agree to alimony in Indiana?

Yes. Settlement agreements can include spousal support terms the statute would never impose, and courts enforce them as contracts, including non-modification clauses. The three-door limit binds judges, not agreements. If support matters to you and no statutory door fits, negotiation is the realistic path.

Does maintenance change Indiana child support?

Yes, on the income side. Court-ordered spousal maintenance actually paid is deducted from the paying parent’s weekly gross income at Line 1D of the child support worksheet before the schedule lookup, and Guideline 2 caps child support plus temporary maintenance at half of weekly adjusted income. Payments under a mere property settlement do not count as maintenance for that deduction.

Why does this site have no Indiana alimony calculator with sliders?

Because there is nothing lawful for the sliders to compute. A tool that turned Indiana incomes into a monthly alimony figure would be fiction. We show the three statutory grounds, the 3-year cap, and the temporary ceilings, which is everything Indiana law actually provides, and we calculate the things Indiana really does compute: child support, garnishment limits, and arrears.

Good to know in Indiana

  • The three-door structure dates to Indiana’s dissolution-of-marriage reform; the maintenance provision now sits in IC 31-15-7-2 for divorce cases and is mirrored for legal separation.
  • Indiana publishes no official alimony or maintenance calculator; the Indiana Supreme Court calculator at public.courts.in.gov/csc computes child support only.
  • The official Indiana Code text on iga.in.gov could not be fetched by our research environment; the statute was cross-checked against a reproduction current as of January 1, 2026, and is flagged for official confirmation in our source registry.

Official sources

Official sources last verified: .

Reviewed by SupportDecode Editorial Team Page content reviewed Sources Methodology Update log

Changelog: page first published with the three-ground maintenance framework and the 3-year rehabilitative cap. Material changes are dated in the update log.