In 2016, the Illinois legislature attempted to create uniformity behind maintenance awards (formerly known as alimony) in dissolution of marriage proceedings by establishing a statutory formula for its calculation. The theory behind the change to the law was that by instituting the guidelines there would be less variation from judge to judge and county to county than there had been prior to 2016. The maintenance guideline formula is contained in the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act, Section 504, and provides for both a guideline amount and duration for spousal support, as well as a percentage cap based upon the spouses combined incomes (the recipient shall receive no more than 40% of the combined total net income). The current statute (revised most recently in 2019) sets support based on the net incomes of each party (compared to being based upon gross income pre-2019) and the duration is based upon a multiplying factor considering the length of the marriage through the date a petition for divorce is filed. Specifically, the award is 33 1/3% of the payor’s net income less 25% of the payee’s net income (subject to the same cap from the 2016 version). Although the court can deviate from these guidelines when they apply, a deviation is rare and there typically needs to be a court-approved basis for doing so; such as one party having a greater capacity to earn income than evidenced on paper or a party having substantial nonmarital assets like an inheritance.
However, the guidelines set forth in the current statute do not apply in all circumstances. Specifically, couples with a combined gross income in excess of $500,000 are not subject to the guidelines. So, if one party earns $450,000 per year and the other earns $80,000 per year, or one party is a stay-at-home parent and the other earns in excess of $1,000,000 per year, the court is not required to follow the guideline formula and has discretion to establish maintenance awards and set the duration of an award, presuming the court first determines that a maintenance award is appropriate under the circumstances.
Does that mean the court will allocate a greater or smaller percentage than what the guideline formula would have resulted in? Will they use a formula at all? The statute states as follows: “Any non-guidelines award of maintenance shall be made after the court's consideration of all relevant factors set forth in subsection (a) of this Section.”
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