If you came here looking for an Indiana spousal support calculator, the honest answer is that there isn’t one — and not because it’s hard to find.
Indiana never built one. There is no percentage-of-income guideline, no duration-by-length-of-marriage table, and no official worksheet. The calculators that rank for this search run generic national formulas borrowed from other states and produce numbers an Indiana judge has no authority to order.
Updated: 2026-08-12
Quick answer: Indiana has no spousal support calculator, formula, or guideline — the amount is left entirely to judicial discretion. Indiana also does not have alimony in the usual sense. It has spousal maintenance, and a court can order it through only three narrow routes: a spouse’s own physical or mental incapacity, a spouse who must forgo employment to care for a child with an incapacity, or rehabilitative maintenance capped at three years from the final decree. If none of those apply, an Indiana court cannot order ongoing support at all, and the lower-earning spouse’s remedy is an unequal share of the marital property instead.
Legal disclaimer: This article is general information, not legal advice. Indiana maintenance turns on findings a general article cannot make about your facts. For decisions about your own case, consult a family-law attorney licensed in Indiana.
Table of Contents
- Is there an Indiana spousal support calculator?
- Who qualifies for spousal maintenance in Indiana?
- How long can Indiana maintenance last?
- What does a judge weigh instead of a formula?
- If maintenance is off the table, what protects the lower earner?
- Can you agree to more than a court could order?
- Does remarriage or cohabitation end maintenance in Indiana?
- How maintenance interacts with taxes and child support
- Frequently Asked Questions
Is there an Indiana spousal support calculator?
No. Indiana’s maintenance statute contains no percentages, no income-share arithmetic, and no dollar guideline of any kind. The only number anywhere in it is a three-year ceiling on one type of award.
That matters more than it sounds, because the search results for this question are misleading in two specific ways.
The official Indiana calculator is for child support, not maintenance. The Indiana Judicial Branch does publish a real, authoritative calculator — but it runs the Indiana Child Support Guidelines, an income-shares model for a different obligation under a different statute. Feeding it your income will produce a child support figure. It will tell you nothing about maintenance.
Third-party “Indiana alimony calculators” have no basis in Indiana law. They apply generic national formulas — typically a percentage of the income gap, borrowed from states that actually adopted guideline maintenance. Indiana never did. A number produced that way is not a low estimate or a rough estimate; it is an output with no connection to what an Indiana judge can do.
The useful substitute is not a calculator. It is a threshold question: do your facts fit one of the three statutory doors? If they don’t, the amount is zero and no arithmetic changes that. If they do, the amount comes from a needs-and-ability-to-pay argument, not an equation.
Who qualifies for spousal maintenance in Indiana?
The Indiana Supreme Court put the limit bluntly in Voigt v. Voigt: “In ordering maintenance today, an Indiana court is restricted to three, quite limited options,” and “where none of these circumstances exist, a court may not order maintenance without the agreement of the parties.”
Those three options come from Indiana Code § 31-15-7-2.
| Route | What must be proved | How long it can last |
|---|---|---|
| Incapacity maintenance | A spouse is physically or mentally incapacitated to the extent that their ability to support themselves is “materially affected” | During the period of incapacity — no statutory time limit |
| Caregiver maintenance | The spouse lacks sufficient property to meet their needs and is custodian of a child whose physical or mental incapacity requires the custodian to forgo employment | An amount and period “the court considers appropriate” — no fixed cap |
| Rehabilitative maintenance | Career or education was interrupted by homemaking or childcare, weighed against four statutory factors | Not to exceed three years from the date of the final decree |
Read the middle column carefully, because it is where most people’s expectations break. None of these doors opens on a long marriage, a large income gap, or a spouse who gave up earning power in a general sense. Out-earning your spouse for twenty years does not, by itself, create a maintenance claim in Indiana.
Two further points that ranking pages routinely skip.
Maintenance is discretionary even when you qualify. The statute says a court “may” find maintenance necessary, not “shall.” Indiana’s Court of Appeals has confirmed the power “is not mandatory but is wholly within the trial court’s discretion.” Clearing the threshold is permission for an award, not entitlement to one.
Eligibility is decided once, at the decree, and cannot be revisited. In Lesley v. Lesley, a spouse was denied incapacity maintenance at dissolution; when the Social Security Administration later found her disabled, the Court of Appeals held the trial court had no authority to reopen the question. “If, at the time of dissolution, the trial court finds that a spouse has not satisfied the statutory criteria,” the court wrote, “then that is the end of the matter.” If there is a medical argument to make, it has to be made before the decree is entered.
How long can Indiana maintenance last?
Three different clocks run in an Indiana case, and nearly every article collapses them into one. They are separate awards under separate statutes.
Provisional maintenance runs while the divorce is pending. It is a separate motion under Indiana Code § 31-15-4, and the standard is looser than everything else on this page — a court may order temporary maintenance “in such amounts and on such terms that are just and proper,” without being confined to the three doors above. It also ends automatically when the final decree is entered. For someone who needs help covering rent next month, this is the relevant filing, and it is the one most people never hear about.
Rehabilitative maintenance runs after the decree and is capped at three years from the date of the final decree. Not three years from separation, not from filing, and not from the provisional order.
Incapacity maintenance is the only route with no end date. It runs “during the period of incapacity, subject to further order of the court.” In Gertiser v. Stokes, an award of $1,182.50 a month based on a spouse’s legal blindness was entered in 2007 and was still in force — and still being litigated — when the Indiana Supreme Court ruled on it in 2015.
So “Indiana caps maintenance at three years” is a half-truth. The cap applies to the rehabilitative route only.
What does a judge weigh instead of a formula?
For the rehabilitative route, the statute lists exactly four factors: each spouse’s education level at the time of the marriage and when the case was filed; whether education, training, or employment was interrupted during the marriage by homemaking or childcare; each spouse’s earning capacity, including skills, work experience, and time out of the job market; and the time and expense needed to acquire enough education or training to find appropriate employment.
Read together, those factors describe a plan, not a grievance. The argument that works is specific and finite.
- “I need to retrain” loses. “This 20-month certificate costs $14,800, classes run three evenings a week, and graduates in this county earn a median of $52,000” is an argument a judge can grant, because it names a finish line inside the three-year window.
- Feasibility is part of the argument. If you are carrying most of the overnights, a program that requires weekday daytime attendance may not be realistic. Showing how the schedule and childcare actually work is what makes the plan credible, and it is a co-parenting question before it is a legal one.
- Fault is irrelevant. Indiana is a no-fault state and marital misconduct is not a maintenance factor. The “he spent our savings on his affair” argument is real, but it belongs in the property case as dissipation — aimed at the wrong statute, it does nothing.
For the incapacity route, the evidence is medical rather than financial. What persuades is treating-physician testimony and records showing the incapacity materially affects the ability to be self-supporting. A disability determination from the Social Security Administration can support the claim, but it does not bind the divorce court, and “I can’t find work” is not the statutory test.
If maintenance is off the table, what protects the lower earner?
Property division. This is Indiana’s real lever, and understanding the substitution is the single most useful thing a lower-earning spouse can take from this article.
Indiana uses what its appellate courts call a “one pot” approach. Under Indiana Code § 31-15-7-4, the court divides property “whether owned by either spouse before the marriage,” acquired during it, or acquired jointly. Premarital assets and inheritances go into the pot — courts are not permitted to carve them out.
Then Indiana Code § 31-15-7-5 applies a presumption that an equal division is just and reasonable — but it is rebuttable, on five listed factors:
- Each spouse’s contribution to acquiring the property, regardless of whether that contribution produced income
- The extent to which property was acquired before the marriage or by inheritance or gift
- Each spouse’s economic circumstances when the division takes effect, including who should keep the family residence
- Each spouse’s conduct regarding disposing of or dissipating property
- The earning ability of each party
Factors one and five are where a homemaker’s case lives. The statute expressly counts non-income-producing contributions, and it expressly lets a court weigh earning ability in dividing property. Because a court cannot order open-ended support outside the three doors, income disparity in Indiana gets addressed inside the property split instead.
The burden sits on whoever wants to move off 50/50. In Webb v. Schleutker, a husband who had inherited a substantial portion of the family farmland during a 28-year marriage still could not get an unequal division, because the land “was treated as marital property during the parties’ twenty-eight years of marriage.”
The trade-off is worth doing in dollars. Three years of rehabilitative maintenance at $1,500 a month is $54,000 — payable only if the payer stays employed, and modifiable if circumstances change. A five-point shift in the property division of a $600,000 marital estate is $30,000 that is final, non-modifiable, and already yours. Which one is worth more depends entirely on the size of the estate, and that comparison is the negotiation.
Can you agree to more than a court could order?
Yes — and this is the only route to anything resembling long-term alimony in Indiana.
Indiana Code § 31-15-2-17 lets divorcing spouses “agree in writing to provisions for the maintenance of either of the parties.” Voigt v. Voigt confirms that “the parties may themselves provide for maintenance in settlement agreements where the court could not otherwise order it,” grounding that power in contract rather than the maintenance statute: “the parties to a maintenance agreement are both grown-ups, free to bargain with their own legal rights.”
So a negotiated Indiana agreement can run five years, or ten, in circumstances where a judge could order nothing at all.
Now the part that surprises people. Because the obligation comes from a contract rather than the statute, it is harder to change later, not easier. Voigt held that a court “has no statutory authority to grant a contested petition to modify a maintenance obligation that arises under a previously approved settlement agreement if the court alone could not initially have imposed an identical obligation.” A negotiated award a judge could never have entered is effectively locked unless the agreement itself provides a way out.
That cuts both ways, and it is why the termination terms matter more than the monthly number. If you want payments to end on remarriage, cohabitation, retirement, or a date certain, write it into the agreement. You will very likely not get to add it afterward.
Does remarriage or cohabitation end maintenance in Indiana?
Not automatically — and this is the most commonly repeated error about Indiana maintenance.
Many states terminate alimony on remarriage by statute. Indiana does not. The only modification provision, Indiana Code § 31-15-7-3, allows change only “upon a showing of changed circumstances so substantial and continuing as to make the terms unreasonable.” Remarriage and cohabitation appear nowhere in it.
The Indiana Supreme Court’s decision in Gertiser v. Stokes makes the point concretely: the recipient had remarried, and the court still affirmed the refusal to revoke her incapacity maintenance, observing that “revoking maintenance for a still-disabled spouse is an extreme remedy that should be exercised with great caution.” Cohabitation has fared no better on its own — in an earlier case the court found that a recipient’s unmarried cohabitation with a new partner did not amount to a changed circumstance substantial enough to make the terms unreasonable.
Two practical takeaways follow.
If you are paying, put the termination triggers in the agreement. Do not rely on a statutory cutoff that does not exist in Indiana.
Never stop paying on your own. Until a court modifies the order, the existing one controls. Maintenance in an Indiana decree is enforceable by contempt and by income withholding, and unpaid amounts become a judgment. Stopping payments because you believe the other party is cohabiting is the same self-help problem as contempt of court in custody cases — it converts a good argument into a losing one.
How maintenance interacts with taxes and child support
Taxes. Federal law settles this one. Under IRS Publication 504, support paid under any instrument executed after December 31, 2018 is neither deductible by the payer nor includible in the recipient’s income, a rule the IRS restates in Topic No. 452. Indiana adjusted gross income starts from federal adjusted gross income and Indiana publishes no alimony add-back, so the same answer carries to the IT-40. The full analysis is in our guide to whether spousal support is taxable, but the consequence for an Indiana negotiation is direct: a 36-month rehabilitative award is a 100% after-tax cost to the payer, with no deduction softening it. That is a large part of why negotiated Indiana maintenance skews toward lump sums and property offsets rather than monthly streams.
Child support. The two obligations are calculated separately, but they are not independent. Under the Indiana Child Support Guidelines, maintenance ordered is deducted from the payer’s weekly gross income before the child support worksheet runs — so a maintenance award lowers the payer’s child support figure at the same time it raises the recipient’s total. Running the child support worksheet before and after a proposed maintenance number is the only way to see what a settlement actually delivers. Our Indiana child support guide covers that calculation, and custody laws by state sets Indiana’s approach against its neighbors.
One timing note worth knowing before you plan around any of this: an Indiana dissolution cannot be finalized sooner than 60 days after the petition is filed, and that floor applies even to a fully uncontested case.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there an Indiana spousal support calculator?
No. Indiana has no maintenance formula, guideline, or official worksheet, and the amount is left entirely to the judge’s discretion. The official state calculator that appears in search results computes child support under the Indiana Child Support Guidelines, which is a different obligation under a different statute.
Does Indiana have alimony?
Not in the traditional sense. Indiana has spousal maintenance, available only for a spouse’s incapacity, for a spouse caring for a child with an incapacity, or as rehabilitative maintenance capped at three years. There is no permanent or lifetime alimony for a long marriage absent incapacity.
How long does alimony last in Indiana for a 20-year marriage?
Length of marriage is not a maintenance factor in Indiana, so a 20-year marriage creates no entitlement by itself. If rehabilitative maintenance is awarded it cannot exceed three years from the final decree. Only incapacity maintenance can run indefinitely.
Can Indiana maintenance last longer than three years?
Yes, in two situations. Incapacity and caregiver maintenance have no statutory cap. And parties can agree in a settlement agreement to maintenance a court could not have ordered, including longer terms — though a negotiated award is generally harder to modify later.
Does remarriage end spousal maintenance in Indiana?
Not automatically. Indiana has no statute terminating maintenance on remarriage or cohabitation. A payer must petition to modify and show changed circumstances so substantial and continuing as to make the terms unreasonable. The Indiana Supreme Court has upheld continued incapacity maintenance for a recipient who had remarried.
Is Indiana a 50/50 state for property division?
Indiana presumes an equal division is just and reasonable, but the presumption can be rebutted on five statutory factors, including each spouse’s earning ability and non-income-producing contributions. Premarital property and inheritances go into the marital pot and cannot be excluded.
Can I get spousal support while my Indiana divorce is still pending?
Yes, through a separate motion for provisional maintenance. The standard is what is “just and proper” rather than the three statutory grounds, which makes it broader than post-decree maintenance. A provisional order ends automatically when the final decree is entered.
Reviewed by Nora Whitman, Managing Editor. Our research and review process explains how we source and verify legal content.
