Glossary

Statutory factors

The checklist a statute tells a court to weigh when it sets an amount the statute does not compute. In most states this is the whole of the alimony law.

Where a legislature does not want to fix a number, it lists considerations instead: the length of the marriage, each party's earning capacity, the standard of living established during the marriage, contributions as a homemaker, the age and health of the parties, and so on. The court weighs them and sets an amount. The list is genuinely law — a court that ignores a factor can be reversed for it — but it is not arithmetic, and no amount of care turns it into arithmetic. That is the reason a state without a formula cannot honestly be given a calculator, and the reason a site that gives one anyway has substituted a guideline the state never adopted. Factors are worth reading even where a formula exists, because a formula state's guideline is presumptive rather than binding, and the factors are what a court reaches for when departing from it.

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