Arizona’s New Spousal Maintenance Calculator in 2023
Determining the amount and duration of spousal maintenance (“alimony”) tends to be one of the most costly and stressful issues in divorce and legal separation proceedings.
Fortunately, Arizona courts recently devised a Spousal Maintenance Calculator to help parties reduce such cost and stress.
Below, we look closely at the advantages of using the Calculator in mediation and why mediation is a better option for resolving this issue compared to using traditional adversarial lawyers.
Understanding Arizona’s New Spousal Maintenance Calculator
The Spousal Maintenance Calculator considers various factors such as each parties’ age, actual income or earning capacity, the length of the marriage, and the average monthly mortgage principal paid. Upon entry of these factors, the Calculator provides the parties with a range of amounts and durations for them to discuss, negotiate, and make fully informed decisions in this regard.
The Drawbacks of Traditional Litigation When Calculating Spousal Maintenance
Litigation with traditional litigation lawyers is usually time consuming, expensive, and likely to increase hostility and tension, especially when spousal maintenance is an issue. It also can involve expensive discovery procedures such interrogatories and depositions, costly outside experts, and multiple court appearances—wherein the lawyers and a judge are mostly in control, not the parties.
Calculating Spousal Maintenance in Arizona: The Benefits of Divorce Mediation
Mediation is a cooperative and collaborative process known to substantially reduce the time, expense, and anxiety involved in a divorce or legal separation.
This is especially true when resolving the amount and duration of spousal maintenance because an experienced mediator will not only help parties complete the Calculator but also help them complete income and expense worksheets to determine each parties reasonable needs; for example, each of their reasonable needs (i.e., expenses) for housing, food, transportation, medical care, medicines, etc. As a result, the parties will have all the information needed to determine a fair amount and duration of spousal maintenance—usually at a small fraction of the time and expense involved in litigation.
For all these reasons, determining the amount and duration of spousal maintenance through mediation is the best choice for quickly and inexpensively settling this issue.