Divorce Different

In New Jersey, courts have moved away from permanent alimony.  However, with much longer marriages, permanent alimony is still available.

An understanding of the purpose of permanent alimony lends further insight into the proper use and application of limited duration alimony. The most commonly expressed rationale for permanent alimony is:
            1. To compensate for benefits conferred on the other spouse by being responsible for homemaking and child rearing. The primary benefit is increased earning capacity of the other spouse who, while enjoying family life, was free to devote all productive time to income production.

            2. To compensate for the opportunity costs of homemaking. This is primarily lost earning capacity through the years of major responsibility for the home, either not being employed or holding employment subject to the needs of the family. Courts recognize this opportunity cost when they refer to the fact that the claimant for alimony had remained in the home in the traditional role of full-time homemaker. There is, also, a cost in lessened opportunity for remarriage which is greater for women than men and which increases the longer the marriage lasts.

            In short, “a transfer of earning power” occurs during a traditional marriage in which the homemaker spouse’s efforts increased the other’s earning capacity at the expense of her own. Alimony is an award formulated to compensate for that transfer by sufficiently (fairly) meeting reasonable needs for support not otherwise met by property division and personal income.

        [Krauskopf, Rehabilitative Alimony, at 583-84 (footnotes omitted).]