Most people researching alimony reform in Massachusetts walk away with the same incorrect assumption: that the legislature recently passed a new law changing how support is calculated. It hasn’t. The Alimony Reform Act of 2011, codified at M.G.L. c. 208, §§ 48-55, remains the controlling statute today, unchanged and unamended. What has shifted are two Supreme Judicial Court rulings and a federal tax law change. Those three developments have reshaped how alimony works in practice more than any legislation since 2011.

That distinction matters enormously if you’re negotiating a support order, considering a modification, or trying to understand what a judge in Middlesex County is actually weighing. Conflating a proposed bill with enacted case law leads people to either overestimate what a court will award or underestimate how much room exists for argument. At Ryder & Phelps, our attorneys Kathleen Ryder and Jordan Phelps serve as court-appointed Guardians Ad Litem and MCLE certified mediators in Probate and Family Courts throughout Massachusetts, which gives us a working view of how these changes play out at the bench, not just in published opinions.

What “Alimony Reform” Actually Means Right Now

The 2011 statute introduced Massachusetts’s first systematic framework for alimony after decades with almost no statutory guidance. It set durational caps, defined four types of alimony, and gave courts a percentage-based starting point for calculating amounts. That framework is still the law.

What isn’t the law is S.1099, a bill currently pending before the Judiciary Committee in the 194th General Court. It proposes further reforms but hasn’t been enacted. Any article treating that bill as settled law is describing something that hasn’t happened yet. The actual changes affecting outcomes right now came from a 2017 federal tax statute and two SJC decisions, neither of which touched a word of M.G.L. c. 208.

The Framework the 2011 Act Still Controls

The 2011 Act created four distinct categories of support, each with its own rules.

• General term alimony is the most common type and is subject to durational caps based on the length of the marriage: up to 50% of the marriage’s months for marriages of five years or less, 60% for marriages between five and ten years, 70% for ten to fifteen years, 80% for fifteen to twenty years, and potentially indefinite for marriages over twenty years.
• Rehabilitative alimony is designed to support a spouse while they gain skills or employment and is capped at five years.
• Reimbursement and transitional alimony are both limited to marriages of five years or less. Reimbursement compensates a spouse who supported the other through education or career advancement; transitional alimony helps a spouse adjust to a new lifestyle or location.

Under M.G.L. c. 208, § 53(b), general term alimony generally shouldn’t exceed the recipient’s reasonable need or 30 to 35 percent of the difference between the parties’ gross incomes. That ceiling is still in the statute. As the next section covers, the real-world meaning of that percentage shifted when the tax treatment of alimony changed.

Why the 30–35% Guideline No Longer Means What It Used To

The original 30 to 35 percent formula was built around a specific tax assumption: the payor deducts alimony payments on their federal return, and the recipient claims them as income. That arrangement made a given dollar amount of alimony cheaper for the payor in after-tax terms and allowed courts to award a higher gross figure without creating an unworkable net burden.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 eliminated that deduction for agreements executed after December 31, 2018. Massachusetts followed, applying the same treatment to state returns for tax years beginning in 2022. The result is that the same 30 to 35 percent of gross income difference now represents a larger real cost to the payor than it did when the deduction existed. Courts applying the old percentage without adjusting for this tax reality can inadvertently set awards that don’t reflect what either party actually takes home.

Two Court Decisions That Changed Outcomes Without Touching the Statute

The SJC has addressed the gap the tax change created through two rulings that reinterpret language already in the 2011 Act rather than adding new rules.

Cavanagh v. Cavanagh (2022)

Before Cavanagh, courts treated alimony and child support as sequential: calculate one, then figure out whether there’s room for the other. The SJC rejected that approach and held that both can be awarded concurrently. Judges must now run two calculations. In one, child support is determined first and alimony fills remaining need. In the other, alimony is determined first and child support is calculated on what’s left. The judge then chooses whichever result is more equitable after considering tax consequences for both parties.

Because the child support guidelines and the alimony statute use different income definitions and different baselines, running alimony first versus child support first can produce meaningfully different numbers for each. For families in Middlesex County, a case involving both now requires more detailed financial modeling than it did before 2022.

Openshaw v. Openshaw (2024)

The 2011 Act ties general term alimony to the recipient’s “need,” which courts had historically interpreted as the cost of replicating the marital lifestyle in terms of monthly spending. Openshaw expanded that definition. The SJC held that if a couple consistently saved a meaningful portion of their income during the marriage, that savings pattern was part of the established marital lifestyle, not surplus. A recipient spouse can therefore argue that their “need” includes continuing a comparable saving rate, not just covering consumption expenses.

For higher-income households in particular, this ruling can increase the amount a court considers necessary to meet need. It also adds a fact-intensive inquiry that didn’t exist before: both parties now have reason to document their savings habits and financial practices during the marriage.

Together, Cavanagh and Openshaw don’t change what the statute says. They change what judges are required to look at, and their effect in any particular case depends entirely on the specific facts presented.

What This Means If Your Case Is in Middlesex County

Middlesex Probate and Family Court operates two sessions. The North session is at 370 Jackson Street in Lowell and serves Westford along with neighboring towns including Chelmsford, Concord, and Littleton. The South session is in Woburn and handles towns in the southern portion of the county. Which session handles your case affects scheduling, procedural timelines, and local practice norms.

If you have an existing alimony order and are considering a modification, the standard is a material change of circumstances. The Cavanagh and Openshaw decisions alone don’t automatically meet that threshold. A modification based on those rulings has to be argued on the specific financial facts of your situation, not just the existence of the opinions.

This fact-intensive environment also changes the calculus around mediation. With courts now required to run scenario comparisons under Cavanagh, assess savings practices under Openshaw, and account for post-deduction tax realities, the range of defensible outcomes has widened considerably. A negotiated resolution that accounts for all three factors can reach a result a judge would accept far more efficiently than waiting for contested hearings to work through each question individually.

Moving Forward with Accurate Expectations

Anyone navigating a Massachusetts alimony question right now needs to work through three distinct layers: the 2011 statute that still controls duration and caps, the tax change that altered the real cost of any given award, and the two SJC decisions that widened judicial discretion on amounts and need. S.1099 may eventually change the statute, but planning around a bill still in committee is a poor substitute for understanding the law as it stands.

Working through those layers requires someone who can model the Cavanagh scenarios, assess how Openshaw applies to your household’s financial practices, and identify where a negotiated outcome serves your interests better than a contested ruling. Our attorneys Kathleen Ryder and Jordan Phelps bring Super Lawyers-recognized advocacy and MCLE certified mediation experience to exactly that analysis. If you’re working through a support question, Ryder & Phelps can be reached at (978) 381-1660.