Narrator: Divorce is one of the most financially complex events a person can face. The decisions made during this process can shape the next chapter of a life for decades.
Welcome to Advisor in Your Corner. The podcast for individuals navigating the financial realities of divorce in California, and for the attorneys, mediators, therapists, and coaches who support them.
Your host is Alex Weinberger, a Certified Financial Planner Professional and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst. Through his firm, Marriage Financial Solutions, Alex consults directly with clients on the financial side of divorce, and the firm welcomes engagements from listeners and from the professionals who serve them.
Bringing clarity to the questions that matter the most to you, without the jargon.
This is Advisor in Your Corner.
Alex Weinberger: There's a word that follows people into a divorce and scares them more than almost any other. Permanent. As in permanent spousal support. People hear it and picture a payment that never ends, a tie to a former spouse that lasts the rest of their life, a number that can never move. And if you're the one who might receive that support, you may be quietly building your whole future around it.
Here's what I want you to know before we go any further. In California, permanent support almost never means permanent. It's one of the most misunderstood terms in the entire process. And at the very start of 2026, a rule changed that quietly reshaped the math underneath every new support conversation in this state. Most people negotiating right now were never told. If your agreement is being finalized this year, the rules you're working under are not the same ones your friend divorced under two years ago. So let's talk about what support really is, how long it actually lasts, and the change nobody warned you about.
I want to cover four things today. First, how long spousal support actually lasts in California, and why that word permanent is so misleading. Second, what can make support change, shrink, or end entirely, sometimes sooner than either person expected. Third, the 2026 tax change, what it does, and why it moves the numbers even when nobody's fighting about it. And fourth, the decision that sits underneath all of it, whether to take support as an ongoing monthly payment or as a single lump sum, and how to think clearly about that choice instead of guessing. None of this is legal advice, and I'll say more than once today that your own attorney and your own tax advisor are the people who apply any of this to your actual situation. What I can give you is the financial lens, the way I'd want you to see it before you sit down to decide.
Alex Weinberger: Let's start with the length, because it's where most of the fear lives.
California really has two kinds of spousal support, and they work differently. There's temporary support, which is ordered while the divorce is still going on, to keep both households steady until everything is final. And there's long term support, sometimes called permanent support, which is what's ordered after the divorce is done. That word permanent is a legal label, not a promise. It doesn't mean forever.
Here's the piece that matters most. The length of your marriage drives a lot of this. For a marriage under ten years, the general expectation is that support lasts somewhere around half the length of the marriage. Six years of marriage, roughly three years of support, as a starting point a judge can move away from. For a marriage of ten years or more, the law treats it differently. The court keeps what's called jurisdiction, meaning it holds the door open. There's no automatic end date built in.
Now, people hear no automatic end date and they hear forever. Those aren't the same thing. No end date means the court can revisit support later. It doesn't mean the payment is guaranteed to continue for the rest of anyone's life. Support in a long marriage often steps down over time, or continues while the person receiving it works toward being able to support themselves, and it stays open to change as life changes. The honest answer to how long will this last is that it depends, and what it depends on is knowable. It depends on the length of the marriage, on each person's real financial picture, on earning capacity, on the standard of living during the marriage, and on a list of factors the law hands the judge to weigh. Two couples with similar incomes can end up in very different places.
So if you've been carrying around the idea that support is a fixed thing, a number that lands and never moves, I'd gently set that down. It's more alive than that, in both directions.
Alex Weinberger: Which brings me to the second thing. Support can change, and it can end, and sometimes that happens sooner than either person planned for.
A few endings are automatic. If the person receiving support remarries, long term support generally ends by operation of law. No hearing required. If either person dies, the obligation generally ends as well, which is exactly why life insurance often gets used to secure support, so the payments don't simply vanish if the paying spouse passes away. Those are the clean, bright line endings.
Then there's modification, which is messier and more common. Either person can go back to the court and ask to change support, but only by showing what the law calls a material change in circumstances since the last order. A paying spouse who genuinely loses a job, or retires, or has a serious health event, may have grounds to ask for a reduction. Someone receiving support who sees the payer's income climb substantially may have grounds to ask for an increase. The key word is material. Courts don't reopen support because someone is simply unhappy with the deal.
Two details here catch people off guard, and I want you to see them coming. The first is cohabitation. If the person receiving support moves in with a new partner in a romantic relationship, the law creates a presumption that their need for support has gone down. It doesn't end support automatically the way remarriage does, but it shifts the burden, and it opens the door to a reduction. The second is timing, and this one is pure dollars. When a court changes support, it generally can only reach back to the date the request was filed, not the date life actually changed. The clock, in other words, starts at the courthouse, not at the moment things changed. So if a paying spouse loses a job and waits six months to file, that's often six months at the old number that can't be recovered. That cuts both ways, depending on which side of the payment you're on, and your attorney will tell you how it works in your case.
One more thing worth knowing. Some agreements are written so that support can't be changed at all, a fixed deal both sides lock in for certainty. Whether that's wise depends entirely on your situation, and whether an order can be revisited later comes down to how it's written. That's a conversation for your attorney, not something to assume.
Alex Weinberger: Now the part almost nobody's talking about at the kitchen table, even though it's changing the numbers underneath every new support deal in California.
For a long time, California taxed spousal support the old fashioned way. The person paying support could deduct it on their California state return, and the person receiving it reported it as income on theirs. The federal government stopped doing this years ago, for agreements finalized after the end of 2018, but California kept its own state level deduction going. So for years we lived in a split world. Deductible on the state return, not on the federal one.
That split ended. A law called Senate Bill 711 was signed in October of 2025, and starting in 2026, California now matches the federal treatment. For a divorce or separation agreement executed on or after January 1, 2026, spousal support is no longer deductible by the person paying it, and it's no longer reported as taxable income by the person receiving it, on the California return. If your agreement was already finalized before 2026, you generally stay under the old rules, unless you later modify it and the modification specifically says you're adopting the new treatment. How that applies to your particular order is a question for your tax advisor, and I mean that literally, because the wording of your instrument controls the answer.
Here's why this matters even when no one's arguing about it. On the surface, if you're the one receiving support, this sounds like good news, and in one narrow way it is. You're no longer paying California tax on those support payments. But watch the whole board, not one square. When support was deductible for the payer and taxable to the recipient, the tax cost was split between two people, and it often landed in a lower bracket on the receiving end. Now the entire tax cost of support sits on the paying spouse. And when something gets more expensive for the person writing the check, it tends to put downward pressure on the number they're willing to agree to. Some of the family law software used to calculate guideline support now produces figures that run several percentage points lower than they would have under the old rules. I'm giving you that as an illustration of direction, not a promise about your case. Your numbers are yours.
So the takeaway isn't that this change is good or bad for you. It's that the rules of thumb your recently divorced friends are handing you may quietly no longer fit. The person who divorced in 2023 negotiated under a different tax world than the one you're standing in now.
Alex Weinberger: All of which leads to the decision that sits underneath everything we've talked about. Do you take support as an ongoing monthly payment, or do you take a lump sum, a single larger amount that buys out the future stream all at once?
I want to be careful and honest here, because this is a place where people get handed bad blanket advice in both directions. You'll hear someone say a lump sum is always the smart move, take the money and cut the cord. You'll hear someone else say never take the buyout, hold onto the monthly payments. Both of those are wrong as universal rules. The truth is that this is deeply specific to your situation, and each path has real tradeoffs.
Picture two people. I'll call them Nora and David, married nineteen years, a home in Brentwood, David the higher earner, Nora having stepped back from her career years ago to raise their kids. This is a hypothetical, not a real couple, but it's a familiar shape. On the table are two versions of the same settlement. One keeps support flowing monthly for years. The other trades that stream for a single larger payment now. Same marriage, same numbers going in, and yet these two paths can lead to genuinely different places, depending on what Nora needs, how much certainty is worth to her, and what she's able to do with a lump sum once it's hers. There's no universal right answer sitting in that room. There's only the right answer for her, and the only way to find it is to run both paths side by side.
So think about what an ongoing monthly payment gives you and costs you. It gives you a stream that's meant to track your need, and it can be adjusted later if circumstances genuinely change. But it also ties you to your former spouse for years. It can end if you remarry. It's exposed to their job loss, their retirement, their choices, even their willingness to keep paying without a fight. And it keeps a financial thread running between two people who may very much want that thread cut.
Now think about the lump sum. A buyout gives you certainty and finality. The money is yours, it doesn't depend on your former spouse's paycheck or their cooperation, it doesn't end if you remarry, and it cuts that ongoing tie cleanly. For a lot of people that certainty is worth a great deal. But it hands you a different set of responsibilities. You're now holding a large amount of money that has to last, which means the investment risk and the longevity risk shift onto your shoulders. And if you would have received that stream for years, the lump sum has to be valued correctly today, discounted to a fair present number, with the new tax treatment folded in. A buyout calculated on the old tax assumptions could be off. This isn't a trap, and it isn't a gift. It's a math problem with your life attached to it.
And this is exactly the moment I'd point out where independent, fee only fiduciary guidance earns its place. Not during the fight over the number, but at the point where a settlement lands and suddenly you're the one responsible for making a lump sum last, or for turning a monthly payment into a real plan. That's a different job than getting through the divorce, and it's worth having someone in your corner whose only role is to look after your side of it. That's a decision for when the dust settles, and it's worth making deliberately.
Alex Weinberger: So how do you actually think about all this without a finance degree? Let me give you a short set of questions to carry into the room, because the goal here isn't for you to become the expert. It's for you to ask the questions that make the experts around you do their best work.
First, what's my real need, and for how long? Not the number that feels safe, the number that reflects the life you're actually rebuilding.
Second, can this order be changed later, or is it locked? That single feature changes how much risk you're carrying, and it's a question for your attorney.
Third, what happens when my former spouse retires, or if their income drops? A monthly payment is only as solid as the person and the plan behind it.
Fourth, what's each option actually worth after tax, under the rules that apply to my agreement, not the rules from a few years ago? That's where your tax advisor and a financial professional run the real numbers, side by side, so you're comparing like with like.
And fifth, if I take the lump sum, who's going to help me make it last? The day that money arrives, the question stops being how do I win and becomes how do I not run out.
You don't need to answer all of those alone. You need to know they're the right questions, so the people you're paying to help you are pointed at what matters.
Alex Weinberger: Let me bring this back to where we started, to that word permanent.
The fear underneath most support questions is a fear of the unknown, of a decision that feels irreversible made at the worst possible moment. But almost nothing here is as fixed as it feels. Support is usually time limited. Even long term support bends and changes with life. The tax rules moved this year in a way that quietly reshapes the numbers, whether or not anyone points it out to you. And the big choice, ongoing or lump sum, isn't a trap to fall into or a right answer to memorize. It's a decision you can actually make well, once you can see the whole picture and run the real numbers.
That's the difference between deciding from fear and deciding from clarity. You're far more capable of handling this than the moment is telling you. Bring your attorney the legal questions. Bring your tax advisor the tax questions. And give yourself permission to get the financial picture in front of you before you sign anything, because the version of you a few years down the road is going to be living inside these decisions, and that person deserves to have them made with a clear head.
Narrator: Thank you for listening to Advisor in Your Corner.
If today's conversation raised questions about your own situation, or a client's, Alex Weinberger and the team at Marriage Financial Solutions are available to help.
They work directly with individuals navigating divorce, and alongside the attorneys, mediators, therapists, and coaches who support them.
Every engagement is handled with the discretion, rigor, and independence the moment calls for.
To learn more or get in touch, visit marriagefinancial.com.
If this podcast has been useful to you, please share it with someone who could benefit, and subscribe wherever you listen.
This has been Advisor in Your Corner. We'll see you next episode.
The information and opinions presented in this podcast, including the views of guests not affiliated with Marriage Financial Solutions, is for general informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered personalized financial, tax, or legal advice.
Marriage Financial Solutions does not provide advice regarding securities, or the advisability of investing in securities.
Marriage Financial Solutions is affiliated with Weinberger Asset Management, an SEC registered investment adviser, and may refer listeners to Weinberger Asset Management when investment advisory services are appropriate. However, individuals are not obligated to use the services of Weinberger Asset Management.
Permanent spousal support is a legal label, not a promise that payments last forever. In California, support is usually time limited. For marriages under ten years, it often runs about half the length of the marriage. For marriages of ten years or more, the court keeps jurisdiction with no automatic end date, which means support can be revisited later, not that it continues for life. Long term support commonly steps down over time and stays open to change as circumstances change.
For divorce or separation agreements executed on or after January 1, 2026, California no longer treats spousal support as deductible for the paying spouse or as taxable income for the recipient on the state return, matching federal law under Senate Bill 711. Agreements finalized before 2026 generally keep their prior California tax treatment unless they are modified with language that expressly adopts the new rule. How this applies to a specific order is a question for a tax advisor.
Often, yes. Either party can ask a California court to modify support by showing a material change in circumstances since the last order, such as a job loss, a significant income change, retirement, or a serious health event. Some endings are automatic: support generally terminates when the recipient remarries or when either party dies. Cohabitation can reduce it. Some agreements are written to be unchangeable, so whether an order can be revisited depends on how it was drafted.
Neither option is universally better. A lump sum buyout offers certainty and finality, ends the financial tie to a former spouse, and does not stop if the recipient remarries, but it shifts investment and longevity risk onto the person receiving it. Ongoing monthly support can track changing needs and be adjusted later, but it depends on the payer and can end on remarriage. The right choice is case specific and turns on running the after tax numbers for both paths.
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