New Maintenance Statute in Illinois in 2015
(effective January 1, 2015) Illinois law on alimony (or what we now call maintenance) is about to get about the biggest change in its history. Many are familiar with child support guidelines but now there will be spousal maintenance guidelines. The new guidelines, like child support, offer a mathematical calculation to apply to a situation to arrive at a dollar amount due for maintenance. Notably, I find the move toward a “one size fits all” approach to maintenance strange considering that the recent trend in child support awards has actually been to strive towards more flexibility. I expect some legislator with pull and an agenda was able to push this through the state assembly and got the governor to sign it. In any event the new statute applies the following math: first determine 30% of the payor’s gross income and then subtract from that 20% of the recipient’s gross income and the result is the amount of maintenance. However, there is a cap that maintenance can not be more th...