Arkansas Alimony Laws: How Spousal Support Works (2026)

When a marriage ends in Arkansas, one spouse may have a legal obligation to support the other financially. That obligation is called alimony, or spousal support. Arkansas courts have wide discretion when deciding whether to award it, how much to award, and for how long.

Information last verified on June 1, 2026.

Estimate your situation: Try our free Arkansas alimony calculator to estimate spousal support and see the factors a Arkansas court weighs.

What Is Alimony in Arkansas?

Alimony is financial support paid by one former spouse to the other after a divorce or legal separation. Arkansas courts may order alimony whenever a decree is entered, and the standard under § 9-12-312 is simply that the award must be "reasonable from the circumstances of the parties and the nature of the case."

The stated purpose of alimony in Arkansas is to rectify economic imbalance. Divorce frequently leaves one spouse with significantly lower earning power or a lower standard of living than the other. Alimony is the tool courts use to address that gap, at least temporarily, while the recipient regains financial independence or adjusts to changed circumstances.

Either spouse can request alimony, regardless of gender. The law treats husbands and wives the same.

How Arkansas Courts Decide Alimony

The Core Test: Need and Ability to Pay

Arkansas courts evaluate two primary factors above all others. First, does the requesting spouse actually need financial support? Second, does the other spouse have the financial capacity to provide it?

If the requesting spouse has no genuine need, because they earn a sufficient income on their own, courts will typically deny alimony. If the other spouse cannot reasonably afford to pay, because their own expenses consume most of their income, courts will similarly decline to order it.

Secondary Factors Courts Consider

When need and ability to pay are both present, Arkansas courts look to a broader list of secondary factors developed through case law. Those factors include:

• The financial circumstances of both parties
• The standard of living established during the marriage
• The length of the marriage
• Each spouse's earning capacity and employment history
• Each spouse's age and physical health
• Whether one spouse left the workforce to support the family or the other's career
• Educational background, vocational skills, and the time needed for retraining
• How marital property was divided in the divorce
• Child support obligations already in place
• The contribution each spouse made to the marriage, including homemaking

No single factor is controlling. Judges weigh all of them together and retain broad discretion to arrive at an amount they consider fair.

No Binding Formula

Arkansas does not use a mathematical formula for alimony. Courts in some other states apply worksheets similar to child support guidelines, but Arkansas has no equivalent for spousal support.

A secondary benchmark that occasionally appears in Arkansas practice is approximately 20 percent of the paying spouse's net income. Some attorneys use this figure as a starting point in negotiation. However, courts are not bound by it, and judges regularly award more or less than that amount depending on the facts. Treating that figure as a guaranteed outcome or a statutory rule would be incorrect.

Types of Alimony in Arkansas

Arkansas law and case law recognize three distinct types of alimony. Each serves a different purpose and operates on a different timeline.

Temporary Alimony (Pendente Lite)

Temporary alimony, also called pendente lite support, is awarded during the divorce proceedings themselves, before a final decree is entered. Its purpose is to maintain the financial status quo while the case is pending.

Once the final divorce judgment is entered, temporary alimony ends and is replaced, if appropriate, by an order for rehabilitative or permanent alimony. The amount and duration of pendente lite support do not necessarily predict what the final order will look like.

Rehabilitative Alimony

Rehabilitative alimony is the most common type awarded at the conclusion of Arkansas divorce proceedings. It is paid for a short, specific, and terminable period of time. The goal is to support the recipient only until they are, with reasonable effort, capable of self-support.

For example, a spouse who stepped away from a career to raise children might receive rehabilitative alimony for the period needed to update their skills, complete a degree, or re-enter the workforce. The same factors that apply to permanent alimony govern whether rehabilitative alimony is appropriate and in what amount.

Permanent (Periodic) Alimony

Permanent alimony, sometimes called periodic alimony, is ongoing spousal support without a defined end date. It is most often awarded in long marriages where one spouse has limited earning capacity and is unlikely to become fully self-supporting.

The word "permanent" is somewhat misleading. Permanent alimony can be modified or terminated by the court if circumstances change materially, and § 9-12-312(a)(7) lets either the paying or the receiving party petition for a review at any time on a significant and material change of circumstances. That right has one significant limit, explained below: it does not reach alimony that was set by an independent contract the decree did not merge.

When Alimony Automatically Ends

Arkansas Code § 9-12-312 specifies events that trigger automatic termination of alimony, unless the court order or the parties' agreement states otherwise.

Remarriage of the Recipient

Alimony terminates automatically on the date the recipient spouse remarries. No court motion is required. The obligation ends by operation of law.

Death of Either Party

The death of either the payer or the recipient ends the alimony obligation. Alimony therefore does not survive the death of the payer and cannot be collected from their estate unless the court ordered otherwise or the parties agreed otherwise. Section 9-12-312(a)(2) opens with the words "Unless otherwise ordered by the court or agreed to by the parties," so a court order can displace automatic termination just as a party agreement can, and the statute sets no requirement that such an agreement be in writing.

Full-Time Intimate Cohabitation

If the recipient begins living full time with another person in an intimate, cohabitating relationship, alimony automatically ceases. This provision treats a stable, marriage-like cohabitation as functionally equivalent to remarriage for purposes of alimony termination.

Establishment of a Relationship Producing a Child with a Support Order

Two additional situations under § 9-12-312 also result in automatic termination. If the recipient enters a relationship that produces a child and a court orders another person to pay the recipient child support, alimony terminates. Similarly, if the recipient enters a relationship that produces a child and a court orders the recipient to provide support to a third party who is not a birth or adoptive descendant of the payer, that too ends the alimony obligation. Both scenarios are treated as the equivalent of remarriage under the statute.

Modification Before Automatic Termination

Even before these automatic triggers apply, either party may petition the court to modify an existing alimony order based on a significant and material change in circumstances. A material change is one that meaningfully affects the recipient's need or the payer's ability to pay. Common examples include involuntary job loss, serious illness or disability, retirement at normal age, or a substantial increase in either party's income.

There is an important exception, and it is the one most likely to surprise a reader whose alimony came out of a negotiated settlement. Arkansas courts have no power to change alimony that was fixed by an independent contract between the spouses, meaning a settlement agreement that the decree incorporated but did not merge into itself. As the Arkansas Court of Appeals stated the rule in Hargis v. Hargis, "A court may not modify an independent contract that is made part of a divorce decree." The same sentence appears in Darcey v. Matthews and in Bell v. Bell, and the principle traces back through decades of Arkansas decisions.

Whether an agreement was merged into the decree or left standing as a separate, unmodifiable contract usually turns on the wording of the decree and the agreement themselves, so read both documents together before assuming a modification petition is available. If the agreement was not merged, the change-in-circumstances standard described above simply does not apply to it.

Alimony vs. Arkansas Child Support

Alimony and child support are separate legal obligations in Arkansas, even though both often appear in a divorce decree.

Child support is governed by a completely different statute and uses the Arkansas Family Support Chart, which is a formula-based calculation tied to each parent's income and the number of children. Alimony, by contrast, has no formula.

Child support is owed to benefit the children and is not affected by the recipient's remarriage. Alimony is owed between former spouses and does terminate on remarriage. The two cannot be traded against each other in negotiations, courts treat them as independent obligations.

For more on the child support side, see our full guide to Arkansas child support laws.

For a broader view of how alimony works across the country, visit our hub page on alimony laws by state.

Is Alimony Taxable in Arkansas?

The federal tax treatment of alimony changed substantially with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which took effect for divorce agreements executed after December 31, 2018.

For agreements signed after that date, alimony payments are not deductible by the payer and are not included in the recipient's gross income for federal income tax purposes. The IRS has confirmed this position on its website for Topic 452.

For divorce agreements signed before January 1, 2019, the old rules still apply: the payer may deduct alimony, and the recipient must report it as taxable income, unless a post-2018 modification expressly states that the new rules apply.

Arkansas conforms to the federal treatment for state income tax purposes. Parties negotiating alimony should account for these tax consequences when evaluating any proposed settlement.

Disclaimer

This page provides general legal information about Arkansas alimony law. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Alimony cases are highly fact-specific. If you are facing a divorce or spousal support dispute in Arkansas, consult a licensed Arkansas family law attorney.

Last updated: June 1, 2026.

More Arkansas Laws

• Arkansas Child Custody Laws
• Arkansas Child Support Laws
• Arkansas Common Law Marriage Laws
• Arkansas Divorce Laws