Permanent alimony ended for new cases on 1 July 2023. What replaced it is a set of caps tied to how long the marriage lasted.
Section 61.08 governs alimony in Florida. Since Senate Bill 1416 took effect on 1 July 2023, a court may award bridge-the-gap, rehabilitative, durational or temporary alimony. Permanent alimony is no longer available in new cases.
The section sets out the forms of alimony a court may award, requires a finding that one party has an actual need and the other an ability to pay, and lists the factors the court weighs — including the length of the marriage, the standard of living, each party’s age and health, earning capacity, and contributions to the marriage. Duration and amount are capped by reference to the length of the marriage.
§ 61.08 · read it on leg.state.fl.us
Two findings come before anything else: that you need support, and that the other party can pay it. Without both, the analysis stops. Everything about brackets and caps only matters after that threshold is met.
The length of the marriage does most of the work. Florida sorts marriages into short, moderate and long-term, and the bracket you fall into limits both how long support can run and how much it can be. The date of filing, not the date of separation, is what fixes the length.
The reform is not retroactive. An award entered before 1 July 2023 stands on its own terms, though modification is governed separately by § 61.14.
Clients arrive expecting one of two things: that alimony is automatic after a long marriage, or that the 2023 reform ended it. Neither is right, and the gap between what people expect and what the statute allows is where most of the early cost goes.
What decides these cases is need and ability to pay, proved with documents. I have watched well-prepared claims on moderate-term marriages succeed where longer-marriage claims failed, entirely on the quality of the financial record. Preparing that record is work you can do before you hire anyone.
Alimony is where a case stops being administrative. Establishing need and ability to pay means financial affidavits, income records and often a vocational evaluation. The records themselves are the same ones Mandatory Disclosure requires — which is why collecting them yourself, before the meter starts, matters more here than anywhere else.
The alimony reference sheet in Before You File sets the four types side by side with the brackets and caps, in one page you can take to a consultation.
See what is included