A Brief Guide to the Alimony Calculator, California
What is an Alimony Calculator for California?
An alimony calculator is a computer program or pdf worksheet that allows you to plug in a few variables and get a figure as a result which should estimate your annual alimony payments.
Where Do I Find an Alimony Calculator for California?
The website Alimony Formula has made available a California alimony calculator. It works very simply, just but in the length of your marriage and then the recipient’s and the payor’s Gross Annual Income and Net Annual Income. (Note that the recipient is the name of the financially dependent spouse and the payor is spouse who will pay alimony.) Then you’ll get an estimated alimony payment. Find it here:
That website gets its formula from the guidelines used by Santa Clara County. The formula goes like this: Multiply the payor’s net income by 4/10. Then subtract from that number the recipient’s income time 1/2. (Note that net income is gross income minus income tax and Social Security payments.) The resulting figure is the alimony payment.
The duration of the marriage is only reflected in the number of years that the alimony is set to continue. For marriages that last less than ten years, alimony payments must be received for a period equal to half of the duration of the marriage. For marriages that last twenty years or more, they must be received for at least a duration equal to that of the marriage. For those marriages that last between ten and twenty years, you must take the number of months the marriage and square it and then divide it by 240. The number should be somewhat comparable to the length of the marriage, albeit somewhat shorter.
Is There Another Alimony Calculator for California?
Unfortunately, this calculator based on the guidelines of Santa Clara County are the main source for every California alimony calculator. This simply means that it may not be accurate if you live in a different county.
That said, statewide guidelines have been established which should be considered when you attempt to estimate using a California alimony calculator. Those figures include:
• The marketable skills of the recipient and the job market for those skills.
• Whether additional education is needed for the recipient to enter the workforce.
• Whether the recipient’s work abilities were harmed by their leaving of the workplace to focus on domestic activities.
• Whether the recipient helped the payor with their education or increased their marketability.
• How much money the payor can afford to spend for alimony payments.
• How long the marriage lasted.
• Whether the recipient is able to work based on if doing so would harm minor children in their care, a disabled person, or some other dependent.
• The age of the recipient.
• Whether violence was ever done to the recipient by the payor.
• Whether one party is incarcerated.
If you’d like to read the guidelines in their entirety, visit this site: https://law.onecle.com/california/family/4320.html.
