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Pre-2019 Alimony Agreements: Deduction and Income Requirements: Taxes After Divorce or Separation (2025 IRS Guide)

This guide covers “Pre-2019 Alimony Agreements: Deduction and Income Requirements” within taxes after divorce or separation. The following material presents the IRS treatment of this topic, including the qualifications, exceptions, and examples in the source section. Read the rules alongside the facts of your own situation before deciding what to report, deduct, or document.

Adapted from Publication 504 (2025), Divorced or Separated Individuals, published by the Internal Revenue Service. This guide retains the source edition’s years, amounts, deadlines, and examples. It is guidance for that edition, not a statement that the same figures apply to every tax year.

Context for these rules

.Amounts paid as alimony or separate maintenance payments under a divorce or separation instrument executed after 2018 won’t be deductible by the payer. Such amounts also won’t be includible in the income of the recipient. The same is true of alimony paid under a divorce or separation instrument executed before 2019 and modified after 2018, if the modification expressly states that the alimony isn’t deductible to the payer or includible in the income of the recipient. See Certain Rules for Instruments Executed or Modified After 2018, later..

Alimony is a payment to or for a spouse or former spouse under a divorce or separation instrument. It doesn’t include voluntary payments that aren’t made under a divorce or separation instrument.

Although this discussion is generally written for the payer of the alimony, the recipient can also use the information to determine whether an amount received is alimony.

To be alimony, a payment must meet certain requirements. There are some differences between the requirements that apply to payments under instruments executed after 1984 and to payments under instruments executed before 1985. General alimony requirements and specific requirements that apply to post-1984 instruments (and, in certain cases, some pre-1985 instruments) are discussed in this publication. See Instruments Executed Before 1985, later, if you’re looking for information on where to find the specific requirements that apply to pre-1985 instruments.

Pre-2019 Alimony Agreements: Deduction and Income Requirements

A payment to or for a spouse under a divorce or separation instrument is alimony if the spouses don’t file a joint return with each other and all of the following requirements are met.

  • The payment is in cash.

  • The instrument doesn’t designate the payment as not alimony.

  • The spouses aren’t members of the same household at the time the payments are made. This requirement applies only if the spouses are legally separated under a decree of divorce or separate maintenance.

  • There is no liability to make any payment (in cash or property) after the death of the recipient spouse.

  • The payment isn’t treated as child support.

Each of these requirements is discussed next.

Cash payment requirement.

Only cash payments, including checks and money orders, qualify as alimony. The following don’t qualify as alimony.

  • Transfers of services or property (including a debt instrument of a third party or an annuity contract).

  • Execution of a debt instrument by the payer.

  • The use of the payer’s property.

Payments to a third party.

Cash payments to a third party under the terms of your divorce or separation instrument can qualify as cash payments to your spouse. See Payments to a third party under Alimony Payment Rules for Instruments Executed Prior to 2019, earlier.

Also, cash payments made to a third party at the written request of your spouse may qualify as alimony if all the following requirements are met.

  • The payments are in lieu of payments of alimony directly to your spouse.

  • The written request states that both spouses intend the payments to be treated as alimony.

  • You receive the written request from your spouse before you file your return for the year you made the payments.

Payments designated as not alimony.

You and your spouse can designate that otherwise qualifying payments aren’t alimony. You do this by including a provision in your divorce or separation instrument that states the payments aren’t deductible as alimony by you and are excludable from your spouse’s income. For this purpose, any instrument (written statement) signed by both of you that makes this designation and that refers to a previous written separation agreement is treated as a written separation agreement (and therefore a divorce or separation instrument). If you’re subject to temporary support orders, the designation must be made in the original or a later temporary support order.

Your spouse can exclude the payments from income only if they attach a copy of the instrument designating them as not alimony to their return. The copy must be attached each year the designation applies.

Spouses can’t be members of the same household.

Payments to your spouse while you’re members of the same household aren’t alimony if you’re legally separated under a decree of divorce or separate maintenance. A home you formerly shared is considered one household, even if you physically separate yourselves in the home.

You aren’t treated as members of the same household if one of you is preparing to leave the household and does leave no later than 1 month after the date of the payment.

Exception.

If you aren’t legally separated under a decree of divorce or separate maintenance, a payment under a written separation agreement, support decree, or other court order may qualify as alimony even if you’re members of the same household when the payment is made.

Liability for payments after death of recipient spouse.

If any part of payments you make must continue to be made for any period after your spouse’s death, that part of your payments isn’t alimony whether made before or after the death. If all of the payments would continue, then none of the payments made before or after the death are alimony.

The divorce or separation instrument doesn’t have to expressly state that the payments cease upon the death of your spouse if, for example, the liability for continued payments would end under state law.

Example.

You must pay your former spouse $10,000 in cash each year for 10 years. Your divorce decree states that the payments will end upon your former spouse’s death. You must also pay your former spouse or your former spouse’s estate $20,000 in cash each year for 10 years. The death of your spouse wouldn’t end these payments under state law.

The $10,000 annual payments may qualify as alimony. The $20,000 annual payments that don’t end upon your former spouse’s death aren’t alimony.

Substitute payments.

If you must make any payments in cash or property after your spouse’s death as a substitute for continuing otherwise qualifying payments before the death, the otherwise qualifying payments aren’t alimony. To the extent that your payments begin, accelerate, or increase because of the death of your spouse, otherwise qualifying payments you made may be treated as payments that weren’t alimony. Whether or not such payments will be treated as not alimony depends on all the facts and circumstances.

Example 1.

Under your divorce decree, you must pay your former spouse $30,000 annually. The payments will stop at the end of 6 years or upon your former spouse’s death, if earlier.

Your former spouse has custody of your minor children. The decree provides that if any child is still a minor at your spouse’s death, you must pay $10,000 annually to a trust until the youngest child reaches the age of majority. The trust income and corpus (principal) are to be used for your children’s benefit.

These facts indicate that the payments to be made after your former spouse’s death are a substitute for $10,000 of the $30,000 annual payments. Of each of the $30,000 annual payments, $10,000 isn’t alimony.

Example 2.

Under your divorce decree, you must pay your former spouse $30,000 annually. The payments will stop at the end of 15 years or upon your former spouse’s death, if earlier. The decree provides that if your former spouse dies before the end of the 15-year period, you must pay the estate the difference between $450,000 ($30,000 × 15) and the total amount paid up to that time. For example, if your spouse dies at the end of the 10th year, you must pay the estate $150,000 ($450,000 − $300,000).

These facts indicate that the lump-sum payment to be made after your former spouse’s death is a substitute for the full amount of the $30,000 annual payments. None of the annual payments are alimony. The result would be the same if the payment required at death were to be discounted by an appropriate interest factor to account for the prepayment.

Child support.

A payment that is specifically designated as child support or treated as specifically designated as child support under your divorce or separation instrument isn’t alimony. The amount of child support may vary over time. Child support payments aren’t deductible by the payer and aren’t taxable to the payee.

Specifically designated as child support.

A payment will be treated as specifically designated as child support to the extent that the payment is reduced either:

  • On the happening of a contingency relating to your child, or

  • At a time that can be clearly associated with the contingency.

A payment may be treated as specifically designated as child support even if other separate payments are specifically designated as child support.

Contingency relating to your child.

A contingency relates to your child if it depends on any event relating to that child. It doesn’t matter whether the event is certain or likely to occur. Events relating to your child include the child’s:

  • Becoming employed,

  • Dying,

  • Leaving the household,

  • Leaving school,

  • Marrying, or

  • Reaching a specified age or income level.

Clearly associated with a contingency.

Payments that would otherwise qualify as alimony are presumed to be reduced at a time clearly associated with the happening of a contingency relating to your child only in the following situations.

  1. The payments are to be reduced not more than 6 months before or after the date the child will reach 18, 21, or local age of majority.

  2. The payments are to be reduced on two or more occasions that occur not more than 1 year before or after a different one of your children reaches a certain age from 18 to 24. This certain age must be the same for each child, but need not be a whole number of years.

In all other situations, reductions in payments aren’t treated as clearly associated with the happening of a contingency relating to your child.

Either you or the IRS can overcome the presumption in the two situations above. This is done by showing that the time at which the payments are to be reduced was determined independently of any contingencies relating to your children. For example, if you can show that the period of alimony payments is customary in the local jurisdiction, such as a period equal to one-half of the duration of the marriage, you can overcome the presumption and may be able to treat the amount as alimony.

Using the guidance

Keep the documents that establish the dates, amounts, and circumstances described above. References to other chapters, forms, worksheets, or earlier and later sections refer to the linked IRS publication. Check the full publication and its updates before relying on a rule for a different tax year or a situation not addressed here.

Sources and further reading

The cited U.S. government text is in the public domain. Source accessed October 28, 2026. Fynoptic has organized this material for educational use and is independent of, and not endorsed by, the IRS.

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