Alimony Calculator North Carolina

A Brief Explainer about North Carolina Alimony Calculators

What Is a North Carolina Alimony Calculator?

An alimony calculator will estimate the amount you will have to pay for spousal support related to a few variables such as your income and finances. They rely on strict state guidelines to create a mathematical formula, but unfortunately, North Carolina doesn’t have strict alimony guidelines, which makes accurate North Carolina alimony calculators and impossibility.

Yet even if the search for a perfect alimony calculator in North Carolina is over, you can still do a good job of simulating an estimate yourself. Just follow this simple outline and serve as your own North Carolina alimony calculator.

Part 1: The Requested Alimony Calculator

To give us a good base number for our calculation, we should first run your income through a requested North Carolina alimony calculator. That means the output number will likely be similar to the number that council for the lower-earning spouse will request, though not necessarily receive.

Step 1: Calculate your joint marital standard of living. Consider all of the costs incurred by you and your spouse during your last year of cohabitation. (This is not necessarily your last year of marriage, if you were living apart toward the end of your marriage.) Make sure to deduct all costs associated with the care of a minor child or dependent adult.

Step 2: Turn that into individual standard of living. All you need to do is divide the marital standard of living by 2.

Step 3: Compare the individual standard of living to the income earned by the lower-earning spouse. Assuming that the standard of living is above the means allowed by the income, the difference will be the annual requested alimony.

Step 4: If necessary, divide the result of Step 3 by 12 to get the monthly alimony payments requested according to this North Carolina alimony calculator.

Part 2: Adjusting Your Estimate

Once you get a ballpark number from the above North Carolina alimony calculator, we can anticipate how the judge will change the request to get an even more accurate alimony estimate. Just answer all the following questions, based on the factors that North Carolina judges are ordered to consider in making alimony decisions. The more you answer “Yes,” the higher alimony will likely be.

1. Was the marriage dissolved because of marital misconduct on the part of the payor?

2. Is there a large gap in earnings and earning capacities between the two partners?

3. Did the marriage last at least five years? More than ten? More than twenty?

4. Is the lower-income spouse to aged to find appropriate employment, or otherwise not in a mental, physical or emotional state where any employment is applicable?

5. Was the standard of living during the marriage high?

6. Did the lower-income spouse contribute significantly to the marriage as a homemaker?

7. Did the higher-income spouse assume little debt as part of the divorce?

8. Will the lower-income spouse need additional education to rejoin the workforce?

You can read more about the factors impacting a North Carolina alimony calculator in Statute § 50‑16.3A, which is located here: