A 28-year marriage in Palm Beach used to carry a reasonable expectation that the lower-earning spouse might receive support for life. That changed in 2023, when Florida eliminated permanent alimony and replaced it with a durational framework carrying statutory limits on both how long payments last and how large they can be. For couples with substantial assets, the reform shifted the central question from how much monthly support to whether the property settlement itself can carry someone through a thirty-year retirement. That is the analysis a high net worth divorce financial planner in West Palm Beach is brought in to run, and it is different from the analysis either attorney is positioned to do alone.
What did Florida actually change?
Senate Bill 1416, signed in June 2023 and effective July 1 of that year, removed permanent alimony as an available award. Four forms remain: temporary support during the case, bridge-the-gap, rehabilitative, and durational.
Bridge-the-gap alimony covers short-term transition needs and cannot exceed two years. Rehabilitative alimony supports a spouse acquiring education or job skills, is capped at five years, and requires a specific written plan describing the training and its cost. Durational alimony is the category that now handles what permanent alimony once did.
The reform applies going forward. It did not retroactively cancel permanent awards already in place, though modification requests under existing orders raise their own questions that belong with counsel.
How long can durational alimony last after a long marriage?
Florida ties the maximum duration to the length of the marriage, measured from the wedding date to the date the petition is filed. For marriages of 20 years or more, which the statute treats as long-term, durational alimony generally may not exceed 75 percent of the length of the marriage. Moderate-term marriages of 10 to 20 years are capped at 60 percent, and short-term marriages under 10 years at 50 percent. Durational alimony is generally unavailable for marriages shorter than three years.
A 28-year marriage therefore points toward a ceiling in the range of 21 years rather than a lifetime. Courts can extend beyond the cap only under limited circumstances requiring clear and convincing evidence, and they must make written findings supporting what they award.
Is there a cap on the amount as well?
Yes, and it is the provision that changes the planning math most. Durational alimony is generally limited to the lesser of the recipient’s reasonable need or 35 percent of the difference between the parties’ net incomes.
That second figure matters for households where the payor’s compensation is large but irregular. Net income for a partner drawing distributions, a founder taking a modest salary against equity, or an executive whose pay is weighted toward deferred compensation and carried interest is not a single clean number, and how it is characterized moves the ceiling. Documenting income structure carefully is part of the financial work in the case rather than an afterthought.
What does this mean for a spouse who has not worked outside the home in decades?
It means the settlement has to do work that support payments previously did. A 58-year-old spouse who receives durational alimony ending in their late seventies faces a funding gap in the years when medical and long-term care costs typically rise and earning capacity is gone.
The planning response is usually some combination of a larger share of investable assets, attention to which assets are received rather than only their stated value, and a realistic view of what the portfolio can be expected to produce over decades. No projection guarantees an outcome, and markets, inflation, and health all move. The point of modeling is to understand the range of possibilities before signing, not to promise a result.
Asset composition deserves as much attention as the division percentage. A $4 million share made up of a low-basis concentrated stock position, an illiquid interest in a family business, and a house with substantial carrying costs is not equivalent to $4 million in diversified liquid holdings, even though a balance sheet shows the same number.
What about the retirement provision?
The reform allows a paying spouse to seek modification or termination of alimony upon reaching normal retirement age as defined by the Social Security Administration, subject to court consideration of specified factors. For a payor who is 55 at the time of the divorce, that introduces a potential change point roughly a decade out.
Building a settlement that assumes payments continue uninterrupted to the statutory maximum, without examining what happens if a modification request is granted, leaves the receiving spouse exposed to a variable that was known from the start.
How a high net worth divorce financial planner in West Palm Beach approaches the problem
The work is modeling, not advocacy. That includes projecting household cash needs across retirement, testing what different settlement structures do under varied return and inflation assumptions, examining the after-tax reality of proposed divisions, and identifying where a shorter support term traded for different assets may serve a client better than the reverse.
Florida’s lack of a state income tax and the federal treatment of alimony for agreements executed after 2018, under which payments are generally neither deductible to the payor nor taxable to the recipient, both affect how proposals should be compared. Two offers with identical headline numbers can land very differently.
This analysis fits naturally in a collaborative divorce, where a single financial neutral works with both spouses and their attorneys rather than two opposing experts producing competing numbers for a judge. It also keeps sensitive business and estate details out of a public filing.
None of this substitutes for legal advice, and the statutory details above should be confirmed with Florida family law counsel, since the law continues to be interpreted by the courts.
Long-marriage divorces in Palm Beach County now turn on whether the property settlement can support a lifetime, and that question is answerable only with careful modeling done before anyone signs. Working with a high net worth divorce financial planner in West Palm Beach early in the process gives both spouses a clearer view of what each proposal actually means over the decades that follow.