Alimony
Differences between Alimony and Child Support
Alimony gets treated differently from child support on your tax return. Alimony is tax deductible to the person who pays it, and included in the taxable income of the person who receives it. Child support, by contrast, is not taxable to the person who receives it and not tax deductible to the person who pays it. That means that when you and your spouse have dramatically different incomes, there may be some tax advantages to using alimony, even if a judge wouldn't ordinarily award it.
Child Support
Child support has come a long way. There was a time when child support was subject to broad discretion from divorce judges, and the results showed it. Grants of child support would vary widely depending on how good a witness Mom and Dad were, how good their lawyers were, and lots of other factors. That's not the case any more. Thanks to some enabling federal legislation, every state now has a standardized way of calculating child support between divorcing parents.
