Alimony
Differences between Alimony and Child Support
It is important to know that alimony is treated differently than child support on your tax return. Where alimony is tax deductible to the person paying it, and included in the taxable income of the person receiving it, child support, by contrast, is not taxable to the person who receives it and not tax deductible to the person who pays it. In the case of spouses with profoundly different incomes, there may be some tax advantages to using alimony.
Child Support
In Massachusetts, child support has changed over the years. It used to be the case that child support was subject to broad discretion from divorce judges, and the results reflected this: grants of child support often varied widely depending on how good a witness the parents were and the effectiveness of the lawyers involved. In Massachusetts this situation is no longer the case. Due to federal legislation, every state including Massachuetts has a standardized way of calculating child support between divorcing parents.
