Marriage comes with a lot of incentives. Incentives include tax benefits on annual tax returns for filing jointly, saving on co-habitation expenses and other financial pluses. These financial benefits can cause people to be hesitant about filing for a divorce. Oftentimes, people who are filing for divorce are looking at a situation in which they will be living a single life, and the financial changes can make people anxious about how the change will affect them.

However, there is a big incentive to filing for divorce. That incentive is that one no longer needs to be married to someone that they do not want to be with anymore. Financial aspects can be hammered out in the divorce proceedings, and a divorce decree will lay out the finalities in great detail. One aspect that may find its way into the divorce decree is the possibility for one spouse to receive alimony, or spousal support, from the other.

Alimony is not something that will be awarded in every high asset divorce settlement. In situations when it is awarded, it means one spouse has a financial leg up on the other in lieu of the other spouse’s sacrifices. It helps the spouse who made sacrifices to raise a family, for example, to have a standard of living that they are accustomed to. Oftentimes one spouse will make sacrifices like not seeking educational opportunities or career opportunities.

These sacrifices can affect a person’s ability to earn a wage that matched their standard of living. Therefore, alimony has the potential to be awarded in these situations. In Florida, it is possible that alimony could be a part of your divorce decree. Every high asset divorce is different, and the asset division process could include a clause about alimony.