A few months ago, I was on Zoom with a client. Financial documents were spread across her kitchen table. We had just finished reviewing her monthly expenses when she looked down at the page and said quietly, “I don’t know how I’m going to do this.”

She wasn’t reacting to a legal argument. She was reacting to the math.

Two housing payments instead of one. Health insurance on her own. Retirement contributions she had not considered in years. The question beneath her voice was the one I hear most often in this work: how do we turn one household into two?

This is where spousal support enters the conversation.

Spousal support, or alimony, is designed to address economic imbalance when a marriage ends. Many families evolve into asymmetrical structures over time. One spouse may scale back employment. One may carry the bulk of the income. One may absorb more of the unpaid labor that keeps a family functioning. When the marriage dissolves, that financial structure does not automatically rebalance itself.

What surprises people is that there is no clean formula to resolve that imbalance. Child support often follows guidelines; spousal support does not. Courts consider length of the marriage, income, earning capacity, health, assets, and future opportunity, but there is no bright line rule that dictates a specific number. Families are financially complex. Their outcomes are, too.

The broader landscape has shifted as well. Over the past twenty years, courts have generally emphasized transition rather than permanence in many cases. At the same time, the American family economy has changed. Housing costs have climbed. Retirement savings are often inadequate. Dual income households are common, but income is rarely equal or easily replaced. Wealth is uneven, and many families are more financially stretched than they appear.

Spousal support cannot create money that does not exist. If one household felt tight, two will feel tighter. If there are significant assets or income, there may be more room to structure a transition. But the starting point is not fear. It is clarity.

On that Zoom call, I did not try to predict a number. We slowed down. We separated assumptions from data. We looked at what was actually coming in and what was going out. We discussed housing realistically and considered earning capacity not as a fixed identity but as something that could evolve. We examined how property division and support might work together.

Her fear did not disappear.

But it became specific.

And specific is workable.

Spousal support is rarely a single payment in isolation. It is part of a broader financial reorganization that includes assets, taxes, retirement accounts, and time. Most cases resolve through negotiation, shaped by the actual financial realities of the family rather than a rigid formula.

Turning one household into two is not simple. The standard of living may shift. Expectations may adjust. There is often a season of recalibration.

But when we move from “I don’t know how I’m going to do this” to a grounded understanding of the numbers, something steadier emerges.

Not certainty. But direction. And direction is enough to begin.