10 Jul
10Jul

On July 9, 2025, the Massachusetts’ Appeals Court issued an opinion in Cavanagh v. Cavanagh. These are the same parties in the landmark Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”) Cavanagh decision of 2022 that was remanded back to the trial (probate) court for further orders. After a one-day trial, the trial judge issued new orders, and the case was again appealed. The Appeals Court affirmed that child support is for the child, alimony is for the spouse in need, and the three-step framework must be followed. In addition, when calculating alimony, the need of the recipient should be used in the calculation as opposed to the percentages set forth in the alimony statute.

In 2022, the SJC decided Cavanagh v. Cavanagh, 490 Mass. 398 (2022). This case provided a new framework for alimony and child support calculations. The SJC stated, "in cases where child support is contemplated, before a judge properly may exercise her discretion to decide whether and in what format and amount to award alimony, the judge must do a three-step approach to support.” Briefly, this requires:

  1. Calculating alimony first in light of the alimony statute with alimony to be determined by need and then calculating child support.

       As an example:

      Spouse A earns $300,000 annually. Spouse B earns $50,000 annually. Spouse B establishes their support need at $50,000 annually.

     After Spouse A pays $50,000 per year to Spouse B, Spouse A has $250,000 per year. Spouse B has $100,000 per year. Child support is now calculated on Spouse A's income of $250,000 and Spouse B's income of $100,000.

     2.   Running child support calculations first and then calculating alimony.

     3.   Compare the tax consequences of both alimony and child support calculations run per steps one and two. With all of this information, a Judge would then need to enter an order that is "most equitable for the family before the court, considering the mandatory statutory factors set forth in G.L. C. 208 § 53(a) . . .". id. 

The Cavanagh 2022 case was remanded (sent back) to the trial (probate) court to determine alimony and child support using the three-step approach. After a one-day trial, the trial court issued new orders and both parties cross-appealed. The Appeals Court heard the appeal and issued its opinion. No. 23-P-1461 on July 9, 2025.

The Appeals Court looked at the trial judges’ approach to step one of the three-step approach. The trial Judge first calculated alimony using 32.5 percent as the difference in the parties’ incomes, second ran a child support calculation, and third disregarded the step one approach as it exceeded the mother’s needs.

The trial judge derived this percentage from the Alimony Reform Act of 2011 which established that an amount between 30% to 35% of the difference in the parties’ income was a reasonable calculation for alimony. 

An example of a calculation of 30% to 35% is as follows:

If the payor earned $100,000 and the payee earned $20,000 per year, then alimony would be calculated on $80,000 ($100,000 minus $20,000) and alimony would be capped at 30% to 35% of the $80,000. Alimony support therefore could be $24,000 to $28,000 per year.

The 30% to 35% percentages are still in the statute, however, due to a change in the income tax laws as to how alimony is taxed judges typically do not apply these percentages anymore.  At the time of the Alimony Reform Act of 2011, alimony was tax deductible by the payor and taxable to the payee. Since that time, the Tax Cuts and Jobs-Act of 2017 changed the tax treatment of alimony by no longer allowing a deduction to the payor and not includible as income to the payee for all alimony support orders entered after December 31, 2018. As a result of this change, attorneys need to determine what percentage is appropriate taking into account the taxes on the payor’s income.

The Cavanagh v. Cavanagh Court No. 23-P-1461 (July 9, 2025) found two errors with the way the trial court applied the three-step analysis. The first error was that the judge disregarded step one because the court believed the support was beyond the Mother’s need. The Appeals Court stated that SJC was clear in the 2022 Cavanagh ruling when they stated that “child support and alimony serve distinct purposes: child support is intended to provide financial support for children of the parties, whereas alimony is intended to provide financial support to an economically dependent former spouse.” Cavanagh v. Cavanagh 490 Mass. at 409 (2022).

The second error was that the alimony calculation should have used the Mother’s actual need and not the 32.5%, which the Appeals Court called an arbitrary percentage (in a footnote, the Appeals Court explains that the percentages in the Act are not arbitrary but using the 32.5 percentage was not related to Mother’s need”).

Since the 2022 Cavanagh decision, the SJC continues to affirm that the alimony analysis is based on first determining the need of the party, second determining the payor's ability to pay, and then calculating a percentage of the difference in the parties' income, which is capped at a percentage (to be determined by the court and guided by the statute). 

Recent cases are further defining “need.” Recently, in Openshaw v. Openshaw, 493 Mass. 599, 605 (2024) the court discussed “need” as the marital lifestyle at the time of the marriage. Quoting Young v. Young, 478 Mass. 1, 6 (2017) the SJC stated, “[t]he plain meaning of marital lifestyle is the characteristic manner in which the couple chose to live their life during the marriage.”

The Appeals Court in the 2025 Cavanagh decision, specified that instead of disregarding calculations at Step 1, all steps should have been followed. If after following all three-steps, if the two numbers (calculation at step one and step two) were not equitable it would be addressed in Step 3. As this was not done, the case was again remanded.

Some of the conclusions from this 2025 Cavanagh decision is that when calculating alimony first, calculate the need of the recipient and not the capped percentage. All three-steps need to be performed to determine what is appropriate for the family, with the understanding that child support supports the children and alimony supports the recipient spouse.