Understanding Maintenance Duration in New York: Why a 12-Year Marriage Doesn’t Always Mean 2-3 Years of Support

When you first learn about New York’s maintenance duration guidelines, they seem straightforward. For marriages of 0 to 15 years, maintenance lasts 15 to 30 percent of the marriage’s length. So if you’ve been married twelve years, that’s somewhere between 1.8 and 3.6 years.

Except that’s not how it actually works in practice. Understanding why requires going deeper than the arithmetic, and that understanding matters for your financial planning. More importantly, understanding the flexibility within these ranges is exactly why mediation gives you such an advantage over litigation, where duration often gets decided by someone who doesn’t know your family.

The Guidelines Are Advisory, Not Mandatory

These percentages are starting points, not rules that determine outcomes. For marriages of 0 to 15 years, the guideline suggests 15-30%. For fifteen to twenty years, thirty to forty percent. For over twenty years, thirty-five to fifty percent.

For that twelve-year marriage, you’re identifying a range of 1.8 to 3.6 years, and then the real question becomes: where within that range does your situation actually fall? In litigation, that decision gets made by a stranger based on competing arguments. In mediation, you work together to find what actually makes sense.

What Determines Where in the Range You Land

Career sacrifice is often the most significant factor. If you gave up opportunities to support your spouse’s advancement or raise children, that points toward a longer duration. If both spouses maintained independent careers, that suggests a shorter duration. The question is how significantly those sacrifices affected long-term earning capacity.

Age and health matter substantially. If you’re fifty-five when divorcing and have been out of the workforce for twenty years, rebuilding earning capacity looks very different than if you’re thirty-five with marketable skills. The older you are, the more challenging it becomes to reestablish career momentum.

The standard of living during marriage also plays a role. This isn’t about maintaining luxury, but recognizing that adjustment from a two-income lifestyle to self-sufficiency takes time.

Training and education needs directly affect duration. We understand that self-sufficiency often requires rebuilding a career, not just finding any job. If you need 2 years of education, you likely need 3 to 4 years total to complete training and establish yourself.

The Financial Reality of Duration Decisions

Let me show you why this matters. Take that twelve-year marriage where one spouse earns $200,000 and the other earns $50,000. The maintenance formula might produce $30,000 annually.

At the low end—two years—total maintenance is $60,000. At the high end—four years—it’s $120,000. That’s a $60,000 difference. For the recipient, it’s the difference between two and four years to rebuild career skills or establish financial independence. For the payor, it fundamentally changes long-term financial planning.

Understanding this range helps both spouses plan realistically. You’re not just budgeting annual payments—you’re planning how many years this will continue and what your financial picture will look like when it ends. In litigation, you’re hoping someone else makes the right call. In mediation, you’re making informed decisions together.

Deviating From Guidelines

Sometimes the advisory percentages don’t fit at all. Sometimes couples agree to “non-durational” spousal maintenance, which continues indefinitely, typically until death or remarriage. This usually happens in longer marriages where one spouse has no realistic prospect of becoming self-supporting. If you’re 62, have been out of the workforce for 30 years, and have health issues that limit employability, time-limited maintenance may make no sense.

Couples can also agree to a shorter duration than guidelines suggest. In mediation, we explore whether your circumstances warrant deviating from the guidelines and help you articulate the reasoning.

Modeling Different Scenarios

Don’t just pick a number and hope it works. Model different duration scenarios and look at the long-term financial impact.
For the payor, model your finances for 2-, 3-, and 4-year periods. How does each scenario affect your ability to save for retirement, rebuild your household, or make major purchases? What happens to your budget when maintenance ends versus continues?

For the recipient, model your path to self-sufficiency under different durations. Can you realistically complete the required training and establish a stable income within 2 years? What does your budget look like in year three if maintenance ends after year two? Run the actual numbers.

Consider total dollars involved. Sometimes, a slightly higher annual payment with a shorter duration costs the payor less overall than a lower payment over a longer period. Sometimes, the recipient is better off with a shorter duration at higher amounts because it provides more resources during the crucial rebuilding period.

This kind of financial modeling is where mediation truly delivers value. We don’t just discuss duration in the abstract—we actually run these scenarios together so you can see the real financial impact of different choices. That’s not happening in litigation, where you’re locked into adversarial positions rather than exploring options together.

Tax Implications for Duration Planning

For divorces finalized after January 1, 2019, maintenance isn’t deductible or taxable at the federal level. This affects duration planning because the payor pays from after-tax dollars for the entire duration.

A shorter duration might feel more manageable than a longer one, even if total dollars are similar. If you’re paying $36,000 annually from income taxed at 24% federally and 6% in New York, you’re actually earning roughly $51,000 to have $36,000 available for maintenance. Cutting the duration from four years to three means one fewer year of that burden. This is a legitimate factor in negotiations.

The Retirement Consideration

We also consider anticipated retirement when determining duration. If you’re fifty-five and planning to retire at sixty-five, setting a fifteen-year maintenance duration doesn’t make sense. Your income will drop dramatically, making continued payments unrealistic. This works both ways—if you’re the recipient, consider whether your retirement timeline affects how much time you need to build independent retirement security.

Creative Approaches in Mediation

The advantage of mediation is that you’re not locked into advisory percentages. You can craft a duration that makes sense for your specific situation.

Some couples front-load payments with shorter duration—instead of $30,000 annually for four years, maybe $40,000 for three years. This gives the recipient more resources during crucial rebuilding while reducing the payor’s total years of obligation.

Others structure duration around specific milestones—maintenance continues until the recipient completes a degree or certification, or until the youngest child finishes high school. This makes duration purposeful rather than arbitrary.

Some couples blend durational and modifiable provisions—three years guaranteed, then an additional year that can be extended if the recipient demonstrates genuine effort toward self-sufficiency but needs more time. These creative structures don’t emerge in litigation’s adversarial environment.

Moving Beyond the Numbers to Real Solutions

Whether you’re the payor or recipient, the key to duration negotiations is thinking beyond percentages to actual outcomes. What is maintenance meant to accomplish in your situation? How much time does that realistically require? What happens financially for both of you under different scenarios?

A twelve-year marriage doesn’t automatically mean 2-3 years of support. It means you start with a range of 1.8 to 3.6 years, then look at all the factors that determine where in that range makes sense, or whether you should deviate from the range entirely based on your specific circumstances.

In litigation, you’re stuck presenting arguments about why you deserve the high or low end of the range, hoping someone else makes the right decision. In mediation, you’re having substantive conversations about which duration actually serves the purpose of maintenance in your situation.

We don’t require you to have a duration figured out before mediation. We actively guide you through this analysis, presenting options and helping you understand the implications of different approaches. That personalized guidance, combined with financial modeling expertise to evaluate various scenarios, gives you the tools to make informed decisions rather than accepting whatever is imposed on you.

The difference between mediation and litigation isn’t just about being nicer to each other. It’s about maintaining control over complex financial decisions that will affect both of your lives for years to come. It’s about having the flexibility to craft solutions that reflect your unique circumstances rather than fitting into rigid categories. And it’s about working with someone who actively helps you navigate the complexity, rather than leaving you to figure it out alone or fight it out in court.

The Mediation Advantage for Maintenance Discussions

Throughout these FAQs, you’ve seen references to mediation as an alternative to litigation. In litigation, attorneys fight over what guidelines produce and argue about how factors apply. You’re spending tens of thousands on adversarial processes that often produce outcomes neither party accepts. For co-parents, this poisons the relationship foundation you need for years ahead.

In mediation, you’re working together to understand what the guidelines say, whether they fit your circumstances, and what alternatives might work better. When you combine that collaborative process with genuine financial expertise—the ability to model scenarios, calculate present values, analyze tax impacts, and structure creative solutions—you get agreements that are both fair and sustainable.

That’s what makes the difference between maintenance arrangements that work and ones that create ongoing conflict.