Posted in Divorce
If a divorce is on the horizon close to a tenth wedding anniversary, it’s common to hear that hitting the ten-year mark changes everything about spousal support. Like most things in family law, that’s partly true and partly an oversimplification. The ten-year mark genuinely is a turning point, but understanding what actually changes, and what doesn’t, can make a meaningful difference in how spouses approach the timing and strategy of a divorce.
The length of a marriage affects far more than how assets get divided. It shapes how long spousal support lasts, how much leverage each spouse has to ask for changes later, and even what each spouse might be entitled to from Social Security decades down the road. Here’s what’s worth understanding before that anniversary date becomes part of the conversation. A Marina Del Rey, CA divorce lawyer can help you understand how the length of your marriage may affect spousal support, property division, and other important aspects of your divorce, allowing you to make informed decisions about your future.
The Basic Rule: Marriages Under 10 Years Get a Defined End Date
For marriages shorter than ten years, courts generally use a straightforward guideline: spousal support is awarded for roughly half the length of the marriage. A six-year marriage might result in support for around three years. An eight-year marriage might land closer to four.
This isn’t a hard mathematical formula written into law, and judges retain discretion to deviate from it based on factors like each spouse’s earning capacity, age, health, and the standard of living established during the marriage. But as a general planning benchmark, the “half the length of the marriage” rule of thumb holds up reasonably well for shorter marriages, and it gives both spouses a fairly predictable timeline to plan around.
What Actually Changes at 10 Years
Marriages that last ten years or longer are typically classified as marriages “of long duration.” This classification doesn’t automatically mean one spouse will pay alimony forever. That’s actually one of the most common misconceptions about the ten-year mark, and it’s worth clearing up directly: there is no rule guaranteeing permanent, lifelong spousal support just because a marriage crossed the ten-year line.
What does change is something more procedural, but arguably more important: the court retains jurisdiction over spousal support indefinitely, rather than setting a fixed end date at the time of the divorce. In practice, this means a judge doesn’t have to pick a termination date for support when the marriage is long-term. Instead, the door stays open. Either spouse can return to court later and ask for the support order to be modified, extended, or ended based on how circumstances have actually changed.
This is a meaningfully different posture than what happens in a shorter marriage. When a court sets a fixed term, for example, three years of support after a six-year marriage, that’s typically it. Once the term expires, the supported spouse generally cannot come back later and ask for more, even if their financial situation has gotten worse. With a long-term marriage, that conversation can stay open far longer, sometimes indefinitely, giving both spouses more flexibility to revisit the arrangement as life happens.
Why Timing Can Matter More Than People Expect
Because of this distinction, the timing of a divorce relative to that ten-year mark is sometimes a meaningful strategic consideration, particularly for the spouse who is likely to receive support. Consider two nearly identical scenarios:
- A couple divorces after 9 years and 9 months of marriage. The court sets support at roughly half that length, around 4.5 to 5 years, with a defined end date. Once that term runs out, returning to court to extend it is difficult, and in many cases, not possible at all.
- A nearly identical couple divorces after 10 years and 3 months of marriage. Now the marriage is classified as long-duration, and rather than locking in a hard end date, the court can leave the door open. If the supported spouse is still unable to support themselves adequately when the original term might have ended, they can go back to court and explain why support should continue.
That difference, just a few months on either side of the ten-year line, can have a real and lasting financial impact. It’s one of the reasons divorce timing deserves a real conversation with an attorney rather than being driven purely by emotion or convenience. This is especially true when one spouse earns substantially more than the other, since the financial stakes of a fixed three-year support term versus an open-ended arrangement can be significant.
To be clear, this cuts both ways. The paying spouse isn’t locked into something worse just because the case stays open longer; they can also return to court to reduce or terminate support if their own circumstances change, or if the receiving spouse remarries or becomes self-supporting. The ten-year mark doesn’t favor one side outright. It simply means the conversation around spousal support has more room to evolve in either direction, for longer.
The Social Security Piece Most People Don’t Think About
There’s a second, completely separate ten-year rule that has nothing to do with a divorce judge and everything to do with the Social Security Administration, and it surprises a lot of people during settlement negotiations. If a marriage lasted at least ten years, a spouse may be eligible to claim Social Security retirement benefits based on their ex-spouse’s earnings record, even decades after the divorce, provided they’re at least 62, currently unmarried, and the marriage met the ten-year threshold.
This matters most when there’s a significant income gap between spouses. If one spouse was the primary earner throughout the marriage and the other stepped back from the workforce, perhaps to raise children or support the household, that lower-earning spouse can potentially claim up to 50% of the higher-earning ex-spouse’s benefit at full retirement age. Critically, this doesn’t reduce what the higher-earning spouse receives, and it has no bearing on whether that spouse has since remarried.
This benefit simply isn’t available if the marriage falls short of ten years, even by a matter of weeks. For couples approaching that anniversary while a divorce is already being discussed, this is worth factoring into the overall financial picture, especially for spouses who may be relying on this benefit as part of their long-term retirement planning.
Don’t Let the Marriage Length Become the Whole Strategy
It’s worth saying plainly: marriage length is an important factor in a divorce, but it’s not the only one, and it shouldn’t be treated as a substitute for a complete financial picture. Courts weigh many considerations when determining spousal support, including each spouse’s earning capacity, age, health, contributions to the household, and the standard of living established during the marriage. A short marriage with a large income disparity can still result in a longer or more generous support order than a borderline ten-year marriage with two similarly situated spouses.
That said, for anyone close to the ten-year mark with a divorce realistically on the table, it’s a detail worth discussing with an attorney before, not after, filing. Whether waiting a few months works in someone’s favor depends entirely on their specific situation: who earns more, what the retirement picture looks like, age, and long-term financial needs.
Why Financial Fluency Matters in These Conversations
Spousal support decisions, especially ones tied to long-term marriages, often involve more than just applying a rule of thumb. They require looking at income trends, retirement account growth, tax consequences of different support structures, and how Social Security timing fits into the bigger picture. This is exactly where having both legal and financial expertise in the room makes a difference. Matthew Skarin is both a family law attorney and a Certified Public Accountant, which allows him to approach these conversations from both angles at once, helping clients understand not just what the law allows, but what it actually means for their long-term financial security.
Anyone nearing a major anniversary while considering divorce, or already navigating a long-term marriage dissolution, may benefit from a conversation about how timing, support structure, and retirement benefits intersect in their specific case. Skarin Law Group offers consultations for exactly this kind of planning, helping clients get a clear picture of where they actually stand before decisions are made.
