{"id":20648,"date":"2017-06-14T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-14T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hrblock.com\/tax-center\/"},"modified":"2023-08-29T08:35:07","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T13:35:07","slug":"alimony-and-child-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hrblock.com\/tax-center\/income\/other-income\/alimony-and-child-support\/","title":{"rendered":"Taxes on Alimony and Child Support"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a tax difference between alimony and child support payments. A person making qualified alimony payments can deduct them. Alimony payments received by the former spouse are taxable and you must include them in your income. The payor can&#8217;t deduct child support, and payments are tax-free to the recipient.<\/p>\n<p>To qualify for the alimony deduction:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You must make the payment in cash, not property.<\/li>\n<li>A spouse &#8212; or someone for the spouse &#8212; must receive the payment under a divorce or separation instrument.<\/li>\n<li>The agreement can&#8217;t specifically exclude the payment from being either of these:\n<ul>\n<li>Included in the recipient&#8217;s income<\/li>\n<li>Deducted by the payor spouse<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The spouses can&#8217;t be members of the same household when the payment is made if divorced or legally separated.<\/li>\n<li>Liability for payments must end upon the death of either spouse.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The amount you pay might depend on the life event of a child. If so, you can&#8217;t claim the payment &#8212; or the portion affected by the event &#8212; as alimony.<\/p>\n<p>The law allows recapture of certain alimony deductions. This keeps large payments from being treated as deductible alimony in the first few years after a divorce. Instead, they can be treated as a nondeductible property settlement.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re subject to the recapture rule in the third year if either of these applies:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The alimony you pay in the second and third years decreases significantly from what you pay in the first year.<\/li>\n<li>The alimony you pay in the third year decreases by more than $15,000 from the second year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Your former spouse might die or remarry. If either happens, you don&#8217;t have to worry about recapture if payments stop in the second or third year.<\/p>\n<p>To learn more, see Publication 504: Divorced or Separated Individuals at www.irs.gov.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a tax difference between alimony and child support payments. A person making qualified alimony payments can deduct them. Alimony payments received by the former spouse are taxable and you must include them in your income. The payor can&#8217;t deduct child support, and payments are tax-free to the recipient. To qualify for the alimony deduction: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-income","category-other-income"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<title>Taxes on Alimony and Child Support | H&amp;R Block<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Learn about the tax implications of alimony payments and child support from the tax experts at H&amp;R Block.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hrblock.com\/tax-center\/income\/other-income\/alimony-and-child-support\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" 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