When the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed in 2017, Congress eliminated the longstanding treatment of alimony and separate maintenance payments under the tax code as a deduction to the payor spouse and as income to the recipient spouse. For any agreement or order executed after Dec. 31, 2018, alimony, spousal support and alimony pendente lite (APL) are not treated the same way as before and payments made to support a spouse are no longer deductible to the payor spouse and are not includable as income to the recipient spouse.

While the stated rationale for the change in the law was to bring the treatment of alimony in line with case law that predated the Revenue Act of 1942, most commentators believe that the reason for the change was to increase tax revenue as normally the payor spouse is in a higher tax bracket than the recipient spouse and also to eliminate the problems with the enforcement of recipient spouses not reporting alimony as income.