By Brian G. Paul

When a New Jersey court determines alimony, it cannot simply describe your lifestyle in broad terms like “comfortable” or “upper-middle-class.” New Jersey law requires something more specific: a number. A judge must numerically define your marital standard of living in dollars and cents before issuing a fair and sustainable alimony award.

This requirement is not a mere technicality. It is the fundamental safeguard against arbitrary alimony decisions and often becomes the central issue in a successful appeal. Without a quantified marital lifestyle, any resulting support obligation rests on a foundation of guesswork, making it vulnerable to challenge.

The Crews Mandate: Marital Lifestyle as the “Touchstone” for Alimony

The New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision in Crews v. Crews, 164 N.J. 11 (2000), established that the standard of living enjoyed during the marriage is the “touchstone” for any alimony analysis. To give this principle practical effect, the Court outlined a critical, three-part evaluation:

  1. Determine the marital lifestyle for the intact family and the amount of support the dependent spouse individually needs to maintain a reasonably comparable lifestyle.
  2. Assess the dependent spouse’s ability to contribute to their own needs.
  3. Analyze the supporting spouse’s ability to pay that support while maintaining a lifestyle for themselves that is also reasonably comparable.

The entire analysis begins with the first step. If a trial court fails to calculate the cost of the marital lifestyle for the entire intact family, it cannot properly measure the dependent spouse’s individual needs. This procedural failure creates a substantive error, as any alimony award issued without this foundational number is inherently flawed.

Where Trial Courts Can Make a Reversible Error

Calculating a marital lifestyle requires a detailed review of spending habits, savings patterns, and financial records from the marriage. Some trial courts, unfortunately, sidestep this intensive work. Instead, they may improperly rely on a spouse’s reduced budget during the divorce litigation—a period when assets are frozen and temporary support orders often force a more frugal existence.

This exact error was the basis for one of our successful precedent setting family law appeals, S.W. v. G.M., 462 N.J. Super. 522 (App. Div. 2020).

In that matter, the trial court initially recognized that the intact family had a lifestyle costing over $1.5 million per year, which consumed the entirety of the husband’s substantial after-tax income. However, upon remand for a new decision, the court abandoned that figure. It instead based its final alimony award on the wife’s significantly scaled-down “current expenses” while living under temporary pendente lite support.

The Appellate Division reversed that decision, agreeing with our position. The appellate court reminded the trial judge that a dependent spouse’s forced frugality during litigation does not redefine the established marital lifestyle. The award had to be based on the standard of living enjoyed during the marriage, not the one imposed by the divorce process itself.

Why a Number Matters for Your Future

A clearly quantified marital lifestyle does more than ensure a fair outcome at trial. It also serves two critical long-term functions:

  • It Creates a Benchmark for Any Future Modification: Life brings financial changes. A quantified marital lifestyle is the crucial benchmark for any motion to modify alimony, regardless of which party files it. Whether the supporting spouse’s income increases or permanently decreases, or the dependent spouse’s income substantially rises, the court must measure that change against the same lifestyle benchmark to determine if an increase or reduction is fair. Without that quantified starting point, any modification argument—upward or downward—is untethered from the facts of the marriage.
  • It Ensures Judicial Transparency: Attaching a dollar figure to the lifestyle forces a clear and logical connection between the evidence and the final alimony award. It allows the parties—and the appellate courts—to see precisely how the judge arrived at the support figure and whether it truly aligns with the standard of living established during the marriage.

What This Means for You

  • Evidence Is Everything: Your attorney must do the work to present comprehensive evidence of lifestyle spending. This includes analyzing tax returns, credit card statements, bank records, and patterns of savings and investment contributions to build a complete financial picture.
  • Temporary Budgets Are Not Permanent: Do not assume that the reduced budget you are forced to live on during the divorce will dictate your final alimony award. The court is legally required to look back at the standard of living established before the separation.
  • An Appeal May Be Necessary: If your final judgment of divorce does not contain a specific, numerical finding on the cost of your marital lifestyle, the alimony award may be legally deficient. This could provide a strong basis for an appeal.

A Foundation for Fairness

New Jersey law is unequivocal: a proper alimony award must be anchored to a quantified marital lifestyle. A judge who fails to make this calculation commits a reversible error. If you are a party to a divorce or an attorney whose client received an alimony award without this critical finding, an appeal may be the only way to correct the injustice.

Our firm concentrates on New Jersey family law appeals. If you believe a trial court failed to properly analyze the marital lifestyle in your case, contact us to schedule a consultation. We welcome inquiries from both clients and trial attorneys seeking specialized appellate counsel.