Facts: Husband and Wife married in 1999. During the marriage, Wife worked in corrections, left employment to care for Husband’s grandmother while Husband served abroad, and later completed several training or certificate programs, including unexploded ordnance technician, dental assistant, aesthetician, and cosmetic laser hair removal training.

Wife never used some credentials. She stopped aesthetician work after failing to secure enough clients to justify the commute. She could not use her cosmetic laser hair removal training in Tennessee because only nurses may perform those procedures.

Wife also developed several health conditions, including interstitial cystitis, prediabetes, back pain requiring periodic nerve ablation, and uterine cancer surgeries.

After Husband filed for divorce, he took control of the parties’ bank accounts, canceled Wife’s car insurance, removed Wife from his health insurance, and stopped paying two credit cards in Wife’s name. Wife worked at a factory for about $14 per hour, received $500 per month in temporary alimony, could not afford medical care, and her credit cards went into default.

Wife later lived with relatives in Ohio and Florida. She earned $17.50 per hour at Amazon, then $12 per hour as a delivery driver, and later $17 per hour for 40 hours per week at the Tomoka Correctional Institution.

At trial, Wife’s affidavit of income and expenses was central to the alimony dispute. Wife executed the affidavit before obtaining the Tomoka job, so it listed monthly income of $1,400. The affidavit had separate columns for “Current Expenses” and “Anticipated Expenses.”

The “Current Expenses” column reflected Wife’s cost of living with her sister in Florida, totaling $2,766.20 per month. The “Anticipated Expenses” column reflected the cost of living “in a 1 bedroom apartment in the Upper Cumberland area of Tennessee” with “a lifestyle similar to the lifestyle [Wife] lived when married,” totaling $5,552 per month.

The trial court first awarded Wife alimony in futuro of $2,000 per month based on the anticipated expenses in her affidavit. The trial court found that amount necessary for Wife to achieve a standard of living comparable to the marital standard or Husband’s postdivorce standard of living.

On Husband’s motion to alter or amend, the trial court continued to rely on Wife’s anticipated expenses but made two adjustments. First, Wife’s income had increased after she started working at Tomoka. Second, Wife’s anticipated expenses included $1,000 per month for credit cards the parties would be paying off. The trial court reduced Wife’s alimony to $1,600 per month.

Husband appealed.

On Appeal: The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s reliance on Wife’s anticipated expenses to calculate her need for alimony in futuro.

Tennessee courts have wide discretion in determining the need for spousal support and the nature, amount, and duration of an award. The spouse seeking alimony bears the burden of proving need, and need is generally determined by considering reasonable expenses.

But need is not measured in a vacuum. Tennessee law provides that need should be determined in relation to the marital standard of living or the post-divorce standard of living expected to be available to the other spouse.

Citing Shadoin v. Shadoin, 1986 WL 8975, at *3 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1986), the Court held the trial court did not err by using anticipated expenses rather than limiting Wife’s need to current expenses incurred while living with her sister:

The party seeking alimony bears the burden of proving their need. “Need” is generally determined by consideration of the party’s reasonable expenses. A spouse’s “need” for alimony should be determined in relation to the marital standard of living or the post-divorce standard of living expected to be available to the other spouse. But evidence of a party’s need is not limited to evidence of the party’s actual expenses at the time of the divorce. It may include evidence of anticipated income and expenses.

This appeal involves other issues, but this is the only issue I found “blogworthy.” On this issue, the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court.

K.O.’s Comment: This case is useful because it rejects a cramped view of alimony “need.” Need is not necessarily limited to the monthly deficit shown by the disadvantaged spouse’s current living arrangement, especially when that arrangement is temporary, subsidized, or below the marital standard of living.

That is often how divorce works in the real world. A spouse may move in with a sibling, parent, friend, or adult child because that is the only affordable option while the case is pending. That temporary survival budget may have little relationship to the marital standard of living or the other spouse’s expected post-divorce standard of living.

Source: McCarroll v. McCarroll (Tennessee Court of Appeals, Middle Section, July 2, 2026).

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