How long might you end up paying or receiving spousal support?

How long might you end up paying or receiving spousal support? Spousal support in Oregon is based on equitable principles, which makes the duration of a spousal support award somewhat difficult to tie down. Generally, a rule of thumb that a lot of people like to use, which may, may or may not be accurate, depending on your facts, is half the duration of the marriage. The reason that it's difficult to predict as it really depends on where people are in life. If you have someone, say, who is 60 years old, several years away from collecting Social Security, it might be a shorter term award because Social Security is going to step in and take care of some of that. If you have someone in, say, their early 20s, you can't expect a long term award because people are just entering their earning years and that's obviously going to shorten that duration. Generally, the court looks to what's equitable, what's fair, what's available, what's practical in this situation. Determining the amount and duration of spousal support is very fact specific, and it deals with a lot of other factors that are far too much to get into here. If you think you're entitled spousal support or you're going to end up paying spousal support, it's very important that you speak to a qualified attorney who can deal with some of the nuances of this topic.