Minnesota Spousal Maintenance After the 2024 Rewrite: The Tie No Longer Goes to the Recipient

For twenty-two years, Minn. Stat. § 518.552, subd. 3 said this:

Where there is some uncertainty as to the necessity of a permanent award, the court shall order a permanent award leaving its order open for later modification.

That sentence was a tiebreaker, and it broke every tie the same way. If the district court could not tell whether the spouse seeking maintenance would become self-supporting, the statute did not leave the question to discretion — it directed a permanent award. The companion sentence removed the other thumb from the scale: “Nothing in this section shall be construed to favor a temporary award of maintenance over a permanent award, where the factors under subdivision 2 justify a permanent award.”

Both sentences were struck by Laws 2024, ch. 101, art. 2, § 3. What replaced them is not a restatement of discretion. It is three rebuttable presumptions, and the fact that decides which one applies is a number on a calendar.

This is the piece practitioners keep missing, because the amendment did more than change subdivision 3. It moved the maintenance modification standard out of chapter 518A entirely, added a retirement subdivision that did not previously exist, put a one-year waiting period on cohabitation motions, and — this is the part with no answer yet — contained no applicability clause at all.

What are the duration presumptions, and what triggers them?

Minn. Stat. § 518.552, subd. 3(c) makes duration a function of one variable:

(1) when the length of the marriage is less than five years, it is rebuttably presumed that no maintenance should be awarded;

(2) when the length of the marriage is at least five years and less than 20 years, it is rebuttably presumed that transitional maintenance should be awarded with a duration of no longer than one-half the length of the marriage if the factors set forth in subdivision 1 support an award of maintenance; and

(3) when the length of the marriage is 20 years or more, it is rebuttably presumed that indefinite maintenance should be awarded if the factors set forth in subdivision 1 support an award of maintenance.

Two things in that text do more work than they look like they do.

The clauses are not parallel. Clause (1) presumes an outcome — no award — without conditioning it on the subdivision 1 grounds. Clauses (2) and (3) presume an outcome “if the factors set forth in subdivision 1 support an award of maintenance.” So in a marriage of five years or more, the statute assumes the eligibility question is answered first and speaks only to duration. In a marriage under five years, the presumption operates against the award itself.

“Length of the marriage” is defined, and it does not mean what people assume. Subdivision 3(b):

For purposes of this subdivision, “length of the marriage” means the period from the date of the marriage until the date of the commencement of the action.

Not the date of separation. Not the date of the decree. The date the action was commenced. In a marriage that has been over in every practical sense for three years, those three years count. And in a marriage sitting just under a statutory line, the date of commencement is worth more than most of the argument that will follow it — a petition served on July 20 of the nineteenth year and a petition served on February 20 of the twenty-first year are two different cases under clause (2) versus clause (3).

What are transitional, indefinite, and temporary maintenance?

Subdivision 3(a) defines a three-part vocabulary and retroactively re-labels every award that came before it.

The word “temporary” therefore changed jobs. Before August 1, 2024 it meant a maintenance award of limited duration in a final decree. It now means pendente lite maintenance under § 518.131, subd. 1(b) — the temporary-relief statute — and the durational award in a decree is “transitional.” A decree drafted after the amendment that awards “temporary maintenance for sixty months” is using a term the statute now assigns to something that ends at judgment.

Note also that “indefinite” is not “permanent.” Nothing in subdivision 3 makes an indefinite award unmodifiable; subdivision 5b expressly contemplates modifying “the amount and duration” of maintenance, and subdivision 5a terminates the obligation on death or remarriage unless the decree says otherwise.

Who qualifies in the first place — and did that change?

Subdivision 1 was amended in 2024 but it retains the same structure. The court may grant maintenance for a spouse who:

(a) lacks sufficient property, including marital property apportioned to the spouse, to provide for reasonable needs of the spouse considering the standard of living established during the marriage, especially, but not limited to, a period of training or education;

(b) is unable to provide adequate self-support, after considering the standard of living established during the marriage and all relevant circumstances; or

(c) is the custodian of a child whose condition or circumstances make it appropriate that the custodian not be required to seek employment outside the home.

The grounds are disjunctive. One suffices.

Subdivision 2 then supplies the amount factors, and the 2024 amendment added language to two of them that changes how a case is proved. Clause (c) is no longer just “the standard of living established during the marriage” — it is “the standard of living established during the marriage and the extent to which the standard of living was funded by debt.” That is an invitation to attack the other side’s budget with a credit report. A lifestyle financed on revolving debt is, by the terms of the statute, a different fact than the same lifestyle financed by income.

Clause (h) is also new in substance: “the need and ability of each spouse to prepare for retirement and the anticipated time of retirement.” Retirement is now both an amount factor at the initial award and, under subdivision 7, a standalone modification ground.

Where is the maintenance modification standard now?

Not in Minn. Stat. § 518A.39. This is the trap.

For decades, § 518A.39 (and § 518.64 before it) governed modification of “maintenance or support.” The 2024 act went through § 518A.39 and stripped maintenance out of subdivision 2: paragraph (e) lost its entire opening sentence — the maintenance-modification-factors clause, relocated almost verbatim to what is now § 518.552, subd. 5b(c) — and the words “maintenance or” (or “or maintenance”) were also deleted from paragraphs (e)(2)(iv), (f), (h) and (l). Subdivision 3 was repealed outright. Laws 2024, ch. 101, art. 2, §§ 10, 11. Read § 518A.39 today and the word “maintenance” survives only in the contempt sentence of subdivision 1, the property-division cross-reference in subdivision 2(g), the medical-support-only modification carve-out in subdivision 8(a), and the form requirement in subdivision 6. The modification standard for spousal maintenance is gone from it.

It now lives in § 518.552, subd. 5b, which was added by the same act:

(b) The terms of a maintenance order may be modified upon a showing of one or more of the following circumstances that make the terms of the existing order unreasonable and unfair:

(1) substantially increased or decreased gross income of an obligor or obligee;

(2) substantially increased or decreased need of an obligor or obligee; or

(3) substantial changes in the federal or state tax laws that affect spousal maintenance.

Three grounds. The child-support version in § 518A.39, subd. 2(a) has eight, plus the rebuttable presumption in paragraph (b) triggered by a 20-percent/$75 variance from the guidelines. Maintenance has no such presumption. There is no percentage that presumptively establishes a substantial change in maintenance. A motion brought on the strength of an arithmetic comparison borrowed from the support statute is being argued under the wrong statute.

The most consequential sentence in subdivision 5b is paragraph (c):

Upon a motion to modify maintenance, including a motion to extend the duration of a maintenance award, the court shall apply, in addition to all other relevant factors, the factors for an award of maintenance under subdivisions 1 to 3 that exist at the time of the motion.

Subdivisions 1 to 3 includes subdivision 3. Which means the duration presumptions are not spent at the decree — they are applied again on any motion to extend. A twelve-year marriage that produced a six-year transitional award has already received the full presumptive duration under clause (2); the motion to extend it starts from a presumption that has already been satisfied, not from a blank slate.

And paragraph (e) removes the assumption that a fight over these facts gets a hearing: “The court need not hold an evidentiary hearing on a motion to modify maintenance.” The affidavit record is frequently the whole record.

Paragraph (d) fixes the retroactivity window — a modification “may be made retroactive” for the period a motion is pending, from the date the notice of motion was served on the responding party, or from service on the public authority or county attorney where those apply. Service of the motion, not the change in circumstances, is what stops the meter.

Can parties contract out of modification?

Yes, and Minnesota has allowed it since Karon v. Karon, 435 N.W.2d 501 (Minn. 1989) (No. C2-87-976, decided January 30, 1989). The Karons’ decree awarded maintenance for ten years and recited that the court “is divested from having any jurisdiction whatsoever to award temporary or permanent spousal maintenance to either of the parties.” When the recipient moved to modify five years later, the district court held it had jurisdiction anyway. The supreme court reversed, and its reasoning was that the divestiture came from the court, not the contract:

It is not the parties to the stipulation who have divested the court of ability to relitigate the issue of maintenance. The court had the authority to refuse to accept the terms of the stipulation in part or in toto.

Because the district court had reviewed and approved the stipulation, “the decree is final absent fraud.” Three justices dissented on the ground that a court cannot divest itself of statutorily conferred jurisdiction.

The legislature has since codified the practice and attached conditions to it. Subdivision 5:

The parties may expressly preclude or limit modification of maintenance through a stipulation, if the court makes specific findings that the stipulation is fair and equitable, is supported by consideration described in the findings, and that full disclosure of each party’s financial circumstances has occurred. The stipulation must be made a part of the judgment and decree or a post-decree stipulated order. The parties may restore the court’s authority or jurisdiction to award or modify maintenance through a binding stipulation.

Three findings, all of them the court’s to make, none of them satisfied by a recital the parties drafted. “Supported by consideration described in the findings” is the one that most often fails: the findings have to identify what the waiving spouse received in exchange, which means the stipulation has to have been negotiated as a trade and the proposed findings have to say what the trade was. A waiver dropped into a decree with a boilerplate paragraph reciting that the parties agree it is fair does not produce findings; it produces an argument that there were none.

The last sentence is the underused one. The parties can also restore jurisdiction by binding stipulation — a waiver is not necessarily a one-way door if both sides later want it open.

On the related question of what a decree can and cannot fix by agreement, see what you cannot agree to in a Minnesota settlement. Where the waiver is being built into a premarital agreement instead of a decree, the governing statute and its formalities are different — see a Minnesota prenup can satisfy § 519.11 and still not waive the spouse’s rights at death.

Does cohabitation end maintenance?

It can reduce, suspend, reserve, or terminate it — but the statute puts three limits in the way, and two of them are timing limits rather than merits limits.

Subdivision 6(a) directs the court to consider four factors:

(1) whether the obligee would marry the cohabitant but for the maintenance award;

(2) the economic benefit the obligee derives from the cohabitation;

(3) the length of the cohabitation and the likely future duration of the cohabitation; and

(4) the economic impact on the obligee if maintenance is modified and the cohabitation ends.

Factor (1) is the tell: the subdivision is aimed at cohabitation that functions as a substitute for remarriage, which under subdivision 5a would terminate maintenance outright. Factor (4) is the counterweight — the court has to price the risk that the cohabitation ends and the obligee is left with neither.

Then the limits:

A one-year waiting period. Subdivision 6(c): a cohabitation motion “may not be brought within one year of the date of entry of the decree of dissolution or legal separation that orders spousal maintenance,” unless the parties agreed in writing that it may be, or the court finds that not allowing it “would create an extreme hardship for one of the parties.” A cohabitation that begins the month after the decree is not actionable on that basis for eleven more months absent extreme hardship.

A relative exception. Subdivision 6(b): the court “must not modify a maintenance award based solely on cohabitation if a marriage between the obligee and the cohabitant would be prohibited under section 517.03, subdivision 1, clause (2) or (3).” Those clauses prohibit marriage between an ancestor and a descendant or between siblings, and between an uncle or aunt and a niece or nephew or between first cousins. In plain terms: an ex-spouse who moves in with a parent, an adult child, a sibling, or a cousin has not given the obligor a cohabitation motion. The economic benefit may be identical; the statute forecloses it as the sole basis.

A private agreement overrides it. The second sentence of subdivision 6(b): a cohabitation modification “must be precluded or limited to the extent the parties have entered into a private agreement under subdivision 5.”

Note the routing in subdivision 6(a): maintenance “may be modified pursuant to subdivision 5b” based on cohabitation. Cohabitation is not a freestanding ground. It runs through subdivision 5b, which means the movant still has to show a circumstance that makes the existing terms unreasonable and unfair.

What happens when the obligor retires?

Subdivision 7 is entirely new — added by Laws 2024, ch. 101, art. 2, § 7 — and it is the most obligor-favorable provision in the amended statute.

The court considers whether the retirement “is in good faith or is an unjustifiable self-limitation of income”; whether the party has reached full Social Security retirement age under section 216 of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. § 416) or “the customary age for retirement in the party’s occupation”; whether the party “has reasonably and prudently managed the party’s assets since the dissolution of the marriage”; and the financial resources available to both parties.

Then two presumptions, pointed in opposite directions:

(c) It is presumed that when a party has attained the age to receive the party’s full retirement benefits … the party will use both income and assets to meet the party’s needs.

(d) A party must not be presumed to have retired in bad faith or to have unjustifiably self-limited the party’s income in the event that the party’s retirement is occurring on or after the date the party attains the age to receive full retirement benefits … or the customary age for retirement in the party’s occupation.

Paragraph (d) protects the retiring obligor from the bad-faith characterization that used to carry these motions. Paragraph (c) applies to a party — not to the obligor — which means it applies with equal force to a retirement-age obligee, who is presumed to be drawing down assets rather than living on income alone.

Paragraph (b)(3) is the one to plan around years in advance: the court considers whether the party “has reasonably and prudently managed the party’s assets since the dissolution of the marriage.” That is a look back over the entire post-decree period, and it applies to both parties.

Paragraph (e) solves a practical problem: the motion can be brought before the retirement occurs, provided the moving party specifies the date, and “[t]he court may then make the modification effective as of the actual date of retirement.” An obligor does not have to quit first and litigate second.

What about reopening the decree itself?

Subdivision 4 is one sentence: “Section 518.145, subdivision 2, applies to awards of spousal maintenance.” That is the dissolution analogue to Rule 60.02 — mistake, inadvertence, surprise or excusable neglect; newly discovered evidence; fraud “whether denominated intrinsic or extrinsic”; a void judgment; or a judgment satisfied, released, discharged, or no longer equitable in prospective application.

The deadline matters. Under § 518.145, subd. 2, the motion “must be made within a reasonable time,” and for mistake, newly discovered evidence, or fraud, “not more than one year after the judgment and decree, order, or proceeding was entered or taken.” A one-year outside limit on the fraud ground is short for a fraud that involves hidden assets, which is exactly the fraud these motions are usually about.

Where is reservation of maintenance?

Not in § 518.552. Minn. Stat. § 518.55 has been emptied — its subdivisions were renumbered into § 518A.27 or repealed — and the authority to reserve now sits in the last sentence of § 518A.27, subd. 1:

In a judgment of dissolution or legal separation the court may determine, as one of the issues of the case, whether or not either spouse is entitled to an award of maintenance notwithstanding that no award is then made, or it may reserve jurisdiction of the issue of maintenance for determination at a later date.

That is in chapter 518A — the child support chapter — under a section titled “Maintenance or Support Money.” A decree drafted from § 518.552 alone will not contain a reservation, and under subdivision 3(c)(1)’s presumption against any award in a marriage under five years, a reservation is often the only thing standing between a short-marriage spouse and a permanent bar.

The applicability question the act did not answer

Laws 2024, ch. 101 is a three-article act. Article 1 (custody and parenting time) closes with an effective-date section: “This article is effective August 1, 2024, and applies to proceedings commenced on or after that date.” Article 3 (antenuptial and postnuptial agreements) closes with its own: “This section is effective August 1, 2024, and applies to agreements executed on or after that date.”

Article 2 — the spousal maintenance article — has no effective-date section at all. It runs from section 1 to the repealer in section 11 without one. Its effective date is therefore supplied by Minn. Stat. § 645.02: “Each act, except one making appropriations, enacted finally at any session of the legislature takes effect on August 1 next following its final enactment, unless a different date is specified in the act.” August 1, 2024.

What § 645.02 does not supply is an applicability rule. The legislature wrote one for article 1 and one for article 3 and did not write one for article 2. Meanwhile subdivision 3(a) reaches backward on its own terms — it deems pre-August 1, 2024 temporary awards transitional and pre-August 1, 2024 permanent awards indefinite — which is not the drafting of a provision meant to apply only to new cases.

The practical question is whether the subdivision 3(c) presumptions apply on a motion to modify a decree entered in 2015. Subdivision 5b(c) says the court shall apply the subdivision 1 to 3 factors “that exist at the time of the motion,” which reads as though it does. This article does not answer that question, and anyone litigating it should brief it rather than assume it.

What this means in practice

• Fix the commencement date first. “Length of the marriage” runs to commencement of the action, and it decides which of three presumptions applies. In a marriage near the five-year or twenty-year line, when the petition is served may matter more than anything in the affidavits.
• Stop citing § 518A.39 for maintenance. The 2024 act deleted “maintenance or” from it and repealed its subdivision 3. The standard is § 518.552, subd. 5b.
• There is no 20-percent presumption for maintenance. That belongs to child support under § 518A.39, subd. 2(b)(1). Maintenance modification requires a showing that makes the existing terms “unreasonable and unfair.”
• Build the record on paper. Subdivision 5b(e) means the court need not hold an evidentiary hearing. Affidavits and exhibits are frequently the entire record.
• Ask for a reservation in every short marriage. Under § 518A.27, subd. 1 — not § 518.552 — because subdivision 3(c)(1) presumes no award at all under five years.
• A modification waiver needs findings, not recitals. Subdivision 5 requires the court to find the stipulation fair and equitable, supported by consideration described in the findings, and preceded by full financial disclosure. Draft the proposed findings, not just the paragraph.
• Plan retirement years ahead. Subdivision 7(b)(3) asks whether a party “has reasonably and prudently managed the party’s assets since the dissolution of the marriage” — a question about the whole post-decree period, asked on the day of the motion.

Maintenance is one piece of a dissolution, and the others interact with it: what is divisible in the first place is a separate analysis, covered in marital versus nonmarital property in a Minnesota divorce, and the child-related terms run on their own statutes, outlined in parenting time and child support basics.

The observation

The old statute had a default and the default was generosity: uncertainty produced a permanent award, “leaving its order open for later modification.” The new statute has three defaults and all of them are set by a date range. A court that cannot tell whether a spouse in a four-year marriage will become self-supporting no longer resolves that doubt with an award — it resolves it with a presumption against one.

That is a real transfer of risk, and it lands on the party who has the least ability to absorb it. The response is not rhetoric about need. It is a record: what the standard of living cost and how much of it was borrowed, what the earning capacity actually is, what was forgone and when, and — in the marriage that is going to fall short of a statutory line — a reservation under § 518A.27, subd. 1, so that the presumption decides the award and not the case.

Madgett Law, LLC handles Minnesota dissolution and post-decree matters, including initial and modified spousal maintenance under Minn. Stat. § 518.552, motions to modify or extend duration under subdivision 5b, cohabitation and retirement motions under subdivisions 6 and 7, stipulated modification waivers that meet the findings requirements of subdivision 5, and reservations of maintenance under § 518A.27, subd. 1. The firm also reviews pre-2024 decrees to determine how the amended statute interacts with terms drafted under the prior version. Send us a message or call 612-470-6529.

Sources: Minn. Stat. § 518.552 (2025), “Maintenance” — the full section was retrieved from the Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes and reviewed. Provisions relied on: subd. 1(a)–(c) (the three disjunctive grounds, block-quoted verbatim); subd. 2, opening sentence and clauses (c), (d) and (h) (amount factors; “either transitional or indefinite”; the standard of living “and the extent to which the standard of living was funded by debt”; “the need and ability of each spouse to prepare for retirement and the anticipated time of retirement”); subd. 3(a) (transitional/indefinite/temporary definitions and the deeming of pre-August 1, 2024 awards); subd. 3(b) (definition of “length of the marriage” as running to the date of commencement of the action, quoted verbatim); subd. 3(c)(1)–(3) (the three duration presumptions, block-quoted verbatim); subd. 4 (“Section 518.145, subdivision 2, applies to awards of spousal maintenance.”); subd. 5 (private agreements; the three required court findings, block-quoted verbatim, and the final sentence permitting restoration of jurisdiction); subd. 5a (termination on death or remarriage unless otherwise agreed in writing or expressly provided in the decree); subd. 5b(b)(1)–(3) (the three modification grounds, block-quoted verbatim), subd. 5b(c) (application of the subdivisions 1 to 3 factors on a motion to modify, “including a motion to extend the duration of a maintenance award,” quoted verbatim), subd. 5b(d)(1)–(4) (retroactivity), and subd. 5b(e) (“The court need not hold an evidentiary hearing on a motion to modify maintenance.”); subd. 6(a)(1)–(4) (cohabitation factors, block-quoted verbatim), subd. 6(b) (the § 517.03, subd. 1, clause (2) or (3) exception and the private-agreement override), and subd. 6(c) (the one-year waiting period and its two exceptions); subd. 7(a)–(e) (retirement — the four considerations, the paragraph (c) presumption that a party at full retirement age “will use both income and assets to meet the party’s needs,” the paragraph (d) bar on presuming bad faith, and the paragraph (e) authority to bring the motion before retiring). Revisor’s history line for § 518.552 ends at “2024 c 101 art 2 s 1-8.” Laws 2024, ch. 101, article 2, was retrieved in full from the Revisor’s session-law text (https://www.revisor.mn.gov/laws/2024/0/101/) and used for: the verbatim deleted text of former § 518.552, subd. 3 (“Permanency of award”), including both struck sentences, at art. 2, § 3; the identification of subds. 5a, 5b, 7 and 8 as new subdivisions added by art. 2, §§ 4, 5, 7 and 8; the deletion of the words “maintenance or” from § 518A.39, subd. 2, paragraphs (f), (h) and (l) at art. 2, § 10; the repeal of Minnesota Statutes 2022, § 518A.39, subd. 3, at art. 2, § 11; and the absence of any effective-date or applicability section in article 2, contrasted with art. 1, § 10 (“This article is effective August 1, 2024, and applies to proceedings commenced on or after that date.”) and art. 3, § 1 (“This section is effective August 1, 2024, and applies to agreements executed on or after that date.”), both quoted verbatim from the same source. Minn. Stat. § 645.02 (2025), first paragraph, first sentence, quoted verbatim (August 1 default effective date absent a date specified in the act). Minn. Stat. § 518A.39 (2025) (subd. 2(a)(1)–(8), the eight child-support modification grounds; subd. 2(b)(1), the 20 percent / $75 rebuttable presumption, which has no maintenance counterpart; and the residual references to maintenance in subds. 1, 2(g) and 6). Minn. Stat. § 518.145, subd. 2 (2025) (grounds for reopening a decree; “within a reasonable time”; the one-year outside limit for clauses (1), (2) and (3)). Minn. Stat. § 518.131, subd. 1(b) (2025) (temporary maintenance of either spouse pending final disposition). Minn. Stat. § 518A.27, subd. 1 (2025), final sentence quoted verbatim (authority to reserve jurisdiction of the issue of maintenance). Minn. Stat. § 518.55 (2025) was retrieved and confirmed to consist entirely of renumbered and repealed subdivisions (subds. 1, 3 and 4 renumbered to § 518A.27; subds. 2 and 2a repealed by 1993 c 322 s 21). Minn. Stat. § 517.03, subd. 1(a), clauses (2) and (3) (2025) (prohibited marriages — ancestor and descendant, siblings; uncle or aunt and niece or nephew, first cousins). Case law: In re the Marriage of Karon v. Karon, 435 N.W.2d 501 (Minn. 1989), No. C2-87-976, decided January 30, 1989, retrieved from the Caselaw Access Project archive at https://static.case.law/nw2d/435/cases/0501-01.json and https://static.case.law/nw2d/435/html/0501-01.html; relied on for the holding that a district court may accept a stipulation divesting it of jurisdiction over maintenance and that the resulting decree “is final absent fraud,” with the two quoted sentences (“It is not the parties to the stipulation …” and “The court had the authority to refuse to accept the terms of the stipulation in part or in toto.”) taken verbatim from the majority opinion, and for the existence of two dissents on the divestiture question. Currency: §§ 518.552, 518A.39, 518.145, 518.131, 518A.27, 518.55, 517.03 and 645.02 were each retrieved from the Revisor’s current (2025) edition and none carried a 2026 pending-amendment banner. Open question identified rather than answered: whether the subd. 3(c) duration presumptions apply on a motion to modify a decree entered before August 1, 2024 — article 2 of Laws 2024, ch. 101 contains no applicability clause, § 518.552, subd. 3(a) expressly reaches pre-amendment awards, and § 518.552, subd. 5b(c) directs application of the subdivisions 1 to 3 factors “that exist at the time of the motion.” This article is general legal information about Minnesota law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Whether maintenance is available in any particular case, in what amount, and for how long depends on that case’s facts and on the law in force when the relevant order was entered. No outcome is promised or implied.