Partneralimentatie: Dutch Spousal Maintenance Duration 2026

Spousal maintenance (partneralimentatie) is money one former spouse pays the other after a Dutch divorce. The question that decides most of what it is worth is not how much, but for how long, and the duration rules are more layered than the familiar five year headline suggests.

Those rules sit in artikel 1:157 BW, an article with seven leden. Lid 1 sets a default, leden 2 to 4 add three exceptions, lid 5 decides what happens when more than one of them applies, lid 6 says when the clock starts, and lid 7 opens a hardship route with a deadline of its own.

The power to award maintenance at all is in the article immediately before it. Artikel 1:156 BW creates the obligation; artikel 1:157 BW only measures it. This page is written against the Burgerlijk Wetboek Boek 1 as consolidated on 5 July 2025.

Information last verified on 21 July 2026. This page provides general legal information about Netherlands law and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

Who can be awarded partneralimentatie

Artikel 1:156 lid 1 BW lets the court, in the divorce order (echtscheidingsbeschikking) or in a later decision, award maintenance to the spouse who does not have sufficient income to live on and cannot reasonably acquire it. The award is made on that spouse's own request and at the expense of the other spouse.

Two limbs sit inside that test and both matter. Insufficient actual income is not enough on its own: the statute also asks whether the person could reasonably earn it. Earning capacity, not just current earnings, is part of the question.

Artikel 1:156 lid 3 BW lets the court, on a spouse's request, attach conditions and a term to the award. That court-set term has a hard ceiling: it cannot have the effect that the maintenance ends later than the applicable statutory period in artikel 1:157 BW. A judge can shorten, but cannot extend beyond the scheme.

The default period: half the marriage, capped at five years

Artikel 1:157 lid 1 BW provides that where the judge (rechter) has set no term, the maintenance obligation ends by operation of law after a period equal to half the duration of the marriage, with a maximum of five years. The opening condition is easy to skip and it is doing real work: this is the fallback, not the rule that overrides a term the court did set.

Applied to concrete marriages, the default gives eighteen months on a marriage of three years, three years on a marriage of six, and five years on a marriage of ten. From ten years upward the cap holds the figure at five, so a marriage of twelve years and a marriage of twenty produce the same default period.

That last point is where the exceptions start to matter. A long marriage does not lengthen the default at all, and the only routes past five years are leden 2, 3 and 4.

The three exceptions, and the rule that decides between them

Leden 2 and 3 are frequently quoted with one condition each, and that is where readers go wrong. Lid 3 needs all three of its conditions at once, so a payee born in 1969 whose marriage lasted three years is under lid 1 and not under lid 3, and a ten year period is not in play at all.

The third condition in lid 3 is also what keeps the two exceptions apart. A payee who is at most ten years below AOW age falls under lid 2, whose period runs to AOW age; a payee more than ten years below it falls under lid 3, whose period is ten years. Read together the two leden are one scheme rather than two competing ones.

Lid 4 has its own precision. The statute speaks of the children born of the marriage of these spouses, which excludes a stepchild and a child of an earlier relationship, and it is phrased collectively, so in practice the youngest such child sets the date.

Note also what leden 2 and 4 actually do. Both say the obligation ends no earlier than a given moment (niet eerder dan), which makes them floors under the end date rather than fixed endpoints.

Lid 5: where more than one applies, the longest term wins

This is the provision that makes the scheme coherent, and it is the one most often left out of summaries. Artikel 1:157 lid 5 BW reads: bij samenloop van de omstandigheden, bedoeld in het eerste tot en met vierde lid, geldt de langste termijn.

In English: where the circumstances in leden 1 to 4 coincide, the longest term applies. The exceptions are neither alternatives nor cumulative. Nothing is added to anything, and a reader who satisfies both lid 2 and lid 4 does not get one period after the other.

Three worked cases show how much that changes the answer. Each assumes a petition filed in 2026 and no term fixed by the court.

One, where an exception extends the default. A marriage of twenty two years, a payee born in March 1969 whose AOW age on the SVB's current projection is 67 years and 6 months (around September 2036), and two children of the marriage aged fourteen and nine. On a petition filed early in 2026 the payee is more than ten years below AOW age, so lid 2 is out and lid 3 governs; lid 1 gives five years and lid 4 a floor about three years out, when the younger child turns twelve, so the longest is lid 3's ten years. The margin is narrow: because that AOW age is only projected, a petition filed late in 2026 or a lower projection would move the case into lid 2, whose floor of around September 2036 is close to the ten years lid 3 gives.

Two, where the default beats the exception. A marriage of twenty years and a payee born in March 1960, whose AOW age is 67. That payee is one year below AOW age, so lid 2 applies and gives a floor of roughly one year. Lid 1 still gives five years, and under lid 5 the longest governs, so the period is five years and not one.

Three, where no exception applies at all. A marriage of three years and a payee born in 1969, with no children of the marriage. The fifteen year condition fails, so leden 2 and 3 are both out, lid 4 has nothing to bite on, and the period is the lid 1 default of eighteen months.

The AOW age that leden 2 and 3 both turn on

Both exceptions are measured against the age in artikel 7a van de Algemene Ouderdomswet, and that age is not a constant. Artikel 7a lid 1 AOW lists it year by year up to 2025, where it stands at 67, and then provides that for 2026 and later calendar years it is fixed annually under the formula in lid 2 and announced in the Staatscourant.

The Sociale Verzekeringsbank publishes the resulting ages by date of birth, and its overview (last checked 1 May 2026) is definitive only for people born before 1 October 1964. It gives 67 for those born between 1 March 1957 and 31 December 1960, and 67 years and 3 months for those born between 1 January 1961 and 30 September 1964.

For later birth dates the SVB figures are expected rather than fixed: 67 years and 3 months up to 30 September 1966, and 67 years and 6 months for those born between 1 October 1966 and 30 June 1970. Much of the lid 3 cohort therefore has an AOW age that is projected rather than settled, which is worth knowing before treating the ten year condition as certain.

When the clock starts

Artikel 1:157 lid 6 BW is short and it changes the arithmetic. The period for providing maintenance begins on the date the divorce order is entered in the registers van de burgerlijke stand.

Not the separation, not the filing of the petition, and not the date the beschikking was given. A Dutch divorce takes effect only when the court order is entered in the registers van de burgerlijke stand under artikel 1:163 lid 1 BW, and under lid 3 the order loses its force if registration is not requested within six months of the day it became final.

Where the spouses agree maintenance themselves under artikel 1:158 BW and set no term, artikel 157 leden 1 to 5 and lid 7 apply by analogy. Lid 6 is the one that is left out, so an agreement of that kind inherits the durations but not the statutory start date, and the agreement itself has to supply it. See the divorce procedure for how and when the registration is done.

The three month window to ask for more time

Artikel 1:157 lid 7 BW is the safety valve, and it is on a timer. Where continuing the ending of the maintenance on expiry of a lid 1 to lid 4 period cannot, given all the circumstances and by standards of reasonableness and fairness, be required of the person receiving it, the rechter may on that person's request still fix a term.

The deadline is in the article's second sentence: the request is filed before three months have passed since the maintenance ended. That is a short window and it opens only once the payments have stopped, which is exactly when a person is least likely to be thinking about court dates.

The same lid adds a detail worth reading in any extension decision. The court states in its ruling whether a further extension after the new term expires is possible or not, so an extension can be granted as the last one.

When it ends early

Artikel 1:160 BW ends the obligation of a former spouse to provide maintenance when the recipient remarries, enters a geregistreerd partnerschap, or has begun living with another person as though they were married or as though they had registered their partnership.

The article works without a court order and without a request. It sets no minimum duration for the cohabitation and does not define it any further, so whether a particular living arrangement counts as living together as though married is decided on the facts.

Artikel 1:159 BW covers the opposite situation, where the parties want to freeze what they agreed. A clause excluding later variation on changed circumstances, a niet-wijzigingsbeding, has to be in writing, lapses where the agreement was made more than three months before the petition was filed, and can still be set aside by the court on a change of circumstances so drastic that holding the party to the clause would offend reasonableness and fairness.

How the amount is worked out

The Burgerlijk Wetboek names the two yardsticks in artikel 1:397 lid 1 BW, behoefte and draagkracht, but sets no amounts: every figure comes from the Rapport alimentatienormen, guidance the Expertgroep Alimentatie of the Rechtspraak publishes each January, which is not law and which a court may depart from in an individual case.

For the former partner's need the courts use a rule of thumb known as the hofnorm, which rests on the observation that two separate households cost more than half of one. It starts from the net disposable household income during the marriage, deducts the parents' own share in the costs of the children they were liable for, and treats 60 per cent of what remains as the behoefte.

A worked example. Take a net disposable household income of EUR 5,000 a month and an own share in the children's costs of EUR 1,145 read off the 2026 behoeftetabel. That leaves EUR 3,855, and 60 per cent of it gives a behoefte of about EUR 2,313 a month.

That is the starting need, not the payment. Because artikel 1:156 lid 1 BW asks whether the payee has sufficient income and could reasonably acquire it, the payee's own income and earning capacity come off that figure before anything is asked of the other spouse.

The payer's side is the draagkracht limb. For partneralimentatie the draagkrachtpercentage in the Rapport alimentatienormen is 60 per cent of the draagkrachtruimte, leaving 40 per cent as vrije ruimte, and that percentage is specific to spousal maintenance.

Two different 60 per cent figures are therefore in play on the same case and they must not be confused. One is 60 per cent of the available household income and produces the need; the other is 60 per cent of the payer's draagkrachtruimte and produces the capacity. Different bases, different stages, different numbers.

Where a payer cannot meet every obligation, artikel 1:400 lid 1 BW ranks children and stepchildren under 21 ahead of a former spouse, so kinderalimentatie is calculated first and partneralimentatie only out of what remains. The child figures and the full tables are on the kinderalimentatie page.

These figures are an indication based on the published Rapport alimentatienormen tables, not a calculation of what any particular person owes: the behoefte and draagkracht yardsticks of artikel 1:397 lid 1 BW are applied by the rechter, who fixes the amount in an individual case.

Indexation, variation and where it is decided

Maintenance amounts fixed by a court or by agreement change automatically each 1 January under artikel 1:402a BW, and for 2026 the Ministry of Justice and Security set that increase at 4.6 per cent in a beschikking published in the Staatscourant. That automatic change is not universal: artikel 1:402a lid 5 BW lets a court order or an agreement exclude it wholly or for a fixed period, and an exclusion clause is a common term in an echtscheidingsconvenant, so the convenant is the first thing to check. The mechanics, the arithmetic behind the percentage and the way an amount can be varied later are on the alimentatie page.

Dutch family and maintenance cases are heard by the rechtbank, not by the kantonrechter, whatever the amount at stake, because artikel 93 Rv does not assign family or maintenance matters to the kantonrechter at any value. That is the district court, and family matters go to its familiekamer.

A divorce petition must be signed by an advocaat under artikel 278 lid 3 Rv, which exempts only cases filed with the kantonrechter or exempted by a special statute, and a divorce is neither. An advocaat is the Dutch lawyer with rights of audience before the courts; a notaris, a gerechtsdeurwaarder and a jurist are separate professions and cannot sign the petition.

An individual filing a request of undetermined value at the rechtbank pays EUR 341 in griffierecht for 2026, or EUR 93 on the rate for people of limited means, and both amounts are re-set each 1 January. The family law section links the rest of the cluster.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does partneralimentatie last in the Netherlands?

The default in artikel 1:157 lid 1 BW is a period equal to half the duration of the marriage, with a maximum of five years, and it applies where the rechter has not fixed a term. Three exceptions can run longer: a marriage of more than fifteen years where the payee is within ten years of AOW age (lid 2), the same long marriage where the payee was born on or before 1 January 1970 and is more than ten years below AOW age (lid 3, ten years), and children born of the marriage who have not yet reached twelve (lid 4). Under lid 5 the longest of the applicable periods governs.

Is partneralimentatie always five years?

No. Five years is a ceiling on the default rule in lid 1, not a fixed period, so a marriage of six years produces three years rather than five. It is also not a maximum for the scheme as a whole, because leden 2, 3 and 4 can push the end date beyond it and lid 5 makes the longest applicable period govern where more than one rule is in play.

Does a payee born before 1970 always get ten years of maintenance?

No, and this is a common misreading of artikel 1:157 lid 3 BW. The birth date is one of three cumulative conditions: the marriage must also have lasted longer than fifteen years at the date the divorce petition was filed, and the payee must be more than ten years below the AOW age of artikel 7a AOW. A payee born in 1969 whose marriage lasted three years falls under lid 1 instead, which gives eighteen months.

When does the partneralimentatie period start running?

Artikel 1:157 lid 6 BW starts the clock on the date the divorce order is entered in the registers van de burgerlijke stand. Separation, the filing of the petition and the date of the beschikking itself do not start it. Where the parties agree maintenance under artikel 1:158 BW without setting a term, lid 6 is the one lid that is not applied by analogy, so the start date has to come from the agreement.

Can partneralimentatie be extended after it has ended?

Artikel 1:157 lid 7 BW allows the rechter, on the request of the person receiving the maintenance, to fix a further term where ending it on expiry of a lid 1 to lid 4 period cannot be required of that person by standards of reasonableness and fairness. The request has to be filed before three months have passed since the maintenance ended. The court also states in its decision whether any further extension is possible after the new term expires.

Does partneralimentatie stop if my ex partner moves in with someone else?

Artikel 1:160 BW ends the obligation when the former spouse receiving it remarries, enters a geregistreerd partnerschap, or begins living with another person as though married or as though they had registered a partnership. The article sets no minimum duration and does not define the cohabitation further, so whether a living arrangement meets that description is decided on the facts of the case.

How is the amount of partneralimentatie calculated?

Two steps. The behoefte of the former partner is usually estimated with the hofnorm, which takes the net disposable household income, deducts the parents' own share in the costs of the children, and treats 60 per cent of the remainder as the need. The payer's draagkracht is then assessed, with 60 per cent of the draagkrachtruimte available for partneralimentatie, after any kinderalimentatie has been settled first under artikel 1:400 lid 1 BW.

Can we agree partneralimentatie ourselves instead of asking a court?

Yes. Artikel 1:158 BW lets spouses agree before or after the divorce order whether maintenance is payable and how much. If the agreement contains no term, artikel 157 leden 1 to 5 and lid 7 apply by analogy, so the statutory duration scheme follows the agreement. A clause excluding later variation, a niet-wijzigingsbeding under artikel 1:159 BW, has to be in writing and can still be set aside on a sufficiently drastic change of circumstances.