The biggest factors determining alimony payments are the earning potentials of each spouse and the lifestyle that each spouse led prior to the divorce. The goal is to allow each individual spouse to maintain a lifestyle that is close to the one they had when they were married.
In some cases, this means that one spouse may have to give money to the other spouse. The most common situation where this happens is when one spouse was a stay-at-home spouse during the duration of the marriage. As a result, after the divorce, they are not going to have a lot of earning potential. They may have to go back to school, or they may not be able to enter the workforce at all. As a result, the spouse may receive alimony payments as ordered by the court.