Legal Speak Made Easy

“Maintenance” or “Alimony”?

You’ll often come across the term “alimony” (from the Latin “alimonia”, meaning “nourishment” or “support”) in American movies and series. It also occasionally crops up in some older English law contexts such as P.G. Wodehouse’s wry comment that, “Judges, as a class, display, in the matter of arranging alimony, that reckless generosity which is found only in men who are giving away someone else's cash.” Our South African equivalent of “alimony” is “spousal maintenance” or “spousal support”.

“Maintenance” on the other hand is our law’s broad term for both spousal and child maintenance, “child support” being the American term for the latter.

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