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Maintenance Buyout: Lump Sum or Monthly Payments?: the facts

2026 law · reviewed September 7, 2026

  1. A stream of monthly maintenance and a lump sum paid today are compared at a discount rate: the return the recipient could earn on the money, or the cost of the money to the payor. The present value of the stream is the lump sum that, invested at that rate, would pay out the same amount for the same months.
  2. Maintenance is not a sure thing. Unless the parties agree otherwise in writing, it ends on the recipient's remarriage or cohabitation on a resident, continuing conjugal basis, or on either party's death (750 ILCS 5/510(c)), and the amount can be modified on a substantial change in circumstances. A lump-sum property settlement in lieu of maintenance is non-modifiable and survives remarriage; that is the trade.
  3. Example: $2,000 a month for 72 months is $144,000 in all. At 5% it is worth $124,186 today, and $111,767 after a 10% allowance for the payments ending early. A $110,000 lump sum would replace $1,772 a month over the same term, and the two are equal at a rate of 9.3%.
  4. The crossover rate is the number to argue about. Below it the payments are worth more than the lump sum on offer; above it, less. Each side's own rate is different, which is why a buyout can suit both.
  5. For an instrument executed after 2018, neither form is deductible to the payor or income to the recipient (Pub. L. 115-97 § 11051), so tax does not tip the comparison; what the lump sum earns once invested is taxed in the ordinary way and is not modeled here.
  6. A buyout also settles the future: no petitions to modify, no proof of cohabitation, no life insurance to secure the payments. Those costs are real and unpriced, and they run in both directions.

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