Duration of alimony in MA divorce?

There are some recent and important changes regarding alimony in Massachusetts divorce stemming from the MA Alimony Reform Act of 2011.   For one thing, there are now several types of alimony.  For General Term Alimony, the type that I will assume may be appropriate in your case, alimony will end upon one of several occurrences:  (1) Death of you or your ex-wife, (2) remarriage of your ex-wife, (3) your ex-wife reaching full retirement age as defined under federal law, or (4) if your ex-wife lives with another person (in a relationship) for a continuous period of three months or more.

Unless or until one of those event occurs, then, when calculating the duration of alimony for the alimony order, the family court judge will refer to a formula that takes the number of months the marriage lasted and multiplies it by a given percentage, as follows: (1) For marriages that last less than six years, to calculate the number of years of alimony, take the number of months of marriage and multiply by 50%;  (2) For marriages that last between 6 and 10 years, multiply the number of months of marriage by 60%;  (3)  For marriages that last between 11 and 15 years, multiply the number of months of marriage by 70%;  (4) For marriages that last between 16 and 20 years, multiply the number of months of marriage by 80%;  and (5) For marriages that last 20 years or more, the alimony may be indefinite. 

So, for example, in your case (assuming exactly 12 years of marriage), we would take 144 months and multiply by 70%.  Hope all that helps.