If a brokerage account or other income-producing asset is divided as part of the marital estate, the income it goes on to produce generally cannot also be counted as that spouse's income for alimony. Counting it in both places would award the same asset twice. The same income may still be counted for child support, because child support answers to a different statutory purpose. The rule comes from G.L. c. 208, section 53(c)(1) and the Supreme Judicial Court's 2022 decision in Cavanagh v. Cavanagh.
In a divorce with meaningful investment assets, one argument surfaces almost every time. A brokerage account, a business interest, or a rental property is divided between the parties. The account then produces dividends, interest, or distributions. When support is calculated, one side proposes counting that income as income to the spouse who received the asset.
The other side objects that this counts the same thing twice: once when the asset was handed over, and again when its yield is treated as earnings. Practitioners call this double dipping, and Massachusetts law has a specific answer to it. The answer is more precise than either side usually expects, because it splits depending on which kind of support is being calculated.
What Is Double Dipping in a Divorce Context?
Double dipping occurs when a single economic resource is counted twice in the financial outcome of a divorce.
The first count happens in the property division, where a court divides the marital estate under G.L. c. 208, section 34 and assigns an asset, or a share of it, to one spouse. That spouse now owns something of measurable value, and the other spouse's share of the estate was reduced accordingly.
The second count happens in the support analysis, where that same asset's income stream is added to the receiving spouse's income. The effect is that the spouse who gave up their share of the asset in the division then benefits from its income a second time through a reduced support obligation or an increased support award.
The objection is not that investment income is irrelevant. It is that this particular investment income has already been accounted for once, in a different part of the same judgment.
What Did Cavanagh Hold?
The rule is grounded in the statute. G.L. c. 208, section 53(c)(1) addresses what income a court may consider when setting alimony, and the Supreme Judicial Court articulated the double-dipping principle in Cavanagh v. Cavanagh, 490 Mass. 398 (2022).
For alimony purposes, it is error to count investment income generated by an asset that has already been assigned to that spouse in the property division. Doing so effectively awards the value of the asset twice over.
That same investment income, however, may still be counted when calculating child support. The 2025 Appeals Court decision in the same litigation, 105 Mass. App. Ct. 620, applied this distinction rather than creating it, and the asymmetry survived that decision intact.
The Asymmetry in One Line
For alimony: income from an asset already divided in the property settlement is generally excluded, because the property division has already dealt with that asset as between the two spouses.
For child support: the same income may still be counted, because the children were not parties to the property division and received no share of the marital estate.
Why Do the Two Forms of Support Treat the Same Dollar Differently?
The split looks inconsistent until you ask what each payment is for.
Alimony governs the financial relationship between two former spouses. The property division governs the same relationship. When a court divides an investment portfolio, it has already decided how the value of that portfolio is shared between them. Reaching back into the income it produces, and shifting some of that back through alimony, unpicks a decision that has already been made.
Child support is a different question with a different beneficiary. The children were not parties to the property settlement. They did not receive a share of the marital estate and no part of the division was made on their behalf. The Child Support Guidelines therefore define income broadly, aiming to capture the resources actually available in the household where the child lives. An asset that produces real money each year produces real money regardless of how the adults divided ownership of it.
The practical result is that a single dividend payment can be excluded from one calculation and included in the other in the same case, and that is the correct outcome rather than an error.
Who Has to Prove What?
This is where cases are actually won and lost, and it is the part most summaries leave out.
The exclusion is not automatic. A court does not know, from a financial statement showing $40,000 of investment income, which portion came from assets assigned in the divorce and which came from assets acquired before the marriage, inherited, received afterwards, or built from post-divorce earnings.
The practical burden sits with the party seeking the exclusion. If a spouse wants investment income left out of the alimony analysis, that spouse has to show which specific assets generated it and that those assets were part of what was divided. Absent that showing, a court has no basis to carve anything out and the full amount is available to be considered.
That makes this an evidentiary problem before it is a legal one. The records that establish it are the ones tying today's income back to the divided assets: the property division schedule itself, account statements bracketing the date of division, and a clean account of what has happened to each account since. Where accounts have been consolidated, rolled over, or added to since the divorce, the tracing work is harder and needs to be done deliberately rather than asserted.
Which Assets Does This Come Up With?
The issue arises wherever a divided asset keeps producing income of its own.
- Investment and brokerage portfolios. The most common setting, and usually the easiest to trace, because statements are detailed and continuous.
- Business interests. The hardest, because a business often produces both a return on the owner's capital and compensation for the owner's continuing work. Only the first has been dealt with by the property division. Distinguishing the two is a valuation question as much as a legal one.
- Retirement accounts subject to division. Where a divided account is already in payout, the same logic applies to the income it generates.
- Rental and investment real estate. Net rental income from a property assigned in the division raises the issue directly.
Our Property Division Calculator and Marital Asset Inventory Worksheet are useful for laying out which assets are in the estate and which are producing income, which is the groundwork this analysis rests on.
Why This Matters in Higher-Asset Cases
In a case where both parties earn salaries and the marital estate is a house and two retirement accounts, the double-dipping question rarely changes the numbers much. In a case with a substantial portfolio, a closely held business, or investment property, it can change them considerably, and it can do so quietly.
The reason it is easy to miss is that a proposed support calculation showing a single combined income figure does not announce which components came from where. A number that includes investment income from divided assets looks exactly like a number that does not. Identifying the difference means working backwards from the income figure to the assets behind it and checking each one against the property division schedule.
That is financial tracing work, and it is the kind of analysis Brigantine Law is set up to do. Our founder, Clinton Dalton, spent years tracing concealed assets and financial flows for the United States Department of Defense before entering private practice, and that experience shapes how we approach the financial side of a divorce. Related work on locating assets that have not been disclosed at all is covered in our articles on hidden assets in divorce and red flags that money is being moved.
Cavanagh v. Cavanagh, 490 Mass. 398 (2022); Cavanagh v. Cavanagh, 105 Mass. App. Ct. 620 (2025); G.L. c. 208, sections 34 and 53(c)(1). Verified as of August 17, 2026.
What to Do If This Is Live in Your Case
Three steps make the difference between an argument that works and one that is merely asserted.
- Separate the income by source before anyone proposes a number. Build the list of income-producing assets first, then mark which ones are in the marital estate. Doing this after a support figure is on the table means arguing against an anchor.
- Keep the property division schedule and the support calculation in the same conversation. They are usually prepared separately, which is exactly how the same asset ends up in both without anyone intending it.
- Remember the split. Winning the exclusion for alimony does not remove that income from the child support worksheet, and expecting it to will produce an unwelcome surprise later.
Where both alimony and child support are being calculated, this analysis also interacts with the sequencing rules, since both calculations run off income figures. That framework is covered in our article on the three-step Cavanagh calculation.
If your divorce involves investment assets, a business, or investment property, and support is at issue, contact us for a confidential consultation. We represent clients across Essex and Middlesex Counties and the North Shore from our office in Topsfield, with appointments available in Gloucester and North Andover.