THE first half of this decade has been a period active in divorce reform. Rapidly rising divorce rates, coupled with increased public tolerance of private behavior, have brought into question the state's role in regulating divorce. At this writing, at least thirty states permit divorce on grounds of "marital breakdown" or incompatibility.' The aspect of divorce law of particular interest in this paper is the provision of alimony. The great majority of states provide for alimony payments in the event of separation or divorce,; and although most jurisdictions authorize alimony to either spouse under appropriate circumstances, alimony is almost exclusively awarded to wives. In addition, the amount of the award tends to vary with the length of marriage, the number of children, and the husband's and wife's relative assets and earning power. In the first part of this paper, I develop a simple model of household production to illuminate the relevance of the length of marriage, number of children, and the wife's earning ability to an efficient determination of alimony. I show that if all marital income were perfectly divisible (i.e., no public goods) and if spouses could negotiate with each other and transfer income between themselves costlessly, a legal rule requiring mutual consent for divorce would be equivalent (in most respects) to one permitting unilateral divorce by either spouse. In the absence of these conditions, alimony serves as an efficient means of redistributing the property rights and assets of the marriage partnership between the spouses, enabling them to reach an "optimal" end-the dissolution of their marriage. I argue that the role of alimony is to compensate the wife for the opportunity costs she incurs by entering and investing in the marriage. As such, the award and enforcement of alimony payments by the