So, maybe this is a stupid question, but should I choose to pay alimony or not?

Apparently my stbxw's lawyer told her that she can ask me to give her alimony, but that the court wouldn't require it of me. That sounds a bit off to me, but I'm not a lawyer and I don't have the entire context since I wasn't part of the conversation. I can make some guesses as to why that be, but they would just be guesses.

I don't make a ton of money. Until this year we've had to rely on medicaid for insurance and have had food stamps and WIC at various times in our marriage as well, and right now we still qualify for housing assistance. I'll already be giving her a third of my paycheck for child support, since she will have our three kids with her most days.

For some additional background, we've been married for 13 years, during which time she has never had a full-time job. When we met, and subsequently after we got married, she was working part-time at a daycare. She went to school for cosmetology and had all of her hours, but she hadn't taken the test to get her license. Shortly after we got married she decided to stop working because she didn't like the daycare job and because I was working since I wasn't in school during the summer. After that she was never really employed. She would occasionally take "nannying" gigs for a week or two at a time, but nothing frequent or regular. A couple years after that we had our first child and she stopped taking those as well.

All this to say that while I'm grateful to her for taking care of our kids, it's not as though she put me through school. We made it through school by me working to pay rent and by taking out loans for tuition.

Obviously all of this is from my perspective so it is likely to be biased, but I feel that I've given an accurate description to the best of my ability. She wants the divorce, but she wants to keep her lifestyle the same. She was a little pissed when I said I would have to think about the alimony, because the child support only covers a little more than our current rent. She says she knows that they calculate child support with the expectation that she will work too, but now she suddenly wants to go to school to get a degree when she hasn't shown any interest in additional education until now.

Anyway, now that I've made this wall of text, if any of you want to comment on my situation I would appreciate the insight of a third party's point of view.