An increasing number of rich and famous women are paying the high price of divorce as husbands demand alimony -- including Joan Lunden, Jane Seymour, Roseanne Arnold, Jane Fonda, Kim Basinger, Linda Lavin and Mary McFadden.

R. Stephen Cohen, a matrimonial lawyer, said some husbands get big payoffs because women are less inclined than men to demand prenuptial agreements.

"Women seem more offended by the concept of the prenup," he said. "When they say 'I do,' they're more likely to think it's going to be forever."

Women with lucrative, high-profile careers are discovering that courts are quite willing to award alimony -- often in sizable sums -- to husbands not financially well off.

Joan Lunden, who earns $2 million a year as co-host of Good Morning America, last summer was ordered by a New York judge to pay ex-husband Michael Krauss $18,000 a month in temporary alimony. The judge also assigned all responsibility for the couple's mortgage, taxes and other expenses -- about $8,000 a month -- to Lunden.

Fashion designer Mary McFadden was ordered to pay Kohle Yohannan, 30 years her junior, $2,400 a month in temporary support (he had sought $7,651), plus college tuition, rent, legal fees and a substantial portion of her multimillion-dollar business.

When the divorce was finalized in June 1991, the alimony was reduced to $600 a month, and McFadden agreed to give Yohannan a $100,000 lump-sum settlement.

Last summer actress Linda Lavin, then 54, ended an alimony battle with actor Clifford Niven, then 47, paying Niven $675,000. Niven reportedly sought $5 million of the $11 million Lavin earned during their nine-year marriage, plus $13,500 a month support for his two children from his previous marriage.

Jane Seymour last year was ordered to pay husband David Flynn $10,000 in monthly alimony through 1994 (Flynn had sought $20,000) and to surrender half the value of the $5 million oceanfront house they shared in Santa Barbara, Calif. Kim Basinger settled with makeup artist Ron Britton by giving him the couple's $700,000 house and more than $64,000 in support. Jane Fonda forked over $10 million to Tom Hayden.

Roseanne Arnold, in a secret divorce settlement, agreed to support former husband William Pentland for 10 years, according to sources familiar with the deal. "He should be paying me half of the money he makes," she said, "except what am I going to do with an extra 40 bucks a week?"