Alimony in 2006?

Great Debates
61

To jump back in here, I think the details of the marriage contract probably vary by state but if I’m not mistaken, all 50 states a) view it as a lifelong contract between the two partners and b) consider all finances between the couple as joint property. It doesn’t matter if the partners provided 50/50 or 90/10 - the sum of their property and their lifestyle belongs to both of them jointly.

So this husband made a life long contract with the wife and agreed that the sum of their earnings would be shared jointly. He legally & voluntarily made her these promises and assumed these obligations.

So now he wants he out of his contract. Well it’s no different than any other contract or business arrangement, is it? The party that wants to break the contract can’t just say “I changed my mind” and skip off merrily leaving his obligations behind. The husband can get out of his contract - but there are penalties and obligations that apply to anyone who breaks a contract. They apply in marriage contracts too.

Anecdotally, for what it’s worth, courts are more likely to award alimony type payments to spouses that have been “wronged” in some way. If he’s been sleeping around then the courts’ might be more sympathetic to her needs than his. Human nature, I suppose.

And yeah, all of the above does (and should) go both ways.

62

My nephew worked throughout his marriage and he still received alimony payments for a few years. She made many times the amount of money he made.

63

So you think it is right that when the marriage ends the person who makes the most must pay a penalty because the contract was broken. Regardless of who initiates the divorce? I understand the perception of a life long commitment but that simply isn’t the case. On most levels, the contract terminates when the marriage terminates. Joint property, debts, inheritences etc. So why doesn’t financial support? Now if other things were considered when talking alimony such as who terminated the “contract”, what the stay at home spouse did while staying at home, his or her obligations being met regarding the expectations of that position in the family and any sacrifices made, I may get behind some kind of support. However, this no fault alimony because the marriage lasted a certain amount of time? I just don’t see it as just and fair.

64

Where did you get his idea? I think that is the crux of the problem here, because “no fault alimony” doesn’t exist, AFAIK.

65

I think the contract analogy can only take you so far. I am not a lawyer (yet), but I believe (and Kalhoun’s list of factors in Illinois agrees) that a court likely doesn’t care who initiated the divorce proceedings, or which party wants out of the marriage more.

For instance, if the soon-to-be-ex-wife in the OP were the one who said “to heck with the benefits of this marriage, I want out”, her having said “to heck with the benefits” wouldn’t preclude her from requesting maintenence support (unless she said that in court, which would be ill-advised…)

Back to the contract analogy, that would be like, in the case of the house-sale, if the purchaser breached instead of the seller, and said “to heck with this house, I want out of the contract”, and the court awarded that party the house anyhow.

As to the rest of the OP, um…I agree with everything! :slight_smile:
(This isn’t legal advice, simply over-generalizations which probably don’t apply in your jurisdiction, may not apply in any jurisdiction, or may be flat-out BS).

–KidScruffy

66

Apparently in California it does. If the marriage lasts a certain amount of time, the spouse making less is entitled to alimony. It doesn’t matter who left whom or what the circumstances were. I couldn’t believe it myself until I read up on it. After 17 years there is a duty of support which may be permanent if the spouses circumstances do not change. I thought this was the 21st century of men and women being equal and responsible for themselves. Apparently certain laws still look at the woman…in the majority of the situation…as having as well as deserving to be cared for by the man for the rest of her life even if she no longer wants the marriage.

67

Firstly: A marriage is a contract between two people to support each other, emotionally and financially. Yes, I think it’s right that one party to the contract can’t just skip out on that obligation when he or she changes his mind.

Secondly, equality between the sexes doesn’t enter in to it. As Kalhoun and others have pointed out the situation is often reversed with regard to who supports whom.

Well no. Legally and factually marriage -is- a lifelong commitment. One can break the commitment but that doesn’t change what the commitment actually says.

If one doesn’t wish to make that commitment, one should either have the Mother of All Pre-Nups or skip it altogether. It doesn’t sound like this guy has a pre-nup? I know it’s unromantic but I think everyone should prepare a pre-nup of sorts before their get their marriage license. When I’m queen of the world, that’s how it’ll be.

I’m not sure there really is such a thing as no fault divorce. Divorces are complex and there are always dozens of reasons why they occur. Take your example. The guy’s been screwing around and now he wants to officially break the contract his wife wants to maintain. Nobody’s going to hold a gun to his head and make him stay in the contract (nor should they.) But it’s a mistake to say that this is a “no fault” situation.

Anyway, the phrase “no fault” is just to indicate that this isn’t like the old fashioned divorces of a hundred years ago where one party had to literally prove that the other party was unfaithful or abusive. It used to be one party had sue the other for divorce. Two people couldn’t just agree to split, they had to, if nothing else, manufacture an instance of adultry or something. I’m pretty sure “no fault” is a genuine legal term, not a factual description, but perhaps one of the lawyers here will correct me if I’m wrong.

But back to your objection. The idea is that the longer the comittment stood between two people, the harder it is to recover if one party breaks it, therefore the greater the penalty against that breaking party. Personally, I think it makes sense. I do think it’s fair that the breaking the contract carries with it penalties. I think it’s reasonable that the penalty might be increased if the courts find that breaking the contract causes harm.

But aside from all this, if I’m not mistaken, most states will allow both parties in a divorce to reach a settlement that may or may not involve alimony or whatver. Perhaps the guy you know could put together a lump settlement rather than a monthly thing. It wouldn’t be cheap but probably cheaper for him in the long run.

68

Nothing you wrote implies that the law cares about the gender of the two spouses. It just so happens that in our society, it’s much more common for women to earn less than men. You’d have to assume that would hold for couples undergoing a divorce. But men can and do get the same spousal support or alimony as women.

Can you point to a cite that spousal support is automatic? This isn’t the best source but it appears that it’s not automatic. I don’t see anything about 17 years or anything about automatic. And you still haven’t addressed the fact that people sometimes put their lives and careers on hold for the sake of the marriage. If one spouse gives up more than the other, it doesn’t seem fair to assume that all support is dropped once the marriage is over.

69

I paid my ex wife alimony and child support; the total was a little more than half my income. The child support ended when the child turned 19; the alimony ended a couple of years afterwards. We had been married nearly nineteen years when the divorce came along; all that time she had been a stay-at-home wife and mother. Due to her lack of job skills, she not only got the alimony, she also got the house, a new car, all the money in our joint bank accounts and the few investments we had. And, I was required to provide her and the child with health insurance. To cap it all, she was the one who filed for divorce. Was it fair? I still don’t know, but I suspect it was—I did some really bad stuff due to a serious drug problem. My loss of income allowed my son to continue living a decent life; the fact that I lived as a pauper was of no consequence. I never resented paying child support; the alimony was a constant source of anger----I still hate my ex although I have begun to mellow. After all, I did survive.

When my darling Marcie and I began talking marriage, a pre-nuptial agreement was the first priority; Marcie was completely isolated from any responsibility for my debts and I was completely isolated from her assets. Things have worked out well for us during the past eleven years but it has taken a lot of effort. Most of that effort has been on Marcie’s part; she deeply resented my ex because of the financial drain on me. I will be forever grateful that she chose to stick with me until my situation improved.

70

As this thread goes on, I am beginning to think it may be as simple as a perception of entitlement due to a person’s upbringing. So many want to throw issues into the mix to justify a financial tie to another human being for life. I have already granted I can understand in issues of sacrifice on one spouses part and the obligation to be support due to those sacrifices. That would be extenuating circumstances. None of this was the case in the original debate. Should a person who choose not to work because they didn’t want to, raised no kids, took care of a home equally with the working spouse and lets throw in, did not honor marital sexual expectations, should such a person be entitled to support because they choose not to handle their lives successfully? Should riding on the coat tails of the spouse that did be fair or even right. And if it isn’t right, why in this day of “no fault” divorce, aren’t these issues taken into consideration when determining support?
As a woman, I was raised to be self supporting. It would never occur to me to take money from another human being when our commitment to each other ends. The personal logic of this entire situation seems so cut and dry to me. Free ride over when the marriage ends. It certainly is working that way with my ex (thank goodness I was advised to get a darn prenup).

71

I agree. I would never expect someone else to care for me when I’m perfectly capable of caring for myself. It’s my guess that this woman wasn’t raised that way. But the Illinois rules posted above DO take “bad attitude” into consideration.

I take this to mean that the judge will expect the person receiving maintenance to make a solid effort to learn self-sufficiency. Ideally, that person would have learned that already, but hey…slow learners are everywhere.

I’ll probably have to don my asbestos underwear for this, but in this day and age, a full-time stay-at-home mom should probably be discouraged in most circumstances. A woman needs to be able to earn a living, *particularly * when she has children. Worst case scenarios happen every day, and a responsible woman should know how to make at least a basic living, regardless of having kids. You can have meaningful part-time work, work while the kids are in school, whatever it takes to keep your skills current and at least somewhat profitable. Divorce is rampant, but many other scenarios can come into play. What if your husband is permanently disabled? What if you suddenly have to lend financial support to another family member? You simply can’t depend on others, regardless of the Love Factor. Bad shit happens to people who love each other all the time.

72

BTW, I consider a stay at home mother a job. She fulfilled her responsibilities in the marriage by taking care of the child(ren). In circumstances such as yours, sure, she should get help for a few years until she is able to rejoin the work force. Just a few years.
Your new wife is a better person than I. Congrats to both of you for making the crappy situation work for you.

73

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I’m not necessarily against alimony in all cases, but I am against people assuming they will be taken care of forever.

74

I consider it a job as well, but for the purposes of actually supporting your family should the shit hit the fan, it doesn’t count.

In addition to the maintenance, would the supporting spouse have to pay tuition and childcare? Or would the woman have to get a McJob and contribute to her “life training”? It’s a very complex issue.

75

Despite your perception of marriage as a fleeting, no-strings-attached arrangement, myself and others have pointed out numerous times that it is in fact a contract to share assets and give support for life.

How is a person acting “entitled” if they merely expect others to honor their contracts (or at least pay a penalty for breaking them)?

76

That’s not exactly true. The wife could have opted out of the OP’s friend’s marriage and got the same deal. The deal he’s getting isn’t punishment for leaving her; it’s punishment for working and not tossing her out on the street years ago. She could’ve whored around on him the whole time and then decided to take off to the islands with a guy. He’d still have to pay.

77

There is no such contract just because you think there should be. Two people decide on their own what their marriage means to them. The law says they are responsible to share each others debts and income throughout the marriage. Now just because your personal opinion states that a marriage is a life sentence with no way out and that people who want out should be suffer a “penalty” doesn’t make it a fact. The “contract” expires when the marriage expires. If the ex wife wins the lotto tomorrow, the ex husband won’t get a dime of that money. It appears you feel this “contract” you keep talking about is very selective to your personal choices of who deserves what because who did what to whom.

78

If he wanted to account for that, he could have drawn up a prenup making the divorce settlement contingent on her behavior during the marriage. Like war, you go into divorce with the contract you have, not the contract you wish you had. :slight_smile:

79

This is true, of course, to a certain extent. But, as you’ve discovered yourself, the state is also a party to the marriage, not just the husband and wife. As long as that’s the case, there will be certain legal realities about marriage that will not change no matter how unfair they seem to you.

80

Where is this “contract” you keep talking about? My marriage license said nothing about that. Your intrepretation doesn’t make it so.

My ex husband was physically abusive and did not work. I married him before knowing his full character. In your mind, I should be penalized for not knowing what I was getting into and be made to pay his support for the rest of his life? I signed no such contract promising this. I promised to love and honor him, I certainly didn’t promise to fund his coke habit while he eats bon bons and looks at porn on the internet.

I would imagine this thread has hit home for you and I am sorry but it doesn’t make it right if you were hurt and want him to pay, or, you are made to pay and feel you deserve it.

NO ONE deserves a free ride because they got someone to the alter. No one no matter what pretend contract one thinks was implied at the time.