Interesting. Is there any other type of contract that can’t be entirely broken if one of the partners still needs the support it provides?
I don’t know, but what difference does that make? Are you arguing that marriage as a legal institution shouldn’t be allowed to be different in some respects from other forms of legal contractual obligations?
I heard an account of adult children who were forced by the courts to assist their parent financially. No cite, but it was within the last 5-10 years that I read it. There was no contract AT ALL in that instance, but the court chose to keep the financial burden within the family rather than push it off on society at large. I don’t know if his decision was based on an old, obscure law or what, but it was the real deal. Maybe someone around here remembers it?
I could be wrong, but I think the suggestion is that the contract analogy isn’t a perfect fit, and shouldn’t be carried too far. Marriage as a legal institution is not a contract, as far as “contract” is used in the legal profession.
I, for one, thinks it’s a fairly poor analogy. Divorce laws are enacted for reasons discussed already, and themselves make no mention of a “breach of contract” - and don’t have to in order to accomplish their purpose.
To me, it’s like saying that I have a contract with the government to drive under the speed limit as long as they provide the roads, and if I breach that contract, I owe money to the government. That may a useful comparison for some reason or another, but it’s also different from a broken contract in many ways.
Once you’ve acknowledge the purpose of the laws (in the speed limit example: detterence and government funding; in the divorce example, to provide support for a non-working spouse), why is there a need to draw a comparison to contracts?
–KidScruffy
Fair enough. However, I’m having difficulty coming up with any concept that does a better job of describing the essence of what marriage (as a legal institution) essentially is.
Honestly, all I know is that you get taxed differently as a married couple. I’ll leave the rest to someone better informed - should I be concerned that I’m more familiar with divorce than I am with marriage? 
Maybe “social contract” is more appropriate. It provides a sense of belonging and security. Or something.
Here ya go (if you were in Canada): Moge v. Moge: http://www.canlii.org/ca/cas/scc/1992/1992scc111.html
Depending on the circumstances, support can be lifelong (and depending on the circumstances it may not be lifelong).
This case is well worth reading from top to bottom a few times. One might agree with parts of the decision, and one might disagree with parts of it, but either way, it opens a window on how the judiciary in Canada interprets the Divorce Act when it considers awarding spousal support for an indefinite period, and it provides insights into the policy and socio-economic factors behind such decisions.
Divorce opens the door to getting on with a new life, including remarrying. The greater the interdependency and the longer the marriage, the more difficult it becomes to financially cut the ties and get on with a new life, but there is a lot more to divorce than suppor, and in any event, for most folks, support eventually ends.
Marriage is pretty unique, for let’s face it, living in a conjugal relationship for a lifetime with someone is entirely different from buying a house or leasing a car. That being said, yes, in other matters there can be ongoing resopnsibilities the endure despite the underlying contract long having been nixed. For example, when someone hires me as a lawyer, a fiduciary relationship is formed that generally prevents me from ever blabbing about the client’s case or from acting against the client on that case, even if the client fires me.
As far as family law goes, the basic deal that the parties are bound to when they marry is the body of family law legislation (e.g. Divorce Act, Family Law Act, Childrens Law Reform Act, Succession Law Reform Act, etc. here in Ontario, Canada). That limits what they can or cannot do. If they divorce, only one aspect of the the deal is settled – they are divorced and are free to remarry – but the other aspects of the deal continue. In that sense, think of marriage being a deal that includes terms on marriage, custody, access, child support, spousal support, and division of property. When a party separates, they may resolve one or more of these areas, but not resolve others. Could be they might divorce but deal with spousal support for the rest of their lives. Could be they might separate and split their property, but never get around to getting divorced. The formal divorce is just one aspect of many that the couple become subject to when the couple ties the knot.
Ontario’s Family Law Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. F.3, s. 32: “Every child who is not a minor has an obligation to provide support, in accordance with need, for his or her parent who has cared for or provided support for the child, to the extent that the child is capable of doing so.”
Kalhoun, thanks for saying what I’ve been trying to find time to say. We have only the husband’s word for his wife’s actions and attitudes, and, let’s face it, people have been known to lie or distort the truth to justify their actions.
I know of a man who would accept a transfer to a new city every time his wife got to a position in her job where she had some rank and authority. I don’t think he was consciously sabotaging her career, but he was shocked when he did this one too many times and she put her foot down and refused to move. A man can say he genuinely wants his wife to work, but if the car’s not available when she needs to go to an interview, or if he objects, or even whines when she has to work late and can’t make dinner, she may start to wonder. If she wants to take a class to get qualified for a better job yet is told she shouldn’t because it will cause too much disruption to the household, is she completely responsible for her own lack of skills? I’m not saying this is the case with the man Foxy40 is describing, but I think we’ve had Dopers who’ve been in similar situations.
What I find interesting is she finds him fulfilling the obligations he incurred in his marriage objectionable, but not him committing adultery by dating her while still married. Then again, different people do have different standards.
Oh, and lest more aspersions be cast, I’m female, single, and very much self-supporting.
Thank you. I think it was in the U.S., but it’s exactly the same thing. “I don’t owe them/him anything” simply doesn’t cut it in the case of genuine need. In the case of divorce, that need may be genuine, or genuine for a finite period of time, but regardless of a person’s motivation throughout the marriage, it’s a real issue that needs to be addressed.
A previous poster said that the person can flip hamburgers for a living. Plenty of people do it, but it ain’t a “living.” You need multiple McJobs to make enough money to support yourself.
There’s one other thing to consider, and that’s the local economy. Ten years ago around here, temporary clerical jobs were easy to come by; three years ago, they were pretty rare. How much demand has there been for low-skilled labor in Central Florida during the past 20 years, and how do the wages available compare to living expenses? If the work available has been infrequent and sporadic with little chance for advancement, I can see why it would make sense to stay home.
Also, how did this man’s wife support herself before she met him? It’s possible that she may never have been expected to support herself. Even if she had a successful career, most fields have changed a great deal, including clerical work, and, if she assumed she would be married for the rest of her life, getting the training needed to stay current may not have seemed worthwhile.
One thing this thread has illustrated very well is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to spousal support. There are too many variables: societal expectations, public policy, and individual needs and means.
The best the law can do is to lay out general factors for consideration, and be equitable when applying those factors to specific cases.
What about the reverse? Does the law say that a parent has an obligation to support his/her adult child, if the child needs support?
My niece, who is single, has been out of work for two years. Even she is feeling the emotional/skill strain of being out of the loop. Another problem is that if you’ve been home “for no good reason”, employers are hesitant to hire you. Bottom rung jobs will be the only ones available, and that won’t be enough to pay the bills. So even if she DID go back to work, she’d need supplemental income to make ends meet.
See, this is not an assumption that she should have made.
Yes, we all expect to live, say, 75 years on average, but we still make wills and plans as to what happens if we happen to die earlier.
Similarly, we all expect to be married to our spouse for the rest of our lives, but we should still make plans in case we get divorced.
Thanks.
One final question regarding the law:
Say the wife is a college professor and the husband is the CEO of a company.
She makes a decent living, but he makes much more money.
After the divorce, does he still need to pay her alimony, so that she continues to have the same lifestyle as before the divorce, even though she could live fine with her own salary?
Good question. “The Lifestyle She’s Become Accustomed To” is rather vague. Would she deserve to live “lavishly” if she made a “comfortable” living on her own?
Why not? That’s the fundamental premise of marriage, after all: that these two people will remain married until death do them part.
Sure, but that’s because we can’t make a vow to live 75 years and force it to come true just by resolving to stay committed to that vow. Divorce is generally more voluntary than death.
Personally, I think this is good advice, but there is nothing about marriage as currently structured that requires it.
Again, what you’re complaining about here is not so much court-ordered alimony per se as the entire legal structure of modern marriage. You would like to see it redefined as a potentially temporary partnership of two autonomous individuals, each of whom must be prepared to resume autonomy at any time if the other person decides to end the partnership.
Sure, that’s one possible way to institutionalize marriage, but it doesn’t happen to be the institution we currently have. We still define marriage as a permanent bond of mutual support and responsibility that may carry certain obligations even if the bond is dissolved.
If you want to change that, it seems to me that the place to start is with the requirements for marriage itself, not with the laws about alimony. If you want to legally require all couples to have a valid pre-nuptial contract before marrying that spells out in detail the financial consequences if they should happen to divorce, go ahead and advocate for that. That would be a constructive solution
But it’s not reasonable to let two people get married without any contract, and make whatever kind of decisions they like about their finances and their employment in the course of their marriage, and then bitch about legal requirements for alimony if the marriage happens to end while one spouse is not self-supporting. At that point, it’s really too late to complain that the couple ought to have had a pre-nuptial contract in the first place.