Wow, it’s shocking and a little depressing that 36% of respondents still support that gold-digging lazy bitch bullshit. And yet people around here claim to believe in gender equality. :rolleyes:
Might you have had some personal experience relating to alimony?
Rigamarole, this 2004 article (usatoday.com: Census: 5.4 million mothers are choosing to stay at home, by Sharon Jayson, Posted 11/30/2004 11:29 PM / Updated 12/1/2004 6:03 AM) reports US census numbers saying that 5.4 million mothers stayed at home in 2003, vs. 98 thousand fathers. If those numbers are true, it seems fair to me that women would be the main recipients of alimony, since they would be the one most likely to have their professional career path negatively affected when having a family.
Nope. It’s the principle of the thing that gets me.
Exactly. That was my criticism of it…
So when you said “gold-digging lazy bitches” you meant stay-at-home moms?
The principle of the thing when it comes to non-compensatory alimony also gets me. Compensatory alimony seems fine and I really don’t see how it’s different from unjust enrichment.
In many families where one person stays at home and another person works, there’s a quid pro quo; I dedicate myself to the family while you dedicate yourself to your career and then we share the outcomet. The stay-at-home’s decision is predicated on the breadwinner sharing income just as the breadwinner’s decision is predicating on the stay-at-home taking care of the family. It can be optimal for some people. But then if there’s a break up, the breadwinner gets the continuing benefit of career specialization and the stay-at-home gets the continuing loss of having sacrificed her career.
It’s not much different than if a wife contributed to her husband’s business on the understanding that benefits would be shared between them. If there’s a divorce and no alimony or unjust enrichmen recours, then he would be getting the benefit of her sacrifice without having to share said benefit with her.
This is a nice post, and I agree that non-compensatory alimony is wholly outdated and awful. If one spouse chooses not to work during marriage, and isn’t also taking on the burden of raising a family, I don’t see why that person should get additional future monies.
To answer the OP’s poll: I think alimony in general is sexist, but not outdated! Ha!
Ooh…such a contrarian.
Not as much than 50 years ago, of course, but still relevant in a number of situation. In some cases, the spouse might not have any serious chance of supporting herself (generally) after the divorce, despite having contributed in various ways.
Also, I don’t know American law, but I assume that the former husband can receive an alimony if the usual circumstances are reversed. Which makes it non-sexist.
I think its changing, not only in how often alimony is decree but in who gets it. As noted, workforce demographics are changing and I would assume that includes judicial careers as well. I wonder (maybe all you attorney types can answer this one) if the rise of “no fault” divorce plays into this somehow.
It works just fine in Illinois, anyway. Every state is a bit different. But I believe most U.S. laws on the subject are written gender-neutrally.
Alimony can be pretty messy and may not always make sense. If you argue that one partner has to give up his/her career to support the other and/or kids, how the hell do you quantify what the person has given up and all the other intangibles (if any) that are brought to the partnership? I think things would be a lot less complicated if 1) every couple signed a prenup laying down the split of assets and liabilities assumed should the marriage dissolve and 2) no one gave up their economic earning power and financial being “for the other”. Sounds business like and all, but if shit hits the fan, you will thank your lucky stars that you do not have to waste seven years of your life in court (see horror story below).
I don’t think it is meant to be sexist these days (although antiquated, yes) because it’s not like alimony is awarded to whoever has the xx chromosome - it’s just that the higher earner has to make the payout. Guess what? My mother was the high earner (she was a Silicon Valley executive), and she spent seven years battling it out with my biological father and was forced to spend a near seven-figure sum on lawyers, forensic accountants, mediators, counsels, trials, etc before making a ridiculous payout to him. By the way, she was the one who raised my sister and me with absolutely no help from him, so I have no idea what he had to “give up” and still receive compensation from her.
Anyway, as an aside, I would never relinquish my economic earning power. Seems like poor financial planning to me.
It can be very good financial planning to have one parent stay home. It simply is not possible to guarantee that one partner will never have to give up their income for the other.
Poor financial planning in the sense that if you spend 20+ years of your life out of the workforce and one day get jilted and receive no alimony for whatever reason or you are left high and dry, good luck marketing your skills and rebuilding your savings and retirement fund as a middle aged worker at the bottom rung.
But it can be good financial planning in that you can spend 35 years living a much better lifestyle (for everyone–working and non-working parents and kids) and then retire at a higher standard of living. All financial plans carry risk. Alimony allows the risk of this situation to be spread between partners instead of carried by only one of them. Which gives both partners more options when deciding what sort of life they want for their family.
I do not believe that alimony is sexist.
Let me give an example. My mom is college educated and had a career prior to getting married, but gave up that career to move abroad with my father. They moved back to the States a few years later, but still lived very far away from her hometown, as he worked in academia and basically just had to go where the positions were in his field. Both of their expectations were that she would be a stay-at-home mom to take care of the kids.
My dad, growing up, was a workaholic – my personal impression that this was in no small part to avoid family responsibilities, but that’s just an opinion. In any case, my mom took care of the kids pretty much single-handed while he went on business trips, worked long days, hid away in his office for much of the time, and so on. He had very few responsibilities around the house – basically, he did most of the yardwork and briefly coached each of us in sports, and the rest of everything was done by Mom. My mom took care of pretty much all of his daily needs, from cooking all his meals to cleaning his clothes to doing the errands to managing the household finances. She also threw events for his work friends, accompanied him to work affairs, went to social events with his colleagues’ wives, and so on, because this was expected of her to support his career.
Once we got a little older, my mom wanted to go back to work. My father fought this tooth and nail for years. My mom ended up compromising and doing some business on the side, but when we moved across the country again when my dad got a new job, that all got destroyed. Finally, when I was in high school and my parents’ marriage was starting to fall apart, she insisted on getting a part time job. He hated this and made it as difficult as possible, and of course did not pick up any slack at home.
Now, when my parents divorced a couple years later, my dad was making on the order of about 5 times or more what my mom was able to make even moving to full-time. She had to get a job out of her field since her knowledge was so dated, and basically needed to work her way up from the bottom. When the divorce happened, she fought for alimony. The reasoning was that she had put her own career on hold not only when they married, but many times since then, and that her living situation (and even the area of the country where she lived) was largely dictated by the needs of his work.
In the trial, my father was asked what he thought it was fair to compensate her for this – temporarily, mind you. Want to guess his answer?
Anyway, she got 7 years of alimony payments. It made a difficult situation bearable and she was able to get back on her feet while largely supporting three kids (he did pay child support for two of us, after a substantial fight, but he didn’t want custody). Wow, what a gold-digging, lazy bitch, right?
My state recognizes two kinds of alimony and tacitly recognizes a third.
The first is “rehabilitation alimony,” typically when one spouse has missed out on opportunities to improve their own economic situation because he was pursuing a low level employment in order to support the other spouse’s career goals, or raising children to the exclusion of his economic opportunities. In these situations the courts will grant relatively short term alimony to allow the disadvantaged spouse to pursue an education necessary to improve their position. Relatively short term my be the length of time reasonably necessary to complete an education program.
The second is long term or conventional alimony awarded when rehab alimony can not put the spouse in a position to live anything like the life they had during the marriage and the other spouse is in an economic situation that can support an alimony obligation and still live in comfort.
Usually these are cases where the wife has put the husband through professional school, medicine or law, the husband has established a good, sometimes lucrative practice, and decides to dump the wife for a newer model. You also see it when there has been a long marriage and the spouse is just too old to enter the job market after a life time of low level employment or child rearing, or working with the other spouse and the other spouse is in a position to pay without undue hardship. This may be lifetime alimony (the life of the first to die) , or until the spouse is eligible for pension or Social Security benefits. You certainly see long term alimony when the spouse is disabled or suffers from chronic illness.
The third situation is when there is substantial property which the spouse will not share because it was received by the other spouse by gift or inheritance or acquired before the marriage, there has been a long marriage and the spouse has substantially less earning potential than the other spouse who gets the property. You see this especially when there is property that produces substantial income, like a beer distributorship.
In none of these situations is alimony an automatic. The whole thing turns on what the parties can agree to and what the judge thinks is necessary to effect equity between the parties.
Seriously? While I’m sure there exist women like that, have you ever taken care of a child full-time? I would sooooooooo rather be working than doing that. If I could be in a situation where we thought my husband’s job was less stable and he were happy to stay home with the kidlet (neither of which is the case), I would be so happy if he worked part-time or not and all and took care of her.
Taking care of a kid is NOT taking things easy. If you think it is, I’d like to invite you to take full-time care of my child for a week. And she’s an easy kid, as they go.
This is what I was coming in here to say. I mean, really, working here in my nice air conditioned office with coworkers I like doing grown up things that I enjoy doing or being at home and taking care of the kids and cleaning the house, doing the cleaning and cooking and laundry.
I tried it for a few months. It’s a lot of work and is incredibly thankless. I am staying at work TYVM.
I would say getting rid of alimony would be even more sexist. It would value a person’s choice to sacrifice their career for the sake of their family at zero.
No one should be forced to stay with someone because they can’t afford to leave.