I thought of specifying that I meant ‘show that this actually happens, not that it’s a statute,’ but that seemed too obvious. Lots of outdated statutes are still on the books but are never in reality applied.
But those cites don’t even say that someone will pay maintenance to their lower-earning partner after living together for three years. They’re vague guidelines about quality of life - they don’t back up what you claimed.
Here is one way to look at it (not sure if this has been touched on yet, as I didn’t read all of the responses):
In a hypothetical marriage, let’s say the man has a high-paying job and the woman is a stay-at-home Mom and takes care of the couple’s two children, cooks for the family, etc.
Now let’s consider both positions to be equal. The man benefits from being taken care of and having his children taken care of by the woman. The woman benefits from the husband’s income. The assumption here is still that both roles are equal in importance.
Then they get a divorce. The man stops benefiting from his wife’s stay-at-home activities. The woman stops benefiting from her husband’s paycheck. They both lose something of equal importance (still assuming equality of the roles).
Then the husband is forced to pay alimony. Essentially, this is adding insult to injury for the husband. The ex-wife benefits whereas the ex-husband suffers. Whereas the score should be an even 0 to 0, with alimony it is 1 to -1 in favor of the wife.
Marriage (in terms of benefits received):
Husband +1
Wife +1
Divorce:
Husband -1
Wife -1
Alimony:
Husband -1
Wife +1
This is a very black and white way to look at this argument, and doesn’t really account for things like the wife’s career options being suppressed while a stay-at-home Mom or emotional appeals (“she deserves it because he was a bad husband”). But I am basically saying that both parties benefit from marriage equally, so what happens after the marriage ends shouldn’t be unequal.
If marriage is a contract (a promise to pay for services rendered), and the contract is broken by a mutual decision to break the contract (divorce), then why should one side still be ordered to pay?
Do you want me to cite all the provincial conditions for common-law marriage? It’s usally two to three years of continuous cohabitation or cohabitation+child. To take the Ontario Family Act as an example, common-law married people get spousal support after three years of continuous cohabitation or child+cohabitation+relationship of some permanence.
Application:
It’s a statute that’s actually applied. The divorce act is not some ridiculous, obsolete and arcane law like you sometimes hear about in the US. Are you saying that the Divorce Act is an outdate statute that is never applied? Judges get leeway but they have to apply statutes. Common-law marriage is three years of cohabitation in many places. That trigger the possibility of spousal support. Spousal support is applied according to the divorce act which is a real, actually applied law.
You said that a man should not put himself in a position where he has to pay alimony. Perhaps it’s the three years that leave you incredulous? It would likely be a lump sum payment then. What about if it’s a longer term relationship with no children? The Supreme court (the cites were from them) said that the longer you stay together, the more you’re entitled to have the same standard of living.
WOuld you be ok with someone claiming spousal support without children being involved if the relationship were longer?
“common-law married people get spousal support”
I should have said “common-law married people get the possibility of spousal support”.
And to reiterate, perhaps in the Law & Order shows you watch, the judges don’t really have to apply the law but real ones do. Some of the more obsolete laws can be waived aside using particular interpretation principles, but the divorce act is not such a law.
You said a man should not put himself in a position where he can pay alimony if he doesn’t want to pay it. If you’re going to play lawyers as you have to far, do some interpretation of the statutes and principles as laid out by the supreme court.
Who is still taking care of the kids? Despite the divorce, she’s still taking care of his family members, so he is still benefiting from her “work”. And yes, I know that she receives child support. But if being out of work to be a SAHM for his offspring has hurt her earning potential and in effect, impaired her ability to take care of the kids financially, I don’t see why it’s out of line that he compensates her until she can get on her feet.
I see it as severance pay.
This is the crux of the whole argument for alimony, and you’re just sort of hand-waving it away. The working spouse developed an asset–a lucrative career–as the direct result of the non-working spouse’s actions. The non-working spouse owns some portion of that asset.
If two people put 20 years into developing a restaurant together, it seems logical that they should each get half of it when they split: if two people spend 20 years both developing a single career, shouldn’t they each be entitled to half of that, as well?
But let’s say both guys worked to develop the restaurant but after that one sits back to get the returns while the other continues to work in the restaurant. Do you think they should both get the same share of the returns forever?
That’s essentially the situation here. The non-working spouse sacrifices for the working spouse’s career, but the working spouse sacrifices as much (and generally a lot more). But now the alimony premise is that the non-working spouse is done with the hard part and can sit back and get returns forever, while the working spouse has to continue busting their tail. It’s fundamentally inequitable.
[There was actually a major decision in MA a year or two back, where a hotshot lawyer (former SC justice) reached mandatory retirement age at his lawfirm and retired and then requested anend to alimony, based on reduced income (which was lower than his alimony). He was turned down, because could make up the income by lecturing and the like. Meanwhile, his ex-wife - who was younger than him - had already retired. http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/11/sjc_retirement.html So he has to keep working to support his ex, while she can sit back and take it easy. Put that into your restaurant example.]
Could you please provide at least one cite of an occasion where what you claimed happens actually happened? Now, in your first paragraph, you’re claiming that it happens as a matter of course. It’s not like I’m asking for the moon.
If t really happen like you say it does, then I’m amazed anyone in Ontario ever moves in together at all.
To the last question - yes, depending on how long, the ages of the people involved, how big a sacrifice the non-working partner made, etc. You know, the sorts of things judges take into account when awarding alimony and child support. Or at least they do in my world. They probably also do on Law and Order, but I’ve never seen it; thanks for the dose of snark, though - I was lacking my RDA.
Snark: Since you said “but that seemed too obvious” and “that’s pretty obvious, I would’ve thought”, I thougth I’d bitch right back. If you want this to be more civil though, I’d prefer that.
People moving in: Most people don’t know the finer points of the law. Also, they often have similar incomes to the point where it wouldn’t be worth it to sue.
“you’re claiming that it happens as a matter of course”
In my correction, I said that they get the possibility of spousal support. They still have to use the divorce act to show if they should get it and how much.
First, you show you have the possibility such as proving you,re married or common-law married. Then you use the divorce act to show if and how much you should get. Only three years of cohabitation are required for the first step.
“It’s not like I’m asking for the moon.”
You’re asking me to do case-law research. Have you ever done that? What tools did use? Very few people will do that without getting paid. I’ve already given you a relevant statute and the opinion of the supreme court on the general principles.
“To the last question - yes (…)”
A sacrifice is not required. If there’s been a sacriffice, that would be compensatory alimony. There also exists non-compensatory alimony which is explicitly about giving money to the former spouse irrespective of any sacrifice made. Alimony can be granted if both are working.
To come back to the point of origin: You said that a man should not put himself in a position where he has to pay alimony. You seem to think alimony is only required if the alimony payee has made sacrifices or doesn’t work. That’s not the case; just read the relevant sections of the divorce act and the opinion of the highest court in the land. An individual can put itself in a position where it has to pay alimony even if the payee has made no particular sacrifice and is working.
If you haven’t read my first post in this thread, I detail how it works in Canada.
Except that alimony is not typically 50% of income, nor is it typically infinite.
There is a reason we need judges for divorces: marriage is a complicated relationship and we can’t just have cookie-cutter rules to cover divorces. This thread doesn’t pose the question “Are there cases when the concept of alimony is misapplied?” The thread is asking if there is every any justification for any amount of alimony under any circumstances, or is the basic concept outdated and sexist.
I don’t think it’s outdated and sexist. I think there are occasions when compensatory alimony makes sense, and that having it available allows a sort of (very traditional) family structure that is more efficient for a lot of people in the long run.
It would depend on the situation. If the woman has no reasonable chance of quickly getting a job because she stayed home to raise the kids, then alimony makes sense. If she has a good job, then she shouldn’t be granted it.
You’re backtracking. You originally said “if two people spend 20 years both developing a single career, shouldn’t they each be entitled to half of that, as well?”
If you’re no longer arguing that she’s entitled to half, then you have a point.
But so does keepmyheadintheclouds (to whom you were responding). Because if she’s entitled to a level of support that will keep her lifestyle the same, then net-net she gains from the divorce and the husband loses. Because the husband is actually the guy doing the work (in addition to the initial developing of his career). During the marriage, the wife made up for that in other ways, like housekeeping etc. Post-divorce, she gets the same support but needs to do less effort, because she is freed from doing his housekeeping. But the ex-husband has to do the same level of work, and additionally must now do his own housekeeping.
To some extent, that’s the breaks. Obviously you wouldn’t expect a woman to go shopping for her ex-husband. But the point is that the financial aspects are being equalized in isolation, without consideration of the broader picture. When considering the wife’s contributions to her ex-husband’s career, the law says that we consider her housekeeping very important. But when we consider the relative state of the two ex-spouses after marriage, we ignore that the wife will no longer be contributing anything to her ex, and insist that only financial contributions be unchanged.
Fair point. I agree with this position. (Someone has made this point earlier in the thread - possibly you.)
But I think it’s also valid to discuss the actual implementation of alimony at this time, based on the laws on the books, the prevailing legal framework, and actual implementation. As long as we’re clear what is being discussed, we don’t need to be limited by the title of the OP.
Then we have the Community Property States. Which may have been mentioned before–but I didn’t know that the concept originally came from the Visigoths (through Spanish & Mexican law).
But Texas does have alimony pendente lite–temporary alimony until things get sorted out.
The “half” was off the cuff: I should have said “some portion”
But in many cases the work has been done: the law partnership achieved, the residency completed, the client list built. For a lot of professional careers, there is a really steep “effort” curve that levels off. It’s about the point it levels off that people start questioning things like their marriage.
With a restaurant, it’s easier to separate out what the asset is worth from what the labor is worth: presumably the person who works at the restaurant gets and has always gotten a salary that can be separated from the profits of the restaurant itself. For a CPA or a lawyer or doctor or something, it’s harder to assess the continual income generated by having already been established in the field. But again, this is why we have judges and why there shouldn’t be a simple law covering these things.
Fair enough. But half the respondents in this poll seem to think that any alimony under any circumstances is being a gold-digging bitch abusing a poor working man, and I think that’s ridiculous.
MichaelEmouse, I’m not asking you to research case law - a newspaper article would do; famous people often have vastly differing incomes to their spouses and live together for a few years, after all. It’s difficult to discuss this without you providing at least one cite of what you claim happens, happening. That really, really is not asking too much.
All my comments about alimony have been about systems that aren’t insane, like the Canadian system you’re describing is. Although it doesn’t even then sound as though the Canadian system is sexist, just weird.
From what I can see, the people making big bucks as law partners, doctors etc., tend to work long hours including nights, weekends, travel etc. There might be a few who coast here and there, but they would be the exception.