I don’t know much about divorce law. I have read enough about the music business to know that platinum albums don’t automatically mean riches but Nas has been a platinum selling artist since 1994. Kelis has a music career in her own right though definitely not as successful as Nas.
So my questions to the Dope: Is $55,000/month outrageous?* Should Kelis be working on another album? Should Nas just bite the bullet? How does this differ from regular people divorces? Please discuss.
*One commenter on another website: Is the baby going to daycare in a G5?
I’ll tell you the response right now: the child is entitled to the lifestyle s/he would have had if the parents hadn’t split up. A way for Nas to avoid this is to have joint custody and have the child spend an equal amount of time with him and Kelis. But damn, makes me wish I’d have the foresight to be impregnated by a rapper or NBA star. That’s a hell of a lot of money right there.
The child is entitled to a certain percentage of the parent’s income. They are talking about this money as if it is a gift to the Mother. This is the child’s money, and shoudl be spent on the child or saved for the child’s future.
The assumptions being made by these guys about how the money will be used are unfortunate.
It’s what the law says, because the law looks at a percentage of your monthly income. If $55,000/mo. is 17% of what Nas makes in a month, that’s what Kelis gets, even if it seems excessive to the rest of us peons, because that’s the formula created (in NYS, anyway) for figuring out what the child is entitled to.
There should be a cap on that. A wealthy person does not necessarily spend 17% of their income on their child in a normal situation. There is no reason why they should get 55000 a month. What if NAS fell out of favor and stopped making that much? What if he wants to invest his money as a businessman? 17% makes sense at a much lower income but not at an income like that. In this case I think **Kelis** wants to keep living the lifestyle that she's used to. Do you think she's going to spend 55k per year on that kid? I doubt it.
Video highlight from about 3:20, the two speakers are discussing how courts are biased against fathers, and always find in favor of mothers in child support disputes:
Wait, let me get this straight. He thinks that since MEN make the laws, they should be able to slant them in their favor?
This article at myfamilylaw.com says the award is temporary until divorce is final. The award is combined spousal and child support.
Every time a high profile divorce comes up you always get the ‘it doesn’t cost that much to raise kids’ commentary. And the ex-wife is accused of living off the kids’ money. Is that characterization mostly out of line?
One has to wonder why Kelis, a successful recording artist in her own right, is entitled to spousal support. I know plenty of women of lesser means who do not get spousal support. Like I said, if Nas really doesn’t want to pay that much, he could have joint custody and spend equal time with his child. Spousal support does not last forever.
How can we know? The thing is, the costs of housing, utilities, food, transportation, telephone, etc., are all part of the costs of raising a child, even though the mother benefits from them too. This is outside the costs exclusive to the child. How much would Nas have paid for those things if he and Kelis were still together? Is the child entitled to have the same lifestyle he would have had if Nas and Kelis hadn’t separated? That’s why the amounts are so high, because Nas’ income must be that high, and the premise behind these child support awards are that the child should not have his lifestyle diminished because his parents split up.
I am not saying if I think the $55,000 is right or not, because I have no idea what Nas and Kelis’ lifestyles are, how much he makes, if or why she deserves spousal support, etc. I’m just giving you the rationale for the award, presumably.
The child being 3 days old is not used to lifestyle anything. Kelis is used to lifestyle stuff. She want’s her 660,000 a year for the spa and expensive cars and big houses.
Did she call you up and tell you that? Did you read anything I wrote? There’s a legal rationale behind the court’s award, and I think I offered it pretty succinctly. You can offer your uninformed opinion as to what Kelis deserves, but I think the court uses some more objective criteria than you are.
I can’t believe I’m in the position of defending Kelis here, because honestly, I don’t really care all that much either way. Bottom line, none of us has the facts, and the law is pretty clear on these matters. Anything we say about what she does and does not “deserve” or what she plans to spend the money on is pure speculation. The law’s rationale is that the child should enjoy the same lifestyle he would have enjoyed if his parents hadn’t split up. The fact that he has not yet begun to enjoy that lifestyle does not change a damn thing.
Rubystreak The law is irrelevant to my opinion. I am able to have an opinion that contradicts the law. I know you enjoy belittling people with your legal opinions, as you do it A LOT, but it’s just not relevant. You’re using it as a bludgeon and not to make a cogent argument.
I am not required to agree with the law just because it’s the law. I am sorry that this is such a baffling concept for you.
It’s the law that’s bludgeoning and belittling your opinion, not me. Don’t kill the messenger. You are claiming knowledge that you don’t have: what Kelis plans on spending the money on. How can you possibly know that? Such assumptions don’t have any basis in fact, and deserve to be held in lower regard than, you know, actual facts, which is what the court presumably uses to determine the award.
You’re not required to do anything, but this is GD. The OP asked a question, and I tried to answer it factually. You are certainly allowed to think that $55,000 a month is outrageous. It’s a lot of money, no doubt about it, and I’m not sure what I think of it, because I have no idea what went into determining that figure. Where I think you go off the rails is where you claim to know Kelis’ mind. You don’t. You also refuse to examine the rationale behind the award, and turn straight to bashing Kelis with assumptions. It gets old, the knee-jerking, it really does.
I have read fewer idiotic statements on the message board. This is definitely one of the biggest. I didn’t claim any knowledge I don’t have. I posited an opinion. I am sorry that your vaunted knowledge of the law doesn’t award you even the most basic of reading comprehension. Shame on you as a school teacher you should be able to read better than that.
My opinion is based entirely in the facts.
Infants do not require $ 55k per month.
3 days is not enough to get used to a ‘lifestyle’
Your masturbation to your own knowledge of the law is just irrelevant crap. I don’t NEED to know the ins and outs of divorce law to know that 1 and 2 are absolutely empirically and objectively true.
The OP asked a question of OPINION. I understand the rationale behind the award perfectly. Your legal explanation is not something I disagree with, but the fact that you have an inflexible intellect you often have to resort to arguing tactically rather than actually discussing the issue. YOU chose to belittle my opinion. “The Law belittles your opinion.”, is one of the biggest lines of bullshit I’ve ever heard.
You just have an ego need to be superior on this issue so you rely on your issue of the law, which while relevant to the OP is not a relevant response to what I said.
Bottom line, anyone seeking that kind of reward for a 3 day old is seeking it for THEIR lifestyle concerns and not the lifestyle concerns of the infant, who has never had any lifestyle concerns. Just because the law affirms Kelis’s lifestyle choices doesn’t make it any more about the child’s lifestyle needs than anything else. As you and I both know $ 55k per YEAR would raise a child in a comfortably middle-class lifestyle.
So while the legal mechanisms operate based on certain a priori assumptions, such as 17% of wages are a reasonable expectation for child support, that doesn’t impact the reality that an infant doesn’t REQUIRE that to have a comfortable lifestyle.
So you can continue to say, “The law this and the law that.”, be my guest, I never argued one whit against your knowledge of the law. If you need to pretend that I did to feel superior to someone, be my guest, feel superior to me all that you want. I know it’s pretentious bullshit but that need not matter to you.
Well, that’s obviously bullshit, or you’re not reading much on the boards.
Thanks so much for bringing my profession into this as a basis for your totally unwarranted ad hominem attack on me. Very much uncalled for and out of line. You ARE claiming knowledge you don’t have. You said, “She want’s her 660,000 a year for the spa and expensive cars and big houses.” You don’t know what she’s going to spend the money on, and you claim that you do, so that you can bash her.
For someone ridiculing the reading comprehension of others, you didn’t do a very good job of distinguishing “fact” and “opinion.” The court does not decide the award based on the minimum amount of money the baby needs. It bases it on Nas’ income, period. If $55,000 is 17% of his income, that’s what the baby gets, regardless of what he needs. No one said anything about getting used to a lifestyle. It’s not about that. It’s the fact that the kid is entitled to have the lifestyle he would have had if his parents split up. Why is this so hard for you to understand?
Your opinion on this matter is irrelevant, and your ad hominem attacks are fucking ridiculous. This is not the Pit. Maybe you should just Pit me, since you are carrying grudges over from other threads, apparently.
Your opinion is based on your bias. I don’t actually HAVE an opinion, I was just giving the OP some insight into why the court might have made such a large award. Your anger here is misplaced, entirely. Grind your personal axe with me somewhere else.
The rest of this I’m snipping because I’m tired of you. Really fucking tired.
The LAW is belittling me? Seriously, it’s a pretty stupid thing to say.
Yes, I did say that. What does that have to do with your knowledge of the law that you are trying to showcase? The point was not about spas and cars but about lifestyle. There is a certain point where extra income becomes entirely about lifestyle, that should be obvious to EVERY thinking creature.
Yeah, I understand that. So tell me again why you continue to argue a point I never disagreed with as though I disagreed with it? I’m having trouble understanding why someone so brilliant as you would continue to do such a thing. It’s not difficult to understand your point about the law, I never disputed it but you are acting like I did.
It’s time to ask for a cite. Please show me where I made any comment about the legality of the money she is asking for.
I am carrying grudges over from other threads? That’s rich.
Then why are you so vociferously arguing against my opinion? Is this another one of those instances where we don’t actually passionately disagree, you just want me to say that you’re right?
Ok, as it regards the law, you’re PROBABLY right, but as I am not up to speed on divorce law I cannot conclude definitively. ;p
Then why did you start in with me? I didn’t disagree with a word you said and then you started defending your points as though I was arguing with you. If you’re so tired why did you pick a fight?
I think your opinion on this matter is pretty stupid. You’re arguing against a court order of support, so yeah, you’re arguing against the law, not me.
Why is this about me? Why are you making it about me? And you know what? I’m the one who said that the child is entitled to a lavish lifestyle. Yes, he is. If he would be living in a posh home, wearing ridiculously expensive clothes, being driven around in Maybachs, if his parents were still together, then he’s entitled to that even if they split up. The fact that his mother gets to enjoy these things too is irrelevant.
Did I make totally unwarranted personal attacks against you in this thread? Or did I just disagree with your opinion?
I posted to this thread first. Your post replied to my comment about lifestyle. Thus, if you read for comprehension, you will see that it was YOU, in fact, who started an argument with me. But I will leave it for the mods to decide.
Nope, I never said the law isn’t that, I just said I don’t agree with the law. I also think that pot should be legal, another opinion that contradicts the law of the land. So because pot is illegal does that make my opinion on pot, ‘wrong’?
You made it about you, not me. So if you think he deserves a lavish lifestyle then say that, disagree with me, but stop with the underhanded straw men. I never once disputed your knowledge of divorce law. Do you think an infant enjoys riding around in a Maybach more than a Mazda? Kelis has a successful singing career. If she drives around in a Maybach then it’s about HER enjoyment, and not the child’s.
Yes you started in about my knowledge of the law, which is irrelevant to what I said. I never said that the law isn’t what it is, only that I disagreed with it, as YOU presented it.
Right, so I guess that means you OWN the thread right?
But hey, as far as the mods go, you’re the one who sent PMs talking nasty shit about my daughter, not me. I think any case for harassment will be pretty easy to prove in this case. So please, keep on harassing me.
The reasoning behind this goes something like this. In a society marriage and family are the solid stable “rocks” upon which society rests.
When you divorce you disturb this, therefore the law has to step in and do for the child what the parents failed to do.
This is why for instance a court can order the parents to pay for a child’s college education when the child is a product of divorce but the court can’t order it if the child’s parents are still married.
The court said “the disruption of marriage is a break in society. The best way to compensate for this break, is to give the child a leg up to get over that stigma of coming from a broken home. In this case a college education would overcome that stigma.”
That is how the law viewed that. Of course now-a-days there is no stigma anymore about coming from a broken home, but the laws or rather the court opinions never changed.
It’s similar to states which still have laws that state, a child’s father is presumed to be the husband of the woman who gave birth to it. The reason behind that law was it’s in society’s best interest to have a complete and not “broken” home.
Of course back then it was hard to establish paternity. Now it is easy to establish if one is the real father or not. But the laws have yet to be changed in a lot of cases