# Should Victims of Adultery Be Favoured? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 9, 2011, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817 "2011-06-09T02:35:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Candyman74](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Candyman74](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Candyman74)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/21 "2011-06-09T12:30:34Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > In a divorce proceedings which happen due to adultery on the part of one of the spouses should the spouse who is the victim of the adultery be favoured-by for instance being given custody of the children or being given all the joint income? Custody or lack thereof is not a reward or punishment for one’s behaviour in a relationship. It’s not a prize. It is an action deemed best for the children. That should be the sole criteria. One might be able to make a case that certain adulterous situations are more damaging to the kids than the million other factors involved in their well-being, but it would be balanced up against everything. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/22 "2011-06-09T12:38:23Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Not necessarily. One may well rationalize a discreet affair as being a commitment to the keeping the family together for the sake of the kids if the alternative is to break up and do the shared custody rigamarole (and all the bullshit that comes with that - even if it’s the most peaceful of sharings, it’s still hugely annoying to the kids at best). The old “I cheated to save the marriage” excuse. You need to let your spouse in on this little decision you’ve made so that they can make their own corresponding decisions. If the sex is dead and you want to have sex with other people, you need to find a way to do that in a way that everyone agrees with. Maybe your spouse would also love the chance to get it on with someone else. Or maybe the would find the idea totally unacceptable. Then you get to choose if the trust/companionship/whatever is worth the absence of sex and act accordingly. But it’s not okay make a major unilateral decision without at least the courtesy of informing your spouse. I really don’t find any good excuses for adults who show a lack of backbone. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/23 "2011-06-09T13:17:22Z")
Another one who says children are not a prize to be given to the parent that has worked the hardest! And actually you really have no guarantee that people who have cheated on their partners are not excellent parents. I know you say the mere act of cheating means they are not but I don’t agree…I think we should stick with no-fault divorce anyway. The state has no business punishing people for something that is not illegal. Just deal with who keeps the kids and who pays for them - whatever living situation is best. ---
**Author:** ![DianaG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ab992/32.png) [@DianaG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DianaG)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/24 "2011-06-09T13:37:04Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > simple cheating shows a certain lack of commitment to the family. Divorce doesn’t exactly demonstrate a commitment to the family either. Remember kids, it’s not cheating that ends marriages. It’s\* getting caught\*. ---
**Author:** ![Death\_of\_Rats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a6a055/32.png) [@Death\_of\_Rats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Death_of_Rats)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/25 "2011-06-09T14:42:06Z")
> [@BunnyTVS](#): > > But is it more or less damaging than physical abuse? > > Hypothetical. Wife regularly gets drunk and beats, burns, scalds husband. Husband feels unable to leave relationship due to fear/humiliation. Husband finally breaks down at work and tells all to a co-worker. He and CW become closer and closer as he opens up to them. > > 6 months pass and husband and CW progress beyond friendship. He tells his wife he’s going on a training seminar over the weekend, but really he’s spending it at CW’s. Wife gets suspicious, follows him, and catches him in the act with his CW. Promptly files for divorce. > > What do you think now? > > What if it was their first time together? There is no difference in your hypothetical that defends the adultery. If the marriage is that broken, then the guy owes it to himself and his wife and CW to grow a pair and end the marriage. In this case, the end result is the same he just made it that much worse for himself and his CW, whom he has dragged into the middle of his problems. ---
**Author:** ![miss\_elizabeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/838e76/32.png) [@miss\_elizabeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/miss_elizabeth)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/26 "2011-06-09T16:31:24Z")
Like many of the other posters, I agree that singling out adultery for special condemnation during divorce proceedings isn’t really in anyone’s best interest. Another thing that hasn’t been brought up, though, is how much more contentious this could make the proceedings. You could create a situation where there are all kinds of accusations flying around. What is adultery? Do you have to have sex? What about kissing? Oral sex? A long close friendship one spouse didn’t reveal to the other? What if you text dirty pictures to someone but never met them in person? What if there was an affair years ago, but the other spouse took them back? What if both spouses cheated? Do we decide based on who had the longer affair? Ah, but a long term affair shows commitment; maybe a one night fling is more damning? Who decides? The entire process is awful enough. It is a very rare thing for a marriage to end and one side is 100% at fault. Adultery is certainly wrong, but people do a lot of shitty things in a marriage. I think holding adultery out for special condemnation would create more problems than it solves (actually, I’m not sure it solves any problems at all; I certainly can’t think of any.). ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/27 "2011-06-09T17:00:01Z")
Favored, absolutely. Favored to the extent of full custody and “all joint income”? Hell no. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/28 "2011-06-09T17:06:54Z")
> [@miss\_elizabeth](#): > > Like many of the other posters, I agree that singling out adultery for special condemnation during divorce proceedings isn’t really in anyone’s best interest. Another thing that hasn’t been brought up, though, is how much more contentious this could make the proceedings. You could create a situation where there are all kinds of accusations flying around. What is adultery? Do you have to have sex? What about kissing? Oral sex? A long close friendship one spouse didn’t reveal to the other? What if you text dirty pictures to someone but never met them in person? What if there was an affair years ago, but the other spouse took them back? What if both spouses cheated? Do we decide based on who had the longer affair? Ah, but a long term affair shows commitment; maybe a one night fling is more damning? Who decides? > > The entire process is awful enough. It is a very rare thing for a marriage to end and one side is 100% at fault. Adultery is certainly wrong, but people do a lot of shitty things in a marriage. I think holding adultery out for special condemnation would create more problems than it solves (actually, I’m not sure it solves any problems at all; I certainly can’t think of any.). I agree, and will go further: assigning fault or blame is absolutely certain to render the proceedings longer and more expensive (not to mention more traumatic for all involved). While in absolute terms it would be more fair for the person more “at fault” (whether defined by adultery or some more inclusive metric of “fault”) do worse financially out of divorce than otherwise if this could be determined in a perfect world, in practical terms the cost of determining that fairness will not be worth it - unlike the average run of litigants, this is a situation in which absolutely no-one is very likely to take a reasonable position, so litigation will in many cases be prolonged, acrimonious and waged without regard to compromise. Chances are that the difference in award will all be eaten up by legal fees - how many spouses in divorce are willing to out and out admit _they_ were ‘in the wrong’? ---
**Author:** ![Skammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skammer/32/143_2.png) [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/29 "2011-06-09T17:09:34Z")
I agree that adultery should be taken into consideration, but it should not be a litmus test for things like child custody. A cheated-upon spouse could easily be a really lousy parent; I can imagine scenarios in which it’s better for the children to be raised by the adulterous parent as un-ideal as that would be. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/30 "2011-06-09T17:22:04Z")
> [@Skammer](#): > > I A cheated-upon spouse could easily be a really lousy parent; I can imagine scenarios in which it’s better for the children to be raised by the adulterous parent as un-ideal as that would be. Right. I imagine alcoholics and drug addicts get cheated on pretty often. Of course I’m sure the cheaters are often alcoholics and addicts themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Candyman74](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Candyman74](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Candyman74)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/31 "2011-06-09T17:22:46Z")
> [@Death\_of\_Rats](#): > > There is no difference in your hypothetical that defends the adultery. If the marriage is that broken, then the guy owes it to himself and his wife and CW to grow a pair and end the marriage. That’s a very, very black-and-white view of domestic abuse. There’s a reason many women, for example, don’t end abusive relationships. Standing there and condemning someone for not doing so is easy to do from the sidelines. And in this example, given that the wife in the example is a dunken, violent individual, and that the husband’s main flaw is that he was “too weak” to end it, I’d say that all other things being equal the adulterer should get custody. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/32 "2011-06-09T18:55:28Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Adultery is emotional abuse in a lot of circumstances not to mention its unfair. Adultery is a lot more complicated than you think it is. I’ve never cheated on my wife and never will, but long before we were married I was the Other Man more than a few times, and the situation is [del]frequently[/del] invariably more complicated than the woman being horny and untrustworthy. Sometimes a spouse (of either gender) may drive the other person away emotionally but not separate. Sometimes there are circumstances pulling both members of a couple apart. Sometimes the cheater is a perfect shit; sometimes the person being cheated on is the shit; sometimes the adulterous abettor is the asshole. The world is not black & white and never has been. That’s why Jesus counseled mercy for the woman the Pharisees wanted him to condemn. ---
**Author:** ![DiosaBellissima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a8b319/32.png) [@DiosaBellissima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DiosaBellissima)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/33 "2011-06-09T19:08:52Z")
I think the difficulty comes in with how you define adultery. I know of married people (heck, I know folks on this very board have said they are in such a relationship) where one is disinterested in sex and gives their partner permission to have sex outside the marriage. But what happens if, when the divorce rolls around, the partner who originally gave permission decides to help their case by saying that their spouse had an affair, not a permitted relationship? Beyond that, though, I think this all goes back to the first thing I said: how are we defining adultery? A very thorough 10 second Google search 😉 seems to indicate that “adultery” is usually defined just as one partner having sex with someone outside the marriage. Far from a legal definition, I’ll grant you, but that’s an important jumping off point in this discussion, because in the scenario I presented, even if the person had permission, they’re still having sex with someone outside of their marriage and, definitionally speaking, committing adultery. Should their spouse still be favored in that situation? Granted all of the money? ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/34 "2011-06-09T20:28:52Z")
Two thoughts, which may have already been covered: 1. Adultery is by far not the worst thing that one can do to their marriage partner. Why single it out? 2. My understanding is that the primary motivation for no-fault divorce law was the relatively high difficulty of proving malfeasance on the part of one or both partners to a degree that would make it ethically valid to come down upon one side or the other in a punitive way. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/35 "2011-06-09T20:33:15Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > Two thoughts, which may have already been covered: > > 1. Adultery is by far not the worst thing that one can do to their marriage partner. Why single it out? In certain archaic religious systems, adultery was a crime worth executing for, at least if it was a woman cheating on her husband and thus violating his “right” to control his “property.” In such systems, some things worse than adultery – a man giving his wife a black eye, broken rib, or other injuries short of death – were giving a bye. ---
**Author:** ![Candyman74](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Candyman74](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Candyman74)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/36 "2011-06-09T20:35:14Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > In certain archaic religious systems, adultery was a crime worth executing for, at least if it was a woman cheating on her husband and thus violating his “right” to control his “property.” In such systems, some things worse than adultery – a man giving his wife a black eye, broken rib, or other injuries short of death – were giving a bye. We’re not talking about certain archaic religious systems, though. And we’re talking about custody, nit stoning. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/37 "2011-06-09T20:38:11Z")
> [@Candyman74](#): > > We’re not talking about certain archaic religious systems, though. And we’re talking about custody, nit stoning. My point is that the attitude that adultery is so incredibly bad lingers. Please don’t mistake this for me saying adultery is in any way a good thing. It’s quite destructive. But **Qin’s** notion that it is so bad as to trump all other considerations in a divorce proceeding (assuming he actually thinks that) is, I daresay, the descendant of Old Testament notions about maritial fidelity. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/38 "2011-06-09T21:45:22Z")
One has to think that society as a whole derives a lot of benefit from the courts NOT getting involved in he said/she said arguments, and simply ordering a 50/50 split of assets. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/39 "2011-06-09T21:46:12Z")
> [@gatorslap](#): > > No. I’m definitely all for no-fault divorce. If you are cheated on, you still choose whether to leave or not. Plus, adultery is often a symptom of other problems in the relationship. And it’s entirely possible that both spouses cheated but only one admitted it / left proof. > > Only if you are a victim of domestic abuse should you be given any preferential treatment IMO. Any sort of abuse, or just physical? > [@Marley23](#): > > Right. I imagine alcoholics and drug addicts get cheated on pretty often. **Of course I’m sure the cheaters are often alcoholics and addicts themselves.** How do you figure that the sentence I bolded is true? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817/40 "2011-06-09T23:11:36Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > How do you figure that the sentence I bolded is true? Because I expect it’s not uncommon for one addict to end up in a relationship with another. I’m not saying it happens all the time or most of the time, just that it is not rare. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-victims-of-adultery-be-favoured/584817.md?page=3)