What do you all think of alimony?
IMO only if one person during the marriage had had no income or had voluntarily taken a reduced income to take care of the couples children. Ex. a stay at home mother. If they are 2 adults with careers I say no even if say one person makes substantially more than the other.
I think it’s fair to factor things in like support through graduate or professional school, etc.
It should not be available to anyone married after 1970-something.
It doesn’t have to be “to take care of the children”. I know people who chose to stay at home to take care of a disabled relative, which could even be their spouse’s; others are “stay at home” but actually their spouses’ (more commonly their husbands’, but not necessarily so) secretaries, social organizers, image consultants… there are also careers which are by irregular by definition, and normally a married person will not embark into one of them if they’re not expecting their spouse to be supportive of the sudden changes in income and availability. A relatively common case of breakup is couple which take that step and then it turns out that their relationship can’t stand that kind of rythm.
It’s the last vestige of “Marriage as Prostitution”.
He had to pay and she had to put out.
We now (generally) have defined spousal rape as a thing, so she no longer has to put out, but he still must pay (unless another man decides to hire her).
Let me know when alimony is more commonly awarded to the male in a hetero marriage.
How this is dealt with in gay marriages will say bunches of how progressive we are or are not.
If an agreement between the two people, predicated on the marriage, caused one of them to have no income or less income than he/she otherwise would have, or caused one of them to ditch career prospects, then I think alimony makes total sense and is the only fair response. If the wife gets an offer of a wonderful job in another country, and they decide she should take it even though that means the husband ditching his career altogether, and then they get divorced a few years later, yes, she owes him alimony. He’s unemployed and less employable, entirely because of a decision they made together that was predicated on the marriage. Same if they decide the wife should quit her job to look after their children, and then a few years later they get divorced: she’s unemployed and less employable due to their mutual decision based on the marriage.
If they just happen to have unequal incomes - and would have regardless of whether they’d got married - then no, I don’t believe in alimony. If a stockbroker marries a taxi driver, and the taxi driver keeps on working throughout the marriage (so it hasn’t harmed his/her career in any way) then no, no alimony. The taxi driver is just as employed and just as employable as he/she would have been if they’d never met.
It’s got nothing to do with marriage as prostitution (??). It’s to do with the fact that a couple can make mutual decisions predicated on a marriage - decisions which, if the marriage doesn’t work out, turn out to harm one partner more than the other. Both partners need to assume the risks of that decision and deal with the consequences, intended or unintended.
I disagree with the idea that alimony be awarded if their is a significant disparity in income levels and the spouse with the lower income levels wants to stay at the former standard of living. Unless of course if say one spouse put the other thru college or somehow else helped build their career.
Alimony is extremely difficult to apply fairly. I was divorced 25 years ago and no alimony was awarded long term. I continue to pay simply becuase I know what she deserves. Her main skill was homemaking and being a good wife, Raising the kids put her in a less favorable position of meeting a new mate until she was past the very desirable age. There really is no way for a judge to determine things like this. I don’t think it is fair that a spouse should expect to maintain a lifestyle they have become used to unless their efforts equally contributed to the lifestyle.
I think I’d need to know more about exactly how it is applied in the US. Offhand, some sort of temporary arrangement seems fine. And it’s not always the man paying the woman.
I got alimony from my ex-husband. We had no children and I made more money than he did.
But I was awarded alimony.
The ONLY reason I was awarded alimony is less than a month before he decided to leave, we bought a car together. We had one car and car payments neither of us could afford. He had to pay half the car payments for a car he had committed to (that I kept). And he never got his own lawyer (he also paid for my attorney) and never showed up to court. So I got what I asked for because the judge thought it was completely fair that if he wanted out of the marriage, he should take some responsibility for the joint debt incurred in the marriage. (We also had credit card debt when he left. I cancelled all the cards - which caused him to call and yell and me - and paid them off before the divorce was finalized. Including bills for gifts for his new girlfriend). The judge did not see him as a responsible person, and saw me as one, and felt that a court order for him to pay me alimony was the best way to keep my credit rating intact and make him responsible for the financial commitments he made.
It was for the term of the car loan (3 years) and a couple hundred dollars a month. Although there was no out clause for him in case of my remarriage, he stopped paying me when I remarried and I never chased him (the car was paid off by then).
Why a specific date rather than looking at the circumstances of each case? I know plenty of people who got married after 1970-something who jointly decided that one person should stay home and raise the kids, take care of the house, etc for different reasons- some economic, some for quality-of-life (it’s much easier to work six 12 hour days a week if someone else handling all the details of your personal life) , some because the main earner’s career would make it almost impossible for the other person to build a career (my cousin’s husband worked for IBM and relocated every couple of years-even if she had been a doctor or lawyer it would have been difficult for her to have a career moving to a new state or country every couple of years) , even one or two who did so because the high earner had the sort of position where having a spouse who entertains and sits on the boards of charities is helpful.
People who got married in 1980 and get divorced now have been married for nearly 35 years. Why should two people agree that one should work for pay while the other doesn't ,jointly benefit from living that way for 10 or 15 or 40 years and only one bear the costs of that decision when they divorce?Male and female patterns of employment differ. It is still the case that very few men in the relationship decide to stay at home and look after the kids, while the woman is the primary bread-winner. But in cases like that, the man will get support if the marriage ends.
The application of the law will be tied to the facts of the case. And, in many cases, the man in the relationship tends to work full-time, while the woman is more likely to work part-time or stay-at-home.
If that social pattern ever changes, then the application of the law will change.
I am in a situation where my family is likely to spend some time overseas, and that will have a huge impact on my husband’s current career. If we were to divorce in that circumstance, I would fully expect to pay alimony. If we made that decision together, we should weather to consequences together.
We are not living in the 1950s. People have to take responsibility for their own lives. If you want to give up opportunities for the sake of your spouse get it in writing or accept the fact that you made a bad deal when you get divorced.
OK,but that can be turned around as well. After all , the couple made this deal in a time when alimony was common under these circumstances ( which is everyone up until yesterday-alimony didn’t end in the '70s. The only thing that ended was the expectation that alimony would last either for a lifetime or until remarriage regardless of the length of marriage or the age at divorce.) Seems that if the earning partner were “taking responsibility for his or her own life” he or she could have gone to the spouse and said " I’m agreeing (or asking) that you give up these opportunities. I will also benefit from you giving up these opportunities, but please sign this so I don’t have to pay you alimony if we divorce" or accept the fact that they have to live with the bargain they made to have the spouse stay home and possibly have to pay alimony even if they now feel it was a bad deal . Since after all, when the deal was made it was a possibility that alimony would be granted in the event of a divorce, and earning spouse should have taken that possibility into account when making the deal. That makes a lot more sense than saying that someone who made that deal in 1980 should have predicted that things would be different 35 years later and they would suddenly have to get a job in their 50s after not working for 35 years. If you’re going to make it a specific date, you should make it in the future so that people actually do know what they’re getting into.
Nope. A lot of people would wear pink-coloured glasses when making this decision, and wouldn’t envision (or if they envision it, wouldn’t dare to discuss) separation, an hostile and unsupportive ex-spouse, etc… They wouldn’t sign anything and would be screwed after the divorce.
Threads like this hit a raw spot with me. When my spouse and I enetered into marriage we assumed different roles based on staying together our entire lives. The roll I took over would help me to advance my career and earn more money. The roll she assumed would only hold her back if she was forced to eneter the workplace. We divorced after 20 years and of course I owe her alimony, she earned it.
And you should know that few people are as rational and just as you are. You did the right thing. This has the added bonus of you not enriching a couple of lawyers.
My ex and I had a very different situation than yours but we strived to be fair as well and we remain good friends to this day.
The specific date isn’t important. People have to take responsibility for their own poor decisions, and they are readily avoidable. If you can’t work out these things with your spouse then you shouldn’t be married, the public doesn’t need to burden itself with people’s fairy tale notions of marriage. When people don’t contribute financially in a marriage they need to clearly state what it is they do contribute and what it’s worth.
Good for you, that’s the right thing to do whether or not it’s enforced by law.
And that, in a nutshell, was why I got alimony. The judge felt my ex needed to take some responsibility for his own life and the choices he made. He wasn’t being allowed to walk away with a mortgage (and a house likely to be underwater if I had to pay commission to sell it - and he didn’t have the cash to come up with the difference, it would have been me taking on the debt, probably with a loan from my parents) or walk away from a car loan he had signed only weeks before.
A high earning spouse has to take some responsibility if he (generally he - so we will stick with that) has been part of the choice to let his wife stay home and not develop the ability to earn an income. If the couple had kids, and she stayed home - or back burnered her career to be the primary parent, she made income potential sacrifices for THEIR mutual children. And probably with at least his complicient agreement - if it wasn’t the outright case I have in my current and happy marriage where I was the primary parent by voiced agreement - we both agreed I wouldn’t climb the ladder so one of us could be available for orthodontist appointments. Without the kids, I’d have taken promotions, worked longer hours, and probably ended up with a similar career trajectory to his.
Now, I retained a pretty good career, and if my husband were to leave, I’d be due for a few years of child support yet, but I wouldn’t expect alimony. On the other hand, even though he earned more money than I did, I’d expect fully half of the marital assets - it was me not being “dedicated to my career” and taking the kids to the doctor and picking them up when they were sick and staying home when they had a day off that allowed him to work 60 hour weeks and spend two weeks at a time overseas.