Alimony is unfair and immoral. Prove me wrong.

glad we could agree on that

but then we disagree again, if she is living with a new provider, the alimony should end, the ex should never have to support his ex's new boyfriend

 

Depends on the wealth of the family. I associate with PLENTY of wealthy, stay at home moms, and if you think they're contributing all that much, you're NUTS. They don't clean. They hire people for that. They don't cook all that much. They have food delivered most nights. Some don't bother picking the kids up from school. Nannies. They don't have jobs. So, hypothetically, if the husband is pulling in 6000k+, what exactly is the wife doing to contribute to the salary he is earning in this sort of set-up, which isn't all that rare? HE's literally paying for everything. So what has SHE contributed, besides taking care of the kids for a couple of hours a day, which often is debatable since the Nanny is live-in or there most of the time the kids are home?

 

If nothing else, providing companionship. Depending on his business, having a young, attractive wife can be a status symbol or even a marketing tool. Perhaps she is managing the household -- handling those nannies, etc.

And what you don't know is what else she might be doing. Maybe she provides good advice on various aspects of his life. Maybe she helps him dress well. Maybe she's the social glue that plays a key part in his networking.

Further, maybe in order for her to be available to meet his professional and personal needs, he prohibited her from doing things that could have increased her independent earning power.

Each marriage tends to be unique and complex. Do we really want divorce courts to get involved in extended debates over who contributed what to the marriage, and try to value those contributions in financial terms? I sure don't. That's just a ticket to contentious, drawn-out, expensive divorce cases.

Instead, the court does the rational thing: assumes every marriage is a partnership, with formulas and guidelines for things like alimony and child support.

In terms of alimony, it's related to the length of the marriage. Married for one year? Not much, if any, alimony. Married for 20 years? Probably alimony for life. The amount of the alimony is related to the relative earning power of each spouse. If a spouse COULD work but chooses not to, that doesn't get much sympathy. But if one spouse's earning power is substantially lower than the other, they will likely get alimony if the marriage was long enough.

A friend of ours recently got divorced after 20+ years of marriage. She was laid off from her sales job during the recession, and was unable to find a comparable job despite sending out hundreds of resumes. She now works two part-time jobs, which combine to be close to full-time hours, but pay far less than her previous job.

Her husband, who makes three times what she makes, didn't want to pay any alimony, and insisted she could make more if she wanted to. He made her meet with a career assessor, whose job is to ascertain what someone's earning power is.

The assessor basically rejected her husband's claim, and the subsequent mediation resulted in an alimony order. As it should have.

All that was based solely on the length of the marriage and the relative earning power of the spouses.

There was no need to get into the details of who did what -- lucky for the husband, as it would have shown what a dick he is, and how the ONLY thing he contributed to the household was money. But doing so would have cost another $10,000 or more in lawyer fees, plus dragged the divorce out and made it even more acrimonious. Current divorce law, at least in Minnesota, wisely avoids all that.

 

men should know better not to get married by now. Specially in the U.S, where marrige has become a business for many women, with the complicity of courts.

 

You're talking a different thing than what I think about as a stay at home Mom. You're talking about the rich, not the upper middle class, with a husband making $100k a year, not being able to afford nannies, etc.

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Men (and women) are better off economically and healthwise if they marry. The thing is to choose the right woman. The main difference these days between the comfortable middle class and the poor is that the middle class still marries and raises children as couples.

 

Why do you think that would be a good idea?

 

Nobody should pay anybody for being their spouse.

 

What about child support?

 

Child support is not alimony. It should go to supporting the child not the former spouse.

 

They aren't. they are being paid for no longer being their spouse. I agree that the need for alimony is far less today than in prior generations, where women's legal and cultural access to financial independence within the marriage was stymied. There was a time when married women had trouble opening up their own bank account in their own name, getting loans and access to decent paying jobs and skills was inconsistent compared to their make counterparts. The house and stocks were always sitting in his name, with a life insurance benefit as her only lifeline. A woman married for 25 years who had absolutely no work history beyond raising kids, no savings, no job skills was at the complete mercy of her husband. It was hard to even access the funds for the attorney to fight for property rights before the mid seventies.

Nowadays those are rare cases.

 

Well alimony isn't just for women. That would be discrimination on the basis of sex. I still don't think you should support your spouse after you broke off your marriage.

 

Are you saying that child support can sometimes go to supporting the former spouse?

 

"Married women" as in those who you mentioned later who have been married for 25 years? I assume that there was nothing about simply being married which made it difficult for women in the past.

 

Re-read the post and you won't get the answer to your question make sure you read every word in it.

 

The problems start before that wedding because the gender roles and the discriminatory practices started before that wedding. But the earning and saving power of women gets worse as time moves along unless they stay in the job market which was discouraged. Banks had double standards in their policies as much as employers did. It was often difficult to establish your own credit history, or get accounts in your own name if you were 'Mrs Smith' for any length of time. He had his own savings accounts. She could not. He could get a personal loan based on his income. She could not because she had none. He had the collateral the cars and house in his name of at best jointly. She did not. He filed the taxes, knew the accountant. He dealt with the family lawyer, she did not know his name. The pension was in his name, the stocks and bonds as well. he could cancel her credit card. She could not cancel his.

So now she needs a job.... look at her resume. She watched Suzie and Johnnie, she was a member of the bridge club, and was on the library board. She had secretarial skills that were great in 1962... and then there was that summer waitress job through high school...

 

Well, alimony is okay if one spouse works hard to help the other, and then the person who helped decides that maybe divorce is preferable.

If my wife and I got divorced, I don't know how it would work because our lives are so intertwined, but I'd feel betrayed because I spent so many years helping her, just as she's helped me. It might seem like it's perfectly fair to just let her leave me, but I wouldn't see it like that. We've been married for 30 years, and if one of us wanted to get divorced, that's got to come with a penalty.

Our lives are far too intertwined for one to just pick up and leave without any repercussions.

 

Alimony is particularly appropriate when one spouse works two jobs so that the other can go to school, get a doctorate and make huge dollars and then dumps the other from some fresh young ass within a few years after the student loan is paid.

 

There's that, but also the idea that you've spent years in a relationship, and then BLAM!!!

I think I've mentioned my lesbian sister before. She has had numerous dalliances with girls experiencing their first female-to-female relationships, and I remember vividly one girlfriend of hers who showed up with three kids in tow, and her husband and father of her three kids coming back home after work to find a letter on the dining room table that read "Dear John..." and then he got hit with alimony and child support payments!!!!!

Neither of those should have even been a conversation because she is the one who left!!!!

If you leave, then forget it. You leave and that's the end of it, and we can fight over who gets to keep the kids.

 

Well for one thing, he can't just take her back. They are divorced and she doesn't have to go back.Number two, like my mother who had six of us kids, never worked outside of the home. If she had divorced my Dad, or my Dad wanted to divorce her, how would she be able to support herself with no skill? When a woman stays home and raises the kids, does all the house work and cooks the meals she isn't getting money for nothing. That's a full time job.



Now her is another. I was married to my wife for 38 years. She came into a lot of money, a little over $400,000.00 and then told me she didn't want to be married anymore. This about 5 months after I had given her Daughter around $20,000 dollars to help her out with bills while she was off work for medical problems. At the time, all I had was $27,000.00. Well, she got the divorce, gave me the house and she went and bought a much nicer house. Although she only put down 20%. on it. I also got $500.00 a month for the rest of my life as alimony. Would it be unfair for me to get alimony from her? We are both retired. I have a small pension she has two pensions plus her 401-K. I used half of my pension to pay off this home..

 

I call it "vaginamoney".

 

If you think that's bad, I can top all of these. Friend of mine is a starving artist. His wife, a doctor making six figures, divorced him and got alimony and child support payments from him. Because he had no income, he was ordered to sign up for Social Security payments early, and all of it goes to her and then some. He lives in a one room, hole in the wall apartment while she lives in their luxury home on the California coast.

 

How the hell is that happening? I can understand why he has to pay child support, but why does he have to pay alimony when he is the one earning less money?

 

See post #4 for a rather detailed explanation why...

 

As he tells it, she accused him of being the reason they went from $500K up to being broke, and since she earned the money in the first place, she felt like she was entitled to some compensation, and I guess the judge agreed. I don't even understand why he would have to pay child support since she was the primary breadwinner anyway.

 

Actually it's divorce that's bad. This is just a symptom of that.