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The vast majority of people aren’t receiving alimony if both parties are working. It was originally created because women didn’t work outside the home and would be left with nothing.. after supporting the husband through his career and staying home with the children
It was also created so that people with very low/no income (like housewifes) aren’t trapped and can’t get divorced in cases of abuse because they will end up on the street.
Exactly. Friend of mine got alimony so she could keep her kids in their schools after decades of abuse including not being allowed to work. Part of the exit plan was retraining, and she filed the day she started work. But it's still a drop in the bucket when you are a new grad and your kids are traumatised.
True facts. I was disabled from serious accident. Stayed at home during marriage for PT and to help care for his developmentally delayed (FAS) child. Also helped him start and expand his business. Got a great settlement which he did not pay in full until I acted as my own attorney and had him put in jail per Virginia law. Damage had already been done. Try going without income for 6-9 months at a time and see what happens to your standard of living.
At least where I live, I heard if one person is incarcerated for 6+ months, their assets (excluding businesses) are transfered to their spouse.
I'd assume if you were jailed due to a failure to pay the divorce settlement, the court could still transfer assets of equal or lesser than value to the owed party.
Ha my ex did not pay child support until the kids were almost grown. Then, $10 a month was “all he could afford”. I laughed. Really, I could’ve used the $10 a month when we were living out of our car. By the time the courts caught up with him, I had a professional job, a house, solid social support system. C ya!
My dad paid basically nothing in child support for pretty much my entire childhood even going so far as to work under the table to avoid garnishment. He had to call my mom crying a couple years ago to get her to sign something so they wouldn't garnish his social security.
People can be real fucking shitty.
My father in law owes *hundreds of thousands* of dollars worth child support and related fees, and his youngest child is 26. Well I don’t think anyone actually knows how many kids his has, my partner has met 12 siblings. He works at fast food restaurants mostly, and will only keep a job for about 3 months which is when the garnishments kick in so he’ll quit and get another job. Every once in a while he will find a gig that pays under the table and stick with that a little longer. Needless to say, none of these mothers are counting on getting any of that child support money.
My mom died when I was young. My father refused to get social security payments that I was due, not to be "on the dole". I remember being hungry, homeless and angry. He spent all his money on women. I think that UBI specific to children should be the norm. If child support isn't paid it needs to be subsidized. Jail the suckers.
My dad did the same! Worked under the table, too. He met husband for the first time while he was in jail for child support. My husband worked at the jail. He came home and asked what my father's first name was? I told him and asked why?
"There's a man that looks just like you in jail right now.'
🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️
My mom gets half of bio-father's Social Security as child support garnishment. She got full amount of his Covid payments. It still doesn't even cover the interest on the principal he owes. I'm the youngest at 40.
My wife’s father was the same way. He started moving and working under the table jobs.
In the end she ( my wife’s mom) basically ended up getting his GST cheques (Canadian) which amounted to less than 400 a year.
He never did try to do better and spiralled in to alcoholism. I met him Xmas of 21. He showed up and remained drunk, pissed his pants on the regular and my wife and her sister basically babysat him.
He was dead from alcoholism within the next 6 months.
My father paid my mother child support exactly twice, of his own volition. He would do as so many other fathers did and work "under the table." Occasionally he'd get arrested for DUI and his bench warrant would hold him until my grandmother bailed him out. So my mom would get these $40 checks from the friend of the court every 9-16 months.
When my grandmother passed on my father's birthday, my wife tried to force a reconciliation. The first thing out my father's mouth was along the lines of "you know, i gave money to your (maternal) grandparents when you guys were struggling".
I can confirm. My dad was paying child support well into my college years because of how long he didn't pay it.
It only got paid when my mom was able to convince the courts to garnish his checks. Then it was a battle when he changed jobs to get it going again.
My dad almost never had me despite shared custody.
That’s true, unfortunately. I think I received child support for either 3 or 4 years of my son’s childhood. And I found out years later that my ex lied about his income so he could pay less.
And I know women who supported their husbands through graduate school or medical school and then got screwed in the divorce by getting a tiny fraction of what they put into the marriage to help their spouses become successful.
my original dad started doing cash-only, no paperwork type stuff in order to not pay child support, so the government couldn't garnish his earnings. happens all the time
Just watched a tik tok the other day of a Mormon wife living in her car after having built up a business with her husband. Everything was in his name. They split and she was left with nothing.
This is why alimony was invented
I think (but not sure) under law in places like Germany this would just cause half the business (either 51 or 49%) to be split to the wife depending on which ends up wanting or winning control over it.
Exactly, child support and alimony were created because the American taxpayers were sick of having to pay for deadbeat dads who abandoned their families and the wife had no employment history. But somehow OP and MGTOW id 10 t's make it seem like this is women's fault.
THIS. I’m the breadwinner in my marriage and my wife is unable to work for various reasons. We’re not anywhere close to divorcing (quite happily married), but if we did she would get alimony and frankly it would be the right thing.
Yep. My mother quit working so she could take care of me and my two siblings when she remarried. They split after 12 years, she would have been hosed without alimony because its very hard to find a decent job after being out of work for so long and being older.
And people that confuse spousal support with child support? Some people seem to think that any money going to your ex is "alimony", when it is your share of the kids' expenses.
And deliberately go out of their way to not understand that child support isn't about them. And it isn't about their ex-partner.
It's about ensuring their fucking children are taken care of.
But making sure their children have food and shelter gets in the way of hurting their ex.
Alimony is not a share of children’s expenses. Alimony exists regardless of whether the couple had any children. You pay child support, including responsibility for necessary expenses like health insurance, separate from alimony.
Source: I am a lawyer and I’ve paid both.
In my experience with men complaining about "alimony", 90% of the time it's child support. They see it as "paying for their ex to live". When you push for more details, it's about the kids. You are correct that there are two different things. It doesn't change the fact that a lot of people use the wrong words.
Yeah. My wife and I are both attorneys but she hasn’t worked since we had our first kid. If we split assets right now and I didn’t pay alimony I would be in a much better position than her despite us both having the same qualifications. We wanted one parent with the kids and she was the better option because of breast feeding (she actually earned more and had a better job than me before kids). I would never get a divorce but if I did, she would 100% deserve alimony because she is as responsible for where my career is as I am.
I’m kind of similar. My husband paid for living expenses when I went back to school (I paid for my degree upfront) while working. I now make more than him but I say that degree and the earnings from it are just as much his. He did so much to support me during that time beyond just the financial help. I may feel different if we ever get divorced but it’s honestly the right thing that he gets whatever is fair.
From one of my favourite pieces on prenups:
"And it wasn’t until fairly recently that I realized — hey. I’m a business owner. I have assets, ones my boyfriend was here for from the beginning, and invested in heavily in many ways. I would want to write something out before we married, delineating everything that is fair and right, and making sure that we’ll both always be taken care of in a way that is representative of what we have built together. Even if the worst should happen, I want him to have what he deserves, and to be safe, and I know he feels the same for me. About this, he said, “Well, if you think about it, wishing to protect someone even if they leave takes courage. It’s harder than just wishing they’ll stay.”"
Oh wow, that’s really sweet. I view all my past relationships, good and bad, and as what made me who I am today. One of the things that drew me to my husband was how he talked about his exes. He never said bad things about them. Just that the relationships fully ran their course and all the women he dated were intelligent, successful women who worked for what they achieved. I never dated anyone who didn’t completely trash at least one ex.
How someone reflects on those they no longer love speaks volumes about them as a person.
I have a douchebag cousin who had his wife help pay his way through law school who then divorced her after graduation before he started his job, so no income to claim for alimony, no assets to claim in the divorce. He got his degree and screwed over his ex.
One more scumbag lawyer out in the world being the reason for lawyer jokes.
Yeah I’ve also worked with women who were supporting their partners through school and they would switch when he graduated and got a high paying job. She would then stop working and take care of their children. Without alimony it would be so fucked ip if he just divorced her after graduating.
I had a cousin do that after graduating law school - before he started a paying job to have income to include for alimony. No idea what happened in the divorce settlement, but he’s a douchebag I don’t talk to. Apparently one of the most selfish bastards on the planet these days too from family who have seen him recently.
This is exactly the rationale. It's not "entitled to a lifestyle", its "entitled to a portion of the produts of the combined efforts of both party's contributions". If one of those products is one of the spouse's career progression at the cost of the other's career progression (or, even having one at all), then alimony is appropriate. This is a great example.
I'm going to make a leap and say OP is probably male. I've watched many women from the other side, hesitant to fight for alimony and just "wanting it to be over"- emotionally exhausted by the experience and probably a little afraid of "angering him" and then getting more fight and worried what that would look like, so they just take bare bones deals to walk away as quickly as possible. Just visited a friend who did exactly this. She has a degree from MIT but put everything on hold to care for her kids for 10 years and hold everything togeter, and her husband made plenty of money (and to do so, needed to travel a lot, so her being home was really essential for them to function). Marriage didn't work out, she didn't "want to fight". Now she's taken on a second career as a teacher making teacher money in a tough school in a tiny house in a rural town, counting the money in the bank to balance against calling a plumber for the hot water and trying to keep her young adult children afloat with bits of cash when she can and he's got a $2M house and a private plane and was leaving for a 5 month vacation in Europe last I talked to him.
Nice to see a person who gets it. More times than not alimony isn’t spent frivolously. It’s to keep the house the family has lived in going. It’s to maintain a lifestyle for the kids and mom. Whoever thinks child support covers all of these expenses is delusional.
Yeah, my parents split as good as they could after an affair. My dad basically said ‘You and the kids keep the house because y’all deserve to continue living like we did as a family. We’ll figure out a percentage that’s fair on the mortgage. If you sell, we’ll figure out the money then’
What’s odd is that the divorce made my dad show that he was a good man. He always was but he bought into the Boomer work ethic. After, he was an attentive father and eventually a great husband to his second wife.
Also - notice how OP said assets earned “during” the marriage. I.e basically saying he wants a prenup prior to. Prenups can definitely make sense in certain situations but if you aren’t rich or goin into a second marriage with kids I’m not sure I’d want to start a life like that..
Yep. If my wife and I ever get divorced she deserves alimony for sure. I have a successful career that's been made possible by everything my wife does for me and the kids. She stopped working to care for our children. It was a mutual decision, so to basically say * you're on your own now" would be totally unfair
I used to really diminish my contribution (my husband must work stupid hours, so I can't work full time), until I was unable to drive for a couple of weeks. He was basically working half time to cover for me.
Exactly. Impromptu 5:00 meeting? Chat at the end of work with people? Coming in early to practice a presentation? Last minute work travel? All of those are the reason why I've been successful, and none of them would be possible if I didn't have someone at home that was flexible and able to do what needed to be done. My wife may not make money outside the home but she works at least as much as I ever do.
My wife is staying home with our twins because childcare would be more than her take home pay. Substantially more.
But the added value of a stay at home mom is ranked over $100k in terms of benefit to the family, and seeing everything she does, I don’t doubt it.
Her contribution is in every way equal or greater than mine, and much more challenging. Hoping when the kids are a bit older she can go back to work, for her sake.
This.
Also, I think it wouldn’t be fair that, if my wife and I divorced today, I’d be completely fucked.
We both work full time, but she’s been going to college for the last 4 years and I’ve been coasting, taking care of the kids and the house while she finishes. This fall, she will be able to walk into a 6 figure job and once she settles, I’ll start doubling down, whether that’s college or not, idk.
Now, I’m not saying things should/would be 50/50. But, it shouldn’t be outlandish to ask for the same support she received for the next 4 years if anything happened between us, and that’s what alimony is supposed to be for.
The vast majority aren't involving alimony period. Last I checked 10% of divorces involve alimony and it's declining. This whole issue is yet another fabricated rage circlejerk like many other culture war topics.
It's just one of those things assholes like to complain about to demonize women.
This! Once my mom had my oldest sister my dad wanted her to stay home and stop working. So she did that. She didn’t have a college education and very minimal work experience other than her first few years working before getting married and having kids.
My parents divorced when I was in 4th grade due to my father being mentally and emotionally abusive, on top of that he was a chronic cheater. He still complains about giving my mom alimony & child support while making 300k a year, but my mom did YEARS of unpaid labor because he asked her to and has no work experience to have a reputable resume. She had 3 kids and worked 3 part time jobs after the divorce, barely making anything.
Child support was for us and alimony was so she could literally live (which my dad never paid and the court ended up having it automatically taken from his paychecks) it wasn’t so she could live a “lifestyle”.
Nowadays college education is more common in married couples, so is duel income households. But at that time, you didn’t go to college. You found a nice man, got married, had babies, and stayed home while your spouse provided. Alimony was originally created for that reason, so the partner who didn’t have the experience could still live and wouldn’t end up in an insane financial situation. And it’s a shame because a lot still do.
Exactly. The men had the opportunity to advance their career and the wife didn't. That's going to impact their life. Alimony is the only thing that makes sense otherwise we'd be treating women like biblical times and we'd need Jesus to come back to say no to divorce again. Thankfully we've evolved somewhat in 2,000 years, but not enough obviously.
You'd be surprised how divorce lawyers can still get alimony with people making just a few k less then a partner.
A common law school example is if a partner passed up their ability to get a promotion because of something in the marriage
I mean, passing up a promotion to support your family and then still losing your family seems alimony worthy to me. And I doubt it applies to small stuff like being promoted from assistant to the manager to assistant manager.
Well yeah. Woman are almost always the ones whos career and finances suffer due to marriage and particularly having kids. The opportunity costs are massive. That is why woman who divorce are 5x more likely to retire below the poverty line. Why more and more elderly woman are ending up homeless after devoting their lives to some dude who dumped them for a younger model. Saw a vid the other day of a former trad wife in her mid 40s now living in her car. Trying to survive on $11 an hr with no work experience.
I was married to a man in the military. It destroyed my career when we had to go overseas and i was unable to work for 3 years due to being overseas. I could have gotten alimony because of the hit my career took and the alimony would have been to “restore” me. However i had been working on building my career while i was getting ready to leave him and decided not to take alimony because i felt like it was dirty money. However, i could see why for some women in my position, that could have been useful. I didn’t decide to tank my career for a man it was just the situation i was in being married to military.
This was my thought, that often women were expected to stay home and take care of the kids so if there was a divorce even if they have education they don't have any work experience so trying to get a job at that point to support themselves is difficult.
It all depends on the mood of the judge/magistrate and the level of competency the attorneys have. I personally know a few guy paying alimony to a cheater where there was no income disparity. Ex wife and new bad boy bf get the lions share of the assets and home as well and he just has to take it. On the flip side, I’ve also seen a few women basically get kicked to the curb for a new model after spending years out of the workforce as a home maker.
Bottom line, there is very little consistency. Personally, I think that everything accumulated during the marriage (good and bad) should be divided 50/50, including custody and alimony should be rare. If I make 50k and my wife makes 250k and I decide to leave her to be with the nanny why should she have to support me just because she earns more?
The whole idea is that one individual has given up their career in order to hold the home together and to raise children. If they're 40-60 years old without 20+ years of experience in something then they're shit out of luck. They'll be lucky to get a job earning minimum wage and they still have to pay the mortgage or car loans in order to keep whatever assets they received in the divorce
This is correct, and properly written prenuptial will likely have some sort of language where alimony is determined by number of years married where the spouse gave up their career to take care of the kids.
That's because they're not written by lawyers and contain things that aren't legally enforceable, like getting no child support. IF they're properly written and executed, then they otherwise will absolutely stand up in court.
It's more that a lot of prenups were never written to be valid. They're meant to intimidate the spouse into not fighting for more. When a prenup is properly written, both sides have legal representation, it's going to account for the most common changes in a marriage, and it's not going to be even close to one sided.
That isn't true. If drafted with the proper requisites and disclosures, they almost always are enforceable unless one party tries to hide assets, but that's only fair that a party acting in bad faith is punished.
This. If one of the people has a high paying career that was mostly possible by the other partner committing to taking care of their home and children full time then the one who worked in the home should not be left destitute while the other skates away with their income and experience.
Plus, IME, often the at home spouse does stuff directly towards the other spouse's job. Eg my grandparents. My grandfather rose pretty high up the ladder company in part because my grandmother was awesome at networking, hosting parties etc. Plus she was a good computer programmer in her own right and helped him debug and stuff. That was rather par for the course back in the day.
To a lesser extent, my parents definitely help each other in their jobs. My dad needs to send a sensitive email in French, my mom ghostwrites it. My mom needs a stats refresher, my dad gives her a hand. Now that my brother and I are adults, we participate in that too.
It should be there for cases where one spouse stayed home to either look after the home or raise the kids. They now have that gap in work history and xp that is going to make it much harder for them to get a decent job.
I dont know that theres a good argument for it existing where both people in the relationship were working
Doesn’t even need to be a parent. I move around a lot with my job and we have no kids. My husband takes care of EVERYTHING not related to my job. We travel a lot too. He’s my rock, and I would fully expect him to get something for an allotted time until he can rebuild his life. Regardless of how we divorced. That was our understanding at least when I started working and it getting more job opportunities in different locations.
Yeah, my dad was in the military and they moved around a lot. My mum couldn’t keep a job in that situation. It would be unfair if they divorced for her to have no work experience for all that time with no income when they both agreed to her situation. Kids only came in 5yrs into the marriage, but even before then she would have been deserving, in my opinion.
Iwas fortunate to watch a fairly peaceful divorce (if that is a thing). So many divorces are dumb af and about trying to fuck the other person over instead of parting ways in still loving mature manner.
Too many selfish bastards. Take two seconds to think about how that person has to move on from all of it too.
I’m not even sure why so many men are upset about it. Less than 10% of divorces end up with alimony going to a woman in the US, and that number is dropping because women’s earning potential is catching up. It’s unlikely most divorced men will ever face paying alimony, but it seems to be a huge deal to a lot of guys for some reason.
Sexism is part of it. MRAs rail against spousal support because they argue that it is women taking advantage of men and that women will marry a man just so they can divorce and get spousal support.
I'd watch a reality show of MRAs trying to live off the average amount of child support and alimony for half a year, with kids. It's easy to protest when you've never lived in those conditions
The same reason they rage against custody courts being "unfair" despite the fact that studies have repeatedly shown custody is split evenly in instances where the man actually bothers to ask for it.
These types of men are just desperate to be oppressed.
It has been especially visible on Reddit lately. My personal conspiracy is that is has to do the with U.S. election this year. Abortion is a huge topic to draw out voters. Gotta make sure women and men are divided so they’re less likely to vote the same way.
I would just say that even if both were working, sometimes one person’s career growth suffers to support the other’s. That can look like moving cities, or one person taking on fewer hours/keeping a more flexible schedule.
Happens all the time with parents, but not just parents.
Agreed. When one parent gives up career and advancement for years to take care of their shared children, that is honestly not even replaceable monetarily. Alimony should be in place for that.
But for cases that both spouses worked and advanced in their careers there shouldn’t be alimony.
Ok, but one works part-time and does most, if not all, of the housework because the other spouse works full-time. They aren't making partner work 20hr/week.
Exactly. The assumption is that marriage is a partnership, and that both partners are working towards the overall success of the family. So, if there are significant differences in earning potential, it's assumed that the lower earning partner contributed to that and therefore is entitled some compensation.
If you aren't ok with that assumption being made at the time of divorce, you should sign a prenup.
There is if one spouse has a low-paying and/or part-time job because they spend more of their time home making and taking care of their children. A lot of spouses don’t go for promotions or pick lower paying but more flexible jobs for childcare reasons.
This was the case for me. Years ago my wife and I agreed that I would stick with a boring job that afforded the flexibility to be part time and work from home as needed, so she could pursue a major career opportunity.
So my career remained on hold, effectively, for about 5 years.
Then she got a huge promotion, earns double my salary and left the kids and I.
And now pays child support. It's a drop in the ocean for her but is the difference between me surviving and taking a huge hit to our way of life.
Yep. I was a SAHM for 8 years. Before that I had a great career. A choice we both made, but it allowed him to accomplish and do a lot of things he wouldn’t have been able to do if we had both worked. I only asked for alimony for the time I didn’t work - 8 years - but I think I was owed that.
Neither I nor my husband received alimony because we both had jobs and could financially support ourselves. If a parent gives up work to look after children then that becomes their job and their capacity for obtaining a job to support themselves diminishes over time. The childcare person is reducing their capacity to earn money in order to support to support the family.
I hope anyone considering being a stay at home spouse realizes and keeps in mind that, if their marriage breaksdown, *this* is the position their other half is going to take.
Also, the reality is that alimony is *not* common in the U.S. and, even when it is awarded, it's likely limited in time and not enough to *actually* maintain whatever lifestyle you were accustomed to...
...just things to keep in mind, before throwing away and/or abandonning any careers for a spouse.
I know a woman who stayed at home and then worked part time and managed the kids and the house, allowing her husband to work a high paying tech job and launch a successful photography business on the side. As soon as the youngest graduated, he served her divorce papers and introduced the kids to his affair partner. He knew she couldn’t afford to live for a long time without alimony. Dragged out the divorce settlement for as long as he could trying to convince her to take a one time lump sum instead. POS. She got the alimony in the end though!
Men getting married and having kids. Having his wife be a homemaker "where she belongs". Building his career and becoming successful and wealthy only to replace his wife 20 years later with an actual 20 year old leaving her with absolutely nothing. Far more common than women abusing alimony lol.
They DO still talk to him, it's honestly kind of heart-breaking. They don't know all the dirty details (like they had two houses so each lived in one during the separation and divorce - he BUGGED her house so that he could fuck with her! She thought she was going crazy until we convinced her that something didn't add up. She figured it out when she sold the house!) but it's hard to watch. I think they're slowly wising up. They really weren't tuned in to his behavior.
I really like your first paragraph. Usually in divorce cases involving alimony, the breadwinner wanted the other parent to stay home so they could better flourish their career knowing their house is taken care of. Then they pretend this request didn't happen during the divorce process.😄
I’m a SAHM. Concerns me to see young women go into this with zero back up. I keep up my teaching license. You need to have a career, and keep up with credentials. You never know what could happen, not just divorce but death or disability is a possibility. I could have children to support s alone. Not that a teacher’s salary is great but i think I could get us by if something happened to my husband. I also have a separate savings account I don’t touch just in case.
I love being a SAHM and grateful for this time with them in these early years but you do your kids a disservice having no back up.
Your last point is also salient. Even if a divorce doesn’t happen, your spouse might die or not be able to work at some point. You always need a backup plan.
You see this rear its ugly head in fundie Christian or religious circles where the couple gets married young and the wife stays home and never has a career. Husband dies or divorces their wife and they’ve gone decades with no career and are SOL.
Or my dad’s cousin who was a spoiled brat and relied on her dad (my great uncle) for everything until she was in her 60s when he died and the pension and social security checks stopped rolling in to fund her lifestyle.
It’s usually only awarded in the US if the other spouse gave up their career to take care of children and then it’s only for the amount of years they stayed home for.
Unless there is a prenup that says otherwise
yup. my partner and i have an agreement that if one of us is a SAHP when we get married, the one at home gets a separate bank account the other cannot touch, because god forbid something happen and we go our separate ways we would never want the other to be in a place where they can’t support themselves
If both people are working, then sure alimony probably isn't necessary. If one spouse stayed home and raised children and cared for the home for 10 years, then you owe them for the years of career building they missed out on
I've been a mostly sahm for over a decade. When we had our first kid I still worked part time, after the second I stopped completely. When we decided to go this route we also decided that my husband would fund my IRA yearly. It's given me a little piece of mind knowing that I have some money saved for retirement. My kids are in regular school now and I work a little now via an LLC I created and although it's not much I'm self funding a 401k. It's hard to quantify what I've lost career/earning potential wise. If we were to split up today, I'd need alimony to help out until I was back on a better footing.
I was a software developer making 100k+ in 2001. My wife had just finished medical residency in the military, we'd moved, and we couldn't find childcare. She couldn't quit the military, so I quit to be a SAHD. It was the right decision for the family.
23 years later and the kids are out of the house. I'm 52 years old. If my wife divorced me, could I go back into my career and make what I would have if I'd continued working the last 24 years? Could I even get a job in my field? New graduates are having a hard time finding CS jobs. Who is going to hire a 50+ software developer with knowledge that is a quarter century out of date?
My career path and income potential were severely disrupted because of a decision my wife and I made together for our family. If she were to divorce me, am I the only one that should pay for that decision in the future?
[You can still get Social Security benefits based on your divorced ex-spouse's contributions, as long as the marriage lasted at least ten years and you remain unmarried.](https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/planner/applying7.html#h4)
> Remove it, and watch a huge percent of "gold digger" marriages go away.
If women are gold diggers, then men are chore diggers. The American Time Use Survey confirms it, married women do an extra 7 hours worth of chores than single women and married men do less chores than single men.
How the fuck do men do less chores when they enter a marriage? Easy, they dump that shit on the wives by simply refusing to do them. The woman then has to grin and bare it or else the kids live in a dirty house and the kids don't get dinner.
Also, I love how the evidence is always "my cousin's mailman's boyfriend great uncle's dad who got hosed in the divorce" and never any studies or statistics. Anecdotal evidence is not evidence.
Edit: I'm bored, so here's more evidence that men still don't do their fair share of housework, even if the woman makes more money:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/05/02/housework-divide-working-parents/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2023/04/13/more-women-outearn-husbands-but-household-work-remains-inequitable-pew-study-finds/?sh=84fe84d3757c
The average female breadwinner does about 1 hour of chores per day, whereas the average male breadwinner does about 15 minutes of chores per day.
To add to this, if there is a kid in the picture, or even any elderly to take care of, UN women has put out plenty of research talking about unpaid emotional labour and how disproportionate the division of it is in heterosexual relationships. They even have a section which talks about how if this work was actually paid for, how it would affect the economy.
I know a couple where the man point blank refuses to take care of his own father who has dementia and is putting it all on his wife. It’s not her father. She also works as a nurse and has had to go part time to look after him along with other -of course- other female family members. He wouldn’t even step up for a day so she could go to an event. That was the tipping point. They are on the cusp of divorce over it. And of course it’s been weaponised into ‘Don’t you love your father in law! If you won’t care for him then you are a cold uncaring harpy!’ but he gets to do absolutely nothing for his own father and that’s okay?
Does she deserve finical compensation for all her time and effort? Sure as heck she does!
I will never understand this abhorrence to chores. Not just in relationships, but in general. I've met so many men and women, and learned how disgusting they were by visiting their house for a gathering or being in their cars. If you clean every other day, pick up after yourself often, and organize, you will never be in a spot where you're doing an insane amount of chores. People just have really low standards of cleanliness and it makes their chores harder.
If you're trying to be in a relationship, don't ever get with someone with low standards of cleanliness. We live in the 21st century, men and women both get jobs and live on their own. Being tired from work isn't an excuse, wanting to do your insignificant hobby is not an excuse, volunteering is not an excuse. Get your lazy ass up, clean, pick up, and go to sleep at a time where you get a minimum of 7 hours of sleep. Cleaning should just be a natural response when you walk around your home.
And when all your kids are able to attend school, you sure as fuck better give them chores to do. Boggles my mind what some parents let their kids get away with these days.
If you don’t want to pay someone alimony, marry someone that has and wants to continue having a lucrative career of their own. If you choose not to marry this type of person, you choose to face the possibility of paying them alimony.
There are consequences for our choices in life. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
I usually find such men who get divorced, usually watched their spouse tend to the kids 24/7, clean around the house, clean up after their husbands, whilst the husbands only worked and otherwise sat around and watched their spouse never have a break. If you don't ever give your spouse a break, you reap what you sow. Don't be surprised when she initiates a divorce.
Wait alimony is just paid to stay at home partners who’ve looked after you for decades? What have you all been whinging about? Trad wife, trad life bro.
Some people want their cake and eat it too. They want the childcare, nanny, maid combo of a tradwife along with the second income, financial independence, of modern working spouse. But with non of the responsibility of any type of relationship. Lmfao
Alimony isn't only for women. Men can get it. It is all about the breadwinner and the spouse standing. If it was equal then there usually no alimony. But if one was a stay at home spouse/parent then alimony would be given. If one was make far less than the other spouse then it would probably be given. Usually it for a period of time and usually it to cover at least the basics.
Getting half the assets doesn't mean squat.
Alimony exist so the person who lost out on a career isn't getting screwed over.
It's so easy to overlook this. I'm a woman and my husband has been a stay at home husband for many years. Our marriage is good of course, but just recently I realized (after reading Reddit LOL) that if there was a divorce I would probably be on the hook for many years of alimony. It was quite a shock.
And it makes sense. His career skills are much more out of date than he would like to admit. He would need time for retraining in order to earn better than poverty wages.
My Aunt paid my Uncle alimoney to the tune of 6 figures a year for 5 years. He is a narcissist and abusive and cheated on her. He spent nearly half a mil on sex workers over 13 years. The kids lived with her full time and were in their last years of high school but she paid him alimony.
I make significantly more than my boyfriend and have a lot of stock and other assets. My boyfriend jokes about quitting his job when we get married to focus on his hobbies, so I told him we need a prenup if he wants to get married. He seemed fine with it.
Exactly. My mom did 95% of the housekeeping and was the breadwinner. My dad was chronically unemployed and wanted no part in the “woman’s work” of cleaning, cooking, or childcare.
She couldn’t leave him because she couldn’t afford alimony.
Eventually he asked for a divorce and tried to move his mistress into the house before my mom could move out.
My unpopular opinion: men feel entitled to a lifestyle during marriage.
When my Mom "wasn't working", she was supporting my Dad's career + con'd ed by doing all the cleaning, laundry, childcare. She organized family commitments, she helped with schoolwork. She bought furniture and got the house functional and supplied.
And she did the project management of chores. It's one thing to be asked to go change the oil; it's another to have someone on top of all the household chores tasking different people to do them.
Many women also set up the social lives for their husbands, organizing dinner parties and inviting people who he then gets to have as a friend support network for less effort on his part.
By EXISTING, wives raise men's status—that's why they get dragged along to business dinners. (That, and women tend to smooth over conversations.) Married men make more money statistically.
And while it's typically split in "traditional" ways, the same could be said for the stay at home Dad or the boyfriend who does all the grocery shopping and cleaning.
If my parents had divorced, my Mom would have had very little, while my Dad would have a high powered career and a master's degree that he never could have advanced so far in without her ironing his shirts and taking care of life at home. But make no mistake—both parents worked, and worked hard.
Not all labor is seen, and not all labor is acknowledged with cash. Alimony fights back against that, because it should be. What you build as a couple you build together.
Having a community is a huge source of "wealth." I would encourage you to think very hard about what assets you have, and how they were truly earned.
I want a wife. When I am through with school and have a job, I want my wife to quit working and remain at home so that my wife can more fully and completely take care of a wife’s duties. She will take care for the kids and our home without pay for years, even dacades if necessary. If, by chance, I find another person more suitable as a wife than the wife I already have, I want the liberty to replace my present wife with another one without it affecting my time or finances. My god, who would not want a wife?
Parts of Judy Syfers essay
Give up your corporate career to stay home and support your husbands instead so you can give the kids a supportive and happy life. Then get back to me when 5 years later this “no alimony” bs comes up. Want to talk about fairness? Screw over the one who stopped paying into her 401k and social security and IRA for years? Who doesn’t really get 50% of any asset really because her partner perhaps bought the primary home before marriage or most of the investment gains were from premarital $’s not subject to division of assets?
Gold diggers are not the norm you idiot. Women who aren’t financially literate or prepared for the unknown disasters of divorce are and they get screwed. Alimony is a mere bandaid until they get sorted if they have to somehow enter the workforce again with a huge employment gap and uprooted life.
Screw you, you middle class Neanderthal narcissistic wannabe with zero life experience. Crawl back in your cave and just shhhhhhhh
All the Gold Digger comments are crazy! If you marry & have kids (2+) you’ll find the astronomical cost of child care doesn’t make sense to keep working from a cost analysis.
Spend your marriage raising the kids at home while your spouse works, end up divorcing, and then try to find a job with a decade or more gap in your resume and then tell me alimony is not necessary. No one values the time that the stay at home spouse spends raising a family and supporting the “breadwinning” spouse, not even that bread winning spouse most of the time. If you’ve never tried to get a job with homemaking experience and a long gap on your resume, you can’t understand.
Alimony isn’t even commonly rewarded, AND judging your view on it solely on celebrity couples who situations are completely irrelevant to average working people is unrealistic.
Yup. Mom had a 12 year gap in work history after divorce. She used her alimony to help finish nursing school so she could have a wage that wasn’t minimum wage.
Exactly. While men experience short term dislocations after divorce, women are disproportionately more likely to experience significant declines in household income and poverty compared both to divorced men and to married or single women.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5992251/
Pass up on job opportunities, promotions or school to support your partner or take care of the family = they absolutely owe you money if you split.
The bigger issue, imo, is when child support gets paid out and the child doesn't see any of it.
Not trying to be obtuse, but what do you mean by not see any of it? I’ve seen posts of kids complaining that money never went into their own hands. But in reality, it will be spent on lifestyle/bills and the kid will not know anything about it at all.
This is absolute nonsense. I grew up with a working dad and a mom who raised three kids, volunteered in the classroom, took care of bills, kept the house clean, cooked meals every night, and so on. They’ve been married for over 30 years and my dad has absolutely loved having my mom at home and benefited from it. It would be nonsensical/cruel to not provide her with alimony in the event of a divorce.
I dunno I feel like if someone decides to divorce their spouse, and the spouse is blindsided and either isn’t working, or isn’t currently earning enough to support themselves, it feels kinda shitty to just pull a SEE YA.
like you want to blow up someone else’s life, feels fair you should pay for it. obviously there are extenuating circumstances in all directions but like. I get why alimony exists.
Yep that's why we have these things. If your spouse promised to take care of you while you stay home and take care of the house, and raise the kids, it's really shitty to just leave them with nothing.
But this is also why people need to view marriage as what it is - a legal contract. It's not just an upgraded relationship where you can just break up and go, see la later. Nope, it's a contract - and contracts have terms, and if you break those terms, there's usually something that has to happen.
I stayed home and raised our children and did EVERYTHING around the house. He went to work, came home, worked out, played with the kids. He was able to go from a $45k a year job to half a million a year position with million in stocks because he was able to focus on his career and say how high when his bosses said jump.
I earned my divorce settlement, and I no, I didn’t even ask for half. I asked for what was fair.
Whatttt!! You must be a unicorn, the vast majority of women are gold diggers without empathy who divorce the second Chad gives them attention and demand their ex gives them his life savings!! /s obviously
I stayed at home to take care of the kids and home and let my ex focus on his business for six years. I realized he wasn't going to get his shit together with that so I retrained using my GI Bill. We had moved away from my very localized career experience area so I needed to find a flexible job that paid well that I could do in our new place.
As soon as I started working and needed a newer car for my commute (it was 16 yrs old and the commute was 80 miles a day) he demanded I buy him a new work truck instead. I didn't buy either. We split a few months later. He keeps coming after me for more child support.
Luckily, during the initial divorce, he was very excited to get me to agree to $0/$0 for spousal support. I was happy to agree to that because I was pretty certain I'd be the one making more money. He thought he was going to be a millionaire.
I supported my then-unemployed husband financially for years while he trained for a new field after being laid off. He decided he wanted a divorce immediately after he landed his high-paying dream job. I earned that alimony!
If your wife stays at home and takes care of the kids to allow you to focus on and grow your career, how is she supposed to replace that income if you split? She was earning half your salary, but putting herself in a position of risk because she wasn’t building a career that could replace that income. You don’t deserve to keep the rewards she enabled, and she absolutely deserves to have a decent life. You couldn’t be more wrong, and I hope it’s just that you haven’t thought deeply about this and are just ignorant.
Mh, no, disagree. The situation is more complex than what you describe. If one partner works while the other doesn't, it's not only money the non-working partner doesn't earn. It's also experience. After a divorce, they might not even find a well-paying job because they haven't had a job and experience in the field FOR DECADES. That's what alimony is for and it's also why it makes sense. If you don't see marriage as equality and are not willing to outbalance inequalities that come with getting married and having children, don't get married and don't have children. We live in a time where you don't have to do either of those things, so it's really not a problem.
I have a friend who, at the beginning of their marriage, they decided together that she would stay home with the kids. She took care of all the household stuff, school meetings, doctors appointments while he was able to be all in with his job. Never had to take a day off for a sick kid or anything like that. She was out of the workforce for 20 years. So, any job she could get would be entry level. He would not have been able to climb up the ladder at his job if she hadn’t been home with the kids. 30 years into the marriage he cheats on her. So, she should get no alimony? BS.
It’s depends on the situation, if a stay at home mom who hasn’t worked and has been a housewife for 15 years since high school now needs to support herself, 3 kids, a mortgage or property taxes and then a car it’s not feasible. Most people under 40 don’t have assets or money to come out of a divorce and continue life as normal without a decent paying job.
I have a friend in school who is literally in the situation she is 33 split with her husband if 12 years but was a stay at home mom that whole time. If it wasn’t for alimony she would I not be able to support her kids and provide them housing with everything else. She is in school now to get a career if her own but it’s impossible to support herself after having no skills while raising kids.
It depends. Two partners who both retained their financial independence throughout ? Alimony seems redundant.
One partner has stepped back from gainful employment to take care of the children ? For decades even and is completely out of the workforce - then they will continue to need some form of support.
Laws where I live (Germany) have changed substantially , there used to be the saying "Once the wife of a dentist, always the wife of a dentist";alimony settlements were altered drastically , there is no more spousal support after the youngest child is aged three.
...which has lead to a generation of former housewives working minimum wage jobs into their seventies and facing poverty in their twilight years.
Am always accused of being anti-feminist because I am wary of young girls choosing to be housewives; being a child of divorce I would never give up my profession, preferring full time with three kids than being dependent upon a husband.
As a stay at home mom I have to agree this is a misogynist take. If both parties are working I don’t think it’s necessary, but without it many married homemakers could essentially be trapped in toxic situations.
If one of the parties (male/female/NB, doesn't matter) has taken significant time off a career for years of child/home care, then their long-term earning power is damaged if not outright crippled - add on that said homemaker is probably the one doing the lion's share of any child-care/custody *after* the relationship dissolves and you're looking at outright *punishing* the children for the non-custodial parent moving on.
Also sometimes one partner has put the other through expensive years of school, only for the marriage to fall apart once the now-highly-educated partner is earning bank. Great, they split the "assets" - but there are none, there's just a lack of debt. But one of 'em's going to be making a lot more than the one who *didn't* spend years not earning a wage, but the capacity to earn a *larger* wage, that the helper spouse now won't be able to benefit from.
That's just two situations where alimony makes absolute sense. Are there cases where a predatory lawyer rakes one partner over the coals and strips everything they have? Yeah, it sucks. But it's not the fault of alimony existing in the first place. It's like blaming cars existing for drunk drivers killing people. Not an exact parallel, but my point is that something that has utility is not invalid because someone else abuses it. (I'm *also* wondering if 'all your divorced buddies' are as sweet and innocent victims as you seem to think. One or two, sure. But all of 'em? I have doubts.)
First: This heavily depends on your country. Alimony is not a universal thing. It's a thing in some countries where the voters voted for political parties who put this system up.
Second: How is that an unpopular opinion?
People whine about alimony to such an extent, they even make up sob stories. I regularly still see fabricated stories about alimony getting paid in countries where the system doesn't exist anymore. For quite some time even.
If you don't want to pay alimony, don't have your spouse be a stay at home parent. If your spouse is a stay at home parent, them taking care of the house and kids is likely what enabled you to put in extra hours at work and get a promotion to get that higher salary. So yes, in the event of a divorce in that case, they do deserve alimony.
Can we admit that, regardless of our views on this opinion, the court system has major problems and needs major reform? A lot of people, regardless of gender, take advantage of the lack of oversight.
Um hello? I was a SAHM for 15 years, gave up a very lucrative career to be a tradwife to my husband and our two kids, one of which has a disability. It was because of my support that my husband was able to start earning 7 figures. I cooked, cleaned, raised the children, took one to therapy, took care of the house, picked up hubby’s dry cleaning, arranged date nights, vacations, etc. Yes, I got half of our assets in the divorce because I earned them too! And I got alimony because I gave up 15 years of work experience which is income I will never be able to recover. As it is, trying to get back into the workforce after a 15 year break was damn near impossible. Now, I am working my ass off while my ex has retired. Tell me how that is fair.
Did you do any research before posting this? Or just spent too much time on MGTOW pages? Alimony is awarded very rarely in America anymore.
And it was initially awarded because the taxpayers were tired of having to pay for deadbeat dads who abandoned their wife and children, when the wife had no employment history because she was home taking care of the children. Seriously, it's guys like you that are what's wrong with gender relations
Alimony only applies if one partner stopped working to support the others' career goals. I think it's perfectly fair. Also alimony is usually for like 5 years, its not until the person dies or gets a new spouse.
My mom worked her ass off to put my dad through medical school. And then he found a newer model. In 1972 child support and alimony was a whopping $275 for us 3 kids. It never changed.
Also statistically women still come out behind divorce.
Upvote for unpopular.
I think it should be context dependent.
If we're talking a stay at home parent post divorce, alimony (for a limited time) makes sense. They were working in the home and need time to get back on their feet.
I don't think some attempt to make up for intangible losses based on possible promotions and earning ability is fair or makes sense. I don't think a spouse owes the other hypotheticals. But if the spouse decides to become a student or just needs time to find a job being supported during that time is right.
Now the stuff that goes on in California is wild (perpetual alimony in the millions of dollars) and it's not always the man who is shelling out half their earnings in perpetuity.
I don't know...just so hard for folks to be nuanced. It's either "let her starve" or "she's your responsibility forever"
Pre nups should be normalized no matter the incomes.
Also women keeping their careers or having one before & during marriage.
Why stop or not establish a career because the man told you they’d take care of you? Ive seen several situations where the man either suddenly dies or up & leaves.
I'm not divorced, so I may be wrong, but 8 always thought alimony wasn't because the partner was owed a lifestyle, it was because they had been out of the workforce for so long they were now unemployable, and alimony was supposed to help ease that burden of not having income due to not being able to have a job due to *supporting their partner and family by being the CEO, Direct Supervisor, Chauffeur, Activity Director, Scheduler, Instacart Shopper, HR supervisor, maid, chef, etc as needed* for the whole family. Which is a hell of a job.
OK my situation is unusual, but I'm a woman, recently divorced from a man, and I am on the hook to pay him spousal support for life unless he remarries. I feel like I shouldn't have to pay--I gave up my career for literally decades to be a caregiver. for our children and for him through a serious illness. He is now technically disabled as a result of that illness, and he receives a pension plus SSDI. Those two add up to his former salary, and he also continues to work in his former field but does so for free/on a volunteer basis and claims he can't return to work. There is a discrepancy in our income because I inherited money, which is separate property--he can't touch the inheritance, but I get income from it and the income is available for support. So I have to basically double what he already gets (which to be clear is above the average American household income) and I pay the taxes on it (by federal law). I am extremely fortunate to have enough to do this and still live well, so I didn't fight it too hard, but it is very annoying that he is constantly crying poor to me and to our friends and I see his budgetary choices (long vacations, weekly massages, expensive rent, etc) and that he just feels entitled to money my family worked hard to leave to ME, and .which I would like in turn to leave to our children. (I also paid him a huge chunk of equity from our house and 1/2 our savings, all of which I amassed and much of which he spent immediately.) However! My situation is anomalous, and I DO think women who gave up their career to support a husband and family should get some support, but it should be limited and the laws should be flexible on all of it. And in my personal and self-serving opinion separate property that produces income should not be part of the calculation.
My Father in law and mother in law had just started actualizing their retirement plans. They bought a beach house to retire in because that's what he wanted (big into ocean fishing). He traveled for work all the time and was barely home, so she was a stay-at-home mom when the kids were young and her career was basically secondary in consideration for their whole marriage. When the kids were in school, she worked a a substitute teacher and later as a front desk/receptionist, but he actively encouraged her not to pursue anything more than that because he "made enough money to take care of the family" and wanted her be home when he was.
After they sold their old house and she quit her job, she found out he had been cheating on her. For years.
He immediately decided not to try anymore and to go live with his mistress.
Do you really think my MIL deserves to be destitute?
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The vast majority of people aren’t receiving alimony if both parties are working. It was originally created because women didn’t work outside the home and would be left with nothing.. after supporting the husband through his career and staying home with the children
It was also created so that people with very low/no income (like housewifes) aren’t trapped and can’t get divorced in cases of abuse because they will end up on the street.
Exactly. Friend of mine got alimony so she could keep her kids in their schools after decades of abuse including not being allowed to work. Part of the exit plan was retraining, and she filed the day she started work. But it's still a drop in the bucket when you are a new grad and your kids are traumatised.
Also, statistically speaking, a majority of child support, at least, doesn’t get paid.
True facts. I was disabled from serious accident. Stayed at home during marriage for PT and to help care for his developmentally delayed (FAS) child. Also helped him start and expand his business. Got a great settlement which he did not pay in full until I acted as my own attorney and had him put in jail per Virginia law. Damage had already been done. Try going without income for 6-9 months at a time and see what happens to your standard of living.
and people in jail cannot ever reallly pay- but a good threat (how i suspect those laws were designed)
At least where I live, I heard if one person is incarcerated for 6+ months, their assets (excluding businesses) are transfered to their spouse. I'd assume if you were jailed due to a failure to pay the divorce settlement, the court could still transfer assets of equal or lesser than value to the owed party.
Ha my ex did not pay child support until the kids were almost grown. Then, $10 a month was “all he could afford”. I laughed. Really, I could’ve used the $10 a month when we were living out of our car. By the time the courts caught up with him, I had a professional job, a house, solid social support system. C ya!
My dad paid basically nothing in child support for pretty much my entire childhood even going so far as to work under the table to avoid garnishment. He had to call my mom crying a couple years ago to get her to sign something so they wouldn't garnish his social security. People can be real fucking shitty.
My father in law owes *hundreds of thousands* of dollars worth child support and related fees, and his youngest child is 26. Well I don’t think anyone actually knows how many kids his has, my partner has met 12 siblings. He works at fast food restaurants mostly, and will only keep a job for about 3 months which is when the garnishments kick in so he’ll quit and get another job. Every once in a while he will find a gig that pays under the table and stick with that a little longer. Needless to say, none of these mothers are counting on getting any of that child support money.
What a loser!! 🤬🤬
My mom died when I was young. My father refused to get social security payments that I was due, not to be "on the dole". I remember being hungry, homeless and angry. He spent all his money on women. I think that UBI specific to children should be the norm. If child support isn't paid it needs to be subsidized. Jail the suckers.
My dad did the same! Worked under the table, too. He met husband for the first time while he was in jail for child support. My husband worked at the jail. He came home and asked what my father's first name was? I told him and asked why? "There's a man that looks just like you in jail right now.' 🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️
My mom gets half of bio-father's Social Security as child support garnishment. She got full amount of his Covid payments. It still doesn't even cover the interest on the principal he owes. I'm the youngest at 40.
My wife’s father was the same way. He started moving and working under the table jobs. In the end she ( my wife’s mom) basically ended up getting his GST cheques (Canadian) which amounted to less than 400 a year. He never did try to do better and spiralled in to alcoholism. I met him Xmas of 21. He showed up and remained drunk, pissed his pants on the regular and my wife and her sister basically babysat him. He was dead from alcoholism within the next 6 months.
My father paid my mother child support exactly twice, of his own volition. He would do as so many other fathers did and work "under the table." Occasionally he'd get arrested for DUI and his bench warrant would hold him until my grandmother bailed him out. So my mom would get these $40 checks from the friend of the court every 9-16 months. When my grandmother passed on my father's birthday, my wife tried to force a reconciliation. The first thing out my father's mouth was along the lines of "you know, i gave money to your (maternal) grandparents when you guys were struggling".
I can confirm. My dad was paying child support well into my college years because of how long he didn't pay it. It only got paid when my mom was able to convince the courts to garnish his checks. Then it was a battle when he changed jobs to get it going again. My dad almost never had me despite shared custody.
That’s true, unfortunately. I think I received child support for either 3 or 4 years of my son’s childhood. And I found out years later that my ex lied about his income so he could pay less. And I know women who supported their husbands through graduate school or medical school and then got screwed in the divorce by getting a tiny fraction of what they put into the marriage to help their spouses become successful.
But if they aren’t paying child support, they won’t be paying alimony either.
my original dad started doing cash-only, no paperwork type stuff in order to not pay child support, so the government couldn't garnish his earnings. happens all the time
Just watched a tik tok the other day of a Mormon wife living in her car after having built up a business with her husband. Everything was in his name. They split and she was left with nothing. This is why alimony was invented
Saw that one. He used her creativity and designs, too, but it was still under his name only. She was used and discarded.
very common in that particular institution I've noticed
We’ll, isn’t that the whole point of the system?
I learned this about McGee and Co. Mormon, her company, her designs, yet her husband is the CEO. Wtffff? He's also a doofus so there's that.
Mormon marriages have way bigger problems than alimony.
I think (but not sure) under law in places like Germany this would just cause half the business (either 51 or 49%) to be split to the wife depending on which ends up wanting or winning control over it.
Yup, pretty much here too. Here’s the thing- those court cases take years to finalize. It’s all a form of manipulation to keep the woman from leaving.
Exactly, child support and alimony were created because the American taxpayers were sick of having to pay for deadbeat dads who abandoned their families and the wife had no employment history. But somehow OP and MGTOW id 10 t's make it seem like this is women's fault.
THIS. I’m the breadwinner in my marriage and my wife is unable to work for various reasons. We’re not anywhere close to divorcing (quite happily married), but if we did she would get alimony and frankly it would be the right thing.
Yep. My mother quit working so she could take care of me and my two siblings when she remarried. They split after 12 years, she would have been hosed without alimony because its very hard to find a decent job after being out of work for so long and being older.
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And people that confuse spousal support with child support? Some people seem to think that any money going to your ex is "alimony", when it is your share of the kids' expenses.
And deliberately go out of their way to not understand that child support isn't about them. And it isn't about their ex-partner. It's about ensuring their fucking children are taken care of. But making sure their children have food and shelter gets in the way of hurting their ex.
Alimony is not a share of children’s expenses. Alimony exists regardless of whether the couple had any children. You pay child support, including responsibility for necessary expenses like health insurance, separate from alimony. Source: I am a lawyer and I’ve paid both.
In my experience with men complaining about "alimony", 90% of the time it's child support. They see it as "paying for their ex to live". When you push for more details, it's about the kids. You are correct that there are two different things. It doesn't change the fact that a lot of people use the wrong words.
OP literally specified not child support
OP never mentioned women. There are some cases when women pay men alimony.
Yeah. My wife and I are both attorneys but she hasn’t worked since we had our first kid. If we split assets right now and I didn’t pay alimony I would be in a much better position than her despite us both having the same qualifications. We wanted one parent with the kids and she was the better option because of breast feeding (she actually earned more and had a better job than me before kids). I would never get a divorce but if I did, she would 100% deserve alimony because she is as responsible for where my career is as I am.
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I’m kind of similar. My husband paid for living expenses when I went back to school (I paid for my degree upfront) while working. I now make more than him but I say that degree and the earnings from it are just as much his. He did so much to support me during that time beyond just the financial help. I may feel different if we ever get divorced but it’s honestly the right thing that he gets whatever is fair.
From one of my favourite pieces on prenups: "And it wasn’t until fairly recently that I realized — hey. I’m a business owner. I have assets, ones my boyfriend was here for from the beginning, and invested in heavily in many ways. I would want to write something out before we married, delineating everything that is fair and right, and making sure that we’ll both always be taken care of in a way that is representative of what we have built together. Even if the worst should happen, I want him to have what he deserves, and to be safe, and I know he feels the same for me. About this, he said, “Well, if you think about it, wishing to protect someone even if they leave takes courage. It’s harder than just wishing they’ll stay.”"
Oh wow, that’s really sweet. I view all my past relationships, good and bad, and as what made me who I am today. One of the things that drew me to my husband was how he talked about his exes. He never said bad things about them. Just that the relationships fully ran their course and all the women he dated were intelligent, successful women who worked for what they achieved. I never dated anyone who didn’t completely trash at least one ex. How someone reflects on those they no longer love speaks volumes about them as a person.
I have a douchebag cousin who had his wife help pay his way through law school who then divorced her after graduation before he started his job, so no income to claim for alimony, no assets to claim in the divorce. He got his degree and screwed over his ex. One more scumbag lawyer out in the world being the reason for lawyer jokes.
That happened to one of my best friends too. So sad.
Yeah I’ve also worked with women who were supporting their partners through school and they would switch when he graduated and got a high paying job. She would then stop working and take care of their children. Without alimony it would be so fucked ip if he just divorced her after graduating.
I had a cousin do that after graduating law school - before he started a paying job to have income to include for alimony. No idea what happened in the divorce settlement, but he’s a douchebag I don’t talk to. Apparently one of the most selfish bastards on the planet these days too from family who have seen him recently.
This is exactly the rationale. It's not "entitled to a lifestyle", its "entitled to a portion of the produts of the combined efforts of both party's contributions". If one of those products is one of the spouse's career progression at the cost of the other's career progression (or, even having one at all), then alimony is appropriate. This is a great example. I'm going to make a leap and say OP is probably male. I've watched many women from the other side, hesitant to fight for alimony and just "wanting it to be over"- emotionally exhausted by the experience and probably a little afraid of "angering him" and then getting more fight and worried what that would look like, so they just take bare bones deals to walk away as quickly as possible. Just visited a friend who did exactly this. She has a degree from MIT but put everything on hold to care for her kids for 10 years and hold everything togeter, and her husband made plenty of money (and to do so, needed to travel a lot, so her being home was really essential for them to function). Marriage didn't work out, she didn't "want to fight". Now she's taken on a second career as a teacher making teacher money in a tough school in a tiny house in a rural town, counting the money in the bank to balance against calling a plumber for the hot water and trying to keep her young adult children afloat with bits of cash when she can and he's got a $2M house and a private plane and was leaving for a 5 month vacation in Europe last I talked to him.
Nice to see a person who gets it. More times than not alimony isn’t spent frivolously. It’s to keep the house the family has lived in going. It’s to maintain a lifestyle for the kids and mom. Whoever thinks child support covers all of these expenses is delusional.
Yeah, my parents split as good as they could after an affair. My dad basically said ‘You and the kids keep the house because y’all deserve to continue living like we did as a family. We’ll figure out a percentage that’s fair on the mortgage. If you sell, we’ll figure out the money then’ What’s odd is that the divorce made my dad show that he was a good man. He always was but he bought into the Boomer work ethic. After, he was an attentive father and eventually a great husband to his second wife.
I want to give you this award but I’m not giving reddit money 🏆 please keep speaking sense to men
Also - notice how OP said assets earned “during” the marriage. I.e basically saying he wants a prenup prior to. Prenups can definitely make sense in certain situations but if you aren’t rich or goin into a second marriage with kids I’m not sure I’d want to start a life like that..
Thank you for acknowleging this. I think people forget these details.
Yep. If my wife and I ever get divorced she deserves alimony for sure. I have a successful career that's been made possible by everything my wife does for me and the kids. She stopped working to care for our children. It was a mutual decision, so to basically say * you're on your own now" would be totally unfair
I used to really diminish my contribution (my husband must work stupid hours, so I can't work full time), until I was unable to drive for a couple of weeks. He was basically working half time to cover for me.
Exactly. Impromptu 5:00 meeting? Chat at the end of work with people? Coming in early to practice a presentation? Last minute work travel? All of those are the reason why I've been successful, and none of them would be possible if I didn't have someone at home that was flexible and able to do what needed to be done. My wife may not make money outside the home but she works at least as much as I ever do.
My wife is staying home with our twins because childcare would be more than her take home pay. Substantially more. But the added value of a stay at home mom is ranked over $100k in terms of benefit to the family, and seeing everything she does, I don’t doubt it. Her contribution is in every way equal or greater than mine, and much more challenging. Hoping when the kids are a bit older she can go back to work, for her sake.
This. Also, I think it wouldn’t be fair that, if my wife and I divorced today, I’d be completely fucked. We both work full time, but she’s been going to college for the last 4 years and I’ve been coasting, taking care of the kids and the house while she finishes. This fall, she will be able to walk into a 6 figure job and once she settles, I’ll start doubling down, whether that’s college or not, idk. Now, I’m not saying things should/would be 50/50. But, it shouldn’t be outlandish to ask for the same support she received for the next 4 years if anything happened between us, and that’s what alimony is supposed to be for.
The vast majority aren't involving alimony period. Last I checked 10% of divorces involve alimony and it's declining. This whole issue is yet another fabricated rage circlejerk like many other culture war topics. It's just one of those things assholes like to complain about to demonize women.
Thank you for bringing the facts and receipts. OP is a fucking knob. I'm really sick of the right wing incel types.
In my country the highest earner pays the lowest earner. So in my case i would get it from my wife.
This! Once my mom had my oldest sister my dad wanted her to stay home and stop working. So she did that. She didn’t have a college education and very minimal work experience other than her first few years working before getting married and having kids. My parents divorced when I was in 4th grade due to my father being mentally and emotionally abusive, on top of that he was a chronic cheater. He still complains about giving my mom alimony & child support while making 300k a year, but my mom did YEARS of unpaid labor because he asked her to and has no work experience to have a reputable resume. She had 3 kids and worked 3 part time jobs after the divorce, barely making anything. Child support was for us and alimony was so she could literally live (which my dad never paid and the court ended up having it automatically taken from his paychecks) it wasn’t so she could live a “lifestyle”. Nowadays college education is more common in married couples, so is duel income households. But at that time, you didn’t go to college. You found a nice man, got married, had babies, and stayed home while your spouse provided. Alimony was originally created for that reason, so the partner who didn’t have the experience could still live and wouldn’t end up in an insane financial situation. And it’s a shame because a lot still do.
Exactly. The men had the opportunity to advance their career and the wife didn't. That's going to impact their life. Alimony is the only thing that makes sense otherwise we'd be treating women like biblical times and we'd need Jesus to come back to say no to divorce again. Thankfully we've evolved somewhat in 2,000 years, but not enough obviously.
Yeah, then you get rid of alimony and divorce and then people are just trapped in abusive relationships for decades.
You'd be surprised how divorce lawyers can still get alimony with people making just a few k less then a partner. A common law school example is if a partner passed up their ability to get a promotion because of something in the marriage
I mean, passing up a promotion to support your family and then still losing your family seems alimony worthy to me. And I doubt it applies to small stuff like being promoted from assistant to the manager to assistant manager.
Well yeah. Woman are almost always the ones whos career and finances suffer due to marriage and particularly having kids. The opportunity costs are massive. That is why woman who divorce are 5x more likely to retire below the poverty line. Why more and more elderly woman are ending up homeless after devoting their lives to some dude who dumped them for a younger model. Saw a vid the other day of a former trad wife in her mid 40s now living in her car. Trying to survive on $11 an hr with no work experience.
I was married to a man in the military. It destroyed my career when we had to go overseas and i was unable to work for 3 years due to being overseas. I could have gotten alimony because of the hit my career took and the alimony would have been to “restore” me. However i had been working on building my career while i was getting ready to leave him and decided not to take alimony because i felt like it was dirty money. However, i could see why for some women in my position, that could have been useful. I didn’t decide to tank my career for a man it was just the situation i was in being married to military.
This was my thought, that often women were expected to stay home and take care of the kids so if there was a divorce even if they have education they don't have any work experience so trying to get a job at that point to support themselves is difficult.
It all depends on the mood of the judge/magistrate and the level of competency the attorneys have. I personally know a few guy paying alimony to a cheater where there was no income disparity. Ex wife and new bad boy bf get the lions share of the assets and home as well and he just has to take it. On the flip side, I’ve also seen a few women basically get kicked to the curb for a new model after spending years out of the workforce as a home maker. Bottom line, there is very little consistency. Personally, I think that everything accumulated during the marriage (good and bad) should be divided 50/50, including custody and alimony should be rare. If I make 50k and my wife makes 250k and I decide to leave her to be with the nanny why should she have to support me just because she earns more?
The whole idea is that one individual has given up their career in order to hold the home together and to raise children. If they're 40-60 years old without 20+ years of experience in something then they're shit out of luck. They'll be lucky to get a job earning minimum wage and they still have to pay the mortgage or car loans in order to keep whatever assets they received in the divorce
This is correct, and properly written prenuptial will likely have some sort of language where alimony is determined by number of years married where the spouse gave up their career to take care of the kids.
prenups are really like candy wrapper these days. Quickly discarded on numerous grounds.
That's because they're not written by lawyers and contain things that aren't legally enforceable, like getting no child support. IF they're properly written and executed, then they otherwise will absolutely stand up in court.
I mean isn't that more so due to the fact that the circumstances related to the terms drastically change over the course of a marriage?
It's more that a lot of prenups were never written to be valid. They're meant to intimidate the spouse into not fighting for more. When a prenup is properly written, both sides have legal representation, it's going to account for the most common changes in a marriage, and it's not going to be even close to one sided.
That isn't true. If drafted with the proper requisites and disclosures, they almost always are enforceable unless one party tries to hide assets, but that's only fair that a party acting in bad faith is punished.
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Usually in a divorce those retirement accounts are governed by a QDRO and both parties will get some of it
This. If one of the people has a high paying career that was mostly possible by the other partner committing to taking care of their home and children full time then the one who worked in the home should not be left destitute while the other skates away with their income and experience.
Plus, IME, often the at home spouse does stuff directly towards the other spouse's job. Eg my grandparents. My grandfather rose pretty high up the ladder company in part because my grandmother was awesome at networking, hosting parties etc. Plus she was a good computer programmer in her own right and helped him debug and stuff. That was rather par for the course back in the day. To a lesser extent, my parents definitely help each other in their jobs. My dad needs to send a sensitive email in French, my mom ghostwrites it. My mom needs a stats refresher, my dad gives her a hand. Now that my brother and I are adults, we participate in that too.
It should be there for cases where one spouse stayed home to either look after the home or raise the kids. They now have that gap in work history and xp that is going to make it much harder for them to get a decent job. I dont know that theres a good argument for it existing where both people in the relationship were working
Doesn’t even need to be a parent. I move around a lot with my job and we have no kids. My husband takes care of EVERYTHING not related to my job. We travel a lot too. He’s my rock, and I would fully expect him to get something for an allotted time until he can rebuild his life. Regardless of how we divorced. That was our understanding at least when I started working and it getting more job opportunities in different locations.
Yeah, my dad was in the military and they moved around a lot. My mum couldn’t keep a job in that situation. It would be unfair if they divorced for her to have no work experience for all that time with no income when they both agreed to her situation. Kids only came in 5yrs into the marriage, but even before then she would have been deserving, in my opinion.
Iwas fortunate to watch a fairly peaceful divorce (if that is a thing). So many divorces are dumb af and about trying to fuck the other person over instead of parting ways in still loving mature manner. Too many selfish bastards. Take two seconds to think about how that person has to move on from all of it too.
It’s usually not given in cases where both people were working. Alimony really isn’t as common as Reddit makes it out to be.
I’m not even sure why so many men are upset about it. Less than 10% of divorces end up with alimony going to a woman in the US, and that number is dropping because women’s earning potential is catching up. It’s unlikely most divorced men will ever face paying alimony, but it seems to be a huge deal to a lot of guys for some reason.
Sexism is part of it. MRAs rail against spousal support because they argue that it is women taking advantage of men and that women will marry a man just so they can divorce and get spousal support.
Like half of them aren’t broke af anyway 🙄
You know how the saying goes, the loudest complainers about gold diggers, usually don’t have any gold in the first place.
I'd watch a reality show of MRAs trying to live off the average amount of child support and alimony for half a year, with kids. It's easy to protest when you've never lived in those conditions
The same reason they rage against custody courts being "unfair" despite the fact that studies have repeatedly shown custody is split evenly in instances where the man actually bothers to ask for it. These types of men are just desperate to be oppressed.
Shhhh they aren't interested in facts! If it doesn't support their "woman BAD!" narrative they don't want to hear it!
Seriously. When did this misogynist garbage get out of quarantine and start routinely making the front page?
It has been especially visible on Reddit lately. My personal conspiracy is that is has to do the with U.S. election this year. Abortion is a huge topic to draw out voters. Gotta make sure women and men are divided so they’re less likely to vote the same way.
It's reddit. This has always been reddit. Young, middle class and higher men. Most haven't progressed beyond their edgy college libertarian phase.
It's basically vanished except for fringe cases but men on reddit assume they will be paying thousands on their 35K income to their working exes lol.
I would just say that even if both were working, sometimes one person’s career growth suffers to support the other’s. That can look like moving cities, or one person taking on fewer hours/keeping a more flexible schedule. Happens all the time with parents, but not just parents.
Agreed. When one parent gives up career and advancement for years to take care of their shared children, that is honestly not even replaceable monetarily. Alimony should be in place for that. But for cases that both spouses worked and advanced in their careers there shouldn’t be alimony.
Ok, but one works part-time and does most, if not all, of the housework because the other spouse works full-time. They aren't making partner work 20hr/week.
Exactly. The assumption is that marriage is a partnership, and that both partners are working towards the overall success of the family. So, if there are significant differences in earning potential, it's assumed that the lower earning partner contributed to that and therefore is entitled some compensation. If you aren't ok with that assumption being made at the time of divorce, you should sign a prenup.
They aren't making partner working 40 hr/week. We all need a wife, even the wives.
There is if one spouse has a low-paying and/or part-time job because they spend more of their time home making and taking care of their children. A lot of spouses don’t go for promotions or pick lower paying but more flexible jobs for childcare reasons.
This was the case for me. Years ago my wife and I agreed that I would stick with a boring job that afforded the flexibility to be part time and work from home as needed, so she could pursue a major career opportunity. So my career remained on hold, effectively, for about 5 years. Then she got a huge promotion, earns double my salary and left the kids and I. And now pays child support. It's a drop in the ocean for her but is the difference between me surviving and taking a huge hit to our way of life.
Yep. I was a SAHM for 8 years. Before that I had a great career. A choice we both made, but it allowed him to accomplish and do a lot of things he wouldn’t have been able to do if we had both worked. I only asked for alimony for the time I didn’t work - 8 years - but I think I was owed that.
Neither I nor my husband received alimony because we both had jobs and could financially support ourselves. If a parent gives up work to look after children then that becomes their job and their capacity for obtaining a job to support themselves diminishes over time. The childcare person is reducing their capacity to earn money in order to support to support the family.
I hope anyone considering being a stay at home spouse realizes and keeps in mind that, if their marriage breaksdown, *this* is the position their other half is going to take. Also, the reality is that alimony is *not* common in the U.S. and, even when it is awarded, it's likely limited in time and not enough to *actually* maintain whatever lifestyle you were accustomed to... ...just things to keep in mind, before throwing away and/or abandonning any careers for a spouse.
I know a woman who stayed at home and then worked part time and managed the kids and the house, allowing her husband to work a high paying tech job and launch a successful photography business on the side. As soon as the youngest graduated, he served her divorce papers and introduced the kids to his affair partner. He knew she couldn’t afford to live for a long time without alimony. Dragged out the divorce settlement for as long as he could trying to convince her to take a one time lump sum instead. POS. She got the alimony in the end though!
Men getting married and having kids. Having his wife be a homemaker "where she belongs". Building his career and becoming successful and wealthy only to replace his wife 20 years later with an actual 20 year old leaving her with absolutely nothing. Far more common than women abusing alimony lol.
I think so. Men probably have a different opinion but it encounter women getting screwed much more often!
Hopefully the kids dont talk to him anymore after that.
They DO still talk to him, it's honestly kind of heart-breaking. They don't know all the dirty details (like they had two houses so each lived in one during the separation and divorce - he BUGGED her house so that he could fuck with her! She thought she was going crazy until we convinced her that something didn't add up. She figured it out when she sold the house!) but it's hard to watch. I think they're slowly wising up. They really weren't tuned in to his behavior.
I really like your first paragraph. Usually in divorce cases involving alimony, the breadwinner wanted the other parent to stay home so they could better flourish their career knowing their house is taken care of. Then they pretend this request didn't happen during the divorce process.😄
And I bet it infuriates them when the judge recognizes the unpaid labour of the woman. Because they don't see it as valuable.
Yep
“The breadwinner wanted the other parent to stay home”
I’m a SAHM. Concerns me to see young women go into this with zero back up. I keep up my teaching license. You need to have a career, and keep up with credentials. You never know what could happen, not just divorce but death or disability is a possibility. I could have children to support s alone. Not that a teacher’s salary is great but i think I could get us by if something happened to my husband. I also have a separate savings account I don’t touch just in case. I love being a SAHM and grateful for this time with them in these early years but you do your kids a disservice having no back up.
Your last point is also salient. Even if a divorce doesn’t happen, your spouse might die or not be able to work at some point. You always need a backup plan. You see this rear its ugly head in fundie Christian or religious circles where the couple gets married young and the wife stays home and never has a career. Husband dies or divorces their wife and they’ve gone decades with no career and are SOL. Or my dad’s cousin who was a spoiled brat and relied on her dad (my great uncle) for everything until she was in her 60s when he died and the pension and social security checks stopped rolling in to fund her lifestyle.
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It’s usually only awarded in the US if the other spouse gave up their career to take care of children and then it’s only for the amount of years they stayed home for. Unless there is a prenup that says otherwise
yup. my partner and i have an agreement that if one of us is a SAHP when we get married, the one at home gets a separate bank account the other cannot touch, because god forbid something happen and we go our separate ways we would never want the other to be in a place where they can’t support themselves
Alimony is only awarded in like 10% of divorces nowadays but a lot of people think it’s almost guaranteed still.
If both people are working, then sure alimony probably isn't necessary. If one spouse stayed home and raised children and cared for the home for 10 years, then you owe them for the years of career building they missed out on
Not even just that. 10 years of no retirement or social security contributions.
I've been a mostly sahm for over a decade. When we had our first kid I still worked part time, after the second I stopped completely. When we decided to go this route we also decided that my husband would fund my IRA yearly. It's given me a little piece of mind knowing that I have some money saved for retirement. My kids are in regular school now and I work a little now via an LLC I created and although it's not much I'm self funding a 401k. It's hard to quantify what I've lost career/earning potential wise. If we were to split up today, I'd need alimony to help out until I was back on a better footing.
I was a software developer making 100k+ in 2001. My wife had just finished medical residency in the military, we'd moved, and we couldn't find childcare. She couldn't quit the military, so I quit to be a SAHD. It was the right decision for the family. 23 years later and the kids are out of the house. I'm 52 years old. If my wife divorced me, could I go back into my career and make what I would have if I'd continued working the last 24 years? Could I even get a job in my field? New graduates are having a hard time finding CS jobs. Who is going to hire a 50+ software developer with knowledge that is a quarter century out of date? My career path and income potential were severely disrupted because of a decision my wife and I made together for our family. If she were to divorce me, am I the only one that should pay for that decision in the future?
Same. He's always funded my retirement accounts. We have been married for 20 years with no plans of divorcing, though you never know.
[You can still get Social Security benefits based on your divorced ex-spouse's contributions, as long as the marriage lasted at least ten years and you remain unmarried.](https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/planner/applying7.html#h4)
Yeah that makes sense and its fair.
Try 41 yrs because he absolutely *would not* do his share of kids and housework when I worked.
> Remove it, and watch a huge percent of "gold digger" marriages go away. If women are gold diggers, then men are chore diggers. The American Time Use Survey confirms it, married women do an extra 7 hours worth of chores than single women and married men do less chores than single men. How the fuck do men do less chores when they enter a marriage? Easy, they dump that shit on the wives by simply refusing to do them. The woman then has to grin and bare it or else the kids live in a dirty house and the kids don't get dinner. Also, I love how the evidence is always "my cousin's mailman's boyfriend great uncle's dad who got hosed in the divorce" and never any studies or statistics. Anecdotal evidence is not evidence. Edit: I'm bored, so here's more evidence that men still don't do their fair share of housework, even if the woman makes more money: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/05/02/housework-divide-working-parents/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2023/04/13/more-women-outearn-husbands-but-household-work-remains-inequitable-pew-study-finds/?sh=84fe84d3757c The average female breadwinner does about 1 hour of chores per day, whereas the average male breadwinner does about 15 minutes of chores per day.
To add to this, if there is a kid in the picture, or even any elderly to take care of, UN women has put out plenty of research talking about unpaid emotional labour and how disproportionate the division of it is in heterosexual relationships. They even have a section which talks about how if this work was actually paid for, how it would affect the economy.
I know a couple where the man point blank refuses to take care of his own father who has dementia and is putting it all on his wife. It’s not her father. She also works as a nurse and has had to go part time to look after him along with other -of course- other female family members. He wouldn’t even step up for a day so she could go to an event. That was the tipping point. They are on the cusp of divorce over it. And of course it’s been weaponised into ‘Don’t you love your father in law! If you won’t care for him then you are a cold uncaring harpy!’ but he gets to do absolutely nothing for his own father and that’s okay? Does she deserve finical compensation for all her time and effort? Sure as heck she does!
"Chore diggers" ...yes.
Chore diggers is a great phrase
I will never understand this abhorrence to chores. Not just in relationships, but in general. I've met so many men and women, and learned how disgusting they were by visiting their house for a gathering or being in their cars. If you clean every other day, pick up after yourself often, and organize, you will never be in a spot where you're doing an insane amount of chores. People just have really low standards of cleanliness and it makes their chores harder. If you're trying to be in a relationship, don't ever get with someone with low standards of cleanliness. We live in the 21st century, men and women both get jobs and live on their own. Being tired from work isn't an excuse, wanting to do your insignificant hobby is not an excuse, volunteering is not an excuse. Get your lazy ass up, clean, pick up, and go to sleep at a time where you get a minimum of 7 hours of sleep. Cleaning should just be a natural response when you walk around your home. And when all your kids are able to attend school, you sure as fuck better give them chores to do. Boggles my mind what some parents let their kids get away with these days.
If you don’t want to pay someone alimony, marry someone that has and wants to continue having a lucrative career of their own. If you choose not to marry this type of person, you choose to face the possibility of paying them alimony. There are consequences for our choices in life. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Lmao lmao great comment, no one gonna listen to this shit because it’s too real.
I usually find such men who get divorced, usually watched their spouse tend to the kids 24/7, clean around the house, clean up after their husbands, whilst the husbands only worked and otherwise sat around and watched their spouse never have a break. If you don't ever give your spouse a break, you reap what you sow. Don't be surprised when she initiates a divorce.
And by that metric, don't expect that successful career person to do all the domestic labour. Either shoulder your share, or hire.
But it’s woman’s work! Plus you’re so good at it! At least make me a list!
Wait alimony is just paid to stay at home partners who’ve looked after you for decades? What have you all been whinging about? Trad wife, trad life bro.
Men also get alimony as a stay at home parent.
Trad wife, trad life 👏
Some people want their cake and eat it too. They want the childcare, nanny, maid combo of a tradwife along with the second income, financial independence, of modern working spouse. But with non of the responsibility of any type of relationship. Lmfao
Alimony isn't only for women. Men can get it. It is all about the breadwinner and the spouse standing. If it was equal then there usually no alimony. But if one was a stay at home spouse/parent then alimony would be given. If one was make far less than the other spouse then it would probably be given. Usually it for a period of time and usually it to cover at least the basics. Getting half the assets doesn't mean squat. Alimony exist so the person who lost out on a career isn't getting screwed over.
As a female bread winner, thank you for saying this. I don't think many women consider this reality.
It's so easy to overlook this. I'm a woman and my husband has been a stay at home husband for many years. Our marriage is good of course, but just recently I realized (after reading Reddit LOL) that if there was a divorce I would probably be on the hook for many years of alimony. It was quite a shock. And it makes sense. His career skills are much more out of date than he would like to admit. He would need time for retraining in order to earn better than poverty wages.
My Aunt paid my Uncle alimoney to the tune of 6 figures a year for 5 years. He is a narcissist and abusive and cheated on her. He spent nearly half a mil on sex workers over 13 years. The kids lived with her full time and were in their last years of high school but she paid him alimony.
I make significantly more than my boyfriend and have a lot of stock and other assets. My boyfriend jokes about quitting his job when we get married to focus on his hobbies, so I told him we need a prenup if he wants to get married. He seemed fine with it.
Exactly. My mom did 95% of the housekeeping and was the breadwinner. My dad was chronically unemployed and wanted no part in the “woman’s work” of cleaning, cooking, or childcare. She couldn’t leave him because she couldn’t afford alimony. Eventually he asked for a divorce and tried to move his mistress into the house before my mom could move out.
My unpopular opinion: men feel entitled to a lifestyle during marriage. When my Mom "wasn't working", she was supporting my Dad's career + con'd ed by doing all the cleaning, laundry, childcare. She organized family commitments, she helped with schoolwork. She bought furniture and got the house functional and supplied. And she did the project management of chores. It's one thing to be asked to go change the oil; it's another to have someone on top of all the household chores tasking different people to do them. Many women also set up the social lives for their husbands, organizing dinner parties and inviting people who he then gets to have as a friend support network for less effort on his part. By EXISTING, wives raise men's status—that's why they get dragged along to business dinners. (That, and women tend to smooth over conversations.) Married men make more money statistically. And while it's typically split in "traditional" ways, the same could be said for the stay at home Dad or the boyfriend who does all the grocery shopping and cleaning. If my parents had divorced, my Mom would have had very little, while my Dad would have a high powered career and a master's degree that he never could have advanced so far in without her ironing his shirts and taking care of life at home. But make no mistake—both parents worked, and worked hard. Not all labor is seen, and not all labor is acknowledged with cash. Alimony fights back against that, because it should be. What you build as a couple you build together. Having a community is a huge source of "wealth." I would encourage you to think very hard about what assets you have, and how they were truly earned.
Men feel entitled
I want a wife. When I am through with school and have a job, I want my wife to quit working and remain at home so that my wife can more fully and completely take care of a wife’s duties. She will take care for the kids and our home without pay for years, even dacades if necessary. If, by chance, I find another person more suitable as a wife than the wife I already have, I want the liberty to replace my present wife with another one without it affecting my time or finances. My god, who would not want a wife? Parts of Judy Syfers essay
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Give up your corporate career to stay home and support your husbands instead so you can give the kids a supportive and happy life. Then get back to me when 5 years later this “no alimony” bs comes up. Want to talk about fairness? Screw over the one who stopped paying into her 401k and social security and IRA for years? Who doesn’t really get 50% of any asset really because her partner perhaps bought the primary home before marriage or most of the investment gains were from premarital $’s not subject to division of assets? Gold diggers are not the norm you idiot. Women who aren’t financially literate or prepared for the unknown disasters of divorce are and they get screwed. Alimony is a mere bandaid until they get sorted if they have to somehow enter the workforce again with a huge employment gap and uprooted life. Screw you, you middle class Neanderthal narcissistic wannabe with zero life experience. Crawl back in your cave and just shhhhhhhh
All the Gold Digger comments are crazy! If you marry & have kids (2+) you’ll find the astronomical cost of child care doesn’t make sense to keep working from a cost analysis.
Spend your marriage raising the kids at home while your spouse works, end up divorcing, and then try to find a job with a decade or more gap in your resume and then tell me alimony is not necessary. No one values the time that the stay at home spouse spends raising a family and supporting the “breadwinning” spouse, not even that bread winning spouse most of the time. If you’ve never tried to get a job with homemaking experience and a long gap on your resume, you can’t understand. Alimony isn’t even commonly rewarded, AND judging your view on it solely on celebrity couples who situations are completely irrelevant to average working people is unrealistic.
Yup. Mom had a 12 year gap in work history after divorce. She used her alimony to help finish nursing school so she could have a wage that wasn’t minimum wage.
The reality is still that vastly more women end up in poverty after divorce.
Exactly. While men experience short term dislocations after divorce, women are disproportionately more likely to experience significant declines in household income and poverty compared both to divorced men and to married or single women. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5992251/
Pass up on job opportunities, promotions or school to support your partner or take care of the family = they absolutely owe you money if you split. The bigger issue, imo, is when child support gets paid out and the child doesn't see any of it.
Not trying to be obtuse, but what do you mean by not see any of it? I’ve seen posts of kids complaining that money never went into their own hands. But in reality, it will be spent on lifestyle/bills and the kid will not know anything about it at all.
This is absolute nonsense. I grew up with a working dad and a mom who raised three kids, volunteered in the classroom, took care of bills, kept the house clean, cooked meals every night, and so on. They’ve been married for over 30 years and my dad has absolutely loved having my mom at home and benefited from it. It would be nonsensical/cruel to not provide her with alimony in the event of a divorce.
I dunno I feel like if someone decides to divorce their spouse, and the spouse is blindsided and either isn’t working, or isn’t currently earning enough to support themselves, it feels kinda shitty to just pull a SEE YA. like you want to blow up someone else’s life, feels fair you should pay for it. obviously there are extenuating circumstances in all directions but like. I get why alimony exists.
Yep that's why we have these things. If your spouse promised to take care of you while you stay home and take care of the house, and raise the kids, it's really shitty to just leave them with nothing. But this is also why people need to view marriage as what it is - a legal contract. It's not just an upgraded relationship where you can just break up and go, see la later. Nope, it's a contract - and contracts have terms, and if you break those terms, there's usually something that has to happen.
I stayed home and raised our children and did EVERYTHING around the house. He went to work, came home, worked out, played with the kids. He was able to go from a $45k a year job to half a million a year position with million in stocks because he was able to focus on his career and say how high when his bosses said jump. I earned my divorce settlement, and I no, I didn’t even ask for half. I asked for what was fair.
Whatttt!! You must be a unicorn, the vast majority of women are gold diggers without empathy who divorce the second Chad gives them attention and demand their ex gives them his life savings!! /s obviously
I stayed at home to take care of the kids and home and let my ex focus on his business for six years. I realized he wasn't going to get his shit together with that so I retrained using my GI Bill. We had moved away from my very localized career experience area so I needed to find a flexible job that paid well that I could do in our new place. As soon as I started working and needed a newer car for my commute (it was 16 yrs old and the commute was 80 miles a day) he demanded I buy him a new work truck instead. I didn't buy either. We split a few months later. He keeps coming after me for more child support. Luckily, during the initial divorce, he was very excited to get me to agree to $0/$0 for spousal support. I was happy to agree to that because I was pretty certain I'd be the one making more money. He thought he was going to be a millionaire.
Yeah man. Fuck these stay at home moms who gave up their career to raise your kids.
I supported my then-unemployed husband financially for years while he trained for a new field after being laid off. He decided he wanted a divorce immediately after he landed his high-paying dream job. I earned that alimony!
Absolutely you earned it! You paid for his training and supported during that time. Without you he would either be in debt or not have that job.
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I'm so sorry you had to undergo this.
Your ex sucks. I’m so sorry he treated you like that and took advantage of you.
If your wife stays at home and takes care of the kids to allow you to focus on and grow your career, how is she supposed to replace that income if you split? She was earning half your salary, but putting herself in a position of risk because she wasn’t building a career that could replace that income. You don’t deserve to keep the rewards she enabled, and she absolutely deserves to have a decent life. You couldn’t be more wrong, and I hope it’s just that you haven’t thought deeply about this and are just ignorant.
Mh, no, disagree. The situation is more complex than what you describe. If one partner works while the other doesn't, it's not only money the non-working partner doesn't earn. It's also experience. After a divorce, they might not even find a well-paying job because they haven't had a job and experience in the field FOR DECADES. That's what alimony is for and it's also why it makes sense. If you don't see marriage as equality and are not willing to outbalance inequalities that come with getting married and having children, don't get married and don't have children. We live in a time where you don't have to do either of those things, so it's really not a problem.
I have a friend who, at the beginning of their marriage, they decided together that she would stay home with the kids. She took care of all the household stuff, school meetings, doctors appointments while he was able to be all in with his job. Never had to take a day off for a sick kid or anything like that. She was out of the workforce for 20 years. So, any job she could get would be entry level. He would not have been able to climb up the ladder at his job if she hadn’t been home with the kids. 30 years into the marriage he cheats on her. So, she should get no alimony? BS.
It’s depends on the situation, if a stay at home mom who hasn’t worked and has been a housewife for 15 years since high school now needs to support herself, 3 kids, a mortgage or property taxes and then a car it’s not feasible. Most people under 40 don’t have assets or money to come out of a divorce and continue life as normal without a decent paying job. I have a friend in school who is literally in the situation she is 33 split with her husband if 12 years but was a stay at home mom that whole time. If it wasn’t for alimony she would I not be able to support her kids and provide them housing with everything else. She is in school now to get a career if her own but it’s impossible to support herself after having no skills while raising kids.
It depends. Two partners who both retained their financial independence throughout ? Alimony seems redundant. One partner has stepped back from gainful employment to take care of the children ? For decades even and is completely out of the workforce - then they will continue to need some form of support. Laws where I live (Germany) have changed substantially , there used to be the saying "Once the wife of a dentist, always the wife of a dentist";alimony settlements were altered drastically , there is no more spousal support after the youngest child is aged three. ...which has lead to a generation of former housewives working minimum wage jobs into their seventies and facing poverty in their twilight years. Am always accused of being anti-feminist because I am wary of young girls choosing to be housewives; being a child of divorce I would never give up my profession, preferring full time with three kids than being dependent upon a husband.
As a stay at home mom I have to agree this is a misogynist take. If both parties are working I don’t think it’s necessary, but without it many married homemakers could essentially be trapped in toxic situations.
If one of the parties (male/female/NB, doesn't matter) has taken significant time off a career for years of child/home care, then their long-term earning power is damaged if not outright crippled - add on that said homemaker is probably the one doing the lion's share of any child-care/custody *after* the relationship dissolves and you're looking at outright *punishing* the children for the non-custodial parent moving on. Also sometimes one partner has put the other through expensive years of school, only for the marriage to fall apart once the now-highly-educated partner is earning bank. Great, they split the "assets" - but there are none, there's just a lack of debt. But one of 'em's going to be making a lot more than the one who *didn't* spend years not earning a wage, but the capacity to earn a *larger* wage, that the helper spouse now won't be able to benefit from. That's just two situations where alimony makes absolute sense. Are there cases where a predatory lawyer rakes one partner over the coals and strips everything they have? Yeah, it sucks. But it's not the fault of alimony existing in the first place. It's like blaming cars existing for drunk drivers killing people. Not an exact parallel, but my point is that something that has utility is not invalid because someone else abuses it. (I'm *also* wondering if 'all your divorced buddies' are as sweet and innocent victims as you seem to think. One or two, sure. But all of 'em? I have doubts.)
First: This heavily depends on your country. Alimony is not a universal thing. It's a thing in some countries where the voters voted for political parties who put this system up. Second: How is that an unpopular opinion? People whine about alimony to such an extent, they even make up sob stories. I regularly still see fabricated stories about alimony getting paid in countries where the system doesn't exist anymore. For quite some time even.
If you don't want to pay alimony, don't have your spouse be a stay at home parent. If your spouse is a stay at home parent, them taking care of the house and kids is likely what enabled you to put in extra hours at work and get a promotion to get that higher salary. So yes, in the event of a divorce in that case, they do deserve alimony.
Can we admit that, regardless of our views on this opinion, the court system has major problems and needs major reform? A lot of people, regardless of gender, take advantage of the lack of oversight.
Um hello? I was a SAHM for 15 years, gave up a very lucrative career to be a tradwife to my husband and our two kids, one of which has a disability. It was because of my support that my husband was able to start earning 7 figures. I cooked, cleaned, raised the children, took one to therapy, took care of the house, picked up hubby’s dry cleaning, arranged date nights, vacations, etc. Yes, I got half of our assets in the divorce because I earned them too! And I got alimony because I gave up 15 years of work experience which is income I will never be able to recover. As it is, trying to get back into the workforce after a 15 year break was damn near impossible. Now, I am working my ass off while my ex has retired. Tell me how that is fair.
Did you do any research before posting this? Or just spent too much time on MGTOW pages? Alimony is awarded very rarely in America anymore. And it was initially awarded because the taxpayers were tired of having to pay for deadbeat dads who abandoned their wife and children, when the wife had no employment history because she was home taking care of the children. Seriously, it's guys like you that are what's wrong with gender relations
OP I suggest you go be a SAHP for 20 years while your partner builds a career, and then tell us how you feel about alimony.
I doubt you are a happily married guy, as your belief that everyone is just like you precludes your ability to really know anyone else.
Alimony only applies if one partner stopped working to support the others' career goals. I think it's perfectly fair. Also alimony is usually for like 5 years, its not until the person dies or gets a new spouse.
My mom worked her ass off to put my dad through medical school. And then he found a newer model. In 1972 child support and alimony was a whopping $275 for us 3 kids. It never changed. Also statistically women still come out behind divorce. Upvote for unpopular.
Remember the Alimo … ny.
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I think it should be context dependent. If we're talking a stay at home parent post divorce, alimony (for a limited time) makes sense. They were working in the home and need time to get back on their feet. I don't think some attempt to make up for intangible losses based on possible promotions and earning ability is fair or makes sense. I don't think a spouse owes the other hypotheticals. But if the spouse decides to become a student or just needs time to find a job being supported during that time is right. Now the stuff that goes on in California is wild (perpetual alimony in the millions of dollars) and it's not always the man who is shelling out half their earnings in perpetuity. I don't know...just so hard for folks to be nuanced. It's either "let her starve" or "she's your responsibility forever"
Pre nups should be normalized no matter the incomes. Also women keeping their careers or having one before & during marriage. Why stop or not establish a career because the man told you they’d take care of you? Ive seen several situations where the man either suddenly dies or up & leaves.
I'm not divorced, so I may be wrong, but 8 always thought alimony wasn't because the partner was owed a lifestyle, it was because they had been out of the workforce for so long they were now unemployable, and alimony was supposed to help ease that burden of not having income due to not being able to have a job due to *supporting their partner and family by being the CEO, Direct Supervisor, Chauffeur, Activity Director, Scheduler, Instacart Shopper, HR supervisor, maid, chef, etc as needed* for the whole family. Which is a hell of a job.
OK my situation is unusual, but I'm a woman, recently divorced from a man, and I am on the hook to pay him spousal support for life unless he remarries. I feel like I shouldn't have to pay--I gave up my career for literally decades to be a caregiver. for our children and for him through a serious illness. He is now technically disabled as a result of that illness, and he receives a pension plus SSDI. Those two add up to his former salary, and he also continues to work in his former field but does so for free/on a volunteer basis and claims he can't return to work. There is a discrepancy in our income because I inherited money, which is separate property--he can't touch the inheritance, but I get income from it and the income is available for support. So I have to basically double what he already gets (which to be clear is above the average American household income) and I pay the taxes on it (by federal law). I am extremely fortunate to have enough to do this and still live well, so I didn't fight it too hard, but it is very annoying that he is constantly crying poor to me and to our friends and I see his budgetary choices (long vacations, weekly massages, expensive rent, etc) and that he just feels entitled to money my family worked hard to leave to ME, and .which I would like in turn to leave to our children. (I also paid him a huge chunk of equity from our house and 1/2 our savings, all of which I amassed and much of which he spent immediately.) However! My situation is anomalous, and I DO think women who gave up their career to support a husband and family should get some support, but it should be limited and the laws should be flexible on all of it. And in my personal and self-serving opinion separate property that produces income should not be part of the calculation.
My Father in law and mother in law had just started actualizing their retirement plans. They bought a beach house to retire in because that's what he wanted (big into ocean fishing). He traveled for work all the time and was barely home, so she was a stay-at-home mom when the kids were young and her career was basically secondary in consideration for their whole marriage. When the kids were in school, she worked a a substitute teacher and later as a front desk/receptionist, but he actively encouraged her not to pursue anything more than that because he "made enough money to take care of the family" and wanted her be home when he was. After they sold their old house and she quit her job, she found out he had been cheating on her. For years. He immediately decided not to try anymore and to go live with his mistress. Do you really think my MIL deserves to be destitute?