What are the strong arguments for the general application of alimony after a divorce?
I can understand alimony in the case of a relationship where a spouse’s work significantly helped their partner get into a strongly positive financial situation, such as a wife who helped her husband set up and run a profitable business that he’ll own after the divorce, or even having paid for higher education for their spouse which results in a large increase of pay, such as medical school.
But I’d like to hear about arguments for alimony in which one spouse is forced to keep the other “in a manner of living they’re accustomed to”.
If I have a good paying job, I would get accustomed to having a certain amount of money, but even when I put effort into the relationship between me and my employer in the form of work, I can’t expect that my employer will be forced to pay to keep me at that level of money if I choose to leave the company on my own. So why a spouse?
I understand the idea that a spouse puts effort into a marriage, such as a spouse who takes care of the house while their partner works, but why does that earn them the right to continue to get a share of their ex-partner’s earnings if they’re no longer expected to do the work they did before?
By the way, I’m trying my best to word this so it’s not based on genders, because frankly I don’t care if it’s a woman or man getting the money, I’m annoyed at the seemingly common idea that the poorer person automatically deserves money from the richer partner after a break up, at least without a good reason to do so.
Also, my annoyance with the situation stems from the perception of alimony being a rather common horror story. I don’t how common it is, and would welcome any hard data on the statistics of divorce.
I believe the traditional rationale for it is so that a housewife who spent X years staying home and raising the kids isn’t suddenly out on the streets unable to support herself (because she has no meaningful way of being gainfully employed) if her husband divorces her. They have worked as a team (the husband would not have been able to work to that level without her help around the house) so effectively they both earned the man’s salary.
I think it’s largely a throwback to the days when wives were financially dependent on their husbands and where a divorced woman faced difficulties in becoming financially independent.
Yeah, but what was fair back then isn’t now, and – let’s be honest with genders here – women don’t want to surrender a divorce advantage they have enjoyed for decades. Which I understand, though I don’t get how there hasn’t been more reform in the court system to recognize changes in society when it comes to equality and employment. Right now, unless the woman makes dramatically more than the man, the field is tilted in her favor when it comes to divorce. I guess the courts still see that the woman has more to bear during marriage with kids and the traditional running of the home.
I don’t have any stats to back this up, but know loads of personal anecdotes from good friends who were royally screwed for alimony and divorce cash settlements when it came to “dividing” up property (which means that she threatens a lifetime of financial harassment unless she gets the house, the car, the money in the joint checking account, etc.). Particulars don’t seem to matter that much, even at all. One friend of mine lost virtually five years of his life when his relationship – three years common-law and an eight-month marriage that died when the wife met somebody new at work and started an affair – dissolved. He had to surrender all rights on the house, his new car, a good $15K in cash, and absorb other hits (he’d just paid for their wedding and $15K honeymoon) to avoid paying alimony and child support for two kids that weren’t his. And this woman was making $65K a year, just under what he was making at the time. Divorce law is very archaic and frightening, or at least the way in which it is applied is very archaic and frightening.
But hey, stupidity springs eternal. I went into my marriage last year with no pre-nup, just verbal understandings about property splits if anything happens. Yeah, that’ll work out just grrreat if we ever break up…
Yeah, I’ve heard that argument often, but don’t really put much stock in it when I look at it closely.
If that same man had hired a cook and a maid during that time, no one would expect him to continue to pay them after they leave his service. They’re doing work for the male, but are also getting paid at the time.
So too is it with a marriage. The female may be putting work into the house and such, but she’s also enjoying access to his pay while still in the marriage. Once the marriage ends, why should she continue to enjoy access to his money if she’s not going to do the same amount of work before.
My aunt did the au pair thing with her children, and she’s not ridiculously wealthy. I would imagine that it was something of a lifestyle choice, though, as she worked pretty much all the time.
The big argument (and I don’t fully buy it as I am troubled by some alimony stories I hears as well) is that the problem for the housewife was opportunity cost: she might end up divorced at 40 or 50 with no marketable skills in the workforce as she spent the last 20 or 30 years doing housework and raising kids. Unless she takes a job as a domestic servant, she has few transferrable skills. The idea being that marriage is for life and she sacrificed the opportunity to develop her skills to raise a family. She incurred a massive opportunity cost so the man has to pay.
I don’t fully agree with it, but thats the argument.
When divorce rates started to skyrocket in the U.S. (mid 70s), there was decent evidence that the economic impact on women was much more severe than it was for men; family income of women decreased 25-30% in the year following divorce, whereas income of the men increased. This is consistent with the theory that, in general, women sacrificed future earnings potential in a marriage, and therefore were entitled to alimony.
With women’s increased participation in the job market, the post-divorce economic disparity between men and women has decreased. One recent study suggested women’s income declines only 14% (although men’s still increases). Perhaps this trend towards economic equality explains the fact that only 15% of American divorces result in any kind of alimony payment. Maybe alimony isn’t as widespread as it once was (I couldn’t find any stats on older rates of alimony), or it still may be prevalent in Canada.
Anecdotally, it sounds like the threat of alimony is used to aggressively seek favorable distribution of assets following a divorce. That should piss off anyone interested in gender equality, because it raises the likelihood of backlash against all requests for alimony, including the legitimate cases.
References:
McKeever M, & Wolfinger, NH (2001). Reexamining the economic costs of marital disruption for women,Social Science Quarterly, 82,202-217
Peterson, RR (1996). A Re-Evaluation of the Economic Consequences of Divorce, American Sociological Review, 61,528-536
Shehan CL, et al. (2002). Alimony: An anomaly in family social science, Family Relations, 51, 308-316
California law mandates a list of things for the court to consider in determining any spousal support. Whether or not this gets applied in a gender-neutral fashion, I don’t know.
Child support is the real killer - the kids basically have a right to live in the same lifestyle as their noncustodial parent. There’s a formula for minimum child support (Family Code 4050 et seq.), but the rule of thumb I was told is 25% of net income for one kid, 35% for two. Ouch.
