the only time that alimony should be allowed is if:
in a scenario like this: john and lisa got married. then they get a divorce. john was ordered to pay X dollar amount to lisa to split up the financial assets. but John didn’t have the X dollar amount as a lump sum payment. then the alimony would be set up to allow john to pay over time until X amount was transferred. ( an example : it might be most of the money is tied up in a long term investment and it would be financially stupid to end the long term investment early… so a payment plan might be set up so lisa gets some of the profits over a period of time) maybe even have it be the X dollar amount plus some interest because she has to wait for the cash. obviously lisa and john would have to agree to the pay over time scenario and if they can’t agree with what to do then the judge would decide for them.
but no one should ever have to keep paying a person after they are divorced. (other then the above situation). it only creates an incentive for a person to get a divorce. get alimony and the move in with another partner but refuse to get married. now she is getting money from the ex spouse but is also getting benefit of living with someone else. it just encourages bad behaviour.
when the marriage ends that’s it . it ends. what’s yours before the marriage is yours . what’s gained during the marriage is split. then what is gained after the marriage is yours. the other half shouldn’t get access to what is yours after the marriage. it makes no sense.
i do not care if you were a stay at home spouse. (a man can be a stay at home spouse the same as a wife can be a stay at home spouse) . i do not care. you get a lump sum pay out of the assets at the end of the marriage. figure it out after that. go get a damn job. why is someone allowed to live off of another person after a marriage has ended?
to add to this: what a person entered the marriage with is what they should get by default.
ex: lisa had 250,000 is cash when she entered the marriage. john had 75,000 in cash when he entered the marriage. when the divorce happens the first thing that should happen is lisa should get 250,000 in cash and john should get 75,000 in cash. that is what they entered with. then the assets gained during the marriage is what should be split. if you split up the 250,000 and the 75,000 then you are going to a point before the marriage and that makes no sense. so what happens if they spent all the money gained during the marriage and then some of the money from before the marriage? (in other words they went negative from where they were before the marriage)
simple: what ever percent of the pre marriage net worth was spent then that is the percent that each party loses of the 250,000 and 75,000 . i would hope that your net worth went up while married. it shouldn’t have gone down unless there was a serious health crisis / long time loss of work on both people / serious mismanagement of the finances. but they both lose an equal percent of their pre-marriage cash.
Let’s say in your example, Lisa and John both have successful careers. They get married, have kids, and agree that they don’t both need to be working, so John keeps his job and Lisa takes care of the kids, takes care of the house, etc.
Twenty years later, they get divorced. Lisa now has a 20-year gap in her resume and her skillset is dated and she’s functionally unemployable in her previous career. John has built up 20 years of expertise and has a successful career ahead of him.
Equitable distribution of assets is only part of it - future prospects need to be considered, as well.
Exactly.
I’d not understood this until decades after my parents divorced.
Then Mom explained the retirement-consequences of being a housewife for years… the retirement destitution consequences of that, that are normal…
It clicked in my mind, then.
Mind you, I don’t find the 50%/50% split sane/rational in all cases…
How the HELL would the former-wife of the sociopath/destroyer-of-lowest-livelihoods Jeff Bezos have gained that many billions of $$, in her time married to him, doing ANYthing else?
There seems to be a requirement for proportionality, there…
( & there seems to be a need for proportionality in the pay-ladder, too!!
REQUIRING living-wage for the lowest-levels, & requiring that the pay-ladder be proportional all the way up, and not being the obscene embezzling-but-“legal” executive-pay that’s now normal…
It’s all part of a civilization-system, & no part can be “properly” isolated from the rest-of-the-system, obviously. )
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Here’s another way to look at it: Everything is being split equally. The spouse that was staying at home wasn’t bringing in money, but was providing value. Otherwise, they would have had a job. They weren’t building a resume or climbing a corporate ladder though.
So say Lisa has worked for the last 25 years while the kids were being raised by John. Lisa is now in middle management making $100,000 a year compared to the $30,000 a year when they got married. The kids are through school, so Lisa doesn’t need John to take care of them anymore, and fires his non-income producing ass(divorce). John, after staying home for 25 years can now go get a job at $30,000. He’s out that 25 years of corporate experience that would have enabled him to be making $100,000. Alimony is to cover some of that shortfall.
Just reframe it as a corporation and it’ll make sense. John and Lisa decide to cofound a startup. They are 50/50 owners. They build the business slowly, but through efficiencies are able to build a small cash base. Using that bare they invest in ways to make more money. One of the partners focus on revenue generating activities while the other focuses on operations. As they build out their company the burden of revenue gets harder as does the burden of operations.
Until one day, one partner decides they are leaving the partnership. One of the partners is still doing revenue generating activities. The other is not. But they both own the corp 50/50.
You can’t keep generating revenue and keep all the profits for yourself and just kick the other person out. Likewise, you can’t commit “'constructive dismissal” where you make life unbearable for the other partner so they feel they have to leave to save their sanity. You’re stuck with partner. Either buy them out or they keep collecting 50%.
Its an opinion and its unpopular, so it checks out. No idea why people downvote.
Honestly, I’m impressed by the Responses they are actually quite respectful and how people are responding. I was fully expecting some serious hate coming in.
