A marriage should end when either of the parties want it to end, or else it's no longer consensual. I don't believe in forcing people to stay married. But divorce still needs to mean splitting the finances so nobody is left destitute and without skills for employment. Alimony was invented for a reason. Before it existed, divorce was immensely cruel.
Sorry to be negative, but I think the conventions around marriage needs to be redone alongside all the other changes around marriage. To wit, the ability of a woman to divorce you and receive alimony and child support for basically the rest of her life. It's not clear to me what reason a rational person has for NOT getting divorced after enough time has elapsed that alimony is possible. Roughly 50% of marriages end in divorce; 50% of those are high conflict. When you buy a ring and give it to her, this will not factor into that judgement. You can pay for everything and the only thing the judge will look at is your incomes. Be smart and split everything down the middle, including the ring.
But a couple where divorce is not a legal option is not a "stable couple", so you're effectively arguing against a strawman.
Here's what usually happens when divorce is not legally allowed:
1- The divorce happens in practice, with people splitting and/or taking lovers. Is this "stable" in your opinion?
2- The divorce doesn't happen even in practice, and either the man, the woman, or both, are stuck in a loveless, unhappy marriage that also causes harm to their children. I know you don't consider this "stable" so I won't even ask.
3- The divorce doesn't happen and the couple eventually makes up and manages to make it work.
You're betting everything on option 3, but it doesn't seem to happen all that often. Most common are options 1 & 2.
In other words: divorce only gives a legal option for problems that exist in couples since the dawn of time. Taking divorce away doesn't make those problems go away, it only makes people unhappy and/or they go about their way in illegal ways.
>> I would not recommend divorcing. She has said she will remain married to you until the kids are adult. This is a GREAT commitment.
So where I live, the standard for alimony is 1 year for every 3 that you are married. On top of that, if you're married 20+ years they think you should pay for life. There is no law that states this and couples are free to decide whatever they can agree to, but once layers are involved you're at a more significant financial risk the longer you stay married.
In short, if you honestly believe it will not work you should get out sooner rather than later. It will be better for both of you. Not sure about the kids though, but living under a broken relationship isn't good for them either.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Reform alimony now.
Force consistent rules at the federal level. Make childless divorces straightforward and fair. Eliminate the notion that a former spouse is responsible for maintaining a 'standard of living' established during the marriage. If two adults want to part ways, make them responsible for being adults.
To anyone not married, please understand what you are agreeing to by getting married. It is a legally binding contract that has nothing to do with romanticized notions of true love. There is an industry of people looking to profit from you and exploit you. Be extremely careful who you enter into that contract with.
People change. The ex in my case was self sufficient when I met her and then chose not to be. Was I supposed to withhold food and shelter from her to force her back into the workforce?
Alimony was not obvious to me as a 21 year old introverted virgin getting married.
If you want a specific arrangement then you should draft it in your marriage contract. It should not be the default assumption imposed by the state under the threat of incarceration.
Alimony is an antiquated concept based on outdated gender stereotypes and not in line with the modern workforce. Alimony seeks to create equality when none should exist. Alimony rewards deadbeats and forces exploitative relationships to continue, often indefinitely or without end. It is abusive to many, it is unjust, and it must be reformed.
Having economic shackles as the only incentive to keep two unhappy people together for longer than necessary seems like a terrible environment in which to raise happy and healthy children. Having experienced that as a child, it was miserable and set me up with unhealthy ideas about relationships.
Might as well make divorce illegal again. After all, something nicer might come along.
If the only thing holding your marriage together is needing to pay the bills or a judge, being forced to stay together only serves to make people like you feel righteous.
Your comment makes me wonder about what other unhealthy ideas about relationships you want to force upon others. Perhaps you should spend less time on r/MRAs and r/TheRedPill.
> So with everyone getting free money, including the children, there is no need for a father to take care of the family when he decides to diforce, right?
Having to pay child care costs and alimony above the poverty line are things that exist now and will have reason to exist even if a BI is implemented.
Agreed. I can’t believe what a massive cultural shift I’m witnessing. Divorce is in no way shape or form a “healthy end” to a marriage. The point of marriage is that it doesn’t end. It is a lifelong commitment.
I know a lady who's married but isn't super happy in the marriage. When she discussed possible divorce with her husband, he promised that he'd bog her down with paperwork, unreasonable alimony demands and just an extremely messy and unpleasant divorce. No settlement, it's going to multiple levels of court and will take years.
Assuming your comment is meant as an argument for remain, it's an equally good argument for this woman not to get divorced.
The lack of a social safety net in the US is not something antiquated marriage laws should be misused to insufficiently provide.
We need better general solutions in this area, a lot of the separation-related problems would vanish. Job-separation and spouse-separation overlap substantially, and it's rather harmful as-is when spouses are incentivized to stay in abusive relationships if they wouldn't even receive significant support separated from an abusive deadbeat anyways. They become trapped.
Agreed. Divorce is one of the most financially devastating events that can happen in one’s life. The longer I’m alive, the longer I recommend to people to never get married. Live together, but keep your finances separate (does not apply in community property states; watch out!).
> I don't really see how that's a bad thing, unless you don't think people should ever get divorced (which means you support people staying in abusive or miserable situations)
You're conflating divorce to remove oneself from an abusive situation with remarriage. I happen to think that remarriage after divorce is fine, but I can easily imagine arguments against it (here's one which leaps to mind, although I don't know if it's true: one's failure to marry well the first time is a strong predictor that one's future marriage will be poor as well).
Terrible divorce settlements really are about poor planning and communication of expectations than something inherent in marriage or common law relationships.
I don't think most people should get married or move in before age 30 - too easy to focus on the short term and get taken advantage of, unless you're really willing to make a leap of faith in the other person.
But otherwise divorce isn't as big of a deal when no children are involved and both partners work at reasonably equal jobs. Maybe there is a split in the house equity and bank accounts, with one party possibly giving a lump sum to the other, and you're done - mostly a clean break with no ongoing payments. I've seen this multiple times among friends.
It's when your partner is stay at home, marrying them (or in many jurisdictions, merely entering into common law relationship) also sets an entitlement of lifestyle and income.
Basically if your partner doesn't work, you need to be okay with supporting them to various degrees for the rest of your life, unless you can enter into a pre-nuptial agreement that says otherwise.
Now, add children into the mix and it's much more complicated and has nothing to do with marriage. Child support is technically the child's money, and the state enforces its payment on the grounds that your child is entitled to your earnings based on some kind of income-equity formula.
So for me, there never was any despair about finding a partner, it was more about understanding what I wanted:
- we split what assets we put into the marriage if it fails, what we brought in is mostly hands off so that the one with more property can't be milked. I say mostly because capital gains etc. may happen on past assets that your partner should be entitled to.
- we put each other into our wills otherwise and ensure we have life insurance for the other
- we both hold jobs, even if one of us makes more, alimony and child support wouldn't be absurdly high
- a partner that isn't afraid to talk about what their expectations are for lifestyle, income during and/or after the marriage if it doesn't work out
Being afraid of having your assets stripped implies you don't think you could hire a strong lawyer to defend your interests and also implies you wouldn't have the ability to define stuff before the marriage. But it's totally doable.
As with any life commitment there needs to be trust in another human being... but some safeguards if they turn out to be very different people than you had thought.
> But general societal pressure dictate that if you want to properly separate you divorce.
But isn't that still directly related to finances? The article kind of touches on the same point, where women are "giving up on men" who are not in a good financial position. Not having your finances sorted out with a former partner would also question one's financial position. If one wants to explore other partners after a relationship breakdown, there is social pressure to get one's finances in order.
> If you ever imagine re-marrying
But circling back, you pointed out that the most common reason people get married is for financial reasons. So it seems the reason for divorce, in order to prepare for another marriage, is still for financial reasons.
Which makes sense as the modern marriage contract doesn't cover anything other than financial attributes. Maybe there was an earlier age where there was more to it, but we don't uphold those values anymore.
I see your point but if we're talking here about a lengthy marriage, where the stakes are really life-changing: the sharing of a mortgage-free home, life insurance policies, savings - that all takes 20-30 years. I would hope, that of after decades of co-habitation there is a breakdown, the friendship between the partners should carry through to a reasonable conclusion. If the breakdown happens in the first few years, there is little to lose.
It is seriously possible that a couple could be married 2-3 years, have it break down because of unreasonable causes e.g one person shows their true self, and then the other person must pay alimony the rest of their lives? If this is the case, then sure I'm in agreement with that being absolutely stupid.
I disagree. There are two ends to a marriage that I am aware of — death and divorce.
Suppose the marriage was one of mental and physical abuse, but ends in death. I think it may have been healthier for that particular marriage to end in divorce.
(Contrast: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/24/tini-ow... )
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