Wednesday 4 May 2016

Impossible Thing #11

Only in a society which maintains a level of 95% of alimony and child support being paid by men to women can men and women be considered as equals. 

DAVE SIM:
Hi Erick!  The 2+2=4 on this one, for me, is that if we lived in a society with actual Gender Equality, no one would pay alimony to anyone.  In the same sense that if you have a roommate and they decide to move out, you don't go to court to figure out who should pay what to whom.  You go your way, I go my way, goodbye. Period.

You can't make the genders equal in these areas.  Men pay alimony to women disproportionately because most women are less well equipped to provide for themselves than are men.  The easiest way to disprove that thesis is by eliminating alimony.  If the Genders were Equal, alimony would be an insult. "How dare you imply that I can't provide for myself!" The genders aren't equal which is why alimony exists and involves such astronomical sums of money going from "male" to "female".

Child support is a different thing: each jurisdiction needs, I think, to have a legal fixed cost established of what is needed to rear a child and that needs to be paid.  But, it needs to be a FIXED cost, otherwise you're enabling a class system that establishes that Child A gets $30,000 a month and Child B gets $4,000 a month.  "This is how much it costs to rear a child". That's how much gets paid.

The exception, to me, would be alimony paid to wives and mothers.  If she was your wife and the mother of your children and that was WHO she was and WHAT she did, 24/7, then, yes, alimony needs to be paid and in a sufficient amount to maintain the life that she had, even if it impoverishes the divorcing husband and father.  Whatever flexibility you attached to that would, I think, have to be considerably (considerably!) less flexible based on the wife and mother's age.  The older she is, the less likely she is going to be able to provide for herself and the less likely she is to remarry.  So, yes, in that case alimony should, in my opinion, be "for life".

3 comments:

Erick said...

Hello Dave,
the world is not so black and white.
Lets take your first example of a roommate leaving and you deciding not to sue for payment. If you signed a lease - sharing rent, and one side decides just to up and leave because they had a hissy or some other reason, thus sticking you with the whole amount, you damn sure better sue to get that money.

Alimony, the theory is that the lower earning spouse sacrificed their earning potential in order to support the family. Your implied stance for over 30 years has been that women should not be in the workforce.Furthermore that men should be the earners and women stay at home. Well, you can't have it both ways when they get divorced. If the woman has stayed at home and has little to no earning potential, then she deserves that alimony - notice I am not even speaking of child support. If the woman has been earning the same or more than the husband, she does not deserve alimony and in fact the man may deserve it - as has played out in quite a few cases. If the woman is working but has earned considerably less than the man but is still contributing to the family, she deserves alimony. Why? Because the reality of the world we live in has women earning less than men for the same job. That is not some make believe 'lets go back to the 19th century' that is the real world deal. When men who have the deciding financial power finally realize that 'hey the best way to eliminate alimony is to have equal pay for equal work' then alimony will fade. But since that ain't happening, some men will just have to keep writing dem checks

Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

I don't know why Dave thinks this is a 2+2=4 argument. Dissolving a joint venture into individual ventures often requires division of assets, assignment of payments and even penalties, and guarantees of future behaviour.

-- Damian

whc03grady said...

Erick, Jesus man, read before you comment.
"If the woman has stayed at home and has little to no earning potential, then she deserves that alimony...."
cf.
"The exception, to me, would be alimony paid to wives and mothers. If she was your wife and the mother of your children and that was WHO she was and WHAT she did, 24/7, then, yes, alimony needs to be paid and in a sufficient amount to maintain the life that she had, even if it impoverishes the divorcing husband and father...in that case alimony should, in my opinion, be "for life"."

Alright,
Mitch.